This volume reflects a resurgence of interest in the African American colonization movement and its importance in American history. It reexamines colonization in light of other historical developments and considers its relationship to the antislavery movement. Contributors to this book recast the American Colonization Society (ACS), vindicating it from charges of racism and pro-slavery leanings, while highlighting the many complexities of a project that was integrally connected to slavery in the United States. Early historiography of the ACS generated debates and discussion about its motives, attitude towards African Americans, and the role that the United States government played in it. This volume tackles these themes to varying degrees. The three parts of the book, ‘Reconsidering the missionary dimensions of colonization’, ‘Reconsidering the political and diplomatic dimensions of colonization’, and ‘Redirecting the field and offering new answers to old questions’, explore well-worn territory, as well as newer, less familiar realms of inquiry.

In her chapter, Gayle Kenny examines the ACS project through the eyes of its New England proponents who used sentimental language to frame colonization as missionary work. Adherents of this view positioned African American settlers as agents of ‘civilization’ and missionaries to ‘savage’ Africans. Ben Wright makes the case for religious conversion as a motive for settlement. He shows the connection between the colonization movement and efforts to proselytize Christianity among Africans. In one of the few chapters focused on Liberia, Andrew Wegmann pays overdue attention to Lott Cary, an African American Baptist minister and founding member of the colony, to illuminate the growth of the Liberian church. Debra Newman Ham furthers our understanding of women's contributions to Liberia's development.

But most contributors to the volume address the views and perspectives of individuals in the United States, making clear that proponents of colonization were largely concerned with events and issues in that country. Thus, we learn how ‘colonizationists’ (the term that is used to refer to supporters of the ACS) engaged the state and understood their role in the movement. David Ericson reveals that the American government was deeply enmeshed in the colonial enterprise, providing funding, military support, and agents for Liberia. Daniel Preston considers colonization and slavery through the eyes of ACS member and United States President James Monroe, while Nicholas Wood examines the relationship of the ACS to the government during the debates about the Missouri Compromise. He shows that as Southern constituents withdrew from ACS, the organization adopted a stronger stance against slavery. In fact, we learn much about colonizationists’ responses to the antislavery movement and the close connections between these two movements. Many chapters stress this link, which redefines typical scholarly interpretations of the ACS. Some members and allies championed antislavery and supported the ACS, but they later condemned the organization for promoting slavery. At the same time, some black Americans expressed strong and consistent opposition to colonization. Such views are reflected in the statements that prominent leaders such as James Forten made to Frederick Douglass; Forten argued that colonization schemes would only further entrench the institution of slavery in the United States.

Some chapters in the volume situate the ACS colonization movement within the wider Atlantic world. Bronwen Everill's comparative lens illuminates the similarities and differences between Liberia and Sierra Leone in terms of citizenship, subjecthood, and race. Brandon Mills places colonization within the history of expansion and nation-building in the United States; he notes that the Liberian colony was an attempt ‘to engineer democracy abroad’ (166). Sebastian Page shows how the ACS competed with other colonization schemes in the Western Hemisphere.

The final part of the book is worthy of the title ‘Redirecting the field’, as it takes a fresh look at old questions and attempts to ask new ones. Eric Burin reinterprets the initial settlement of Liberia by highlighting the role of the ACS in obtaining and contracting for land, while Andrew Diemer brings a powerfully fresh perspective to this history by exploring the role that European immigration to the United States played in the conversation about African colonization. Robert Murray assesses black attempts to recreate America in Liberia, and investigates the tension produced by the rhetoric of white colonizationists who were unwilling to accept blacks as equals, yet who touted them as agents of civilization in Africa. The adoption by black settlers of superior civilizationalist views was to have consequences in the subsequent history of the country. Matthew Hetrick reveals how various people appropriated the black emigrationist Paul Cuffe after his death in 1817 to champion both colonization and black integration. Likewise, Phillip Magness explores how historians have variously cast Abraham Lincoln's relationship to emigration: some saw his support of colonization as a way to rid the country of blacks, and others argue that Lincoln viewed colonization as a way to garner support for emancipation.

Nicholas Guyatt concludes the volume with an examination of sentiments and ideas about colonization that predated the founding of the ACS, which enables him to fully consider the meaning and impact of this organization and its emergence. This question is a central one, and a steadier focus on what the ACS represented for individual emigrants might have strengthened the volume. In 1830 George Erskine declared: ‘I am going to a new country to settle myself and family as agriculturalists; to a country where we shall at least be on a level with any of our fellow citizens; where the complexion will be no barrier to our filling the most exalted station.’Footnote ¹ More consideration of voices like Erskine's would provide new insight on the importance and significance of the colonization project for its many participants.