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Africanism: the Freetown Contribution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The intellectual and social origins of those modern movements of political and cultural assertion which are allegedly centred on peculiar African circumstances or peculiar African principles of traditional culture—movements which may be conveniently summed up as ‘Africanism’1—are to be sought in a variety of directions. Factors in the historical and social traditions of the continent in distant centuries have been evoked by some inquirers; while others have listed external influences—emanating in the main from Europe or North America, affecting chiefly those few Africans who travelled overseas, and operating only since the middle decades of the last century—which have directly or indirectly encouraged expressions of Africanism within Africa.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

Page 521 note 1 ‘Africanism’ was employed by Hailey in the revised (1956) edition of his African Survey to indicate movements which seek ‘the attainment of a government dominated by Africans and expressing in its institutions the characteristic spirit of Africa as interpreted by the modern African’ (p. 232). This seems to me the most adequate term to describe the rather wider range of activities referred to in the text. Négritude of course includes movements outside Africa relating to groups outside Africa, while the term ‘African nationalism’ is imprecise in an important respect—does it mean the ‘nationalism’ of Africa as a whole (African racialism or continentalism) or the existence of ‘nationalisms’ in the various African nation-states, loosely summed up? If Africanism/Africanismo/Afrikanismus be used to describe the modern activity, I suggest that an ‘africanism’ (without a capital letter) should continue to mean any item of culture peculiar to Africa.

Page 521 note 2 The present article enlarges on observations made in two earlier articles: ‘Christianity at Freetown from 5792 as a Field for Research’, in Proceedings of the Inaugural Seminar of the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1963, pp. 127–40Google Scholar; and a review article dealing with Fyfe, C. H., History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962),Google Scholar in Sierra Leone Studies (Freetown), 57, 1963, pp. 281–96.Google Scholar Mr Fyfe's book, described forebodingly by Professor Hargreaves as ‘a basic work of rare distinction, from which less able and industrious men will long be glad to quarry material for more pretentious theses’, is indeed an essential work of reference, but it is difficult to consult and surely too sparing in generalisations. The present article leans heavily on Fyfe's scholarship, but the selection of facts has been based on an argument which, I submit, is not adequately represented in the book, perhaps because the author has chosen to understate it.

Page 522 note 1 Hair, P. E. H., ‘Early Vernacular Printing in Africa’, in Sierra Leone Language Review (Freetown), 3, 1964, pp. 4751.Google Scholar

Page 522 note 2 The early stages of Egyptian nationalism included consideration of Egypt's role in Africa, e.g. ‘Our Egypt is the planet of Africa, the highest minaret and the warm sun of its horizon’ —Rifa'ah Rafi al-Tahtawi, 1869: quoted in Ahmed, Jamal Mohammed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London, 1960), p. 11.Google Scholar But the counter-attraction of panIslamism, together with the loss of the Egyptian empire in Africa, led to disinterest in this theme.

Page 523 note 1 P. Beaver, African Memoranda, 1805: Hair, P. E. H., ‘Beaver on Bulama’, in Boletim cultural da Guini Portuguesa (Bissau), XV, 1960, pp. 362–83.Google Scholar

Page 523 note 2 ‘A constitution bound by a social contract rooted in history, in the institutions of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, and of Israel under the judges’; Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, p. 16.Google Scholar Sharp also wanted the settlers to renounce the evils of a monetary economy.

Page 524 note 1 Brown, Wallace, ‘Negroes and the American Revolution’, in History Today (London), XIV, 1964, pp. 556–63.Google Scholar

Page 524 note 2 Fyfe, C. H., ‘Thomas Peters: history and legend’, in Sierra Leone Studies, n.s. 1, 1953, pp. 413.Google Scholar

Page 525 note 1 Unpublished letter of M. Horne to Rev. Mr Haweis, 27 Jaunary 1794, the original in the possession of C. H. Fyfe, who kindly gave me a copy.

Page 525 note 2 Z. Macaulay, MS. journals (originals in Huntingdon Library, California: microfilms at Fourah Bay College Library, Freetown), 10 and 15 December 1796. The history of the disturbances caused by a section of the Nova Scotians has been treated by Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, pp. 7483 ff.Google Scholar, who emphasises the political considerations, i.e. the democratic aspirations of the settlers; and by Walls, A. F., ‘The Nova Scotian Settlers and Their Religion’, in Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion (Freetown), I, 1959, pp. 1931,Google Scholar who stresses the religious considerations, i.e. the dissenting tradition of the settlers. Neither writer has much to say about the racial elements of conflict, yet they are repeatedly illustrated in the most extensive source for this period, the journals of Governor Macaulay.

Page 525 note 3 ‘The white friends… some (of whom) had treated us as cruelly as if we were their slaves.’ Kirk-Greene, A., ‘David George: the Nova Scotian Experience’, in Sierra Leone Studies, n.s. 14, 1960, p. 108.Google Scholar

Page 525 note 4 Shepperson, G. A. and Price, T., Independent African (Edinburgh, 1958), pp. 106–8.Google Scholar

Page 525 note 5 Macaulay, MS. journal, 21 December 1796.

Page 525 note 6 Knutsford, , Memoir of Z. Macaulay, entry for 15 09 1793.Google Scholar

Page 526 note 1 Governor Thompson, T. P. in The African Herald (Freetown), 1 03 1809Google Scholar (copy in Hull University Library: microfilm in Fourah Bay College Library, Freetown).

Page 527 note 1 Hair, P. E. H., ‘Archdeacon Crowther and the Delta Pastorate, 1892–1899’, in Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, 5, 1963, p. 20.Google Scholar

Page 527 note 2 Thompson, L. M., ‘Afrikaaner Nationalist Historiography,’ in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), III, 1962, p. 126.Google Scholar

Page 527 note 3 Chalmers, J. A., Tiyo Soga (1878), p. 343.Google Scholar

Page 528 note 1 Fyfe, C. H., ‘Four Sierra Leone Recaptives’, in The Journal of African History, II, 1961, pp. 7786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 528 note 2 Koelle, S. W., Grammar of the Bornu or Kanuri Language (London, 1854),Google Scholar Introduction.

Page 529 note 1 Though normally a militant nonconformist and wit, R. F. Burton was capable of the following insipid expression of support for a conventional élitist policy— ‘It is a political as well as a social mistake to permit these men [Creoles] to dine in the main cabin which they will end by monopolizing: a ruling race cannot be too particular about these small matters’. Wanderings in West Africa … by an F.R.C.S. (London, 1863), I, p. 211.Google Scholar

Page 530 note 1 ‘The negro race is intellectually between the Australian and the Red Indian … Our black friend now boldly advances his claim to égalité and fraternité as if there could be brotherhood between the crown and the clown! The being who “invents nothing, originates nothing, improves nothing”… the self-constituted thrall, that delights in subjection to and imitation of the superior races’. Burton, op. cit. p. 175.

Page 530 note 2 ‘El Islam has wrought immense good in Africa; it has taught the African to make the first step in moral progress… as far as his faculties can endure improvement.’ Burton, op. cit. p. 180.

Page 530 note 3 Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, p. 319.Google Scholar The electors were members of the commercial community, European and African, and the contest was between a European and a Sierra Leonean : Fyfe believes that the voting was by colour—all the African votes going to the Sierra Leonean candid. ate, all the European votes to the European—a significant revelation of underlying feeling.

Page 530 note 4 Hargreaves, J. D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa (London, 1963), p. 28Google Scholar; Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, p. 354.Google Scholar

Page 531 note 1 Horton, J. A. B., West African Countries and Peoples (London, 1868), p. 62.Google Scholar It is strange that no modern historian has made a general study of the Creoles outside Freetown. But on Creoles in the Gold Coast, see Jones-Quartey, K. A. B., ‘Sierra Leone's Role in the Development of Ghana, 1800–1930’, in Sierra Leone Studies, n.s. 12, 1958, pp. 7384Google Scholar; on Creoles in Western Nigeria, see Kopytoif, J. H., A Preface to Modern Nigeria: the ‘Sierra Leonians’in Toruba, 1830–1890 Madison, 1965),Google Scholar and on Creoles in the Congo, see Hawker, G., Life of G. Grenfell (1909), pp. 383–4.Google Scholar

Page 531 note 2 Hair, P. E. H., ‘The Contribution of Freetown and Fourah Bay College to the Study of West African Languages’, in Sierra Leone Language Review, 1, 1962, pp. 718Google Scholar; and Hair, P. E. H., Tile Early Study of Nigerian Languages (West African Language Monograph Series, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 531 note 3 Burton, op. cit. pp. 217 ff; also Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, pp. 229–30,Google Scholar who quotes a case involving a jury with a European majority to demonstrate that ‘prejudice was no African perquisite’. Trial by jury in civil cases was abandoned in 1866.

Page 532 note 1 Fyfe is inclined to dismiss as exaggerations, rising from racial prejudice, the strictures of English observers on the irregular practices of Freetown lawyers and Freetown courts in the nineteenth century. These strictures have however continued to be made in the present century, even in recent decades, and the Freetown press itself supplies ample evidence of curious happenings, e.g. the disbarring for the third time of a prominent lawyer (later a minister of state). A less aficionado approach would suggest that it would be extraordinary if there were no gross irregularities in a community where family and racial loyalties were so strong.

Page 532 note 2 Hargreaves, op. cit. pp. 64ff.

Page 532 note 3 Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: the rise of Gold Coast nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), p. 230.Google Scholar

Page 532 note 4 Biobaku, S., The Egba and their Neighbours, 1842–1872 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 25 ff.Google Scholar

Page 532 note 5 I owe the reference to Ajayi, J. F. Ade, ‘Nineteenth Century Origins of Nigerian Nation-alism’, in Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria (Ibadan), 1965, on p. 205.Google Scholar The use of the slogan ‘Africa for the Africans’ by the Afro-American M. R. Delaney in 1861 is noted in Shepperson, G., ‘Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism’, in The Journal of African History, I, 1960, p. 301.Google Scholar It was quoted by Burton in 1863, op. cit. p. 125.

Page 533 note 1 Hargreaves, J. D., A Life of Sir Samuel Lewis (London, 1958), p. 12Google Scholar; Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, p. 355.Google Scholar

Page 533 note 2 Extremely significant in this respect is the episode of Dr J. F. Easmon. The highest official rank ever achieved by a Creole outside Freetown was Easmon's appointment in 1892 as Chief Medical Officer for the Gold Coast. He was dismissed in 1897, largely because of agitation by Gold Coast doctors who wrote to the Government about Gold Coast ‘antipathy and dislike’ of Sierra Leoneans. Kimble, op. cit. p. 97.

Page 534 note 1 Fyfe, C. H., Sierra Leone Inheritance (London, 1964), p. 211,Google Scholar quoting a MS. letter.

Page 534 note 2 A letter in The Negro of 1 January 1873, quoted in Blyden, E. W., Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (London, 1887), p. 75.Google Scholar On Johnson and ‘cultural ethnocentrism’in Freetown, see Lynch, H. R., ‘The Native Pastorate Controversy and Cultural Ethnocentrism in Sierra Leone, 1871’, in The Journal of African History, V, 1964, pp. 395413CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and on Johnson's later career, see Ayandele, E. A., ‘An Assessment of James Johnson and his Place in Nigerian History, 1874–1917’, in Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 1963, pp. 486516, and 1964, pp. 73101.Google Scholar These articles however tend to adulation of Johnson as an African hero and uncritical condemnation of his European missionary colleagues.

Page 534 note 3 Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, pp. 468–9.Google Scholar

Page 535 note 1 Hair, P. E. H., ‘E. W. Blyden and the C.M.S.: Freetown 1871–1872’, in Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, 4, 1962, pp. 22–8Google Scholar; Holden, Edith, Blyden of Liberia (New York, 1966), pp. 170215.Google Scholar Blyden received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the Negro college, Lincoln University, in 1874; in 1882, when President of Liberia College, with a handful of students, he awarded to honorary doctorates to friends and state officials. He was re-admitted to the Presbyterian ministry in Liberia in late 1872 and finally resigned from it, allegedly for domestic reasons, in 1886; but during this period he used his clerical title, in the main, only when fund-collecting in America. Holden, op. cit. pp. 262, 284, 489, and 574.

Page 536 note 1 July, R. W., ‘Nineteenth Century Negritude: Edward W. Blyden’, in The Journal of African History, V, 1964, p. 77,Google Scholar n. g. This attitude to ‘mulattoes’ was of course a common racialist view; Cf. Burton, op. cit. p. 271—’ the worst class of all is the mulatto’. The correspondence recently published in Holden, op. cit. shows that Blyden had developed his views about ‘mulattoes’ during his conflicts with the Americo-Liberians in Monrovia, but his public writings were less outspoken about Liberia than they were about Freetown.

Page 536 note 2 That Blyden's views and activities were widely resented in Freetown towards the end of his life is shown by the critical comment in the local press on the unveiling of this memorial; however, admirers of Blyden in Freetown and elsewhere in West Africa (particularly in Lagos) also subscribed to various memorial schemes. Holden, op. cit. pp. 863, 894–5, and 898–9.

Page 536 note 3 Comparison with cultural nationalism in other ‘developing’ areas would be instructive, e.g. with that in the Philippines, with ‘Indianismo’ in Latin America, or with pan-Arabism in the Middle East.

Page 537 note 1 He quoted, for instance, from Dean Stanley, Winwood Reade, Professor W. G. T. Shedd, Dean Church, Rev. Stopford Brooke, Professor Freeman, Mr Gladstone, ‘Leckey’, Professor Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Max Müller.

Page 537 note 2 Blyden, op. cit. preface to the second (1888) edition, p. 1. Spencer's contemporary influence in India—cf. the Babu in Kipling's Kim—and in China— see Schwartz, B., Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)Google Scholar—will be recollected.

Page 537 note 3 July, op. cit. refers to the development of Blyden's views, but does not examine it in detail. In a limited field, the development has been stressed by Wilson, H. S., ‘The Changing Image of the Sierra Leone Colony in the Works of E. W. Blyden’, in Sienvs Leone Bulletin of Religion, 2, 1960, pp. 5866.Google Scholar Neither article relates Blyden's views to current European thought.

Page 538 note 1 Holden, op. cit. p. 189. Between Burton's contact with Freetown in the early 1860's, and Blyden's stay there in the early 1870's, the Muslim community in the town was visited by another dissenter from Christianity, Winwood Reade. He began the Victorian antireligious best-seller, The Martyrdom of Man (London, 1872),Google Scholar while travelling in the Sierra Leone hinterland, and on his return to Freetown admired the Islamic manuscripts of the Muslim community. See Fyfe, , History of Sierra Leone, p. 368Google Scholar; and Shepperson, G., ‘A West African Partnership: Winwood Reade and Andrew Swanzy’, in Progress (London), 51/3, 1965, pp. 45–7.Google Scholar

Page 538 note 2 ‘The unity of thought and action was axiomatic for Blyden, hence the mainspring of some of his actions may be sought in his Sierra Leone experiences. Probably the aloofness of some educated Negroes when confronted by tribal Africans produced disillusion… Moreover, his educational aims of Christian-Muslim fraternisation… met with frustration’; Wilson, op. cit. P. 146. The recent volume of Blyden's correspondence, justly entitled Blyden of Liberia, underestimates the importance of Blyden's Sierra Leone connexions. Since only his correspondence with acquaintances in the U.S.A. appears to have fully survived, the volume necessarily concentrates on his connexions with Liberia and the U.S.A. at the expense of his connexions with Freetown and Britain.

Page 538 note 3 See Kilson, M., Political Change in a West African State (Harvard, 1966), passim, but especially pp. 169 and 258,CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 13.

Page 539 note 1 As suggested in an early comment by Dalby, D., ‘Sierra Leone on the Brink’, in New Society (London), 6 04 1967, p. 507Google Scholar; but modified in Dalby, D., ‘The Military Take-over in Sierra Leone’, in The World Today (London), 08 1967, pp. 354–60.Google Scholar

Page 539 note 2 A minor instance is the current presentation of ‘Krio’, i.e. the Creole ‘patois ‘—which is lexically a dialectal form of English and structurally an African idiom—as a literate language, with traditional roots, worthy of respect from Creoles and others. While the ‘literarising’ and study of ‘Krio’ are unexceptionable activities, it is notable that the English elements in ‘Krio’ are played down, at the expense of showing that it is an independent language with a fully African flavour (note the preference for an orthographic form of the name which conceals the European etymology). Moreover, the traditional attitude among the Creoles to their ‘patois’ was very far from that of respect.