White US government officials came up with the idea of colonizing freed black slaves, and freed slaves were the ones who settled in what became Liberia, with the promise of freedom and equality for all. But interestingly this did not extend to the native Africans. Liberia never did achieve its promise: not enough people came over from the US and the inequality between Americo-Liberians and the natives bred resentment and violence. Safeguarding the nation's independence also took precedence over building a thriving economy. Lincoln was all for this colonization idea!

I picked up this book because I wanted to learn more about the history of Liberia and its connection to the United States.
There were two things that were particularly interesting. The first is that the colonizers of Liberia carried on many American governmental and cultural traditions. In addition to clothing, and politics the colonizers, fleeing oppression in the U.S. were often discriminatory towards natives in Africa. While the settlers were opposed to slavery, they were not progressive and still carried on discriminatory politics.
Another interesting fact, was to learn about how controversial the emigration to Liberia was, and how most freed slaves were very opposed to the idea of starting a colony even in the face of injustices such as the Black Codes after Emancipation. Yet, Abraham Lincoln was in support of black emigration to Liberia, and believed that blacks and whites could never live fairly and peacefully in the United States.

This book is very cleanly organized chronologically, from the arrival of the first colonists to modern day Liberia. There are several pictures provided with captions. In the author's note it explains that most of the photographs were taken at least 80 years after the founding of Liberia due to technological advancements. This is an appreciated note, as it does change the accuracy of the relationship of the photographs to the text.

While I felt that there was sufficient primary source information and comprehensive background on the topic, I still felt as though this book was less engaging than many of the other books we have read in this class. ( )

I requested This Our Dark Country: the American Setters of Liberia from another location in our library system not realizing that while some branches had it listed in adult nonfiction, it is clearly a work for young adults. Many YA nonfiction works can be a good introduction to a subject, so I decided to read it anyway. I’m left with mixed feelings as to whether or not it was time well spent.

Liberia was colonized by former slaves and other free blacks, primarily from the United States. The book does a nice job explaining the origins of the plan and the mechanics of movement of individuals and families from the U.S. to the West Coast of Africa. The temporal focus of the work is the 19th century, with the last chapter covering 20th and 21st century issues.

Once I accustomed myself to the near complete lack of complex sentence structure, This Our Dark Country was pleasant and easy to read. I was left wondering, though, is this all our high school students can handle? I was also disturbed by the lack of citation / endnotes used. Citations / endnotes were given only for direct quotes, and at that, they were not marked in the body of the work itself. No sub or superscript numbers were given to even hint to the reader that a corresponding endnote was in the back of the book. Even worse, throughout the work there are instances of statistics or complex ideas that the author must have found either in original sources or the works of others that are not cited. For example, on p. 31 statistics are given about survival rates for newcomers to Liberia, but no source for the information is given. On p. 57 there is a brief discussion about local, traditional child circulation practices and possible native resentment of the fact that the colonizers failed to reciprocate. While I found this to be one of the most interesting issues brought up in the chapter, the lack citation leaves my with little chance to determine where the author read a description of the child circulation practice. There is a bibliography, but without acknowledgement of which work provided which facts its usefulness is greatly reduced.

In an era when plagiarism is endemic in high schools and colleges, it astounds me that anyone would publish a work for students that is such a complete failure in giving credit where credit is due. Because of this problem, I cannot recommend This Our Dark Country to anyone.