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African-Americans and the Defense of African States Against European Imperial Conquest: Booker T. Washington's Diplomatic Efforts to Guarantee Liberia's Independence 1907-1911*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Edward O. Erhagbe
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Extract

Some members of tine African-American community were aware of European activities in the African continent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As early as the 1860s, Pan-Africanist Martin R. Delany and Henry Highland Garnet, a US ambassador to Liberia reacted differently to the British annexation of part of Yorubaland. In later years, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner also addressed the issue of the manner in which Europeans were taking over African territory, and chided African-Americans for not going back to re-take and protect the African continent from the European intruders (January 1882, 1). There were more responses from the community on the subject, during tine last stages of European imperial subjugation of Africa (Jacobs 1981, 38, 49, 53 and 75).

Although some African-Americans condemned the European annexation of Africa, they were not physically involved in the resistance effort of the Africans. The Africans' heroic and tenacious defense of their states collapsed in the face of the superior military tactics and warfare technology of the invading European armies (Crowder 1971, 1-16). Thus by the first decade of the 20th century, most of the continent had come under effective European colonial domination, with the two exceptions of Liberia and Ethiopia. The Europeans wished and actually attempted to colonize these two states. Ethiopia saved itself, while Liberia eventually had to rely on the assistance of the United States of America to thwart European designs against the State.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 55 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996

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Footnotes

*

“Pan-Africanism” as used in this context, is not in its restrictive sense; instead it refers to the idea that has seen Africans, both those in the continent and those in the Diaspora, believe in and work for the upliftment and defense of Africa and the African throughout the World. In this regard, it encompasses the ‘Pan-Negro’ and ‘Pan-African’ sentiments expressed by Diasporan blacks such as Wilmot Blyden, Alexander Crummell, Martin Delany, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson and a host of others (Blyden, [1862] 1966; Crummell, [1862] 1969; Delany [1852] 1968; Turner 1883; Du Bois 1919; Garvey 1969 and Robeson 1958). Its usage in this essay is therefore different, from the one restricted to the “Continental Pan-African” Movement that is often associated with the Organization of African Unity (see Padmore 1956; Legum 1965; Geiss 1974 and Ajala 1974 for a detailed discussion of the nature, types and different levels of manifestation of Pan-Africanism).

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