Recent decades have seen a growing interest in the history of black people in Britain. One of the most controversial episodes in black British history, and one which raises several important questions, was the Sierra Leone expedition of 1786-1787. The establishment of a settlement in West Africa in the late eighteenth century by a group of black people from London was in itself an extraordinary occurrence. Who were these black people and how had they come to Britain? How were they regarded by the native white population? And why was it that some of them left Britain in an attempt to build a new community in Africa?

Most writers on black British history have emphasised the negative side of black-white relations and the prejudice which blacks in Britain have suffered. Thus Folarin Shyllon argues that ‘racism has been the British way of life ever since the first blacks settled in Britain’. The centre-piece of his argument is the Sierra Leone venture, which is seen as ‘a concerted attempt … by the British Government and Britain's liberal establishment to rid Britain of her black population and make Britain a white man's country’. Were London's blacks simply the passive victims of a racist deportation? Or did they in fact help to determine their own destiny?

The Sierra Leone expedition is not only part of black British history but also part of the history of Africa.