Edmund Hogan's narrative history of Liberia's First Civil War offers an approachable account of the background, actors, causes, and course of the conflict. Encompassing Liberian history from the 1980s until 1997, Hogan highlights the proximate and distal causes that resulted in a conflict that left over 200,000 dead. A historian of Catholic missions in Liberia, Hogan bases his narrative on Catholic missionary records from people who witnessed the events, bringing to light both Liberian and foreign missionaries’ experiences during the war. These documents consist of ‘administrative correspondence, reports, diaries and memoirs but also records of the extensive electronic communications between the missionaries in the field and their various headquarters’ (xiii). These records were produced by missionaries and Catholic organizations, like the Society of African Missions, providing first-hand details of people who experienced the war, but were not journalists, military personnel, or politicians. Hogan uses these records to narrate dispersed and subjective experiences and interpretations of the war, which he complements with news and international organizations reports and published academic work to explain the main aspects and evolution of the conflict.
Hogan's work is substantial; the book has twenty-one chapters divided into six sections. The first section opens with a brief overview of Liberia's founding by liberated slaves and the ensuing corruption and abuse by the settler elite on the local population. In the second section, Hogan focuses on the era immediately preceding the civil war, with a particular focus on President William Tolbert's oppressive regime during the 1970s. Tolbert had ‘no intention of addressing grievances’, discontent deepened, and an April 1980 military coup left Tolbert dead and Samuel Doe (1951–90) in power (17). Under Doe, there was little change in political and social conditions, and executions of former supporters and arrests of political opposition were normalized. Hogan highlights church-state relations during this period, describing a ‘paradox’ whereby the government was hostile to the Catholic church, while also finding the church too useful for its members and media outlets, like radio, to be completely ‘censored’.
The third section — the shortest in the book — explores the start of the war with the emergence of a one-time Doe ally Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)'s insurgency, which threatened Doe's presidency. In this section, Hogan details missionaries’ work to aid refugees who were trying to escape the fighting, and considers how relief efforts faced difficultly amidst escalating violence and warring factions who failed to agree on peace talks. He provides specific stories of missionaries who were kidnapped and safely returned as well as those who were killed, demonstrating the brutality of the war that did not discriminate between humanitarian work and enemy fighters.
In the fourth section, Hogan focuses on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and its peacekeeping group, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). Conflicts proliferated during the latter phase, as Prince Johnson and his Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) split from Taylor and clashed against Taylor's NPFL forces. Despite ECOMOG protecting Doe, Johnson's forces seized Doe's Liberian entourage and Doe was brutally tortured and murdered under Johnson's direction.
By the end of 1990, a ceasefire allowed for ‘signs of a return to normality’ as refugees entered Monrovia and sought sanctuary in the ECOMOG-controlled area, but this was followed by the failed All-Liberia Conference and the inability to form an interim government in 1991 (158). Hogan describes how Taylor's NPFL supported the Revolutionary United Front that entered Sierra Leone, provoking concerns about destabilization as the security situation in Liberia deteriorated with the ceasefire breaking in 1992. The fifth section then describes the escalation of conflict with Taylor's Operation Octopus in the fall of 1992, with examples of the people killed and arrested drawn from missionary and church records. Hogan analyzes a particularly horrible atrocity in June 1993 near Harbel followed by a ceasefire without any disarmament or demobilization. He notes that the United Nations was unable to implement a ceasefire, while ECOWAS ‘lacked sufficient strength to use force’ and was also unable to quell the violence (252).
Hogan's final section probes the end of the civil war. He describes a scramble by the international community for a peaceful solution, noting the rebel leaders were ‘frustrating the peace process at every turn in their determination to position themselves favourably for elections’ (265). The 1995 Abuja Accord included Taylor's participation, but the factions rearmed their groups months after and clashes continued. Nonetheless, the accord was implemented with punitive measures for failing to disarm, a timeline for disarmament, a deadline for elections, and the new military leadership of ECOMOG ensured security. Ultimately, Taylor overwhelmingly won the July 1997 elections under the eye of international observers and ECOMOG security, marking an end of the war. Yet, violence would later resume and the country experienced the Second Civil War in the new millennium.
The book is informative, providing a high-level narrative of the civil war with important insight into the church's role providing humanitarian aid and as a victim of the violence beyond previously told stories from journalists, politicians, or soldiers. Those familiar with the broad strokes of the civil war might still find Liberia's First Civil War useful for the perspective offered by Hogan's new primary sources. Yet at times Hogan includes material from missionaries and church records without a clear and relevant connection to the political narrative. While some of the records are connected to larger figures and events, other times they refer to more localized stories that are less clearly relevant to the big picture. By utilizing missionary sources to such a significant extent, Hogan also lets the vignettes of foreign missionaries replace Liberian voices in parts. Moreover, although the book does advertise itself as a narrative history, there is too little analysis, beyond a few pages in the last chapter. Hogan relates what happened rather than offering original arguments about the underlying reasons, motivations, and ideologies surrounding the actors and the events. Consequently, the book does not provide a new interpretation of events. While there is much information in the book, an analytic lens could have provided better framing, as well as helped to synthesize the missionaries’ experiences within the context of the broader war. Nonetheless, the book is a useful introduction to the war, especially for students and scholars who need a primer on Liberia's recent history.
