Edward Wilmot Blyden
Edward Wilmot Blyden ( born August 3, 1832 Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, † February 7, 1912 in Freetown, Sierra Leone ) was a Liberian politician and Panafrikanist of West Indian origin. Besides, inter alia, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford Blyden regarded as one of the leading figures of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.
Life
Blyden was on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas, then a colony of Denmark, born as the third of seven children of Schneider's Romeo Blyden and the teacher Judith Blyden. Since 1842, the family lived in the Venezuelan port city of Puerto Cabello where the boy developed a great interest in learning languages .
Blyden recognized already in his early youth the disadvantages and injustices against the African slaves as forms of colonial racism. After his five-year primary education, which he completed back on the island of Saint Thomas, he went there to the Bible Class of the Dutch Reformed Church by Reverend John P. Knox, who advised him in 1850 to study at the American Rutgers Theological Collage. Accompanied by Mrs. Knox, he traveled to the United States, despite the intensive support provided by the Knox family he found a school that would take him as proof of higher education was missing. Even after Saint Thomas he did not return, coincidentally, he was in New York City attentive to the activities of the American Colonization Society (ACS) who are constantly enlisted emigrants to Liberia and arrived in Monrovia on 26 January 1851. He lived first in that of the Americo - Liberian former BVR family house James and attended by the Presbyterian Church ( Reverend David A. Wilson) operated Alexander High School. With the support of Reverend Wilson, he worked alongside his school education from 1855 to 1856 as editor of the Liberia Herald. Due to health problems, Wilson had to give up the teaching profession in 1861 and Blyden also took its place as a teacher of Latin and Greek at Liberia College. In the spring of Blyden was given the opportunity to tour to England, Scotland, the USA and Canada, where in West Africa he met as a Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church was the first African with the most influential representatives of the Presbyterian Church. After his return he was appointed by the Liberian government " poached " and assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He traveled to diplomatic missions several times to Europe (UK and France) as well as to the neighboring colonial territories Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The acquired there impressions and knowledge he used for his later scientific work and in his political career as Secretary of State ( 1862-1864 ) and Liberian Minister of the Interior ( 1880-1882 ). In Monrovia, Blyden was a lecturer of Liberia College from 1862 to 1864 and was its director for four years ( 1880-1884 ). The previous Liberian governments had neglected the economic development of the country and put an increasing foreign debt into account, this led in 1870 to the first bankruptcy of Liberia, which triggered a revolt of the Americo - Liberians against all state institutions and with the violent death of an economic experts President selected Großhandelskaufmann Edward J. Roye culminated. These events led Blyden to go to the temporary exile in Sierra Leone. After calming the situation Blyden returned to Liberia and was during the presidency of Alfred F. Russell 1880-1884 Liberian Minister of the Interior. In the presidential election of 1884 he was defeated as a presidential candidate his rival candidate Hilary RW Johnson. Blyden returned after active politics and devoted himself to the back of his scientific work. Since his exile in Sierra Leone, the question of religious influence employed him on the Africans. From 1901 to 1906, took Blyden in Sierra Leone a teaching assignment for training of Muslim civil servant.
Writings
Blyden was since his move to Liberia 's most avid supporters of the American Colonization Society in Liberia, as an insider, he delivered the ACS journal African Repository numerous essays and reports on the progress and increasing problems of the Liberian society. As an author, he wrote:
- A Voice from Bleeding Africa ( 1856),
- Hope for Africa (1861 )
- Liberia 's Offering ( 1862)
- The Negro in Ancient History (1869 )
- The West African University ( 1872)
- From West Africa to Palestine (1873 )
- Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race ( 1887)
- The Jewish Question ( 1898)
- West Africa before Europe ( 1905)
- Africa Life and Customs ( 1908)