Americans in Africa

Abstract

From the early nineteenth century, African American settlers began arriving in West Africa — first in Freetown, later on Sherbro Island, and finally along the coast of what is now Liberia. These settlers arrived to escape slavery and racial prejudice at home. But like other settlers before and after them, they did not entirely sever their ties to their home country or their friends and family left behind. And since their move to Africa was political, as well as personal, they also kept in touch with the societies that promoted colonization. In these communications, the ‘Americo-Liberians’ (as they came to be known) demonstrated themselves as a convincing middle class, not necessarily rejecting, but trying to incorporate their African experience into a broader story that embraced bringing modernity, democracy, Christianity, and civilization to other parts of the world. Although their interpretations of modernity and their relationship with American material culture paint a picture of strong American connections, like many settler societies, their claims on metropolitan identity were interchangeable with affirmations of their African-ness, particularly in their assertions of the benefits of Liberian life. While Sanneh has written that ‘the colony had America in its eyes while it turned its back on Africa; though it was necessarily in Africa, it was preferably not of it’, the actual negotiation of American identities abroad was more complex and contingent.¹