For the uninitiated, Liberia is a small country on the west African coast. It was founded by people in the United States, seeking to establish a “colony” for the purpose of repatriating freed slaves and other Blacks back to their ancestral home. (While such an idea would no doubt be controversial today, in that time and before such migrations were actually accepted as legitimate options.) It was never technically a colony of the United States in the sense our original 13 States were colonies of Great Britain. But as the European powers do with their former colonies, when Liberia gets itself into a mess, it’s the good ole USA that holds the burden of intervening.
What might’ve been:
For a number of reasons, very few free Blacks and emancipated slaves ever considered moving to the country. (Even then they knew it was better here than there.) The result was little growth and conflicts with neighbors – both indigenous peoples and nearby European colonies.
But what if…
Imagine great financial and other incentives being offered to American Blacks to migrate there in the aftermath of Emancipation. Many here wanted them sent out of the country – Abraham Lincoln was even in negotiation with the British to establish a colony for them in then-British Honduras. And that was indeed a movement among certain American Blacks to do something to establish themselves. These and others might have combined to make the Liberia option viable – indeed, compelling – to more American Blacks. With the end of the Civil War, the rapid demobilization freed up hundreds of thousands of still serviceable rifle muskets. While arms developments here and in Europe were beginning to render muzzleloaders obsolete, in the context of Africa and indigenous technology, they would offer a colonizing population in a measurable military advantage. With pledges of American support, including – perhaps, ironically – from those wanting all of them removed, these “Americo-Liberians,” as they are called, might have carved out a considerable empire in the “Dark Continent.”
Results:
1. A powerful American ally in the eastern hemisphere, and one enriching its founding demographic.
2. American culture represented in an institutional way in the eastern hemisphere.
3. An example of what these people could accomplish, which may indeed have changed the perception of so many people – frankly, especially White people – held of that demographic.
With this latter point, domestic American race conflicts would actually have been reduced. Developing a more proper general racial attitude may well have been accomplished sooner, calmer, more peacefully, and without the PC excesses (to say the least) we see today.
Win for traditional American culture – including needed reforms. Win for the Black minority in America. And win for the descendants of slaves who built an empire.
