West Africa Review (2001) ISSN: 1525-4488 THE FUTURE OF SUBJECT PEOPLES*

William Esuman-Gwira Sekyi [Kobina Sekyi]

The future of the subject peoples of the present day interests us all. In this article I venture to differ from our esteemed Editor in a view he has elsewhere expressed, and I hope by this article to open a written debate on the above topic.

The editorial notes of the Mid-August (1917) number of this Journal deal with a matter that is undoubtedly difficult. On the one hand we have the progressive aggressiveness of European industry, and on the other hand we have the complacent decadence of the subject peoples, who believe that by imitating Europe they will raise their respective nations to a level of power, or of efficiency, similar to, if not the same as, that of Europe. The subject peoples of these days pride themselves on their efforts to acquire external qualities which they believe to be essential. What most appeals to them are the morbid excrescences that have grown out of the over-luxurious civilization of Europe and contribute very largely towards the unhealthiness of the appearance of that overlauded culture. But what few can notice about these social tumours is that they are not caused by disease confined to certain determinate portions of the social organism of European civilization, but are the inevitable results of the general diseased condition of that organism. What most men overlook is that Society is not a fabric composed of resolvable parts, but an organism of which the parts are necessarily inter-related and indivisible. Hence in the scheme of intellectual and industrial training, for example, which Europe has established in her own home, any evil is universal in its effects: it is present all through the organism of European society, although it may be detected more easily in certain parts of that organism than in others. Consequently, wherever that scheme of training is established that evil exists, especially where that system has been imperfectly established.

Now, the fault with those in Africa and elsewhere who are at present striving might and stain to emulate Europe is that they are copying the habits of a diseased state of society. Herein lies the reason for the hankering after learned professions, which, since it is excessive, is showing itself to be unpropitious for the nations whose children are thus qualifying themselves. Enough, I think, has been written so far to lead to the conclusion that this menace will characterize the efforts made by the sons of Africa and other non-European parts of the world to attain proficiency in any other department of European enterprise. ‘Civil, mining, and mechanical engineers,’ ‘surveyors, scientific agriculturists, boiler-makers, and other efficient mechanics,’ all these, whom the Editor considers likely to help us to ‘survive the “development” schemes that are very much in evidence now,’ will prove just as unsatisfactory as those who have secured the learned professions in acquiring the ‘wealth’ that, it is thought, will enable us to ‘survive’; because the trouble is not the remunerativeness or otherwise, mediate or immediate, of professions and other forms of industry, but rather the perverted state of the minds and aspirations of those who learn the science, arts, and crafts of Europe. This perversion was wrought by Europe, and cannot but be continued and intensified by persistence in following the lines laid by Europe in intellectual and industrial development. The evil is European civilization, which consistently with its disruptive character, extends by denationalizing peoples. Nationality is the backbone of the social organism as such; when it is destroyed nothing can support that organism; it must collapse in the manner natural to organisms—it must die and decay. In Europe’s own case this is clearly demonstrated. Europe really knows no such thing as Nationality; she knows only Empire, which means the exaltation of one nation and the debasement of all other nations that are unable to resist aggression. The nation that subjects other nations can do so only when she forsakes the ideals that raised her from the tribal to the national stage and maintained her existence in the latter form.

Two wrongs do not make a right; there is no escaping from the truth of this saw. Europe has misunderstood social progress as other groups of people misunderstood it in the past. Like those decayed Empires, Europe has evolved, and perhaps is capable of evolving, nothing but Imperialism and not the Brotherhood of Nations. Imperialism is self- contradictory in idea and, consequently, self-destructive in realization. Let us not induce ourselves to think and believe that the only way to ‘survive’ Europe’s aggression is by organizing on European (including American) lines, for that must involve conflict with Europe, and in time we must become like Europe, ever creating new wants to supply an insatiable desire for conquest, ever oppressing others to further this conquest, and bound to end by consuming all that has been acquired by such conquest in universal holocaust kindled by the demon of Greed. If we are to formulate any really sound and practicable scheme for our future, let us set before us, and try to understand, the ideal of living as men, and not seek the compromise of surviving as persecuted persons.

Our advisers, all of them thorough men of the world, dispensing worldly wisdom with a free tongue, advise us to compromise. They do not merely say that the world, as they know it, is a world of compromise, but they go further and add that the world always has been, and always will be, a world of compromise. Since they sneer at the unpractical thinking of men whose wisdom opposes theirs, one feels tempted to ask them whether the world which has been and the world which will be are as well known to them as the world they now know. If not, how can they know that the world always was a world of compromise, and how can they divine that the world always will be a world of compromise, unless they, too, for all their practical worldly wisdom, sometimes attempt to emulate the thinkers whose thought they condemn as unpractical? They perhaps find it easier to sneer than to ask themselves why the world, which they say they know, is a world of compromise, as they so emphatically assert. It does not strike them that since compromise is what must occur to end the contest of parties of which the one will not give in to the other, if it is true that the world they know is a world of compromise, that can only be because in all the transactions of that world there is involved the conflict of two obstinate parties. Neither do they examine such obstinacy whenever they come across it; perhaps even if they could examine it they would consider unpractical the truth they would discover, namely, that wherever two opposed parties are each convinced that its own side of the matter at issue is right, either both of them are in the wrong or one of them is right; wherefore it follows that such obstinacy is founded on stupidity either of one party or of both parties, the stupidity consisting in inability to know when to yield to correction or instruction.

However, our advisers, confident of their superiority in experience, translate the natural wisdom of self-protection or of reasonable self-assertion into the worldly wisdom of compromise. They argue, in effect, thus: ‘If a robber puts you in danger of your life and property, you too must become a robber in order to prevent the realization of his violent intentions, even though you may not have in you the qualities which go to make a successful robber!’ Therefore, they advise us thus worldly wisely: ‘Europe is scheming to make further depredations upon you. Her methods are religious conversion, trade, war, imperial- ization. Imperialization involves, on the one hand, subjection and denationalization of peoples whose territories are fertile and rich in mineral wealth, and, on the other hand, religious, com- mercial, military, and governmental organization on the part of Europe. Against European imperialism you cannot contend unless you unite. Therefore unite, if not religiously, militarily or governmentally, at any rate commercially.’ If you ask our estimable advisers how we are to follow their advice, they reply: ‘Your easiest way is by developing trade among yourselves. Produce the utmost out of your land by scientific agriculture; develop your mineral resources; send your children to Europe and America to acquire scientific methods; then let them learn and apply the principles of European and American organization. Stoop to conquer. Send your children to serve in European and American centers of industry. Then you will have money. Money brings everything. See how wise we are!’ But that is just when their wisdom fails: money does not bring everything that is wholesome; and it very often happens that by the time there is enough money to command even the things that are within the reach of money, the man who made the money is a wreck, either physically or morally or in both ways at once. Our advisers call this unpractical. They would, perhaps, say it is ‘all theory’ to state that if our children ‘stoop’ now, when Europe is designing further evil for us, they cannot ‘conquer’ till Europe herself is worn out with preying on others, that one cannot ‘stoop’ for a long time without getting somewhat out of the habit of standing upright and looking enemies straight in the face; that our sons cannot study European and American methods without acquiring European and American ideas; that European and American methods are the result of a corrupt society; and that if our children must learn these methods, they cannot get thoroughly into the secret of success in applying them unless they acquire the vices of Europe and America; most important of all, that there is such a thing as a future for our children, and that we cannot expect them to live healthy lives if we bequeath to them physical frames weakened by vice and traditions based on iniquity.

‘Ah,’ retort our worldly wise advisers, ‘that is all very well; but we do not want such moonshine. You are dreaming. We want practical men in these opportunistic days. Be a good soul, and compromise.’ Therefore, we, the despised dreamers, ask our practical advisers, ‘Where would Europe herself have been by now if there had not been a Renaissance, in the Middle Ages, to purge her of a certain degree of her innate barbarism?’ Were there not men in those days—Christian priests and their adher- ents—who called the leaders of the Renaissance dreamers? One can imagine them saying: ‘The Bible says this and the Bible says that. All this that you propose was put into your head by the devil; and in the name of Christ we will burn it out of you! So they did with some, but not with all; otherwise the science and learning which sometimes blinds our African and Asiatic eyes to the natural savagery of Europe would not have been developed. But the savagery is still in the bones of Europe: for Europe, with her occidental wisdom, perpetuates the old Roman saying: ‘If you will have Peace, prepare for War!’ Therefore is there now in process the new Renaissance that, in the form of a devilish war, is raging in Europe and purging her of some more of her barbaric dross. And now that Europe herself may wake up to a sense of her mismanagement not only of her own affairs, but, through her overweening belief in her own superiority, of the affairs of the whole world, would our eminently practical and worldly wise advisers urge us to acquire the habits that will sooner or later be discarded even by those who created them?

Let us not forget that man is capable of his utmost only when he lives in society: the individual as such is impossible except as a freak. Society is an organism of which the so-called individual members are so vitally connected, the one with the other, that to treat them as separate entities is to destroy, immediately or mediately, the integrity of that organism. To those who are qualified to be dreamers it will be clear that the civilization of the West is based on commerce or trade; and from this it follows that those who desire to set up such a civilization must develop commerce or trade along Western lines. But what is generally overlooked by the eminently practical men who believe in nothing that does not conduce to trade or commerce is, that since commerce depends on the acquisition of the most by the expenditure of the least, it stands upon a principle that is to use the mildest term, inequitable. Observing this foundation of trade or commerce in the light of what has been said above as to the oneness of society, it will be seen that if in any social group commerce or trade is established, the latter necessarily involves the juxtaposition of excess and deficiency, of wealth and poverty, in that social group. Since, however, excess is as much a fault as deficiency is, it will be clear, to those at least who are qualified to be dreamers, that any man living in a society characterized by such a juxtaposition of surfeit and want cannot bring out the utmost he has in him; in other words, a society possessing such a civilization as the West boasts is unhealthy.

If we examine the inequitable principle upon which the whole Western institution of commerce or trade stands, we shall see that its existence as a basis of a society requires the existence of either force or docility. From what we know of the bleakness of the zone in which the most eminently Western civilization thrives, and from what we know of the driving power of want in such a zone, we must conclude that docility cannot be the reason for the existence of trade in the West, we are therefore compelled to accept force as that which maintains trade or commerce in the West. Now a society that is organized on the basis of force is clearly unnatural, because there is no necessity to compel man to live in society. Where, therefore, there is a ‘society’ that is so only by virtue of force. The units of such a ‘society’ are individuals in the strict sense, so that the group composed of such individuals is not a society but is a mere collection of individuals held together by force; and before such individuals could be created either they had to be severed by force from the respective societies of which they were vital parts, or else each such society was annexed in its entirety by force and compelled to lose its identity in the combination of which it then became an element. Thus we see that not only does trade or commerce, as the West has instituted it, stand on the inequitable rule of giving the least and securing the most, but also it requires, as that which makes possible the application of such a rule, either the severance of vital portions of certain social organisms or the assimilation of certain formerly separate organisms.

But there can be no denying the fact that the inequitable principle on which, as we have seen, trade or commerce is based is the result of the perversion of the equitable principle of exchange underlying the natural institution of barter. Where in any social group the institution of barter is established there is no possibility of the appearance of such a strange juxtaposition as that of surfeit and want. In such a society, therefore, it will be possible for man to bring out the utmost that he has in him, because then man will be living a natural life in a natural social group. From this it follows that such a society is not held together but simply consists. The constitution of such a society will be strictly based upon that of the natural institution known as the family: the head of such a society will be head by virtue of the respect in which he is held by those under him, and change in such a society is very slow.

Now it will not, I believe, be denied that the institution of respect is more highly developed among the darker peoples than among the white: with the black man respect for his elders, as such, has become second nature. Similarly it will be admitted that the institution of war is more highly developed among the white peoples than among the darker. Again, it will not be denied that conservatism is more pronounced as characterizing the societies of the darker peoples than as characterizing those of the white: as a matter of fact, among the darker peoples themselves the darker the people the more unprogressive they are considered. Moreover, the social institutions of the darker peoples are more communistic than those of the white—that is to say, the conception of the individual as the unit of society is almost exclusively confined to the white peoples. All these to me are more than enough, if not to prove, at least to furnish substantial ground for the position, that the institutions of the white peoples are farther from the social ideal than those of the darker peoples. The success of the white man in establishing dominion over the black man, in my opinion, instead of proving, as the white man naively assumes, the superiority of the white man to the black man, on the contrary is further evidence of the crudeness of the white man’s sense of respect; for it is clear that in any transaction between a polite man and a rude man, if brute force is of the essence of that transaction, the rude man is very likely to gain the upper hand; and any man is rude who often confuses respect with servility.

This, then, is the position to which I have been trying to lead. The unity which our worldly-wise advisers are urging us to effect will be possible only if we adopt the absolutely antisocial methods of Europe; for there are natural limits set to the intercourse, to say nothing of the union, of peoples who have developed for a long time in widely separated parts of the globe. Africans, Asiatics, Europeans, Americans, each group of peoples has its natural and normal environment, and within each large group there are smaller groups with distinct characteristics, and therefore different modes of life. Let each social group develop along the lines marked out for them by their unwesternized and therefore undemoralized ancestors, accepting from the West only such institutions as can be adapted to, and not such as cannot but alter, their national life. Each group of people occupies its own territory, which has its own peculiar qualities as to fertility and mineral wealth, besides such special arts and crafts as constitute the national industries. If any group by any chance vitally needs any of the products, natural and artificial, of any other group, the transactions should be regulated according to the principle of barter. Abolish group-morality altogether. If it is undesirable that whites should unite against blacks, it is equally undesirable that blacks should unite, in any manner whatsoever, against whites; for whites and blacks are men, and men must dwell upon the earth as men and not as fiends. Let us therefore seek to live as men, separated only by the natural boundaries imposed by our environments, instead of living as humanized brutes, preparing in the intervals of ‘peace’ for war, the correlative of ‘peace.’

In particular, I wish to speak to the African. Let the native African not heed anything that is said by non-African peoples against him. Let him be proud of his African soul, his black soul, the soul that evolved all that has tamed a good deal of the aggressiveness that has heretofore characterized the lighter peoples. Let him seek always to remain African, for that which makes him African, that which for convenience I will call Africanity, always has been, and always will be, the leaven with which the crude meal of humanity can be leavened. In spite of all that prejudiced archaeology and anthropology have sought to establish, the real reason why negroes are the darkest in colour will soon enough be clear to all who can think. Africa was old when Europe was young: reflection therefore is African, whilst impulse is European. Let us, the children of Africa, by remaining true to our Africanity, help to raise the children of Europe, our juniors, in the art of living socially, above the impulses of their unreflective social youth.

*Originally published in The Africa Times and Orient Review, October-December, 1917. Reprinted from J. Ayo Langley, ed., Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa: 1856-1970 (London: Rex Collings, 1979), pp. 242- 251.

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

Sekyi [Kobina Sekyi], William Esuman-Gwira (2001). THE FUTURE OF SUBJECT PEOPLES*. West Africa Review: 2, 2 [iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.2.2.4]