Overfeeding and Hunger as a Captive in 18th-Century Sierra Leone

In September 1794, a few events made colonists hungry in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A group of French sailors attacked the British colony of a few whites and just over 1,000 black Loyalists. While the French uprooted crops, and ate or killed off the animals they could not carry, a Temne ruler known as King Farama, acting independently, seized nearly all of the colony’s ships. When colonist James Watt set out to retrieve them from Farama’s town, he embarked on a trip so riddled with diplomatic missteps that it ended in his temporary captivity. By taking Watt captive, withholding food from him, and then feeding him excessive amounts of food, Farama emphasized his power over the struggling British colony.