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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Background to the emergence of the National Congress of British West Africa |
Author: | Eluwa, Gabriel I.C. |
Year: | 1971 |
Periodical: | African Studies Review |
Volume: | 14 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 205-218 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | English-speaking Africa West Africa |
Subject: | national liberation movements |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/523823 |
Abstract: | Differing in important respects from earlier 'nationalist' movements in the area, the National Congress of British West Africa, which emerged in March 1920, envisaged a united British West Africa as a political goal to be attained. The NCBWA's organization simultaneously embraced all four colonies of British West Africa and was led almost exclusively by the educated elite of the area. The germ of the movement was rooted in a fairly distant past, but also a variety of interesting forces of a fairly recent occurrence 'conspired' to ensure its birth. Several forces - economic, political and racial - made their contribution to early twentieth-century national consciousness in British West Africa. Particularly significant stimulators were DuBois' Pan-African Congress movement (Paris 1918-19) and the Garvey movement. Besides the Indian and Ceylon movements, the effects of the First World War on West Africans were politically significant. This all led politically conscious West Africans under Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford to launch the NCBWA. Ref., notes. |