Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society - Huntington University

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leadership of the PCS. In the South, the location, magnitude, and proximity of black
manumissions, not to mention fears concerning the reality of bloody slave revolts,
heightened southern paranoia that the ACS was, in fact, trying to undermine the power of
the slave-owning class. Legislators, therefore, tightened restrictions on manumissions.
Nonetheless, the two regions had something in common: a hardening of white racism.
Both the North and the South viewed blacks as a problem, one to either remove or to
violently subdue.
This analysis of the generational and regional impact on colonization is
complemented by Burin’s most important contribution: emphasizing the agency of
African Americans in steering the course of liberation. Both slaves and free blacks
actively collected information about the Liberian colony, sought out “conjunctive
emancipations,” whereby “different slaveholders liberated various members of one black
family,” and were cautiously optimistic about escaping an economic and social situation
built on the foundation of white racism (75). ACS organizers were well aware of how
African Americans viewed, redefined, and therefore slowed colonization. In a kind of
Genovesean vein, Burin suggests that whites of the benevolent empire could not carry out
their plans without taking into consideration the actions and decisions of black
communities; this was evident in the various creative campaigns by ACS leaders to sell
colonization. The discursive effect of white America’s efforts to remove non-whites
opened up a space for free blacks and slaves to consider the possibilities of emancipation
and communal sovereignty, perhaps even nationhood. By 1861, interest in emigration
among African Americans reached “an all time-high” (162) and laid the foundation for
pursuits of independence that later took shape in the pan-African and Black Power
movements of the twentieth century.
Burin’s study, a history “from below,” ends with the perceptions and experiences of
African Americans in Liberia. The society made its first land acquisition in 1821, and
many who settled within the next few decades brought their American culture with them.
Self-sufficient farming was the intent of ACS organizers, but a majority of Liberian
settlers preferred cash crops like tobacco and sugar. Unfortunately, such commercial
agriculture failed to take root. Furthermore, the earlier settlers faced an array of
difficulties: “diseases, the hazards of settler life, and conflicts with native peoples” (158).
But such tribulations did not snuff out the greatest blessing of the colony: an escape from
white racism. “Liberia,” Burin concludes, “was a bulwark against the forces of racial
prejudice” (159).
There is not much one can say by way of critique that would undermine Slavery and
the Peculiar Solution. Few historians have examined how colonization brought to the
table thorny issues related to black activism, racial justice, and a truly African American
identity, and fewer still have given such a well-rounded presentation of all those involved
in shaping colonization and emancipation. This is a work of synthesis, an excellent—
perhaps the best—study of the African colonization movement.