Liberian Independence
The American Colonization Society, backed by a coalition of abolitionists and slaveholders with opposite motives, began settling free African Americans on the West African coast in 1822. The society's governance of the colony became untenable as British traders questioned the legal standing of a territory administered by a private American organisation, and in 1847 the settlers declared an independent republic with a constitution closely modelled on that of the United States. Independence created Africa's first republic and, for much of the nineteenth century, one of only two African states to remain uncolonised. But sovereignty was vested in the Americo-Liberian settlers and their descendants, perhaps five percent of the population, who held the presidency continuously through the True Whig Party until the coup of 1980. The indigenous majority were not granted full citizenship rights until the mid-twentieth century. The structure -- a self-governing state in which a settler minority monopolised power while claiming a founding narrative of liberation -- shaped Liberian politics until it collapsed into civil war.
- Year: 1847 CE
- Category: Political
