Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0314/03141.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 30KB | 479 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03141}
$Pretitle{380}
$Title{Sierra Leone
Chapter 3B.   International Boundaries and Political Subdivisions}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Irving Kaplan}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
census
sierra
leone
freetown
percent
area
areas
per
rate}
$Date{1976}
$Log{Table 1.*0314101.tab
}
Country:     Sierra Leone
Book:        Sierra Leone, A Country Study
Author:      Irving Kaplan
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 3B.   International Boundaries and Political Subdivisions

     Sierra Leone borders only two other countries, Guinea (405 miles) on the
north and east and Liberia (190 miles), also on the east and on the south. The
present-day boundary with Guinea was determined largely by agreements between
France and Great Britain between 1882 and 1895 that sought to delineate the
spheres of interest of the two colonial powers in the area during the
so-called scramble for Africa of the late 1800s. French military action at the
end of the century and in the early 1900s against ethnic groups in territory
then claimed by Liberia adjacent to southeastern Sierra Leone culminated in
various territorial readjustments. This section of the Sierra Leone-Guinea
border was agreed upon in 1911 and demarcated in 1913.

     A border with Liberia was initially agreed upon between Great Britain and
independent Liberia in 1885. The agreement set the Mano River as the dividing
line in the western part of the two territories and projected a line from the
river farther inland to form the rest of the boundary. Adjustments were
subsequently made in 1903, 1911, and 1930 that resulted in the present-day
border. The 1911 convention included a substantial mutual exchange of
territory that added the eastern extension of Kailahun District to Sierra
Leone.

     River courses constitute more than half the borders, and the watershed
dividing line between the basin of the upper Niger River in Guinea and several
basins in Sierra Leone makes up a substantial further portion; the remainder
consists of arbitrarily established straight lines. As elsewhere throughout
Africa south of the Sahara the boundaries were established mainly on economic
and political considerations and virtually entirely in the light of European
interests. Stemming from this, almost the entire Sierra Leone border is
straddled by homogeneous cultural groups. With respect to members of these
groups in Sierra Leone there appeared to be no indication of irredentist
sentiment in 1975 (see ch. 4; ch. 11).

     In the mid-1970s the country's first-order administrative divisions
consisted of three provinces, encompassing some 99 percent of the national
territory, and the small Western Area, in which Freetown is located (see fig.
1). The provinces were divided into a total of twelve districts that were
further subdivided into about 145 third-level administrative units called
chiefdoms (see ch. 9). Northern Province covered almost one-half the country's
total area, and the other two provinces each constituted roughly one-quarter.
The southern boundary of Northern Province followed a line that generally
separated the nation's two largest ethnic groups, the Temne on the north and
the Mende on the south. The eastern section of this boundary lay between the
Koranko and Kono peoples. District delineations bore little relationship to
ethnic association with the exception of Kono District, in which the vast
majority of members of that group were concentrated (see ch. 4).

     Sierra Leone has laid claim to jurisdiction over the adjacent waters of
the Atlantic Ocean to a distance of 200 nautical miles. At the time of
independence in 1961 the country claimed territorial seas only to the
three-nautical-mile limit. In 1965 an amendment to a 1957 fisheries act
extended the limit to twelve nautical miles. This remained in effect until
April 1971 when the Interpretation Act of 1971 defined "territorial sea" as
any open water within 200 nautical miles of the Sierra Leonean coast. The new
definition was incorporated in the fisheries act by an amendment to that act
in October 1973.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS AND MAN-MADE FEATURES

     The basic rural settlement pattern is the rather tightly nucleated
village or hamlet, the major exception being the dispersed individual
dwellings or family compounds of the Fullah. The nucleated village developed
essentially as a defense mechanism during the lengthy period of interethnic
and intertribal strife that characterized Sierra Leone until about the end of
the nineteenth century (see ch. 2). Throughout the forested zone over most of
the country such villages lay inside surrounding thick protective screens of
trees, beyond which were the village's cultivated fields and bush fallow (see
ch. 13). In the more open savanna woodlands of the northeastern plateau region
similarly nucleated settlements usually occupied defensible elevations. In
some places, however, local conditions brought modification of the typically
concentric arrangement of houses (or family compounds) is the village, as in
the coastal swamp regions, where linear villages occupied sand ridges.

     Although the compact, concentric village remained the most common kind in
the mid-1970s, modifications have developed in many places. The need to bunch
together for security no longer exists, and there is a tendency for villages
to spread out and for hamlets to arise near the villages. Particularly where
roads pass nearby or through a village, new houses are built in a linear
pattern. Fires that destroy villages from time to time may be followed by new
village layouts, including gridlike patterns.

     Towns, actually large villages, existed in precolonial days at principal
river ferrying points where the traffic stimulated trade and the provision of
services. Along the coast towns appeared early in the slaving period as
trading centers for slaves and some agricultural items from the interior. The
appearance of towns was followed from the late 1700s by the development of
towns, especially in the Freetown area, settled by freed slaves (see ch. 2).
European trade with the interior long used the waterways and, as this trade
increased, commercial centers arose at the head of navigation of rivers, for
example, at Pujehun or at river confluences such as at Port Loko.

     An impetus to town emergence inland was given by the construction of a
railroad across the southern part of the country beginning in 1895. Completed
in 1916 and designed to tap agricultural production in the area, it brought
about the development of collecting and marketing centers at strategically
located places. Establishment of administrative centers led to town
development, road expansion encouraged the rise of towns at various crossroads
to serve as trading centers, and the growth of mining led to some town
formation at the principal mining sites.

     Western-style architecture was introduced very early by the Creoles, who
constructed two-story houses and other structures patterned on the Caribbean
models with which they were familiar. This style was generally restricted to
the coastal area in which the Creoles lived, however, and had no influence on
traditional styles inland. The establishment of British administrative centers
after formation of the Protectorate (see Glossary) in 1898 led to the
construction of some Western-style buildings at those places. Present-day
Freetown resembles a Western city, but other towns retain many traditional
features: scattered Western-style public structures and areas of modern houses
occupied by materially better-off families are found alongside traditional
African housing (see ch. 6).

     In early 1976 the largest man-made feature was the road system, which
generally interconnected the towns of the three provinces, the Western Area,
and Freetown. This system was composed of an estimated 5,000 miles of roads of
different size and surface usable by motorized vehicles (see ch. 14). Visible
but largely, if not entirely, in disuse