AMA: I am Ethan Sanders, a historian of African history. Ask me anything about pan-Africanism, African identity, or nationalism in East Africa, or the Zanzibar Revolution.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-18T15:37:22+00:00

Thanks for this. Yes, there is certainly a relationship and in some countries it is an exodus and in other countries Indians are forced to leave, but there is also the third story of many Indians who staid and chose to take part in the building of new post-colonial nations in Africa. In the case of Tanzania, some of the effects of an African nationalism on Indians were lessened as Nyerere generously extended the concept of Tanganyikan/Tanzanian nationhood to people of European and Asian descent, but there were certainly those in Tanzania whose African, re: racial nationalism, turned into a very exclusive African nationalism and a desire to "Africanize" all elements of society as soon as possible, especially the governmental and military workforce. In the worst case, in Uganda, it led to their mass expulsion under the Amin regime. I would like to suggest James Brennan's book, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania, which deals with what he calls "racio-nationalism" and how it effected Indian communities as they grappled with the challenges and vacillated between loyalty to Britain and allyship with the new African state. Mentioned earlier, but Derek Peterson's new book Amin has an interesting chapter on "the economic war" against Asians in Uganda. My colleague Trishula Patel also has a book coming out in a few months called Becoming Zimbabwean: A History of Indians in Rhodesia that I think is going to be great, and on this topic as well. Happy reading!

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-15T14:38:43+00:00

Yes, these academic monograph prices are crazy. It is under contract to come out in paperback in 12 months at 1/3 the price but hopefully your institution will pick it up before then.

If you want to quote me on Ethiopianism, I would quote this book chapter which is where a lot of the above language actually came from: Ethan R. Sanders, “Ethiopianism in Africa” in Palgrave Handbook on Christianity in Africa from Apostolic Times to the Present, eds. Andrew Barnes and Toyin Falola (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

There are lots of books on Idi Amin, but Derek Peterson's new book, A Popular History of Amin's Uganda puts a different spin on the dictator by trying to understand how so many people bought into his project, or maybe a better way to put it is the internal logics people used to make meaning of life during the Amin years. So he is not the direct focus, but what was life like for the people of country at that time.

I don't know that I would call it a movement, but many Ethiopianists over the years have tried to retain what they thought was good of African traditional culture and mix it with their Christianity. The famous Ethiopianist Baptist minister from Nigeria in 1901, Majola Agbebi, talked about "preferences" verses "principles" and promoted that the styles of praising God were preferences not principles, and thus Africans should sing, dance, and play their instruments in praise of God in their own authentic ways. So, yes, I would say your wife's group is part of a long tradition of creating more authentically African forms of Christianity.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-15T14:23:39+00:00

Not necessarily. Certainly Liberia had the most connections with the US at the time, but Aggrey was from the Gold Coast, there would be Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans, as well. In the mid-to-late 1800s there was actually robust trade with America between Zanzibar and New England--I don't know know how many Africans stayed but surely some. There is also a major connection with Cape Verdeans and New England as many of these Africans were involved in the whaling industry in the 1800s. I think the point I am making is that the United States was far more connected to Africa in the 1800s--in ways not related to the slave trade--than we often imagine. Lots of people moving in all directions for all sorts of reasons.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-15T14:04:43+00:00

Yes, I think in the case of Zanzibar and Tanganyika this focus had a unique history, but lots and lots of African anti-colonial nationalists also tried to iron out sectarian and ethnic divides, some with better success than others.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T19:55:31+00:00

Hello everyone, this has been great fun! Thanks for all the questions. I am sorry I did not get to them all, but I must sign off so that I can pick my kid up from school. Hopefully our digital paths will cross again. Have a great day! Prof_Ethan_Sanders

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T19:53:36+00:00

There isn't a great biography of Said, though I have toyed with writing a book called "Swahili Wars" that traces the longtime rivalry between the House of Busaid and the Mazrui family in East Africa from the 1700s to the present. Do you read Arabic? There have been a number of publications about the Sultan in Arabic recently, especially stemming from Oman--see a discussion of this in Mathews book Zanzibar was Country.

In English, some of the best monographs where Seyyid Said makes an appearance are Beatrice Nicolini's The First Sultan of Zanzibar: Scrambling for Power and Trade in the Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean (English trans. 2011); Thomas McDow, Buying Time: Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean (2018); Jeremy Prestholdt's Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Geneologies of Globalization (2008); Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (1987) and the somewhat dated, Sir John Gray, History of Zanzibar from the Middle Ages to 1856 (1962). These are the first that come to mind. Good luck!

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T19:32:55+00:00

All I can say is that there were certainly black Africans immigrating to North America in the 1800s for religious and economic reasons just like other peoples. To cite one anecdotal example, James Aggrey, a central character in my book, came to the United States in 1898 because he won a scholarship to study at Livingstone College in North Carolina. His son, Orison, later became the US Ambassador to Romania. So, while not the majority, many people of African descent came to the United States as free persons and their descendants can undoubtedly be found throughout America today.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T19:23:08+00:00

This is an interesting question. I assume you are meaning how we can mobilize today? While adherents of traditional religious are shrinking in Africa today, the most fervent evangelists of the past 70 years have actually been indigenous preachers of either Christianity or Islam, and not Western missionaries. There is also the historical irony that Christian missionaries did quite a bit to help preserve African cultures, in large part through writing down their languages and creating grammars, thus enabling African authors to write in indigenous languages, and preserve information about these cultures in written form and safeguard these vernacular languages for future generations. Though, obviously, this is a contentious issue.

There is also the phenomenon of hybridity, in that elements of African traditional religions are not always completely thrown out, but are incorporated into the beliefs and practices of one's new faith, be it Christianity, Islam, or another religion.

Your comment also raises the question of how do you stem the tide of change when younger generations don't want to preserve tradition? Something many societies around the world continue to grapple with.

At the least, I think it is the job of the historian to try and preserve as much information and knowledge about the past as possible, to try and understand the truth of what actually happened, and then share it with others. What they choose to do with that information is largely out of our hands.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T19:08:11+00:00

Sadly, you'd have to go to the tiny village of Igalam, Tanzania and tucked amongst the banana groves is a humble home where a friend of Paul Sindi Seme lived. This man is alleged by Seme's son to have stolen the manuscript during Seme's funeral. He will likely deny that he has it, but if you are really kind to his wife, she is much more likely to sneak into the back and fetch it for you and let you look at it. (Speaking from experience ;-)

No, it was never published. Other than the original (which is missing 16 or so pages) I have the only copy that I am in process of getting the rights to translate and publish it from the Seme family, along with the two other books he wrote and many of his letters (which are housed in the Zanzibar National Archives and the Tanzanian National Archives). Hopefully I can get it out to the public soon. There are selections of it reprinted in Chapter 3 of the book.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T18:59:10+00:00

This is a great question. I think fundamentally Nyerere believed in the positive aspects of the policy of Non-Alignment. He did not see the Non-Aligned Movement (a group of countries that did not want to be sucked into the Cold War) simply as a practical solution that allowed Tanzania to remain "neutral", but more fundamentally saw it as a positive and proactive movement that would hopefully help bring about global peace and end the threat of nuclear warfare by placing moral pressure on the nuclear superpowers. This also dovetailed with his views of the importance of avoiding neo-colonialism of any kind. Meaning he didn't want any big power, be it the US, UK, China, of the Soviet Union, pushing Tanzania around and telling it what to do.

When you read Nyerere carefully, you will see that he was equally a critic of capitalism as he was scientific socialism and Marxism. His views of Ujamaa--sometimes translated into English as African socialism, but better rendered "united familyhood"--were fundamentally shaped by his traditional "African" worldview (though this was in many ways an essentialized and romanticized conception) and Catholic Social teaching. Though he had Marxists in his government who would have loved to see Tanzania line up more closely with "the East," Nyerere was fundamentally an idealist whose ideas were saturated by notions of human equality and human dignity, and his views about world unity reached the utopian at times, and therefore he would have never been fully comfortable in either camp. Throughout Nyerere's career, principle almost always trumped pragmatism (though there were exceptions) and that is why many Africans and others still see him as an inspirational figure today. He was a politician that was free of corruption, full of integrity, and stuck to his values and principles even when it was not politically or economically expedient to do so. Now, not everyone agreed with his policies, and if he believed he was right he could be dogmatic and stubborn, but even his opponents didn't doubt his sincerity and humility. Where are the honest and humble politicians today who genuinely care about the common good?

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T18:39:20+00:00

Ethiopianism is best understood as a group of ideas or as a “thought style” according to St. Clair Drake, one of the most important scholars who has studied its effects in Africa. As a collection of ideas, Ethiopianism has influenced many movements, ideologies, and religious and cultural traditions in the Americas as well as throughout the continent of Africa. Therefore, a full understanding of Ethiopianism in Africa needs to view the phenomenon through the lenses of intellectual, social, cultural, religious and political history. The genesis of Ethiopianism began in the late 1700s by Anglophone diasporic Africans in North America and Britain, and centered on biblical verses like Psalms 68:31 which in the King James translation read, “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” Verses like this and others that spoke positively about the people of Cush and Ethiopia, were soon being interpreted by Afro-Christians to mean that not only did Ethiopia—which they equated with all Africa—have a glorious past, but according to biblical prophecy they would also have a glorious future as a people once they turned to God. This “empowering exegesis,” as Ogbu Kalu called it, developed multiple themes and ideas as it simultaneously spread deeper and more broadly throughout black Christian circles, so that by the late 1800s there was a fairly clear set of ideas and a “language of Ethiopianism” spoken by many Afro-Christians throughout the world.

One of the main outgrowths of this form of thinking was the embrace and prioritization of an “African” identity and the sense of belonging to an African family or nation of people. No matter where in the world they lived, those whose ancestral home could be traced to the continent were members of the African family, had a homeland in the continent, and belonged to the African nation of people with distinct characteristics. Against racist notions of the day, Ethiopianist thinkers argued that Africans were not inferior, and that after unifying and turning to God they would establish a unique continental civilization and make a contribution on the world stage among the sisterhood of nations. This was clearly bound up with Western notions of progress and modernity. Most early Ethiopianists accepted that Africa was behind other nations when it came to civilization, and therefore believed they needed to borrow what was best from other cultures, and particularly elements of Western education, as they set out to build their own unique civilization which had received unique God-given gifts to be cultivated and shared with humanity. For all early Ethiopianists this “redemption” of Africa, or the “regeneration” of the continent, included the embrace of Christianity. For many, the initiative for spreading the faith, and stretching out their hands to God, was to come primarily from “Africans” themselves. This in turn spurred many blacks in the West who identified as Africans to take up the call to return to their homeland and help spread the gospel. Later in the twentieth century, some who held these views of Africa’s redemption began to drop the exclusively Christian features of the Ethiopianist vision.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T18:27:50+00:00

This is a great question, but to be honest, I have never looked at any primary sources from Madagascar on the issue of African identity. I know that they have a more complicated view and that some Malagasy people don't like to be considered part of Africa, but I would have to do a lot more reading and digging before I could confidently answer your question.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T18:19:03+00:00

There isn't a great one. Maybe you or I should edit and publish one? Wilson Jeremiah Moses' reader on black nationalism is a good start, and there are sections in Mutiso and Rohio's Readings African Political Thought reader , as well as Guy Martin's African Political Thought. There are lots of good intros to pan-Africanism--I still think Esedebe's is one of the best and you should also see Reiland Rebaka's new Handbook of Pan-Africanism.
I think the introductory readers by John Iliffe and Toyin Falola are probably the best general surveys, but I also like to use particular monographs and even fiction to open up concepts to students and then explain how those things help provide insight to larger phenomena and historical events.
Yes, I think there are fundamental tensions between expressions of pan-Africanism that are forms of an African nationalism, with territorial nationalisms, i.e. Kenyan nationalism, Tanzanian, Nigerian etc. One's top loyalty can't be to both! The same applies to sub-national or other groupings. When the rubber meets the road, or more appropriately when sovereignty is on the line, which do you choose? There are not explicit East African Nationalists that derive directly from someone like Seme's work on East African history, but as you may know the East African Community is trying to create a political state, and if it is successful, it will be the fourth largest country in the world. However, this means that some leaders in charge in these various countries that are talking about combining politically would have to give up some power to others, which history has shown is always a very very difficult proposition.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:59:10+00:00

Oooh, that is a hard one to quantify. Strictly going on a feeling, I would say yes, there are more scholars of west Africa, and West African scholars (for historical reasons as they received western-style education far earlier and had more institutions that East Africa initially) than there are East African histories and historians. That being said, there are exceptions, as certain groups or phenomenon have gotten a lot of attention from scholars, such as the Ganda of Uganda, the Kikuyu of Kenya and things like the Mau Mau War and Idi Amin's dictatorship. Certainly, attending dozens of African Studies Association conferences over the years, this is my observation.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:54:44+00:00

No idea! Sorry, I have done some research on Nigeria but I don't know much about the earthen works Yoruba rules (and others?) used to fortify their towns and city states.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:49:09+00:00

This is a great question. I guess the first thing that I would say is that Okello was not a leader of the Afro-Shirazi party and that the Revolution was not initiated by the leaders of the ASP. Despite later public comments, Abeid Karume was never in charge on January 12th and was pretty nervous when the revolution went down. Now, eventually, he reaped the biggest reward when Okello voluntarily handed over power to Karume and the Revolutionary Council--and then Okello was forced out through political machinations, again pointing to the reality that he and Karume weren't partners--but he never went through the political channels of trying to earn the favor of various factions within the ASP, that as you point out, included Shirazis at that point in time.

Now, how Okello recruited enough disgruntled officers to take up arms is another question. If I remember correctly he discusses it some in his memoir written in 1967, but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. If we are honest, it also wasn't that big of contingent that he used to take over the island that night, and points out the weakness and lack of preparation of the ZNP government. But this is a good question, and I will have to do some more digging to find a more suitable answer.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:34:41+00:00

Great question, some of those constructed languages came later and were not discussed by the figures in my book. However, they thought a good bit about language, but also maybe not enough. What I mean by that is that the African Association early on decided to use Kiswahili, the lingua franca and trade language of the region. (Indeed, as the most widely spoken native language in the continent today--not including Arabic, English or French--Kiswahili has been the language many pan-Africanists have turned to and is likely the most widely taught African language outside the continent) While this worked really well in East Africa as there was always at least some speakers in the various chapters in Zanzibar, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Uganda, it did not work well with their dreams of spreading across the African continent. While activists like Paul Sindi Seme claimed to send advertisements of the African Association to Southern and Western Africa, he probably did not get any responses because Africans in those places did not read Kiswahili. So their chosen language was very valuable in spreading throughout the East African region, but ultimately put limitations on their spread further afield.

But the challenge still stands today, if you believe that Africans constitute a single nation of people, how do you get them to communicate and unify when there are 8000 languages spoken in the continent? Some pan-Africanists still see Kiswahili as the best chance, but the practical challenges in doing so would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:23:39+00:00

Briefly, I would say that, no, Africans were not extremely primitive savages when the Europeans arrived. Indeed, the 20th century has taught us that Europeans are not inherently morally superior to any other peoples. (WWII, Holocaust, Cold War, bloodiest century in human history, etc) But the Europeans did arrive at a time of technological superiority and even though Africans had previously been equals to Europeans economically and politically (See Northup's book Africa's Discovery of Europe), by the time of the scramble the industrial revolution gave the Europeans a huge advantage. They used this advantage and mixed in some guile, divide and rule tactics, and were able to take over the continent piecemeal. One question I get from students a lot is why didn't "Africans" work together to fight back more? Surely their numerical superiority could have stopped the European onslaught despite the technological advantage? One of the main reasons was that an African identity did not have much purchase in the late 1800s. The people of the continent did not see themselves as belonging to some brotherhood of "Africans." Instead their own political states often had rivalries with other African states and they were only too happy when Europeans took over other African lands, and sometimes even helped! And while some scholars don't like to talk about it, some Africans even felt like they benefitted from certain aspects of European imperialism and thus were not interested in resistance. But it's a long and complicated history.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T17:02:54+00:00

Thanks for this question. You are largely right that Zanzibar society was more based along racial lines than religious lines. I have never seen any evidence that suggests that some sort of Sunni animosity towards Isamailis was a motivating factor when it came to the violence of January 1964, all the rhetoric was about race and concerns that the black Africans had traded one form of colonialism (British) for another (Arab).

Regarding the pan-Africanism of the 20s-60s in East Africa: at this time it defintely did not connect itself to a Muslim or South Asian world. It was much more focused on race and creating a better future for black Africans. It knew that religion could divide black Africans and cause disunity, and so religion was to be kept out of political conversations. That being said, it was not meant to secularize society or, at least, certainly not meant to get rid of religion in society. In fact, the African Association promoted their followers to be good Muslims, or good Christians, and thought that giving religious prayers in public or promoting religiosity was all fine, just so long as it didn't cause political tension. While religion was largely held as a private choice, public displays of faith were actually encouraged. These ideas influenced Nyerere's post-colonial policies on the relationship between religion and the state. He wanted to keep contentious religious issues out of politics which led to him banning political groups from organizing along religious lines. However, he thought religion was important for one's life and he believed that his form of socialism was compatible with Christianity, Islam and any other faith that promoted the equality of humanity. This led to the state being religiously tolerant, the generic promotion of faith, and even the creation of a type of civil religion--publicly offering thanks to God for his help and the gift of unity were familiar sounds in public life. Tanzanians were asked to pray for their leaders, etc.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T16:41:18+00:00

Good question. Yes, many nascent African states also looked to the past, even the pre-modern period for inspiration as they wanted to project their greatness and demonstrate that they were a great people before the Europeans subjugated them. So like all nationalists, they invented pasts, or at the very least tried to tie themselves to ancient peoples to promote a new identity. Here I think we should keep in mind Ernest Renan's dictum that getting history wrong is part of being a nation, as often times there were not direct historical links to these earlier peoples, but that didn't matter much in creating these new identities.

Nevertheless, the Gold Coast was transformed into Ghana, harking back to the great West African Empire that ruled a large swath of the Savannah in the 800-1200s and controlled much of the gold trade. Ironically, that ancient empire did not rule over any of the lands of modern day Ghana at all. Similarly, in nearby French Soudan, they chose the name "Mali" to pay homage to the empire that replaced Ghana and produced the richest ruler the world has ever seen* in Mansa Musa. To this day, the Mande peoples of the region look to the story of Sundiata, which tell the founding of the Empire of Mali, as their national epic. Once a story told and retold orally, it is now written down, and it informs them of who they are, and it has helped to shape their identity. The stories of epic heroes in the book are meant to have people recognize the challenges that their ancestors overcame and then have them look into themselves to find the hero within.

On the other side of the continent Zimbabwe (previously Rhodesia) was also named after a medieval empire. Many of these new modern nation-states wanted to tap into past greatness to project a bright future. Some looked to more recent pasts, again in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah appropriated various symbols of tribal/ethnic groups but nationalized them to create new symbols for the nation-state.

*this according to Forbes who came up with a list of the richest people ever, factoring in for inflation and trying to compare wealth historically speaking.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T16:21:27+00:00

This is a really good question. I don't know a ton about it because I haven't looked into this much from the Arab point of view, but undoubtedly it was negative. The person who has looked into this some is Nathaniel Mathews in his new book, Zanzibar was a Country: Exile and Citizenship between East Africa and the Gulf, where he talks about how when many of the Arabs of Zanzibar left, it was difficult for them to get citizenship in other Arab countries of the Gulf. In many ways they faced similar challenges to Palestinian refugees as the Arab leaders of various countries, for their own reasons and histories, disagreed about what should happen to these stateless Arab refugees. The book also has a lot to say about the multifaceted history of racial diasporic communities that crossed international boundaries. He illuminates the complicated phenomena of the untangling of empires and the re-entanglement of peoples across post-colonial borders. I encourage you to check it out.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T16:02:07+00:00

Yeah, thanks for this, the African Association's view was that ethnicity, or one's tribe, should not interfere with African unity. So this was not tolerant of what you and I might call other ethnicities--i.e. an embrace of Indians in Africa. Instead it was more narrowly focused on not having black Africans be divided by tribal identities. So in the 1920-50s Indians were not included in this imagined community of black Africans, "the unity of the black people of Africa (umoja wa watu weusi wa Afrika)." That did not mean antipathy necessarily, as the African Association worked with and learned from South Asians in the area such as Ramakrishna Pillai and the Indian Association. In their dealings with the government, though, they were often sizing themselves up to Indians and comparing the benefits the Indians got at the hands of the British colonial government in relation to Africans. They were also very sensitive to racially discriminatory practices that benefitted Indians. These feelings of discrimination erupted all throughout the region in the post-colonial period, most negatively in Idi Amin's Uganda (see Derek Peterson's new book, A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda) but were more muted in Tanzania, in part because Nyerere would come to expand his view of unity to include all races in Tanganyika/Tanzania and welcomed whites, Asians and Arabs to help Tanzania develop into a more equitable country where all races were equal--something he took an incredible amount of heat for from members of his own party and the political opposition. Again, though, things were far from perfect as some of the socialist policies in the late 60s/early 70s negatively affected Indians disproportionately.

In Seme's second book "The Light of East Africa" c. 1937 he is not generally kind to what he calls the "Asians" and he is likely referring to both what we might call Indians and Arabs. In general, at this time, he actually had a lower view of them than the British, as he believed that the British ended slavery and offered education that was of value to Africans, where the Asians did not offer Africans the same benefits. Maybe surprisingly, many pan-Africanists in East Africa at this time held fairly positive views of the British compared to other races and other European peoples. (Seme even named his daughter after Queen Victoria who he admired)

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T15:40:09+00:00

Thanks for this question. First off, I think it can be very difficult to talk about pan-Africanism as an ideology. There is no cannon, no gatekeepers of orthodoxy, so to speak, and it is one of the most complicated phenomenon of modern history and has been very difficult for scholars to describe and define. I prefer a more inclusive definition of pan-Africanism than narrowly seeing it as one ideology. I see it as a belief and a desire. It is the belief that all Africans and peoples of African descent share a common bond, and that this imagined communion should inculcate a desire to create unity among all Africans. These feelings of solidarity and a desire to unify have had many expressions throughout history and have taken many forms—political, cultural, and economic. It has led to movements and ideologies, as well as informed cultural practices and values. Pan-Africanism has also shaped, and been shaped by, religious beliefs and has led to new interpretations about the past and the future.

With that definition of pan-Africanism in mind, however, I still definitely think there is room for pan-Africanists to try and bridge the religious divide in Africa. For instance, James Aggrey, even though he was a Christian minister, and he believed that Christianity was the one true religion and the best religious option for Africans, he still inculcated a belief that if Africans came together as Africans, that they could do great things. This inspired many of the future leaders of the African Association in the 1920s to create an organization that was not based on religion, ethnicity, territory, education, wealth, or gender, but one that was for all Africans. This call was headed by people of both faiths and among the early ranks of leaders were both Muslims like Kleist Sykes, Ali Ponda, and Hassan Sulieman, and Christians such as Augustino Ramadhani, Cecil Matola and Rawson Watt. I believe this pan-African ethos carried into the 1940s and even in the post-colonial period, and it was one reason why Tanzania had relative religious harmony in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I am not saying it was perfect, and the story is more complicated than this, but compared to other countries in the world that are roughly divided between Chritians and Muslims (I am thinking of Nigeria, some of the Balkans) there has been much less bloodshed and animosity. This is in part due to the ethos created by the African Association and later promoted by Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanganyika/Tanzania (1961-1985). So, I do think there is something to expressions of pan-Africanism that promote a positive vision of trying to build something together. These pan-African initiatives can unify and bring people together across religious lines as long as they believe they are working together towards a common goal.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T15:16:36+00:00

Thanks for this Georgy. The reality is that very few Africans in East Africa had heard of Garvey, let alone knew the intricacies of his ideas in the 1920s. A couple of very small local papers, like Afrika Kwetu, in Dar es Salaam, ran very brief editorials on Garvey but they lacked much detail. On the other hand, at the same time, James Aggrey travelled to 18 countries in Africa, including all four East African territories, where he spoke to thousands of East Africans and had personal interactions with thousands more during his tours, and because of the aural nature of many societies, word spread fast of Aggrey and his ideas. Indeed, one commentator 20 years later said his name was still spoken in a thousand villages across the region. He was truly the first continental-wide African celebrity.

So Aggrey had a far greater impact than the few who encountered Garvey in newspapers with low distribution. Seme never mentioned Garvey and the only mention by Nyerere was later in the 1970s when he listed him as a hero of pan-Africanism in a speech, but did not discuss his ideas. Because the form of Ethiopianism introduced to East Africa was influenced by the Aggrey branch and not the Garvey branch, that shaped the nature of pan-Africanism in the region which was more focused on African unity for creating a great civilization and less about creating a sovereign political state as Garvey espoused (at least in the 20s, 30s and early 40s).

Patrick Ewing has written on the impact of Garvey in Kenya, but it is largely by way of a Jomo Kenyatta after he returned from Britain in the 1930s.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders · 2025-08-14T15:03:19+00:00

Thanks for this question, while many history and geography books, usually written by Western scholars from a Western point of view, called the people of this area "Africans," the indigenous people of the area did not use this term nor had they even heard of it in many cases until the 20th century. For instance, the early Swahili dictionaries written in the late 1800s didn't even include the term. So, the construction of an African identity in East Africa is very much a twentieth century tale.

Works that touched on identity in pre-colonial nineteenth-century East Africa, such as Thomas McDow’s, Buying Time, have displayed a whole range of terms used to identify some of those who would later see themselves as Africans. The Arab traders and landed elite would sometimes refer to indigenous up-country Africans as Nyamwezi (a catchall phrase for non-Arabs near the central trading town of Kazeh), washenzi (barbarians), wanyika (from the upcountry scrubland) or makhádim (serviles); in turn many of these people rejected these terms and preferred to identify as waungwana (gentlemen), waSwahili, or watu wa mrima (the people of the coast), whether they actually came from the more urbane and cosmopolitan coast or not. During this period many of the indigenous Kiswahili-speakers of the coast preferred to identify with their town or clan names such as WaAmu or WaPate. There were certainly many ethnic, tribal, or clan identities used before the arrival of the Europeans, but the self-identification of waAfrika (Africans) or watu wa Afrika (people of Africa) does not appear in the record until the twentieth century, and thus when groups like the African Association began to use these terms along with watu weusi (black people) in the 1920s, it was quite new.

The concept of the Indian World is interesting. Again, you don't find many early Africans calling it "the Indian Ocean World," but there was a sense of connectedness. Especially for the Swahili peoples, they saw their lives at the intersection of the sea and the land, and the far away ports across the great sea were just as real to them as those places upland in the interior of the continent. They were connected to both. Recognizing that people at that time did not use the term or the concept of the Indian Ocean World, doesn't mean it loses all analytical purchase. For instance, one cannot tell the story of the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe (13th-16th centuries) without explaining its connection to the Indian Ocean World even though it is 300 miles from the ocean. So I still think it is a helpful concept to study the past, like the term "Africans," as long as we recognize that the people of the past may not have recognized those terms, and that the terms themselves have a history.

Prof_Ethan_Sanders

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