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Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this work is to investigate the rhetoric and concepts of Alexander Crummell in the construction of the Liberian state and the representations of the agents and individuals involved in this process: the Americo-Liberians and the native Africans

Paper long abstract:

Alexander Crummell (1819 – 1898), American black missionary, theologian, and intellectual, devoted nearly two decades to advocating and legitimizing Liberian colonization, particularly from 1853 to 1872. Our proposal is to investigate Crummell's rhetoric and concepts in the construction of the Liberian state and the representations of the agents and individuals involved in this process: the Americo-Liberians and the native Africans. In this sense, we will demonstrate that Crummell understood the Liberian colonial project, firstly, as a plan for the religious redemption of the African continent and the "negro race" after years of misery due to slavery. Furthermore, the author also perceived the project as the most suitable to the institutional and historical characteristics of the United States, as the African peoples in the region were supposedly less resistant to colonization than other parts of Africa. Therefore, this would facilitate colonization by African Americans, who had been shaped in an environment more connected to democratic values than to bellicose or violent principles. Finally, we will show that Crummell employed a racialist vocabulary to understand the Liberian experience and Africans, primarily by accepting that races would have certain characteristics, and the "negro race" would possess a fundamental one for acquiring civilization: the ability to imitate the superior peoples of the world. Our intention, ultimately, is to demonstrate how Crummell's civilizational, religious, and racialist rhetoric, present in his books, articles, and sermons, generated ambiguities and inconsistencies in the representation of blacks in the diaspora and native Africans.