The British and French true intentions toward Liberia during the Fernado Po Incident.

Thomas Faulkner an African American came to Liberia in the 1920's.At the time many people were critical of the images of a Black republic oppressing fellow Black people.Thomas Faulkner tried his hand at politics in advocating for the poor indigenous people of Liberia.Indeed they were at the bottom of Liberia society and abuses towards them was appalling.Being from a racist society he was determined to see justice and equality in Liberia.He formed the People's Party.He was undermined not out of any real wanting to keep the status quo but the fact that Liberia was a country of although brilliant men,very shortsighted and coveted in their personal greed and arrogance.He was silenced but before he was some important things came out.The British and French were encroaching on Liberia's territory its very sovereignty was in peril.The territory of the Sherbro Island Sulima River and the Mano River hinterland was taken by a Liberia helpless to stop it.British businessmen tried to offer development in exchange for Liberia's independence.Only the United States stood in the way of a complete take over.The French had taken land on the coast from the Cavalla River to the San Pedro river and in the North the whole Guinea highland which was rich in gold and diamonds.They claimed Liberia failed to occupy this territory.Indeed Liberia wanted settlers from the United States and the West to occupy that land but they never came.So by the early 20th century Liberia was cut in half from its original size.Liberia organized the Liberia Frontier Force with the help of American Black officers of the US Army plus some British officers this stopped the encroachment.Now with it territories now defined the Fernando Po incident happens.Liberia demonstrated it can govern itself,even better than the colonial administration in the region.This did not stop the racist forces determined to take Liberia's sovereignty away.Faulkner had a good heart and good intentions.But the road to hell is often paved with good intention.

A British distinguished author Lady Kathleen Simon wife of noted British statesmen Sir John Simon made a series of attacks on the Black republic and the Americo Liberian.These prejudices were the result of rumors not anything founded in evidence.She bluntly without evidence called for the government to be put under the rule of strong high minded White men.A view sanctioned by her husband.Most of what she knew about Liberia was hear say but to think when the British were butchering half the globe in the name of empire building she like most hypocritical racist at the time said nothing.Several other leading newspapers and writers in Britain and America joined the chorus in condemning the Americo Liberians.The truth was there was hostility towards Liberia being a Black government at a time when Cecil Rhodes and Kruger and others were advancing the belief that Black men were incapable of governing themselves.Liberia like the free Blacks in the USA during slavery gave hope to other in bondage.Infact Liberia was the main reason for the African Nationalist movement.A movement that at the time struck fear in the heart of White Supremacist.So this little republic with all its problems was a threat to the racist and their myth of Black inferiority.The Americo Liberia were some of the most thorough people on the planet.In intellectual circles and international affairs the kept peace in a continent often torn by conflict.

The Fernando Po Incident was the epitome of hypocrisy.The British was in competition with Spain in the cocoa trade.The Spanish recruited labor from Liberia just like it was being done all over Africa.The British used this as evidence of slavery and called for Liberia to be mandated.The Liberians shot back and with the US intervention its sovereignty was preserved.The incident shows that although countries make mistakes.America had chattel slavery and genocide of Native Americans but only White countries keep their independence.
The Contract Labor Scheme
All over the colonial world governments sanctioned contract labor.It still exist to this day.What happens is recruiters are paid for every head delivered.In Liberia's case labor was usually communal.This means groups of men from the same village came and did work.The problem was labor may be abused and induced.This is the by product of this system that all parties are aware of.The British brought labor to South Africa from India because they could better control them.They brought Chinese labor to Malaysia and Singapore to work on plantations and in mills.In Fernando Po an Island off the coast of Nigeria and Equitorial Guinea the Spanish were growing Cocoa and needed labor.This venture was in direct competition with the British in the Gold Coast(Ghana.Now the some Liberian middlemen recruited labor from the Kru migration which the British themselves started.The British abandoned the Island and the Spanish claimed it.So in 1920 the Liberian government claiming sovereignty over all business activity in its territory taxed the enterprise like any other state would.Now the labor that was sent could have been used to build Liberia's own cocoa industry but short sighted greedy leaders went along with it.So should Liberia have lost its independence?No.Lets look at the whole reason.The Spanish recruited labor from Angola,Gabon,and Congo all under the same circumstances.Why was there no out cry about the laborers recruited by the Portuguese?Or the French?Why was Liberia singled out?Answer Racism.This was an attempt to wage a colonial war on Liberia but Liberia out witted and out foxed the fox in Britain and kept her sovereignty.

Two incidents in 1920's Liberia Showed the Black World the limits of White Supremacy.The Sandemannie and Worley Incidents

Liberia was founded as a haven for Africans in the west seeking freedom and independence.The whole point of Liberia was to have a place where African Americans can build themselves without interference from Whites.It was clear to many thinkers during that time period that Blacks needed to server ties with White America in order to become a people.White Paternalism was even more dangerous than brutality because it confirmed the notion that Blacks were children and needed guidance from white benefactors.In Liberia by the end of World War 1 many generations of African Americans grew up being governed by fellow blacks.Many had never been called a nigger.None were ever massacred like in Tulsa(Black Wall Street)and Rosewood.They were used to seeing their leaders at the League of Nations.Sitting down like other sovereign people safe within their borders.This is what freedom is all about.Now when you yield any part of that you give up your sovereignty.Liberia was a proud Black Republic and the Sandemannie and Worley incidents are going to show what happens when White Supremacy is brought to a free proud Black African state.-KALAGENESIS

The first negative reaction to American activities came in February 1918,when a revolt by the Goije and Kongba clans of the Gola broke out against the government.Secretary of the Interior John L Morris was sent to investigate the situation.After a two month stay in the northwestern part of the republic.Morris came to the conclusion that one of the main factors leading to the revolt was the conduct of administration officials.He noted in particular the behavior of two African American or Americo-Liberian officials.Henry J Howard and James R Howard who had abused their authority by collecting large sums of money and generally mistreating the native population,especially the Gola.Morris we find ourselves in an awful predicament.The whole interior is fermenting as a result of the rule of these commissioners.It is only by extremely careful handling that one may hope to restore a decent state of affairs.
On the face of it there was no connection between the Americans serving in Liberia and the outbreak of the Gola revolt.Morris report devoted a full nine pages to a description of Howards misdeeds;his appointment,Morris argued had been a mistake from the beginning.Since Howard had been Major Young's personal choice for the position there was in fact a link drawn between U.S. officials and the Gola outbreak.Morris had probably come to the conclusion that the reforms forced upon the government by the military attache,financial adviser and the American minister in 1915 had led neither to to the strenghthening of African American rule nor to the establishment of an effective administration but to the reverse:there was now more corruption,as well as the deterioration of Liberian authority in the Northwest.The Americans in his opinion was to blame for the situation no less than the Liberians since they had attributed failure to the Liberians alone without talking any responsibility upon themselves.In addition U.S. officials in Liberia had presented further demands that were likely to broaden their power and involve them even more in Liberian internal affairs.
Yet another factor leading to the resentment of the Americans was the high handed manner of American officials towards their African American counterparts.Instances in which Liberians were disciplined or punished were interpreted as acts of mistreatment in which Black men were humiliated by Whites.
The most serious dispute was the Sandemannie Affair,which involved three people Mitchell an American district commissioner H.A. Sawyer,and an Americo-Liberian commissioner of an area bordering the French territories and of two additional district,Garma and Sanniquellie.In 1920 Sawyer accused Sandemannie of keeping slaves,taking government money and transferring government property to his name.As a consequence of these accusations Mitchell sent a note announcing Sandemannie's dismissal and ordered the commissioner to present himself immediately to Monrovia.Sawyer who carried these messages was ordered to chain Sandemannie if resisted.
Upon his arrival in Monrovia,Sandemannie reported to his superior the Secretary of the Interior complaining that Sawyer had taken advantage of the situation and had ordered him chained without justification.As a result Sandemannie had been led all the way to Monrovia a twelve day journey in chains humiliated and degraded.Such behavior expressed the with of White Americans to control Liberia,Sandemannie added"While on the way from Sanniquelle I could hear the surprised natives making this remark:Now we know the White man has taken the country away from the Black people in Monrovia;for see White men have put the D.C. in chains and sending him out of the country.
Sandemannie was closely related to a number of Liberian leaders.In addition he was the protege of both ex President Barclay and the president elect Charles DB King(1920-1920).As a result his public arrest was widely reported in the Liberian press.The Bulletin of November 6,1920 for example printed an article titled"Is Liberia becoming a Georgia or Texas?which severely denounced a situation in which a White American could take the liberty of chaining and humiliating a Liberian without trial.Seven days later another article appeared which followed an investigation of the charges against Sandemannie.The reporter had discovered that Sandemannie did in fact keep slaves in various place in the Vai country,and had indeed sent his family money that had been illegally obtained.But at the same time the newspapers attacked the Americans serving in Liberia particularly Sawyer who had chained Sandemannie and humiliated him unnecessarily.
Another newspaper The Monrovia Weekly Review,wrote that Mitchell came from the state of Georgia.In his hometown the paper reported,there were posters saying'Niggers Read and Run.The paper remarked that Sandemannie's arrest was the first such humiliating incident to occur in the Liberian republic.
The Storm of resentment and indignation triggered by the Sandemannie affair reached new peaks following another incident The Worley Affair
This time the object was H.E. Worley the financial adviser from the U.S. government.Together with Ernest Lyon,the Liberian consul general in the U.S. Worley had represented the Liberian government in negotiations involving a 5 million loan from the U.S.The loan was intended to rehabilitate Liberia's economy following the close of WW1.After working out the details of the agreement,Worley went back to Liberia on a ship from Baltimore.Before leaving however he granted an interview to a local newspaper.Worley was described in the article as the King of Liberia a man obeyed and admired by the leaders of Liberia.The article in glowing terms the reception awaiting Worley upon his arrival in Monrovia with the draft agreement.
The article might well have gone unnoticed by the African American elite in Liberia had not Lyon taken the trouble of sending copies of the newspapers to his two son in laws who happened to be the Secretary of the Interior and Treasury.The publication added to the bitterness and resentment of the African American community in Liberia.Anti American feelings reached a boiling point there were even attempts to physically attack Americans serving in Liberia.Major Young,Bundy and even Mitchell became the target of insults and threats while walking the streets of Monrovia.On May 24,1920 Mitchell became involved in a street fight with a Liberian who cursed him and refused to let him pass.Mitchell hit him and the Liberian fell down.The next day when the Liberia police came to arrest Mitchell sought refuge in the American delegation's residence.A messenger was sent to accompany him to the President.When both arrived at the president's office it became clear that invitation had been a strategem to get Mitchell out of the delegation's residence and thus enable his arrest.The commissioner general was tried the same day and a fine of 50 dollars was imposed on him.Moreover the the Liberian he had attacked presented a suit for damages in the sum of 3000 dollars.The whole thing was an attempt to arrest and humiliate Mitchell.Worley was declared persona non grata in an official letter to the U.S. government and the Liberians wanted all of the American advisers out of Liberia.They accused the Americans of trying to take over the country and being the first Black republic any hints of paternalism was not to be tolerated.They rejected the loan out of pride and dignity.Liberia was a true example of Black pride in a world of White Supremacy.The U.S. State dept and Military would have its revenge 60 years later when they financed the overthrow of the Black American elite helping Samuel Kanyon Doe become the first indigenous President of the country.
References are from:Black Colonialism/Americo Liberian Scramble for the hinterland
Yekutiel Gershoni
1985