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African Nationalism: Concept or Confusion?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Robert I. Rotberg
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Extract

In common usage, African nationalism is descriptive shorthand for an assembly ofseparate and distinct phenomena, some of which have already taken on the protective colouring of popular understanding. Africans generally agree that they have experienced nationalism; they know the tree of nationalism when they see it and have tasted some, at least, of its fruits. For many of them, and for students of recent African events, its manifestations are obvious, although the quality of its spirit remains, like most spirits, capable only of inexact description. It is, in essence, pretty much what it is.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , May 1966 , pp. 33 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

Page 33 note 1 For an excellent study of the over-all problem, see Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation: the rise to self-assertion of Asian and African peoples (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).Google Scholar

Page 38 note 1 Cf. Emerson, op. cit. pp. 110, 118, and 128.

Page 38 note 2 Carr, E. H., in Royal Instite of Interational Affairs Study Group Report on Nationalism (London, 1939,) p. 145.Google Scholar

Page 38 note 3 Shaw, G. B., ‘Preface for Politicians’, in John Bull's Other Island (New York, 1907), pp. xxxvi–xxxix.Google Scholar

Page 39 note 1 Quoted in Shafer, Boyd C., Nationalism: myth and reality (New York, 1955), p. 95.Google Scholar

Page 39 note 2 See Emerson, op. cit. pp. 19 and 27.

Page 39 note 3 Hailey's, Lord ‘Africanism’ seems particularly lacking in descriptive utility. See his An African Survey: Revised 1956 (London, 1957), pp. 251–2.Google Scholar

Page 40 note 1 Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: the rise of Gold Coast nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963);Google ScholarColeman, James S., Nigeria: background to nationalism (Berkeley, 1960).Google Scholar

Page 41 note 1 For details and references concerning much of what follows, see Rotberg, Robert I., The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: the making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873–1964 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).Google Scholar

Page 42 note 1 Quoted, ibid. p. 82.

Page 42 note 2 Ibid. pp. 85–91. See also Shepperson, George and Price, Thomas, Independent African: John Chilembwe and the origins, setting and significance of the Nysasland native rising of 1915, (Edinburgh 1958), pp. 269–319.Google Scholar

Page 43 note 1 For the Thuku disturbance, see Ross, W. McGregor, Kenya From Within: a short political history (London, 1927), pp. 25–35.Google Scholar

Page 43 note 2 Cf. Hodgkin, Thomas, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (London, 1956), p. 114.Google Scholar

Page 45 note 1 Rotberg, op. cit. p. 183.

Page 45 note 2 Young, Crawford, in Politics in the Congo: decolonization and independence (Princeton, 1965), pp. 281–98,CrossRefGoogle Scholar proposes a fivefold schema that unnecessarily includes overlapping categories.