Liberia

Long before the settlers, the rainforest and coast of present-day Liberia were home to many peoples. The Kpelle, the largest group today, and the Mano, Gio (Dan), Loma and Gbandi farmed the interior; the Kru and Grebo fished and traded along the coast; the Vai lived around Cape Mount; the Bassa around the St John River.

Kru sailors were famous along the whole West African coast, working on European ships from the 18th century, and their skill made them a sought-after crew into the 20th century. The coast was known to Europeans as the Grain Coast, after the melegueta pepper ('grains of paradise') traded there.

The Vai developed their own syllabic script in the 1830s, credited to Momolu Duwalu Bukele, one of the few indigenous writing systems in Africa, still used for letters and records.

Inland, Poro and Sande societies governed initiation, law and education, as in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Guinea. Their masks, including Dan face masks, are among Africa's best-known art.

The American Colonization Society, a mix of abolitionists and slaveholders who wanted free Black people out of the United States, landed its first settlers on Providence Island at Cape Mesurado in 1822. The town was named Monrovia after US President James Monroe.

About 16,000 African Americans and several thousand Africans rescued from slave ships (the 'Congoes') settled over the following decades, many dying of disease. Other colonisation societies founded settlements such as Maryland at Cape Palmas, which joined Liberia in 1857.

On 26 July 1847 the settlers declared independence under President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, making Liberia Africa's first modern republic. Its constitution, flag and institutions copied the United States. Britain recognised it quickly; the US only in 1862.

The Americo-Liberians built plantation houses, Masonic lodges and churches, and kept power in their own hands through the True Whig Party. Indigenous people were largely excluded from citizenship until the 20th century, and in 1930 a League of Nations inquiry found officials had been involved in forced labour exports to Fernando Po.

In 1926 the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company leased a million acres for 99 years at a nominal rent, creating the world's largest rubber plantation at Harbel near today's airport. The company, and US strategic interests, dominated the economy for decades; Roberts Field was built as a US airbase during the Second World War.

William Tubman, president from 1944 to 1971, opened the country to foreign investment in iron ore and shipping (Liberia's flag of convenience became one of the world's largest shipping registries) and promoted a 'unification' policy that extended some rights to indigenous Liberians, while keeping power centralised.

His successor William Tolbert faced rising prices and protests, including the 1979 rice riots. On 12 April 1980 Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, of the indigenous Krahn, led a coup; Tolbert was killed and thirteen officials were publicly executed on a Monrovia beach. It ended 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule.

Doe's rule became brutal and ethnically based, favouring the Krahn and targeting Gio and Mano communities after a failed coup in 1985. The US supported him through the Cold War.

On Christmas Eve 1989 Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia crossed from Côte d'Ivoire into Nimba County. The war spread quickly; rebel factions split, Doe was captured and killed by Prince Johnson's forces in 1990, and a West African peacekeeping force (ECOMOG) held Monrovia.

Fighting between factions, many using child soldiers and financed by timber, diamonds and rubber, went on until a 1996 deal. Taylor won the 1997 election under the slogan that many voters feared more war if he lost. His support for the RUF in Sierra Leone brought sanctions.

A second war began in 1999 as rebel groups LURD and MODEL advanced on Monrovia. In 2003 the siege of the capital, bombarded by mortars, led to a peace agreement; Taylor went into exile in Nigeria and a UN mission (UNMIL) arrived. He was later convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and jailed in the UK.

Women's peace movements, notably Leymah Gbowee's Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, pressured the warring sides into the 2003 accord; Gbowee shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Around 250,000 people died across the two wars.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist, won the 2005 election and in January 2006 became Africa's first elected woman head of state. She secured debt relief, rebuilt some infrastructure and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, while critics pointed to corruption and slow change.

The 2014–16 Ebola epidemic hit Liberia hardest of all, with about 10,700 cases and 4,800 deaths. Monrovia's West Point district was quarantined, schools closed, and communities changed burial practices under pressure.

In 2018 former football star George Weah, the only African to win the Ballon d'Or, became president in Liberia's first peaceful democratic handover since 1944. In 2023 he lost narrowly to Joseph Boakai and conceded, a second peaceful transfer of power.

Liberia remains poor and dependent on iron ore, rubber and gold, with bad roads, weak electricity and a heavily dollarised economy. Its coast, forests and surf are almost untouched by tourism.

Liberia holds the largest remaining share of the Upper Guinean rainforest, a global biodiversity hotspot with forest elephants, chimpanzees and pygmy hippos. Sapo National Park, the largest protected forest, is reachable only on multi-day trips. Mining and logging concessions press on the forest edges.

The coast has long sandy beaches, lagoons such as Lake Piso and river mouths. Rain is extreme: Monrovia gets around five metres a year, most of it between May and October.

Rice is the staple and a political commodity since the 1979 rice riots. It comes with palm butter, cassava leaf or potato greens, and plenty of pepper. Kala and rice bread are morning snacks; Americo-Liberian families keep Southern US touches such as cornbread and sweet potato pie at holidays.

Liberian English, the snap handshake, church choirs and the country's own music, from Hipco (Liberian hip hop) to gospel, give daily life its character. Thanksgiving, Decoration Day and Independence Day on 26 July echo the country's American roots.