Horton and the Idea of Independence

Abstract

… In viewing the map of West Africa, and tracing out those political communities which are not due to the agency of more civilised politicians, we affirm that there are amongst them fixed and established Governments, although rude and barbarous; that the obedience to the supreme power in many cases is implicit, the right of property is enforced by adjudicature; and, although the power of the supreme head has been used with extreme despotism, as in Dahomey and Ashantee, yet still it is as truly a political Government as that of France or England. By nature the African is a social being, possessing the capacity of commanding and obeying, and that type of improvement which advances as the reason is cultivated, which are the essential elements both of a political Government and a political community; and therefore Africans bear no relation whatever to those gregarious species of animals — apes, monkeys, etc. — to which some fantastic writers have likened them.

From James Africanus Horton, West African Countries and Peoples (1868)