Building the African Nation

Explores how people in East Africa came to see themselves as 'Africans', using a global intellectual history lens.

This study examines how people in East Africa came to see themselves as 'Africans', using a global intellectual history lens. Ethan Sanders challenges dominant understandings of nationalism in Africa, exploring how the thought of James Aggrey and Julius Nyerere shaped African Identity and offering a new definition of pan-Africanism.How did people in East Africa come to see themselves as 'Africans,' and where did these concepts originate from? Utilizing a global intellectual history lens, Ethan Sanders traces how ideas stemming from global black intellectuals of the Atlantic and others shaped the imaginations of East Africans in the early twentieth century. This study centers on the African Association, a trans-territorial pan-Africanist organization that promoted global visions of African unity. No mere precursor to anti-colonial territorial nationalism, the organization eschewed territorial thinking and sought to build a continental African nation from the 1920s to the 1940s, at odds with later forms of nationalism in Africa. Sanders explores in depth the thought of James Aggrey, Paul Sindi Seme, and Julius Nyerere, three major twentieth-century pan-Africanists. This book rethinks definitions of pan-Africanism, demonstrating how expressions of both practical and redemptive pan-Africanism inspired those who joined the African Association and embraced an African identity.