did efforts begin to forge a unified Liberian identity. Even then, Liberia remained essentially a colonialist society until 1980. Since 1980, Liberia has struggled with coups, rigged elections, dictatorship, and brutal civil war, but the seeds of this strife -- as elsewhere in Africa -- were planted in the colonial era.
The remainder of this essay will examine how the colonial experience shaped modern Liberia, and the persisting effects of Liberia's unwanted-stepchild relationship with the nation that founded it. Our examination will proceed along a threefold path: the origins and development of Liberia, the relations between the Americo-Liberian elite and the indigenous majority, and Liberia's relations with the United States.
II. Historical Background of Liberia
The African slave trade was integral to the English presence in the New World long before the first successful English colony in North America was established at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. The Spanish had begun importing African slaves to their colonies early in the 16th century. In the 1560s, English seamen like John Hawkins and Francis Drake began to sail to the Caribbean, originally as smugglers to the Spanish colonies.
The goods they smuggled were slaves, bought or kidnapped in West Africa. Queen Elizabeth I of England was a silent partner in these smuggling expeditions, chartering royal warships to the smugglers. Only after the third such slave trading expedition was attacked by a Spanish squadron did Hawkins and Drake turn to plundering Spanish galleons instead.
Once English colonies were established in America, slavery soon followed. The sale of "twenty negars" in Jamestown is reported in 1619, the year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Africans were originally sold as indentured servants as we
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