Editing Liberia (section)

=== Early colonization ===
{{main|Colony of Liberia}}
Between 1461 and the late 17th century, [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]], [[Dutch people|Dutch]], and [[British people|British]] traders had contacts and trading posts in the region. The Portuguese named the area ''Costa da Pimenta'' ("Pepper Coast") but it later came to be known as the [[Grain Coast]], due to the abundance of [[melegueta pepper]] grains.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Grain Coast Definition & Meaning |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/grain-coast |access-date=2023-10-18 |website=Dictionary.com |language=en |archive-date=November 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101145334/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/grain-coast |url-status=live }}</ref> The traders would barter commodities and goods with local people.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Syfert |first=Dwight N. |date=April 1977 |title=The Liberian Coasting Trade, 1822–1900 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/article/abs/liberian-coasting-trade-18221900/889FDC6F143C53CE5BA593314D85A4A3 |journal=The Journal of African History |language=en |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=217–235 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700015504 |issn=1469-5138}}</ref>

In the United States, there was a movement to settle [[African Americans]], both free-born and formerly enslaved, in Africa. This was partially because they faced racial discrimination in the form of political disenfranchisement and the denial of civil, religious, and social rights.<ref>Howard Brotz, ed., African American Social & Political Thought 1850–1920 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 38–39.</ref> It was also partially because slave owners and politicians feared uprisings and rebellions of enslaved peoples. They believed these uprising would be motivated by a desire to achieve the&nbsp; freedoms experienced by formerly enslaved peoples, specifically freedom from violence and reunions with separated family.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Spicer |first=Christina |date=2016 |title=The Perpetual Paradox: A Look into Liberian Colonization |journal=The Ascendant Historian |volume=3 |pages=36-52 |via=University of Victoria}}</ref>

Formed in 1816, the [[American Colonization Society]] (ACS) was made up mostly of [[Quakers]] and slaveholders. Quakers believed black people would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the U.S.<ref name="AFP">[http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75 "Background on conflict in Liberia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070214051143/http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=731&issue_id=75 |date=February 14, 2007 }}, Friends Committee on National Legislation, July 30, 2003</ref><ref name="Sale">Maggie Montesinos Sale (1997). ''The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious Masculinity'', Duke University Press, 1997, p. 264. {{ISBN|0822319926}}</ref> While slaveholders opposed freedom for enslaved people, some viewed "repatriation" of free people of color as a way to avoid [[slave rebellion]]s.<ref name="AFP" />

In 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending free people of color to the Pepper Coast voluntarily to establish a colony. Mortality from [[tropical disease]]s was high—of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.<ref name="Shick 1971">{{cite journal|last1=Shick|first1=Tom W.|title=A quantitative analysis of Liberian colonization from 1820 to 1843 with special reference to mortality|journal=The Journal of African History|date=January 1971|volume=12|issue=1|pages=45–59|doi=10.1017/S0021853700000062|pmid=11632218|jstor=180566|s2cid=31153316 |url=http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/34895| issn = 0021-8537}}{{Dead link|date=May 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref name="Shick 1980">{{cite book|last1=Shick|first1=Tom W.|title=Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-century Liberia|date=1980|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|isbn=978-0801823091}}</ref> By 1867, the ACS (and state-related chapters) had assisted in the migration of more than 13,000 people of color from the United States and the Caribbean to Liberia.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html|title=The African-American Mosaic|website=[[Library of Congress]]|date=July 23, 2010|access-date=March 31, 2015|archive-date=February 26, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110226111511/http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html|url-status=live}}</ref>  These free African Americans and their descendants married within their community and came to identify as [[Americo-Liberian]]s.  Many were of mixed race and educated in American culture; they did not identify with the indigenous natives of the tribes they encountered.  They developed an ethnic group that had a cultural tradition infused with American notions of political republicanism and Protestant Christianity.<ref>{{cite thesis |last = Wegmann |first = Andrew N. |date = May 5, 2010 |title = Christian Community and the Development of an Americo-Liberian Identity, 1824–1878 |type = MA thesis |publisher = Louisiana State University |url = https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/525/ |doi = 10.31390/gradschool_theses.525 |df = mdy-all |doi-access = free |access-date = November 11, 2022 |archive-date = November 11, 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20221111201936/https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/525/ |url-status = live }}</ref>

According to historian Henryatta Ballah, indigenous Liberian cosmology was centralized around the existence of a supreme being and its worship through specific deities and ancestral spirits that they believed acted as intermediaries between themselves and the supreme being. Certain pieces of land were considered to be part of the spiritual land and were central to Indigenous Liberians’ resistance to their loss of land through colonization. Americo-Liberians and the American Colonization Society sought to eradicate all forms of Indigenous religious practices as a form of forced assimilation and to aid in their acquisition of land and political power. The term “witchcraft” was used to describe all Indigenous cosmologies in Liberia and many missionaries described these religious practices as the most barbaric practices of all “native tribes”. These ideas about Indigenous Liberian cosmologies drove large scale assimilation in the country beginning in the 1820’s and continuing for decades.<ref>{{Citation |last=Ballah |first=Henryatta L. |title=Witchcraft in Liberia |date=2024-04-17 |work=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History |url=https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1466 |access-date=2025-05-08 |language=en |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.1466 |isbn=978-0-19-027773-4}}</ref>

[[File:Mitchell Map Liberia colony 1839.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Map of Liberia Colony in the 1830s, created by the ACS, and also showing Mississippi Colony and other state-sponsored colonies.]]
The ACS, supported by prominent American politicians such as [[Abraham Lincoln]], [[Henry Clay]], and [[James Monroe]], believed "repatriation" was preferable to having emancipated slaves remain in the United States.<ref name="Sale"/> Similar state-based organizations established colonies in [[Mississippi-in-Africa]], [[Kentucky in Africa]], and the [[Republic of Maryland]], which Liberia later annexed. Lincoln in 1862 described Liberia as only "in a certain sense...a success", and proposed instead that free people of color be assisted to emigrate to [[Chiriquí Province|Chiriquí]], today part of Panama.<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:812?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=April+16%2C+1862=trgt|title=Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 5|chapter=Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes|date=August 14, 1862|access-date=August 21, 2019|archive-date=June 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614183123/https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:812?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=April+16,+1862=trgt|url-status=live}}</ref>

The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered, especially those in communities of the more isolated "[[the bush|bush]]". The colonial settlements were raided by the [[Kru people|Kru]] and [[Grebo people|Grebo]] from their inland chiefdoms. Encounters with tribal Africans in the bush often became violent. Believing themselves different from and culturally and educationally superior to the indigenous peoples, the Americo-Liberians developed as an elite minority that created and held on to political power. The Americo-Liberian settlers adopted clothing such as [[hoop skirt]]s and [[tailcoat]]s and generally viewed themselves as culturally and socially superior to indigenous Africans.<ref name="Smithsonian">{{cite journal|last1=MacDougall|first1=Clair|title=These Abandoned Buildings Are the Last Remnants of Liberia's Founding History|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/liberia-created-former-slaves-fading-into-history-180959503/|journal=[[Smithsonian Magazine]]|date=July–August 2016|access-date=June 23, 2021|archive-date=April 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210420194225/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/liberia-created-former-slaves-fading-into-history-180959503/|url-status=live}}</ref> Indigenous tribesmen did not enjoy birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904.<ref name="Constitutional History"/>