Liberia: The Land, Its People, History and Culture
Author: Frank Sherman
Paperback: 348 pages
Publisher: New Africa Press (10 January 2011)
ISBN-13: 9789987160259
Book Description:
This work is a general introduction to Liberia. It is comprehensive in scope covering a wide range of subjects from a historical and contemporary perspective.
It is intended for members of the general public. But some members of the academic community may also find this work to be useful in their fields.
Subjects covered include an overview of the country and its geography including all the regions - known as counties - and the different ethnic groups who live there.
The work is also a historical study of Liberia since the founding of the country by freed black American slaves.
One of the subjects covered in the book is the conflicts - including wars - the new black American settlers had with the indigenous people.
The freed slaves who, together with their descendants, came to be known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the country and excluded the indigenous people from the government and other areas of national life for almost 160 years until the Americo-Liberian rulers were overthrown in a military coup in 1980. It was one of the bloodiest military coups in modern African history.
The soldiers who overthrew the government were members of native tribes and were hailed as liberators by the indigenous people who had been dominated and had suffered discrimination at the hands of Americo-Liberians throughout the nation's history. Some of them were even sold into slavery in Panama by the Americo-Liberian rulers in the 1930s, prompting an investigation of the labour scandal by the League of Nations. Others were forced to work on various projects within Liberia itself and became virtual slaves in their own country. Americo-Liberians saw the natives as inferior to them and treated them that way.
The mistreatment of the members of native tribes by the Americo-Liberians was one of the main reasons native soldiers of the Liberian army decided to overthrow the government.
The book also covers the Liberian civil war which destroyed the country in the 1990s and early 2000s, a conflict which also had historical roots.
The conflict is attributed to the inequalities between Americo-Liberians and the indigenous people which existed throughout the nation's history. But its immediate cause was the brutalities Liberians suffered under the military rulers who overthrew the Americo-Liberian-dominated government.
Another major subject covered in the book is the ethnic composition of Liberia. The work looks at all the ethnic groups in the country and their home regions - counties - as well as their cultures, providing a comprehensive picture of life in contemporary times in Africa's oldest republic. The national culture of Liberia in general is also another subject addressed in the book.
The author has also addressed another very important subject: indigenous forms of writing invented by the members of different tribes or ethnic groups in Liberia. The indigenous scripts are a major contribution to civilisation and Liberia stands out among all the countries on the African continent as the country which has the largest number of these forms of writing.
People going to Liberia for the first time, and anybody else who wants to learn about this African country, may find this work to be useful.
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Introduction
I WISH to express my profound gratitude to Wikipedia as the source of most of the information I have compiled in this work.
I have used the material in compliance with the terms stipulated by the Wikipedia foundation for the use of such material for commercial and non-commercial purposes in the dissemination of knowledge.
But much of the material I have used from this central pool of knowledge – that is what Wikipedia is, depending on one's interpretation of what Wikipedia really is – does not appear in its original form.
A substantial part of it has been re-written to conform to my style and format of presentation of the material I found to be relevant to my project on Liberia.
I have also excluded some material from Wikipedia which is not necessary for inclusion in this work.
I have also included a lot of material which is not found in Wikipedia. I did not want to rely only on one source of information.
I have also incorporated into the book my own material, what I already know about Liberia, and my own analysis in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of the country.
Therefore a lot material did not come from Wikipedia. This work is a product of many sources. And they are given full attribution where they have been cited for documentation. They include Liberian newspapers and Liberian and non-Liberian scholars whose works include articles and books from which I have quoted to complement my work.
I can not name all but special thanks must go to Nigerian Professor Ayodeji Olukoju of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, whose book, Culture and Customs of Liberia, proved to be indispensable in the execution of my project regarding indigenous forms of writing invented by the members of different ethnic groups in Liberia.
The Vai script is the most well-known. But there are others which, although less well-known, are equally important as a way of preserving and transmitting knowledge.
Collectively, all the scripts are also an integral of a systematic body of knowledge indigenous to Africa.
Also, a lot of thanks go to Gabriel I. H. Williams, a Liberian and former editor of a leading independent daily newspaper, The Inquirer, who also once served as secretary general and president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), for quoting from his book, Liberia: The Heart of Darkness: Accounts of Liberia's Civil War and Its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Stephen Ellis, author of The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War; andProfessor Joseph Guannu, Nation-States and the Challenges of Regional Integration in West Africa: The Case of Liberia, for quoting from their books to document my study.
I'm also very grateful to Colin Legum and John Drysdale for using some of their material on Liberia published in their volume, Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1968 – 1969.
I have also quoted from a book by Patricia Levy and Michael Spilling, Liberia: Cultures of the World, and wish to thank them for their work.
Also a lot of thanks to Dr. Augustine Konneh, former professor and chairman of the department of history at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and later head of the Foreign Service Institute in the ministry of foreign affairs, Monrovia, Liberia; and to other Liberians including Siahyonkron Nyanseor, Seltue Robert Karweaye, Flomo Y. Kokolo, Varlee A. Conneh, Arthur B. Dennis and others for using their articles which provide different perspectives on Liberia and its destiny.
I also wish to thank The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine, Zambia News, Chicago-Sun Times, BBC, Birmingham, UK; ABC News, New York, and other sources of information for using some of their material to document my work.
Anyone I may have inadvertently omitted in my expression of gratitude is given full attribution in the book where I have used the material in its appropriate context.
This is not intended to be a scholarly work. It's a simple introduction to Liberia intended for members of the general public. But if some students and scholars find it to be useful in their fields, my work will have achieved another goal, even though that was not my intention when I conceived – and started working on – the project.
And I would not have been able to complete it without the work of others to whom I will always be grateful. There are not enough words to convey my deep gratitude to them.
They deserve credit more than I do for the execution of this work. I stood on their shoulders to be able to see far. And I am still standing on them, scanning the horizon.