Liberia's Archival Collection

Extract

Students interested in the history of Liberia have been hampered by the dearth of serious studies on Africa's first republic. With few noteworthy exceptions, published works on Liberia can be grouped into two rather broad categories. The first consists of works which tend to be too journalistic in concept and execution to satisfy the demands of serious scholarship. The second includes a variety of memoir-like collections of reminiscences and observations recorded by individuals stationed at one time or another in Liberia while engaged in educational, missionary, or developmental programs. Much of the published material in both categories is useful, and indeed quite valuable, for it provides a good deal of information not readily found elsewhere. Yet, while informative, these books do not constitute a body of scholarly work which the serious student of West Africa would wish to have available.

One work which must have a place on the relatively brief list of trust-worthy books of reference relating to Liberia is the exhaustive compilation of basic documents prepared by the distinguished international jurist, C. H. Huberich. Paradoxically, it appears that it was this important work which discouraged many historians from searching further for basic source materials, for Huberich noted that most official Liberian documents were destroyed during a violent storm in Monrovia. Writers on Liberian affairs who accepted Huberich's statement as the final word on the subject seem not to have attempted to utilize unpublished Liberian government papers in their research. Even those researchers who have, in recent years, had sufficient interest to probe into this alleged disappearance of the Liberian archives, or who were desirous of determining the extent of archival materials which might have survived the disaster, were undoubtedly discouraged by ambiguous replies from Monrovia in response to their inquiries.