African-American Exploration in West Africa: Four Nineteenth-Century Diaries (Hardback)

As its title suggests, this book reproduces James L. Sims and George L. Seymour's diaries of their voyages into the interior of Liberia in 1858, and Benjamin J.K. Anderson's assessment of the Liberian and Guinean hinterland in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The sketchy historical introduction makes the volume unsuitable for most undergraduates, but those with some knowledge of the area will find the carefully annotated diaries fascinating. Seymour, for example, initially opposed the American Colonization Society's plans to settle free blacks in Liberia as racist, but changed his mind after a visit in the 1840s led him to conclude that black men could achieve an equality in Liberia unavailable in the US. Ironically, black Americans carried with them the racial consciousness they sought to escape, and Liberian society was notable for its distinctions between mulattoes and blacks and its class divisions between settlers and indigenous Africans. Sims, Seymour, and Anderson, like white explorers before and after them, sought to bring Western Christianity, civilization, and commerce to the West African interior. Their fascination with the Africa they described so ably was couched in a US worldview. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

[T]hose with some knowledge of the area will find the carefully annotated diaries fascinating. . . . Recommended.