My Ghana friend said that African leaders refused to accept American slaves return, because they were sold into slavery because they were unwanted into the community due to criminal behavior. He said it is similar to the British sending their criminals to Australia? Is this true?

by TerriChris

My buddy visited last night. He complained that America was obsessed with racism.

I shared that one of our founding fathers predicted that, if slaves were not returned to their home country, they would not assimilate to the US, and grow resentful through future generations.

My friend was born and lived in West Africa until his late 20s. He shared that the country of Liberia was founded and established, because the other African communities refused to take back the people that they sold to the slave traders.

America was used as a penal colony, like Australia later, but instead Africans were paid to send their criminals to America.

Is this true?

As far as your friends claims are concerned, I find them fairly unconvincing. I've heard that many slaves were sold by traditional oracles. As demand for slaves rose, oracles became corrupted and started handing out stringent penalties for even the most minor of crimes. But I can't find a scholarly source for this claim, so I'd take a grain of salt with that claim. While Monrovia and Freetown were the centers of the Krio (the returned ex-slaves, and their descendants) diaspora, they very much spread out throughout colonial west africa. Creole traders were active in the palm oil trade in Nigeria, and the groundnut trade in dryer regions. They were everywhere in West Africa, and not just in anglophone countries. Fore example, Creole traders were prominent in the Equatorial Guinea, where they started of as traders, and eventually became the owners of large plantations as well. They became the wealthy class with a lot of cultural prestige. They built a society around the missions, churches, and retained the English languages. Liberians even sort of participated in forced labor. There was a huge scandal when it was found out Americo-Liberians were sending contract laborers to Fernando Po under conditions not that different from slavery.

I think the big thing to keep in mind is that slavery was an immensely traumatic event. It destroyed the old cultures, and built a new culture from what remained of African customs, and those of America. They didn't speak African languages (although I'd really like to read a book on the history of the Krio language) , and the nature of African customs had been transformed. It's why leaving for Liberia or Sierra Leone had little appeal. They were American, or Jamaican or whatever other country we are talking about, and those that returned to Africa were rarely returning to the lands of their ancestors. There was the case of recaptive slaves, and their relation to the creole societies that took them in, but I'm not super knowledgeable about that.Let's look at the example of Liberia. You had an economically, and politically dominant group of people, who felt little cultural kinship with the people in the lands they were colonizing. While everyone involved was black, this isn't that different from colonial societies. In fact, many Americo-Liberians set up plantations and plantation houses modeled quite closely after what they had known in America. They saw the societies they ruled as those of ignorant, uncivilized, and unchristian people, and thought of them as better.

However, total separation was never the reality. The True Whig Party , a party representing the interests of the Americo-Liberian elite ruled from 1878 to 1980. While the vote was largely restricted to Americo-Liberians and those integrated into this society. One of the most important pillars of Americo-Liberian rule were prominent Freemason societies, that in many ways mirrored the pre-existing secret societies of West Africa. The churches and freemason societies became a major means for assimilating native elites and a complex society based upon patronage, the selective adoption local traditions (such as widespread adoption and fostering), and a clear Americo-Liberian elite emerged.

Technology, Trade and ‘A Race of Native Capitalists’: The Krio Diaspora of West Africa and the Steamship, 1852–95, Martin Lynn

Commerce, christianity and the origins of the 'Creoles' of Fernando Po, Martin Lynn

The 1930 Enquiry Commission to Liberia, Journal of the Royal African Society

Charles Taylor and Liberia: Ambition and Atrocity in Africa's Lone Star State, By Colin M. Waugh