By the middle of the century the development of the liberated African community in Sierra Leone under the tutelage of British administration, churches, and education meant that some of its members were providing a considerable reinforcement for the British interest in western Africa. Economic activities in Sierra Leone itself were limited, and Sierra Leoneans were soon finding their way along the coast as independent pioneers of trade and Westernization or as auxiliaries to British traders, officials, and missionaries. Their most significant influence was in Yorubaland. By the 1840s at least half the liberated Africans were of Yoruba extraction, and by ...(100 of 31209 words)