“Let those to whom the heavens grant such opportunities consider that there are two paths open before them: one enables them to live in security and, after their death, renders them illustrious; the other causes them to live in continuous anxiety and, after their death, to leave behind an eternal legacy of infamy.” - Machiavelli [Discourses, I.10]
Introduction: The Westernized Africans of West Africa
Sierra Leone and Liberia, small nations on the southwest coast of West Africa, have always had a kind of shared fortune. Founded as colonies for freed slaves, the first by the United Kingdom and the second by the United States, they were early among African nations in having a “Westernized” class of black elites. In both cases, a variety of groups leaving slavery came in and took over the land and set u…
