Make Liberia More Successful

ben0628

Banned
Could Liberia have merged with Sierra Leone somehow? Both were freemen resettlement/colonial states.

Idea for another thread: why didn't France or Spain or any other country create freemen resettlement/colonial states?

France lost most of their overseas colonies before abolition became popular.
 
Spanish colonies had more of a culture of allowing slaves to become free, acceptance of blacks/mulattos into society, and mixing of the races. The defining aspect was amount of money one had moreso than skin color. so there was no real drive to remove blacks from society.
 
Spanish colonies had more of a culture of allowing slaves to become free, acceptance of blacks/mulattos into society, and mixing of the races. The defining aspect was amount of money one had moreso than skin color. so there was no real drive to remove blacks from society.
To some degree money does whiten but as we see in both history books and the contemporary history of blacks in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, etc... They were a mostly marginalized and poor group of people.

There acceptance and assimilation was primarily before the Mestizo classes rose in tank, before hand Black Ladinos were much more valued than an average indigenous people because of their knowledge, language skills and middlemen position in exploration.
 
Okay so how about the original premise of Liberia merging with Sierra Leone
Never gonna happen ACS would never allow their colony to merge into British colonial hands. After the war of 1812 and the fall out of Cuffee it was never really going to happen anyways.
 
Gabon owes its existence to its establishment as a refuge for escaped slaves, as the name of the capital Libreville ("Freetown") indicates.

The central problem with Liberia is that is was as much of a settler state as South Africa or Algeria, with a small minority of immigrants holding political and other power over a large majority of natives. The Liberian political system simply did not include people not of American slave descent until the 1980 coup by Samuel Doe.

If Liberia is going to be successful, or perhaps more accurately continue to be successful, then it cannot remain a minority-run polity. The elite will have to expand, if only to include elites of the native peoples.
 
Gabon owes its existence to its establishment as a refuge for escaped slaves, as the name of the capital Libreville ("Freetown") indicates.

The central problem with Liberia is that is was as much of a settler state as South Africa or Algeria, with a small minority of immigrants holding political and other power over a large majority of natives. The Liberian political system simply did not include people not of American slave descent until the 1980 coup by Samuel Doe.

If Liberia is going to be successful, or perhaps more accurately continue to be successful, then it cannot remain a minority-run polity. The elite will have to expand, if only to include elites of the native peoples.
That's a real simplification. Americos are locally called Congo because they assimilated Congolese people being shipped for enslavement in the New World.

There is also a long history of assimilation of adopted native children especially those with European father's or mother's into Americos communities including the current president.
 
That's a real simplification. Americos are locally called Congo because they assimilated Congolese people being shipped for enslavement in the New World.

It is not a big simplification, if it is one at all: The first non-Americo-Liberian to be president was Samuel Doe, after his 1980 coup, despite Liberia's nearly century and a half of existence. The Liberian government seems to have existed largely for the benefit of the Americo-Liberians, excluding the tribespeople of the interior from power. Probably the president who did this most blatantly was Charles D.B. King in the 1920s, who among other things engaged in the export of non-Americo-Liberians from their country as slaves to Spanish Equatorial Africa and São Tomé e Principe.
 
It is not a big simplification, if it is one at all: The first non-Americo-Liberian to be president was Samuel Doe, after his 1980 coup, despite Liberia's nearly century and a half of existence. The Liberian government seems to have existed largely for the benefit of the Americo-Liberians, excluding the tribespeople of the interior from power. Probably the president who did this most blatantly was Charles D.B. King in the 1920s, who among other things engaged in the export of non-Americo-Liberians from their country as slaves to Spanish Equatorial Africa and São Tomé e Principe.
You're ignoring the very fact that Americos are made up of more than Americans and that Americos Liberian identity is not rooted in notions of purity.

Non-Americos assimilated into Americos populations, just as Leonean Krios incorporated non Americans and Maroons.

It's putting this idea that blacks of the new world did exactly what whites did and it's mostly used to justify the actions of European colonialists later.
 
You're ignoring the very fact that Americos are made up of more than Americans and that Americos Liberian identity is not rooted in notions of purity.

The Americo-Liberian hegemony does not seem to have been based on any perception of racial purity, granted, more on simple ethnic supremacism rooted in the belief that their culture was superior.

Non-Americos assimilated into Americos populations, just as Leonean Krios incorporated non Americans and Maroons.

Americo-Liberians amounted to a 5% of the population that managed to dominate the country's political life for a century and a half. This was not by accident.

It's putting this idea that blacks of the new world did exactly what whites did

That was kind of the case in Liberia, sadly.

and it's mostly used to justify the actions of European colonialists later.

That is not something that I am doing. How can pointing out the ultimately fragile nature of a Liberian state controlled by only a small minority of the people of Liberia justify European colonialism?

It is true, certainly, that an African country that in the 1920s was exporting its inhabitants as slaves to European colonial empires isn't exactly a champion for the rights of Africans or black people. It does not follow from this that the European colonization of Africa was justified.
 
The Americo-Liberian hegemony does not seem to have been based on any perception of racial purity, granted, more on simple ethnic supremacism rooted in the belief that their culture was superior.



Americo-Liberians amounted to a 5% of the population that managed to dominate the country's political life for a century and a half. This was not by accident.



That was kind of the case in Liberia, sadly.



That is not something that I am doing. How can pointing out the ultimately fragile nature of a Liberian state controlled by only a small minority of the people of Liberia justify European colonialism?

It is true, certainly, that an African country that in the 1920s was exporting its inhabitants as slaves to European colonial empires isn't exactly a champion for the rights of Africans or black people. It does not follow from this that the European colonization of Africa was justified.

The creation of Liberia and the formation of Americo/Congos is not straightforward, the foundations of funding and industry was step by step implemented by the white led ACS along with key mixed race and free elite who were minorities within the broader Congo society.

Stephen Allen Benson was amongst the first of only two presidents who were able to gain power as dark skin and truly pan-ethnic leaders of Liberia. Having grasped a number of languages and cultural institutions he actively sought to upend the ACS and ACS aligned Mulatto elite.

This of course ignores the persistent practice of enslavement Kru, Grebo, and further inland Mande performed and the great tension arising from a slave based economy vs one being put by Americos.

It also ignores the fall of palm oil in favor of whale oil, the rise of the sugarbeet and the drop in coffee grown by Congos colonists that put into motion the plantation society the ACS had sought all along. These were the cogs that forced the hands of Benson and the majority of the Congos that centered back ACS and Elite who refused to support smaller ventures.

Regardless the cultural aspect is also overly exaggerated, all throughout West Africa there had long been acculturation of European custom and knowledge. The main issues were slavery/slaving economy and paganism (which mind you decreased and Islam grew in the mid-19th century).

This also ignores the assimilation of Congos into local ethnic groups and the histories of mixed race and/or multicultural groups found elsewhere such as Portugee from Senegal to Angola and Shebro in Sierra Leone.

Youre creating starkness, no one is denying the power held by Congos but you are modeling that using a very trite European model of colonization in Africa that is not the same.
 
This of course ignores the persistent practice of enslavement Kru, Grebo, and further inland Mande performed and the great tension arising from a slave based economy vs one being put by Americos.

Justifying what Americo-Liberians did to them in turn?

This also ignores the assimilation of Congos into local ethnic groups and the histories of mixed race and/or multicultural groups found elsewhere such as Portugee from Senegal to Angola and Shebro in Sierra Leone.

Youre creating starkness, no one is denying the power held by Congos

It actually seems as if you are trying to diminish the power, and the agency, of the Americo-Liberian elite. They were certainly in a position of unenviable dependency on world markets and world powers, but they could have made choices. Most notably, they could have tried to avoid reproducing the old patterns of domination that they (or their ancestors) had been subject to in their new homeland.

Going back to the original point being discussed, Liberia would have needed to have had a much more inclusive polity for it to have avoided the coup of Doe, and of people like Doe.
 
Now, Liberia certainly had assets. In the post-Second World War environment, it enjoyed substantial prestige as one of the few free African state. It had the patronage of the United States, and an economy based on rubber that was prosperous by world standards, with a GDP per capita on par with that of Egypt, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Certainly, as Steve Radelet wrote in his paper "Reviving Economic Growth in Liberia", the country faced huge challenges. It also had huge potential.
 
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