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The Anderson-D'Ollone Controversy of 1903–04: Race, Imperialism, and the Reconfiguration of the Liberia-Guinea Border1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Tim Geysbeek
Tim Geysbeek*
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University
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Extract

The years 2003-04 mark the centennial observance of a debate that emerged in Paris, Freetown, and Monrovia over whether or not the Liberian Benjamin Anderson trekked to the fabled town of Musadu in 1868. Musadu, now situated about five miles northwest of Beyla in Guinea-Conakry, or eighty-five miles northwest of the Liberian border town of Yekepa, represented Liberia's interiormost claim in the nineteenth century. Anderson's challenger was a captain in the French army named Henri d'Ollone, who went to West Africa in the late 1890s and surveyed some of the land that the French had recently conquered. Anderson won the debate, given the fact he was still alive and could prove that he went to Musadu, and because eminent persons such as the French diplomat-scholar Maurice Delafosse, and perhaps even the famed pan-Africanist Edward W. Blyden, came to his defense.

The controversy was set in the context of Britain, France, and Liberia's competing claims for land during the heyday of the western conquest of Africa. This paper examines the main contours of the debate, sets the debate in historical context, and republishes the most important primary sources so readers can examine the case more closely for themselves. While some have mentioned the controversy that emerged between d'Ollone and Anderson, the first detailed examination of what happened has been published in Fairhead et. al. (2003:79-88). This paper is a followup to that study.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 31 , 2004 , pp. 185 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2004

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Boston, 2003. My thanks to Grand Valley State University's Department of History and Faculty Research and Development Center for providing the funding so that I could present this paper. I thank David Robinson and James Fairhead as well for sharing some ideas on how to put the d'Ollone-Anderson controversy into a broader historical framework.

References

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