James Aggrey – African Villain or Hero?
A review of the article titled ‘James E. K.
Aggrey: Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African’ by Kenneth King
In
the article titled “Collaborator,
Nationalist, Pan-African”, King (1969) labors to give a different
perspective of the heroism of James Aggrey while at the same time admitting how
difficult that task is since among radical Pan-Africanists, he carries the
image of a villain. Even to the author, it looks much easier to describe Aggrey
as a collaborator compared to trying to portray him as a nationalist or
Pan-Africanist. King calls it a kind of Pan-Africanism that has suffered
neglect in the face of more combative standpoints of the likes of W.E.B. DuBois
and Marcus Garvey.
As
a collaborator, King asserts that the years Aggrey spent in America as well as
touring Africa made him believe he was perfectly suited to connect Africa with
Negro America. Celebrated as a ‘Good African’ among the whites, he endeavored
to make colonialism tolerable and black revolution untenable. Even then, he was
a symbol of racial solidarity and independent African to the blacks with an
embodiment of the kind of educational aspirations Negro America could provide
to the subdued continent. He found a middle ground between Booker Washington’s
school of thought and that of Dubois but leaned more towards Washington’s ‘Tuskegee’
idea of compromise.
The
author further argues that although complicated, Aggrey deserves a place in the
African nationalist thought due to his ability to tailor a message based on the
audience and being loyal to both the British and the Africans. Moreover, he
applauded educational and medical achievements resulting from the spread of
Christianity emphasizing that it was the best thing for his African people. He
also felt that slave trade was God’s plan to produce African expatriates who
would later come back to redeem the continent (King, 1969).
Finally,
on Pan-Africanism, his approach was again different in that he preferred a
focus on welfare than formation of black political movements which ran counter
to what King calls Garvey’s propaganda. Aggrey was never a fan of ‘anti-government’
disciples of Harry Thuku’s East African Association and somehow justified white
rule in Kenya in his speeches. Despite promoting an inferior version of
education to the Africans, his own education had the unintended consequence of
inspiring revolutionaries like Namdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah and Mbiyu Koinange
who wanted what he had and not what he was telling them to get (King, 1969).
In
this article Kenneth King gets it on collaboration since Aggrey described
himself as a ‘Britisher’ and a beneficiary of the wise generosity of the
British Empire while the colonialists regarded him highly in return as a
protector of their interests. What is perplexing though is King’s attempted redefinition
of what it means to be a nationalist or Pan-Africanist by equating it to the
unintended consequences of one’s action. If Aggrey is a Pan-Africanist because
his education unintentionally inspired revolutionaries towards superior
learning, then we may as well call Marie Antoinette a revolutionary for her
“let them eat cake” moment.
Aggrey
reserved his best praise for the British audience hence this article may still
not receive a positive reception in an era of black lives matter. Nevertheless,
his push for African education is legendary because it was better than getting
nothing under the prevailing circumstances. The jury is out there whether that
education in the words of Du Bois later offered equal opportunity for all
including the gifted manual worker to rise from peasantry to aristocracy or it
simply satisfied the inherent belief in the inferiority of the blacks by the
whites (Withun, 1960). One thing Kenneth King has achieved with this article is
that if we ever talk about African nationalism and Pan-Africanism, James E.K.
Aggrey’s name will never be entirely ignored regardless of which side you take.
References
King, K. (1969).
James E. K. Aggrey: Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue
Canadienne des Études Africaines , Autumn, 1969, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn,
1969), pp. 511-530. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian
Association of African Studies
Withun, D. (1960).
W. E. B DuBois and Irving Babbitt: A Comparative Evaluation of Their Views on
Education, Leadership, and Society. Phylon
(1960-) , Vol. 54, No. 1 (Summer 2017), pp. 25-42. Clark Atlanta University
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