Create James Africanus Horton as a touchstone for Black complexities

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+title: 'James Africanus Horton as a touchstone for Black complexities'
+tags:
+  - moment
+  - essay
+category: student
+---
+**Abiufo Dan-Abia** is a third-year Politics, Philosophy & Law LLB student
+
+Imagine rushing through Aldwych, maybe to a seminar or a lecture, but among the plaques and full-body statues that line the diplomatic institutions from Australia House to the Royal Courts of Justice, you notice a bust etched in stone towering over you.
+Unlike many monuments in the area that emphasize remarkably similar individuals as heroes, this one stands out: blending motifs of military, racial, and medical histories in memorial to James Africanus Horton, one of Britain’s first Black physicians and regarded as the Father of African Political Thought.[^1]  His service to the British Army spanned multiple continents over many years, in which he contributed to the understanding of tropical botany, disease, and remedies, including some of the earliest recordings and investigations of sickle cell anaemia. As intriguing as his repertoire is, what is far more intriguing is that this monument does not exist, not in Aldwych, not anywhere!
+Despite his temporal distance, James Africanus Horton stands as a profound touchstone for the complexities of the Black identity, embodying the intricate contrasts and contradictions that defined his life and work.  This article will consider his unique positioning and cultural hybridity using the themes of religion and education, Creole identity, military engagement and finally, the formulation of a personal politic in early Africana philosophy.
+
+### Religion and Education
+James was born in 1835 to a family of devout Christian recaptives living in Gloucester, Sierra Leone. He was educated in mission schools, including the renowned Fourah Bay Institute, heightening his exposure to Western value systems of civility. As such, he was steeped in the religious doctrines of his time. Horton’s name itself—James Africanus Beale Horton—echoed this duality, blending African pride with a European assimilation, encapsulating the symbiosis between his African roots and his colonial education. He went on to attend King's College London, where daily prayer was a part of the curriculum, yet he systematically refuted the racist ideologies inherent to the very religion that continually shaped his education. 
+London in the late 19th century saw an uptick in racial curiosity, particularly among scientists at the institutions James worked at: the emergence of early ethnologists and anthropologists divided over the classification of humankind as a single species or separate species welcomed a slew of racist hypothesizing.  In tandem, there are Select Committee reports referenced as questioning the ability of Africans to self-govern, prompting his landmark work West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native And a Vindication of the African Race (1868). Although the Anthropological Society would later be absorbed into the Royal Anthropological Society, its impact is evident even in James Horton’s political philosophy as he maintains a similar typification of societies into savage, semi-barbarous and civilized, as would later be formalized by Edward B. Tylor in 1871.
+His work is also reflective of the racial typification that pervaded scientific spaces at the time: despite his dissent concerning the ability of African people to self-govern, he emphasized religion, education and the need for a civilizing force in Africa, which would later be corroborated by members of the Anthropological Society he refuted, who declared “Christianity, the surest way to civilisation.” 
+Despite this, Horton’s intellectual pursuits were a direct challenge to the Eurocentric beliefs that regarded Africans as inferior, as he fiercely argued for the capability and right of Africans to self-govern.
+
+### The Hybridity of Creole Identity
+Horton was a Creole, a member of a community often overlooked in the racial binaries of his era, existing in a society that largely ignored the complexities of African identities. As such, his life was a testament to navigating this liminal space—neither fully identifying culturally with the European colonizers nor completely aligned with the indigenous African populations. In this, Horton represented the duality of traversing two worlds, yet fully belonging to neither, constantly at the crossroads of cultural identities and clashes.
+
+### An African Doctor in the British Army
+His career as a military doctor further reinforced this paradox. The role itself—a healer within the military—was an oxymoron, compounded by the racial dynamics of the time. Horton likely attended to white soldiers who viewed him with suspicion or outright disdain, despite relying on his medical expertise. His presence in the British Army highlighted the contradictions of colonialism, where a Black man could be a saviour and a subordinate in the same breath.
+
+### A Pioneer of ‘Africana’ Philosophy
+Horton’s intellectual legacy is marked by his rigorous refutation of the eugenics that underpinned colonial rule. He was a scholar who deconstructed the pseudo-scientific racism of his time, yet his politics were paradoxically aligned with the idea of European “civilizing” influence. He stood at the intersection of advocating for African self-governance while also engaging with the colonial structures that sought to oppress his people. Horton’s life was a navigation of these crossroads—between Freetown’s legal trade and the lingering shadow of the slave trade, between national pride and the eugenicist ideologies of colonization, between the roles of caretaker and soldier.
+
+### A Lasting Legacy
+James Africanus Horton’s legacy of profound complexity still rings true today: a man of contrasts, embodying the tensions and dualities of Black identity in a colonial world. His life and work serve as a reminder of the intricate, constantly conflicting forces that shape the journey toward continental, national, and individual self-determination, standing as a touchstone for the layered realities of Black existence in the face of systemic oppression.
+
+## Sources
+
+Anthony King, Decolonizing the British Army: a preliminary response, International Affairs, Volume 97, Issue 2, March 2021, Pages 443–461, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab001
+Campbell, G. (1869). On the Races of India as Traced in Existing Tribes and Castes. The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870), 1(2), 128–140. https://doi.org/10.2307/3014445
+Horton, J. A. B. (2011). West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native: And a Vindication of the African Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Imperial War Museum, “The Black British Soldiers Who Were Deliberately Forgotten.” 
+James “africanus” Beale Horton. The University of Edinburgh. (n.d.). https://global.ed.ac.uk/uncovered/1800-1859/james-africanus-beale-horton 
+King’s College London Calendar 1858-1859. (1858–1859). King’s College London Calendars. King’s College London. https://jstor.org/stable/community.35019072
+King’s College London. (n.d.). Africanus Horton. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/africanus-horton 
+Macmillan, Robert (1995). Book Reviews: Henrika Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885-1945. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. Pp. 325. $44.95 (cloth. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 25 (2):250-255.
+Martin, G. (2012). African political thought. Palgrave Macmillan.
+The secret lives of Britain’s first black physicians. Wellcome Collection. (n.d.). https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/YxDHJBEAACIAdasV 
+
+[^1]: Martin, G., _African political thought_ (XXX, 2012).