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War-Towns in Sierra Leone: a Study in Social Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

D. J. Siddle
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Extract

One of the most interesting features of the cultural landscape of Sierra Leone is the very large number of settlements which still bear the marks of the long period of anarchy which preceded the colonial era. This is reflected both in the choice of sites and in the internal structures of settlements. Such influences are still to be found despite the impermanence of mud and wattle buildings and the sixty years which have elapsed since pacification. These settlements are interesting not only by the fact of their survival, but also for their wide distribution and their small size. There are probably more than a thousand defensive villages in the country, an average of one for every twenty-eight square miles, and reaching a maximum density of one for every four square miles in parts of Mendeland in the south. Most of them have populations of between two hundred and a thousand inhabitants. It is the aim of this paper to reconstruct the original character of these ‘war-towns’ as they were described by nineteenth- century explorers; to attempt an explanation of their wide distribution; and finally to show how social and economic changes are gradually causing a breakdown of this nucleic and defensive rural settlement pattern.

Résumé

VILLES FORTIFIÉES ET CHANGEMENTS SOCIAUX EN SIERRA LEONE

Les formes et la structure de l'implantation rurale en Sierra Leone sont le reflet d'une longue période d'anarchie qui a précédé l'ère coloniale. Jusquʼà la fin du siècle dernier, chaque village (de 200 à 4.000 habitants) constituait une place forte primitive, avec un système d'ouvrages défensifs — fossés, palissades — en bordure de grandes forêts. Il y avait probablement plus de mille implantations semblables dans le pays, intervenant environ tous les 28 milles carrés, et toute la structure de la vie rurale était fondée là-dessus. L'article étudie le contexte social et économique où elles se sont développées, décrit les légères variantes auxquelles on peut attribuer les différences régionales et fait état des facteurs nouveaux (routes carossables, cultures intensives, matériaux de construction nouveaux, évolution des attitudes sociales) qui ont contribué à la désintégration progressive des structures des anciennes villes fortifiées.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 1968 , pp. 47 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1968

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