SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Early pan-Africanism in a trans-Atlantic World before 1912

The Pan-African Conference held in London in July 1900 was an attempt by people from the black Atlantic world to express a collective voice at a time of aggressive Western imperial expansion in southern Africa and south-east Asia. The Conference has often been hailed by scholars as a significant event although it seems not to have been that significant to most of those who attended.  Nevertheless, the Conference stood central to the work of the African Association, established in Britain in 1897, and the short-lived Pan-African Association that succeeded it.  This paper identifies the people, both black and white, their origins, motives, and ambitions who were involved in these and subsequent pan-Africanist endeavours, and assesses their contribution to the movement to assert black identity and civil rights in Africa, the Americas and Europe before 1912.