The_Open_Door_deel1

Fourthly, on the eve of Tubman's inauguration, President Barclay
put an end to Liberia's ambiguous monetary system in which both
British and American currencies were used by declaring the U.S.
dollar sole legal tender in the country. By granting the right
to freely export capital (dollars) from Liberia to any part of
the world, Tubman expected to attract many American businessmen.
The first group of investors did in fact consist almost entirely
of U.S. businessmen. Later, partly as a result of the dollar
shortage in Europe, investors from the Old World began to show
an interest in Liberia.
One of the greatest obstacles which Liberian Presidents before
William Tubman had encountered in their attempts to open up the
country to foreign capital had been the relations with the tribal
population. These were characterised by an enormous gap between
those who governed and those who were governed.
Since the creation of the Republic in 1847 the political power,
and before the arrival of the Firestone Company in 1926 also
the economic power, had always been in the hands of a small minority,
originally called the Pioneers or the Settlers, later
referred to as Americo-Liberians. The tension between this
group on the one hand and the tribal population on the other
had only increased and become more widespread as a result of
the disputed acquisition of tribal lands by the Monrovia based
Government, the forcible annexation of tribal lands and communities,
the imposition of allegedly unjustified and discriminatory
taxes, retaliatory expeditions of Government forces to revolting
tribal people, the exclusion of indigenous people from
public offices and, until the beginning of the present century,
from citizenship. Not until 1907 were tribal people granted citizenship
by an amendment of the Constitution. In general, the
attitude of the ruling Amerieo-Liberian elite when dealing with
their "uncivilized subjects" was one of superiority. This, and
a system of "apartheid" created by the Liberian Legislature
which consisted of different laws for the coastal counties
where virtually all Americo-Liberians lived and the Hinterland -
which covered the territory of the Republic beyond these coastal
counties and which was inhabited by tribal Liberians - explains
the notorious resistance put up particularly by the Gola in the
area west of the St. Paul River, and by the Kru and Grebo in
the eastern part of the country. This resistance against the
authority of the central government was not broken until the
193O's during the Administration of President Edwin Barclay.
The opening of the country to foreign capital, the "Open Door
Policy", could well be regarded as one leg sustaining President
Tubman's policy of development of the country, the other being
the "National Unification Policy".
This characteristic of Tubman's general policy was not very
original either. In 1904 President Barclay had already stated:
"Ue cannot develop the interior effectively until a satisfactory
understanding with the resident populations is arrived
at," (6)