a different aproach to the issue:

Firestone’s Liberia Slave Plantation: Reflection on African Historicity
By Masauso Banda
31-03-2006

In 1926, Firestone signed a concession agreement with the Liberian government, giving it 99 years lease of a million acres of Liberian land, at 6 US cents an acre per year, adding up to 60 thousand US dollars for the total land area.

As deals that concern huge tracts of land in even moderately populated regions go, the land would subsequently be cleared of significant segments of its original African inhabitants, displaced to make way for the setting up of Firestone’s largest rubber plantation at Harbel.

All of this is of course honest on Firestone part, even though issues may arise, such as whether there were underhanded tactics employed in the acquisition process, whether the property was as such deliberately undervalued, for example, or whether the displacing of the original inhabitants had been properly planned and carried out, etc. We cannot however place blame on the entity that had lease rights to the land, at least not on this level, but on those who gave it away. As a business enterprise, Firestone had not broken any law. The corporation had merely taken advantage of an existing business opportunity, something that goes by the territory they are in.

In the aftermath of the deal, however, Firestone’s blatantly illegal activities on the plantation, especially regarding the labor and human rights of its workforce, and the use of child labor, must have come to the attention of governing officials, who would have known the corporation was in fact breaking the laws of the land, including the laws of Firestone’s country of founding. It would be correct to state therefore that Firestone’s law breaking rampage started under the watchful eyes of an African
government, something that we know happens much too often on the continent.

http://www.panafricaonline.com/panaf.../firestone.asp