The Education of a British-Protected Child Read online

  Herein lies the root of the horrifying statistic to which the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, drew attention: “You will be staggered to know, as I was, that 37 percent of African private wealth is held outside Africa, whereas for Asia the share is 3 percent and for Latin America it is 17 percent.”2

  It would be a great pity, I remarked, if the world were to sit back in the face of these catastrophic statistics and do nothing, merely to preserve codes of banking etiquette and confidentiality formulated for quite other times. The world woke up too late to the inadequacy of these codes in the matter of the Nazi Holocaust gold. We had thus been warned. The cooperation of the world’s banks, led by the World Bank Group, in eliminating this great scourge would have given so many poor countries the first real opportunity to begin afresh and take responsibility for their development and progress, and it would have discouraged future marauders of nations. It would also have cleared the world’s banking systems of the charges of receiving stolen property and colluding with genocide.

  For too long the world has been content to judge peoples and nations in distress largely on the basis of received stereotypes drawn from mythologies of oppression. In 1910, at the height of British imperial dominion, John Buchan, a popular novelist who was also a distinguished imperial civil servant, published a colonialist classic entitled Prester John, in which we find the following pronouncement: “That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility.”

  I do not believe such a difference exists, except in the mythology of domination. Let’s put this to the test by giving these poor, black nations the first sporting chance of their lives. The cost is low and the rewards will blow our minds, white and black alike. Trust me!

  Let me round this up with a nice little coda. “Africa is people” has another dimension. Africa believes in people, in cooperation with people. If the philosophical dictum of Descartes “I think, therefore I am” represents a European individualistic ideal, the Bantu declaration “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” represents an African communal aspiration: “A human is human because of other humans.”

  Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone. We rise above the animal together, or not at all. If we learned that lesson even this late in the day, we would have taken a truly millennial step forward.

  1998

  Notes

  The Education of a British-Protected Child

  1. Guy Burrows, The Land of the Pigmies (London: 1898), quoted in Robert Kimbrough’s edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (New York: Norton, 1988), pp. 128, 130.

  2. Robert B. Shepard, Nigeria, Africa and the United States (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 88, 89.

  Spelling Our Proper Name

  1. James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” The Fire Next Time, 1963.

  2. John Buchan, Prester John, quoted in Brian V. Street: The Savage in Literature (London, Boston: Routledge & K Paul, 1975), p. 14.

  3. James Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” The Fire Next Time, 1963.

  4. Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (Boston: Atlantic—Little, Brown, 1961), pp. 147–148. Quoted in Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us (Pero Press, 1987), p. 28.

  5. C. R. Boxer, “The Kingdom of Congo,” The Dawn of African History, Roland Oliver, ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 78. Quoted in Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us, p. 331.

  6. Dorothy Randall Tsuruta, “James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe,” Black Scholar, no. 12 (March–April 1981), p. 73.

  Recognitions

  1. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, edited and with an introduction by Paul Edwards (Harlow and White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1989).

  Africa’s Tarnished Name

  1. Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, The Africa That Never Was: Four Centuries of British Writing about Africa (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1992), pp. 22–23.

  2. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, ed. Robert Kimbrough (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 37.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., p. 4.

  5. I am indebted to Basil Davidson’s The African Slave Trade (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980) for the outline of this story.

  6. Mbanza was the capital of the kingdom of Congo; the king soon renamed it São Salvador. The quoted passage is from Davidson, The African Slave Trade, p. 136.

  7. Ibid., p. 152.

  8. Joseph Conrad. “Geography and Some Explorers,” National Geographic (March 1924).

  9. Davidson, The African Slave Trade, p. 147.

  10. Sylvia Leith-Ross, African Women: A Study of the Igbo of Nigeria (London: Faber and Faber, 1938); see p. 19.

  11. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, pp. 38–39.

  12. Ibid., p. 51.

  13. Davidson, op. cit., p. 29.

  14. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p. 147.

  15. David Livingstone, Missionary Travels, quoted in Hammond and Jablow, The Africa That Never Was, p. 43.

  16. Reyahn King et al., Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1997), p. 28.

  17. Ibid., p. 30.

  18. William F. Schultz and Willis Hartshorn, “1997 Amnesty International Calendar: Photographs from the Collection of the International Center of Photography” (New York: Universe Publishing, 1996).

  19. Ibid.

  Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature

  1. Obiajunwa Wali. “The Dead End of African Literature?” Transition 4, no. 10 (September 10, 1963).

  2. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. “The Language of African Literature,” Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: Heinemann, 1986).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Richard Symonds, The British and Their Successors (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 202.

  5. David R. Smock and Kwamena Bentsi-Enchill, eds., The Search for National Integration in Africa (London: Collier Macmillan, 1975), p. 174.

  6. J. F. Ade Ajay, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841–1891 (London, 1965), pp. 133–34.

  7. Smock and Enchill, The Search for National Integration in Africa, p. 176.

  African Literature as Restoration of Celebration

  1. Quoted in Brian Street, The Savage in Literature (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 14.

  2. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Actions (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. vi.

  3. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p. 37.

  4. Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, Katherine Woods, trans. (London: Heinemann, 1972), p. 37.

  5. Ibid., p. 79.

  Teaching Things Fall Apart

  1. From “In Dialogue to Define Aesthetics: James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe,” The Black Scholar 12 (March–April 1981), Conversations with James Baldwin.

  2. Jules Chametzky, Our Decentralized Literature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986).

  Martin Luther King and Africa

  1. Davidson, The African Slave Trade, p. 12.

  2. Ibid., p. 25.

  3. Dorothy Randall Tsuruta, “In Dialogue to Define Aesthetics: James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe,” The Black Scholar 12 (March–April 1981), p. 73.

  Stanley Diamond

  1. House of Lords Official Report, August 27, 1968.

  2. Suzanne Cronje, The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafran War, 1967–1970 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), p. 211.

  Africa Is People

  1. Quoted in Jonah Raskin, The Mythology of Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1971).

  2. James D. Wolfensohn, Africa’s Moment (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1998).

  Acknowledgments

  Some of the essays in this wo
rk originally appeared, sometimes in slightly different form, as follows:

  “The Education of a British-Protected Child”: Adapted from a speech delivered as the Ashby Lecture, Cambridge University, January 22, 1993.

  “The Sweet Aroma of Zik’s Kitchen: Growing Up in the Ambience of a Legend”: Adapted from a speech delivered at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, April 1994. This speech was given at a conference honoring Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, hosted and sponsored by Lincoln University’s president, Niara Sudarkasa.

  “My Dad and Me”: From My Dad and Me: A Heartwarming Collection of Stories About Fathers from a Host of Larry’s Famous Friends. Larry King (New York: Crown, 1996).

  “What is Nigeria to Me?”: Adapted from the keynote address at The Guardian’s Silver Jubilee, at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos, on October 9, 2008. It was subsequently reprinted in the Nigeria Daily News on October 14, 2008.

  “Traveling White”: Originally published in The Weekend Guardian (London), October 22, 1989.

  “Spelling Our Proper Name”: Adapted from a speech delivered at a conference entitled “Black Writers Redefine the Struggle,” on the occasion of the death of James Baldwin, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, April 22-23, 1988. It was subsequently published in an earlier form in A Tribute to James Baldwin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989).

  “Africa’s Tarnished Name”: Originally published in Another Africa. Robert Lyons and Chinua Achebe (Anchor Books, 1998).

  “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature”: Originally published as “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature” in FILLM (International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures) Proceedings. Ed. Doug Killam (Guelph, Ontario: University of Guelph, 1989).

  “African Literature as Restoration of Celebration”: From Chinua Achebe: A Celebration. Eds. Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford (Oxford and Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Sydney, Australia and Coventry, England: Dangeroo Press, 1990), 1-10.

  “Teaching Things Fall Apart”: From Approaches to Teaching Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Ed. Bernth Lindfors. Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series: 37 (New York: Modern Language Association, 1991), 20-24. Reprinted in Morning Yet on Creation Day.

  “Martin Luther King and Africa”: Originated as a talk given at the King Holiday Celebration, January 20, 1992, at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of History in Washington, D.C.

  “The University and the Leadership Factor in Nigerian Politics”: From The University and the Leadership Factor in Nigerian Politics (Enugu, Nigeria: ABIC Books and Equipment, 1988).

  “Stanley Diamond”: From Dialectical Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Stanley Diamond: The Politics of Culture and Creativity. Ed. Christine Ward Gailey (University of Florida Press, May 1992).

  “Africa Is People”: Adapted from a speech originally delivered at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, France, 1998. Subsequently published in Massachusetts Review 40.3 (Autumn 1999).

  A Note About the Author

  Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.

  Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the “1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century,” for defining “a modern African literature that was truly African” and thereby making “a major contribution to world literature,” Chinua Achebe has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold millions of copies in the United States since its original publication in 1958–1959. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. He lives with his wife in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where they teach at Bard College. They have four children and three grandchildren.

  This Is a Borzoi Book

  Published by Alfred A. Knopf

  Copyright © 2009 by Chinua Achebe

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Achebe, Chinua.

  The education of a British-protected child : essays /

  Chinua Achebe.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-27290-4.

  1. Achebe, Chinua. 2. Authors, Nigerian—20th century—Biography.

  3. Nigeria—Biography. I. Title.

  PR9387.9.A3Z46 2009 823’.914—dc22 [B] 2009017480

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