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justcherry
July 16th, 2003 - 08:37:35
All of the media reports from CNN to the horrible one sided FoXNews, are reporting that the USA has no real reason for helping to solve "Liberia´s" civil war except that some Black Americas returning back to Africa, settled there...AND THAT IS ALL...blah, blah, blah
Well I went looking for the TRUTH and you would not imagaine what I found out...
First I was trying to find out the information from the net but all I kept getting was the same old information...so I and a African friend started our own manuel search...through books.
Being from The Gambia, this friend had had a history book from grade school which had the history of Africa from the 180´s and upwards which we read with shock and disgust.
The name of the book is:
The Growth of African Civilisation
The Revolutionary Years West Africa since 1800 *
by J.B.Webster and A.A. Boahen with H.O. Idawu
*unfortunately there are no copies left of this book on the market to buy.
Because of it´s not being available, I am taking it on myself for the good of the Black American and African cultures to reprint some of the most important information that I found so it will not lose its authenticity.
I intend to send a copy by Email to FoxNews and CNN and we will see if they report the information, research the information or if they keep on with the same B.S. information they give on the T.V.
Welcome to the TRUTH:
Chapter 11 page 155
Liberia 1822 - 1914: the love of liberty kept us free
Foundation; independence; survival
Liberia, like Sierra Leone a product of the efforts to abolish slavery and the slave trade, was founded in 1822 when a few free Ameerican Negroes negotiated for land at Cape Mesurado and began the pioneer settlement, later named Monrovia.
Within the next fourteen years more pioneers settled at Grand Bassa, Sinoe and Cape Palmas.
But the idea of an American Negro state in Africa dated back to the foundation of the American Colonization Society, formed in 1816 by a few white Northern American clergymen and Southern slave owners, whose inspiration was a mixture of religion, economics andd politics.
The return of American Negroes to Africa was expeected to lead the continent to Christianity, begin the expansion of American trade along the West Coast, and rid the United States of the free Negroes, who were considered undesirable citizens.
Therefore among the early settlers a number were clergymen such as the Baptist, Lott Carey, and others were a representatives of American firms.
For free Negroes there were two alternatives: segregation in America or repatriation to Africa.
The majority of free Negroes opposed repatriation, determined to fight the battle for equality because America is more our country than it is the whites. It was built by the `sweat of our labour.
A small minority were ready to leave. `We love this country and its liberties if we could share them, but our freedom is partial and we have no hope that it will ever be otherwise.`
The genuine supporters of Liberia were thus few. It became the Lone Star Republic, not only because its flag carried a single star but because it had few friends, either white or black.
White Americans who supported the Colonization Society were not many and their aims contradictory; quarrels followed, the branch organization broke away, and the funds of the Society dried up.
Particularly after the civil war, leading American Negroes and their organizations were hostile, because they looked upon emigration to Liberia as a white excuse to banish them from the Society were happy to rid themselves of an unprofitable and embarrassing burden.
The pioneers, like their Sierra Leonian neighbors, faced African hostility, and did not get the land promised them.
The death toll was frightening, especially among Mulattos (those of mixed race) and those from non-malarial areas of the United States who possessed no natural immunity.
About 12,000 emigated to Liberia, many more than the 3, 000 who pioneered Sierra Leone, and, while the British navy freed 40, 000 Africans in Freetown, the American navy freed only 2, 000 in Monrovia.
Thus, after the joining of the two groups of pioneers and freed slaves, the Creoles of Sieerra Leone were much more African than the Americo-Liberians, who combined the culture of the American South with the puritanical religious ideas of New England, the rugged individualism of the American pioneer and a passionate desire for liberty reflected in Liberia´s natiional motto: `The love of Liberty brought us here.`
Almost immediately, as in Sierra Leone, the settlers complained of the arrogance and despotism of the white officials sent to govern them, and of the constitution forced on them on board the ship while crossing the Atlantic.
By the constitution they swore an oath of allegiance to the Society, whose officers were given power to permit entry or deport anyone from the colony and to appoint and dismiss all officers of government.
The settlers `had seen enough of slavery`, and from the first resented the Society´s paternalism and the arrogance of tis white officers.
Nor were the white governors particularly successful; and when they visisted America and left the Negro, Ellijah Johnson, in charge, the colony was quiet and peaceful.
A major complaint was theat the governors favoured Mulattoes over Negroes in the distribution of land. But petitions of grievance to the Society were answered by wxpressions of shock at the ingratitude of the colonists, and by calling them `deluded, depraved and deserving banishment`.
While Ellijah Johnson sought to be a moderate and tried to compromise, Lott Carey led the agitation for reform.
Since the Society did not possess a navy it could not prevent reform. A governor´s advisory council and the elected lietenant governor became more and more powerful until 1839 when a conference in Monrovia drew up a conmstitution of self-rule.
The Society rejected it and imposed their own, whereby the governor held a veto over acts of the council and full control over the land distribution.
And, because all land acquired from Africans was vested in the Society, it continues to hold final control oveer the settlers.
But in 1841, to pacify the settlers, the Socity appointed the first non-white governor, a Mulatto, Joseph Roberts.
In order to pay for its administration expenses Liberia imposed customs duties on ships trading in her ports. Some Europeans refused to pay, because Liberia was neither an independent nation nor an American colony and held a status unknown to international law.
This gave Robeerts a legitimate excuse to press towards independence,; in a referendum the settleers supported him, and at the Monrovia Convention of 1847, a constitution, national flag and declaration of independence were adopted. Roberts was elected first president of the Republic of Liberia in 1848.
To stop the continued evasion of Liberian customs, President Roberts sought to strenghten Liberian control along the coast.
When a British merchant (Harris) in the Sherbro refused to pay customs dues the Liberians seized two of his trading ships; but the British governor of Sierra Leone dispatched a gunboat to MOnrovia and recovered the ships.
Then when Harris later came into conflict with the Vai people, the Liberians, sent a military force to their aid. On this occasion the governor of Sierra Leone sailed into Monrovia with four gunboats and demanded a large indemnity.
During the scramble for Africa, European powers operated on the convention that areas claimed must be effectively occupied.
Although Liberian travellers had èxplored`the interior as far as the Nimba mountains and had negotiated treaties with the chiefs, due to their country´s slowness to react she lost the Sherbro to the British, and the coast east of Cape Palmas and a large section of the interior to the French.
In 1908 Liberia belatedly began to organize a military force under the command of an Englishman; when the French demanded that she employ a Frenchman as well, the Liberians dismissed the Englishman and asked the American officers.
These experiences devloped in the ruling class a deep suspion of the European powers.
Consideration of the losses, however, should not obsure the fact that Liberia, weak and poor, saved a larger and richer hinterland for future development than did the British who were directing Creole affairs in Sierra Leone.
In this regard, independence, even for a weak country, proved more effective than colonial status under a great power.
Americo-Liberian merchant princes, 1830 – 1900
The settlers, or Americo-Liberians, were building up a substantial foreign trade by the 1830´s in palm-oil from the Kru coast, used for yes, from the St. Paul River and fibres from the raphia palm.
By the 1850´s plantations of coffee and sugar were flourishing, and Liberian coffee was considered the finest in the world, while sugar and molasses were manufactured in quantity for the export market.
Liberian merchants entered the overseas trade and their merchant ships manned by the skilled Kru carried the Lone Star flag of Liberia into European and American ports.
Merchant princes like R.A. Sherman, Joseph Roberts, Francis Devany and E.J. Roye owned ocean transports, coastal vessels and trading posts along the coast and in the hinterland.
Prosperity was reflected in the affluence and southern American style mansions of Monrovia. Roberts willed 2, 000 pounds to the cause of public education, newspapers flourished – the first being the Liberia Herald of 1826 – and Liberia College, founded in 1862, became the second institution of higher learning, next only to Fourah Bay, in the West Africa.
Americo-Liberians never shone with the brilliance of the Sierra Leone Creoles in the professional fields but they did produce such outstanding men as the traveller, Benjamin Anderson, whose Narrative of a Journey to Musardu, published in 1870, ranks with the best of traveller’s accounts in its understanding of African society; the missionary writer, Alexander Crummel, with his The Future of Africa, 1862; and probably the most outstanding educated West African of the nineteenth century, E.W. Blyden whose writings influenced two or three generations of Africans. Of this many published works five major ones concerned Liberia; the first in 1862, Liberia’s Offering, and the last in 1909, Problems Before Liberia.
In addition, the Liberian Vaughan family were pioneers of the Nigerian Baptist Missions, and the Jackson family’s newspaper the Lagos Weekly Record (1890-1930) was a powerful advocate of the right of Africans to self-determination and a bold and influential champion of the African race.
When the French occupied Abomey and the king of Dahomey fled, the Record took up his defence, the editor leading a delegation to Paris to plead his cause.
Lastly, the famous Liberian evangelist, William Wade Harris, brought about one of the largest numbers of conversions to Christianity ever credited to one man in West Africa, in his preaching in the Ivory Coast between 1914 and 1916.
Between 1880 and 1900 Americo-Liberian plantations collapsed and their merchant princes were swept from the oceans at the same time as the Creoles of Sierra Leone begun their decline.
Both groups were badly affected by the changes, which accompanied the partition of Africa.
The worldwide depression of the 1880´s and 1890´s, which bankrupted many European traders, hurt the Liberian merchant princes as well.
Then, as the European powers partitioned West Africa, they developed their own colonies to the exclusion of others, and their own trading patterns which ignored Liberia.
Both French and British West Africa developed palm-oil and raphia fibre production, and, while the United Stated might have been expected to provide a market for Liberia, in fact once the partition was complete the large and important nineteenth-century American trade was abandoned.
Liberia was too small a supplier by herself to attract a large American business, and exploit Latin America for their tropical requirements.
The Liberian coffee plant was introduce into Brazil, which quickly monopolized the American market. Prices fell and Liberian plantations were ruined.
As far as sugar was concerned, American developments in Cuba, British developments in Brazil, and the discovery of beet sugar in Europe, ruined the Liberian plantations.
Then around 1900 the German synthetic dyes destroyed the camwood industry.
Thus between 1880 and 1900 a series of disasters hit Liberian exports of palm-oil, raphia, coffee, sugar and camwood. British and French ships passed by Liberia sank into economic insignificance.
To offset their losses Americo-Liberians turned to a more vigorous exploitation of the interior, although even at the climax of their prosperity this had proved difficult.
The major obstacle was the power and domination of internal trade by the Poro society and Diula Mandinka.
In 1856, for example, when the government had financed an expedition to the interior, the Mandinka and Pero demonstrated their power by a trade boycott of Liberian settlements.
Liberian rivers were not navigable, yet they were so numerous that road building was more costly than anywhere else in West Africa except the Niger Delta.
Since Germany’s colonial empire was unable to supply her tropical needs, her merchants moved into Liberia before 1900 until they monopolized Liberia’s trade; by 1914 twenty German firms were doing business and two out of every three ships calling in Liberian ports were German.
The sons of the Liberian merchant princes became agents of German firms, and not independent traders as their fathers had been.
Caught between the Mandinka and Poro in the interior and the Germans on the coast, many Americo-Liberians retreated into a dependence for their livelihood upon the civil service, teaching and the priesthood.
The years 1880 to 1914 demonstrated the growing isolation of Liberia from the American, European and African worlds, caused by her exclusion from the world trading systems and reduced contract with Africa after the partition.
This forced Liberians to set up standards beholden only to themselves and become timid and defensive regarding foreign inquiries.
Isolation was particularly harmful to the intellectual elite and the educational system, which did not evolve sufficiently to meet the development needs of the country.
The chronic economic problem
Liberia’s twentieth-century problems were the direct result of the post 1880 ecomomic stagnation, for this delayed Liberia’s effective occupation of the interior and resulted in her subsequent loss of territory; it also increased friction with Africans as the Americo-Liberians, having been forced out of the export trade, entered into greater internal competition with Africans; and it slowed the growth of education for the African peoples.
Economic competition and poor education became the causes of repeated revolts, especially among the progressive and ambitious Kru, and this resulted in overstaffing the civil service in an effort to provide jobs, and a fear that Africans educated enough to seek government employment would overrun the last stronghold of Americo-Liberians, and thus their last hope of survival.
Government revenues fell below expenditure. In 1906, with the assistance of a British firm called the Liberian Rubber Corporation, the government negotiated a loan in London.
Part of it paid off the Roye loan of 1870, which will be discussed later, and the reminder was given to the Rubber Corporation to develop plantations in the interior.
Rubber prices fell and the corporation had nothing to show for the money, and with interest payments to meet, the financial situation was even worse.
The Rubber Corporation began to work for a British take-over and Britain suggested that Europeans be employed to supervise Liberian finances and the army.
Liberia turned to America in desperation, and in 1912 American bankers offered a loan to pay off the British, on condition that an American be placed in control of Liberia’s customs collection; with Americans in control of her finances and army Liberia had become a semi-colonial state.
In 1914 the British navy cut off German trade with Liberia and refused to allow British goods to be imported by German firms; since there were no other firms this put a total stop to Liberian trade.
In 1917, when the United States entered the war against Germany, Liberia had little choice but to follow and much to her own loss confiscated the German firms and bank.
This left the Bank of West Africa as Liberia’s only financial institution, which attempted through its monopoly to bring about the financial institution, which attempted through its monopoly to bring about the financial collapse of the government and thus to establish a British take-over.
By 1918 Liberia had reached the lowest point in her national history, tottering on the verge of collapse and full British or American colonialism.
Liberian politics, 1839 – 83
In the pre-independence period the major political division had been between the commercial elements of Monrovia and the agricultural groups in the other costal settlements.
Between 1839 and 1847 Joseph Roberts led the Monrovia group while Rev. John Seys headed the opposition. The opposition opposed the total break with the Colonization Society at independence, in some areas boycotting the referendum and in Grand Bassa threatening to bread away and form a separate state.
In the first presidential election Roberts, on a Republican Party ticket, defeated the opposition candidate but immediately named him first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The technique of giving opposition was absorbed into Liberian politics.
Although the Republicans dominated Liberian politics from independence to 1877, the two-party system continued to function.
Roberts was a capable administrator, politician and statesman, who extended the nation´s boundaries, maintained fairly peaceful relations with the local Africans and won international recognition for Liberia. He had the advantage that his presidency coincided with the era of the merchant princes and prosperity.
However, Roberts, himself a light skinned Mulatto, fostered a caste system based on skin colour; the light complexioned Mulatto governing class kept socially apart, contending that since the climate took a greater toll of their numbers than of full blooded Negroes, they should be favoured in administrative positions.
This was a philosophy, which the Negroes would not accept; yet it was not surprising that the Mulattoes adopted it since they were fighting for their lives, eight out of ten Mulatto colonists dying against four out of ten of the Negro colonists.
The Society in America aggravated the situation by favouring Mulatto emigrants, who supported the Republican Party when they arrived; but after the American Civil war emigration to Liberia sharply declined, and with the high death rate among Mulattos it was only a matter of time before the Republicans fell from power.
In 1869 the victory of E. J. Roye brought the opposition, the True Whigs, to power, Royce was a full-blooded Negro who had arrived in Liberia in 1846, became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1849, published a newspaper and was nominated Chief Justice in 1865. A merchant prince, he was a typical example of the opportunities for advancement in Liberian society, which the economic prosperity of the times encouraged.
Even at this stage the Republicans continued to give offence by their racial arrogance; Joseph Roberts, after retiring from the presidency, became principal of Liberia College and made it a policy to admit only Mulatto students; the Masonic secret society became an exclusive Mulatto club whose members enjoyed government patronage; the Republicans had no policy for opening the interior; and finally they used the courts to suppress the opposition.
Opposition grew around Royce and Blyden. Blyden at Liberia College argued a racialist theory praising the superiority of persons of pure blood, whether white or black, as against the inferiority of the unhealthy` and ``unnatural` Mulatto mixture.
Roye gained immense prestige when , as Chief Justice, he resigned in protest against the government attempt to bring treason charges against True Whig leaders.
When Roye became president he inherited a Republican civil service which not only resented his Negro pedigree and his rapid rise to wealth and power but, also that he was not descended from one of the founding fathers of the Republic.
With advice from Blyden, Roye advocated the opening of the interior; he tried to get American money for a railway , and welcome foreign investments. To secure money for road building he negotiated a loan from London bankers, who handled the transfer in such a way that only two-thirds of the amount reached Liberia, where most of this amount was picketed by government officials, until less than one-tenth of the original sum was available to the Liberian treasury.
Aware of his growing unpopularity Roye unconstitutionally extended the presidential term from two or four years.
Although Roye´s aims were enlightened, his lack of control over his officials and his fear of standing for re-election in the normal two years aroused fears among the people; he was charged with planning to sell the country to foreigners and set up a personal dictatorship.
In 1871 an angry Republican mob attempted to lynch Blyden, stormed the presidential mansion and imprisoned Roye, who died shortly after in mysterious circumstances.
Joseph Roberts came back for two more terms as president.
In 1877 the True Whigs again won an electoral victory and they have never since lost power, although the Republicans continued strong in the civil service.
In 1883 H. R. Johnson, son of the pioneer Ellijah Johnson, was endorsed by both political parties because of his immense popularity.
However, on his election he declared for the True Whigs and removed the Republicans from the civil service.
The emergence of the one-party state in Liberia dates from Johnson’s election in 1883.
The True Whigs were able to create a one-party state because of the urgent need for unity against aggression and intrigue by Europeans, and repeated revolts by Africans.
The frontier encroachments by the British and French and financial intrigues by British, Americans and Germans made Americo-Liberian solidarity essential if their independence was to be preserved.
Even with this solidarity established a constant threat to survival remained in their attempt to impose their rule over Africans.
Wars of resistance and independence were fought with the Grebo in the 1880´s and 1890´s and with the Kru and Gola in the early twentieth century. There was always the possibility that European intrigue and African revolts would combine to topple Liberia into one or other of the huge empires around her.
Although the colonists had arrived in small American-type family groups, like the Creoles they developed extended families, until by the end of the nineteenth century great dynastic families had emerged through intermarriage and consolidation.
Government became the art of balancing the number of civil service jobs held by each family, and if a great family became aggrieved it was conciliated by the family, and if a great family became aggrieved it was conciliated be the offer of more oppositions.
Since opposition was thus absorbed by offers of government posts the civil service was overburdened with staff; the Justice Department for example absorbed nine per cent of Liberia’s revenues compared with two per cent in Sierra Leone.
The cost of maintaining the one-party state was a major cause of the continuities shortage of finance, because every time government revenue increased, the struggle began among the family dynasties as to how it was to be shared.
One-party rule was sustained because all positions were in the patronage of Whig politicians, including the staff of Liberia College, judges, heads of church denominations, and newspaper owners, all of whom were bound together in the Masonic secret society.
The system was not the invention of the Whigs. The Republicans had introduced it between 1848 and 1877; While under the Republicans Liberia College was all Mulatto, when Roye came to power Blyden was given the principal ship and it became almost all Negro.
Following Blyden, principals were either politicians on the rise or politicians being quietly pushed into retirement.
The results was that thirty years after its foundation Liberia College had produced only eight graduates. This was why an intellectual class did not arise to challenge the ruling oligarchy.
Because of the fear that it might get out of control, the True Whigs did not encourage a Liberian merchant class, preferring to leave commerce in the hands of Europeans.
Relations with African peoples
From the arrival of the first pioneers at Cape Mesurado, when the African chiefs were forced to sign away their land at gun point, the competition for land disturbed relations between the settlers and the Africans.
At Cape Palmas the Grebo were prepared to exchange land for education and welcomed the pioneers on condition that settlers and Grebos be treated alike, particularly in the matter of educated.
Successive governors unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Grebos to move back and leave the coastal strip to the colonists, until, in 1855, the militia from Monrovia, supported by an American warship, drove 2, 000 Grebos out of Cape Palmas.
Compared with the later period, the era of prosperity from 1850 to 1880 was one of relative peace between settlers and Africans.
Merchant princes operated interior trading posts and, by co-operating with the chiefs, maintained. Liberian influence, while the government occasionally paid subsidies to the chiefs to keep the trade routes open to the coast.
The depression and collapse of the merchant princes in the 1880´s brought a decline in government revenue, yet the patronage policy of the one-party state and European border encroachments necessitating effective interior rule called for large government expenditure.
To meet this need Africans were taxed, and taxed heavily; most were willing to pay if in return they were provided with teachers and schools.
TheAmerico-Liberian had to deal with progressive and ambitious African people.
The commercial ability of the Mandinka has been already noted.
The Vai had developed their own system of writing, created by Momolu Daolu in the early nineteenth century, so that by mid-century a majority of adult Vai males could read and write the Vai script.
The Kru, and related Grebo, had a passionate desire for education and English was widely spoken along their coast when the pioneers arrived; they were also devoted to their country, their institutions and their freedom, which was symbolized by their facial mark, called the `mark of freedom` because the Kru were never sold as slaves.
They enthusiastically embraced Christianity, becoming teachers, catechists and clergy in the missions operated by American churches.
The Kru were commercially aggressive in fostering trade along their coast, and many worked on European merchant ships where they were praised for their dependability and efficiency as deck hands, stevedores and firemen.
When in 1884, President Johnson permitted groups which paid more than a specified amount of tax to esend members to the House of Representatives, only the Kru and Grebo had the wealth and ambition to qualify.
There were sunukarutues between Americo-Liberian treatment of Africans and the earlier attitude of the Mulatto settlers towards Negro settlers, which included the same cultural arrogance and an effort to restrict education.
In order to eclude Africans from the already over-burdened governing class, the Americo-Liberians proposed technical rather than literary education for the Kru, but there was little scope for the technically trained in a non industrial society.
The Kru, who with mission help were trained in technical subjects overseas, had difficulty in securing employment, and even those who qualified in literary education were discriminated against in government jobs.
The normal path into Americo-Liberian society was via the apprenticeship system whereby African children worked in Americo-Liberian homes, became familiar with their customs and way of life, adopted their names and later married among them.
This system was distasteful and offended the pride of the Kru and they seldom took part in it.
In addition to their grievances over education, the Kru complained of economic discrimination. They were energetic trading people, and when the government had declared sex Americo-Liberian cities as international trading ports, Kru cities declined into villages, the ultimate result being to make the Kru economically subservient to the Americo-Liberians.
Repeatedly the Kru asked that their city, Settra Kru, should be made an international port of entry.
In 1905 the president of the republic agreed but when the Americo-Liberians of the area prevented the erection of the necessary customs post and forcibly refused to allow customs officials to take up their duties in Settra Kru, the Monrovia government made no effort to compel obedience to the president’s order.
This was typical of the political paralysis at Monrovia in enforcing unpopular measures on the Americo-Liberian, especially in disputes with Africans.
The Monrovia government was a settler government ultimately enforcing settler policies.
A further example of this paralysis occurred when the senator of Since county lynched six Kru chiefs and imprisoned a number of others, demanding 2, 000 dollars apiece for their freedom; the senator personally pocketed this money and despite repeated Kru petitions the Monrovia government did not interfer.
Under these conditions Africans frequently revolted against Americo-Liberian rule; there were major revolts among the Grebo and Gola and also the serious Kru revolt of 1915.
In 1912 the Kru presented the American ambassador with a petition of grievances in order to persuade them to stop supporting Americo-Liberian policies.
When the Americans ignored this, the Kru turned to the British, asking for guns and ammunition.
There had been a long connection and trading partnership between the Kru and the British, who were the best customers of Kru palm-oil exports, while thousands of Kru worked on British warships and merchant vessels along the West Coast.
Kru colonies had developed in Freetown, Takoradi and Lagos and they felt that advancement and education would be quicker under British than under Liberian rule
Once the revolt began the Kru hoisted the British flag.
Although British merchants and the British press were sympathetic, the British ambassador in Monrovia was even more hostile than the Americans had been.
Nevertheless the Monrovia government disguised the real causes of the revolt – oppressive and intolerant rule – by claiming that it was provoked by the British as an excuse to bring Liberia within their empire.
In 1900 there were about 12, 000 settlers and 60, 000 Africans in the countries where Americo-Liberian law, custom, institutions and religion prevailed.
The Monrovia government pursued a policy of assimilating these Africans.
In order to become assimilated, Africans had to give up their language for English, their traditional religion or Islam for protestant Christianity, their rights in communal land for private ownership and their loyalty to African institutions for loyalty to the Monrovia government.
A sharing of the two cultures was not intended, but instead total African assimilation was required, which was a slow and often painful process.
The Americo-Liberians, although they were settlers with all the arrogance, feelings of settler communities elsewhere in Africa, would have been hailed as revolutionary.
In the 1920´s, of a school population of 9, 000 only 600 were Americo-Liberians.
A prominent lawyer and Secretary of state married a Grebo in 1881, a Chief Justice married a Vai in 1910, a Kru had risen to be Secretary of State for education in 1915, and in 1925 a Grebo held the second highest position in the Republic, Vice-President.
In traditional society it had been the Poro, not the chiefs, which had exercised the most significant political power.
The Liberian government appointed paramount chiefs over numerous clan chiefs and this, coupled with the Poro ban, fundamentally altered the form of traditional government in just the same way as the British recognition of the Calabar chiefs undermined the power of the Ekpe society.
Usually indirect rule was introduced because it was cheap, but this was not the case in Liberia. The hinterland civil service enlarged the patronage available for distribution by the True Whigs and multitudes of officials soon overburdened the hinterland administration as it had in earlier days overstaffed the county administration.
It did, however, provide an opportunity to employ educated Africans – Kru, Vai, Grebo – and thus became an avenue for them into the governing class.
Since indirect rule was not economical and since, in any case, it altered African traditional government, it appears unfortunate that the policy of assimilation was, not applied throughout the country in the interests of national unity.*** (I Don´t agree with this statement sorry I had to comment!!!)
Conclusion
Americo-Liberian history is a record of struggle for survival, suspicion of the imperialistic aims of the great powers and a passionate devotion to independence. The struggle began with the throwing off of the Colonization Society’s paternalism and the establishment of recognition as a sovereign state. It continued in the effort, first to save Liberian territory during the partition of Africa, and then to survive, the intrigues of foreign bankers.
Internally it was a struggle to develop a national loyalty in the interests of national unity. At first the division between the settlers and the coastal peoples, the Kru, Grebo and Vai, and later between the people of the countries and the people of the hinterland.
Credit for survival was largely due to the one-party state but it was achieved at a high cost to the development of the country.
Unity had its price. The patronage policy of the True Whigs multiplied civil service posts and overburdened an already economically weak nation.
When the party brought the courts, press and schools under its control this weakened independent thought and action.
The Americo-Liberians set the standards and fixed the rules by which Africans might assimilate, which often required that they conceal their origins and pretend to be of settler pedigree.
Discovery of this concealment brought shock and scandal.
Americo-Liberians also sought to monopolize national politics, which was the main road to success and wealth, while business and commerce were spurned.
Yet it would appear that Liberia’s basic weakness was economic, after her plantations and merchant class were destroyed, following a brief but brilliant beginning, and she was isolated outside the world’s major trading systems.
Liberia’s continuous lack of revenue left her exposed to imperialism, widened the gulf between settlers and Africans, made the full application of assimilation impossible, accounted for the abuses of the administration of the hinterland, drove every ambitious man into seeking a government job and left the economic development of the country to foreigners.
The significance of Liberian history for West Africa lies in the fact that modern independent African states face many of the problems and in many cases are following similar paths to those pioneered by Liberia between 1821 and 1914.
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