Abstract
This chapter attempts to provide the backdrop which hopefully will help the uninitiated to better appreciate the subject matter of the book. Rather than giving a complete narrative of the past happenings, we have chosen to pick three main strands which dominate the early history of Liberia, Africa’s first republic created out of a settlement established to give a home to the freed slaves of the USA. These strands are: a. dealing with the arrogant and powerful neighbours (the British colony of Sierra Leone to the west and the French colonies of Guinea and Ivory Coast to the north and east respectively) and attempting to carve out a well-defined, internationally accepted territorial sovereign identity; b. formulating a policy towards the interior inhabited by the local people who constituted the bulk of the population and the complications faced because of ambivalence of both the parties and c. groping for appropriate measures to convert a wobbly economy into a viable one and erect a decent administrative structure on it. This led to the formation of the International Customs Receivership with an American heading it and representatives of Germany, Great Britain and France working as members. Liberia allowed her most important source of revenue to be managed by European powers and her godfather, the USA.
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Notes
- 1.
Schulze, Willi, A New Geography of Liberia (London) 1973 is a dependable source of information on Liberian geography.
- 2.
Karnga, Abayomi, History of Liberia (Liverpool) 1926.
- 3.
I understand Dr. C. Patrick Burrowes of Penn State University is working on a well-researched and elaborate history of Liberia prior to 1822. Dr. Burrowes’s book, I am sure, will satisfy a curious student of history who would want to have more detailed information of this region.
- 4.
Johnston , Harry, Liberia, Vols. I and II (London) 1906 has dwelt on Europe’s attempts to explore the coast of West Africa and provides a chronologically arranged list. Huberich, Charles Henry, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia, Vols. I and II (New York) 1947, pp. 1–5, gives a more detailed picture of European exploration of the West African Coast. Fage, J.D. A History of West Africa, (Cambridge) 1969, p. 57 provides a wider perspective of the gradual penetration of the European traders in West Africa.
- 5.
Gershoni, Yekutiel, Black Colonialism: The Americo Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland, (Boulder and London) 1985, p. 4.
- 6.
Hopkins, A.G., An Economic History of West Africa (London) 1973, p. 212.
- 7.
d’Azavedo, Warren L., “A Tribal Reaction to Nationalism”, Liberian Studies Journal, Vol. I, No. 2, 1969. p. 5.
- 8.
Curtin, Philip D, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison) 1969; Kuczynski, Robert Population Movements (Oxford) 1936 and Davidson, Basil, The African Slave Trade (Boston) 1961. Figures attributed to Curtin and Kuczynski refer to the slaves who reached America, but Davidson’s figure refers to the number Africa lost. Many Africans died as a result of wars precipitated for the purpose of acquiring slaves, during the ensuing march to the coast, in confinement at the slave yards or on board slave ships.
- 9.
Beckles, Hilary Macdonald, Slave Voyages: The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans (UNESCO, PARIS) 2002, pp. 93–94.zzx.
- 10.
Shick, Tom W., Behold the Promised Land: A history of African-American Settler Society in Nineteenth Century Liberia (Baltimore) 1977, p. 11 drawing on Reynolds Farley, The Growth of the Black Population: A Study of Demographic Trends (Chicago) 1970.
- 11.
Shick, Behold the Promised Land, p. 4 quoting from Jefferson, Thomas Notes on the State of Virginia (New York) 1861 reprinted. 1964.
- 12.
Gershoni, Black Colonialism.
- 13.
Alexander, Archibald, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (New York) 1969 as quoted by Gershoni, pp. 6–7.
- 14.
Hodgkin, Thomas, An Inquiry into the merits of the American Colonization Society: and a reply to the charges brought against it (London) 1833 reprinted by the African Publication Society (London) 1969.
- 15.
Burin, Eric, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Florida) 2005, pp. 17–22.
- 16.
The Republic of Haiti, located in the Caribbean Sea, was founded on 1 January 1804. It was a French colony known for its vast sugar-cane plantations where thousands of black slaves imported from Africa worked. Inspired by the lofty motto of the French Revolution, the slaves revolted and declared themselves independent after defeating the French Colonial Army. The hero of the glorious episode was Toussaint L’Ouverture. Napoleonic France chose not to intervene. Haiti thus was the world’s first Black Republic and Liberia has the identical distinction in the context of the African continent.
- 17.
Nnamdi , Azikiwe , Liberia in World Politics (London) 1934 is a good source of Liberia’s diplomatic history. Raymond W. Bixler’s The Foreign Policy of the United States in Liberia (New York) 1957 and John Payne Mitchell’s America’s Liberian Policy, an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation done at the University of Chicago in 1955 are good sources on US-Liberian relationship.
- 18.
Foley, David M., British Policy Towards Liberia, 1862–1912, an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation presented to the University of London in 1965, makes a thorough study of British policy towards Liberia of this period.
- 19.
Everill, Bronwen, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Palgrave Macmillan (2013), pp. 2–3.
- 20.
Everill, Bronwen, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia, pp. 129–33.
- 21.
E. Gordon Rule to the Liberian secretary of state, 11.12.1929 in F.O. 371/14657.
- 22.
David Foley, British Policy Towards Liberia, has detailed information on the issue of Liberia’s boundaries with her colonial neighbours.
- 23.
Minutes by Clarke and Langley on Lister to Grey , 2.10.1907 in F.O. 371/44.
- 24.
Shick, Behold the Promised Land, p. 17.
- 25.
Smith, Robert A, The Emancipation of the Hinterland (Monrovia) 1964, p. 13.
- 26.
Sawyer , Amos, National Oration Delivered on the Occasion of the 3rd Redemption Day Anniversary (Monrovia) 1983. It so happens that Dr. Sawyer was referring to the present author when he said “a colleague of mine”. In June 1981, the French embassy at Monrovia organized “A week of Liberian Culture”. They chose me to speak on the unique features of Liberian history on the evening of June 24. The lecture was broadcast by the Liberian Radio repeatedly for several days. This and Dr. Sawyer’s mention of this in the National Oration made the analogy very popular. Interestingly, nearly all literature on Liberia uses the word “mosaic” to describe the plural nature of Liberian society. For obvious reasons, I feel flattered.
- 27.
Parker, George Gordon, Acculturation in Liberia, a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford Seminary Foundation (1944).
- 28.
Jones, Hanna Abeodu Bowen, The Struggle for Political and Cultural Unification in Liberia 1847–1930, an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation done at Northwestern University (1962).
- 29.
Akpan, Monday Benson, The African Policy of the Liberian Settlers, 1841–1932: A Study of the Native Policy of a Non-colonial Power in Africa, a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the University of Ibadan (1968). Professor Akpan, towards the end of his life, preferred to be known as Monday Benson Abasiattai.
- 30.
Brown, George W., The Economic History of Liberia, Washington (1941). E.W. Bovill’s Caravans of the Old Sahara was published even earlier (1933) but deals with a specific trade and covers a region and not a particular country.
- 31.
Gershoni, Black Colonialism, p. 5.
- 32.
Jones, Adam, From Slaves to Palm Kernels: A history of the Galinhas Country 1730–1890 ( Wiesbaden) 1983, p. 20
- 33.
Olfert Dapper (1636–69) was a Dutch physician and writer whose “Description of Africa” (1668) is considered one of the most authoritative seventeenth-century accounts of Africa. Dapper never travelled to Africa (hence he is usually referred to as an armchair geographer) but used reports by Jesuit missionaries and Dutch traders and explorers.
- 34.
Bixler, Raymond W., The Foreign Policy of the United States in Liberia, p. 9.
- 35.
Ashmun to Board Managers of ACS, December 31, 1825, AR I (1826), 82 and AR XIV (1838), 4; Maryland Colonization Journal, III (1845), 43 as quoted by Akpan, M.B. in “The Liberian Economy in the Nineteenth Century: the State of Agriculture and Commerce”, an article published in Liberian Studies Journal, Vol. VI, (1975), No. 1. pp. 3–4.
- 36.
Akpan, “The Liberian Economy in the Nineteenth Century”, p. 4.
- 37.
Liebenow, J. Gus, Liberia: The Quest for Democracy (Bloomington) 1987, p. 21.
- 38.
Allen, William W., “Rethinking the History of Settler Agriculture in Nineteenth Century Liberia”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 37, 3 (2004), pp. 435–62.
- 39.
Akpan, “The Liberian Economy in the Nineteenth Century”, p. 12.
- 40.
Everill, Bronwen, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia, pp. 133–35.
- 41.
Akpan, “The Liberian Economy in the Nineteenth Century”, p. 11.
- 42.
Schmokel, Wolfe W., “The German factor in Liberia’s Foreign Relations”, in Liberian Studies Journal, VII 1 (1976–77), pp. 27–42.
- 43.
Gardner, Leigh A., Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, OUP (2012).
- 44.
Gardner, Taxing Colonial Africa, pp. 64–65.
- 45.
Gardner, Leigh A., “The Rise and Fall of Sterling in Liberia, 1847–1943” in The Economic History Review 67, 4 (2014), pp. 1089–1112. In this article, Gardner provides some valuable information about currency and banking in Liberia. George Brown’s The Economic History of Liberia, as expected, also provides some information on it. In Chap. 2, I have discussed details of the rivalry between the BBWA and the Deutsche Liberia Bank and how World War I made the government of Liberia completely dependent on the BBWA.
- 46.
Gardner, “The Rise and Fall of Sterling in Liberia, 1847–1943”, p. 1090.
- 47.
The Liberian Development Company headed by Harry Johnston yielded very little for the development of Liberia. But Johnston’s association with Liberia encouraged him to do research on Liberia, resulting in two very useful volumes on the country.
- 48.
King to Taylor, 30.3.1909 in F.O. 371/15883 as quoted by Foley in British Policy Towards Liberia.
- 49.
Smith, Robert A., We are Obligated, Hamburg (1969), p. 39.
- 50.
Bixler, Foreign Policy of the US, p. 29.
- 51.
The Agreement between the Liberian government and the bankers signed on 7.3.1912 in F.O. 367/278.
- 52.
Enclosure in Reid to Grey , 29.5.1912, in F.O. 367/278.
- 53.
Starr, Frederick, Liberia after the World War, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 1925). pp. 113–30.
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Pal Chaudhuri, J. (2018). An Outline of the Past. In: Whitehall and the Black Republic. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70476-0_1
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