Alternate Liberia?

How about also considering Papua New Guinea? It would be tough to establish a "Liberia in the Pacific" due to its geography and not to mention the resistance from the Papuans but it would be interesting to see an American colony established on PNG.
Thanks for the idea, but I already posted the timeline that uses this idea. It's called Das Ewige Reich if you want to read it.
 
Perhaps. If the two cooperated and formed a single nation I can imagine a "Liberian Federation" that would consist of much of the Gold Coast.

The problem with the Gold Coast is that is has such large Indigenous population. It seems that Central Africa would be better. An Anglo-American free black colony in the area of Gabon could be very successful.
 
The problem with the Gold Coast is that is has such large Indigenous population. It seems that Central Africa would be better. An Anglo-American free black colony in the area of Gabon could be very successful.
How big and powerful would it be? I can imagine Liberia becoming this world's South Africa as an Apartheid-like system is installed where Amero-Liberians are above the natives.
 
How big and powerful would it be? I can imagine Liberia becoming this world's South Africa as an Apartheid-like system is installed where Amero-Liberians are above the natives.

The problem with this is that settlement in South Africa is so much older than settlement in somewhere like Gabon. That's 50 years before the Scramble in comparison to over 200 for South Africa.
 
I mean Liberia but as large an powerful as OTL South Africa.

Best I can tell, just off the top of my head, is either a region between the Niger and Ogooue Rivers (if I recall correctly, Spain had a claim in that exact region 200 miles inland, but they did not defend it at all; Equatorial Guinea is the result) or somewhere further south. Both are farther from the US, though, so I'm not sure how you could get there early on (an earlier Spanish-American war or something? The Rio de la Plata maintains control of that claim and gets in a war/sells it to the US? Just thoughts).

The biggest problem in any part of that region is that the American/European populations can stand the conditions of Africa that well, along with the natural environment, makes it very inconducive to settlement. The southern end of Gabon has a better climate than Liberia, certainly, but it doesn't hold a candle to the temperate zones of southern Africa, nor those in Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar, etc.

To have a South Africa-like scheme occur in a Liberia alternate, you need to have a large, settled population grow rapidly throughout the 19th century so that they can be a larger component (if I recall correctly, Amero-liberians were 0.5% of the population; compare that to about 10% for the Boers). You may not need that many to establish strict minority rule, especially if there is a coalition of the privileged vs the remainder.

All that said, I could see a Liberia within the area of Gabon+Republic of Congo+Equatorial Guinea still being successful, as Liberia had one of the highest human development ratings in Africa before their civil war. Be interesting if alt!Liberia became a destination from some spaceflight companies due to their equatorial location.
 
The southern end of Gabon has a better climate than Liberia, certainly, but it doesn't hold a candle to the temperate zones of southern Africa, nor those in Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar, etc.

Gabon is still the best possibility for a successful Anglo-American colonization. A small population with small density, a better climate, closer to the U.S., and settled right around the time of the British abolitions. That means a lot of freed slaves for the colonies.
 
All that said, I could see a Liberia within the area of Gabon+Republic of Congo+Equatorial Guinea still being successful, as Liberia had one of the highest human development ratings in Africa before their civil war. Be interesting if alt!Liberia became a destination from some spaceflight companies due to their equatorial location.
A space Liberia would be awesome! I would definitely read that!
 
The problem with this is that settlement in South Africa is so much older than settlement in somewhere like Gabon. That's 50 years before the Scramble in comparison to over 200 for South Africa.
I don't see that as a problem. Australia and New Zealand became a part of the British Empire within the early 1800s too. As for Liberia not being able to be big because Europeans would not let it, this is a world where Britain cooperates with America to create this nation so I don't think anyone would want to get on their bad side by provoking Liberia.
 
Could those islands, at that time, accommodate the numbers that emigrated to Liberia?

They're sizable islands, but I'm not sure how good the soil is on Inagua (or Andros Island, another large island in the Bahamas with minimal population). Not good enough for cash crops like sugar and such (hence why it was never extensively settled with no large slave populations), but I'd think the islands are good enough for small-scale farming. It wouldn't be too crowded, either--going by Wikipedia's count of Americo-Liberians in the present age (200,000), that would produce a population density of about 120/km2, about that of France or Poland. That's on the low side for the Caribbean.

All that said, I could see a Liberia within the area of Gabon+Republic of Congo+Equatorial Guinea still being successful, as Liberia had one of the highest human development ratings in Africa before their civil war. Be interesting if alt!Liberia became a destination from some spaceflight companies due to their equatorial location.

OTL Liberia could be very nice for that. It's only just north of the equator, and by the geography, Maryland County in the southeast has some nice capes for launching rockets over the ocean.
 
Gabon is still the best possibility for a successful Anglo-American colonization. A small population with small density, a better climate, closer to the U.S., and settled right around the time of the British abolitions. That means a lot of freed slaves for the colonies.

I just worry about how successful it could be in terms of disease. The die-off on the repatriated slaves was massive; many could not survive the climate of the pepper coast.

I'm not sure how much better they'd take Gabon's climate (better, for certain, but how much better is the big issue for me, there.

On the bright side, Britain did lease a couple of bases in Fernando Po, so of the Spanish claim on the region, you could have a US lease be involved, or perhaps even have it be part of the Adams-Onis treaty. "All land south of the Campo River to the furthest extent of the Spanish claim southward are hereby remitted to joint condominium of the three powers of the Empire of Spain, the Empire of Great Britain, and the United States of America for the establishment and the settlement of a united colony of Africans of American descent." Or something like that.
 

raharris1973

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What makes Gabon's climate healthier than West Africa's?

Isn't even hotter and more rainforest-y? the equator runs right through it.
 
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