This detailed analysis, with an overview of theoretical models, presents Liberia's failure in state-building from its founding as a colony, through its development as a settler state, to its emergence as a sovereign commonwealth, and its evolution into a peripheral capitalist state. The author carefully evaluates internal and external factors that caused state failure and the state collapse and re-collapse marked by the country's two civil wars. The study concludes with a critical review of reconstitution in post-conflict years, under both transitional and elected administrations in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.