A very good copy of a desirable book: Blyden’s travels in Africa and the Middle East were vital in the development of his theory of Pan-Africanism and his most important work, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (London, 1887).
Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) was born in the Danish Island of St. Thomas, West Indies to parents of African heritage. From an early age he was inspired to return to his ancestral homeland, but not before equipping himself with knowledge and skills that could be used to aid the development of Africa. Once recognised as a student of exceptional promise he travelled to America, where he hoped to study at an institution of higher learning. Due to his race, Blyden was denied acceptance, and subsequently changed his plans: settling on the idea of moving to Liberia in West Africa, where the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States was establishing a high school.
He later joined the school and eventually rose to the position of Headship, a title that he carried until being elected to a professorship in 1862, at the newly-established College of Liberia. He balanced his academic duties with a political position as Secretary of State (1864), before terminating his professorship in order to devote his time to travel. Upon re-settling in West Africa he was made Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia in 1877. From West Africa to Palestine is Blyden’s record of one of his travels.
Having decided against the dangers of an overland route, he arrived in Egypt after a number of voyages, one of which took him to England. The passages detailing his stay there have much to offer, including remarks on a day in parliament and an evening spent at a reading by Charles Dickens. Writing wittily against some of the racist views he encountered, Blyden critiques the sources from which they rise – such as travel accounts that paint an unfair picture of Africa. Burton’s Wanderings in West Africa is targeted for containing a surfeit of opinion (much of it damning) based upon a minute amount of experience. Blyden highlights the chapter title “Three days at Freetown, Sierra Leone,” as indicative of this imbalance.
As soon as Blyden reaches Egypt, the reader can begin to trace the stirrings of the ideology for which he is known today: namely, that of Pan-Africanism. Everywhere he notes Biblical and ancient settings, and, more often than not, connects Africa to what he sees. He feels a “heritage in the Great Pyramid” as a descendent of the “enterprising sons of Ham” and recognises the features of the Great Sphinx of Giza as that of a black African. From the latter recognition, he states that if the Sphinx is a representation of the king ‘is not the inference clear as to the peculiar type or race to which that king belonged?’
Another part of Blyden’s later ideology, that Islam was a more empowering religion than Christianity for Africans, is not so pronounced — Blyden, during that period and throughout his life, remained a Christian — but there are mentions of visits to numerous mosques in the Holy Land. At the mosque of the West Africans in Jerusalem he witnessed “natives from Senegambia at prayers.”
Scarce in commerce, Rare Book Hub records just two copies in 1887 and 2010.
