Book contents
- W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought
- Cambridge Texts In The History Of Political Thought
- W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Democracy and Empire
- Select Chronology of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
- Book part
- 1 The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind (1900)
- 2 To the Nations of the World (1900)
- 3 The African Roots of War (1915)
- 4 Of the Culture of White Folk (1917)
- 5 Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to President Woodrow Wilson (1918)
- 6 To the World (Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress) (1921)
- 7 Worlds of Color (1925)
- 8 Liberia and Rubber (1925)
- 9 Liberia, the League and the United States (1933)
- 10 Where Do We Go from Here?
- 11 Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis: A Negro View (1935)
- 12 The Clash of Colour: Indians and American Negroes (1936)
- 13 The Union of Colour (1936)
- 14 What Japan Has Done (1937)
- 15 Black Africa Tomorrow (1938)
- 16 The Realities in Africa: European Profit or Negro Development? (1943)
- 17 Prospect of a World without Race Conflict (1944)
- 18 Colonies and Moral Responsibility (1946)
- 19 A Cup of Cocoa and Chocolate Drops (1946)
- 20 An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities
- 21 Colonies as Cause of War: Address to the World Peace Congress, Paris (1949)
- 22 On the West Indies: Address of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois at the St. Thomas Chamber of Commerce (1952)
- 23 To the World Peace Council, Budapest (1953)
- 24 Colonialism and the Russian Revolution (1956)
- Index
9 - Liberia, the League and the United States (1933)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2022
- W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought
- Cambridge Texts In The History Of Political Thought
- W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Democracy and Empire
- Select Chronology of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
- Book part
- 1 The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind (1900)
- 2 To the Nations of the World (1900)
- 3 The African Roots of War (1915)
- 4 Of the Culture of White Folk (1917)
- 5 Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to President Woodrow Wilson (1918)
- 6 To the World (Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress) (1921)
- 7 Worlds of Color (1925)
- 8 Liberia and Rubber (1925)
- 9 Liberia, the League and the United States (1933)
- 10 Where Do We Go from Here?
- 11 Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis: A Negro View (1935)
- 12 The Clash of Colour: Indians and American Negroes (1936)
- 13 The Union of Colour (1936)
- 14 What Japan Has Done (1937)
- 15 Black Africa Tomorrow (1938)
- 16 The Realities in Africa: European Profit or Negro Development? (1943)
- 17 Prospect of a World without Race Conflict (1944)
- 18 Colonies and Moral Responsibility (1946)
- 19 A Cup of Cocoa and Chocolate Drops (1946)
- 20 An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities
- 21 Colonies as Cause of War: Address to the World Peace Congress, Paris (1949)
- 22 On the West Indies: Address of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois at the St. Thomas Chamber of Commerce (1952)
- 23 To the World Peace Council, Budapest (1953)
- 24 Colonialism and the Russian Revolution (1956)
- Index
Summary
This 1933 essay revisits Liberia’s precarious political and economic situation in the wake of a League of Nations commission formed in 1929 to investigate charges that the Liberian government had tolerated slave trading. Du Bois wrote the essay on the basis of a cache of League documents provided to him by the writer and activist Anna Melissa Graves. Du Bois writes that the League’s International Commission of Inquiry or Christy Commission dwelt more on general economic conditions, having quickly concluded that Liberia had successfully suppressed the forced labor practices in question. Its elaborate and misguided economic proposals failed to recognize the true reasons for Liberia’s poverty and debt and threaten to exacerbate the problem. United States government efforts to guarantee the profits of the Firestone Corporation likewise demonstrate Liberia’s vulnerability to being “ruthlessly exploited as a foundation for American and European wealth.”
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- W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought , pp. 100 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022