History and Society

Beginning with the troubled relationship between the freed slaves from America (Americo-Liberian Settlers), this chapter traces how a history of discrimination and ingrained social inequality prepared the ground for the emergence of extralegal groups almost two centuries later. While providing a broad sociopolitical sketch of the country’s evolution, the chapter discusses four key ideas: distrust of the central state, the use of violence and coercion to control outsiders, Firestone’s role as a model enclave economy, and the liberalization of the trade in commodities. It considers how the country’s vast inequalities gradually developed and were systematically institutionalized through state structures, and why, as a consequence, many native Liberians continue to regard the country’s central authorities with distrust. Although these four factors are not necessary conditions for the formation of extralegal groups per se, their influence continued to reverberate many decades later, affecting extralegal group formation and development in contemporary Liberia.

Coercion (linguistics) · Development economics · Distrust · Economics · Inequality · Liberalization · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Law