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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   2520 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What external problems did Liberia have?

Americo-Liberians are the colonizers. Despite the country having very few whites, they still wound up with internal political strife akin to Rhodesia, just with the descendants of American expatriates as the elite class rather than European colonists. Liberia is sufficiently odd from an outsider's perspective that it's hard to compare to other countries.

There were no major war debts, no foreign invasions. What European country can say that? Liberia inherited a successful constitution from the USA and continual foreign aid.

In its 1930 report, the league admonished the Liberian government for "systematically and for years fostering and encouraging a policy of gross intimidation and suppression" by "[suppressing] the native, prevent him from realizing his powers and limitations and prevent him from asserting himself in any way whatever, for the benefit of the dominant and colonizing race, although originally the same African stock as themselves."

They made the decision to suppress the natives all by themselves. They made the decision to fall into foreign debts all by themselves. They were blessed with natural resources: rubber, iron and diamonds. They squandered one of the most fortunate geopolitical/geoeconomic positions in world history.

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