Native Races and Nationalism in Africa

Abstract

THE development of nationalist ideas as an effective political force in eastern Asia and, more particularly, in India, has afforded a justification for those who hold that a like course of events may be anticipated sooner or later among the native races of Africa. Negro Africa, that is, Africa south of the Sahara, they would maintain, is an unsurpassed forcing house for ideas such as have inspired the more loudly vocal element in recent and current political agitation in India. For these regions of Africa are the meeting-place of two utterly diverse races, white and black, who are poles apart in physical character, mental outlook, tradition and culture, and of whom, while one, everywhere numerically the inferior, is politically and economically dominant, the other is rapidly transcending the limitations as well as outgrowing the opportunities of tribal code and indigenous culture. The natural division thus existing in the community, and reinforced by social and political barriers, must inevitably, it is held, give rise to a group consciousness on the part of native peoples, which unless checked or diverted, will tend to the more unstable and politically dangerous forms of racialism and nationalistic ideation.