Panafrikanismus,afrikanische Intellektuelle und Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

Abstract

Pan-Africanism, African Intellectuals and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries

This article discusses the efforts of African (and some African-American) intellectuals and political activists to counteract European racism and claims to superiority and to develop their own visions of modernity. The paper focuses on individuals and networks which could be linked to Pan-Africanist ideas. It discusses the projects and visions of early African nationalists such as James Africanus Horton and Edward Blyden, then briefly sketches the main features of Pan-Africanism as designed by W. E. B Du Bois and finally looks at two different trajectories of the Pan-African movement in the 1920s and ’30s: first, activities linked to the International Communist movement and secondly, the Négritude which gained prominence among francophone intellectuals from African and the Carribean in the 1930s. The paper argues that the many different trajectories of Pan-Africanism represented the rising mobility of colonized people and the emergence of politically active and well connected diaspora communities, a development which colonial powers regarded as a dangerous threat to their order of the world. The central vision behind the reflections and activities of such different figures as Blyden, Du Bois, Padmore, Kenyatta, and Senghor was to unify and integrate peoples of African descent all over the world and to challenge Western claims to superiority. Thus Pan-Africanism played an important part in anti-colonial and anti-western developments which contributed to the erosion of the global colonial order of the 20th century. Similar to other non-European anti-imperial and pan-movements, Pan- Africanism combined a critique of Western politics and culture with a modernization project that – although conceptualized as an alternative modernity – included many elements of the dominant Western modernity.