James Aggrey was the most influential pan-Africanist in the Anglophone African world in the 1920s and was the single greatest influence on the early leaders of the African Association (AA). This chapter does a deep dive into Aggrey’s intellectual biography and his connection to the AA to argue that Aggrey transmitted Ethiopianist ideas to East Africans. It carefully examines the life of this remarkable global African intellectual by investigating the Gold Coast political milieu of his youth, his educational formation in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church in the American South, and his time in New York at Columbia and as a member of the Negro Society for Historical Research. It argues that Aggrey helped directly tie East Africans in the 1920s into a network of black thought that shaped their understanding of African identity and their role in the continent’s past and future, inspiring some of them to become redemptive pan-Africanists.

Julius Nyerere was one of the greatest African thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, but until now, no one has looked at how his time in the African Association (AA), before he left for Europe, connected him to a whole world of black thought and shaped his intellectual biography. After demonstrating the lessons Nyerere learned about African unity from the AA and figures like James Aggrey, it will demonstrate how he remolded and used these ideas, and how the strands of both practical pan-Africanism and Ethiopianist-inspired redemptive pan-Africanism can be seen throughout his career. It explores how his ideas of umoja shaped both domestic and international policies in postcolonial Tanzania including the relationship between religion and politics. It then examines how Nyerere wrestled with ideas of African identity, unity, and Africanness (Uarikfa) and highlights the inherent tensions between projects of territorial nationalism and political pan-Africanisms such as African nationalism.

The introduction engages scholarly debates around the topics of Tanzanian nationalism, African identity, pan-Africanism, and global intellectual history to indicate its contributions to those fields. It introduces the main question: How did an African identity come to have any personal or political purchase in East Africa in the twentieth century? The main case study focuses on the African Association (AA), a politically minded pan-African group with ideational connections to several streams of black thought. The members who chose this group, which promoted an African identity, usually did so for two reasons. They were either inspired by the redemptive pan-Africanism of some of its visionary leaders who engaged with the ideas of Ethiopianism surrounding Africa’s future and past and/or they were drawn to the strand of practical pan-Africanism cultivated by the leadership of the AA who sought to build African unity and open chapters all throughout the continent and even the globe.

Paul Sindi Seme is a little-known pan-Africanist but was the chief architect and popularizer of the African Association (AA)’s vision of continental and global expansion in the 1930s and 1940s through a vast network of correspondence. During this period, the AA attempted to spread the ideas of redemptive and practical pan-Africanism deeper into the interior of Africa by building a material circuit of ideas which they hoped would expand to all Africans across the globe. The practical work of building the African nation came through the mastery of the postal system, the circulation of statute books and membership forms, and the creation of regional conferences. Seme was not only a prolific letter writer but also completed several book manuscripts including the first history of East Africa written in an African language by an African (c.1937). This chapter analyzes his writings to demonstrate how his vision was influenced by Ethiopianism and redemptive pan-Africanism.

An intellectual history approach to the exploration of African identity in mid twentieth-century East Africa provides several insights into unresolved tensions in African political history. Building the African Nation argues that the failure of the Pan-African Movement to politically unify the continent in the heady days of the end of empire in the late 1950s and early 1960s should be partly attributed to the fact that competing nationalisms were at play. African and territorial nationalisms were vying for the loyalty of the people of the continent. Even though the relationship between the two proved to be beneficial to the aims of some territorial nationalists in solving specific problems – coordination of anti-colonial tactics, sharing of information valuable to decolonization projects, etc. – in the end, there were two separate identities aiming for ultimate allegiance. In hindsight, we can see that trying to build two nations simultaneously was bound to create tension or conflict and is one reason African political unity has proven so elusive. When we recognize that much pan-African thinking in the continent was born out of the idea that all Africans were one and should therefore prioritize a continental fealty, it becomes easier to understand how this made pan-Africanism at odds with territorial nationalists’ projects.

Previous scholars claimed there were no women in the African Association (AA); however, from at least the early 1930s a significant percentage of several chapters’ formal membership was made up of women. It is possible that some of them were inspired by the AA’s message of redemptive pan-Africanism, but Chapter 5 argues that the practical pan-Africanism strand was often most enticing for the women who joined. Many of these entrepreneurial female activists found a pan-African identity useful in helping them meet specific needs, accomplishing personal or collective objectives, or gaining a voice in the largely male-dominated political sphere and access to governing authorities. But the women and men of the AA did not always agree on the proper way to build the African nation and the Association served as an arena of contested space. This chapter unpacks the implications of this rare example of a mixed-gendered political organization in colonial Africa.

Chapter 6 demonstrates how the African Association (AA) utilized the political concept of umoja to build an organizational structure that would create the unity needed to create progress in their various spheres of action: local, territorial, regional, and global. The organizational pinnacle of their African unity were five Association-wide conferences with continental aspirations. However, the continental vision and project of the AA was dramatically altered in the late 1940s and early 1950s due to both changing geopolitics and interassociational feuds that spurred territorial self-interest and the splitting of the Association. Using a framework of competing nationalisms, the chapter demonstrates how the moves from a continental African nationalism to territorial anti-colonial nationalisms were contested and not inevitable. Thus, the creation of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in Tanganyika and the Afro-Shirazi Party in the Zanzibar Protectorate stemming out of the AA were not natural progressions but constituted a shrinking of vision and reengineering of aspirations.

This chapter follows the creation, adoption, and impact of the numerous constitutions implemented in colonial Nigeria, ultimately pushing the region toward adopting a more federal system of government. This chapter will contain overviews of the five important constitutions created in the colonial period, while also exploring the factors which drove the colonial government to push the region toward federalism and the greater inclusion of native Nigerians. It will identify two primary periods of constitution-making, one before World War II and one after, pushed more vigorously by nationalist groups. Federalism, codified by Nigeria’s consecutive implementation of different constitutions, promoted regionalism, causing the growth of ethnic nationalism. Consequently, ruling groups benefiting from previous, more unitary systems, like Northern Nigeria’s emirs, and small minority ethnic groups fearing the influence of larger groups, opposed the growth of federalism. As Nigeria transitioned into an independent nation, it walked a fine line between an oppressive unitary system and a chaotic federal one. This balancing act defined its constitutions and political landscapes during Nigeria’s colonial period, and continues to do so today.

This chapter analyzes the rich essayistic activity of the Harlem Renaissance (1919–1940). Through the visual arts, music, and literature, many African Americans responded to the changing national and international dynamics of the 1920s as an opportunity to leverage their creative arts and redefine their place within the nation. Poetry and fiction were the literary genres African Americans increasingly employed for these efforts. More ubiquitous was their frequent complement: the essay. Writers like Gwendolyn Bennett, Benjamin Brawley, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Eulalie Spence infused the essay with this ethos and positioned it as an equally important genre for chronicling the period. Indeed, it was through the essay that readers in the United States and in other parts of the world encountered rhetorical styles reflecting the racial pride and determination of the “New Negro.” Essays from the period detailing the array of forces and ideas shaping African American life – including migration, racial violence, civil rights, and Pan-Africanism – constitute dynamic narratives combining history, opinion, and critical redress.

Chapter 6 goes beyond a conclusion, calling more broadly for a serious appreciation of the political projects of African elites in critical geopolitics. This field has largely omitted African actors, discussing them, if at all, as being affected by the geopolitical ambitions of others such as China, United States, or France, rather than being considered as having active agency in shaping international politics. The chapter recaptures the African military politics that surrounded different proposals for military deployment for the Sahel as they were shaped by the foreign policy ambitions of South African president Jacob Zuma, Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno, the Algerian Commissioners for Peace and Security at the African Union Commission, as well as Nigerian politicians and bureaucrats from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). By drawing on the empirical insights of Chapters 1–5, Döring emphasizes the importance of studying spatial semantics in more general terms and how this provides a better understanding of changing paradigms for military action. This, as argued in the last part of the chapter, is indispensable in the current climate of re-emerging illiberal, nationalist, and authoritarian geopolitical narratives.

Pan-African thinkers in the pre-1945 period developed innovative ideas that challenged the racialized hierarchies of the world economy. Some of these thinkers are discussed in previous chapters, such as George Padmore and C.L.R. James (both discussed in chapter 7) as well as Amy Ashwood Garvey (chapter 10). This chapter discusses three other prominent Pan-African thinkers who sought to cultivate the transnational economic solidarity of Africans and the African diaspora in order to challenge this group’s subordinate position in the world economy. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey was the best-known popularizer of this kind of “economic Pan-Africanism” via his Universal Negro Improvement Association and its Black Star Line. The other two discussed in the chapter are W.E.B. Du Bois (from the United States) and Hubert Harrison (who migrated from the Danish West Indies to the United States). The latter two disagreed with Garvey and each other about a number of issues, ranging from their views of capitalism to the role of the African diaspora in Pan-African politics.