This article discusses the political history of Liberia from the early history to the colonization, independence and political development of Liberia.
Liberia is a country in West Africa founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of African Americans, both free and recently emancipated, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest among settlements reported with modern recordkeeping.
EARLY HISTORY (PRE-1821)
Historians believe that many of the indigenous peoples of Liberia migrated there from the north and east between the 12th and 16th centuries AD. Portuguese explorers established contacts with people of the land later known as “Liberia” as early as 1462. They named the area Costa da Pimenta (Pepper Coast), or Grain Coast, because of the abundance of melegueta pepper, which became desired in European cooking.
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In 1602 the Dutch established a trading post at Grand Cape Mount but destroyed it a year later. In 1663, the English established a few trading posts on the Pepper Coast. No further known settlements by Europeans occurred until the arrival in 1821 of free blacks from the United States.
COLONIZATION (1821–1847)
From around 1800, in the United States, people opposed to slavery were planning ways to liberate more slaves and, ultimately, to abolish the institution. At the same time, slaveholders in the South opposed having free blacks in their states, as they believed the free people threatened the stability of their slave societies. Slaves were gradually freed in the North, although more slowly than generally realized; there were hundreds of slaves in Northern states in the 1840 census, and in New Jersey, in the 1860 census. The former slaves and other free blacks suffered considerable social and legal discrimination; they were not citizens and were seen by many as unwanted foreigners who were taking jobs away from whites by working for less. Like Southern states, some Northern states and territories (Illinois was one, and the Lecompton Constitution proposed this for Kansas) severely restricted or prohibited altogether entry by free blacks.
The first ship of the American Colonization Society, the Elizabeth, departed New York on February 6, 1820, for West Africa carrying 86 settlers. Between 1821 and 1838, the American Colonization Society developed the first settlement, which would be known as Liberia. On July 26, 1847, Liberia declared itself a (free) sovereign.
Colonies in Africa
In 1787, Britain had started to resettle the “black poor” of London in the colony of Freetown in Sierra Leone. Many were Black Loyalists, former American slaves who had been freed in exchange for their services during the American Revolutionary War. The Crown also offered resettlement to former slaves whom they had first resettled in Nova Scotia. The Black Loyalists there found both the discrimination by white Nova Scotians and climate hard to bear. (See Black Nova Scotians.) Wealthy African-American shipowner Paul Cuffe thought that colonization was worth supporting. Aided by support from certain members of Congress and British officials, he transported 38 American blacks to Freetown in 1816 at his own expense. He died in 1817, but his private initiative helped arouse public interest in the idea of colonization.
Colonization societies
The American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded in 1816 by Virginia politician Charles F. Mercer and Presbyterian minister Robert Finley of New Jersey. The goal of the ACS was to settle free blacks outside of the United States; its method was to help them relocate to Africa.
Starting in January 1820, the ACS sent ships from New York to West Africa. The first had 88 free black emigrants and three white ACS agents on board.
From the beginning, the colonists were attacked by indigenous peoples whose territory this was, such as the Malinké tribes. In addition, they suffered from disease, the harsh climate, lack of food and medicine, and poor housing conditions.
Until 1835, five more colonies were created by the colonization societies of five different states in the U.S. (Republic of Maryland, Kentucky-in-Africa, Mississippi in Africa, Louisiana, Liberia, and that set up by the Pennsylvania state colonization society and one planned by the New Jersey colonization society), and one[which?] by the U.S. government in the vicinity of the ACS settlement.
Rejection of colonization in the United States
Free people of color in the United States, with a few notable exceptions, overwhelmingly rejected the idea of moving to Liberia, or anywhere else in Africa, from the very beginning of the movement. Most of them had lived in the United States for generations, and while they wanted better treatment, they did not want to leave. In response to the proposal for blacks to move to Africa, Frederick Douglass said “Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here.”
HANDING OVER COMMAND TO AMERICO-LIBERIANS
The ACS administrators gradually gave the maturing colony more self-governance. In 1839, it was reorganized into the Commonwealth of Liberia. In 1841, the Commonwealth’s first non-white governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, was appointed by ACS’s governing board. In early 1847, the ACS directed Liberian leadership to declare independence. On July 26, 1847, eleven signatories to the Liberian Declaration of Independence established the free and independent Republic of Liberia. It took several years for other nations to recognize Liberia’s independence, most notably Britain in 1848 and France in 1852. In the United States, the Southern bloc in Congress refused to recognize Liberian sovereignty.[26] In 1862, however, following the departure of most Southern congressmen due to the American Civil War and the secession of the Southern states, the United States finally established diplomatic relations and welcomed a Liberian delegation to Washington.
AMERICO-LIBERIAN RULE (1847–1980)
Between 1847 and 1980, the state of Liberia was dominated by the small minority of African-American colonists and their descendants, known collectively as Americo-Liberians. The Americo-Liberian minority, many of whom were mixed-race African Americans, viewed the native majority as “racially” inferior to themselves and treated them much the same as white Americans had treated them. To avoid “racial” contamination, the Americo-Liberians practiced endogamous marriage. For over a century the indigenous population of the country was denied the right to vote or participate significantly in the running of the country. The Americo-Liberians consolidated power amongst themselves. They, but not the natives, received financial support from supporters in the United States. They established plantations and businesses, and were generally richer than the indigenous people of Liberia, exercising overwhelming political power.
POLITICAL HISTORY
Politically, Liberia was dominated by two political parties. The Americo-Liberians had limited the franchise to prevent indigenous Liberians from voting in elections. The Liberian Party (later the Republican Party), was supported primarily by mixed-race African Americans from poorer backgrounds, while the True Whig Party received much of its following from richer blacks. From the first presidential election in 1847, the Liberian Party held political dominance. It used its position of power to attempt to cripple its opposition.
In 1869, however, the Whigs won the presidential election under Edward James Roye. Although Roye was deposed after two years and the Republicans returned to government, the Whigs regained power in 1878 and maintained power constantly thereafter for over a century.
A series of rebellions among the indigenous Liberian population took place between the 1850s and 1920s. In 1854, a newly independent African-American state in the region, the Republic of Maryland, was forced by an insurgency of the Grebo and the Kru people to join Liberia. Liberia’s expansion brought the colony into border disputes with the French and British in French Guinea and Sierra Leone, respectively. The presence and protection of the U.S. Navy in West Africa until 1916 ensured that Liberia’s territorial acquisitions or independence were never under threat.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1980
Between 1980 and 2006, Liberia was governed by a series of military and transitional governments. The president of the last of these, Charles Taylor, was forced to step down in 2003, and the United Nations installed a transitional government. Elections to select a government to replace the transitional government took place in October and November 2005.
POLITICS OF LIBERIA
The Politics of Liberia takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic modeled on the government of the United States, whereby the President is the head of state and head of government; unlike the United States, however, Liberia is a unitary state as opposed to a federation and has a pluriform multi-party system rather than the two-party system that characterizes US politics. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the legislature.
Liberia is still in transition from dictatorship and civil war to democracy. Liberia’s government is based on the American model of a republic with three equal branches of government, though in reality, the President of Liberia has usually been the dominant force in Liberian politics. Following the dissolution of the Republican Party in 1876, the True Whig Party dominated the Liberian government until the 1980 coup, eventually creating what was effectively a stable, one-party state, with little politics in the usual sense. The longest-serving president in Liberian history was William Tubman, serving from 1944 until his death in 1971. The shortest term was held by James Skivring Smith, who was interim president for all of two months in 1871. However, the political process from Liberia’s founding in 1847, despite widespread corruption, was very stable until the end of the First Republic in 1980.
This situation changed abruptly in 1980, with the revolt against the Americo-Liberians and their True Whig Party. Currently, no party has majority control of the legislature.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Liberia a “hybrid regime” in 2022.