Mande expansion[edit] The Pepper Coast, also known as the Grain Coast, has been inhabited by indigenous peoples of Africa at least as far back as the 12th century. Mande-speaking people expanded from the north and east, forcing many smaller ethnic groups southward toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Dei, Bassa, Kru, Gola, and Kissi were some of the earliest documented peoples in the area.[24] This influx of these groups was compounded by the decline of the Mali Empire in 1375 and the Songhai Empire in 1591. As inland regions underwent desertification, inhabitants moved to the wetter coast. These new inhabitants brought skills such as cotton spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, rice and sorghum cultivation, and social and political institutions from the Mali and Songhai empires.[24] Shortly after the Mane conquered the region, the Vai people of the former Mali Empire immigrated into the Grand Cape Mount County region. The ethnic Kru opposed the influx of Vai, forming an alliance with the Mane to stop further influx of Vai.[25] People along the coast built canoes and traded with other West Africans from Cap-Vert to the Gold Coast. Early colonization[edit] Main article: Colony of Liberia Between 1461 and the late 17th century, Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders had contacts and trading posts in the region. The Portuguese named the area Costa da Pimenta ("Pepper Coast") but it later came to be known as the Grain Coast, due to the abundance of melegueta pepper grains.[26] The traders would barter commodities and goods with local people.[27] In the United States, there was a movement to settle African Americans, both free-born and formerly enslaved, in Africa. This was partially because they faced racial discrimination in the form of political disenfranchisement and the denial of civil, religious, and social rights.[28] It was also partially because slave owners and politicians feared uprisings and rebellions of enslaved peoples. They believed these uprising would be motivated by a desire to achieve the  freedoms experienced by formerly enslaved peoples, specifically freedom from violence and reunions with separated family.[29] Formed in 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS) was made up mostly of Quakers and slaveholders. Quakers believed black people would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the U.S.[8][30] While slaveholders opposed freedom for enslaved people, some viewed "repatriation" of free people of color as a way to avoid slave rebellions.[8] In 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending free people of color to the Pepper Coast voluntarily to establish a colony. Mortality from tropical diseases was high—of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.[31][32] By 1867, the ACS (and state-related chapters) had assisted in the migration of more than 13,000 people of color from the United States and the Caribbean to Liberia.[33] These free African Americans and their descendants married within their community and came to identify as Americo-Liberians. Many were of mixed race and educated in American culture; they did not identify with the indigenous natives of the tribes they encountered. They developed an ethnic group that had a cultural tradition infused with American notions of political republicanism and Protestant Christianity.[34] According to historian Henryatta Ballah, indigenous Liberian cosmology was centralized around the existence of a supreme being and its worship through specific deities and ancestral spirits that they believed acted as intermediaries between themselves and the supreme being. Certain pieces of land were considered to be part of the spiritual land and were central to Indigenous Liberians’ resistance to their loss of land through colonization. Americo-Liberians and the American Colonization Society sought to eradicate all forms of Indigenous religious practices as a form of forced assimilation and to aid in their acquisition of land and political power. The term “witchcraft” was used to describe all Indigenous cosmologies in Liberia and many missionaries described these religious practices as the most barbaric practices of all “native tribes”. These ideas about Indigenous Liberian cosmologies drove large-scale assimilation in the country beginning in the 1820’s and continuing for decades.[35] Map of Liberia Colony in the 1830s, created by the ACS, and also showing Mississippi Colony and other state-sponsored colonies The ACS, supported by prominent American politicians such as Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, and James Monroe, believed "repatriation" was preferable to having emancipated slaves remain in the United States.[30] Similar state-based organizations established colonies in Mississippi-in-Africa, Kentucky in Africa, and the Republic of Maryland, which Liberia later annexed. Lincoln in 1862 described Liberia as only "in a certain sense...a success", and proposed instead that free people of color be assisted to emigrate to Chiriquí, today part of Panama.[36] The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered, especially those in communities of the more isolated "bush". The colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Encounters with tribal Africans in the bush often became violent. Believing themselves different from and culturally and educationally superior to the indigenous peoples, the Americo-Liberians developed as an elite minority that created and held on to political power. The Americo-Liberian settlers adopted clothing such as hoop skirts and tailcoats and generally viewed themselves as culturally and socially superior to indigenous Africans.[37] Indigenous tribesmen did not enjoy birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904.[16] Political formation[edit] Residence of Joseph Jenkins Roberts, first President of Liberia, between 1848 and 1852 On July 26, 1847, the settlers issued a Declaration of Independence and promulgated a constitution. Based on the political principles of the United States Constitution, it established the independent Republic of Liberia.[38][39] On August 24, Liberia adopted its 11-striped national flag.[40] The United Kingdom was the first country to recognize Liberia's independence.[41] The United States did not recognize Liberia until 1862, after the Southern states, which had strong political power in the American government, declared their secession and the formation of the Confederacy.[42][43][44] The leadership of the new nation consisted largely of the Americo-Liberians, who at the beginning established political and economic dominance in the coastal areas that the ACS had purchased; they maintained relations with the United States and contacts in developing these areas and the resulting trade. Their passage of the 1865 Ports of Entry Act prohibited foreign commerce with the inland tribes, ostensibly to "encourage the growth of civilized values" before such trade was allowed in the region.[38] African Americans depart for Liberia, 1896. The ACS sent its last emigrants to Liberia in 1904. By 1877, the True Whig Party was the country's most powerful political entity.[45] It was made up primarily of Americo-Liberians, who maintained social, economic and political dominance well into the 20th century, repeating patterns of European colonists in other nations in Africa. Competition for office was usually contained within the party; a party nomination virtually ensured election.[46] Pressure from the United Kingdom, which controlled Sierra Leone to the northwest, and France, with its interests in the north and east, led to a loss of Liberia's claims to extensive territories. Both Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast annexed territories.[47] Liberia struggled to attract investment to develop infrastructure and a larger, indu