Origins of West African Nationalism History in Depth GENERAL EDITOR: G. A. Williams Henry S. Wilsotl: Origins of West African N:nionalism R. B. Dabso,l: The Peasants' Revolt of 1]81 J. R. Polt: The Revolution in America, 1754-88 D. S. Chambers: Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance IN PRfiPARATlON R. Martin: The General Strike R. C. Mettam: State and Society oflauis XIV B. Harriso,,: Robert Lowery: Portraits of a Radical Hans Koch: Das Yolk Raphael Samuel: The Victorian Underworld H. C. Porttr: Puritanism in Tudor England Dorothy Thompson: The Early Chartists Liontl Butler: The Fourth Crusade W. H. Hargreol'l's-Mawdslty: Spain under the Bourbons, 1700-183] Origins of West African Nationalislll HENRY S. WILSON PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Selection and editorial matter© HenryS. Wilson 1969 First published 1969 by MACMILLAN AND CO LTD Little Essex Street London w c 2 and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg The Macmillan Company ofAustralia Pty Ltd Melbourne The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto StMartin's Press Inc Nerv York Gill and Macmillan Ltd Dublin ISBN 978-0-333-10593-1 ISBN 978-1-349-15352-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15352-7 Library of Congress catalog card no. 73-88171 To the founder members of the Multiracial Club, Freetown, 1959 Contents GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACB I) PREFACE 15 INTRODUCTION 17 PAR T I: Liberian Statehood I American Ideas of Liberty and African Nationality A. Report of the: Manl gers to the American Colonization Society, November 1835 46 B. Speech of RobertJ. Breckinridgc. 1838 47 2 Constitutional Convention of 1847 48 3 Declaration of Indepenclence. 1847 56 4 Constitution of the Republic of Liberia, 1847 61 5 President Stephen A. Benson's 1856 Inaugural Address 73 6 Liberia as She Is. Edward W. Blyden, 1857 79 7 President Benson on the Duty to Elevate the Native Tribes, 1858 87 8 The Assimilation of Liberated Africans (Congoes). Alexander Crummell. 1861 92 9 OUf Origin, Dangers and Duties. Edward W. Blyden, 1865 94 10 OUf National Mistakes and the Remedy for them. Alexander Crwnmell, 1870 105 PART II: Grey and Venn: British Sponsorship af African Nationality II Earl Grey's Proposals for the Gold Coast, 1853 lZ3 " 10 CONTENTS 12 Missionary Views of Self-government A. Native Agencies for African Advan~ment; George Nicol. 1844 129 B. T.]. Bowen on the Need to Develop a West African Middle Class.18j7 129 C. Henry Venn on Nationality and Native Churches. 1868 131 D. Henry Venn on the Native Pastorate and the Organisation of Native Churches. 1880 135 E. A Refutation of'Africa for the Africans Alone', 1869 ISO 13 Resolutions of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1865 lSI PAR T III: James Africanus Horton and the Fanti Confederation 14 Horton and the Idea of Independence. 1868 157 1.5 Letters on the Political Condition of the Gold Coast, I~O 198 16 The Fanci Confederation A. The Objects of the Confederacy: Joseph Dawson, 1870 208 B. ChiefS' utter Submitting the Fmti Constitution to the Governor, 1871 212 C. Constitution of me Fana Confederacy, 1873 213 D. Propouls for British Assistance and ColUborarion from Leaders of the Fana Federation. 1872 218 E. Pope--Hennessy's Viewpoint. 187] 221 F. The Confederation in Narioll2list Tradition. 1903 222 PART IV: Birden's Racial Pride and Cultural Conservatism 17 Africa for the African, 1872 2)1 18 African Accomplishments and Race Pride, 1874 2)9 19 Africa's Service to the World, 1880 241 20 Study and Race, 189) 249 CONTENTS II 21 African Life and Cwtoms, 1908 254 PAR T V: Responses to the Extension and Consolidation of European Control 22 Reverend Attoh Ahuma on National Consciousness, 19II 266 2) Fanti National Constitution. J. M. Sarbah, 19Q6 274 24 The Abiding Meaning of 'Africa for the Africans' in the Age of Imperialism, 1906 )02 25 Pastor Mojola Agbebi on the West African Problem, 1911 ]04 PART VI: Casely Hayford's Synthesis 26 Gold Coast Native Institutions, 1903 312 27 Ethiopia Unbound, 19II 334 28 The Truth about the West African Land Question, 1914 379 SUGGESTED FURTHER READING 381 INDEX 383 General Editor's Preface Historical perception demands immediacy and depth. These qualities are lost in attempts at broad general survey; for the reader of history depth is the only true breadth. Each volume in this series, thereforC', explores an important historical problem in depth. There is no arti­ ficial uniformity; each volume is shaped by the problem it tackles. The past bears its own witness; the core of each volume is a major collection of original material (translated into English where necessary) as alive, as direct and as full as possible. The reader should feel the texture of the past. The volume editor provides interpretative notes and introduction and a full working bibliography. The volume will stand in its own right as a 'relived experience' and will also serve as a point of entry into a wider area of historical discourse. In taking possession of a particular historical world, the reader will move more freely in a wider universe of historical experience. ¢ In this volume Mr H. S. Wilson explores the origins of the concepts of 'nationhood' and 'independence' in English-speaking West Africa. He traces their emergence to the days of the transatlantic slave trade, when black men and white sought relief from its horrors by investing their hopes in the new black Christian settlements of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia, indeed, could use American principles and procedures to move towards independence. But the independence which Rowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chris­ tian impulse was Rawed; granted rather than won, it left Liberia a legacy of dependence upon white patronage and an elite which took pride in being American rather than African. Even at this stage some Liberians denounced the limitations of a merely political independence and advocated a total withdrawal from paternalism and a whole­ hearted identification with Africa. '4 ORIGINS Of WEST AFRlCAN NATIONALISM Equally abortive was the optimistic spe<:ulation which stemmed from the liberalism and evangelism of nineteenth-i:entury Britain. Henry Venn in the mission field and Grey in that of political colonisation tried to stimulate African self-government. and the J 865 Padiamenu.ry Committee was, in a sense, the high-point of such liberal endeavour. The movement was crippled by the reservations and resistance of celoni:!.l officers and by the f;atai paradox that it was those white men with the least faith in the West African's capacity for political progress who were prepared to gr:mt independence immediately and thus bring to an abrupt end the whole venture in Anglo-African collaboration. It was in this first major confrontation that West Africans, u apped in its contradictions and exposed to white racism, turned in on them­ selves and tried to express their perception of themselves, their culture, their being. Sometimes they found compensation in their own brand of black racism; more often they cultivated a semi-scientific, semi­ romantic appreciation of the virtues of traditional Africa, whose unified, iwtitutionally integrated society they contrasted with the incoherence and class conflict of life in Western cities. This was essen­ tially the assertion of a Western-educated iliu determined to stay with tbe inarticulate masses, but speculation along these lines could, and did, lead to the idea of the crowd as a dynamic anti-imperialist force. The later politics of mass nationalism are foreshadowed at the close of this period, when Casely Hayford publicises his recognition of the charis­ matic power of the crowd leader, embodied in Prophet Harris. The documents collected here chronicle the emergence, from a direct confrontation of cultures, of a modern and dis tinctively African out­ look and take the reader, in one sector of experience, t o the roots of attitudes, ideologies and myths which have become a major fo rce in world history. GWYN A. WI LLIAMS Preface The idea of this book grew out of teaching ninetecnth- and early twentieth-century West African history in Sierra Leone and then in Britain at Aberystwyth and York. Given the primitive stage that the historiography had reached in the late ftfti es. teaching African history to Africans on Mount Aureal and extramurally in Freetown East, dose to the original Fourah Bay College. required more than the usual degree of pedagogic improvisation. Things are far better now. The ideas of independence, nationhood and African identity discussed by Venn, Horton and Blyden have now found their way into the mono­ graphs. But still, in the late sixties, I find I have to use more than the usual quota ofphotocopi ed and copy-typed documents to give students an appreciation of the imaginative scope of Victorian thinking about West Africa. Key points of growth for the new historiography have been the universities of Nigeria and Ghana and the revitalised Fourah Bay College. The ideas and institutions of what was once British West Africa have naturally been central to such studies. No such develop­ ment has as yet taken place for Liberia. Yet that country cannot be neglected if there is to be any true appreciation of nineteenth-century political ideas. The remarkable career of Edward Blyden straddled Anglophone W est Africa. More generally, sharing the same language facilitated the interchange of ideas, prompting comparison and example by both sides. Indeed, Liberia's symbolic position as a Ngro e republic sporting W estern-3tyle institutions upon African soil meant that any nineteenth-century discussion of the problems of indepen­ dence and identity tended sooner or later to have to confront this case.