The Colonization and Establishment of Liberia: The History of the West African Nation Before the Liberian Civil Wars

In the spring of 1786, an organization was founded in London to provide some aid for destitute blacks and Asians in the British capital who were by then beginning to become conspicuous. Quite a number of them were resettled blacks from the American colonies who aided British forces in the Revolutionary War and found themselves thereafter no longer welcome in the United States. Others were captives, slaves for one reason or another released on the high seas, and other stevedores and sailors washed up on the shore of England. It was generally believed that the figure was some 15,000, and with limited employment prospects and no community support, most were in very difficult circumstances indeed.

The motivations for this were complicated and varied, and in part they could be explained by an interest in creating circumstances advantageous to blacks, but also to give them an opportunity to form and run a colony effectively in order to debunk a widely held belief that no black man could do such a thing. There was also some value in redistributing freed blacks from the various plantation colonies of the empire, not to mention the political expedience of protecting the British Isles themselves from an expanding population of non-whites generated as a consequence of imperial activities.

The Colonization and Establishment of Liberia: The History of the West African Nation Before the Liberian Civil Wars looks at how the colony grew, the ideals behind it, what life was like there, and how a tenuous democracy lasted in the colony for over 100 years. Along with pictures, you will learn about the settlement of Liberia like never before.