20 Dollars Monroe Doctrine

The Monroe Doctrine commemorative series issued by Liberia in the early 2000s reflected the country's historically peculiar relationship with American foreign policy — Liberia was founded in 1822 under direct patronage of the American Colonization Society, and the Monroe Doctrine itself, articulated the following year, shaped the geopolitical framework that kept European powers from interfering in the young settlement's affairs. That alignment between Liberian sovereignty and American hemispheric policy was never incidental.

By 2003, Liberia's Central Bank was issuing collector coinage under considerable duress — the Second Liberian Civil War was actively underway, and Charles Taylor would resign the presidency under international pressure that August.