Customer Reviews

History of Liberia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Liberia was set up by citizens of the United States as a colony for former African-American slaves. There is only one other state in the world that is started by citizens of a political power as a settlement for former slaves from the same political power: Sierra Leone, begun for that same purpose by Britain. Because of this, J. H. T. McPherson's "History of Liberia," which was written in 1891 and chronicles the story of that country, is a particularly interesting read. Chapter in this book include (1) The Colonization Idea, (2) The Colonization Movement, (3) Maryland in Liberia, (4) The Republic of Liberia, and (5) The Historic Significance of Colonization.

It's difficult reviewing a "book" (all 53 pages) that was not what I thought it was going to be. I am currently writing a book on my adventures during four visits to Ghana as a field biologist but needed information on Liberian history. Why Liberia? On my way to Ghana, accompanied by a student, in 1979, our Pan American flight ended in Liberia because there was a coup d'etat in Ghana. Although I have a library of well over 500 books on Africa, I had little on Liberia and wanted to include some facts about Liberia in my description of our week there. When searching for a history of Liberia on Amazon.com, this book popped up. Okay, so it was short, but perhaps it provided a nice concise history of major Liberian moments in its history. The date of publication was listed as 2009. When I opened the book upon it's arrival, I discovered that this was a republished dissertation (that much I knew) but that it was written by a professor of history and politics at the University of Georgia in 1891!

I have skimmed portions of the book and had to remember that it was written in a time of Jim Crow, i.e., segregation policies, in the deep South (and in the North as well, perhaps not as virulently so, although you may challenge that conclusion). This book should be fascinating to students of history -- not only of Liberian history -- but especially of American attitudes toward slavery, emancipation, and the solution to the"free black problem" that gave birth to the the Republic of Liberia. Perhaps such students of history would rate the book higher than my one star. By the way, my student and I went on to Ghana a week later on the next Pan Am flight only to find that former heads of state were being executed by firing squad!