History
The modern Liberian state was established by former American slaves and free African-Americans that immigrated to western Africa in the early 1800s as part of the mission of the American Colonization Society. Much of the country's foreign policy philosophy is therefore derived from the same principles that guide United States foreign policy. Indeed, the ministry notes on its website that the "foundation is copied after the pattern adopted by the United States of America from where the founding fathers of Liberia had come as ex-slaves and free men of color."
Liberia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was established as a cabinet-level branch of the government in 1848, soon after the country's declaration of independence in 1847. Originally called the "Department of State," the ministry assumed its current name in 1972. The first director of the ministry was Hilary Teague, who also drafted the Liberian Declaration of Independence and served in the Liberian Senate.
Between 1848 and 1981, every Foreign Minister (formerly "Secretary of State") came from Montserrado County, Liberia's most populous county. The first individual to fill the post from outside of Montserrado was H. Boimah Fahnbulleh, Jr., who was originally from Grand Cape Mount County. The current Minister of Foreign Affairs is Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, who was appointed by President Johnson-Sirleaf in February 2012.
Read more about this topic: Ministry Of Foreign Affairs (Liberia)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)