A history of ideas: West Africa, 'the Black Atlantic', and pan-Africanism

Specifically, "A History of Ideas" centers the lives and works of two West African thinkers: Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) of Liberia, Rev. Carl Christian Reindorf of the Gold Coast (1834-1917). The work first brings attention to the specific contributions of these two intellectuals and their nineteenth century cohort of West African intellectuals to the Atlantic world and their role in the making of intellectual traditions in Africa, the Black Atlantic, and the international Black world. This intellectual history also emphasizes West African thinkers' shared involvement with African Diaspora scholars in the philosophical evolution and organizational growth of ideas of Pan-Africanism. This dual biography also seeks to show the distinct West African perspectives about various discussions in the Atlantic world concerning the future direction of West Africa in particular, the Black Atlantic, and the human species in general. To this end, the dissertation illuminates West Africa's place in the formation of Atlantic bodies of knowledge and in turn help gain a greater understanding of the Atlantic dynamics of the nineteenth century intellectual world.;Most importantly the study significantly examines the ways by which Blyden and Reindorf through their scholarship were instrumental in establishing Pan-African ideas that helped launch the worldwide Pan-African Movement whose beginnings, I contend, should not continue to be understood as exclusive to the Americas.