Fyle, 2011, pp. 45-46; Schwarz, 2007; Schwarz, 2017). Following the transfer of the settlement to British Crown control in 1808, the multi-ethnic composition of the settlement was increased markedly through the forced relocation to Sierra Leone of tens of thousands of Africans released from slave ships on the West African coast by British Royal Navy patrols (Schwarz, 2012; Da Silva et al., 2014; Schwarz, 2020). During this period, Sierra Leone developed as an early and important site of experimentation in Protestant missions and was associated with some of the earliest European interventions of the Evangelical revival. Although earlier historical writing has placed emphasis on European missionaries, an outstanding characteristic of the activity in Sierra Leone was the extensive and independent roles of people of African origin and descent. As Hair points out, the 'missions from Freetown [...] were largely manned by Africans; the initiative in most cases came largely from African sources; and the direction of many of them was largely in African hands' (1964, pp. 13-14).  
The influx of migrants to Sierra Leone between the late 1780s and early 1860s introduced new African and Afrodescendent peoples, languages, cultures and religious beliefs into an area that had hitherto demonstrated considerable continuity as regards the make-up of the population. As Fyfe points out,  
1787 brought dramatic discontinuity. A totally different population was introduced. During the succeeding twenty years three successive settler communities of African descent arrived - the 1787 settlers (the so-called "Black Poor") from England, in 1792 the settlers from Nova Scotia, and in 1800 the Jamaica Maroons (Fyfe, 1987, pp. 411414; Fyfe, 1962, pp. 13-104).