Abstract
The study has been an attempt to examine the experiences of John Brown Russwurm in relation to the American colonization initiatives in West Africa. It provides examples of the institutional values and norms that informed his social and intellectual endeavors not only in America, but also in Liberia and Maryland in Liberia from 1829 to 1851. It also shows how Russwurm, the ACS, and the MSCS worked collaboratively to promote these values in the two settlements. The institutional principles included elements of early-nineteenth-century evolving American high ideals. Russwurm’s training in the classics, theology or religion, and the natural sciences at Hebron Academy and at Bowdoin College qualified him as a virtuous person, a criterion American Founding Fathers suggested was a prerequisite for a full privileged status in the new country. Although he met the above precondition, Russwurm did not become a full member of the class in question as a result of institutional racism that also characterized the mentioned rectitude.
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Notes
Charles Henry Hubericih, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia, vol. 1 (New York, 1947), pp. 437–438.
Mary Sagarin, John Brown Russwurm: The Story of Freedom’s Journal (New York, 1970), pp. 140–145.
For details of the origins of the poor social and leadership systems that led to the Liberian Civil War from the 1980s to 2003, see the following studies: Amos J. Beyan, “The Antitheses of Liberia’s Independence in Historical Perspective, 1822–1990,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 14, no. 2 (1989), pp. 3–7;
Beyan, “The American Background of Recurrent Themes in the Political History of Liberia,” vol. 19, no. 1 (1994), pp. 20–40;
Beyan, The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State, 1822–1980 (New York, 1991), pp. 101–102, 136–138;
Beyan, “The American Colonization Society and the Origin of Undemocratic Institutions in Liberia,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 14, no. 2 (1989), pp. 140–151;
Beyan, “The American Colonization Society and the Socio-Religious Characterization of Liberia: A Historical Survey, 1822–1900,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 10, no. 2 (1985), pp. 1–11;
Gus Liebenow, Liberia: The Quest for Democracy (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1987), pp. 11–135, 153–184;
Liebenow, Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege (Ithaca, NY, 1969);
Dwight N. Seyfert, “The Origins of Privilege: Liberian Merchants, 1822–1847,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 6 (1975), pp. 109–128;
Jane Martin, “How to Build a Nation: Liberian Ideas about National Integration in the Later Nineteenth Century,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 6 (1969), pp. 15–42;
M. B. Akpan, “Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule Over the African Peoples of Liberia, 1841–1964,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 7 (1973), pp. 217–236;
Jo M. Sullivan, Mississippi in Africa: Settlers Among the Kru, 1835–1847,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 8 (1978–1979), pp. 79–94;
Wolfe M. Schmokel, “Settlers and Tribes: The Origins of the Liberian Dilemma,” Boston University Papers on Africa, vol. 4 (1969), pp. 153–173;
and Tuan Wreh, The Love of Liberty: The Rule of President William V. S. Tubman in Liberia, 1944–1971 (London, 1976).
Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800 (London, 1970), pp. 106–121, 200–222;
Gilberto Freyre, Portuguese Integration in the Tropics (Lisbon, Portugal, 1961), p. 22;
James Duff, Portugal in Africa (New York, 1962), p. 71;
Christopher Fyfe, Sierra Leone Inheritance (London, 1964), pp. 169–172;
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Claude George, The Rise of British West Africa (London, 1903), pp. 65–67; A. M. Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone (London, 1788), p. 77;
S. M. Despicht, “A Short History of the Gallinas Chiefdoms,” Sierra Leone Studies, vol. 21 (1939), pp. 218–219; C. B. Wadstrom, Observation on the Slave Trade and a Description of Some Parts of the Coast of Guinea during a Voyage Made in 1787 and 1788 (London, 1789), pp. 75–76, 170; John Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone (London, 1788), pp. 13–14;
and Anios J. Beyan, “The Transatlantic Trade and the Coastal Area of Pre-Liberia,” The Historian, vol. 57, no. 4 (1995), pp. 767–768.
For details of the contributions of Westernized Africans in Africa and their descendants in the Diaspora have made and continue to provide to the Western World, and their rewards for such roles since fifteenth century, see the following studies: ibid; Edwards and Walvin, “Africans in Britain, 1500–1800” in Kilson and Rotberg, eds., The African Diaspora, pp. 72–204; James W. Walker, “The Establishment of a Free Black Community in Nova Scotia, 1783–1840,” in Kilson and Rotberg, eds., The African Diaspora, pp. 205–236; Henry Gregoire, On the Cultural Achievements of Negroes (Paris, France, 1808; reprinted, Amherst, MA, 1996);
Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915 (Urbana and Chicago, 1990);
Joseph E. Harris, Global Dimension of the African Diaspora (Washington, DC, 1982);
Headley Tulloch, Black Canadians: A Long Line of Fighters (Toronto, Canada, 1975); Leslie B. Route Jr., “The African in Colonial Brazil,” in Kilson and Rotberg, eds., The African Diaspora, pp. 132–171;
Allison Blakely, Black in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1993), pp. 251–271;
Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840–1980 (Urban and Chicago, IL, 1991);
Eric Foner, ed., Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (New York, 1993);
and Carol P. MacCormack, “Wons: Institutionalized Dependency in Sherbro Descent Groups,” in Miers and Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, WI, 1977), pp. 181–187.
For a detailed explanation of the direct and indirect effects of Western contradictory institutional systems such as democracy, capitalism, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, racism, and moral or religious principles on the majority of blacks in West Africa and their descendants in the Americas, since the fifteenth century, see the following studies: Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and the African Slave Trade (Cambridge, UK); J. E. Inikori, ed., Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies (New York, 1982);
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC, 1974);
Bonham C. Richardson, The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992 (Cambridge, UK, 1992);
Franklin W. Knight, Africa and the Caribbean: The Legacies of Link (Baltimore, MD, 1979);
Hilary Beckles and Verene Sheperd, eds., Caribbean Slave Society and Economy (Kingston, Jamaica, 1991);
Richard Price, Alabi’s World (Baltimore, MD, 1990);
Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade (Madison, WI, 1998);
A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Black in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (New York, 1982);
Patrick Carroll, Black Race, and Regional Development in Colonial Veracruz, 1570–1830 (Austin, TX, 1991);
Donald G. Nieman, Promises to Keep African-Americans and the Constitution Order, 1776 to the Present (New York, 1991);
William A. Tucker, The Science and Politics of Racial Research (Chicago, 1994);
Mary F. Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York, 1982);
Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery The Negro in the Free States 1790–1860 (Chicago, 1961);
Arnett G. Lindsay, “The Economic Condition of the Negroes of New York to 1861,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 6 (1921), pp. 190–199;
and Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism, U.S.A.: Root of Black Inequality (New York, 1975).
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© 2005 Amos J. Beyan
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Beyan, A.J. (2005). Conclusion. In: African American Settlements in West Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979193_7
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