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President Arthur Barclay (1904-1912) Concluding note |
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President Arthur Barclay had steered the country through a difficult
period during which its continued existence was at more than one occasion
endangered. Subsequently, the outbreak of the First World War, the British
blockade of Liberia, and the resulting drop of the country’s trade,
greatly affected Liberia’s history and its dealing with foreign loans and
investments. But then we are entering the Administrations of Presidents
Daniel Howard (1912-1920) and Charles Dunbar King (1920-1930).
It was President Daniel Howard who signed a Loan Agreement in 1917 with the Bank of British West Africa. Nearly ten years later President King concluded perhaps the most humiliating loan in Liberia’s history which earned Liberia, together with the preponderance of the rubber giant Firestone, the nick-name ‘Firestone Colony’. |
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Source: Fred P.M. van der Kraaij, ‘The Open Door Policy of Liberia – An Economic History of Modern Liberia’ (Bremen, 1983; pp. 12 -46). | ||
© fpm van der kraaij |