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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Some of the late nineteenth century success of Liberia coffee, sugar, and other commodities can be attributed to the leasing of plantations to enterprising foreigners, although a few leading politicians did own successful farms … For most Americo-Liberians, the role of dirt farmer was decidedly beneath their station.
Yet the reasons for this apathy among most Americo-Liberians for agriculture, which prevailed up to the early 1870s, were not far to seek. The majority of them being newly emancipated slaves, who had in servitude in America been used to being forced to work, erroneously equated their newly won freedom with abstinence from labour.
Both arguments are inaccurate, yet the authors made essential contributions to the writing of Liberian history. J. Gus Liebenow became renowned within Liberian academic circles for his earlier book, Liberia: the Evolution of Privilege. In that book he analyzed the policy that enabled the minority Americo-Liberians (descendants of free blacks from the United States who founded Liberia in 1822), to monopolize political and economic power to the exclusion of the majority indigenous Africans for more than a century. M. B. Akpan dissected Liberia's dubious political history and concluded that Americo-Liberian authority over the indigenous population, was identical to the discriminatory and oppressive policy practiced by European colonizers in Africa.
A section of this paper was presented at the 2004 African Studies Association Annual Meeting. I thank the audience for the comments and criticisms.
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4 Liebenow, J. Gus, Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege (Ithaca, 1969)Google Scholar. Liebenow's text was included in the occasional collection that the Liberian intelligentsia cited during the charged political atmosphere of the 1970s, when Americo-Liberian rule was being openly challenged for the first time. Liebenow's argument resonated with the large number of students of indigenous extraction, particularly those at the University of Liberia, the nation's only public institute of higher learning.
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6 The archives include publications by the American Colonization Society (ACS), underwriter of the Liberian colonization project, letters written by Liberian immigrants during the nineteenth century, and the Census of 1843. Publications by the ACS are African Repository and Colonial Journal (hereafter ARCJ): this was later shortened to African Repository (hereafter AR) and the Annual Report of the American Colonization Society (hereafter Annual Report). Most of the correspondence was published in Wiley, Bell I., ed., Slaves No More: Letters front Liberia, 1833-1869 (Lexington, 1980)Google Scholar. The Census of 1843 was conducted by the United States Government: U. S. Congress, Senate, US Navy Dept., Tables Showing the Number of Emigrants and Recaptured Africans Sent to the Colony of Liberia by the Government of the United States. A Census of the Colony, (Sept., 1843, Senate Document no. 150, 28th Cong., 2d Session, 1845); hereafter, Census.
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