Economic and Social Impacts of World War II on Freetown and Sierra Leone

It is widely recognized that after the Second World War there was a great jump in African urbanization, economic output, and nationalist activity, but there has been little effort to correlate those shifts with allied activities and African responses during the war itself. The connection between the war effort and a speed up of changes leading to the nationalist movement is a large and complex problem. I propose to isolate a portion of this problem by focusing on port cities using certain tools of spatial analysis in conjunction with familiar methods of documenting social and economic history.
My focus will be on Freetown, Sierra Leone. The study will begin by looking at the question quantitatively: number of ships in the harbor, number of troops stationed on shore, investment by allied armies in infrastructure, numbers of Africans hired and types of positions for which they were hired, etc., all within a chronological framework. Related infrastructural changes in the areas immediately around the cities will also be measured. This statistical study will be used to create a foundation for measuring the overall spatial impacts and for assessing related social and economic impacts. I will also attempt to measure five related spatial effects: the rise of large-scale migration to the port; the expansion of economic activity along the rail line and the coast, particularly in towns where food and other crops were gathered for shipment to the port; the development of extensive African networks linking rural areas with the port city; the investment of Africans' incomes in the city and in rural areas; and the impact of expenditure for food and other necessities on rural areas. In analyzing these effects, I will draw of spatial theories, for instance, concepts of growth poles and of the morphology of networks.