“The United States of Africa”
Liberian Independence and the Contested Meaning of a Black Republic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23160983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brandon Mills (0000-0002-3302-5330, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-107 |
| Publication date | 2014-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Early Republic (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0275-1275 • E-ISSN: 1553-0620 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jer.2014.0012 |
| OpenAlex | W2001473539 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 34 |
Historians have primarily examined the African colonization movement within the context of domestic anti-slavery politics; however, because colonizationists often promoted Liberia as a nascent “United States of Africa,” it can also be understood as one of the United States’ first attempts to engineer republicanism abroad. This article examines the symbolic realization of this republican ideal by investigating the often-overlooked moment in 1847 when Liberia declared itself the world’s second black republic. Some white colonization supporters in the United States viewed Liberia’s realization of independence as validation of the idea that a black colony, through U.S. tutelage, could be elevated to become a sovereign, self-governing nation. At the same time, several African American critics argued in pamphlets, abolitionist newspapers, and black political conventions that Liberia’s independence would do little to earn international respect for African Americans and that the event was primarily aimed at garnering support for a colonization movement which had, in fact, contributed to the erosion of black rights in the United States. This article argues that U.S. observers both championed and dismissed Liberian independence as an expression of the United States’ ability to shape the world in its own image at a moment when many Americans were preoccupied with expanding onto new territory as well as policing the boundaries of racialized citizenship within the nation.
Citizenship · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Independence (probability theory) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · White (mutation) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
The rise of American democracy
Black identity and Black protest in the antebellum North
In the midst of perpetual fetes
The Black image in the white mind
The black Atlantic
The Negro Emigration Movement, 1849-1854
UnAfrican Americans
The Search for a Black Nationality
Slave Culture
Contentious Liberties
The Evolution of the Imperial Idea and U.S. National Identity
Errand into Africa
British West Africa or ‘The United States of Africa’? Imperial pressures on the transatlantic anti-slavery movement, 1839–1842
The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State
The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865
Behold the Promised Land
Destiny seems to point me to that country’
The Economic History of Liberia
American Nationalism, American Imperialism
The Emergence of Racial Modernity and the Rise of the White North, 1790-1840
US Slavery's Diaspora
Sojourners in Search of Freedom
The United States and Decolonization
The Outskirts of Our Happiness
The Price of Liberty
The love of liberty brought us here (an analysis of the development of the settler state in 19th century Liberia)
Disowning Slavery
Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America
Becoming African in America
A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821-1847
George Thompson among the Africans
Slavery, Settlers and Indigenous Dispossession
The Speculative Freedom of Colonial Liberia
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2022 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |