In 1983, twenty years after the introduction of the new county system in Liberia, a tenth county named Bomi was proclaimed by President Samuel Doe. This county would comprise a considerable number of territories in the northwestern interior which were controlled by the Gola in the 19th century. In the course of Liberia’s national unification, most of the larger ethnic entities were fractionated and reoriented to the dominant symbols and institutions of the national culture. The Gola case, however, is something of an anomaly insofar as it represents the development of a distinctive ethnic ideology reinforced by an emergent pan-tribalism. It also reveals the persistance of a myth of ethnic solidarity which, over the past 20 to 30 years, has been transformed into an instrument of competitive political opportunism within the changing structures of the Liberian national process. This paper examines Gola attempts at hegemonic expansion from the 1820s onward. Bibliogr.
