Africanus Horton
| Africanus Horton | |
|---|---|
Africanus Horton
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| Born | James Beale Horton 1835 Gloucester Village, Sierra Leone |
| Died | 1883 |
| Nationality | Sierra Leonean |
| Period | 19th Century |
| Literary movement | African Nationalism, Pan-Africanism |
Africanus Horton (1835, Gloucester, Sierra Leone–1883), also known as James Beale, was a Creole African nationalist writer and an esteemed medical surgeon in the British Army from Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Africanus Horton was a surgeon, scientist, soldier, and a political thinker who worked toward African independence a century before it occurred. In his varied career, he served as a physician, an officer in the British Army, a banker, and a mining entrepreneur. In addition, he wrote a number of books and essays, the most widely remembered of which is his 1868 Vindication of the African Race, an answer to the white racist authors emerging in Europe. His writings look ahead to African self-government, anticipating many events of the 1950s and 1960s, and Horton is often seen as one of the founders of African nationalism and has been called "the father of modern African political thought".
He wrote a book entitled West African Countries and Peoples (1868). A crater on Mercury is named after him.
Horton was born in the village of Gloucester, close to Freetown in Sierra Leone. He was born James Horton in 1835 to the family James Horton; his father was a recaptive slave of Igbo ancestry. Horton began his studies at a local school in Gloucester and in 1845, he was recruited by Reverend James Beale to attend CMS Grammar School. Thereafter, he moved to Fourah Bay Institution (later Fourah Bay College) to study divinity in the hope of becoming a clergyman. In 1855, along with William Davies and Samuel Campbell and he received a British War Office scholarship to study medicine in Great Britain. He studied at King's College London and Edinburgh University, qualifying as a medical doctor in 1859. While a student, he took the name "Africanus" as an emblem of pride in his African homeland. He published his dissertation, The Medical Topography of the West Coast of Africa in 1858. Upon completion of his studies at Edinburgh, he was commissioned as an officer in the British Army and was made a Staff Assistant Surgeon becoming one of the earliest Africans in the officer cadre of the British Army. When he returned to Sierra Leone, he was posted to service in Ghana in the West India Regiment. In his army career he was posted to various locations within the British colony, including Lagos, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ghana.
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