America through Africa and Asia

Abstract

“A pedigree bloodhound for scenting out Negroana” was what I was called twenty years ago by Cedric Dover, a Eurasian writer unduly neglected today. I am content to accept his verdict on my pursuit of Afro-American and African studies, aldiough there is, perhaps, a little too much of Harriet Beecher Stowe's running dogs in the imagery for my liking and his statement seems to imply that I have spent all of my academic life tracking down disappearing black men and women in the dismal swamp of the past. It is true that I am never happier than when I have brought to light a forgotten figure with African ancestry. But my interests in Africa and America have ramified into other areas, especially into Scotland, at home and abroad; and I have spent some of my researches following Scottish themes. Yet, even here, continental and inter-cultural connections multiply, as the letter from Cedric Dover which I have quoted indicates. We were in correspondence about Robert Duncanson (1817–1872), a pioneer of Afro-American art: “a Scots Canadian mulatto born in New York State,” most of whose later life was spent in Europe, “where classical tradition took him to Italy and paternal tradition to Scotland,” whose “feeling of superiority … caused him to reject the Negro people and identify himself” with his father's country.