The Exportation of American Higher Education to West Africa

American educational activity abroad began in 1822 with the founding of Liberia as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (hereafter referred to as A.C.S.) for repatriated freedmen. Although the society was non-governmental and non-demoninational, it was supported and largely dominated by churchmen. Prominent statesmen such as James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Bushrod Washington were also associated with the organization, but they too, in varying degrees, subscribed to the evangelistic sentiments of the recently established foreign mission societies. Liberia was seen not only as a home for American freedmen but as a center for the Christianization and civilization of Africa, as well.2 For several preceding centuries, Americans on their own soil had been in contact with what by the latter part of the 19th century were known as the despised, inferior, or child races: the Indians, whose land they coveted; and the Blacks, whose labor they extracted in slavery. Attitudes forged toward these peoples no doubt affected the evangelistic and educational schemes exported to Africa and Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries when race came to be seen as the vital force in history, but the initial schools and educational programs established in Liberia were remarkably

Ancient history · Archaeology · Christianity · Christianization · Civilization · Economic history · Ethnology · Exportation · Political science · Settlement (finance) · African Education and Politics · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

• Educational borrowing as negotiation

  Shigeo Yamada•Comparative Education•2008

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