Liberia, a Negro republic on the Pepper Coast (Guinea) of West Africa, extending north and east of Cape Palmas. The coast-line measures about 500 miles. The boundaries in the interior are not determined, but the republic is considered to extend inland for a distance of 200 miles. The coast-region consists of mangrove swamps, lying behind a belt of sand-dunes, is traversed by numerous rivers, and interrupted by projecting headlands of rock. About 20 miles or so inland the surface begins to rise into undulating uplands. The climate and vegetation are tropical. The temperature is pretty even, scarcely ever less than 75° F. or more than 88° F. The rainy season lasts about seven and the dry season five months. The soil is well adapted for the cultivation of coffee, the principal crop grown after the food-plants rice and manioc. The more important articles of export are coffee, sugar, palm-oil and palm-kernels, cocoa, arrowroot, caoutchouc, ivory, kola nuts, &c. The total value of the trade does not probably much exceed half a million sterling. The population amounts to 1,068,000, of whom 18,000 are liberated American slaves and their descendants, the remainder indigenous Negroes, including the Kroomen (q.v.). Capital, Monrovia (pop. 3000), now greatly decayed. Liberia owes its origin to the American Colonising Society, which in 1821 bought land on this coast and settled a small body of freed African slaves. The colony grew and prospered; newcomers arrived in large numbers from the United States, and fresh lands continued to be bought. In 1847 the free and independent republic of Liberia was constituted; and it has enlarged its boundaries at least four times since then, being joined ten years later by the Negro republic Maryland (founded as a colony in 1821, as a republic in 1854), to the east of Cape Palmas. The constitution of Liberia is modelled on that of the United States: there are a president and House of Representatives (13 members), elected for two years, and a Senate (8 members), elected for four years. No white man is allowed to acquire citizen's rights or to hold property. There is no standing army, but all citizens capable of bearing arms are enrolled in the militia. Slavery is declared illegal. Complete religious toleration exists, the Methodist forms prevailing. The state debt amounts to £100,000, but no interest has ever been paid since the loan was made in 1871. English money is current, though accounts are kept in dollars and cents; and English weights and measures prevail. The republic does not enjoy much favour in the eyes of the native Negroes, nor yet of those in the United States, although a few immigrants still continue to arrive from year to year. Not only have the Liberians failed to make any impression on the aboriginal inhabitants, the people they were sent to civilise, but they themselves are relapsing in many respects towards barbarism: they are lazy and quarrelsome, and ape the worse manners of the whites, though there are some honourable exceptions.
See Büttikofer, Reisebilder aus Liberia (2 vols. Leyden, 1890); Bourzeix, La République de Libéria (Paris, 1887); and Wauermans, Libéria (Brussels, 1885).