Gold Mountain Turned to Dust: Essays on the Legal History of the Chinese in the Nineteenth‐Century American West. Edited by John R.Wunder. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2018. Pp. 248. $29.95.) (original) (raw)

This book is an original, knowledgeable, and important addition to the growing number of book-length studies on the history of African Americans in twentiethcentury Africa. Moreover, it is a welcome contribution to the expanding body of historical scholarship on United States-Africa interactions and relations. Prior to 1965, Africa was a low priority in U.S. foreign policy, but this carefully researched, compellingly argued, and well-written book breaks new ground in our understanding of African American military contributions to the making of modern Liberia. Shellum reconstructs the military service of seventeen African American Regular Army Officers in training, reorganizing, and leading the Liberian Frontier Force between 1910 and 1942, and his volume enriches the available comparative data concerning the military history of Africa and the United States. The relationship between Liberia and the United States is one of the most important subjects of study within transatlantic history, and, in this work, the author examines previously overlooked actors and events in constructing a fresh narrative about this transatlantic intersection. Furthermore, the book offers important new insights into United States military history by detailing African American military professionalism, leadership, and perseverance in extremely challenging overseas assignments, as was the case with Liberia. Furthermore, it expands upon previously published multidisciplinary works on the challenging black experience in the United States. One of the strengths of the volume is that Shellum draws on previously unexplored archival records and photographs to make a compelling case for the contributions of these African American soldiers to the development of modern Liberia. Furthermore, his biographical sketches of the African American soldiers who served in Liberia greatly enhance the historical value of the study. In illuminating the case of African American soldiers in Liberia, this book makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of people of African descent both within the diaspora and in Africa itself. In doing so, the author broadens our understanding of the complexities, cooperation, and contradictions among US-based African Americans, African American returnees to West Africa, and indigenous Africans. As such, the author recounts major aspects of Liberian history, including the slave trade, local resistance to Americo-Liberians, Firestone investments, the country's participation in the First and Second World Wars, the roots of the bloody civil war, and postwar efforts to rebuild the country's political institutions through democratic elections. The study could, however, have benefited from a more nuanced discussion of relations between the African American soldiers, Americo-Liberians, and indigenous groups such as the Kru, Bassa, Mano, Gola, Krahn, and Kissi. Tribalism, ethnocentrism, parochial loyalty, and the pronounced tendency to exalt one group of Liberians are all central to understanding the evolving Liberian landscape. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the book is deserving of a wide readership. Military history specialists, historians in general, students, and the general public interested in the histories of Liberia, African Americans, or the African diaspora will find this book most useful.