THE ORIGINS OF STATE FORMATION

The two neighbouring republics of Sierra Leone and Liberia are among the smaller West African states. Squeezed in between the Atlantic Ocean and the formerly French territories of Guinea and the Ivory Coast, they cover no more than 43,000 square miles for Liberia and 28,000 for Sierra Leone, with respective populations of some 1 and 3 millions. They are hot, wet, and for the most part low-lying. The whole of Liberia and the southern half of Sierra Leone lie within the West African forest belt, ensuring a plentiful rainfall, and many rivers drain down from the Guinea highlands across both countries to the swampy coast.

This rather inhospitable coast was the scene of a peculiar experiment in colonisation. The modern states of Liberia and Sierra Leone both owe their origins to the position of ‘free persons of colour’ in the United States, Great Britain and the British possessions in America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In each case one solution to what was seen as the problem of free blacks in a white society was repatriation to Africa. Colonisation societies were set up, and the first settlements were founded on headlands which provided an anchorage safe from the West African surf. Freetown in Sierra Leone was established in 1787, and Monrovia in Liberia in 1822. Subsidiary settlements were set up at Sherbro in Sierra Leone and at intervals down the Liberian coast from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas.