Editing Granville Sharp (section)

==The Province of Freedom==
[[File:Province of Freedom.jpg|thumb|200px|right|View from Granville Town looking north to Bullom Shore from ''Voyages to the River Sierra Leone'' by John Matthews, 1788]]

Although no reliable figures exist, it is thought that in the early 1780s there were around 15,000 black people in Britain, most of them without employment. Ideas were formulated for a settlement in Africa where they could return "home". [[Henry Smeathman]], a plant collector and [[entomologist]] who had visited Sierra Leone, propounded to the [[Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor]] that the country would be an excellent location.  Worried black people came to see Sharp, concerned that they might be re-enslaved in such a place.<ref>Michael Siva, ''Why did Black Londoners not join the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme 1783-1815?'' (London: Open University, 2014), p. 20-4.</ref><ref>Simon Schama, ''Rough Crossings'' (London: BBC Books, 2005), pp. 183-5.</ref>

Sharp took to the idea with alacrity: he saw it as a perfect opportunity to create a new model society from scratch. He drew up plans and regulations, and persuaded the Treasury to finance the ships and pay £12 a head to each embarking settler. He named the new, egalitarian, peaceful Christian society-to-be "[[Cline Town, Sierra Leone|The Province of Freedom]]".<ref>Simon Schama, ''Rough Crossings'' (London: BBC Books, 2005), pp. 185-194</ref>

The utopian ideal quickly went sour in the face of tremendous logistical difficulties; fire broke out even before the ships had left London. Sharp's friend, [[Olaudah Equiano]], highlighted corruption in the process of stocking the ships, and was dismissed as a result; 411 people sailed for Africa, including some 60 white women without Sharp's knowledge, married to the male settlers. It is unclear how many were previously betrothed and how many married in preparation for the journey; traditionally these women have been characterized as prostitutes from Deptford. However, historians have since dismissed that description as false.<ref name="Simon Schama 2005 pp. 200-16">Simon Schama, ''Rough Crossings'' (London: BBC Books, 2005), pp. 200-16.</ref><ref>Michael Siva, ''Why did Black Londoners not join the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme 1783-1815?'' (London: Open University, 2014), p. 28-33, 40-3.</ref> The settlers arrived in May 1787, at the onset of the five-month rainy season, and a settlement of sorts was built, named Granville Town. The commander of the naval escort that had brought the settlers concluded that they were unfit for the complex challenge of founding a new settlement in a potentially hostile environment.<ref name="Simon Schama 2005 pp. 200-16"/> One of the settlers whom Granville had rescued from a slave ship left the settlement to work in the slave trade, much to Sharp's despair. By the end of 1788 Sharp had poured £1,735 18s 8d of his own money into the settlement. In 1789 Granville Town was burned to the ground by a local [[Temne people|Temne]] chief; this may have been in retaliation for the burning of a Temne by a slave-trader.<ref name=Sheppard/>

Through The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1790 Granville came into contact with [[Thomas Peters (black leader)|Thomas Peters]], a former American slave who fought with the British during revolution in return for freedom. Sharp was instrumental in helping Peters to establish [[Freetown]], Sierra Leone. Sharp is considered to be one of the founders of Sierra Leone alongside Thomas Peters and the Clarkson brothers ([[Thomas Clarkson]] and [[John Clarkson (abolitionist)|John Clarkson]]).