| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Ibrahim Sundiata. Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940. Paperback edition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2003, Pp. xiii, 442.
Liberia, the West African republic with 3.4 million inhabitants, has a special place in the colonial and postcolonial history of Africa because it was established by freed slaves who emigrated, inspired by the millenarian vision of resettling in the motherland. They perceived their return as an exodus, with the aim not only of finding a refuge from white racism and the hardships of life in the United States but also of rehabilitating and reviving the "authentic personality" of the black man. Hence, Liberia is an intriguing case of the encounter of a vision with reality, and its history plays a central role in what is known as black Atlantic history, owing to the close link between it and the black American diaspora and the nature of the relationship between the emigrants and the African natives. This relationship was not regarded as one between colonizers and the indigenous population but as a translation into reality of the belief that there is such a thing as a "collective African personality" despite the disparate origins and traditions of the Africans.	1
A great deal has been written about the history of the Back-to-Africa movement, of pan-Africanism as a world view and ideology, and of Liberia. This new book by Ibrahim Sundiata is a valuable addition to the literature. It deals with several aspects of the movement's multifold history. First is the development of the Back-to-Africa idea in America, its reflection in African-American literature, and the activity undertaken to realize the idea with the support of the black community, the U.S. government, and the international community (the League of Nations). Also examined is the attitude of the Back-to-Africa movement's adherents toward the veteran Americo-Liberians and the local inhabitants and the attitude of the veteran settlers, who were imbued with many of the values of Old Dixie, toward the new immigration. In reality, the idea of "mother Africa" as a single entity, and of Atlantic partnership, were products of diasporic creation and intended for it. The Liberian oligarchy had interests of its own and believed it represented an independent entity outside that diaspora. There were also those in Liberia who described the American Africans as "black white men." The Liberian government preferred America to send money, not people.	2
Finally, Sundiata considers the relations between the emigrants and the local population. The former settled in a region from which their forefathers had not been forcibly led to America; they did not know its languages, nor did they behave toward the native Africans as "brethren in race and fate." To a great extent, they were colonialists who exploited the locals as forced laborers, and even as slaves. And although the local inhabitants were accepted by the emigrants, they had to undergo a process of acculturation into the culture the latter had brought with them from America.	3
The book deals with the years between the outbreak of World War I and the beginning of World War II (1914–1940) and opens with the years during which the Back-to-Africa movement became a mass movement in the "diaspora" that enlisted in its ranks about a million supporters from 1920–1924, but did not succeed in encouraging and organizing a mass emigration of millions back to the ancestral land. "Liberia, a movement long touted as the black Zion, proved to be a 'bitter Canaan'" (p. 2). Despite the efforts to arouse a mass exodus to Liberia, only about 25,000 persons actually immigrated. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which were active in the 1920s, did not succeed. In Sundiata's view, "the Garvey plan in Liberia failed not because it was illogical or unfeasible, but because key members of the Liberian political class opposed it from the start" (p. 35), and it is difficult to argue with this claim, because it is hard to prove that if Garvey had been realistic and had managed to delimit his Negro world, he would have been more successful. It seems to me that Garvey's movement was doomed to failure from the outset.	. . .

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