In the above review of Bishop E.G. Ingham's book Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years, published in an 1894 edition of the Sierra Leone Weekly News (SLWN), the anonymous writer expressed his frustration with Ingham's unflattering choice of photographs. He argued that the images depicted Freetown in a less-than-favorable light. The reviewer's preoccupation with the shifting ways in which Sierra Leone, and Freetown in particular, had been represented is generative of a larger discourse of surveillance and imaging of the region. In 1787, the earlier settlement of Granville Town was conceived as perfect for the repatriation of “poor” blacks back to Africa that were deemed undesirable in the larger British society.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the colony had expanded and made a major contribution to the liberation and advancement of enslaved black Atlantic people with subsequent immigration, repatriation, and deportation schemes. The largest influx into Sierra Leone were...