Today Sierra Leone is best known for one of the most savage and cruel civil wars in the history of mankind, but its actual history goes back around two and a half thousand years. Because of its dense tropical rainforest Sierra Leone (named after the mountains around Freetown harbour by the Portuguese 'Serra Lyoa' ~ Lion Mountains) Sierra Leone was mostly cut off from the rest of Africa.

Europe made its first contact there in 1462 and soon established trading posts and inevitably introduced slavery. By the seventeenth century Portuguese imperialism was on the wan and their presence there was largely supplanted by the British. By the 1800s Sierra Leone, whilst now a British colony, was much smaller than its present day area insofar as much of the land was still ruled by its indigenous people. Over the next decades British rule extended either by treaty, agreement or by other means until it exerted full control over the area, mainly in order to exclude the French.

In April 1961 Sierra Leone was granted full independence from the United Kingdom and elections were arranged for May 1962 in which the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) were victorious. A few years later military rule was imposed following a further election in 1967 however just over a year later democracy was restored. By 1991 there was an air of corruption in the politics of Sierra Leone and civil war broke out; a war in which tens of thousands died and over one third of the population was displaced.

The following pages explore both this dark period in Sierra Leone's history and shows pictures and images of the country today.