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Edward W. Blyden: Pioneer West African Nationalist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
This article examines the various ways by which Edward Wilmot Blyden, the most outstanding Negro intellectual of the nineteenth century, worked for the creation of a West African community, and thereby demonstrates that the idea of a united West Africa is not of twentieth-century origin, as has generally been supposed.
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References
1 Coleman, James, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley, 1963), p. 191;Google ScholarKimble, David, A Political History of Ghana, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), p. 375.Google Scholar
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4 I am, of course, referring to recognized, secular sovereign states, and not to the theocratic states which resulted from the Muslim jihads of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, or any other native African state system.Google Scholar
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19 New York Colonization Journal, xii (07, 1862);Google ScholarC.O. 267/283, Blackall to Cardwell, 2 Feb. i86. In fact, most of the leading Liberians did not wish to encourage talented Africans from the British colonies for fear that they would compete for top positions in the Republic. For instance, whereas citizenship for American emigrants was automatic, West African emigrants had to spend a three-year naturalization period, see C.O. 267/313, W. W. Reade to Granville, Feb. 1870.Google Scholar
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27 C.O. 267/324 Blyden to Kimberley, 22 Oct. 1873; C.O. 879/8, African No. 82, Blyden to Berkeley, 12 Feb. 1874;Google ScholarHargreaves, John D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa (London, 1963), p. 169.Google Scholar
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36 Her major works are Travels in West Africa (London, 1897),Google Scholar and West African Studies (London, 1899).Google Scholar
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38 Blyden's writings specifically on Islam in West Africa are as follows: ‘Mohammedanism in West Africa’, Methodist Quarterly Review, LIII (01. 1871), 62–78:Google Scholar‘Mohammedanism and the Negro Race’, Fraser' Magazine, New Series, XII (11. 1875), 598–675:Google Scholar‘Islam and Race Distinction and The Mohammedans of Nigeria’, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, pp. 277–97, and pp. 350–82 respectively,Google Scholar‘Islam in the Western Soudan’, Jour. Afr., Soc., II (10. 1902), 11–37;Google Scholar and ‘The Koran in Africa’, Jour. Afr. Soc., XIV (01. 1905), 157–71.Google Scholar
39 Blyden to Walter Lowrie, 6 Jan. 1877, Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (hereafter P.B.F.M.), XI.Google Scholar
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41 C.O. 147/242, Blyden to Denton, 10 Apr.. 1899; also C.O. 267/472, Blyden to Antrobus, 4 July 1903.Google Scholar
42 Lagos Weekly Record, IX (14 May 1898).Google Scholar
43 C.O. 147/242, Blyden to Denton, 10 Apr.. 1899.Google Scholar
44 C.O. 267/47!, Blyden to Antrobus, 4 July 1903.Google Scholar
45 Ibid.
46 In his writings Blyden frequently referred to the character of the Negro race, but the phrase ‘African Personality’ was actually first used by him in a lecture entitled ‘Race and Study’ delivered in Freetown on 59 May 5893. See Sierra Leone Times (27 May 1893).Google Scholar
47 For a full discussion of this question see Lynch, Hollis R., ‘The Native Pastorate Controversy, and Cultural Ethno-Centrism in Sierra Leone, 1871–1874’, Jour. Afr. Hut., v (1964), 3, 395–453.Google Scholar
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50 Church Missionary Society Archives G3/A3/o4: Davies, J. L. S., Chairman of Lagos Public meeting to Secretaries of the C.M.S., 2. Oct. 1890.Google Scholar
51 Blyden, Edward W., The Return of the Exiles and the West African Church (London, 1898), p. 28.Google Scholar
52 Agbebi, Majola, Inaugural Sermon (New York, 1903), p. 17.Google Scholar See also Webster, James B., The African Churches among the Yoruba (Oxford, 1964), pp. 65–8.Google Scholar
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55 West African Reporter, IV ( Nov. 1887).Google Scholar
56 See Horton, James A. B., West African Countries and Peoples (London, 1868).Google Scholar
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65 Blyden, Edward W., ‘Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans’, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, p. 82.Google Scholar
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70 Blyden, Edward W., West Africa Before Europe, introductionGoogle Scholar, and Hayford, J. C. Casely, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation (London, 1911), p. 163. In the former Casely Hayford wrote: ‘Edward W. Blyden has sought … to reveal everywhere the African Unto himself; to fix his attention upon original ideas and conceptions, as to his place in the economy of the world; to point out to him his work as a race among races of men; lastly, and most important of all, to lead him back to self-respect. He has been the voice of one crying in the wilderness of all these years calling upon all thinking Africans to go back to the rock whence they were hewn by the common fathers of the nations— to drop metaphor, to learn to unlearn all that foreign sophistry has encrusted upon the intelligence of the African. In the latter he wrote that Blyden was a god descended upon earth to teach the Ethiopians anew the way of life. He came not in thunder, or with sound, but in the garb of a humble teacher, a John the Baptist among his brethren, preaching rational and national salvation. From land to land and shore to shore his message was the self-same one, which, interpreted in the language of Christ was: “what shall it profit a race if it shall gain the whole world and lose its soul”.’Google Scholar
71 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, Renascent Africa, p. 98,Google Scholarlsquo;The future of Pan-Africanism’; Presence Africaine, XII (1962), 11.Google Scholar
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