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Abstract
Despite a growing body of work on anti-colonialist movements and the activities of individual activists, there remain large gaps in our knowledge of early agitation in and around Africa, and the links between people. A scholarly focus on transnational networking in the 1930s to 1950s tends to overshadow earlier agitation, by people whose achievements are too often forgotten now, but who laid the foundations for later struggle, decolonisation, and modern-day humanitarian activity. This article discusses some lesser-known agitators, both European and African, active in Africa in the 1900s (though Colenso began earlier), who used copious correspondence, the press and humanitarian networks to highlight colonial abuses and challenge imperial policy. It focuses largely on, and draws parallels between, Dr Norman Leys (working in East Africa), Henry Nevinson (West Africa), F. Z. S. Peregrino (West and South Africa) and Harriette Colenso (South Africa).
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft, and Gwil Colenso, Angela John, David Killingray and Christopher Saunders for very generously sharing information, answering queries and commenting. She also acknowledges the executors of the Gilbert Murray Papers.
Notes
1. There is a 1967 biography of Padmore by James R. Hooker.
2. Leys to Harvey, 30 March 1913 (LHL).
3. Other notable whistle-blowers in this earlier period included black American missionary William Sheppard, E. D. Morel and Roger Casement, all active in the Congo. They undoubtedly inspired some of the agitators discussed here; Casement and Nevinson were close friends.
4. Leys to Murray, 18 June 1905, Papers of Gilbert Murray; Cell, Citation1976, p. 10.
5. Leys to Murray, 7 February 1902, Papers of Gilbert Murray; Cell, Citation1976, pp. 10–11.
6. Leys to Murray, 18 June 1905, Papers of Gilbert Murray. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society merged with the Aborigines' Protection Society in 1909 to become the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, a name later shortened to the Anti-Slavery Society. For brevity I largely refer to it as the latter, the Society, or use the Bodleian Library style APS in citations.
7. Maasai is the correct spelling, but Masai is used when citing colonial-era documents.
8. His focus was much wider than imperial policy and practice, e.g. in the pamphlet Why the Landworker is Poor (Leys, Citation1925), he expressed his socialist beliefs in plain language aimed at British farm workers, urging them to join a union and fight for their rights: ‘Our object [in the Labour movement] is the cure of poverty, and we believe Socialism will cure poverty’ (p. 7).
9. Leys to Oldham, 23 March 1918, Cell, Citation1976, p. 137.
10. Ol le Njogo and Others v. The Attorney General and Others, 7 December 1913, East African Law Reports, 5, pp. 70–114. ‘Record of the “Masai Case”’, Sandford, Citation1919, pp. 186–222.
11. I drew heavily on these letters, discovered in family papers, for my doctoral dissertation and book (Hughes, Citation2002, Citation2006). They undermine Cell's claim that Leys ‘had not … stirred up opposition to the government himself’, and that he ‘did precisely what he admitted, no more’ (Cell, Citation1976, pp. 321, 322).
12. Interviewed in summer 1997 at his home at Olokurto, Kenya. Kenneth King (Citation1971) interviewed him three decades earlier, but not about this subject.
13. Letter to Harvey, 9 September 1912; letter to Harvey, MacDonald and Murray, 7 October 1911 (LHL).
14. The handwritten original of the 1911 Agreement is in the National Archives, London (DO118/383). The 1904 original has never been found. Numerous typescript copies exist; both are reproduced in Sandford, Citation1919, pp. 180–185.
15. Anon. letter 25 September 1911, APS, Box G131.
16. Anon. letter to David Davies MP, 1 August 1911, Harcourt Papers. I have speculated that the author may well have been Goldfinch (Hughes, Citation2006).
17. Hallett (Citation1974) is among those who has written about this Western-educated African elite in early 20th century South Africa. An African political press was established in the Cape in the 1880s, and more than 100 Africans had studied in Britain or the United States by 1912.
18. An anonymous peer reviewer noted that there is some doubt as to whether Peregrino actually attended this event.
19. Anti-Slavery Reporter 1906–8, p. 9. Peregrino sent this news to the editor on 19 September 1906.
20. 8 December 1907, Mafeking Mail. In Peregrino to Buxton, 4 September 1910, APS, Box D2/1.
21. Letter 11 October 1910, APS, Box D1/7.
22. South African Spectator, 23 February 1901.
23. Leys devoted chapter 13 of Kenya (1924) to the Chilembwe revolt, and interviewed some of the participants in prison.
24. Letter to Sir William (surname illegible), forwarded to Harris 26 November 1913, APS, Box D4/6.
25. Letter 30 May 1910 to Arthur Black, Liverpool Branch of the Congo Reform Association, APS: D3/1.
26. Their testimony is in APS, Box D4/4.
27. Letter of 30 June 1913 from Cadbury Bros, and various from Burt Brothers, APS, Box D4/5.
28. Letter to Harris, 30 June 1914, APS, Box D4/6.
29. Coincidentally, in 1914 two other leading activists, John Dube (founder and editor of the first Zulu language newspaper) and journalist Sol Plaatje, took part in a South African Native National Congress delegation to London to protest at land and labour laws. They appealed unsuccessfully to Lewis Harcourt (Derrick, Citation2008, p. 21).
30. Letter 12 June 1912, APS, Box D4/6.
31. Frank Colenso, ‘Miss Colenso—As an aid to justice and peace in Zululand’, 13 February 1908. Printed pamphlet, Colenso Papers (London: Frank Colenso).
32. Jeff Guy (Citation2001) states in his preface that the book is only ‘in part a biography’ (p. ix).
33. Harriette Colenso to Sir George Cox, 14 January 1884, Colenso Papers, Mss Afr. S 1286/2 (a), f4.
34. Also Anti-Slavery Reporter, Series 4, Vol. XXVI, 1, January–February 1906, p. 5.
35. Anti-Slavery Reporter, Series 4, Vol. XXV, 4, August–October 1905, p. 92.
36. Judging, for example, from remarks made in the August–October 1905 article, ibid., p. 92; in November–December 1907, Vol. XXVII, 5, p. 126; or in January–February 1908, Vol. XXVIII, 1, pp. 11–12. The Society did, however, hold a major conference on the subject in London in October 1908, reported in Vol. XXVIII, p. 5. Nevinson spoke.
37. For example, his appeal to Liverpool Chamber of Commerce with missionary M. Z. Stober prompted its African Trade Section to wire the Foreign Office and make demands of British cocoa firms. Anti-Slavery Reporter, November–December 1907, Vol. XXVII, 5, p. 124.
38. Letter 22 March 1910 to a Mr Swan, APS, Box D1/6.
39. Letter 30 March 1910, APS, Box D2/1.
40. 23 April 1910, APS, ‘Harris out letters’, Book 1.
41. Letter 7 February 1918, copy in the Papers of Gilbert Murray, and Cell, Citation1976, pp. 91–136.