Africa's oldest republic — freed-slave history, rainforest coast and the only country named for a US president
Monrovia is the capital of Liberia, a country with one of the most unusual origins of any nation on earth — it was established by freed American and Caribbean slaves who emigrated beginning in 1820, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, and declared independence in 1847 as Africa's first republic. The city is named after US President James Monroe. The settler class (Americo-Liberians) formed a governing elite that ruled for over a century above the indigenous population — a dynamic that generated enormous social tension and ultimately contributed to the 1980 coup and the de…
The Providence Island site in the Mesurado River is where the first group of freed American slaves landed in 1820 and established the settlement that would become Monrovia. The colony was governed by the American Colonization Society until 1847, when it declared independence under Joseph Jenkins Roberts (himself a freed slave from Virginia) — making Liberia the first independent republic in Africa and the second oldest in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. The long period of Americo-Liberian oligarchic rule ended in 1980 when Master Sergeant Samuel Doe (a member of the indigenous…