Creation of Liberia

Background

First as the result of a good intention, that of the Quakers and some American pastors willing, in the late eighteenth century, to repair the harm done to black slaves by repatriation to Africa. The very idealistic governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, who was Father of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, which is the first elements of Human Rights, became the advocate of that noble idea; he put a lot of determination to achieve. By 1788, well before the repeal of slavery after the Civil War (1861-1865), a "Negro Association of Newport "therefore set to push for a massive relocation of all black slaves in Africa. Two attempts in this direction, organized by President Jefferson in 1815 and 1820, led however, failures. The relay was taken by an American Colonization Society, which was met with opposition, however, blacks themselves who thought that the real purpose of this policy was to get rid of them, then they wanted rather be integrated as free citizens in American society. So it was directed towards the transfer in Africa freed slaves abandoned by their masters, and later released captives at sea hunting for slave ships (Burin 2005, 14).

In a second aspect, it has long presented Liberia, such as only black state remained free during the colonial period, while its primary purpose was, we have seen, to become a land of colonization by black Americans. The Liberia is actually the result of several settlements in modern times, to speak only of those that history has been written inventory (Fage 1969, 393).

The first were contemporaneous with the discovery and conquest of America by the Spanish and Portuguese. The upheavals in the "empires" Sudan at that time forced two major population groups, the Kru and Mande, to immigrate to the territories occupied by indigenous Mel, to dominate them and send them back to the borders of North and Northeast of Liberia today, and to Sierra Leone and Guinea. You will find these ethnic divisions in the current thirteen large tribes and the three major political forces whose numerous subdivisions are vying for power since 1980, in incessant civil wars. The case of Liberia, which was never occupied by Europeans, thus inflicting the lie to those who claim that tribalism was an invention of Western colonialists, and that would have wanted to "divide and rule".

A second wave of colonization occurred in the nineteenth century. We saw that she was born philanthropic intentions. But hell is paved with good intentions that, but also considerations of less virtuous, but more practical. After the age of humanitarian idealists that we mentioned above, a problem arose in the southern slave states of the United States. We did not want at all see blacks be freed by their masters in a social group that would have propagated an ideal of general release, with the support of anti-slavery Northerners. Southerners and Northerners agreed on the idea of repatriating them to Africa, where they could thrive in their homeland and ...