Sage Publications, Ltd. Journal of Contemporary History

Pan-Africanism
Author(s): Imanuel Geiss

Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No. 1, Colonialism and Decolonization
(Jan., 1969), pp. 187-200
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Pan-Africanism
Imanuel Geiss
Although it is talked about a great deal, Pan-Africanism is one

the least known political movements or concepts of our time.
There are a number of reasons for this: as a concept Pan-Africanism
is still very vague, today perhaps more than only a few years ag
and its history is complicated and little explored; most writer
have been more or less content with the short account by W.E.
Du Bois and the more detailed work by George Padmore.1 The
present essay is based on extensive research, the results of whi
have been published in the first detailed study of the history o
Pan-Africanism.2
Although Pan-Africanism burst upon the world scene rather
abruptly and spectacularly after the second world war, its roots
go farther back in history than is commonly thought. If the actual
beginning of Pan-Africanism in its strictest sense is taken as 1958,
with the first two conferences ever held on African soil (although
they continued the tradition of their forerunners), it has both a
narrower and a wider pre-history; the former dating back to the
first Pan-African Conference, held in London in July I900, while
the origins of the latter can be traced back to the end of the
eighteenth century. In I787, at the corners of the famous triangle
of the slave-trade (later the triangle of Pan-Africanism), important
developments occurred which were to become relevant for the
formation of Pan-Africanism: in America the effective beginning of
organized abolitionism and of organized activities by free Afro-
Americans; in Britain the beginning of abolitionist agitation; and
1 W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay towards an Autobiography of a

Race Concept (New York, I940), 260-2, 276-8; and The World and Africa. An
Enquiry into the Part which Africa has played in World History (New York, I946;
2nd imp. I965), 6-12, 236-45; George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism ?
The Coming Struggle for Africa (London, I956), esp. II7-44.
2 Imanuel Geiss, Panafrikanismus. Zur Geschichte der Dekolonisation (Frank-
furt, I968). See also my provisional sketch, 'Notes on the Development of
Pan-Africanism', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, June I967.
187
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
in West Africa, as an indirect result of abolitionism, the fo

of Sierra Leone, which was to make a significant contri
the formation of the modern intellectual elites in British West
Africa. Abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic, the free Afro-
Americans in the United States (and also in the British West
Indies), and Sierra Leone between them directly or indirectly
helped to produce those modern elites in the New World and in
Africa who alone were able to articulate the concept of Pan-
Africanism and translate it into political agitation and action in the
twentieth century.
Brought to Britain as slaves, set free there, and self-taught,
writers like Ottobah Cugoano and Gustavus Vassa developed a
body of ideas and an intellectual tradition which provided the basis
for Pan-Africanism in our century.3 After their generation had
died out, free Afro-Americans in the United States, most of them
ministers, carried on from about 1830. Their end-product was
W.E.B. Du Bois,4 Pan-Africanism's most eloquent and prolific
propagandist before George Padmore.5 The second half of the
nineteenth century had seen the emergence of E.W. Blyden, like
Padmore a West Indian from St Thomas Island (then Danish).6
Blyden lived most of his life in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and it
was there that he met the only African author of stature of that
time, J.B.A. Horton, a Sierra Leonan of Ibo stock.7 Among later
African writers the most eminent were J.E. Casely Hayford and
3 Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of
Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants
of Great Britain by Ottobah Cugoano, a Native of Africa (London, 1787);
Gustavus Vassa, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Oloudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself (London, 1789).
4 For his life see Francis L. Broderick, Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis
(Stanford, I959); Elliot M. Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Study in Minority
Group Leadership (Philadelphia, I960).
5 James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary. George Padmore's Path from Com-
munism to Pan-Africanism (London, I967); for a detailed criticism see my review
in Venture, February I968.
6 On Blyden see Edith Holden, Blyden of Liberia. An Account of the Life and
Labors of Edward Wilmot Blyden, Ll.D. As Recorded in Letters and in Print
(New York, I966); the first full-scale biography is by Hollis R. Lynch, Edward
Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (London, 1967). What was
probably Blyden's most important work, a collection of essays, has been
recently reprinted: E.W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race
(London, I887, 2nd ed., Edinburgh, I967).
7 No biography of Horton has been written, although it would certainly be
worth while. See, however, L.C. Gwam, 'Dr James Africanus Beale Horton,
i88
PAN-AFRICANISM
the Rev. Attoh Ahuma, both from the Gold Coast,8 foll
such well-known figures as Nnamdi Azikiwe9 and K
Nkrumah.10 Authors from French-speaking African cou
also made their appearance, mainly exponents of the con
'Negritude', above all L.S. Senghor.11
The main preoccupation of all these writers was to ref
charge of the Negro's unchangeable racial inferiority, and
full equality for Africans and Afro-Americans in the m
world. But while one group demanded full equality w
whites and nothing else, a second group was carried awa
anti-racist zeal into a kind of black racialism, claiming th
great men and most achievements of civilization were ess
or at least partly African. The result was a curious kind
Darwinism, which was completely self-defeating.12
Surprisingly little was said about the one question whic
mally comes to mind when speaking of Pan-Africani
question of African unity. The main concern of twentieth ce
Pan-African writers has been to prove Africa's right to i
dence and the possibility of its rapid development throu
introduction of modern techniques. Their second great p
was to find some synthesis between the needs of moder
and the preservation of African society and culture. The disc
about Africa's place in the modern world was indeed mo
portant than the elaboration of vague schemes for politic
Pan-Africanism is thus largely African nationalism proje
MD, MRCS, FRAS, FRGS. I835-I883', Ibadan, June I964; and
'Africanus Horton and the Idea of Independence in West Africa', Sie
Studies, January I966.
8 J.E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound (London, Ig19); for A
political ideas see a collection of leading articles written in his G
Leader, published under the title The Gold Coast Nation and National
Consciousness (Liverpool, IgI1).
9 Above all his Renascent Africa (Accra, I937, 2nd ed. London, I966), a
collection of his leading articles in The African Morning Post (Accra).
10 Nkrumah is too well known a figure to need further comment here. For
his earlier political ideas see his first major essay, Towards Colonial Freedom.
Africa in the struggle against world imperialism (London, I962); it was written
in I942, and first circulated in London in provisional form in I947.
11 For a most perceptive analysis of Senghor's earlier intellectual and political
development see the (unpublished) thesis by the American historian J.L.
Hymans, 'L'Elaboration de la Pensde de Leopold Sedar Senghor: Esquisse d'un
itineraire intellectuel', Paris, 1964.
12 See the chapter 'Der Anspruch auf Gleichberechtigung' in my study of
Pan-Africanism; also N. Azikiwe, Renascent Africa, I63.
I89 I3
the continental level and strengthened by the support of

Americans in the New World.
In the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century,
Martin R. Delany, one of the few full-blooded Negroes among
leading Afro-Americans, championed voluntary re-emigration to
Africa with the aim of building up a modern nation on African soil
and of checking European imperialism. 'Our policy', he wrote,
'must be... Africa for the African race and black men to rule
them. By black men I mean of African descent who claim an
identity with the race.'13 Though his Niger Valley Exploration
Expedition to Abeokuta in I859-60 turned out a failure, and the
American Civil War wrecked the scheme, the Delany episode is
relevant to our subject.
The first proto-Pan-African organization was envisaged at the
same time in Britain, where, in I859-61, Dr Thomas Hodgkin, the
eminent abolitionist, tried to build up his Native African Associa-
tion with the help of fellow abolitionists, Africans, and Afro-
Americans.
Formally, the Pan-African movement was launched at the
London Pan-African Conference of 1900. It represented the
reaction of the African and Afro-American intelligentsia to Euro-
pean imperialism and white racism, and was influenced by Du
Bois' concept of Pan-Negroism, first enunciated in 1897. The
initiative was taken largely by Afro-West Indians, prominent
among them Henry Sylvester Williams from Trinidad, who in
November 1897 had founded the first Pan-African organization,
called the African Association; at the I900 Conference this be-
came the Pan-African Association. Afro-Americans and Afro-
West Indians were most prominent in it, but the genuinely
African element was by no means negligible. The African Associa-
tion, the Pan-African Association, and the Pan-African Conference
were noticed and welcomed in the press of West Africa. Never-
theless, the attempt was premature, and by I9OI the first
Pan-African Association had practically expired.
Between the 1900 Conference and the first Pan-African Con-
13 M.R. Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (New
York, I86i), 61. For more details see Leon P. Litwack, North of Slavery: The
Negro in the free states, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), 260 f.; and I. Geiss, 'Notes
on the Development of Pan-Africanism', 723f.
190
PAN-AFRICANISM
gress in I919,14 the single most important development

emergence of Mohamed Ali Duse and the appearance
African Times and Orient Review in I9I2.15 Duse, an Egy
Sudanese origin, after a chequered career during which
taken an active part in the Garvey movement in America
up as the chairman of the famous meeting in Glover Hal
26 August 1944, in which the National Council of N
Citizens (NCNC) was founded, thus demonstrating th
dependence of African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.
his disciples in London was Marcus A. Garvey, who
back to his native Jamaica before the outbreak of the fir
war just in time to launch his Universal Negro Impro
Association (UNIA) on I August I914. This organization
become important only after Garvey had landed in Harlem
and started a branch there of the UNIA in 1918.16 From
Garvey and Garveyism was a powerful, though divisive
which sapped much of the little strength from 'official
Africanism, as represented by the Pan-African Congress mov
under Du Bois from 1919 onwards.
A closer look at this movement reveals that it was much weaker

than its prominence in the meagre historical literature on the sub-
ject would suggest. Its structure was tenuous from the outset, and
a second Pan-African Association, founded in 1921 (apparently
without reference to the first one of 900oo, although Du Bois and
two other leading members were active in both organizations),
was again a complete failure. Of the four Congresses held in I919,
1921, 1923, and 1927, only the second and fourth were prepared in
advance; the other two had to be hastily improvised. Africa was
even less well represented than in 900oo, because the links with
14 Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism. A Short Political Guide (London, 1962), 24,
unfortunately blurs the difference between the London Pan-African Conference
and the later Pan-African Congresses, thus arriving at no. 6 for the 1945
Manchester Congress. Those concerned always numbered the Congresses only,
omitting the I900 Conference.
15 A biography of Duse is being written by Ian Duffield, a student of George
Shepperson.
16 There is no study of Garvey and Garveyism in the Pan-African context.
For a satisfactory biography see Edmund D. Cronon, Black Moses. The Story of
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison,
I955); useful, although understandably uncritical, is Amy Jacques Garvey,
Garvey and Garveyism (Kingston, Jamaica, 1963).
I9I
political organizations of emergent African national

weak, and both intellectually and politically the spe
debates, as far as the scanty evidence suggests, seem to hav
the substance one would have expected from a man of
intellectual calibre. Still, his Pan-African Congress m
did create a certain tradition on which a younger genera
build up a new Pan-African movement after the secon
war.
Profiting from the new economic, social, and political

ments in Africa (especially British West Africa), in
Indies and the United States, the new Pan-Africanism w
draw on a broader social basis than Sylvester William
Bois could have found in their first ventures. The intellectuals had
become more numerous and articulate in their political demands,
and they found a larger audience in the urban lower middle
classes in Africa and the West Indies, in the first trade unions,
among the unemployed with a modern education ('standard VI or
standard VII Boys') and correspondingly higher expectations,
and, in some cases, among peasant organizations and co-operatives.
This mass basis was reinforced by the war veterans, whose
demonstration in February 1948 in Accra sparked off the political
and constitutional process which reached its outcome in the in-
dependence of Ghana nine years later, and of most of Africa after
only another few years.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester in
October 1945, and is now the best known event in the history of
Pan-Africanism. Although it placed itself studiously in the tradi-
tion of the four preceding Congresses (Du Bois acted as president),
it was in some respects a new departure. Almost all the historical
elements of Pan-Africanism were assembled at Manchester, which
marked the culminating point of the movement before 1958. Its
leading figure was George Padmore (Trinidad), who had behind
him hard years of political apprenticeship in the communist move-
ment (1927-34) and as a poor but independent Pan-Africanist
in the London wilderness (1934-44), before he succeeded in
building up, in successive stages, the Pan-African Federation,
which nominally organized the Manchester Congress. Next to him
there were Kwame Nkrumah, who had just returned from ten
years of study and teaching in the United States and had been
made vice-president of the important West African Students
192
PAN-AFRICANISM
Union (WASU) in London, and Kenyatta, who had sp

I5 years in Britain at one stretch and was thus doubly i
the East African context, where Pan-Africanism remained u
until 1958.17
The policy laid down by the 1945 Congress of gain
pendence for Africa as soon as possible by exerting
political pressure on the colonial powers, infused new co
and hope into the various nationalist movements, which
years later proved successful beyond even their own r
hopes. The Gold Coast was granted practical autonomy
February 1951 elections, and, as Ghana, achieved indepen
March I957. The two Accra conferences of 1958, largely
by Padmore, who had come to Ghana as Nkrumah's chie
adviser on African affairs, brought Pan-Africanism back
diaspora to the promised land. But the hour of triu
famous 'African Year' of 1960, saw also the first disapp
over the Congo, which became a source of constant fr
division. Nkrumah's impassioned appeals for 'Union Go
for Africa' went unheeded; the foundation of the Organ
African Unity in 1963 was no more than a feeble co
which still has to prove itself. Pan-Africanism has bee
into chronic malaise by the series of military coups that
Africa since 1963, culminating in the Nigerian and Ghan
of early 1966 and the Nigerian civil war of 1967-8. S
Pan-Africanism as a political movement has been practi
and as a political concept very much in doubt. It will re
thinking for Africans to make a fresh start into a better f
in the process some cherished illusions will have to be
So far, in the flush of comparatively easy and quick vic
1945, and in the understandable resentment over whit
rule and racism, the exponents of Pan-Africanism hav
large, overlooked many of its inherent weaknesses. Th
have been identified even before I945. It was the politi
down of Pan-Africanism in early 1966 and the closer st
historical background which brought them into sharpe
As a product of the clash between traditional and modern
society, Pan-Africanism iepresents one specific case of a fairiv
universal phenomenon in modern history, and reflects the very
17 Joseph S. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (London, 1966),
3I.
I93
confused state of affairs in a society which after centuries

tical stagnation is now rapidly getting on the move. Th
inevitably disarray and muddle, an eclectic hotch-potc
and resentments, badly in need of stern intellectual d
This is a perfectly normal happening in any tradition
exposed to the sudden onrush of new ideas and te
modernization.
As happened elsewhere, Africa reacted to the impact of
modernization by developing a variety of different attitudes,
ranging from the reactionary extremists who want to undo all
change and go back to the past, to the revolutionary extremists
who want to abolish the old structures as rapidly as possible, not
shrinking from the use of force to break the power of inert con-
servatism. Between them there are those who want to preserve as
much of the old as possible, and groups of reformers who are as a
rule prepared to combine old and new elements in varying ways
and degrees. The modernizers and reformers have usually spent
some time abroad, either voluntarily (e.g. as students) or involun-
tarily (e.g. as exiles or hostages to a superior power), where they
are impressed by the higher development in the foreign society
they live in and absorb modern techniques and ideas in order to
bring them back to their respective countries and to develop their
society along modern lines. But once they return home the sheer
weight of traditional society usually whittles down their moderniz-
ing zeal and forces them to compromise in one direction or another.
In fitting Pan-Africanism into this universal pattern two pecu-

liarities are immediately apparent which, superficially, even seem
to set it radically apart from similar cases: the enormous gap in
development between Africa and Europe, and the great number of
permanent 'exiles' - Afro-Americans - playing a prominent role
in the movement. Although it is of course complete nonsense to
assert, as racists of all times have done, that Africa has seen no
significant development in its history and is condemned to
remain forever inferior, all honest African nationalists and
intellectuals readily admit the truth that African society has been
stagnating for a long time and lags far behind other continents.
There are perfectly understandable historical reasons for this, such
as the practical isolation of sub-Saharan Africa from the rest of the
world, and the climate, which in most parts of the continent makes
I94
PAN-AFRICANISM
for very difficult living conditions that can be made tolerab

by expensive and complicated technical innovations.18 T
that, in spite of these serious handicaps, which it would b
to ignore or belittle, Africa did not stagnate in absolute term
itself sufficient to disprove racist doctrines. But the
development was so low compared to that reached in th
developed sections of the western world at the time when
impact began fully to bear on African society, that is,
second half of the nineteenth century, that the more a
Africans began to feel painfully aware of the hum
discrepancy.
The technical, economic, social, political, and military superi-
ority of Europe and North America was first translated into the
institutions of slave-trade and slavery in the western world, which
only helped to increase the difference between Africa and the white
world, to the point where the latter was able to impose its political
domination. In the nineteenth century colonial rule brought the
beginnings of modernization, mostly in the interest and always
to the overall profit of the colonial power, and this in its turn
further increased the gap between rulers and ruled. But as a
secondary effect, modernization brought into existence a native
elite, at first in those parts of Africa which had been longest in
contact with Europe - Senegal, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and
South Africa. The same development occurred in the West
Indies, and the situation was only slightly different in the United
States, where Afro-Americans lived in a quasi-colonial situation
whether as slaves or formally emancipated but effectively segre-
gated and discriminated against. Ironically, the slave trade and
slavery in the New World ensured the transfer of significant
numbers of Africans from their traditional societies into a rapidly
expanding and modernizing society in the New World. Although
they always remained on the lowest rung of the social ladder and
enjoyed neither political rights nor power, Afro-Americans did
absorb modern ideas and techniques. Rejected by white society as
unequals, they were inevitably thrown back on their African back-
18 The new notion that the Sahara was not an obstacle, but a bridge, is, of
course, sheer ideology. Although communication through the Sahara was pos-
sible, the difficulties and dangers made it a very real obstacle, even if not in-
superable. No European who has lived in Africa will deny that life there is very
hard, at least in North and West Africa, that the relentless sun is exhausting,
and that hard work always requires extra effort.
I95
ground and sought to improve their own status via de

Africa, which they were the first to conceive as a sin
though often with romanticizing overtones.
This explains why Pan-Africanism arose first amo
Americans in the United States and the British West I
also why the intellectuals among them, compulsorily a
from their traditional surroundings, have been es
numerous. The Afro-American contingent has been sup
by members of the modern elite growing up in Africa
the middle of the nineteenth century, from Horton a
Hayford to Azikiwe and Nkrumah. But this predom
'exiles' of a particular kind does not in itself mark
difference of kind from other comparable movements.
The distance of Afro-Americans in time and place fro
gave their ideas of the 'fatherland' a certain tinge of ro
and idealization, if only as a reaction to the racist clic
'savage Africa'. When those idealized notions were exp
undeveloped realities of Africa, Afro-Americans (if, as
the case, they were unprepared psychologically) su
emotional shock and either developed a kind of superi
plex vis-a-vis their brothers-in-race,19 or were overwh
wave of sentimentality, as Du Bois was when he first
African soil in December 1923. They demonstrate e
clearly than African students returning from abroad the a
emotional response of the 'detribalized', 'uprooted' i
returning to the traditional milieu, eager to reform his so
still bound to it by nostalgic memories of the past. It is
to take this attitude into account because it helps to e
many conflicts and contradictions within the Pan-African
however ill-defined it may be, the constant wavering
rational and irrational, modern and traditional elemen
African students and intellectuals absorbed the w
nineteenth century Afro-American authors, which refl
contradictions, their personal feelings were, as it w
19 For a detailed account of such confrontations between Afro-Americans and
Africans on African soil see William E. Bittle and Gilbert Geiss, The Longest
Way Home. Chief Alfred C. Sam's Back-to-Africa-Movement (Detroit, I964),
9go-6; Richard Wright, Black Power (New York, I957). The remark of an
Afro-American history teacher to a Ghanaian colleague during the Ghanaian
Historical Congress in 1964 at Accra: 'Of course we are superior!', made in the
hearing of the present writer, falls into this context.
PAN-AFRICANISM
lectualized and raised to an impersonal level, which on

forced their natural inclination towards a romantic, par
tional outlook. This, indeed, has been one of the main tro
the Pan-African movement. Behind a facade of modern
and intellectual attitudes, its most influential exponents
fond irrational romantics. This was certainly true of Bly
Du Bois; it was also true of secondary figures such as
Hayford and the Rev. Attoh Ahuma. It was even partly
Padmore, and beyond any doubt of Azikiwe and Nkruma
of them saw that equality for Africa in the modern world
possible without an immense effort to modernize, b
apparently did not accept fully or fully enough the inev
implication of their correct premise, namely, that in the
the old traditional society would have to go, as it did in
In their understandable zeal to demonstrate the cultural
of African traditional society against the stupid charges
racists and colonialists, they clung too much to its prese
even if in modified form. By continually stressing the
position of Africa and its difficulty of access to outsiders, th
played unwittingly into the hands of the white racists, w
tained the same position, only in a denigrating sense. Only
in the nineteenth century, and an otherwise obscure writ
Uganda, Yatu, in the twentieth, seem to have grasp
accepted the radical consequences of modernization.20 Un
nately for Pan-Africanism, Horton died at an early age in
was until recently practically ignored, while Yatu is com
forgotten and appears so far to have found no followers w
made a public impact.
The result is a kind of romantic eclecticism, perhap
exemplified by Nkrumah and his 'philosophy' of Conscie
This was probably inevitable, as the power of traditiona
is still overwhelming; to point out the modernizer's dile
Africa is not to make light of Nkrumah, but to contrib
better understanding of the tremendous difficulties enco
by the modernizers, given their eclectic approach and the
20 J.A.B. Horton, West African Countries and Peoples (London, I8

cited from David Kimble, A Political History of Ghana. Part I. The R
Gold Coast Nationalism 1850-I928 (Oxford, I965), 230-2; for Yat
article, 'Yatu Thinks Aloud. II. He Thinks about African Unity', in P
April 1947.
I97
of their allies. Most were no doubt unaware of this basic dilemma

before they went into politics, and thus cherished unrealistic
hopes which were bound to be disappointed sooner or later.
There was another element of unrealism strengthening the
illusions about the smoothness and speed with which African
traditional society could be modernized. Afro-American writers in
the nineteenth century, when rejecting racist charges of inferiority,
had always brought in the historical dimension, pointing out that
at least in antiquity parts of Africa (Ethiopia and Egypt) had been
advanced compared with Europe, that what had happened in the
past could happen again, at least to the extent that Africa might
catch up within a much shorter time than Europe had taken to
reach her contemporary level of development. This was (and still
is) a perfectly sound argument as far as it goes, and a healthy anti-
dote against racist superiority complexes. Its validity was proved
in the nineteenth century by Japan, and by the Soviet Union and
China in the twentieth. But African intellectuals jumped to un-
realistic conclusions, both from that correct observation and from
their personal experience, which had demonstrated that a child
from a traditional society can absorb modern ideas and techniques
in the short span of about 15-20 years, the time modern education
takes from the elementary to the university level. In their im-
patience to see Africa restored to the status of independence and
equality, some African intellectuals thought their society (whether
of Africa in general or only of a particular part was never clear)
could also be modernized within a comparably short time. Thus,
while Atto Ahuma in 1912 thought that Africa had only reached
the level of medieval Europe (a realistic analysis, on the whole,21
implying that she would need a very long time to catch up with
the European level), fifteen years later Ladipo Solanke, the
founder and life-long warden of WASU, thought it could be done
within 25 years,22 and his most famous disciple, J.B. Danquah, in
21 In an article in the Gold Coast Nation, I5 August 1912, under the title:
'The future of West Africa with Special Reference to Cape Coast Castle'.
22 Ladipo Solanke, United West Africa (or Africa) at the Bar of the Family of
Nations (London, 1927), 57: 'They [the Japanese] are a coloured and an
Oriental race as we, too, are. It took the white race a thousand years to arrive at
their present level of advance; it took the Japanese, a Mongol race, 50 years to
catch up with the white race; there is no reason why we West Africans, a Negro
race, should not catch up with the Aryans and Mongols in one quarter of a
century.'
I98
PAN-AFRICANISM
1943 cut this figure down to ten for the Gold Coas
unrealistic impatience not only distorted hopelessly an o
sound theoretical argument, but also raised hopes among
and illusions among well-wishing Europeans which h
destroyed and are being cruelly destroyed today. Pan-A
will have to return to the untapped tradition of Horton
and develop it into a rational and unromantic conce
Africa's place in the modern world, how best to achieve t
of a modern society, accepted as equals by others.
Once this is done (and it will take years of hard think
bitter conflict), the more obvious problem of Pan-Afric
or co-operation will be easier to tackle. This has always
vaguest part of the very vague concept of Pan-Africanism
outsider must be cautious in commenting on the situ
prospects. But he may be safe in assuming that once a
fairly homogeneous social development has been reac
rather advanced level within and amongst the various n
states of Africa, the problem of establishing Pan-African
co-operation will become much easier, given the will to ac
it. What has to be done requires more sober long-term t
more patience than was recognized by Nkrumah, the
young man in a hurry, during his years of power. The b
would seem to be an adaptation of Yatu's perceptive rem
Africa will count for nothing in the modern world if she pr
cling to the 'idyllic' life of the traditional village, or to b
with a parasitic existence, living ostentatiously on the ha
developed countries, while not noticing that part of her
wealth flows out of Africa to raise the already high sta
living of the industrialized countries, whether cap
communist. Once the energies derived from the res
against European colonialism as a unifying force fo
Africanism are spent, Africans have to face the hard fact
One of these facts is that the common colonial backgro
anti-colonial sentiment are not enough in the long run to
foundations for a political movement which aspires to br
or some form of co-operation to a whole continent. The obst
economic cooperation providing a sound and substantial b
23 J.B. Danquah, Self-Help and Expansion (Accra, n.d. [I943]), i6:

be afraid of a lot of legislation ? They did it in Russia in 25 years. Th
reason why we should not do it in the Gold Coast in ten years.'
199
political cooperation are massive and manifold, amongst

present poverty of Africa, the lack of modern communicat
predominance of production at the subsistence econom
and the orientation of most new states towaxds the former 'm
country'. On the other hand, there are such obvious adva
trying to cope with the common poverty by a common eff
any rational plans to cope with present problems will point
form of economic and political co-operation or even un
this cannot be achieved through coercion or military co
presently demonstrated by the war between Nigeria an
but only in the context of freedom and voluntary effor
nental unity will probably be an unrealistic aspiration f
time to come. There is no neo-colonialism behind the s
that just as the Arab-Muslim element has proved divisi
pre-colonial past and in the present, in particular in prac
West African states with Muslim inhabitants, whether in
ority or majority, it may also well turn out to be a disru
ment on the continental level, as tensions between Nkru
Nasser in the very recent past suggest. If there were to
Pan-African unity in the foreseeable future, it will most lik
include the Arab countries, perhaps not even the predom
Muslim West African states.
Whatever may be the immediate prospects of Pan-Africanism,
whether it will be able to stage a comeback or not, its professed
goals - political independence and urity of at least substantial
parts of Africa - will be reached only by a strong will to radical
modernization, which stands no romantic and dangerous nonsense
about preserving traditional African society. If this issue is not
squarely faced by Africans and their leaders, the result will be more
confusion and chaos than is in any case inevitable in a time of
transition and rapid change. It would also mean the definitive
end of Pan-Africanism.
200

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Sage Publications, Ltd. Journal of Contemporary History

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Pan-Africanism

Author(s): Imanuel Geiss

Although it is talked about a great deal, Pan-Africanism is one

1 W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay towards an Autobiography of a

in West Africa, as an indirect result of abolitionism, the fo

the continental level and strengthened by the support of

gress in I919,14 the single most important development

A closer look at this movement reveals that it was much weaker

political organizations of emergent African national

Profiting from the new economic, social, and political

Union (WASU) in London, and Kenyatta, who had sp

confused state of affairs in a society which after centuries

In fitting Pan-Africanism into this universal pattern two pecu-

for very difficult living conditions that can be made tolerab

ground and sought to improve their own status via de

lectualized and raised to an impersonal level, which on

20 J.A.B. Horton, West African Countries and Peoples (London, I8

of their allies. Most were no doubt unaware of this basic dilemma

23 J.B. Danquah, Self-Help and Expansion (Accra, n.d. [I943]), i6:

political cooperation are massive and manifold, amongst

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