SOURCE: Mudimbe, V. Y. “E. W. Blyden's Legacy and Questions.” In The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, pp. 98-134. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

[In the following excerpt, Mudimbe considers the claim that the West Indian writer and thinker Edward Wilmot Blyden, who settled in West Africa in 1851, was the precursor of Négritude, and analyzes Blyden's ideas on colonization, Western ideology, European attitudes toward Blacks, Islam, Pan-Africanism, and the condition and character of Africans.]

THE AMBIGUITIES OF AN IDEOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE

Toute ma vie, politiquement, je me suis fait de la bile. J'en induis que le seul Père que j'ai connu (que je me suis donné) a été le Père politique.

Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes.

In his foreword to Selected Letters of Edward Wilmot Blyden (1978) collected by Hollis R. Lynch, L. S. Senghor celebrates Blyden as the “foremost precursor both of Négritude and of the African Personality” (Lynch 1978:xv-xxii). The father of negritude thinks that a century before the emergence of modern African ideology, Blyden promoted its spirit. First, because Blyden treated “both the virtues of Négritude and and proper modes of illustrating these virtues: through scholarly studies, life styles and cultural creaton.” Second, because “through the stimulus of a ‘revolution of mentalities’,” Blyden tried “to lead Negro-Americans to cultivate what is ‘authentically’ theirs: their ‘African Personality’ … and advocated already the method which is ours today: to find one's roots in the values of Négritude, while remaining open to those of non-African civilizations.” Third, because as a “true universal man,” Blyden “already believed, as we do today, that all progress in a civilization can only come from a mixing of cultures.” Lynch, author of a biography of Blyden, agrees with Senghor and writes that “the modern concept of Négritude … can find respectable historical roots in the writings of Blyden” (1967:252). He also stresses the influence of Blyden on such ideologues as the Nigerian Nnamdi Azikiwe and the Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah and states that “Blyden was the ideological father of the idea of West African unity”: “he inspired nationalism in the individual territories,” and his “pan-Negro ideology was undoubtedly the most important progenitor of Pan-Africanism” (1967:249-50).

A native of the Danish island of St. Thomas, E. W. Blyden (1832-1912) settled in West Africa in 1851 and rapidly became one of the most careful students of African affairs. A permanent resident of Liberia and Sierra Leone, he saw the beginning of the scramble for Africa, studied the arrival of European settlers on the West Coast, and observed the progressive establishment of colonial rule. He was the author of several works.

It is not my intention to present an exegetic interpretation of Blyden's work, nor to offer a new understanding of his life and achievements. I am concerned with a practical question in the precise field of the history of African ideologies: in what sense can we accept Senghor's and Lynch's statements about Blyden as the precursor of negritude and “African Personality”? Thus, I will not “interpret” Blyden's theses from the point of view of historical data now available, but instead will focus on their significance and limitations, and will when necessary, situate them in their “ideological atmosphere.” I shall, therefore, describe the signs and symbols of Blyden's ideology as expressed by such texts as Vindication of the Negro Race (1857), Liberia's Offering (1862), The Negro in Ancient History (1869), Liberia: Past, Present and Future (1869), Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1888), and Africa and the Africans (1903). I use the themes of Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race as an organizing frame. This book, a miscellaneous collection of various texts—articles, speeches, reviews—is Blyden's major work (see Lynch, 1967:73-78). Quotations from his letters add subjectivity to some of Blyden's more formal theses.

In this first section, I will present Blyden's thesis on colonization and his interpretation of the “Negro's condition”; in the next, I will show how he sees the African and defines his own political philosophy. My conclusion on his legacy attempts a critical synthesis and studies Blyden's racial attitudes and “prophetism” and proposes a critical interpretation of Senghor's and Lynch's statements. The method used is simple. Blyden's work is not analyzed as sign or symbol of something else, but only in terms of its own density and spiritual limits, as it reveals its own irreducibility and specificity. At the same time, because this work was produced within a given historical period and a specific intellectual climate, I thought it valid to rewrite its “passion” in the manner of Foucault, as a simple discourse-object.

Given Blyden's personal situation—a West Indian Black who, denied education in the United States, emigrated to Liberia (Blyden, LO:8; Lynch, 1967:73)—one can understand that his ideas concerning colonization express both racial and nationalistic positions aimed at achieving a particular type of social revolution. On April 20, 1860, he wrote to William Gladstone, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer about Liberia: “this little Republic, planted here in great weakness, is no doubt destined, in the providence of God, to revolutionize for good the whole of that portion of Africa” (Blyden, LET:30). But in a letter written on June 9 of the same year to the Rev. John L. Wilson, Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the American Presbyterian Church, Blyden speaks of being “instrumental in doing anything towards establishing the respectability of my race.” Significantly, he wishes that his efforts for the promotion of the “Alexander High School” in Monrovia will contribute to “a partial solution” to questions about the Negro's capabilities:

‘The great problem to be solved is whether black men, under favorable circumstances, can manage their own affairs … with efficiency.’ Will the efforts now put forth in the Alex High School, if efficient and successful, contribute to a partial solution of the problem? And, on the other hand, if those efforts fail, will the impression be deepened that the problem is insolvable [sic], and will the gloom which has so long rested upon the race increase in density? If so, then let me be forever discarded by the black race, and let me be condemned by the white, if I strive not with all my powers, if I put not forth all my energies to contribute to so important a solution.

(Blyden, LET:31)

One might focus on this sign: an explicit need for over-compensation transformed into a will-for-power. But this will for “the progress of the race” is largely determined by an apologetic objective. For, as Blyden put it at the end of his treatise on The Negro in Ancient History, “we believe that as descendants of Ham had share … in the founding of cities and in the organization of government, so members of the same family, developed under different circumstances, will have an important part in the closing of the great drama” (NAH:28). In this regard, he denies to whites any positive cultural presence in Africa and frequently insists on the fact that only black peoples can transform the continent. Yet he seriously advocates colonization as one of the possible means of metamorphosis.

Blyden's understanding of the process of Africa's opening up to a white presence is ambiguous:

The modern desire for more accurate knowledge of Africa is not a mere sentiment; it is the philanthropic impulse to lift up the millions of that continent to their proper position among the intellectual and moral forces of the world; but it is also the commercial desire to open that vast country to the enterprises of trade.

(Blyden, CINR, 95)

There remains the “civilizing mission.” He even refers to the first years of slavery as being positive: “The slave trade was regarded as a great means of civilizing the blacks—a kind of missionary institution.” Africans were at that time “not only indoctrinated into the principles of Christianity, but they were taught the arts and sciences.” “The relation of the European to the African in those unsophisticated times, was that of guardian and protégé” (LPPF:7-8).

Despite the fact that Blyden certainly had knowledge of Belgian atrocities in the Congo, his stated opinion of King Leopold's enterprise in Africa was that “everyone has confidence in the philanthropic aims and the practical and commercial efforts of the King of Belgians in the arduous and expensive enterprise he has undertaken in the Congo” (Lynch, 1967:208). In his Africa and Africans, written in 1903, he celebrated Leopold and the Belgians as “providential” agents for the regeneration of the continent and added that, “retribution for their misdeeds will come from God” (Blyden, AA:45; Lynch, 1967:209). But the same year, in a letter to John Holt, he was quite angry about “the horrible proceedings in the Congo.” Identifying Leopold with a mythical and monstrous Pharaoh, he noted that the king and his aides “have the curse of God on them” (LET:474).

Blyden also focused on the commercial interest as a second explanation for colonization. He believed that the European project of colonizing Africa was an economic investment, for it would determine “the continuation of the prosperity of Europe”:

In their eager search, the explorers have discovered that Africa possesses the very highest capacity for the production, as raw material, of the various articles demanded by civilized countries. English and French, and Germans, are now in the struggles of an intense competition for the hidden treasures of that continent.

(CINR:120)

We can assume that Blyden heard of the discovery of gold in Rhodesia by the German Karl Mauch in the 1860s. This discovery, widely publicized by white South African settlers, became the symbol of African treasure in the 1870s when it reached European papers. However, Blyden stressed an economic theory to explain the scramble for Africa:

Europe is overflowing with the material productions of its own genius. Important foreign markets, which formerly consumed these productions, are now closing against them. Africa seems to furnish the only large outlet, and the desire is to make the markets of Soudan easily accessible to London, Manchester and Liverpool. The depressed factories of Lancashire are waiting to be inspired with new life and energy by the development of a new and inexhaustible trade with the millions of Central Africa.

(CINR:95)

This is a classical explanation from the middle of the nineteenth century, but written near its end. The so-called anti-imperialist “little England era” of the last quarter of the eighteenth century seems a fantasy (see Robinson, Gallagher and Denny, 1961; Thornton, 1959; Langer, 1951). After J. B. Saw's thesis on economic balance and its endorsement by Mill and Bentham, almost all British economists advocated colonization as the best means to economic and social improvement at home. One of the most articulate theories, E. G. Wakefield's systematic colonization scheme, emphasized the extension of “land capital” or “field of production” as a solution to the “redundancy” of both capital and labor in England. For Wakefield, as for most of the leading theorists of this time (like R. Torrens and R. J. Wilmot-Horton), the acquisition of colonies was, to put it in John Stuart Mill's words, “the best affair of business in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage.” Its most obvious advantages were supposed to be: first, the expansion of the field of production and employment and, therefore, the possibility of creating new wealth; second, a solution to the problem of unemployment by moving people overseas and integrating them into new fields; and third, an organic extension of markets by the export of manufactured goods and the import of food and raw materials.

Blyden seems aware of these colonial objectives (Lynch, 1967:191-209) even while accepting European “humanitarian intentions—with all its trappings for civilizing, instructing and elevating—” (CINR:338). The man is, fundamentally, a politician. He admires the British Empire and considers himself to be “acquainted with the character and temper of the men who, happily for humanity, come to the head of the Government.” He sincerely rejoices in “the spirit and intention of the Imperial Government” which, according to one Mr. Bosworth Smith, whom he quotes, presents “a rule unselfish and unaggressive, benevolent and energetic, wise and just.” Furthermore, he has a friendly regard for the British settlers in West Africa who “have numbered among their rulers, especially within the last twenty years, some of the best representatives of the English spirit” (CINR:298-99). As to the French presence in West Africa, he says that “France is doing her part to pacify West Africa, to improve her material conditions, and to give an opportunity for permanent progress to the sons of soil”: “a work much needed, and suited to the genius of celtic race.” Germany is giving “her desirable quota” and Germans “are taking their part with intelligence, energy and capital” (Lynch, 1967:200-1).

Blyden does not seem to disapprove of European colonization. In 1896, he still states that Britain “ought to have unquestioned precedence in respect of territory and political influence in West Africa” (Lynch, 1967:197; Blyden, LO:25). When, in 1906, Sir Frederick Lugard resigned, Blyden expressed his “very deep regret” to the colonial pro-Consul: “In the long list of British rulers in Africa who have deserved well of their country and of the natives, the universal sentiment will say to you ‘well done, go up higher’” (LET:484). Yet there is an ambivalence in Blyden's praise of European colonization. For example, he wrote in 1878 to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton:

The Christianizing and civilizing mission of your country will never be carried out by commerce and military demonstrations, nor even by schools only—but by the exemplification of those great principles of justice and humanity which the Great Teacher whom you profess to follow inculcated, but which, it is sad to see, are yet far from being understood or practically applied by Christian nations in their dealings with weaker races.

(LET:272)

In Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, Blyden concentrated heavily on the English language as a means of African education. “Into the English, as into the bosom of a great central sea, all the streams of the past and present have poured, and are still pouring their varied contents” (LO:109). He considered English to be “the language of conquest—not of physical, but of moral and intellectual conquest” (CINR:368). He only regretted that on Western shores, English, like other European languages, has “come to the greater portion of the natives associated with profligacy, plunder, and cruelty, and devoid of any connections with spiritual things” (CINR:68). In reality, the logic of Blyden's thinking is clear: he favors both English language and colonization as means for grafting “European progress wholesale on African conservatism and stagnation” (CINR:300). In his own words:

The native African, like all Oriental or tropical people, can see no reason or property in extra work, as long as he has enough to supply his wants. But he is imitative. And as the English language is diffused in his country, vivified by its domiciliation on the American continent … the native will be raised unconsciously; and, in spite of hereditary tendencies and surroundings, will work, not, then, in order to enjoy repose—the dolce farniente—but to be able to do more work, and to carry out higher objects.

(CINR:368)

What is at stake is a thesis on the perfectibility of “savages,” one widespread in European milieux and scholarly publications since the Age of Enlightenment (see Lyons, 1975) as well as the ideological theme of Anglo-Saxon responsibility, a view that sustained the saga of exploration during the nineteenth century. It is obvious that Blyden has no doubts about the necessity of the “regeneration” of Africa (LO:5, 28). He clearly shares Livingstone's conviction, variously presented in almost all the Anglo-American reports on African explorations: “It is on the Anglo-American race that the hope of the world for liberty and progress rest” (see Hammond and Jablow, 1977). Blyden accepts the achievements of colonization under British law and views the British colonial experience as the best model for the promotion of civilization: “Under that enlightened system of government which protects the rights, the liberty, the life and the property of every individual, of whatever race or religion, the people have been advanced in civilization and well being” (CINR:215).

It is well to keep in mind this general principle: Blyden considers colonization a way of elevating Africans to civilization and thinks that, if possible, this process must be done in English. As a theoretical explanation for the conquest of Africa it does not, at this level, differ from the philanthropic justification of Leopold II, King of the Belgians: “the extinction of Slavery and the introduction of a select civilization” (CINR:348) nor from the purposes of a multitude of colonial organizations. In his speech delivered at the anniversary of the American Colonization Society in 1883, Blyden praised the zealous curiosity of these associations which were “bringing all their resources to bear upon Africa's exploration and amelioration” (CINR:94). These were organizations such as the International African Association, created in 1876; the Italian National Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Africa; the Spanish Association for the Exploration of Africa; the German Society for the Explorations of Africa, founded in 1872; the African Society in Vienna, founded in 1876; the Hungarian African Association, created in 1877; the National Swiss Committee for the Exploration of Central Africa, etc. All these associations, wrote Blyden, bring to the task a “desire for more accurate knowledge of Africa,” a “philanthropic impulse to lift up the millions of that continent to their proper position,” and a “commercial desire to open that vast country to the enterprises of trade” (CINR:95).

The particular dimension of Blyden's theory of colonization resides in the assumption that the opening up and the development of the continent must be a black enterprise. In 1885, in a long letter to Sir Samuel Rowe, Governor of Sierra Leone, he expounded the essentials of his theory on colonization. The European interest “now directed to Africa” is positive in terms of its premises, since it is, according to his view, “the cause of civilization and progress.” “It is gratifying to know that England is waking up to her just claims to whatever advantages those countries may yield for commercial or imperial purposes.” On the basis of his “labours in connection with the Republic of Liberia, and to a limited extent with the Settlement of Sierra Leone,” he gave advice on how to impose a new “system” on “Natives”: “the most effectual is evidently that of annexation with a view to regular supervision and control of the annexed territories.” Yet he insisted that the “settlements of civilized blacks from America” was the best policy; “the most effective way of spreading civilization in inter-tropical Africa” (LET:349-55). Blyden was convinced that “only the Negro will be able to explain the Negro to the rest of mankind” (CINR:263). For him, Liberia's case was exemplary as the most successful sign of this conviction. He wrote in “Hope for Africa” (1862) of the “fulfillment of a Divine plan”:

There are fifteen thousand civilized and Christianized Africans striving to accomplish the twofold work of establishing and maintaining an independent nationality, and of introducing the Gospel among untold millions of unevangelized and barbarous men.

(LO:19)

This is an idea he maintained till the end of his life. Equally strong were his invitations to Black Americans to emigrate to Africa. The motives he put forward were sometimes financial, sometimes psychological, and also attest to his concern for the “regeneration” of these potential immigrants. He makes this explicit in a letter of September 3, 1877, to W. Coppinger, Secretary of the American Colonization Society:

I would be glad if you would point out to Africans in the United States these two facts:

1. There is great wealth in their fatherland of which if they do not soon avail themselves, others will get the first pick and perhaps occupy the finest sites.

2. Only in connection with Liberia or a properly established Negro nationality can they even attain to true manhood and equality.

(LET:260)

Let me underscore that Blyden had a quite restrictive understanding of what black meant. He did not wish to have in Africa “people of mixed blood” (see, e.g., LET:174, 271, 315) who, according to him, “never get thorough sympathy with the work.” This obvious racism is, paradoxically, based on the European thinking that he should be opposing. In a letter to Charles T. Geyer, he openly stated that “repatriation of civilized blacks from the Western hemisphere is indispensable in the work of African amelioration” (Blyden, LET).

Despite such clear suppositions, his reasoning emphasized Africa's mysteriousness: she is a sphinx and “must solve her own riddle at last” (CINR:127). In other words, Europe has to give up “the idea of regenerating Africa through colonies of her own subjects” (CINR:349), because “energetic colonization for Whites, must be in climates where the winter or cold weather brings its healthy and recuperative influences to body and mind” (CINR:349). Blyden sustained his argument by giving some historical precedents (CINR:358), quoting M. Stanley who wrote that “the equatorial regions of Africa have for ages defied Islam, Christianity, science and trade … Civilization, so often baffled, stands railing at the barbarism and savagery that presents such an impenetrable front to its efforts (CINR:345). He also emphasized the colonizers' woes: Europeans cannot survive in Africa (CINR:128); they die or become physically ill and mentally deranged (CINR:263). In sum, “the chief obstacle to the wholesome influence of Europeans in Africa is the climate. From the earliest antiquity this has been the insuperable barrier” (CINR:341). In the letter he sent to Sir Lugard in 1906, he proposed the same explanation.

The principle of the ‘man on the spot,’ however applicable it may be to other countries in healthier climates, is not always to be relied on when dealing with intertropical Africa. There the personnel is most important. Europeans do not, as a rule, retain their normal mental state, or, perhaps, even their moral equilibrium, after six months under the influence of that climate.

(Blyden, LET:484; my emphasis)

Therefore, only Blacks could colonize and reform Africa. By Blacks, he meant “civilized Americans and West Indians of African descent.”

Blyden had some strange views concerning slavery, for example his belief that in the first years “it was a deportation from a land of barbarism to a land of civilization” (LO:156). Remarkable also were some of his views of Black Americans. He wrote for instance, that Africa has never lost the better classes of her people. As a rule, those who were exported belonged to “the servile and criminal classes” (CINR:126). Yet he continued to praise Black Americans and their capabilities and considered them as possible saviors of Africa. He believed that they “have never needed the stimulus of any organization of white men to direct their attention to the land of their fathers” (CINR:100). Pursuing this point of view to its furthest limits, he insisted on the particularity of this possible colonization and its racial implications:

The exiled Negro, then, has a home in Africa. Africa is his, if he will. He may ignore it. He may consider that he is divested of any right to it; but this will not alter his relations to that country, or impair the integrity of his title.

(CINR:124)

It is indeed impossible not to sympathize with the intelligent Negro, whose imagination, kindled by the prospects and possibilities of [America] the land of his birth, makes him desire to remain and share in its future struggles and future glories. But he still suffers from many drawbacks.

(CINR:125)

As a rsult of their freedom and enlarged education, the descendants of Africa in [America] are beginning to feel themselves straightened. They are beginning to feel that only in Africa will they find the sphere of their true activity.

(CINR:125)

In New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Harrisburg, and other cities Blyden preached to “colored congregations” during the summer of 1862, stating: “now, while Europeans are looking to our fatherland, ought not Africans in the Western hemisphere to turn their regards thither also?”; “We should not content ourselves with living among other races, simply by their permission or their endurance”; “We must build up negro states”; “An African nationality is our great need, and God tells us by his providence that he has set the land before us, and bids us go up and possess it” (LO:75-76), etc. The project is racially oriented; its foundation is racist:

In America we see how readily persons from all parts of Europe assimilate; […] The Negro, the Indian, and the Chinese, who do not belong to the same family, repel each other, and are repelled by the Europeans. ‘The antagonistic elements are in contact, but refuse to unite, and as yet no agent has been found sufficiently potent to reduce them to unity.’

(LO:88)

Blyden's ideas on African colonization are based both on theories cast in terms of race and on his own experience in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Sometimes they express a personal sense of over-compensation which accounts for some of the strange reasons he proposes to Black Americans for going back to Africa. For example: “The Negro in the United States, however well educated and however qualified for it, will never have the opportunity of appearing in a diplomatic character at a European court—a privilege which the Liberian has in spite of the political insignificance of his country” (LET:260). Nevertheless, the essential point is that he envisioned the extension of Liberia's experience to all the continent, convinced that in support of “black authenticity,” “whatever others may do for us, there are some things we must do for ourselves. No outward protection, no friendly intervention, no deed of gift can give those personal virtues—those attributes of manhood—self-reliance and independence” (CINR:217).

This argument on African colonization represents a departure from two related theories which were generally accepted during the nineteenth century (see Lyons, 1975:25-85). As Christopher Fyfe puts it in his introduction to one of Blyden's books; humankind “is divided into races, and … the movements of history and society can only be adequately explained in terms of their interaction” (CINR:xii). Blyden saw the African future in terms of racial cooperation and integration between Black Americans and Africans. He also shared the assumption widely held in the second part of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth, that only a certain race can adapt and survive in a given climate. “East is East and West is West; and never the twain shall meet” was a polygenist principle. With such assumptions, Blyden thought that the only alternative to the ongoing European colonization was a Black American presence which would necessitate a reshaping of the African environment and result in a transformation of its peoples. This argument consequently becomes one that we should call a tentative program for political and racial organization:

This seems to be the period of race organization and race consolidation. The races in Europe are striving to group themselves together according to their natural affinities […] The Germans are confederated. The Italians are united. Greece is being reconstructed. And so this race impulse has seized the African here. The feeling is in the atmosphere—the plane in which races move. And there is no people in whom the desire for race integrity and race preservation is stronger than in the Negro.

(CINR:122)

The fundamental theme in Blyden's writings is that Africans, from a historical point of view, constitute a universe apart and have their own history and traditions. This point is worth analyzing, since the European nineteenth-century literature on Africa emphasized this point too, but in a different way (see Battle and Lyons, 1970). Nineteenth-century writers, focusing on differences between Africa and Europe, tended to demonstrate the complete lack of similarity between the two continents and attempted to prove that in Africa the physical environment, the flora and fauna, as well as the people, represent relics of a remote age of antiquity. Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (1853), Darwinism, and the debate between polygenists and monogenists provided “scientific” and “social” categories for racial thinking (see Haller, 1971). Linnaeus's classification of types and varieties of human beings within the natural system (1758) was then modified. G. Cuvier, for instance, offered a hierarchy of human types in Animal Kingdom (1827); S. Morton, a table of races and their cranial and intellectual capacity in Crania Americana (1833); and G. Combe, A System of Phrenology (1844), in which he demonstrated the relationships between types of brain, racial differences, and degrees of spiritual and cultural development (see Curtin, 1965; Lyons, 1975). In sum, “though they did disagree among themselves about which European ‘races’ were inferior to others, Western racial commentators generally agreed that Blacks were inferior to whites in moral fiber, cultural attainment, and mental ability; the African was, to many eyes, the child in the family of man, modern man in embryo” (Lyons, 1975:86-87).

This meant, in other words, that African peoples were considered as instances of a frozen state in the evolution of humankind. They were defined as “archaic” or “primitive” human beings, insofar as they were supposed to represent very ancient social and cultural organizations which had been present in Europe several thousand years earlier. Nineteenth-century anthropology was firmly based on this hypothesis and produced scholarly works on the principles of humankind's evolution to civilization, in which African peoples were considered signs of the initial primitiveness:

The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of Negro improvement and the future of Africa, is in supposing that the Negro is the European in embryo—in the undeveloped stage—and that when, by and by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he will become like the European; in other words, that the Negro is on the same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but infinitely in the rear.

(Blyden, CINR:276)

According to the twentieth-century political philosopher Hannah Arendt:

It is highly probable that the thinking in terms of race would have disappeared in due time together with other irresponsible opinions of the nineteenth century, if the ‘scramble for Africa’ and the new era of imperialism had not exposed Western humanity to new and shocking experiences. Imperialism would have necessitated the invention of racism as the only possible ‘explanation’ and excuse for its deeds, even if no race-thinking had ever existed in the civilized world.

(Arendt, 1968:63-64)

This is an interesting hypothesis, which Blyden missed. For quite understandable reasons, Blyden had to emphasize the ideological structure of race-thinking. Thus the major themes of his A Vindication of the African Race (1857) deal with the myth of Ham's curse and the “idea of phrenological inferiority” (Blyden, LO:31 and 55). He dismissed racist opinions and the so-called “scientific conclusions” by working around a provocative topic: “it was once said that ‘No good thing can come out of Nazareth” (LO:55). His position is one of common sense and close to that of pro-African ideologists of the last two centuries, such as the British J. C. Prichard and the French priest H. Grégoire. Commenting on the curse of Ham, Blyden remarked that first, “it must be proved that the curse was pronounced upon Ham himself”; second, “that it was pronounced upon each of his sons individually”; and third, “if pronounced upon Canaan, that he was the only offspring of Ham.” He concluded: “we know that no one of these was the fact” (LO:35-36). Therefore, for him, the slavery experience was “no argument in favor of the hypothesis of malediction” (LO:41). As to the phrenological theses, Blyden did not accept them because among other good reasons, “external appearance is not always the index of the intellectual man” (LO:56), and “the intellectual and moral character of the African in freedom” cannot be inferred “from what it is in slavery” (LO:52-53). Against the evolutionist assumptions that emphasized the climatic conditioning, he affirmed that “moral agencies when set in operation cannot be overborne by physical causes” (LO:81).

Blyden did not oppose the evolutionary assumption scientifically. He simply mocked it and then took a different route, a relativist one, in order to refute it by ridiculing “the charges of superstition, etc. made against Africans and in consequence of which a hopeless ‘incapacity of amelioration’ is sometimes attributed to the whole race’”:

There is not a single mental or moral deficiency now existing among Africans—not a single practice now indulged in by them—to which we cannot find a parallel in the past history of Europe, and even after the people had been brought under the influence of a nominal Christianity.

(CINR:58)

He laid the same charges against both Europe and Africa: polygamy, slavery, human sacrifices, sanguinary customs (CINR:58-59). He thus defended his own view in a negative manner by showing that the African is part of humanity, even though he seems weaker. In 1869 he noted that:

When, four hundred years ago, the Portuguese discovered this coast, they found the natives living in considerable peace and quietness, and with a certain degree of prosperity … From all we can gather, the tribes in this part lived in a condition not very different from that of the greater portion of Europe in the Middle Ages.

(NAH:20)

The same year, in his address delivered on Mount Lebanon in Syria at the celebration of the nineteenth anniversary of the independence of Liberia, Blyden presented an ideological reading of the Liberian symbol within the “civilized world.” Black responsibility has become the sign of advancement and hope. It incarnates peace and liberation against the wars, emasculation, and oppression of the traditional native cultures; it expresses an organized authority against the corruption of “aboriginal chiefs”; it institutionalizes civilization, trade, and religion against the mass of crimes and immorality of the slave trade. In brief, one has a paradoxical and romantic paradigm: here is Liberia symbolizing the New Negro opposed to both the “heathenism” of the “natives” and “the barbarism” of the slave-traders. By its very existence, Liberia implies the possibility of a radical transformation of Africa's history: “Anglo-American Christianity, liberty, and law, under the protection of the Liberian, will have nothing to impede their indefinite spread over that immense continent. I say, nothing to impede their indefinite spread” (LPPF:23). This almost mystical conviction is also present in later texts. So, for example, in 1884:

In view of all things my consolation is that the Lord is King. In spite of the mistakes and perversity of man, His plans will be carried out. I believe that the Colonization idea was from God, and that the American Colonization Society under the necessarily imperfect conditioning of humanity have been carrying out His purposes.

(LET:326)

And in 1888:

We are unwilling … to admit the idea that Africans cannot acquire those trusts and convictions and that moral and spiritual development essential to human peace and guidance in this world, and to life everlasting in the world to come, without being cast in European mould.

(CINR:66)

These quotations indicate Blyden's complexity. He does not refute the standard view of African “primitiveness,” but rather emphasizes the relativity of social cultures and progress. This practice of arguing by means of sociological concepts, or, as he defines it, “the science of Race” (CINR:94), leads him to “the poetry” of politics:

It is the feeling of race—the aspiration after the development on its own line of the type of humanity to which we belong. Italians and Germans long yearned after such development. The Slavonic tribes are feelig after it. Now, nothing tends more to discourage these feelings and check these aspirations, than the idea that the people with whom we are connected, and after whose improvement we sigh, have never had a past, or only an ignoble past—antecedents which were ‘blank and hopeless,’ to be ignored and forgotten.

(CINR:197)

Blyden tends to avoid both the easy antislavery propaganda, with its myths about the “noble savage,” and also the technical debates on the hierarchy of races. Rather than defining the African as a “special” counterpart of the European—a “noble savage” or a “beastly primitive”—Blyden used his literary background to describe the African as a victim of a European ethnocentrism. For instance, he considered contempt of Africans and Negroes to be a modern invention. He referred to Homer's and Herodotus's descriptions of blacks, insisted on the frequency of kalos kagathos (handsome and good) Ethiopian in classical literature, and discussed the aesthetic value of the color black in the Bible (NAH:14; see also Bourgeois, 1971; Mveng, 1972). In Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, he affirmed that “In Greek and Latin languages and their literature, there is not, as far as I know, a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro” (CINR:84). Commenting on a poem atributed to Virgil and quoting Homer's celebration of the Negro Eurybates at the siege of Troy, he states that “the disparagement began with European travellers, partly ‘from a desire to be unfair’ or ‘from preconceived notions of the Negro,’ ‘and partly, also, on the principle that it is easier to pull down than to build up’” (CINR:263). These explanations do not constitute a convincing historical description. Yet, in very general terms, they situate the ideological justifications used first by travelers and then by explorers and missionaries to establish a new order in the “dark continent” (see Arendt, 1968:87). This meant opening Africa to trade, European education, and Christianity, and thus setting up and enforcing a psychological domination:

In all English-speaking countries the mind of the intelligent Negro child revolts against the descriptions given in elementary books—geographies, travels, histories—of the Negro; but, though he experiences an instinctive revulsion from these caricatures and misrepresentations, he is obliged to continue, as he grows in years, to study such pernicious teachings. After leaving school he finds the same things in newspapers, in reviews, in novels, in quasi-scientific works; and after a while—saepe cadendo—they begin to seem to him the proper things to say and to feel about his race.

(Blyden, CINR:76)

Thinking of the condition of Black Americans in particular, Blyden generalized his analysis:

Those who have lived in civilized communities, where there are different races, know the disparaging views which are entertained of the blacks by their neighbours—and often, alas! by themselves. The standard of all physical and intellectual excellencies in the present civilization being the white complexion, whatever deviates from that favoured colour is proportionally depreciated, until the black, which is the opposite, becomes not only the most unpopular but the most unprofitable colour.

(CINR:77)

Blyden dealt courageously with this difficult aspect of psychological dependence. He thought that the Negro was weak because he accepted the image imposed on him and that this complex of dependence could account for the “hesitancy,” the “modesty growing out of a sense of inferiority” found in the Black American pupil (CINR:148), as well as for the self-depreciation seen in the adult. “It is painful in America to see the efforts which are made by Negroes to secure outward conformity to the appearance of the dominant race” (CINR:77).

As for the Negro in general, Blyden pointed out that derogatory perspectives provide the intellectual framework of this psychological war. An opposition of colors, black versus white, becomes the paramount symbol of the distance in quality and virtue between Europeans and Africans, and justifies the white man's duty toward “despised races” (CINR:138). But this duty seems a myth and its works will not last:

Victor Hugo exhorts the European nations to ‘occupy this land offered to them by God.’ He has forgotten the prudent advice of Caesar to the ancestors of those nations against invading Africa. The Europeans can hold the domain ‘offered to them’ by only a precarious tenure.

(CINR:145-46)

Rejecting the theme of the barbarous Negro, Blyden focused on the connection between degeneration and Westernization. In his view, not all European accomplishments are splendid and useful. On the contrary, “things which have been of great advantage to Europe may work ruin to us; and there is often such a striking resemblance, or such a close connection between the hurtful and the beneficial that we are not always able to discriminate” (CINR:79). Furthermore, he observed that the most visible consequence for the Kingdom of Congo, Westernized and Christianized under Portuguese influence during the seventeenth century, was its disappearance (CINR:159).

One could even think that Blyden—although he was a Christian minister—did not believe in conversion, insofar as it is an expression of Westernization: “Pagans of discernment know that the black man among them who ‘calls himself a Christian and dresses himself in clothes' adheres to European habits and customs with a reserved power of disengagement” (CINR:59). He strongly ridiculed the confusion of sociocultural customs and Christian values and pessimistically noted that “the Gospel has failed to have free course in this land” (LET:115). However, he believed that the “inconsistencies of Christians” (LET:99) might account for this relative failure. In actuality, what he rejected was the “thin varnish of European civilization” that a young and inexperienced missionary propagates. “With the earnest vigour and sanguine temper which belong to youth he preaches a crusade against the harmless customs and prejudices of the people—superseding many customs and habits necessary and useful in the climate and for the people by practices which, however useful they might be in Europe, become, when introduced indiscriminately into Africa, artificial, ineffective and absurd” (CINR:64). However, Blyden seems to believe that the confusing of religious values and cultural customs is not an accident: “The Anglo-Saxon mind and the African mind trained under Anglo-Saxon influence, seem to be intolerant of all customs and practices which do not conform to the standard of European tastes and habits” (LET:114). This instance of cultural misunderstanding is neither extraordinary nor unusual. Of at least equal significance is the supposed African response to Europeans and their culture.

There are those of other races who also sneer and scorn and ‘despise.’ Some of the proceedings of Baker and Stanley in Africa must frequently have impressed the natives with the feeling that those energetic travellers came from much ‘darker continents’ than any of their unsophisticated imaginations had ever before suggested to them.

(CINR:138-9)

Mungo Park recorded his impressions as follows: Although the Negroes, in general, have a great idea of the wealth and power of Europeans, I am afraid that the Mohammedan converts among them think but very little of our superior attainments in religious knowledge … The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathen.

(CINR:343)

For Blyden, these incongruities revealed the general tone of a distorted contact as it existed under slavery and colonial imperialism. Moreover, to the degree that the European presence and self-proclaimed political supremacy affect the African's culture and confidence (LO:57), Blyden felt it necessary to overemphasize certain ideological issues which would eventually foster the African's silent resistance and would bring about a new climate of ideas. The logic of this commitment led Blyden to formulate strong intellectual criticisms of Western ideology, principally through a critical evaluation of the European tradition, a new interpretation of history, and, finally, a positive evaluation of African oral tradition.

Blyden's criticism of the European tradition is based on a relativist philosophy of cultures (AA:60). He believed that even though, in religious terms, the concept of humankind is the same throughout the world, “the native capacities of mankind differ, and their work and destiny differ, so that the road by which one man may attain to the highest efficiency, is not that which would conduce to the success of another” (AA:5-8; CINR:83). Fanciful excursions in the field of comparative history provided some comparisons to support his relativism.

The ancestors of these people [Africans] understood the use of the cottonplant, and the manufacture of cotton, when Julius Caesar found the Britons clothing themselves in the skins of wild beasts. Visitors to the British Museum may see, in the Egyptian department, cloth of the very same material and texture wrapped around the mummies. This cloth was made by those who understood the lost art of embalming, but who, when they retired by successive revolutions, into the interior … lost that valuable art, but never forgot the manufacture of the cloth used in the process.

(CINR:196)

This is only one of many fragile comparisons. His comments on Leo Africanus's reports about the kingdom of Mali (CINR:195), Egyptian physical characteristics (NAH:10), Ethiopian psychology (NAH:25-26), and destiny (CINR:152-3), or the civilization of the “Mohammedans of Negritia” (CINR:300) make explicit and uphold his ideas on the diversity of historical processes. This premise allowed him to state that:

The special road which has led to the success and elevation of the Anglo-Saxon is not that which would lead to the success and elevation of the Negro, though we shall resort to the same means of general culture which has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to find out for himself the way in which he ought to go.

(CINR:83)

This critical position, in fact, also required a new understanding of history. Since the kind of political and cultural domination that was taking place in Africa served the particular historical perspective on which it was based and was, in return, justified by its own success, Blyden chose to revise the concept of history altogether.

Referring to F. Harrison's classification, which distinguished “six leading epochs in the history of civilization” (Theocratic Society, Greek Age, Roman Period, Medieval Civilization, Modern Age, and the Age since the French Revolution), Blyden proposed to exclude the study of the last two ages from the African curriculum. His reasons were quite simple. He observed that it was during these periods, especially the last, that “the trans-Atlantic slave trade arose, and those theories—theological, social, and political—were invented for the degradation and proscription of the Negro.” On the other hand, he considered the first periods, particularly the Greek, the Roman, and the Medieval to be exemplary: “There has been no period of history more full of suggestive energy, both physical and intellectual, than those epochs … No modern writers will ever influence the destiny of the race to the same extent that the Greeks and Romans have done” (CINR:82). Thus a philosophical principle of cultural relativism accompanied an ideological rejection of a part of European history and permitted Blyden to justify his claim for authenticity, and, therefore, the relevance of the African past and its proper tradition. Following Volney (NAH:5) and Hartmann, he had no doubts about “the strictly African extraction” of the pharaonic civilization (CINR:154n). But it was through an evaluation of Africa's oral traditions that he saw the basis for inspiration:

Now, if we are to make an independent nation—a strong nation—we must listen to the songs of our unsophisticated brethren as they sing of their history, as they tell of their traditions, of the wonderful and mysterious events of their tribal or national life, of the achievements of what we call their superstitions.

(CINR:91)

In sum, what Blyden put forward is a general criticism of Western ideology, not because it was wrong, but because it seemed to him irrelevant for African authenticity. This criticism, however, arose as a negation, and to some degree as a consequence, of the most intolerant “race-thinking” interpretations. Thus, it is a warping reworking of the most negative theories of the century. In a long letter to the British traveler Mary Kingsley in 1900, Blyden could agree with her: “‘The Negro must have a summit to himself’—a remark which is not the result, as has been alleged by some, of prejudice to the African, nor, as it has been held by others, of latitudenarian indifference to religious truths” (LET:461). Playing upon the ambiguous significance of Swedenborg's expression that the African is a celestial man, he could also, in a most relativist fashion, conclude that “such a man among terrestrials must have a separate place—not a hole into which some would thrust him, nor a dead flat where others would fix him, but a summit.” Therefore, “for obvious reasons the conventional morality of Europe cannot be the conventional morality of Africa, so far as social or domestic matters are concerned” (LET:461).

Three major considerations were central to Blyden's political philosophy: the basic organized community under Muslim leadership, the concept of the African nation, and, finally, the idea of the unity of the continent.

The basic Islamic community appears to be his model of political organization. “There are no caste distinctions among them” nor “tribal barriers” (CINR:175) nor racial prejudices (CINR:15-17); “slavery and the slave-trade are laudable, provided the slaves are Kaffirs,” but the “slave who embraces Islam is free, and no office is closed against him on account of his servile blood” (CINR:176). Did Blyden approve of this institutional slavery? It is not clear. One could perhaps argue that he was just presenting one case. We must keep in mind that throughout his publications he opposed slavery (e.g., LO:67-91; LO:153-67). At any rate, what he admired in the system was that for Muslims the social relations of production are not determined by racial factors but by their faith: “‘Paradise is under the show of swords,’ is one of their stimulating proverbs” (CINR:9). “They gather under the beams of the Crescent not only for religious, but for patriotic reasons; till they are only swayed with one idea, but act as one individual. The faith becomes a part of their nationality, and is entwined with their affections” (CINR:231). The dynamism of these Muslim communities, their subtle and intelligent ways of proselytizing, and their trade assured Islam a brilliant future in Africa. “All careful and candid observers agree that the influence of Islam in Central and West Africa has been, upon the whole, of a most salutary character. As an eliminatory and subversive agency, it has displaced or unsettled nothing as good as itself” (CINR:174).

None of the Nigritian tribes have ever abdicated their race individuality or parted with their idiosyncrasies in embracing the faith of Islam. But, whenever and wherever it has been necessary, great Negro warriors have risen from the ranks of Islam, and, inspired by the teachings of the new faith … have driven them, if at anytime they affected superiority based upon race, from their artificial ascendancy.

(CINR:122)

According to Blyden, Islam is politically an excellent means of promoting an African consciousness and of organizing communities. Unfortunately, though the ideological assumptions can be accepted in principle, the historical facts badly contradict Blyden's belief in the positive capabilities of Islam. Throughout the nineteenth century in Central Africa, Islamic factions represented an objective evil and practiced a shameful slave-trade. And here, again, we face an unbelievable inconsistency in Blyden's thought: his naive admiration for Islam led him to accept the enslavement of non-Muslim peoples!

The concept of the African nation is perhaps the most puzzling, but also the most original one, in Blyden's writings. It implies the classical conception of “democracy” (LPPF:16) but with a special focus on the rejection of racial distinction, and at the same time, the paradoxical claim for the retention of racial individuality. In actuality, as a man of his time, Blyden used the romantic premises, which in the nineteenth century allowed some European theorists to rediscover their historical roots and then celebrate the authenticity of their own culture and civilization, in terms of their identity with their origins. The most conspicuous example of this process is the debate which took place among German scholars on the “Indo-European” or “Indo-Germanic” culture, in which a most remarkable confusion existed about the notions of “race,” “language,” “tradition,” and “history” (see, e.g., Arendt, 1968:45-64). Nevertheless, European nationalisms arose, in part, from theoretical combinations of these complex and controversial notions and accounted for what Blyden called “the period of race organization and race consolidation” (CINR:122). Like his European counterparts, Blyden did not doubt that a racial phenomenon must be the basis of nationalism and the foundation of the Nation:

On this question of race, no argument is necessary in discussing the methods or course of procedure for the preservation of race integrity, and for the development of race efficiency, but no argument is needed as to the necessity of such preservation and development. If a man does not feel it—if it does not rise up with spontaneous and inspiring power in his heart—then he has neither part nor lot in it.

(CINR:122-23)

Thus, retaining the concept of racial individuality became the cornerstone in the construction of a nation. Paradoxically, Blyden wrote that he did not consider Haiti and Liberia, the two major black nations, as possible models for the African nation, because “there is a perpetual struggle between the very few who are aiming to forward the interests of the many, and the profanum vulgus, largely in majority” (CINR:273). Moreover, as he grew older, Blyden accepted the partition of Africa by European powers (see Lynch in LET:409), collaborated with them (LET:502), and in 1909, worked very hard for the “reconstructing [of] Liberia by the United States”; and indeed for a process of administrative “colonization.”

Let the Republic retain her Executive, Legislative and Judicial Departments. But let America take the Republic under her ‘Protection’ for the time being. Let the British officers, as they are doing now supervise the Customs and Treasury Departments. Let the French manage the Frontier Force under Liberian financial responsibility. Let America appoint a High Commissioner for Liberia—an experienced Southern man, if possible, surround him with the necessary white American officials to help. Abolish the American Legation at Monrovia or put a white man at the head. The High Commissioner should review the Executive, Legislative and Judicial decisions before they are sanctioned.

(LET:496)

However, it is in his descriptions of Liberia and Sierra Leone that he offered his clearest view of an African nation, which must be independent, liberal, and self-reliant but must trade with other foreign countries, a “good democracy” in which racial self-elevation would be the guiding principle.

Blyden's Pan-Africanism is a sort of prophetism. He envisioned, first, a collaboration and a fusion of African Christianity and the conquering force of Islam:

Where the light from the Cross ceases to stream upon the gloom, there the beams of the Crescent will give illumination; and, as the glorious orb of Christianity rises, the twilight of Islam will be lost in the greater light of the Sun of Righteousness. Then Isaac and Ishmael will be united.

(CINR:233)

Second, he emphasized the cultural unity that Islam represents. It has placed African peoples “under the same inspiration” (CINR:229), giving them, by means of the same “language, letters, and books” (CINR:229), both a political unity and a cultural community (CINR:6). Finally, Africa will unite when it pays due attention to its experiences with Europe and America. He thus maintained the thesis that “the political history of the United States is the history of the Negro. The commercial and agricultural history of nearly the whole of America is the history of the Negro” (CINR:119; LET:476-77).

In sum, there would be unity and growth in Africa if black peoples all over the world would reflect upon their own condition. Blyden, the ideologue, became a visionary:

In visions of the future, I behold those beautiful hills—the banks of those charming streams, the verdant plains and flowery fields … I see them all taken possession of by the returning exiles from the West, trained for the work of re-building waste places under severe discipline and hard bondage. I see, too, their brethren hastening to welcome them from the slopes of the Niger, and from its lovely valleys … Mohammedans and Pagans, chiefs and people, all coming to catch something of the inspiration the exiles have brought—to share … and to march back … towards the sunrise for the regeneration of a continent.

(CINR:129)

A modern cultural and political organization would be achieved with the help of Americans of African descent.

The interpenetration of religious and political “nationalisms” expresses in Blyden's thought what we must call a policy of racial authenticity, oriented towards a cultural and political transformation of the continent. The instrumental role that he accorded Black Americans and West Indians by selecting them as “colonists” indicates his belief in “racial identity” and illustrates his peculiar philosophy about the salvation of Africa.

The restoration of the Negro to the land of his fathers will be the restoration of a race to its original integrity, to itself; and working by itself, for itself and from itself, it will discover the methods of its own development, and they will not be the same as the Anglo-Saxon methods.

(CINR:110)

Black people from America and West Indies have “served” and “suffered,” and Blyden did not hesitate to compare them to the Hebrews (CINR:120). The possibility of their return to Africa becomes the hope for the promised land.

Blyden has been called the founder of African nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Surely he is, insofar as he described the burden of dependence and the drawbacks of exploitation. He put forward “theses” for liberation, insisting on the necessity of both the indigenization of Christianity and the support of Islam. Despite its romanticism and inconsistencies, Blyden's political vision is probably the first proposal by a black man to elaborate the benefits of an independent, modern political structure for the continent.

Bibliography

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• (1) “Hope for Africa,” 5-28.
• (2) “A Vindication of the African Race,” (Liberia, 1857): 31-64.
• (3) “The Call of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America,” 67-91.
• (4) “Inaugural Address at the Inauguration of Liberia College,” 95-123.
• (5) “Eulogy on Rev. John Day,” 127-149.
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• (7) “A Note to Benjamin Coates on ‘The Colonization and Abolition Movements’,” 169-181.

———. (1869a). Liberia: Past, Present, and Future. (LPPF) Washington.

———. (1869b). The Negro in Ancient History. (NAH) Washington.

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———, ed., (1978). Selected Letters of Edward Wilmot Blyden. New York: KTO Press.

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