The anti-modern spirit of colonialism

Prophets without honour

African apostles of modernity in the nineteenth century

by Olufemi Taiwo


Also published in this issue is the essay by the philosopher, Olufemi Taiwo, which originates from the realisation that in the last two hundred years, the history of the development of modern reasoning and culture has completely ignored the contribution of the African thinkers.

Concentrating his attention mainly on English-speaking West Africa, Taiwo demonstrates how the transition to a modern society was an endogenous process in full swing in the nineteenth century, an optimistic, creative and experimental period for Africa.
In this context Taiwo identifies three great African thinkers who were important because of their contribution to the development of the continent as a modern society. They are well-known to scholars, but their significance as regards the history of ideas and social changes that have taken place in Africa, according to Taiwo, have been largerly ignored. In fact, such intellectual liveliness was suddenly interrupted by the colonial occupation which, in order to survive itself, turned out to be a real barrier against modernisation in Africa.

Introduction

Five years ago, I published a paper titled "On the Misadventures of National Consciousness: A Retrospect on Frantz Fanon's Gift of Prophecy", in which I explored the interface between the biblical idea of prophecy and social science predictions. I said there:

There are three attributes shared by a social scientific model and a jeremiad: description, explanation, and prediction. In ways that mirror social scientific models, there is a description, in a jeremiad, of what is wrong in the community. For example, biblical prophets gave stark descriptions of the many sins and transgression prevalent in their community, the corruption and debaucheries of the rulers, the absence of righteousness and upstandingness among their fellows. Secondly, the explanation of the misfortunes of the community was that the people had strayed from the path of righteousness laid out for them by the divine authority. Finally, in the prophecy, there was a warning that unless the divine word was heeded, dire consequences would follow. But there is at least one clear difference between biblical prophecy and good social science: in social scientific models, the "Thus saith the Lord" of a prophecy is replaced with the authority of analysis, theoretical paradigms, and empirical investigations. Nonetheless, in the same way that failure to heed the word of the Lord will mean perdition, so will failure to heed the warning in social scientific prophecy lead to social dislocation and crisis in the community. (Gordon, Sharpley-Whiting, White, 1996, p. 256)

Addis Ababa University Source: www.abyssiniacybergateway.net

We begin from the present. The entire continent of Africa, not unlike other parts of the world, is at the present time one huge workshop of social experiments in politics, economics, religion, culture and myriad other areas of life. One frame within which scholars in almost all disciplines interpret contemporary Africa is that of a dichotomy between Africa's much-vaunted attachment, one is tempted to say addiction, to tradition and near congenital aversion to what is generally dubbed 'modernisation'. Those who are familiar with the social science literature in economics, political science and history would easily recall that in the sixties and seventies, African regimes were adjudged successes or failures by how far they had travelled on the road to modernization. Modernisation was understood in near-grotesque terms of increasing Gross Domestic Product, total mileage of macadamized roads, and the like. And when the bottom fell out in the eighties, we were treated to gory accounts of so-called modernisation that went too fast, African traditional institutions that were recalcitrant to the changes enjoined by modernisation efforts, and so on.

There are two major problems with any attempt to explain phenomena in Africa within the 'traditional versus modern' schema. The first problem is conceptual: the means, "modernisation", is mistaken for the end, "modernity". This is not a mere verbal point. The end-product, putatively speaking, of all modernization processes must be the transformation of the social organism concerned from a pre-modern or non-modern state to a modern one. Properly understood, this must mean that the organism concerned has had its most dominant institutions bathed in the ether of modernity, the proper name for the outcome of the process in which modernisation is a tool. If this is the case, it is possible to have modernisation, understood as the superficial painting of the social fabric with various markers of modernity without there being the infusion of the elements that constitute the soul, the identifying characteristics of modernity. Japan and South Korea are the most successful examples of this phenomenon. Taiwan and Hong Kong are not far behind. Hence, I am suggesting that whatever was going on in Africa in the sixties and seventies were at best inchoate attempts at becoming modern. So, their failure cannot be used as evidence of the inability of Africans to be modern.

The second problem is historical: contemporary scholars do not evince any awareness of the rich legacy of past attempts at the installation of modernity in some parts of the continent, most notably English-speaking West Africa. Hence, much of the discourse about Africa and modernity at the present time proceeds as if (1) this is a new problem or (2) there are no antecedent African engagements with modernity. The available historical evidence supports neither standpoint.

In the nineteenth century, specifically before the imposition of formal empire on the African continent by various European powers, some parts of Africa were in the beginnings of a transition to modernity. Originally begun under the inspiration of Christianity-taking this seriously is bound to alter our historiography of Christianity and appraisal of its career in Africa-the African apostles of modernity took the movement beyond the confines of the religious to the larger sphere of the secular. I argue that it is time to honour these prophets and adapt their wisdom to the task that is again before us to move Africa towards modernity. But we cannot celebrate them if we don't know who they are. So one modest aim of this essay is to introduce these prophets of old Africa.

There is an even deeper reason to take them seriously now. I argue that modernity is back on the agenda in Africa, as it is in other areas of the world. It is more insightful, perhaps more correct, to interpret the current experimentation in forms of rule-liberal representative democracy and the rule of law; forms of social living-the ideology of individualism; forms of economic production-capitalism; in Africa and other parts of the world as late transitions to modernity. I am quite aware that what I say risks being appropriated by social evolutionists who would like to make it appear as if Euro-America sits at the apex of the human social ladder with the rest of the world coming up the rear. Anyone who is familiar with the expostulations of Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington will see the point clearly (Fukuyama, 1992; Huntington, 1993b; Huntington, 1993c). But we may not refrain from drawing appropriate lessons from history for our own use because some might turn the same results to mischievous ends. It is worth taking the risk involved in this instance because I would like Africa, if its peoples so desire, to engage modernity in a conscious, critical way and embrace or shun it for Africa's own reasons, not out of ignorance or elemental hostility traceable to the conflicted legacy of its history in the continent.


What modernity?

We work with a very historicised and, therefore, narrow conception of modernity. Modernity, as it is understood here, refers to that movement of ideas, practices and institutions that originated in Europe the roots of which are generally traced to the Renaissance, moving through the voyages of Discovery, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. It gave us such milestones as the English Civil War and Act of Settlement of 1701, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Scientific Revolution as well as Capitalism. But it is modernity's philosophical discourse that interests us because, ultimately, its most lasting impact has not been that it enabled us to build nuclear weapons or send humans into space. Rather, in creating and widely disseminating a new and radically different the view of human nature unique to it, and creating the kinds of values, practices and institutions to enable this specific mode of being human to effloresce, modernity represents an epoch all its own in the history of human evolutioni.

The relevant elements of the discourse of modernity are the following: the principle of subjectivity and its social concomitant, individualism, the centrality of Reason, autonomy of action, liberal democracy, the Rule of Law, the open future, and an obsession with novelty. This is not the appropriate place to expound upon the meanings and entailments of the various aspects of modernity just iterated. In this section, we give a brief description of each of the features that will be discussed below. For our purposes here, the Rule of Law, autonomy of action, and the question of novelty shall not be considered.

Individualism

Samuel Ajayi Crowther Source: Decorvet Jeanne, "Samuel Ajayi Crowther - un père de l'église en Afrique noire", éd. Foi Vivante

The most important of the above elements to be discussed here is the idea of individualism. No doubt, the idea of individualism predated the modern age. My contention is that (1) the notion of the individual that is dominant in the modern age is without precedent, at least in the Euro-American tradition from which our African prophets extracted it; (2) it is under the modern regime that individualism is anointed as the principle of social ordering and almost everything else is understood in terms of how well or ill it serves the interests of the individual. Thus, although it is true that there was some recognition of the individual in premodern epochs, it is in the modern epoch that the individual is not merely supreme; whatever detracts from the rights of the individual is, precisely for that reason, to be rejected. This notion of the individual took a long time to emerge but it received one of its most dramatic consecrations in the Protestant Reformation when the subject, that is, the individual, was made the centrepiece of Christian soteriology. The subject must win eternity for himself, helped of course by grace. One's genealogy, status and similar attributes counted for nothing, or at least theoretically ought to count for nothing in the allocation of goods, services, or even recognition. The key element is that of individual striving, what the individual makes of herself and whatever talent she is endowed with by Nature. Here is the source of the Merit Principle, the meritocracy that promises rewards to individuals according as they show themselves worthy by developing their talents. One consequence of the focus on the individual in the modern state is that no longer are individuals' futures determined by what station they were born into in life. Humans are adjudged capable of moving across status, class, and other boundaries as long as they are willing to improve themselves enough to fit them for whatever station they aspire to occupy.

Our prophets embraced the preceding idea of individualism and made it the cornerstone of their worldview. Whatever other influences they would later derive from their African origins and general milieu, the idea that if they improved themselves sufficiently, they would be rewarded with careers open to talent was appropriated directly from their engagement with modernity. Needless to say, at the core of the individualist orientation is the idea of the person, the self, created by God, saved by grace. In the interim between its creation in sin and its salvation by grace, the self acquires stature by dint of hard work, education, and a little luck. This is the self that is accorded respect and whose well-being is the metric by which to judge forms of social ordering. I am not saying that the kind of rampant individualism that we usually associate with the modern variety would have appealed to any of them. But I definitely would argue that the self-of individuals-and the collective self-of groups-were objects of their solicitation.

The centrality of Reason

The second tenet of modernity that is of moment to us is the centrality of Reason. Modern society fancies itself as a society of knowledge, one in which the claims of tradition and authority do not mean much and every truth claim must be authenticated by Reason. Whoever can show that she has superior knowledge commands our assent and respect. This is contrasted with the premodern situation where authority went largely unchallenged, tradition reigned supreme and reason was appointed a handmaiden to Revelation. The African prophets adopted this tenet of modernity with aplomb. In their exertions, we can see them working extremely hard to acquire knowledge of not only the new ways of life that their sojourn in the New World of Slavery and the Slave Trade had socialised them into, but also that of their own societies, cultures, and customs. They provided us with our first models of intellectuals under the new dispensation inaugurated by evangelisation and colonisation.

Governance by consent

Finally, I refer to the central tenet of political theory in the modern age under which no one ought to acknowledge the authority of, or owe an obligation to obey, any government in the constitution of which he or she has played no part. That is, no government is legitimate to which the governed have not consented. When the American revolutionaries first used this principle as their rallying cry in 1776, it was the first culmination of a new principle of legitimacy the philosophical grounds of which had been foreshadowed in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. From that point on, whether it was in the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the much less abrupt transfer of power from the monarch and the nobility to the House of Commons in Britain, the authority of every ruler by the grace of God or by reason of birth was vulnerable to the challenge posed by the new thinking concerning the issue of who ought to rule when not all can rule. It was this principle that, as we shall see, our prophets adopted in their argument that they must be rulers in their own house and that representative government was not a gift to be bestowed on them by the British, but a right that they had earned because they were citizens of Empire. Our prophets were so enthusiastic about the doctrine of governance by consent that they sought at different times to remake indigenous modes of governance in accordance with its imperatives. Such was the force of the principle that by the third decade of the twentieth century, "no taxation without representation" was a favourite slogan of leaders of the National Congress of British West Africa (Sampson, 1969).

The historical context

In what follows, I shall be arguing that the African apostles of modernity filled the role of prophets in the manner described in section 1. There were two dimensions to their starting point: the first was their experience of having been recaptured from slavers and slavery. As a result, their appreciation of the liberty promised for all under the modern regime was not merely theoretical. Theirs was an unalloyed disavowal of any and every regime that threatened to undermine liberty. The second was their description of the indigenous Africa to which they had returned. Given the approbation that they bestowed upon their new outlook on life, it is no surprise that they held their native counterparts to be backward, sunk in heathenism and requiring redemption through the light of Christianity and (modern) Civilisation. They attributed Africa's backwardness to the ravages of the Slave Trade and the prevalence of ignorance and superstition. Their preferred solution provides a pointer to their moral vision. They insisted that the future prosperity of their land depended on their taking the best from modern civilisation and combining it with what was best about their indigenous heritage and fashioning a synthesis that would deliver the promise of Christianity and Civilisation to their compatriots.

Let us rewind to the nineteenth century. The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery had just been abolished. Many slaves-Recaptives, as they were called-were being taken from their slavers and returned to Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa whence they'd been taken. Others were being repatriated from the United States and the West Indies or Canada-they were called freedmen. But before their return journeys many of them had undergone some fundamental reorientation, sundry life-changing experiences, the most important of which was their becoming Christians. However, to see their becoming Christians only in terms of its religious trappings will be inadequate, perhaps mistaken.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a small group of missionaries and politicians as well as other men and women of affairs, especially humanitarians, who believed that the success of their missionizing activities was to be measured by how quickly they were able to render themselves superfluous to the running of the local Church they had helped establish. Many of them had been active in the humanitarian movement that had spearheaded the struggle for the abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery. No doubt, the period witnessed its share of racist apologists who saw Africans as non-human beings or lesser human beings. Their ranks included missionaries and humanitarians. But many in the humanitarian movement saw Africans differently. They believed that the degenerate state of Africans at that time could not be separated from the centuries of degradation that they had suffered under the twin evils of the Slave Trade and Slavery. They contended that if Africans displayed lesser qualities than other humans, this was not because Africans were any less human than their fellows. Rather, the development of Africans had been stunted by historical factors. Thus, the humanitarians regarded the abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery as the absolute prerequisite for the rehabilitation of the Africans and for their restoration to their proper place at humanity's table. As a result, some missionaries and humanitarians believed that their task was to school Africans in preparation for that time when the latter must assume the basic prerogative of every human being: responsibility for themselves and their posterity. For those missionaries and humanitarians, their task was to create those conditions in which Africans could quickly master, once again, the art of self-government and its attendant responsibilities, and they, as teachers, would take pride in having weaned their heathen wards off any dependency.

A similar current was present among politicians, too. It was articulated for instance by Earl Grey, Colonial Secretary in Lord Russell's administration, 1846-52, in the following terms: "The real interest of this Country is gradually to train the inhabitants of this part of Africa in the arts of civilization and government, until they shall grow into a nation capable of protecting themselves and of managing their own affairs, so that the interference and assistance of the British Authorities may by degrees be less and less required" (Wilson, 1969).

Another manifestation of it is to be found in the resolution of the Select Committee of the House of Commons in May 1865 which said, inter alia, "that the object of our policy should be to encourage in the natives the exercise of those qualities which may render it possible more and more to transfer to them the administration of all the Governments, with a view to our ultimate withdrawal…" ( Resolutions of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 26 June 1865, Parliamentary Papers, 1865, v (412).

The sentiment was most pronounced among missionaries. One might argue that there was a convergence of views among the key sectors of nineteenth century West Africa concerning the aim of imperial activities there: freed slaves who had become socialized into a new lifeworld structured by Christianity; government officials who felt that the most economical way to build Empire was to rely on native agency and who saw their duty as making Africans fit for self-government; and missionaries who saw Africans as blighted children of God, no thanks to slavery, but God's children nonetheless who were capable of redemption and regeneration needing only temporary help from their missionary benefactors. Whether or not the government officials meant what they professed, and whether or not the missionaries were sincere in theirs, the Africans took the charge seriously and proceeded to make themselves worthy of self-government. The conjuncture we have described so far provided the context for the phenomena that we discuss in the rest of this essay.

The most vocal and the most profound missionary at that time was the Very Reverend Henry Venn who served as the Honorary Secretary of the spearhead organisation for the evangelisation activities of the Church of England, the Church Mission Society, from 1841 to 1872. Here is Ade Ajayi's summary of Venn's ideas on native Church organisation.

The Missionary Society he says in effect, is an organization with limited funds, but unlimited fields to cover. Its aim must be to create "self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating" churches. The missionary arrives in the field, sent out and maintained by the Society. His first converts should be organized in little bands under leaders and should start as soon as possible to make contributions to a Native Church Fund separate from the funds of the Missionary Society. Soon the bands should come together and form a congregation under a native catechist whom they should endeavour to maintain. Soon the catechist or other suitable native should be ordained pastor and the missionary can then move on to fresh ground. Thenceforth, the missionary is "to exercise his influence ab extra, prompting and guiding the native pastors to lead their flocks, and making provision for the supply for the native Church of catechist, pastors or evangelists…. "Let a native Church be organized as a national institution…. As the native Church assumes a national character, it will ultimately supersede the denominational distinctions which are now introduced by Foreign Missionary Societies… Every national Church is at liberty to change its ceremonies, and adapt itself to national taste." But that must be the work of the native pastorate. The temptation for European missionaries to assume the role of the pastor must be resisted, for, "such a scheme, even if the means were provided, would be too apt to create a feeble and dependent native Christian community (Ajayi, 2000a, pp. 59-60).

Notice the emphasis on the three selves-self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. This alone is significant. Were we to focus on its implication we would see the secular reach of what goes on within the religious sphere. Self-support means (1) that there is a self whose capacity to act and whose autonomy to do so must not merely be recognised but respected, celebrated even and (2) support cannot but include the creation of material means to ensure that neither Church nor pastor is beggared. Again notice the connections. Only a post-Reformation Christianity could articulate the kind of heterodoxy suggested by Venn. Even in our day, the Catholic Church does not allow anything similar. Venn took seriously the history of the Church of England itself and he was willing to extend the capacity for autochthony to the African Church. He insisted that perpetually feeding the native Church through aid from the coffers of the mother Church would create a dependent and feeble native Church. The mother Church must equip the native Church with the capacity for self-support and must insist on the latter acquiring such capacity in the shortest time possible. Hence, Venn, and others who shared his philosophy, wanted a total remaking of the African world, initially under their direction but quickly turned over to Africans themselves, a development that was to be anchored on the other two Cs-Commerce and Civilisation-that they deemed requisite to the achievement of their primary C, Christianity.

Many Africans took the humanitarian professions of faith in native agency seriously. They set about the task of remaking the African world after the fashion of the world that they had been inducted into, the signal values of which they had come to embrace, and the fruits of which they were earnest to make available to their brethren and sistren who, in their estimation, were still in the grip of heathenism. It is from among their ranks that the prophets that I am speaking of emerged, fully persuaded that a great future for Africa lay in a critical appropriation of what force and Providence had bestowed on them during their time in the Babylon of New World Slavery and the Slave Trade. According to Ajayi,

The most important factor in their make-up, however, was that in passing through slavery into freedom they had all been made acutely conscious of the gaps that separated them as a people from the Europeans. And in spite of having been subjected to Europeans or because of it, they wished to be like Europeans. They had all travelled far. A few of them had travelled widely and had seen something of the European world, either in Europe itself, or at secondhand, in Sierra Leone, the West Indies or Latin America. By and large, they all came back desiring to make certain changes come about… They were the first generation of Nigerian nationalists. Their nationalism consisted in their vision of a new social, economic and political order such as would make their country "rank among the civilized nations of the earth" (Ajayi, 2000b, p. 73).

Great Hall-University of Ghana Source: http://www.ug.edu.gh

THE PROPHETS

Samuel Ajayi Crowther

The first of the apostles that I wish to present for rather belated honour is the Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1806-1891). The contributions of Bishop Crowther have usually been processed through religious lenses. He was "the first non-European to be consecrated a Protestant Bishop since the Reformation" (Nicol, Introduction, 1969, p. 14; hereafter cited as Nicol) The evangelisation of much of present-day Nigeria was prosecuted under his direction. This achievement alone would constitute enough justification for adulating him. But I concur in Ade Ajayi's judgment:

To continue to treat Crowther merely as a success story-a slave boy who became a bishop-without probing further to evaluate the greatness of the man and his achievements, is to trivialize the issues involved and fall into the error of the CMS officials who, after the death of Henry Venn in 1872 chose to underestimate Crowther's tenacity of purpose and attachment to basic principles. On one point I agree with Jesse Page's assessment: "He was no fanatic on the subject of a native ministry, but he was a patriot to the core" (Ajayi, 2000c, p. 87).

Edward Wilmot Blyden, important African intellectual of the 19th century, who has contributed to the rise of Pan-Africanism. Source: www.sierra-leone.org

In spite of the hazards and difficulties, Crowther accomplished a surprising amount of work on the Niger, making the most detailed observations and reports of his progress on the banks of the Niger. He was interested in the religious ideas and practices of Africans, and he inquired diligently, listened closely, and depicted as accurately as he could what he observed and heard for himself. He was eager to corroborate, test, and confirm for himself, leaving issues of dispute open to opinion. He avoided rushing to judgment. Thus, although he noted somber aspects of their customs and traditional practices, Crowther was nevertheless enthusiastic about what he learnt of religion among the Ibo people, including their ideas about God (Chukwu, Chineke), ethics, and moral conduct. He said he had heard references to such things among the Sierra Leoneans of Ibo background but had refrained from stating them as facts "before I had satisfied myself by inquiring of such as had never had any intercourse with Christians…. Truly God has not left Himself without witness!" The idea that premodern Africa had anticipated in several crucial respects Christian teaching was stated by Crowther with such spontaneous conviction that it marked him as a native mouthpiece, not just as a foreign agent
(Sanneh, 2000, p. 180, senza note).

Crowther was not a mere romantic, bowing to native custom and practice. His natural habit of stringent scrutiny of the evidence he never abandoned to nativistic pride, and so he plunged into remote hinterland districts, grateful for what he discovered of encouragement there, certainly, but resolved also to confront what he judged harmful (Sanneh, 2000, p. 181).

His scientific orientation, his commitment to the study of African life and thought as a basis for determining the shape and direction of the native Church, is part of why I insist that it is way past time to celebrate his genius. And what genius it was! He set about acquiring the necessary tools for the performance of his scientific task.

When on his return from the Niger Expedition in 1842 he was recommended for ordination, the Bishop of London after interviewing him briefly is reported to have said: "He will do, but polish him up." He was admitted in September 1842 to the CMS Training Institution at Islington. At the May\June examinations, he evidently impressed his examiners. The Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge said he would like to take his answers on Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" to read to his friends in Trinity College. "If, after hearing that young African's answers, they still contend that he does not possess a logical faculty, they will tempt us to question whether they do not lack certain other faculties of at least equal importance, such as common fairness of judgment and Christian candor." Bishop Bloomfield later remarked: "That man is no mean scholar; his examination papers were capital, and his Latin remarkably good"
(Ajayi, 2000d, p. 107).

In the 13 years (1844-57) that he was a member of the Yoruba mission, apart from his evangelical and pastoral work at Igbein, he went up the Niger again in 1854 and 1857, building up the experience he needed for his later career. But the most important aspect of his work in those years was his career as a translator. We tend to take this for granted, but look at the record. He published a few extracts in 1848; the Epistle to the Romans in 1850; Luke, Acts, James and I and II Peter in 1851; Genesis and Matthew in 1853; Exodus and the Psalms in 1854; Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in 1856l and revisions of earlier texts. After 1857, he had to work with others. Thomas King had collaborated with him on Matthew in 1853. In 1857-62, they worked on the Epistles-Philippians, I and II Colossians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, John, Jude and Revelations, thus completing the New Testament in 1865. Schön and Gollmer edited these for linguistic consistency and published a revised new Testament in 1865. In 1867, Genesis to Ruth of the Old Testament was published. Others were brought in, probably because of their proficiency in Hebrew-Hinderer, D. O. Williams, Adolphus Mann, etc. By 1889 the whole Bible was available in Yoruba, though not in a single volume until 1900 (Ajayi, 2000c, p. 90).

James Africanus Beale Horton

James Africanus Beale Horton Source: www.sierra-leone.org

The second of the apostles whose importance I wish to underscore is Dr. James Beale Africanus Horton. Born in Sierra Leone on June 1st, 1835, in Gloucester, near Freetown, Horton's parents were originally of Ibo extraction. They were repatriates from Trinidad. He went to school in Sierra Leone and for further studies, beginning in 1855, first at King's College, London, where he trained as a physician, and later at Edinburgh in 1859. "Horton's career [at King's College] was brilliant, and he won prizes in Surgery, Physiology and Comparative Anatomy. His knowledge of Anatomy was amply demonstrated in his book West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native … and a Vindication of the African Race in which he challenged physical anthropologists who had asserted that the brain of an African was smaller than that of a European and that he was therefore less intelligent" (Nicol, 1969, p. 3). He went on to Edinburgh for further studies and in 1859 he obtained a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree. He had earlier in 1858 been admitted to membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (M.R.C.S.), which qualified him to be a doctor. "He joined the Army Medical Service as an Assistant Staff Surgeon in the West African Service and rose to the rank of Surgeon-Major in 1875, later ranking as Lieutenant-Colonel after twenty years' service and finally retiring on half pay in 1880. He was not the first African doctor, but he was one of the most versatile of his century" (Nicol, 1969, p. 4). He served many tours of duty in different parts of English-speaking West Africa from Gambia to Ghana.

His initial training as a scientist already makes it easier for us to identify him with the temperament ordinarily associated with doing science. However, Horton's career was extraordinary enough given his medical and scientific accomplishments. What made his accomplishments even more extraordinary were his writings in government, political theory, ethnography and sundry other areas. As Nicol remarks, "his knowledge of the classics, history, anthropology, science and medicine was remarkable for a man of any race" (Nicol, 1969, p. 1). Of course, it would be nice if I could explore his prodigious writings in some of these spheres. But such an undertaking is far beyond the scope of the present essay. What I hope to do instead is to present evidence from some of his writings and show how some of his articulations amounted to prophetic insights into times beyond that in which he lived.

As a scientist and man of knowledge, Horton's writings were prodigious. In language that is anticipatory of some of the contemporary responses to lingering pseudo-scientific racism, Horton used knowledge and scientific research to refute the racism of his time. It is important to comprehend why the appeal to science is as crucial to racists as it is to anti-racists. Modern society, as I have pointed out, requires that whatever is to be accepted as true must either be capable of demonstrative proof of the type to be found in mathematics, especially algebra, or emanate from empirical investigation, possibly experimentation, supported by facts and figures. Additionally, given that appeal to tradition and revelatory authority no longer enjoys any legitimacy, only that claim that withstands or justifies itself to Reason's scrutiny is deserving of a thinking person's assent. This was the ground of the modern epoch's denial of legitimacy to both papal and other types of sacerdotal authority and that of royals by the grace of God. As a credentialed member of that community in which only the authority of Reason and the possession of superior knowledge count, Horton was eager to show that he had the upper hand against the racists of his time. Needless to say, one often is struck by the irony involved in the situation where the self-appointed custodians of Reason and scientific rationality are frequently shown up subverting Reason by the so-called non-possessors of Reason when the former, in the face of facts and other proof, continue irrationally to deny the obvious. Consider the following critique by Horton of the alleged inferiority of the Negro Race:

It is in the development of the most important organ of the body-the brain, and its investing parieties-that much stress has been laid to prove the simian or apelike character of the Negro race…. The skull is, as regards the sutures, intimately connected with the brain; in man, we find that the posterior sutures first close, and the frontal and coronal last, but in the anthropoid ape the contrary is the case. Among the Negro race, at least among the thousands that have come under my notice, the posterior sutures first close, then the frontal and coronal, and the contrary has never been observed by me in even a single instance, not even among Negro idiots; and yet M. Gratiolet and Carl Vogt, without an opportunity of investigating the subject to any extent, have unhesitatingly propagated the most absurd and erroneous doctrine-that the closing of the sutures in the Negro follows the siminious or animal arrangement, differing from that already given as the governing condition in man (Nicol, 1969, p. 25).

Of late years a society has been formed in England in imitation of the Anthropological Society of Paris, which might be made of great use to science had it not been for the profound prejudice exhibited against the Negro race in their discussions and in their writings. They again revive the old vexed question of race, which the able researches of Blumenbach, Prichard, Pallas, Hunter, Lacépéde, Quatrefages, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and many others had, years ago (as it is thought) settled. They placed the structure of the anthropoid apes before them, and then commenced the discussion of a series of ideal structures of the Negro which only exist in their imagination, and thus endeavour to link the Negro with the brute creation. Some of their statements are so barefacedly false, so utterly the subversion of scientific truth, that they serve to exhibit the writers as perfectly ignorant of the subjects of which they treat. The works of Carl Vogt, Lectures on Man of Dr. Hunt, Negro's Place in Nature; and of Prunner Bey, Mémoire sur les Nègres, 1861, contain, in many respects, tissues of the most deceptive statements, calculated to mislead those who are unacquainted with the African race (cited in Nicol, 1969, p. 25).

John Ezzidio (ca.1810 -1872), slave from Nupe (Nigeria), become a wealthy merchant, Mayor of Freetown, and the first African elected to Sierra Leone's Legislative Council Source: www.sierra-leone.org

Africa, in ages past, was the nursery of science and literature; from thence they were taught in Greece and Rome, so that it was said that the ancient Greeks represented their favourite goddess of wisdom-Minerva-as an African princess. Pilgrimages were made to Africa in search of knowledge by such eminent men as Solon, Plato, Pythagoras; and several came to listen to the instructions of the African Euclid, who was at the head of the most celebrated mathematical school in the world and who flourished 300 years before the birth of Christ (Nicol, 1969, p. 18).

However that may be, what stands out is that Horton took a decidedly modern view of the appropriate mode of governance for Africa. For example, he embraced the core tenet of modernity in respect of political legitimacy: no one ought to obey any government to which he/she has not consented, in the constitution of which she/he has not had any hand. The most direct way of indicating this consent is through the vote. Hence, the electoral principle is the cornerstone of political legitimacy in the modern age. It was the political theoretical foundation of the demand for self-government by many in nineteenth century West Africa.

In his consideration of what sort of government should be adopted by "the political union of the various kings in the kingdom of Fantee under one political head", Horton recommended the electoral principle. "A man should be chosen either by universal suffrage, or appointed by the Governor, and sanctioned and received by all the kings and chiefs, and crowned as King of Fantee. He should be a man of great sagacity, good common sense, not easily influenced by party spirit, of a kind and generous disposition, a man of good education, and who had done good service to the Coast government…" (Nicol, 1969, pp. 41-42). Meanwhile, in his discussion of what mode of governance was appropriate for Accra, he recommended a republican government.

If this place must ultimately be left to govern itself, a republican form of government should be chosen. An educated native gentleman, of high character and good common sense, who has the welfare of his country at heart…should be selected by the Government as a candidate for the presidency, and offered for the votes of the populace in the various districts; and, when once elected, he must be regarded as supreme in everything, and the natural referee in all their quarrels and differences. He should be assisted by counsellors chosen by the people as their representatives. The term of office of the president should not be less than eight years, and he should be eligible for re-election (Nicol, 1969, p. 43).

It is on this ground that there is now a loud cry for a codex constitutionuum for the Confederation from the Government of the Coast. It is essential so that every branch of the Government should have its power and limits well-defined, protecting it against aggression, and 'ascertaining the purposes for which the Government exists,' and the rights which are guaranteed to it; securing its rights in the various provinces, and restraining it from exercising function which would endanger liberty and justice. The present drooping state of the Confederation can say with great truth, novus rerum nascitur ordo-a new order of things is generated (Nicol, 1969, p. 59).

Revd. S. R. B. Attoh Ahuma

Another one of the apostles was very clear as to what the idea of the modern self entailed. I refer to Revd. S. R. B. Attoh Ahuma. I conclude my discussion with a brief look at some of his reflections. Attoh Ahuma's book, The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness is a collection of columns he wrote for the Gold Coast Leader. I was intrigued by the author's Foreword to the collection part of which goes thus:

The Author indulges the hope that the principles therein set forth, and the sentiments to which he gives so inadequate an expression, may influence for good, not his contemporaries only, but also-and especially-the members of the rising generation, whose birthright, privilege, duty, destiny and honour it is to usher in an era of Backward Movement, which to all cultured West Africans is synonymous with the highest conception of progress and advancement. Intelligent Retrogression is the only Progression that will save our beloved country. This may sound a perfect paradox, but it is nevertheless, the truth; and if all educated West Africans could be forced by moral suasion and personal conviction to realize that "Back to the Land" signifies a step forward, that "Back to the Simple Life" of our progenitors expresses a burning wish to advance, that the desire to rid ourselves of foreign accretions and excrescences is an indispensable condition of National Resurrection and National Prosperity, we should feel ourselves amply rewarded (Foreword, Ahuma, 1971, pp. vii-vii).

What sense is one to make of this strange foreword and its core phrases: "Backward Movement," "Intelligent Retrogression" which, on the face of it, suggests the opposite of Progress? It is even stranger that those locutions describe the condicio sine qua non of progress. It is easy to read into the foreword the ruminations, perhaps even fears, of a wistful conservative in the grip of nostalgia for a world since lost. Yet when one reads the essays that make up the collection one finds that the author's deployment of what he called "a perfect paradox" is not meant to be taken at face value. Much of his conservatism was directed at his bid to prove that the peoples of the Gold Coast, regardless of their ethnic affiliations, did constitute a Nation and deserved to be accorded all the dignity and respect due such entities, especially in the context of nineteenth century debates about nationalism. We may not discount the importance of the changed context in which Attoh Ahuma was writing. He wrote much later after the rejection of educated natives by their white tutors. But he was also concerned to combat the excesses of those who thought that their salvation lay in absolute mimicry of European ways. In his view, however, the options for Africans were not limited to total opposition to or mimicry of the European ways of being human. What he advocated was the creative appropriation of indigenous culture and its use as the pivot of the construction of modern societies that would borrow whatever was useful from its European-inspired legacy. The man who seemed to be looking backwards wrote on Progress and the importance of the individual in language that conceded nothing to any modern conceptions of both terms. Quite the contrary, he called on the youth to make self-improvement their vocation, patriotism their cause, and the advancement of Africa their mission. To do all these things he asked youth to (1) take individualism seriously; (2) pursue knowledge and, (3) build the African Nation.

In an essay titled, significantly, "I am: I Can: An Appeal to the Rising Generation". Ahuma wrote:

The first essential prerequisite in the voyage of the discovery of ourselves as a people is the consciousness of ourselves. "I AM" is the keynote to all the harmonies and concords of individual advancement and power. Not "I AM" simply as a psychological abstraction, but the realization of the living personality and all that it denotes and connotes. The first person singular of the verb To Be is, after all, the most formidable word in the vocabulary of human thought and progress… (Ahuma, 1971, p. 22).

"I AM" and to know it, is the head and front of all true and genuine success in life. It is the fount from which bubble those graces and virtues which minister to the growth of a nation's vitality and productivity. The horse, the elephant, and the greyhound cannot testify to such consciousness; science may, in its ultimate deductions, credit them with the possession of intuitive faculties marvellously akin to the perfection of instincts on the borderland of human psychology, but the creatures can never know that they know. To save the country, to develop its resources, to maintain its rights and privileges, and to advance its interests in all directions without bungling and blundering and against fearful odds, our young men must "see visions" and "multiply visions" and this is impossible of accomplishment unless they know themselves (Ahuma, 1971, p. 22).

[The Youth] should make it their ruling principle to concentrate their mental powers, their powers of observation, reasoning, and memory, on the primary objects of their engagement. "Never to observe without a thought; never reason to confident conclusions without a sufficiency of certainly verified facts; never to acquire facts without submitting them to the test of reasoning and, when occasion offers, to the test of experience, as it has been conclusively remarked that observation without thought is a hasty observation, and the experience derived from it wasted; and if we reason without a sufficiency or verification of facts we shall reason into error; and if we remember without comparison the result will be that we shall be a vast storehouse of inconsequential knowledge" (cited from Wilson, 1969, p. 195).

In lieu of a conclusion

Crowther, Horton, Ahuma, and several others, were all part of a ferment in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century made up of those who stood for the primacy of native agency, the capacity of Africans for self-government, and the recognition by the rest of humanity of Africa resurgent in the aftermath of the debacle of the Slave Trade and Slavery, all within the boundaries of a deep faith in the promise of modernity especially regarding liberty, equality, and fraternity. If in reading this essay others are challenged to begin to delve into their legacy and situate them properly as precursors for African intellectual discourse at the present time, the modest aim of the current essay will have been more than achieved.

This is the written version of a presentation under the same title to a special panel on 'Politics and Prophecy in Africa' at the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion, Nashville, Tennessee, in November 1999. I am grateful to Simeon Ilesanmi who invited my participation on the panel. A different version of the paper was presented to the Conference on 'Henry Sylvestre Williams and Pan-Africanism: A Retrospection and Projection' held at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, 7th-12th January, 2001. It was also presented to the Conference on 'Hegel and Africa' held at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in March 2001. I would like to thank John McCumber and Robert Gooding-Williams who invited me to contribute to that conference. Finally, I did the research and writing of the original draft of the paper during my tenure as a Visiting Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow, at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia in 2000-2001 academic year. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Ford Foundation for my stay there. And I thank Reginald Butler and Scot French, Director and Associate Director, respectively, of the Woodson Institute for facilitating my work there during my tenure.

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

The table below shows the distribution of universities identified per geographic areas. A complete list of these institutes is available in the box.

TABLE

The distribution of these universities is rather uneven owing to the much greater weight in this sense of three countries, Nigeria, South Africa and Sudan – which, moreover, account for over 30% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa - with 49, 32 and 14 universities respectively - over half of all the universities identified. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the remaining 93 universities are distributed over 38 countries.

Alongside this purely numerical increase, African universities have also been growing in terms of the production of autonomous study curricula designed to meet the priorities and needs of their respective countries and of the continent in general. Specialized university research centres have been set up and have been working to produce research and publications adequate to international standards (Saint, 1993). University lecturers, who used to be mostly expatriates, are now mostly local, while the development of intellectual communities has been favoured (Saint, 1993; Blair, Jordan, 1994).

Currently the African academic world is facing an increase in the social demand for higher education, resulting from population growth, the higher rate of basic education and the emergence of an African middle class. The number of registered students at the universities of Sub-Saharan Africa has risen by 61% in ten years, going from about 337,000 students in 1980 to an estimated 542,700 in 1990. It is estimated that in the following decade this rise was even greater.

At the same time we are seeing a proliferation and diversification of tertiary education institutions, which are transforming from elitist institutions into mass education institutes.

One example is the University of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland (UBBS), which until 1964 was a single university with campuses in three countries. Since 1975 the various campuses have become autonomous, so that now there are three universities; the University of Botswana, the University of Lesotho and the University of Swaziland

Moreover, this has come about at a time of crisis in university investments linked to the economic stagnation in the continent and, in many countries, to structural adjustment policies.

Closely connected to this problem, and equally felt, is that of the migration of university staff. The World Bank estimates that about 23,000 university lecturers leave Africa every year.

Despite these problems, a survey recently carried out in seven African universities (National University of Benin, the University of Botswana, the University of Ghana, the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Zambia, and the University of Zimbabwe) has come up with data which contradict some of the more common assumptions concerning the situation with university staff in African universities.

Indeed, in all the universities considered, in the period 1988/92 teaching staff remained stable or increased. The quality of staff resulted to be on average of high level. The propensity to remain at one’s own university was expressed by 75% of those surveyed (R. Blair J. Jordan. 1994).

Among the problems faced by African universities is their relative condition of isolation, with consequences also in terms of the migration of teaching staff.

In recent years, however, forms of partnership and networks are being formed both between African universities and between the latter and the institutes of other continents.

This is the case of the Association of African Universities (AAU), which is based in Accra in Ghana, and which has recently published the second edition of the "Guide to Higher Education in Africa" and promotes the African University Day. A very high number of universities also has links with American and European institutions.

Another new development is the creation of virtual academic communities. The most important project of this kind is the African Virtual University (AVU), which uses satellite communication. In addition, on line resources are available to all African students and researchers, including completely free libraries and data bases, such as the African Digital Library, with 7,600 books available for consultation free and the African Virtual University’s Library, which provides access to 2,400 specialized journals. Both these resources can also be accessed through the web site: http://www.AfricaEducation.org.