Preliminary Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Liberia of the Journeys
2. Journeys in the Interior
3. James L. Sims, 1858
4. George L. Seymour, 1858
5. Benjamin J. K. Anderson, 1868-1869
6. Benjamin J. K. Anderson, 1874
7. The Journeys and the Interior
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Travel diaries of pioneering African Americans who explored and documented the West African interior.
James Fairhead is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
Tim Geysbeek teaches history at Grand Valley Sate University and has taught at the ELWA Academy in Monrovia, Liberia. He has published his work in History in Africa and the Liberian Studies Journal.
Svend E. Holsoe is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. He has done extensive research on Liberia and is the founding editor of the Liberian Studies Journal.
Melissa Leach is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include issues of gender, environment, science, and history. She is the author of Rainforest Relations.
As its title suggests, this book reproduces James L. Sims and
George L. Seymour's diaries of their voyages into the interior of
Liberia in 1858, and Benjamin J.K. Anderson's assessment of the
Liberian and Guinean hinterland in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
The sketchy historical introduction makes the volume unsuitable for
most undergraduates, but those with some knowledge of the area will
find the carefully annotated diaries fascinating. Seymour, for
example, initially opposed the American Colonization Society's
plans to settle free blacks in Liberia as racist, but changed his
mind after a visit in the 1840s led him to conclude that black men
could achieve an equality in Liberia unavailable in the US.
Ironically, black Americans carried with them the racial
consciousness they sought to escape, and Liberian society was
notable for its distinctions between mulattoes and blacks and its
class divisions between settlers and indigenous Africans. Sims,
Seymour, and Anderson, like white explorers before and after them,
sought to bring Western Christianity, civilization, and commerce to
the West African interior. Their fascination with the Africa they
described so ably was couched in a US worldview. Summing Up:
Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
*Choice*
[T]hose with some knowledge of the area will find the carefully
annotated diaries fascinating. . . . Recommended.
*Choice*
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