Liberia is a West African nation of about 5.5 million people, with its capital in Monrovia, and possesses a unique origin story as a project founded in the early 19th century by the American Colonization Society to resettle freed African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. Declaring independence on July 26, 1847, it became Africa's first independent republic, and having escaped the European colonial Scramble for Africa, it later prospered through American investment, including the Firestone rubber industry and major WWII-era infrastructure. However, a military coup in 1980 ended Americo-Liberian rule, plunging the country into the First (1989–1997) and Second (1998–2003) Civil Wars, which killed an estimated 250,000 people and shrank the economy by 90%. Following a peace deal in 2003 and democratic elections in 2005, Liberia has stabilized, though its current industrial mining boom has sparked ongoing protests and raised serious concerns about deforestation, water and air pollution, and poor working conditions.