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Centralia
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Flag |
Coat of arms |
Nickname | The Diamond State |
Motto | "Justice, Commerce, Freedom" |
Anthem | Τ Centralia |
Map of Equatoria with Centralia highlighted
Country | Equatoria |
Before statehood | Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate |
Granted statehood | 4 July 1906 |
Capital | Port Wellington |
Largest county | Alberton |
Largest metro | Greater Port Wellington |
Government | |
Governor | Anna Nichol (F) |
Deputy Governor | Emanuel Davidson (F) |
Legislature | Centralia State Legislature |
Upper House | Centralia Senate |
Lower House | Centralia House of Representatives |
Judiciary | Supreme Court of Centralia |
Federal Senators | |
Federal House members | |
Area | |
Total | 72,740 km2 |
Water (%) | 0.9 |
Rank | 1st |
Elevation | 279 m (915,35 ft) |
Highest elevation | 1,948 m (6,391 ft) |
Lowest elevation | 0 m |
Population | 2024 |
Total | 8,980,040 |
Rank | 1st |
Density | 123.5/km2 |
Rank | Nth |
Median household income | N |
Income rank | Nth |
Demonym | Centralian |
Official language | English |
Spoken languages | English |
Time Zone | UTC (GMT) |
FPS abbreviation | CE |
Traditional abbreviation | Cent. |
Latitude | 7° to 10°N |
Longitude | 10° to 14°W |
Website | centralia.gov |
Centralia is a state in the Central Equatoria region that lies on the Atlantic Coast. It borders Victoria to its north, Mamoa to its northeast, Sehnkwenh to its east, Saint Paul and the Federal Enclave to its south, and the Atlantic Ocean to its west and southwest. Covering 72,740 square kilometres (28,085.071 sq mi), with just under 10 million residents as of 2024, Centralia is Equatoria's largest state by land area and population. Centralia is nicknamed the Diamond State for its large, internationally renowned diamond industry, which historically was the main driving force of its economy.
Before European colonisation, Centralia was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in West Africa. The region's dense tropical rainforest and swamps, coupled with the presence of the tsetse fly, provided natural defences against invasions by the Mandinka Empire and other West African civilisations, preserving Centralia's indigenous cultures from external influence. Centralia was the first region of modern-day Equatoria to be visited by European explorers. Traders from other European countries arrived in Centralia in the 15th and 16th centuries, establishing factories along the coast that primarily traded in slavery. The British Empire was the first European country to claim and control Centralia, establishing a settlement for liberated Afro-American slaves called Freetown, which later grew into the Colony of Sierra Leone. In September 1879, under the auspices of the British government, the Colony of Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Republic of Liberia united to form the Commonwealth of Equatorial States. In 1886, the Commonwealth formally acquired control of French territory between the Geba and Niger rivers, roughly doubling its size. The modern state of Centralia was established when the Equatorial States gained independence from the British Empire in 1906. It encompassed the old Sierra Leone Colony, with some territory annexed from the 1886 acquisition. The state gained its modern borders in 1921, when the city of Freetown and its surrounding towns and countryside were separated from the state.
Historically, five major industries shaped the Centralia economy before World War II: rice, cattle, fishing, cocoa, and palm oil. Before and after the establishment of the Commonwealth of Equatorial States, rice was a major economic driver, contributing to the popular image of the Centralian rice farmer. In the early 20th century, fishing and cattle farming became major industries as the rice industry became less lucrative. Ultimately, the discovery of major diamond deposits in the 1930s initiated an economic boom that drove the economy for much of the 20th century. Centralia developed a diversified economy and manufacturing industry during the mid-20th century. As of 2024, the state has a growing industry base, leading in many sectors, including tourism, agriculture, gem-grade and industrial-grade diamond mining, energy, fishing, finance, and biomedical sciences. Centralia leads in state export revenue and has the second-highest state GDP, after Saint Paul.
The state capital of Port Wellington and the Greater Port Wellington area are the nation's fourth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan area, respectively. Part of the Central Equatoria region, Centralia has four distinct geographical regions: coastal Equatorian mangroves, the wooded hill country, an upland plateau, and the eastern mountains. Eastern Centralia is an interior region of large plateaus interspersed with high mountains, where Mount Bintumani rises to 1,948 meters (6,391 ft). Eastern Centralia is also home to the Kambui Hills State Park, a natural reserve inhabited by over 200 separate species of birds, in addition to western chimpanzees and other primates, as well as other mammal species such as African forest elephants, and Jentink's, Maxwell's and black duikers. Cultural aspects of Centralia include the Centralian palm wine industry, diamond mining, rice farming, tea culture, tobacco, Creole cuisine, barbecue, gumbe music, association football, and baseball.
Centralia's name derives from its location near the centre of Equatoria.
Before independence in 1906, the modern territory of Centralia was known as Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone derived its name from the Lion Mountains near its capital, Freetown. Originally named Serra Leoa (Portuguese for 'lioness mountains') by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra in 1462, the name "Sierra Leone" is derived from the Venetian spelling, which was introduced by Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto and subsequently adopted by other European mapmakers.
Precolonial history
Equatoria was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in precolonial Equatoria. Before European colonisation, the area was inhabited by numerous politically independent native groups. Several different languages were spoken, but there was a similarity in religion. In the coastal rainforest belt, there were Bulom-speakers between the Sherbro and Freetown estuaries, Loko-speakers north of the Freetown estuary to the Little Scarcies River, Temne-speakers found at the mouth of the Scarcies River, and Limba-speakers farther up the Scarcies. In the hilly savannah north of all of these lands were the Susu and Fula tribes. The Susu traded regularly with the coastal peoples along river valley routes, bringing salt, Fulani textiles, ironwork, and gold.
The region's dense tropical rainforest and swamps, coupled with the presence of the tsetse fly, which carried a disease fatal to horses and the zebu cattle used by the Mandι people, provided natural defences against invasions by the Mandinka Empire and other African empires, and limited the influence of the Mali Empire, preserving local cultures from external influence. The introduction of Islam by Susu traders, merchants and migrants in the 18th century enriched the indigenous cultures, eventually establishing a strong presence in the north.
Portuguese ships began visiting Centralia regularly in the late 15th century, and for a while, they maintained a fort on the north shore of the Freetown estuary. In 1462, Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the oddly shaped formation Serra Lyoa (Lioness Mountain). This naming has been subject to historical reinterpretation, suggesting earlier European knowledge of the region. Following Sintra, European traders established fortified posts, engaging primarily in the slave trade, which altered the socio-economic landscape.
Portuguese traders were particularly drawn to the local craftsmanship in ivory, leading to a notable trade in ivory artefacts such as horns, Sapi Saltceller, and spoons. The Sapi people belonged to a cluster of people who spoke West Atlantic languages, living in the region of modern-day Centralia. There had already been a carving culture established in the area before Portuguese contact, and many travellers to Sierra Leone, impressed with their craftsmanship, took local ivory horns back to Europe. One notable description at the beginning of the 16th century, by Pacheco, noted that: in this country [Sierra Leone] they make beautiful mats of palm-leaf and necklaces of ivory [...]In this land they make ivory necklaces more delicately carved than in any other country, also very fine and beautiful mats of palm-leaf, which are called 'bicas' [which are] very beautiful and good.
Exploration and the slave trade
The Atlantic Slave trade
Slavery, and in particular the Atlantic slave trade, had a profound social, economic, and political impact on the area. Commercial goods from Europe were shipped to Africa for sale and traded for enslaved Africans. Africans were, in turn, brought to the Americas, in what became known as the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves were thereafter traded for raw materials, which were returned to Europe to complete the "Triangular Trade".
When Europeans first arrived in Centralia, slavery among the African peoples of the area was believed to be rare. According to some modern historians, Portuguese explorers kept detailed reports and accounts of their exploration of the region; therefore, it is likely if slavery had been an important local institution, the reports would have described it. There was mention of a very particular kind of slavery in the region, wherein "a person in trouble in one kingdom could go to another and place himself under the protection of its king, whereupon he became a 'slave' of that king, obliged to provide free labour and liable for sale." Based on historical accounts, such a person would likely have retained some rights and had some opportunity to rise in status as time passed.
The European colonisation of the Americas soon led to labour demands from nascent colonies; this led Europeans to seek a supply of slaves to transport to the Americas. Initially, European slavers launched raids on coastal villages to abduct Africans and sell them into slavery. However, they soon established economic alliances with local leaders, as many chiefs were willing to sell undesirable members of their tribe to Europeans. Other African chiefs launched raids on rival tribes to sell captives of such raids into slavery. Besides the human impact of these slave raids, there were economic effects as well: trade with the interior was interrupted, and thousands of captives were sold as slaves to the Europeans. In the industry, a flourishing tradition in fine ivory carving was ended.
By the 17th century, Portuguese colonialism in West Africa began to wane, and in Centralia, other European colonial powers such as the English and Dutch began to supplant their influence in the region. In 1628, a group of English merchants had established a factory in the vicinity of Sherbro Island, about 50 km (30 mi) southeast of present-day Freetown. In addition to ivory and slaves, the merchants at the factory also traded in camwood, a type of hard timber. The Portuguese missionary Baltasar Barreira ministered in Centralia until 1610. Jesuits, and later in the century, Capuchins, continued the mission. By 1700, it had closed, although priests occasionally visited.
In 1663, the Royal African Company (RAC) was granted a royal charter from Charles II of England and soon established a factory on Sherbro Island and Tasso Island. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, both factories were sacked by the Dutch Navy in 1664. The factory was rebuilt, though it was sacked again by the French Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession in 1704 and by pirates in 1719 and 1720. After the Dutch raid on the RAC factory at Tasso Island, it was relocated to the nearby Bunce Island, which was more defensible.
The slave fort on Bruce Island
In 1652, the first slaves from Centralia were transported to North America; they were sold to white plantation owners in the Sea Islands off the coast of the American South. During the 18th century, numerous slaves from Bunce Island were transported to the Southern Colonies, due in part to the business relationship between American slave trader Henry Laurens and the London-based firm of Grant, Sargent, Oswald & Company, which oversaw a thriving slave trade from Bunce Island in Centralia to North America.
The Europeans made payments, called Cole, for rent, tribute, and trading rights to the king of an area. At this time, the local military advantage was still on the side of the Africans, and there is a 1714 report of a king seizing RAC goods in retaliation for a breach of protocol. Local Luso-African merchants often acted as middlemen, the Europeans advancing their goods to trade with the local people, most often for ivory and slaves. In 1728, an overly aggressive RAC governor united the Africans and Luso-Africans in hostility to him; they burnt down the Bunce Island fort, which was not rebuilt until about 1750. At the time the Royal African Company was operating, Grant, Sargent and Oswald provisioned the trading stations. When the RAC abandoned Bunce Island, Sargent and his partners purchased its factory in 1748, repaired it, and used it to trade in timber. They expanded to Batts, Bobs, Tasso, and Tumbu Islands and along the banks of the river, eventually expanding their slave trade enterprise. The French sacked it again in 1779, during the American Revolutionary War.
The transatlantic slave trade continued to transport millions of enslaved Africans, including those from Centralia, across the Atlantic during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; ultimately, roughly 12.5 million slaves were brought to the Americas this way. However, the rise of abolitionist movements in the Western world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries led to various European and American governments passing legislation to abolish the slave trade. The slave trade in Centralia ceased in the late 18th and early 19th centuries largely through British efforts.
A view of Granville Town
In the late 18th century, many African Americans were subjects of the British Crown. Most of these people were Black Loyalists, people of African ancestry who supported the British cause during the American Revolutionary War. Many had been slaves who had escaped to join the British, lured by promises of freedom (emancipation). Official documentation known as the Book of Negroes lists thousands of freed slaves whom the British evacuated from the nascent United States and resettled in colonies elsewhere in British North America.
In 1787, a plan was established to settle some of London's "Black Poor" in Centralia in what was called the "Province of Freedom." A charitable organisation called the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor funded and organised this venture. Many of the Black Poor were African Americans, who had been given their freedom after seeking refuge with the British Army during the American Revolution, but also included other West Indian, African and Asian inhabitants of London.
Pro-slavery advocates accused the Black Poor of being responsible for a large proportion of crime in 18th-century London. While the broader community included some women, the Black Poor seems to have exclusively consisted of men, some of whom developed relationships with local women and often married them. Many in London thought moving them to Sierra Leone would lift them out of poverty. Entomologist Henry Smeathman proposed the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme, drawing interest from humanitarians like Granville Sharp, who saw it as a means of showing the pro-slavery lobby that black people could contribute towards running a new colony. Government officials soon became involved in the scheme, although their interest was spurred by the possibility of resettling a large group of poor citizens elsewhere. William Pitt the Younger, prime minister and leader of the Tories, had an active interest in the Scheme.
In 1787, the British Crown founded a settlement in Centralia in what was then called the "Windward Shore". The area was first settled by 400 formerly enslaved Black Britons, who arrived off the coast of Sierra Leone on 15 May 1787, accompanied by some English tradesmen. They established the Province of Freedom or Granville Town on land purchased from a local Temne subchief named King Tom and regent Naimbanna II, a purchase which the Europeans understood to cede the land to the new settlers "forever". The established arrangement between Europeans and the Temne did not include provisions for permanent settlement, and some historians question how well the Koya leaders understood the agreement.
Half of the settlers in the new colony died within the first year, owing to disease and warfare with the Temne people, who captured some of the colonists and sold them into slavery. Alexander Falconbridge was sent to Sierra Leone in 1791 to collect the remaining settlers, and they re-established Granville Town (later renamed Cline Town) near Fourah Bay. Although these 1787 settlers did not establish Freetown, which was founded in 1792, the bicentennial of Freetown was celebrated in 1987. This settlement was different from the Freetown settlement and colony founded in 1792 by Lt. John Clarkson and the Nova Scotian Settlers under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company.
Old Baptist Chuch, built in 1802
near the site of the arrival of the
First Nova Scotian settlers. In the
churchyard is the famous
Cotton Tree
The basis for the Freetown Colony began in 1791 with Thomas Peters, an African American who had served in the Black Pioneers and settled in Nova Scotia as part of the Black Loyalist migration. Peters travelled to England in 1791 to report grievances of the Black Loyalists who had been given poor land and faced discrimination. Peters met with British abolitionists and the directors of the Sierra Leone Company. He learned of the company's plan for a new settlement in Sierra Leone. The directors were eager to allow the Nova Scotians to build a settlement there; the London-based and newly created Company had decided to create a new colony, but before Peters' arrival had no colonists. Lieutenant John Clarkson was sent to Nova Scotia to register immigrants to take to Sierra Leone to start a new settlement. Clarkson worked with Peters to recruit 2,206 former American slaves from free African communities around Nova Scotia, such as Birchtown. Most had escaped Virginia and South Carolina plantations. Some had been born in Africa before being enslaved and taken to America.
The settlers sailed in 15 ships from Halifax, Nova Scotia and arrived in St. George Bay between 26 February and 9 March 1792. Sixty-four settlers died en route, and even Lieutenant Clarkson was ill during the voyage. Upon reaching Sierra Leone, Clarkson and some of the Nova Scotian 'captains' "dispatched on shore to clear or make roadway for their landing". The Nova Scotians were to build Freetown on the former site of the first Granville Town, which had become a "jungle" since its destruction in 1789. Though they built Freetown on Granville Town's former site, their settlement was not a rebirth of Granville Town, which was re-established at Fourah Bay in 1791 by the remaining Old Settlers. Clarkson told the men to clear the land until they reached a large cotton tree. After this difficult work had been done and the land cleared, all the settlers, men and women, disembarked and marched towards the thick forest and to the cotton tree, where their preachers (all African Americans) prayed and preached the first recorded Baptist service in Africa under the tree's shade.
The land was dedicated and christened 'Free Town' according to the instructions of the Sierra Leone Company Directors. This was the first Thanksgiving service in the newly christened Free Town and was the beginning of the Colony of Sierra Leone. Later, John Clarkson would be sworn in as the first governor of Sierra Leone. Small huts were erected before the rainy season. The Sierra Leone Company surveyors and the settlers built Freetown on a grid pattern with parallel streets and wide roads, the largest being Water Street. On 24 August 1792, the Old Settlers of the second Granville Town were incorporated into the new Sierra Leone Colony but remained at Granville Town. By 1798, Freetown had around 600 houses with architecture reminiscent of the American South, with 3- to 4-foot stone foundations and wooden superstructures.
In 1792, in a move that foreshadowed the women's suffrage movements in Britain, the heads of all households, of which a third were women, were given the right to vote. Black settlers in Sierra Leone enjoyed much more autonomy than the average person in most European countries at the time. Black migrants elected different levels of political representatives, such as 'tithingmen', who represented each dozen settlers and 'hundreders' who represented larger amounts. This sort of representation was not available in Nova Scotia.
