The_Open_Door_deel1

INTRODUCTION
Liberia is situated on the southwest coast of West Africa and
covers an area variously reported as measuring from between
37,130 and 43,000 square miles (1). Until recently, relatively
little was known about it as compared to other African countries.
The principle reasons for this were that its natural barriers
were not overcome until the pi-esent century and because
its area had never been formally colonised by any European or
other external power.
During the European trade expansion which preceded the actual
colonisation of Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the area was covered with tropical rain forests which
made penetration from the north practically impossible while
the dangerous surf of the Atlantic Ocean long prevented any attempt
to establish frequent or permanent contacts with the coast.
The most important fact, however, that led to its comparative
isolation was the arrival of freed slaves, free men and "persons
of colour", i.e. mulattoes, from the United States of America in
1822 and the subsequent founding of the Republic of Liberia by
these emigrants twenty-five years later.
Despite both external and internal threats to its souvereignty,
the political independence of the first black governed country
in Africa was maintained throughout the next century. The cost
of this survival, though, was tremendous. On the one hand, internally,
"black colonialism" resulted in a wide gap between the
descendents of the emigrants from the U.S.A. (and later also
from the West Indies) and the aboriginal population - who outnumbered
the former group by more than fifty to one - through an
oppressive system of legalised political, social and economic
discrimination, while on the other hand the contacts with economically
more advanced nations were limited to a small amount
of trade, sporadic foreign investments and loans in times of financial
distress.
These loans were often obtained on terms prejudicial to the Government
in Monrovia and, in combination with economic and financial
mismanagement, aggravated rather than relieved the financial
problems of the country. Added to this was an incapacity
and unwillingness to make full use of the country's potential.
All this led to the continuation of a situation of economic
underdevelopment or, as a prominent Liberian once said:
"Lii.en.ia has ne.ue.n. had the advantage.* 0/ colonialism" (2)
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, European colonial
imperialism threatened the very existence of the Negro
Republic, it considerably reduced the territory which the Liberian
Government claimed as belonging to the Republic, whereas
the Liberian Government- on two occasions failed to put itself
under the official political protection of the U.S.A. Both in
1893 and 1908 the U.S. Government refused to agree to a Liberian
request to establish a Protectorate over the Negro Republic.
The U.S. policy with respect to China around the turn of the