Duse Mohamed Ali and the development of Pan-Africanism, 1866-1945

Abstract

This thesis, through a narrative of Duse Mohamed Ali's life and times, aims to expose the milieu from and in which a particular Pan Africanist emerged, and thereby also to show other dimensions of Pan-Africanism to 1945 than set-piece conferences and congresses.

The first three chapters explore Duse Mohamed Ali's life and developing opinions up to the time when he became a fully active Pan-Africanist with the foundation of the African Times and Orient Review in 1912. Chapter one deals with what little is known about his Lgy ptian family background until the destruction of his family in 1882; chapter two with ris life as an actor and journalist in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and his early travels in the United States, Central and South America, the West Indies and Europe; and chapter three traces his connections with the seminal British left wing magazine The NewAae between 1909 and 1911, with the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, and discusses his political history of Egypt from the fall of Khedive Ismail to the assassination of Butrus Pasha, In-The Lend Of The Pharaohs, published in London and New York in 1911. This work is analysed to show the great debt it owed to other writers, especially the Russian Marxist Theodore Rothstein and the English conservative anti-imperialist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, as well as to show its author's own original contribution, namely his relating of British behaviour in Egypt to racism in general in the British Empire, and attack on the United States of America, for its violent and arbitrary oppression of Negroes - strictures by Theodore Roosevelt against Egyptian Nationalise having provoked the writing of the book.

Chapters four to six consider his life in London as a Pan-Africanist editor, political campaigner and organiser, and business man, between 1912 and 1921 when he left Britain for the U. S. A. Overall, they attempt to reveal the importance of his London headquarters, 158 Fleet . 3treet, not only as the place of publication of the African Times and Orient Review and Africa and Orient Review, but as the organising centre of a complex and interlocking group of political, cultural, religious, social and business enterprises and associations, designed to further the interests of either sections or the whole of what buss Mohamed Ali called the "darker races". The development of his own ideas is illustrated, through his writings in his two reviews and other contemporary sympathetic journals, as is his organisational role as a bridge between such diverse movements as Indian Nationalism, the All-India Muslim League, various Pan-African organisations in London, early West African Nationalism, Pan-Islamism, Egyptian Nationalism, the Khilafat Movement, and black nationalism in the United States. It is shown that although not neglectful of political aspects of the struggle of the "darker races" for freedom, by 1921 he had decided to pin his faith on an economic programme for race emancipation. This decision is also shown to rest within the context of a fairly general inclination in that direction by elements mainly from West Africa and the black community in the United States.

Chapter seven discusses his attempts, in conjunction with black Americans and West Africans, to put these economic plans into practice, during the period from 1921 to 1931 when he was living in the United States. It shows their conscious Pan-Africanism, relates them to the similar plans of other persons, especially Marcus Garvey and w. Tete-Ansa, and suggests overall reason for the invariable failure of all such schemes. Duse Mohamed Ali's relations with Marcus Garvey are discussed in detail, as is his role as an organiser of Islamic, Asian and African cultural movements in the United States, and his views on the race problem in American society. Chapter eight considers the final failure of Duse Mohamed A1i's plane for economic Pfn-Africanism on his going to Nigeria in 1931; the organisation and influence of his Lagos magazine The Coxgt; his role as mentor of a generation of young Nigerians who were to include many of the leading nationalist politicians of the post-war era; and his relationship with Nigerian political movements of the period 1931-45.

The brief conclusion makes general remarks about Duse Mohamed Ali's place within the world of Pan-Africanism during his lifetime.