Americo: Fill & Download for Free

Your question made me laugh. See, the returning blacks (“Americo-Liberians”) assumed themselves to be far, far superior to the indigenous Liberians. So the Americo-Liberians basically colonized the indigenous. They pushed the indigenous off their land, created governments that didn’t represent the indigenous, were morbidly cruel to the indigenous, and made lots of money off of them. Americo-Liberians stole indigenous land and then sold it to the Firestone Corporation, which planted enormous and profitable rubber plantations for car tires, and paid off Americo-Liberians for the privilege. Firestone and Americo-Liberians also chose the rulers of Liberia for a hundred years or so.This arrangement only ended some decades ago, when a civil war engulfed the country, pitting Americo-Liberians against indigenous Liberians. The Americo-Liberians finally lost. And now, Liberia is, I believe, the poorest country in Africa.So, you see, the issue was never whether indigenous Liberians “accepted” Americo-Liberians!

In the “early period” up until the rise of the True Whig Party, the Americo-Liberians tried to uphold a loose sphere of influence over the natives.Americo-Liberian control at this stage (roughly from the early 1800s to the 1880s) did not extend far from coastal settlements, and they weren’t very interested in pushing their control further inland. At this point the Americo-Liberians were mostly interested in controlling trade (including ending the slave trade) and spreading Christianity; but other than that the natives were left, more or less, to their own devices.This is an era that a few historians have taken to calling the “Merchant Princes era,” when Liberian policy was dictated by, and for the benefit of, enormous trading houses.From Left to Right: Joseph Jenkins Roberts (first president of Liberia) and Urias McGill (of large Liberian trading company McGill Brothers). Both men were among the most successful of the Merchant Princes.The Merchant Princes generally established trading relationships with the natives, sailing coastal barges up and down the coast and trading European manufactured products for African manufactures, such as palm oil, and resources like camwood.Americo-Liberian attempts to control the trade of native Africans by law/force sparked frequent rebellions from the native African polities, which were fought against by the Americo-Liberians with occasional US support. These wars were extremely destructive and went a long way to ending the reign of the Merchant Princes.In 1878 the True Whig Party defeated the merchant-dominated Republican Party in the presidential elections, sparking the beginning of their century-long reign. Unlike the Merchant Princes, who were focused on coastal trade and control, the True Whigs -great agricultural landowners- sought to conquer the interior of the country, both in order to increase their own landholdings and to open new lands for foreign capital.It was under the True Whigs that Liberia began to launch expeditions to map and pacify the interior. The natives were brought more firmly into Monrovia’s control -though they were never entirely pacified. Like with the era of the Merchant Princes, the native Africans rebelled frequently against Liberian rule, though due to foreign support and “divide and rule” policies they did not manage to shake Monrovia’s yoke until the late 20th century.Through “adoption” (aka free labor and forced assimilation) programs called the “Ward System,” the Americo-Liberians assimilated some native Africans into Americo-Liberian society. Christianization was very successful outside of the Islamic north -a region which the Americo-Liberians had much trouble projecting power to anyway. But overall even under the True Whigs the Americo-Liberians could only project, at best, weak protectorates over the native Africans. At the same time, the natives rarely could fully shake Monrovia.It was a systemically unstable interaction that, ironically, collapsed at the moment that Monrovia was preparing to assert full control over the country.On the topic of treatment: neither the Merchant Princes nor True Whigs treated the natives “well,” though because the True Whigs were more interested in establishing direct control, their rule was more brutal. It seems that the Merchant Princes, so long as they controlled trade, did not care too much about what went on outside of their coastal domains. The True Whigs, however, desired to control native labor for their own purposes, and there are reports of atrocities against native Africans wherever the Liberian Frontier Force and their native auxiliaries went.But overall the Americo-Liberians and native Africans don’t seem to ever have been extremely friendly with each other.If you’re looking for more information on Liberia’s “Merchant Princes,” check out my blogpost here: From Slaves To Merchant-Princes: The Americo-Liberians (1820s-1878)

Most African-Americans who did go back to Africa went to Liberia (or what would become Liberia).Many of them died on the way there. Of those who made it to shore, many of them died due to disease, starvation, or warfare with the native peoples.Those who survived all of that became the new oligarchs of Liberia, the top dogs of the country who owned the land, international trade, and for some time even barred natives from living in Monrovia -the capital and most developed part of the country.It's a very similar story to settler colonialism elsewhere.Americo-Liberian (African-American) family, late 1800s.Americo-Liberian President of Liberia, Charles King, at The Hague in the Netherlands with his entourageLiberia was a great place to be if you were an African-American or Afro-Caribbean in the early to mid 20th century (after the wars stopped and disease was less of an issue).You could run the show. You lived without fear. You could do any sort of work you wanted, be anything. Monrovia was decently developed and could provide a decent quality of life. Sure, this quality of life was built on the backs of millions of oppressed African natives but hey…In terms of agency and quality of life, the average Americo-Liberian almost certainly had it much better than the average African-American still in the states during the early to mid 20th century. Keeping in mind that during this time the overwhelming majority of African-Americans were working as sharecroppers and living in shacks, tied to the land and subject to White supremacist terror and oppression.The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and then the 1980 coup that overthrew the Americo-Liberians, changed these dynamics of course.EDIT: As for Marcus Garvey specifically, his plans actually failed. He wanted to buy up HUGE tracts of land in Liberia and settle African-Americans en masse, with the goal of making Liberia a beachhead for the conquest of Africa (a “Black Empire" in his terms). Liberia shockingly agreed to this plan and then reneged on it shortly after. Why they reniged is still disputed -I've heard everything from a fear of losing power to the newcomers, to pressure to kill the deal by the USA and Britain. After that, his Back-to-Africa plans were sunk and never gained the same prominence.