Pub Date : 2021-02-23DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0006
R. Murray
Chapter 5 examines the overwhelming rejection of colonization by free people of color in the United States, the evolution of the colonization societies, and the agency of the settlers in enacting these changes. For the majority of African Americans rejected colonization’s principal arguments. Those few who saw potential in Liberia emphasized the performative possibilities of the colony, the ability to act in ways previously denied to them on account of race. Significantly, the small number of African Americans who willingly chose to emigrate to Liberia were often racially ambiguous. They saw opportunity in the undefined and evolving racial identities offered by moving to Liberia. The chapter also examines the settlers’ roles in changing the colonization societies. For many settlers, there was no difference between abolition and colonization. Settlers worked with colonizationists committed to black uplift and attempted to drive out those who did not favor such reforms; they changed how the societies’ governed their colonies.
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Pub Date : 2021-02-23DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0003
R. Murray
Chapter 2 examines the geographic and spatial logic that undergirded colonization. By occupying the “civilizing” space of Liberia, degraded American blackness was transformed into exotic, and “civilized,” whiteness. One of the keys to this transformation was to project Liberia as a tiny United States in which Americo-Liberians served as masters of their own “civilized” space. Critical to the perception of “civilized” white settlers and degraded black Africans was the requirement that “heathen” Africans be separate and beyond the limits of “civilization,” so as to not taint the space with their barbarity, while simultaneously projecting control over the black bodies of the African inhabitants. Cartography and maps of Liberia proved useful tools in this complex dance of establishing separation and togetherness, distance and control, simultaneously.
{"title":"“All Those Things Desirable for a Map to Show”","authors":"R. Murray","doi":"10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 examines the geographic and spatial logic that undergirded colonization. By occupying the “civilizing” space of Liberia, degraded American blackness was transformed into exotic, and “civilized,” whiteness. One of the keys to this transformation was to project Liberia as a tiny United States in which Americo-Liberians served as masters of their own “civilized” space. Critical to the perception of “civilized” white settlers and degraded black Africans was the requirement that “heathen” Africans be separate and beyond the limits of “civilization,” so as to not taint the space with their barbarity, while simultaneously projecting control over the black bodies of the African inhabitants. Cartography and maps of Liberia proved useful tools in this complex dance of establishing separation and togetherness, distance and control, simultaneously.","PeriodicalId":107128,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Passages","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132932984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-23DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0002
R. Murray
In chapter 1 Murray establishes the trajectories of several Liberian settlers’ during their travels in the United States, what they wanted to accomplish, and what they actually attained. He traces how the settlers’ whiteness became entangled with arguments regarding their relative “civilization” and the power that discourse provided to certain well-positioned settlers to make claims for an elevated status. These settlers sought a liminal position between antipodal whiteness and blackness; they hoped to remain undefined and unfixed and, in this manner, slip through American society’s racialized norms. The same ships that returned Liberian settlers to America also brought native Africans across the Atlantic to America. The resulting exchange between the two societies shaped racial consciousness not only in the United States but also within the Liberian colonies themselves.
{"title":"“To Be Called a Free Colored Man in the States Is Synonymous with What We Here Term Slavery”","authors":"R. Murray","doi":"10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In chapter 1 Murray establishes the trajectories of several Liberian settlers’ during their travels in the United States, what they wanted to accomplish, and what they actually attained. He traces how the settlers’ whiteness became entangled with arguments regarding their relative “civilization” and the power that discourse provided to certain well-positioned settlers to make claims for an elevated status. These settlers sought a liminal position between antipodal whiteness and blackness; they hoped to remain undefined and unfixed and, in this manner, slip through American society’s racialized norms. The same ships that returned Liberian settlers to America also brought native Africans across the Atlantic to America. The resulting exchange between the two societies shaped racial consciousness not only in the United States but also within the Liberian colonies themselves.","PeriodicalId":107128,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Passages","volume":"26 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113963489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-23DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0005
R. Murray
Chapter 4 explores the multifaceted violence that rocked Liberia, characterizing day-to-day life in intimate settings as well as larger conflicts. Liberia continually expanded its influence and territory along the coast and into the interior of the continent. The settlers quickly utilized their oft-violent interactions with Africans to establish their cultural separation from Africans and celebrated their victories as evidence of their power and control over African barbarity. The threat of barbaric neighbors also papered over the many divisions within Liberian society. In addition, such violent excursions to expand “civilization” provided martial glory to the settlers and their cause. The violence likewise reinforced colonization’s masculine projection as settlers heroically defended their outpost of “civilization” against aggressive heathenism.
{"title":"“They Would Dearly Learn What It Was to Fight White Men”","authors":"R. Murray","doi":"10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 explores the multifaceted violence that rocked Liberia, characterizing day-to-day life in intimate settings as well as larger conflicts. Liberia continually expanded its influence and territory along the coast and into the interior of the continent. The settlers quickly utilized their oft-violent interactions with Africans to establish their cultural separation from Africans and celebrated their victories as evidence of their power and control over African barbarity. The threat of barbaric neighbors also papered over the many divisions within Liberian society. In addition, such violent excursions to expand “civilization” provided martial glory to the settlers and their cause. The violence likewise reinforced colonization’s masculine projection as settlers heroically defended their outpost of “civilization” against aggressive heathenism.","PeriodicalId":107128,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Passages","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125323206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-23DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0004
R. Murray
Chapter 3 focuses on Liberia’s labor regime. The colonists made expansive use of a spectrum of coerced, unfree, or debased African labor. The command of black workers undergirded the whiteness of the Americo-Liberians and was the focus of two broad charges leveled at the colony. Critics charged that the Liberian settlers preferred trading with natives rather than engaging in agriculture and that they utilized Africans as a slave labor force. Ideologically and rhetorically, Liberia was complicated as its booster claimed it could uplift two separate populations: indigenous Africans and African American settlers. Working for the settlers within various states of unfreedom would bestow “civilization” upon native Africans; settlers would find uplift through their command of indigenous labor. This framework presented a significant problem: native Africans laboring in Liberia both had to assimilate and remain separate and subordinate.
{"title":"“Nearly All Have Natives as Helps in Their Families, and This Is as It Should Be”","authors":"R. Murray","doi":"10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813066752.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 focuses on Liberia’s labor regime. The colonists made expansive use of a spectrum of coerced, unfree, or debased African labor. The command of black workers undergirded the whiteness of the Americo-Liberians and was the focus of two broad charges leveled at the colony. Critics charged that the Liberian settlers preferred trading with natives rather than engaging in agriculture and that they utilized Africans as a slave labor force. Ideologically and rhetorically, Liberia was complicated as its booster claimed it could uplift two separate populations: indigenous Africans and African American settlers. Working for the settlers within various states of unfreedom would bestow “civilization” upon native Africans; settlers would find uplift through their command of indigenous labor. This framework presented a significant problem: native Africans laboring in Liberia both had to assimilate and remain separate and subordinate.","PeriodicalId":107128,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Passages","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128262733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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