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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Envisioning Africa: American Slaves' Ideas about Liberia |
| Author: | Burin, Eric |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Periodical: | Liberian Studies Journal |
| Volume: | 27 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 1-17 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Liberia |
| Subjects: | American Colonization Society colonists freedmen History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) colonialism |
| Abstract: | In 1816, whites who wanted to remove blacks from the USA established the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS founded Liberia in 1822. Over the next 40 years, approximately 11,000 American blacks settled in the African colony. Nearly 55 percent of these emigrants were former slaves who had been manumitted on the condition that they go to Liberia. This article examines slaves' pre-emigration ideas about Liberia for the period 1820-1840, and how their thoughts and actions affected the colonization movement. The article demonstrates the centrality of slaves' activities to the colonization project. Bondpersons who contemplated going to Liberia consulted a variety of sources about the African settlement. They conferred with their owners, ACS agents, colonization's foes, and Liberian colonists. The resulting advice had two ramifications. First, it vexed the deliberating bondpersons. Some declined to go to Liberia. Others went, only to discover that they had underestimated the settlement's imperfections. Second, slaves' efforts to learn about Liberia contributed to the collapse of the colonization movement in the South of the USA. The very thing that promised some success for the ACS also insured the organization's ultimate failure. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |