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Africa and America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

George Shepperson
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Extract

(These notes were offered as a contribution to discussion at the nineteenth and twentieth century sessions of the Third Conference on African History and Archaeology at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, 3 - 7 July, 1961. Two additions - references 3 and 12 - have been made to the original notes.)

The historical position of the United States in Subsaharan Africa has until recently been one of detachment. There have been official moves, as when in 1833 an agreement was concluded with the Sultan of Zanzibar which, among other things, permitted American consuls to reside in his ports and judge disputes involving U. S. citizens; or the recognition of the Congo Free State in 1884. On the whole, however, the United States has left Africa to the European powers who took over the responsibility of governing her peoples.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 3 , December 1961 , pp. 25 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1961

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References

REFERENCES

1.United States Foreign Policy. Africa. A Study prepared at the request of the Committee on Foreign Relations. (46905. Washington, D.C.: 1959), p. 49.Google Scholar
2.But cf. United States Foreign Policy. Africa. A Study prepared at the request of the Committee on Foreign Relations, pp. 43–47.Google Scholar
3.At the time this statement was made I had not seen Norman Robert Bennett, “Americans in Zanzibar: 1825–45”, Tanganyika Notes and Records (Par es Salaam), no. 56, March 1961. pp. 93–108, reprinted from Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCV, July 1959, pp. 239–262. This article indicates clearly that there is scope for a full and detailed study of U. S. trade with East Africa in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar
4.“The United States and East Africa”, Phylon. Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture, XIII, 1, 1952, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar
5.Especially Knaplund, Paul A., ed., Letters from the Berlin Embassy, 1871–1874, 1880–1885 (Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1942: Washington, D. C., 1944), p. 358, etc.; An American Diplomat. The Recollections of Perry Belmont (New York, 1941), Chapter X; and Charles Rollin Keyes, “Iowa and the League of Nations”, Annals of Iowa, XXVIII, 4, 1947, pp. 253–286.Google Scholar
6.Younger, Edward, John A. Kasson (Iowa City, 1955).Google Scholar
7.Register. Henry Shelton Sanford Papers. Memorial Library, Sanford, Florida, ed. Owsley, Harriet C. (Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, 1960).Google Scholar
8.Cf. Shepperson, George and Price, Thomas, Independent African (Edinburgh, 1958), passim; George Shepperson, ‘The Literature of British Central Africa”, Rhodes-Living a tone Journal (Manchester), XXIII, 1958, pp. 40–43, and “Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism”, Journal of African History (London), I, 2, 1960, pp. 302, 305–306, etc.; F. B. Welbourn, Some East African Rebels (London, 1961), passim.Google Scholar
9.See, for example, Sulzberger, C. L., “American Negroes and Free Africa”, New York Times, 20 July, 1960; N. Y. T., 1 March, 1961, pp. 1, 25, and 2 March, 1961, pp. 1, 17; Sunday Times (London), 19 March, 1961, p. 2.Google Scholar
10.Cf. Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influences”.Google Scholar
11.Isaacs, , “Five Writers and their African Ancestors”, Phylon (Atlanta, Ga.), 1960, pp.243–265.Google Scholar
12.An appreciation of this image and modes of American expression helps in the study of H. M. Stanley's writings. A grounding in the travel literature of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century provides an important perspective for the study of Stanley. Incidentally, it is interesting to notice that his Autobiography is used as a historical source for early slave plantation conditions in Arkansas: Taylor, Orville W. Negro Slavery in Arkansas (Durham, N. C., 1958), pp. 94–95, 106–107, 137, 145, 153, 205. (In a contribution to the dis - cussion, Professor Daniel F. McCall of the Program of African Studies, Boston University, stated that a student of his had written a paper on Stanley in which it was clear that the kind of racial attitude which Stanley displayed in Africa was to be seen in his reporting of clashes with the Indians for the American press.Google Scholar
13.To date, the most valuable collection of historical data on DuBois and Pan-Africanism is Rudwick, Elliot M.. W. E. B. DuBois (Philadelphia, 1960), Chapter DC.Google Scholar