Description: What did independence mean during the age of empires? How did independent governments balance different interests when they made policies about trade, money and access to foreign capital? Sovereignty without Power tells the story of Liberia, one of the few African countries to maintain independence through the colonial period. Established in 1822 as a colony for freed slaves from the United States, Liberia's history illustrates how the government's efforts to exercise its economic sovereignty and engage with the global economy shaped Liberia's economic and political development over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing together a wide range of archival sources, Leigh A. Gardner presents the first quantitative estimates of Liberian's economic performance and uses these to compare it to its colonized neighbors and other independent countries. Liberia's history anticipated challenges still faced by developing countries today, and offers a new perspective on the role of power and power relationships in shaping Africa's economic history.
Brief description: Leigh A Gardner is Associate Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism (2012) and co-author (with Tirthankar Roy) of Economic History of Colonialism (2020).
Review Quotes: 'Liberia has been independent since 1847, yet, sitting too long in the shadow of colonialism, and then becoming too dependent upon stronger states, did Liberia squander its opportunities? In this lucid history, Leigh Gardner skilfully dissects the complex dynamics of Liberia's development to tell us why sovereignty alone is not enough to secure economic success and political stability.' David M. Anderson, University of Warwick