History lesson on Liberia

A fastinating epistle by Jacob Levy in The Volokh Conspiracy on Liberia. Worth s read. Excerpt:

Liberia's wounds are an ongoing result of the state's creation as a haven for resettled American former slaves-- on territory that was already inhabited. The conflict between an Americo-Liberian ruling class and the semi-colonized inhabitants is a major cause of that country's almost-perpetual civil war. Other civil wars in other places in Africa have other causes-- a colonial power that classified local class differences as "racial" ones and created an intra-African racial hierarchy, or the oil curse, of what have you. But this is one of the roots of the Liberian trauma.