This book provides a comprehensive narrative history of Liberia’s first civil war, from its origins in the 1980s right through the conflict and up to the peace agreement and conclusion of hostilities in 1997. The first Liberian Civil War was one of Africa’s most devastating conflicts, claiming the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians, and sending shockwaves across the world. Drawing on a wide range of local and international sources, the book traces the background of the war and its long-term and immediate causes, before analysing the detail of the unfolding conflict, the eventual ceasefire, peace agreement and subsequent elections. In particular, the book shines a light on hitherto unseen first-hand Roman Catholic indigenous and missionary sources, which offer a rare intimacy to the analysis. Detailing the impact of Liberia’s individual warlords and peacemakers, the book also explains the roles played by non-governmental agencies, national, regional and international actors, by the UN, ECOWAS and the Organisation of African Unity, and by nations with special interests and influence, such as the USA and other West African states. This book’s detailed narrative analysis of the Liberian conflict will be an important read for anyone with an interest in the Liberian conflict, including researchers within African studies, political science, contemporary history, international relations, and peace and conflict studies.
The first popular history of the former American slaves who founded, ruled, and lost Africa's first republic In 1820, a group of about eighty African Americans reversed the course of history and sailed back to Africa, to a place they would name after liberty itself. They went under the banner of the American Colonization Society, a white philanthropic organization with a dual agenda: to rid America of its blacks, and to convert Africans to Christianity. The settlers staked out a beachhead; their numbers grew as more boats arrived; and after breaking free from their white overseers, they founded Liberia—Africa's first black republic—in 1847. James Ciment's Another America is the first full account of this dramatic experiment. With empathy and a sharp eye for human foibles, Ciment reveals that the Americo-Liberians struggled to live up to their high ideals. They wrote a stirring Declaration of Independence but re-created the social order of antebellum Dixie, with themselves as the master caste. Building plantations, holding elegant soirees, and exploiting and even helping enslave the native Liberians, the persecuted became the persecutors—until a lowly native sergeant murdered their president in 1980, ending 133 years of Americo rule. The rich cast of characters in Another America rivals that of any novel. We encounter Marcus Garvey, who coaxed his followers toward Liberia in the 1920s, and the rubber king Harvey Firestone, who built his empire on the backs of native Liberians. Among the Americoes themselves, we meet the brilliant intellectual Edward Blyden, one of the first black nationalists; the Baltimore-born explorer Benjamin Anderson, seeking a legendary city of gold in the Liberian hinterland; and President William Tubman, a descendant of Georgia slaves, whose economic policies brought Cadillacs to the streets of Monrovia, the Liberian capital. And then there are the natives, men like Joseph Samson, who was adopted by a prominent Americo family and later presided over the execution of his foster father during the 1980 coup. In making Liberia, the Americoes transplanted the virtues and vices of their country of birth. The inspiring and troubled history they created is, to a remarkable degree, the mirror image of our own.
In nineteenth-century America, the belief that blacks and whites could not live in social harmony and political equality in the same country led to a movement to relocate African Americans to Liberia, a West African colony established by the United States government and the American Colonization Society in 1822. In The Price of Liberty, Claude Clegg accounts for 2,030 North Carolina blacks who left the state and took up residence in Liberia between 1825 and 1893. By examining both the American and African sides of this experience, Clegg produces a textured account of an important chapter in the historical evolution of the Atlantic world. For almost a century, Liberian emigration connected African Americans to the broader cultures, commerce, communication networks, and epidemiological patterns of the Afro-Atlantic region. But for many individuals, dreams of a Pan-African utopia in Liberia were tempered by complicated relationships with the Africans, whom they dispossessed of land. Liberia soon became a politically unstable mix of newcomers, indigenous peoples, and "recaptured" Africans from westbound slave ships. Ultimately, Clegg argues, in the process of forging the world's second black-ruled republic, the emigrants constructed a settler society marred by many of the same exclusionary, oppressive characteristics common to modern colonial regimes.
On December 24, 1989, a group of Libyan-trained armed dissidents, which styled itself the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), attacked Liberian territory from neighboring Ivory Coast. The band of outlaws was led by Charles Taylor, an ex-Liberia government official who escaped from prison in the United States while facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly embezzling nearly one million dollars of public funds. After he fled the U.S. Taylor returned to West Africa, from where he connected with Libya. Sustained by Libyan support, Taylor went to Liberia to spearhead his murderous brand of civil war. Liberia's dictatorial leader Samuel Doe responded to the NPFL invasion by deploying troops in the conflict area, whose senior ranks were dominated by the military strongman's own ethnic group. The government forces carried out collective punishment against local villagers, killing, looting, and raping, while singling out people from certain ethnic groups whom they regarded as supporters of the invasion by reason of their ethnic identity. The NPFL also targeted members of Doe's ethnic group and other ethnic groups that were seen to be supportive of the government, as well as its officials and sympathizers. As the war spread from the interior toward the Liberian capital of Monrovia amid widespread death and destruction, the United States responded to the deteriorating situation by dispatching four warships with 2,300 marines to evacuate Americans and other foreigners who were in the country. The U.S. decided not to intervene to contain the unfolding catastrophe. Officials of the George Bush administration maintained that Liberia, which was then America's closest traditional ally in Africa, was no longer of strategic importance to the U.S. Coincidentally, the Liberian civil war started at the time the Cold War was ending. Located on the West Coast of Africa, Liberia was founded in 1822 by freed black American slaves who were returned to the continent. Their passage was paid by the American Colonization Society, a philanthropic organization, whose members included Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. The Liberian capital Monrovia is named after Monroe, who was president of the United States at the time Liberia was founded. The country's national flag of red, white and blue stripes with a star, bears close resemblance to the American flag. The systems of government and education, architecture and other aspects of Liberian life reflect American taste. Names of places in the country include Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana and Buchanan. More than anywhere in Africa, spoken English in Liberia echoes the rhythms of Black American speech. Liberia served as the regional headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and hosted a Voice of America relay station that beamed American propaganda, as well as other major U.S. security installations during the Cold War. The Americans also operated the Omega Navigation Tower, which was intended to track the movement of ships and planes in the region and beyond. Once one of Africa's most stable and prosperous countries, Liberia was regarded as a haven for international trade and commerce because of the use of the American dollar as a legal tender. Major U.S. investments in the country included the Firestone Rubber Plantation, the world's largest plantation, which produce rubber for Firestone tires, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Citibank. Pan American Airlines (PAN AM) once operated Liberia's Roberts International Airport, where U.S. fighter jets have landing rights. During part of the 1970s, Liberia's per capita income was equivalent to that of Japan. Independent since 1847 as Africa's first republic, Liberia's plunge into anarchy began after a bloody military coup that ended the rule of descendants of the freed slaves, who monopolized political and economic power for over a century. During the 1980 coup, President William Tolbert, who tried to institute some meaningful po
BEST BOOKS of 2017 SELECTION by * THE WASHINGTON POST * NEW YORK POST * The harrowing, but triumphant story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women’s movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first democratically elected female president in African history. When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the 2005 Liberian presidential election, she demolished a barrier few thought possible, obliterating centuries of patriarchal rule to become the first female elected head of state in Africa’s history. Madame President is the inspiring, often heartbreaking story of Sirleaf’s evolution from an ordinary Liberian mother of four boys to international banking executive, from a victim of domestic violence to a political icon, from a post-war president to a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf’s personal story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian women. The highs and lows of Sirleaf’s life are filled with indelible images; from imprisonment in a jail cell for standing up to Liberia’s military government to addressing the United States Congress, from reeling under the onslaught of the Ebola pandemic to signing a deal with Hillary Clinton when she was still Secretary of State that enshrined American support for Liberia’s future. Sirleaf’s personality shines throughout this riveting biography. Ultimately, Madame President is the story of Liberia’s greatest daughter, and the universal lessons we can all learn from this “Oracle” of African women.
This book represents the first attempt to holistically document and analyze the causes of deadly conflict in Liberia from its founding to the present. It reconstructs and examines the root, operational, and catalytic causes of eighteen internal deadly conflicts that transpired in Liberia between 1822 and 2003, including the 1980 coup d'e'tat against the Tolbert regime and the Great War (1989-2003). The book seeks to answer two primary questions: What are the historical causes of deadly conflict in Liberia, and To what extent has the evolution of settler nationalism and authoritarianism contributed to the stimulation of conflict between settler and native Liberians? To answer these questions, Levitt examines a continuum of circular causation among the state of affairs that led to the founding of the Liberian State, the evolution of settler authoritarianism and nationalism, and internal conflict. By analyzing these processes together, the causes of eighteen conflicts are revealed and thoroughly discussed. The book also has three major objectives: to determine the historical causes of deadly conflict in Liberia, in particular, the underlining historical phenomena responsible for birthing the Great War; to present an alternative framework to comprehend and examine the aged conflict dynamic between settler and indigenous Liberians, and within Liberian society itself; and to produce the first comprehensive study of deadly conflict in Liberia. This book advantageously spans the fields of political science, history, international law, and peace and conflict studies; it is an excellent interdisciplinary choice. "Dr. Levitt has meticulously investigated the major violent conflicts in Liberia's tortured history and convincingly traced their roots to political institutions of domination and control that remain at the foundation of Liberia's system of governance today. The book's message for Liberia's future is unmistakable." -- Amos Sawyer, Professor and Associate Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University-Bloomington, and former Interim President of Liberia, IGNU "[T]he definitive work on the causes of Liberia's cycle of deadly conflict... The vital importance of Dr. Levitt's work is clear: only by understanding those root causes can Liberians and those who wish them well hope to find an exit from the cycle." -- David Wippman, Professor of Law and Vice Provost for International Relations, Cornell University "This is an excellent book... Levitt deserves great credit for its quality, thoroughness and the care of his research." -- Crawford Young, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison "[A]n original work with fresh perspective that is well grounded in history and theory and of great value to Liberian studies and to the theoretical literature on deadly conflict." -- D. Elwood Dunn, Professor & Chair of Political Science, University of the South (TN), Former Liberian Government Official "Levitt's painstaking documentation of the deadly conflicts makes a most useful contribution to the on-going governance debate. This work is a major contribution to understanding the primary factors that collapsed the Liberian state." -- Dr. Byron Tarr, Development Consultants Inc. Monrovia, Liberia "Levitt, for his part, makes a major contribution to our understanding both of Liberia's past and how that past ought to inform our understanding of the present. Indeed, his is the first systematic accounting for the many nation-building conflicts of Liberia." -- African Studies Review
