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President Charles D. B. King |
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Charles Dunbar Burgess King was born in Monrovia on March 12, 1871 of Sierra Leonian parents. He studied law and started his career at the Supreme Court, later turned to the State Department. After the turn of the century he became Attorney-General with the rank of cabinet minister under President Arthur Barclay (1904 -12), and Secretary of State under President Daniel E. Howard (1912 - 20). Illustrative for Liberia’s international profile in those days is that King attended the Peace Conference following the end of World War I. He also was among those who signed the Treaty of Versailles. While attending the Peace Conference he was elected president (May, 1919). On January 1, 1920 he was inaugurated. His 10-year Administration is marked by some of the most historic events Liberia and Liberians ever experienced. They greatly influenced the course of Africa’s First Republic. In 1926 the US rubber company Firestone was granted a historic one million acres concession for the production of rubber on Liberian soil which according to some critics made Liberia a ‘Firestone Colony’ for the next quarter of a century. The following year Charles King won the presidential elections with a landslide victory that gained him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the most fraudulent elections ever reported in history. And last but not least, in 1930 President King resigned in order to avoid impeachment. This happened following the publication of the so-called Christy-report. This was an international report on the existence of forced labour practices in this country created by ex-slaves and freeman and the involvement of high ranking government officials including Vice President Allen Yancy. Since Yancy also resigned, King was succeeded by his Secretary of State Edwin Barclay, a cousin of aforementioned President Arthur Barclay. The 1926 Firestone Concession Agreement Background After World War I, rubber prices on the international markets dropped sharply. As a consequence, the Government of the United Kingdom, the country that at the time dominated the world production of rubber, introduced measures which restricted the supply of rubber on the world market. These measures became known as the Stevenson Plan and went into force on January 1, 1922. US interests were adversely affected by this protectionist scheme as a penny per pound increase in the price of rubber meant a financial loss of $ 8 million for the US economy. The American economy at this time absorbed approximately two thirds of the world’s rubber output. US industries, notably the automobile industry, needed increasing quantities of this raw material. One American rubber manufacturer became so indignant with the British Government that he introduced the slogan “America must grow its own rubber.” It was Harvey S. Firestone from Akron, Ohio. In West Africa Firestone found what he was looking for. In the only independent country in that region – Liberia – he found a tropical and very humid climate – ideal for the growing of rubber - , a seemingly abundant and cheap labour force, and a Government which was eager to offer a concession in exchange for US protection against colonial neighbours who were impatient to annex the tiny, weak republic. The negotiations Negotiations between Firestone and the Liberian Government went smooth but after the draft concession agreement had been approved by the National Legislature, Firestone suddenly introduced a new clause. This so-called Clause K made realization of the agreement dependent on the condition that the Liberian Government would also take a $ 5 million loan from his company. Conditions of this loan were to be exactly the same as the controversial $ 5 million loan which President Daniel Howard in 1918 had obtained from the US Government but which had been rejected by the US Congress. In Liberia the 1918 loan proposal had aroused many objections since critics feared that it would turn the country in an American administrated territory with only nominal political independence. Firestone’s proposal aroused widespread protests, both inside and outside the country. The internal opposition denied the need for another loan. But Firestone insisted that Liberia should take a loan from him. Liberia owed more than one million dollars, an enormous amount in those days, to British bankers. Firestone wanted to eliminate this situation that could easily become a pretext for the British Government to interfere in Liberian affairs. Also, he wanted some political control over the Liberian Government because of the long-term nature of the investment. The US Government was interested in and supported Firstone’s plans which included a promise to construct a major port. Firestone did not need a port to export the rubber from Liberia but merely proposed it to get the approval and support of the US State department which was particularly interested in a port on the West African coast as a station for naval use. The 1926 agreements Under pressure of the US State Department, the Liberian Government, represented by its Secretary of State Edwin Barclay, continued the negotiations which eventually lead to the 1926 Firestone Concession Agreement and two additional agreements. Firestone had won. He obtained a one million acre concession for a 99-year period, was granted the exclusive rights (!) upon the lands selected, and became - with only few, small, exceptions - exempted of all present and future taxes. Thus, Firestone acquired virtually unlimited rights over an area equal to 4 per cent of the country’s territory and nearly 10 per cent of what was considered the arable land in the country. Moreover, Firestone lent $ 5 million to the Liberian Government through a wholly-owned and especially for this purpose created subsidiary, the Finance Corporation of Liberia. The $ 5 million Loan put Liberia virtually under control of US administrators and supervisors. An American Financial Advisor appointed by the US Government controlled the Republic’s finance and had to approve the country’s budget every year. But the most striking and important consequence of this Loan was that the Liberian Government was now forbidden to contract new loans without the written consent of the Finance Corporation of America, i.e. Firestone. Firestone’s obligations were very limited. The Liberian Government, on the other hand, accepted several conditions besides the ones just mentioned which turned Liberia de facto into an American protectorate. The Liberian Government also promised that it would encourage, support or assist the efforts of the Firestone company to maintain an adequate labour supply. Firestone had foreseen complications in recruiting labourers and cleverly introduced this commitment. In those days, the monetary economy was absent outside the coastal areas where the Americo-Liberian elite lived. The majority of the tribal peoples of the Hinterland, where the rubber plantations were planned, did not participate in Liberia’s small modern monetary economy and even still used traditional means of exchange, the so-called Kissi-money. Eventually, this situation would lead to the forced recruitment of labour as was described by the Christy-report (1930) which led to the resignment of King and his Vice-president (see below). When the bill granting the Firestone Concession was introduced in the National Legislature for approval it met with tremendous opposition. However, President Charles King, former President Arthur Barclay, Secretary of State Edwin Barclay, and Senator William Tubman staunchly advocated the bill. Interestingly, former President Arthur Barclay and Senator Wlliam Tubman had been hired meanwhile by Harvey Firestone as his company’s lawyers in Liberia. Eventually, the bill granting the Firestone Company unprecedented privileges in Liberia was passed. “The greatest concession of its kind ever made”, as Harvey Firestone qualified it, was realized. The 1927 Presidential Elections One of Liberia’s oldest disputes, whether or not to make use of foreign capital in the development of the country, was re-vived as a result of the Firestone Concession Agreement. Also during the 1927 Presidential Elections the ‘Open Door’ issue played an important role. The presidential candidate of the People’s Party, opposed to President King’s True Whig Party, Thomas J.R.Faulkner, favoured the establishment of an ‘Open Door Policy’. President King commented that the country already had an Open Door Policy. His ideas were not uncontested. Notably the exclusive character of the Concession Agreement with Firestone was mentioned by King’s opponents to be incompatible with the classical idea of an Open Door Policy. President Charles King won the 1927 presidential elections with a landslide victory that earned him a place in history – but different from what he might have imagined. The Guiness Book of Records (1982) qualified the elections as the most fraudulent ever reported in world history. Suffrage was constitutionally limited to some 15,000 citizens, all Americo-Liberians, but according to the official election results some 240,000 votes were cast in favour of Charles D.B.King. The following year, the defeated Presidential candidate, Faulkner, accused the King Administration of permitting slavery, slave trade and forced labour within the borders of the Republic. The 1930 Forced Labour Scandal After his defeat in the 1927 presidential elections, Thomas Faulkner accused the President-elect, Charles D.B. King, of allowing slavery to exist in the Republic. Worse, he also stated that certain highly placed government officials were engaged in the forced shipping of labourers to the Spanish island of Fernando Poo. Moreover, he accused them of making use of the Liberian Army (called Frontier Force) to achieve this. The accused government officials were the President of the Republic and Standard-Bearer of the True Whig Party (TWP), the country’s ruling political party, Charles King, the Secretary-General of the TWP and Postmaster-General Samuel A. Ross, and the country’s Vice-President Allen N. Yancy. After Faulkner’s accusations a wave of international reactions followed and a Committee of the League of Nations was established to examine the allegations. The Committee was composed of Dr Cuthbert Christy, an Englishman (representing the League of Nations), Charles S.A. Johnson, an Afro-American (representing the USA), and former Liberian president Arthur Barclay (representing Liberia). The Christy-report In 1930 the ‘Christy Report’ was published, named after the Committee’s chairman. The Committee concluded that: Slavery as defined by the Anti-Slavery Convention, in fact, does not exist in this Republic.
Following publication of the report, the House of Representatives started the procedure to impeach President King who hastily resigned. He thus escaped a public trial as the Liberian Constitution reads: ‘No person shall be held to answer for a capital or infamous crime, except in case of impeachment.’ Vice-President Yancy made the same decision – defended and advised by his cousin, the lawyer William Tubman (who became President in 1944). The third high-ranking Liberian involved, Samuel A., Ross, had died in the beginning of the year. Secretary of State Edwin Barclay succeeded King. |
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