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What did independence mean during the age of empires? How did independent governments balance different interests when they made policies about trade, money and access to foreign capital? Sovereignty without Power tells the story of Liberia, one of the few African countries to maintain independence through the colonial period. Established in 1822 as a colony for freed slaves from the United States, Liberia's history illustrates how the government's efforts to exercise its economic sovereignty and engage with the global economy shaped Liberia's economic and political development over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing together a wide range of archival sources, Leigh A. Gardner presents the first quantitative estimates of Liberian's economic performance and uses these to compare it to its colonized neighbors and other independent countries. Liberia's history anticipated challenges still faced by developing countries today, and offers a new perspective on the role of power and power relationships in shaping Africa's economic history.
List of contents
List of figures; Preface; 1. Reconstructing the fragments: Liberia's economic history, 1847-1980; Part I. Foundations: 2. Before the dragons came; 3. Black Americans in West Africa; Part II. The Art of Survival: 4. Trade, globalization and sovereignty; 5. From paper to gold ; 6. The costs of foreign capital; 7. Financial controls and forced labor; Part III. Sovereignty for Sale?: 8. An African marshall plan; 9. Concessions and growth; 10. Selling the flag; 11. Sovereignty beyond the age of empires; Appendix 1: Data on Liberia's economic history; Appendix 2: Constructing Liberian GDP statistics; References; Index.
About the author
Leigh A Gardner is Associate Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism (2012) and co-author (with Tirthankar Roy) of Economic History of Colonialism (2020).
Summary
What did independence mean during the age of empires? How did independent governments balance different interests when they made policies about trade, money and access to foreign capital? Sovereignty without Power tells the story of Liberia, one of the few African countries to maintain independence through the colonial period. Established in 1822 as a colony for freed slaves from the United States, Liberia's history illustrates how the government's efforts to exercise its economic sovereignty and engage with the global economy shaped Liberia's economic and political development over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing together a wide range of archival sources, Leigh A. Gardner presents the first quantitative estimates of Liberian's economic performance and uses these to compare it to its colonized neighbors and other independent countries. Liberia's history anticipated challenges still faced by developing countries today, and offers a new perspective on the role of power and power relationships in shaping Africa's economic history.
Foreword
Reinterprets Liberia's economic history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate the challenges and opportunities of sovereignty during the age of empires.
