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Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Governance After Armed Conflict pp 65–86Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

From Settlement and State Consolidation to Civil War and “Conflict Timber”

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Abstract

To better understand how natural resources contributed to the conflict in Liberia, Beevers provides an in-depth history of the country from its settlement in 1822 to the civil war a century and a half later. The chapter draws attention to the changing political, economic and social dynamics of the state and explains how the control of land and natural resources lie at the heart of the Liberian history. Beevers then explores the Liberian civil war in detail, and documents the emergence of natural resources, and specifically the exploitation and trade in the so-called conflict timber, as a dominant cause of the conflict.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To convince the king to sell the land a gun was reportedly held to his head.

  2. 2.

    “Americo-Liberians” refers to the descendants of freed American slaves (and free African Americans) that were settled in what would become Liberia by the ACS.

  3. 3.

    This was only of fraction of the over 100,000 tons exported annually before the war began.

  4. 4.

    Taylor was not the only rebel group to use natural resources as ULIMO used diamonds to fund its operations.

  5. 5.

    A famous chant about Taylor’s election goes “He killed my pa, He killed my ma, I’ll vote for him.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Studies, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA

    Michael D. Beevers

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  1. Michael D. Beevers
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Beevers, M.D. (2019). From Settlement and State Consolidation to Civil War and “Conflict Timber”. In: Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Governance After Armed Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63166-0_4

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