Liberia History

By | September 11, 2021

Little known are the prehistory and protohistory of the territory of present-day Liberia; the population itself has significant gaps from a historical point of view: immigration of people coming from the foothills of Fouta-Djalon must have superimposed on the aboriginal ethnic groups, starting above all from the century. XVI. As for contacts with the outside world, it was the Portuguese, with Pedro de Sintra, who first visited those coasts in 1461. English, French, Dutch, Danes, etc. they then exercised the traffic of slaves and spices along the coastal regions, without however settling there permanently due to the prohibitive climatic conditions. At the beginning of the century. XIX the American Colonization Society sponsored a plan for the return of free black Americans to Africa. In 1820 the ship Elizabeth landed the first core of black settlers in Freetown in Sierra Leone. Soon after, an establishment was organized on the island of Sherbro; but only in 1822 at Capo Mesurado were the first foundations of the colony laid, which in 1824 took the name of Liberia. In 1839 the governor Buchanan established the outline of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Liberia; in 1841 the leadership passed to Joseph Jenkis Roberts, first black governor. The latter on 7 September 1846 proclaimed the independence of the colony and on 26 July 1847 promulgated the Constitution of the Republic of Liberia. The new state was gradually recognized by Great Britain (1848), France (1852), the Germanic states (1855), Belgium (1858), Denmark (1860) and the United States (1862). The latter then ensured, with their financial intervention and their protection, the survival of the Republic, in which, in reality, the free-American element developed as a privileged minority compared to the autonomous majority, left in a state of serious backwardness.. Only with the coming to power, in 1943,, a program of national unification was launched, intended to ensure a gradual development of the whole national community. Constantly re-elected until his death (1971), Tubman was replaced by William Tolbert, who basically continued his political line. Reconfirmed in 1975, however, Tolbert was the victim of a military coup in April 1980 following serious social unrest. Power was assumed by Sergeant Major Samuel K. Doe and by a popular redemption council made up of military personnel, while the Constitution was suspended and martial law proclaimed.

According to getzipcodes, the hopes of a certain democratization raised by the new Constitution which, approved by referendum in 1984, laid the foundations for a multi-party system, were however soon disappointed with the 1985 elections, probably marred by fraud. Scandals and episodes of corruption, as well as failed coups d’etat (starting with that of March 1985) that caused the deterioration of relations with Sierra Leone (accused of supporting the conspirators), marked the entire decade without leading to significant changes in the regime. During December 1989, bloody fighting broke out between the army and the forces of the National Patriotic Front (FPN) headed by Charles Taylor., which from the North-East soon spread throughout the country, reaching the capital itself between May and June 1990. On September 10, the killing of Doe preluse, through US sponsorship, to a ceasefire between rebel groups and presidential forces, as well as the creation of a transitional government (under the leadership of Amos Sawyer) and drafting of agreements for a national conference inaugurated in March 1991. The national pacification process nevertheless encountered persistent difficulties and the FPN, although in October 1991 it had agreed to entrust military control of the country to the peacekeeping force sent by the member countries of the Economic Community of West African states continued to launch harsh attacks, even on the peacekeeping force itself. L’ yet another agreement (Cotonou Agreement) was signed in July 1993 by Sawyer, the FPN and the United Liberation Movement (ULIMO): it finally led to a real ceasefire. However, more and more intransigent, the warring factions made the various negotiating hypotheses prepared by the UN and ECOWAS. Sharpened by years of fighting, the ethnic contradiction was welded to the more classic struggle for power, causing an inextricable tangle, with organizations now tending to break down according to tribal reference. In this situation, even what appeared to be a definitive agreement, signed in August 1995 in Nigeria, was doomed to failure.

At the end of the nineties the first free nation of the African continent, therefore, was paying the consequences of a contradictory historical process. Reverse colonialism, represented by the African-Americans who emigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century, had not proved, in the final analysis, so different from the more classic one operated by whites. The original elite then formed, in fact, he had always continued to exercise a managerial role and when the divisions within it had become incompatible, the various components had not hesitated to exploit the contrasts of tribal archaism in the most cynical way, bending them to their own interest and plunging the country into chaos. In August 1996, the signing of a new agreement in Abuja, Nigeria, made it possible to obtain in the first months of 1997 the disarmament of most of the militias and the end of the civil war, which began in 1990. In July 1997 they took place, under the supervision of ECOMOG, presidential and legislative elections, won by Taylor and his party, the National Patriotic Front. After the elections, life in the country gradually began to return to normal even if the Taylor’s establishment of a real regime did not help the progress of the difficult normalization process that began with his election, so much so that the peace reached in 1997 was shattered with the fighting that shook Liberia again between 2002 and 2003. In these years the civil war between the army and the rebels of the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) re-erupted, which caused a humanitarian disaster to stem which the international community intervened. The The United States and the West African Community of States called for Taylor’s exile. He fled the country in August, taking refuge in Nigeria. A transitional government was established led by a local businessman, Moses Blah, assisted by UN officials. 2005 was a turning point year for the country as presidential elections were held which saw Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf win (in a disputed ballot with soccer star George Weah), former finance minister under Taylor. Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female president of an African country, found herself having to govern an extremely fragile country, devastated by decades of civil war and with a significant number of refugees and displaced persons. In November 2011, Johnson-Sirleaf was re-elected with over 90% of the votes.

Liberia History