The early part of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of West Africa’s Sierra Leone settlement as an important center for the expanding trade economy. A surprising number of Sierra Leonean traders were Krio women, whose crosscultural background helped them to mediate the contact between European and African markets.In Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders, E. Frances White has unearthed the fascinating social and economic history of these women traders from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Using a lively mixture of newspaper accounts, contemporary observations, colonial documents, and oral histories, this book tells the story of former slaves and captives from Jamaica, North America, and other areas of West Africa who became successful traders linking their regional trade networks with the international economy. The study traces the eventual decline of the Sierra Leone traders’ influence under the extension of colonial rule and documents the gradual shift of Krio women into professional and semiprofessional occupations.Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders rescues these women from the invisibility that often befails colonial subcultures and sheds new light on the role of women as cultural brokers across ethnic boundaries, resulting in a study that makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the impact of colonial rule on women in Africa.

E. Frances White is MacArthur Professor of History and Black Studies at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts.