Examining the nineteenth-century movement to resettle Black Americans in Africa
 
 
“The starting point for anyone trying to understand the current field of the study of African American recolonization.”—Choice  
 
“Succeeds in demonstrating the importance of colonization to several aspects of early American history and pushing scholarly conversations in new and exciting directions.”—Journal of the Early Republic  
 
“[A] well-curated collection.”—Journal of American History  
 
“A set of remarkably concise and primary source-based analyses. . . . The volume stands out most for widening our understanding of the significance of colonization as a contemporary and current historiographical discourse.”—Journal of Southern History  
 
“A thought-provoking set of essays that brim with insights. . . . A valuable launching pad for further studies investigating the broadscale significance of African colonization to the history of the nineteenth-century Atlantic world.”—Journal of the Civil War Era  
 
“An excellent volume that challenges much of what scholars think they know about colonization. . . . Tomek and Hetrick offer a powerful reminder to take colonization seriously and illustrate how much more research needs to occur on this subject.”—Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research
 
 
“Never has the story of American African colonization been so thoroughly explored.”—Violet Showers Johnson, coauthor of African & American: West Africans in Post–Civil Rights America  
 
“Succeeds admirably in putting us back in touch with the diverse sources of support for the American Colonization Society. We learn much about the complex nature of human motivations and about the changes in attitudes, goals, and government policy that occurred over time.”—Paul D. Escott, author of Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States  
 
“Thought-provoking and challenging. These deeply researched and gracefully written essays refine our understanding of this often misunderstood group.”—Douglas R. Egerton, coeditor of The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History  

 
This volume closely examines the movement to resettle Black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century. Over a century later, the subject remains vigorously debated: while some believe recolonization was inspired by antislavery principles, others view it as a proslavery reaction against the presence of free Black people in society.  
 
Moving beyond this simple duality, the contributors to this volume link the movement to other historical developments of the time, revealing a complex web of different schemes, ideologies, alliances, and motives behind the relocation of African Americans to Liberia and other parts of Africa. Considering the perspectives of both Black and white Americans, as well as indigenous Africans, these essays address the many religious, political, and social aspects that influenced the recolonization project. Within nuanced nineteenth-century contexts, the contributors explain what colonization, emigration, immigration, abolition, and emancipation meant to the many different factions that supported or opposed recolonization.  
 
Beverly C. Tomek, associate provost for curriculum and student achievement and associate professor of history at the University of Houston-Victoria, is the author of Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania. Matthew J. Hetrick is a history teacher at the Bryn Mawr School.     
 
Contributors: Eric Burin | Andrew Diemer | David F. Ericson | Bronwen Everill | Nicholas Guyatt | Debra Newman Ham | Matthew J. Hetrick | Gale Kenny | Phillip W. Magness | Brandon Mills | Robert Murray | Sebastian N. Page | Daniel Preston | Beverly Tomek | Andrew N. Wegmann | Ben Wright | Nicholas P. Wood
 
A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
 
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
 

Sample Chapter(s):

Table of Contents

Excerpt

The starting point for anyone trying to understand the current field of the study of African American recolonization.
--Choice