Liberia

Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, fronts the West African Atlantic between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, five and a half million English-speaking people of more than twenty ethnic tongues round the capital Monrovia. It began as the American Colonization Society's project: from 1822 over fifteen thousand freed and free-born Black Americans with three thousand Afro-Caribbeans crossed to Africa carrying American churches, lodges and law, and ruling the indigenous peoples as Americo-Liberians. Independence came on 26 July 1847, recognised by Washington only in 1862, the first African republic and the continent's oldest unbroken independence, spared with Ethiopia from the Scramble. Firestone rubber money rebuilt the treasury, American wartime airfields and iron ore paved roads and ports, Tubman's Open Door drew ships to the Liberian flag, and Monrovia sat at the founding tables of the League, the United Nations and the OAU. Backed by America through the Second World War, Liberia reached 1945 the steadiest republic of West Africa.