Pan-Africanism: A legacy of slavery

Pan-Africanism has been studied as an ideology, an epistemology, a theory; and also, as a social movement. However, it has insufficiently been studied as an institutionalized phenomenon and as a producer of knowledge. Most work has been conducted on the emergence of Pan-Africanism in the African diaspora in the mid-to-late 19th century. Yet, far less has been written about Pan-Africanism as an epistemology, that is as a set of ideas and ideologies. In this dissertation, it is argued that Pan Africanism is part of an Africana intellectual tradition. Both Pan-Africanism, as a series of epistemologies – and the Africana intellectual tradition - emerged directly from history and experience. It is therefore argued that epistemic Pan-African knowledge production uses history and experience as its reference. That is, it does not construct its intellectualisms from reading the enlightenment writers, such as is commonly practiced within the European intellectual tradition. Throughout its history, Pan-Africanism saw numerous unreasonable responses from predominantly (former) colonizing powers to reasonable arguments voiced in Pan-African congress petitions and speeches. This happened against the background of a changing world order. Whereas Pan-Africanism started in a situation dominated by the necessity to engage, it moved to a situation in which it increasingly was able to confront (former) colonial and imperial powers. As the circumstances of world politics changed, so did the epicenter of Pan Africanism, and in this dissertation, the author highlights how Pan-Africanism moved its epicenter from the Diaspora to Africa, where it was transformed and institutionalized.