13 hours ago
- General
- National Geographic
Were there sinister motives behind founding Liberia?
FREEPORT OF MONROVIA The independent flag of Liberia flies on the shore in an 1849 engraving.
Faced with injustice in the land of their enslavement, oppressed people might find the offer of a new country, with the chance for freedom and prosperity, attractive. During the early 1800s in the U.S., however, the idea of establishing a colony of Black Americans in Africa was deeply controversial among freedmen—people of African descent who had gained freedom from enslavement—and freeborn Black people.
The reasons centered on the self-serving motives of many of the project's promoters: It was supported by, among others, pro-enslavement figures. Although it led to the founding of Liberia—the world's second ever Black republic—the new state later practiced violence against Indigenous Africans. 'Back' to Africa
Most free Black people saw themselves as Americans, participating in the economy of their newly liberated country. Many freedmen had fought in the Revolutionary War against Great Britain (1775–1783), some earning their freedom in this way.
Their contributions were overlooked, however, and Black Americans were harassed in southern states by the slave-owning order; large numbers of free Black people moved north, where, despite enjoying more freedoms, they still faced civil, political, and social discrimination. Many white people questioned their ability to integrate into American society. It was, ironically, both these racist views and a desire by some Black people for a new start that shaped the idea of a colony in Africa. Map of West Africa in 1851, showing the coastal strip of the Republic of Liberia. AMERICO-LIBERIANS established a colony on territory already inhabited by a complex mix of ethnicities. The Gola, Loma, Mende, Mano, and Gbandi peoples settled the area 8,000 years ago. Other peoples arrived in the 16th century, including the Bassa and Grebo, known to Europeans for their great seafaring skills and fierce resistance to being enslaved.
The project took shape in 1816, with the founding of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Many ACS members belonged to Protestant churches, notably its founder, Robert Finley, a white Presbyterian minister.
The society's members had strikingly different motivations for supporting its aim. Abolitionists sincerely wanted to not only help Black freedmen escape racism but also use them to spread Protestant Christianity in Africa. Some of the society's backers were pro-slavery. They believed an African colony would remove those whose free status and abolitionist ideas might otherwise incite uprisings among the enslaved Black people of the South. Bulgaria's cultural capital
(Where were enslaved Africans taken from? The answer could be hidden in their bones.)
The ACS established branches in many U.S. cities in the North and the South, and the federal government supported the initiative. After the 1808 ban on importing enslaved people, the authorities were keen on a base in Africa where they could send Africans who had been freed from slave ships intercepted at sea. Coat of arms and motto of the Republic of Liberia.
There was already a precedent for such transfers: enslaved Black Americans who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War were living in a state of destitution in London by the late 1700s. British campaigners created what would later become the British crown colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa, where, following Britain's 1807 abolition of the slave trade across its empire, people who had once been enslaved could be resettled. A land for the liberated
The first step was to choose where free Black settlers would be sent. An 1818 exploratory voyage pinpointed Sherbro Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone. In 1820 dozens of free Black people, mostly from Vermont and Virginia, embarked there.
Sherbro Island proved swampy and insalubrious. Within months, after illness and deaths, the settlers were evacuated. Eli Ayres, a doctor representing the ACS, was dispatched to West Africa to find a more appropriate section of the coast to attempt colonization. Along with U.S. naval captain Robert Field Stockton, he identified land around Cape Mesurado. Ayres and Stockton negotiated with regional leaders, including Bassa-Dei chief Zolu Duma (known by the Americans as King Peter), who carried out lucrative trade with Europeans, including in enslaved people. The deal was a strip of coastline, just under 40 miles long and three miles wide, in exchange for goods worth $300 at the time. Sources affirm after Zolu Duma tried to pull out of the deal, Stockton threatened him at gunpoint. EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN, standing at far right in this 1866 photo, immigrated to Liberia after being rejected by three U.S. universities because of his race. He was a key figure in developing the Pan-Africanist theory based on Islam, though he was Christian.
Grave fractures, however, were forming in the nascent state. The Indigenous peoples launched an attack on the colony in 1822, which was held off. Sources attest that many new arrivals were not there of their own volition: Some were forced to immigrate as part of a racist initiative to remove as many free Black people as possible from American soil. MATILDA NEWPORT DAY, once celebrated by the Liberian elite, was named for the settler who lit a cannon with her pipe to fend off an 1822 attack by Indigenous peoples. The now abolished holiday has no historical source yet remains a symbol of tension between American and native Liberians. Deep fractures
The colony's first leaders were white members of the ACS, but in 1841 a freeborn man named Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected governor; he was the son of a white planter and a Black enslaved woman. By this time, the ACS was struggling with the financial burden of maintaining the colony and also threatened by British colonial expansion in the area. Supported by the British, the colonists declared Liberia independent in 1847. Roberts was elected president of the world's second Black republic after Haiti.
Britain, France, and other European nations quickly recognized the existence of the new country, but the United States did not do so until 1862, just before the Emancipation Proclamation made by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.
Liberia adopted a constitution modeled after the United States, with a democratically elected legislature and an independent judiciary. However, the only people to enjoy full rights were the so-called Americo-Liberians—Liberian settlers from the United States and their descendants—which today constitutes only a fraction of the country's population. THE SENATE of Liberia, in the republic's capital, Monrovia, is depicted in this drawing from 1856. Liberia, modeled after the United States, also has its own House of Representatives.
From the beginning, the Americo-Liberians were radically different from the Indigenous people. They spoke English, practiced Christianity, and dressed in a European manner. The colonists rapidly exploited Indigenous Liberians as sources of cheap labor, creating a system of segregation. Discontent led to frequent attempts at rebellion, which were put down brutally by the colonists. Liberia's motto—'The love of liberty brought us here'—papered over deep rifts between Indigenous peoples and Americo-Liberians, later erupting into years of brutal civil wars from the 1980s. Since the early 2000s, Liberia has enjoyed stability, the fruit of a long, complex peace process. This story appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.
