This book is the third in the series Classical Diaspora, a series that aims to address issues of national and ethnic identity within classical studies, reflecting the complex variety of the classical world's legacy in fields as varied as education, government, technology, literature, painting, cinema, philosophy and empire building (as stated on the back cover). Even though this book forms part of the series, it can be read and appreciated independently for its coherence and the content it addresses; and as such, one may choose to read other books in the series primarily for the purpose of drawing comparisons on experiences about colonial classics education from other territories. For example, M. Lambert's Classics and South African Identities recounts many experiences that relate to G.'s volume.
The book's aim is ‘to reconstruct a cultural history of classics in the British colonies of West Africa’ (p. 1). G.'s broader aims for writing the book revolve around three main issues: ‘how classics contributed to the formation of a new class of Europeanising West Africans in the late nineteenth century; how classics was implicated in the ideological struggles of the early twentieth century over the desirability of “practical” or “agricultural” education; and how the uses of Classics changed in the years leading up to independence’. And the specific questions that B. seeks to address are outlined as follows: ‘how did West Africans react to education in Latin and the classics; how far did such education operate as a sign of oppression, of the “colonisation of consciousness”, and how far as a means for personal and social advancement, or even as a tool for forging an anti-colonial politics? Why did Europeans bring the classics to West Africa, and how did they respond to the developing dynamic when West Africans laid independent claim to the classical heritage? In sum, how were the classics interwoven with the power struggles that characterized colonial systems and the resistance to them?’ (p. 2).
The study focuses on the West African countries of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (later called Ghana on independence) and Nigeria; and the time frame for the study is delineated from c. 1827 to 1957 (from the beginning of Western education in West Africa until the date of Ghanaian independence).
The book is demarcated into four thematic chapters presented chronologically. Chapter 1, ‘Colonial Contradictions’, looks at nineteenth-century developments by examining ‘the role of classical education in the production of a new “middle class” among freed slaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone’ and also ‘contradictory reactions to Africans’ acquisition of the classics’ (p. 17). Chapter 2, ‘Classics and Cultural Nationalism’, gives the classical references in the texts of African ‘cultural nationalists’ from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapter 3, ‘Twentieth-Century Struggles’, looks at ‘the first decades of the twentieth century, when marked political and cultural transformations were brought about by the First World War. These decades saw perhaps the most energetic struggle over classical education, with British authorities now wishing to withhold it from Africans, against their vigorous opposition’ (p. 17). Chapter 4, ‘Classics and West African Modernity’, examines the period leading up to independence.
G. uses a wide array of secondary sources ranging from Parliamentary reports, to missionary reports and some of the earliest histories authored by Africans, to the essays and novels of James Africanus Beale Horton, Edward Blyden, Kobina Sekyi and Joseph Casely Hatford, to the Phelps-Stokes Report of 1922 and De Graft Johnson's Towards Nationhood in West Africa of 1928, autobiographies of African students and the history of Achimota, a school which endeavoured to combine the classical with African tradition; to articles in the termly magazine of Mfantsipin school.
G. seeks ‘to show that in the very early period, Africans’ classical qualifications contributed to the formation of an African “middle class”, and thus were welcomed by the imperial authorities as proof of the process of the “civilising” colonial mission, while occasionally deplored by other commentators both African and European’ (p. 3). G. further argues that ‘in the West African colonial context, classical education was an important dimension of the move into modernity which was also identified with Christianity and the use of English, and which was promised to Africans as the prime reward of colonial occupation … to study classics in Africa is thus to study an encounter that potentially symbolizes modernity in particularly acute and demanding ways’ (p. 7).
From the outset, G. points out that she is a pure classicist (not a historian) with a strong bias towards classical reception. To that end she succinctly elaborates on the perspective she has taken regarding classical reception: ‘by “classical reception”, I mean the redeployment of classical texts and artefacts by subsequent societies and cultures. Within the discipline of classics, research into classical reception is a burgeoning sub-field, and within research into classical reception, the role of classics in colonial and postcolonial cultures has in recent years taken a very high profile’ (pp. 2–3). Even though G. humbly purports not to be a historian, she has accomplished the intellectual historical dimension to this work plausibly. The book is informed by a political ideology of colonialism to a certain degree. G. has been impartial to have struck a balance at both ends and let facts speak for themselves.
G. is clear about the aspirations of the book: she ‘hopes to promote further understanding in this area [of classical reception], and therefore investigates not only the educational context but also the wider cultural, political and social contexts where classical materials are deployed by Africans and Europeans alike to support, resist or analyse the workings of colonialism’ (p. 3). G. uses documentary evidence to investigate the role of classics in educational establishments and in the wider cultures. The evidence is primarily derived from parliamentary papers, school and university histories, autobiographies, essays, journalism and creative literature. Such a wide array of secondary evidence helps to triangulate G.'s findings and thereby achieve validity and authenticity.
A highly formal academic style of writing is used throughout. All terms and concepts are defined or elaborated upon. The book's format, layout and binding (hard bound, beautiful cover and front cover depicting a Greek play in colonial Africa) are of a high standard. The index is accurate, and so too the wide-ranging bibliography.
The volume should be read for G.'s erudition and remarkable attention to detail and her insistence on remaining open to the richness of the classical reception, and should be read by scholars in other disciplines and particularly those with interests in classical reception, post-colonial cultural politics, the history of education and African history. The book is a must read for all scholars at postgraduate level researching post-colonial contexts. As an African classics scholar from Malawi, I have been deeply inspired by this book. I can now understand better that the experiences faced by early missionaries who brought education to Africa especially for Latin and Classics generally, were not unique to West Africa but were relatively similar in other colonies. And I can now better understand how classical studies have evolved and keep evolving with times.
The breadth of G.'s learning is impressive. Her writing is full of allusions to several fields and is clearly the fruit of a long period of study, thought and writing.
