The_Open_Door_deel1

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Of the colonists notably the Americo-Liberians (which group also
included those from the West Indies) did not care to engage in
agriculture - though every immigrant received some farmland.
Their resentment had various reasons. First, having been forcibly
employed on plantations in the U.S.A., they found manual work on
farms of their own incompatible with their new freedom. Secondly,
while in the U.S.A., they had developed a taste for American
food and the products of the Liberian soil were generally not
very popular with the early settlers. Furthermore, many of these
colonists were mulattoes of light complexion who argued that
their skin could not stand the blazing African sun. Last but not
least, the tools supplied by the American Colonization Society
were often unsuitable to the Liberian environment and discouraged
the few who did make an attempt (11). Consequently, Americo-
Liberians engaged in trade and politics.
These two activities were in fact inter-related. They coincided
with an early arrival in Liberia (before 1832), literacy, and
free-born status (12). Thus, prosperous traders became highranking
government officials, cabinet ministers, and sometimes
even Presidents of the Republic. It is significant that Liberia's
first five Presidents were all wealthy traders: Roberts, Benson,
Warner, Payne, and Roye. The last-mentioned deposed in a bloody
coup d'etat in 1871, marked the end of a period which is often
called the period of the Liberian Merchant-Princes (13).
Failure to adjust to changing circumstances resulted in declining
export activities by Liberians from the late 1870's. In
particular, inadequate reactions to the emergence of the
steamship and to the increased competition of substitutes, e.g.
beet sugar, but also the growing economic nationalism of the
European trading partners, as well as the new trade patterns
following the European colonization of Africa, in combination
with a lack of diversification of the Liberian economy, greatly
contributed to this decline. European trading firms, like the
Woermann and Hedler companies from Hamburg, established on the
Liberian coast since 1850, and the Dutch H, Muller Company,
established in 1855, took over, despite the acceptance in 1864
of the Ports of Entry Law by the Liberian Legislature. This law
limited the trading activities of foreigners to six Liberian
ports.
From the 1860's onwards Liberian farmers showed an increasing
interest in the cultivation of coffee, which originally grew wild
in the Liberian forests -like cocoa - , and of sugar. During the
last decades of the nineteenth century coffee even became the
country's main export product (14). Large plantations developed,
especially north-east of Monrovia, along the St.Paul River, in
the coastal centre of the country, along the St. John River, and
in Sinoe County, along the coast. The high quality of the
Liberian coffee not only resulted in the export of increasing
quantities, it also led to the export of coffee seeds and (young)
coffee plants. Notably to Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica and