The Origins of Pan-Africanism

Dr. Ali Mazrui (1933–2014), a Kenyan political scientist, argues in his book The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986) that “one of the great ironies of modern African history is that it took European colonialism to inform Africans that they were Africans. As a result, one can say that it took Africans being ruthlessly exported by the millions as slaves to the Western hemisphere to create the foundation and struggle for the unity of African people throughout the world through the ideological and social movement known as Pan-Africanism.

To most historians, most notably Dr. Robert Johnson Jr., the genesis of Pan-Africanism begins on the tiny Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Dr. Johnson states, “The desire to re-connect with ancestral and traditional ties found expression in the drums of the African in Hispaniola, and in his/her militant resistance to slavery and separation from Africa.” As a result, Pan-Africanism found its birth in the nineteenth century in the Haitian Revolution. The successful rebellion of so-called primitive Africans against the modern French military under the leadership of one of the greatest military minds the world has ever known, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), ushered in a new era of African-national sufficiency. As a result, Independent Haiti became a symbol of defiance, achievement, and hope and a clear signal to Africans struggling against European hegemony worldwide…