Africa Must Unite [Charles V. Hamilton's closely annotated copy]

London: Heinemann, 1964. Early printing. Hardcover octavo in illustrated dust jacket. Maroon treated cloth with lettering stamped in gilt to spine. Publisher's African-continent cartographic endpapers and maroon topstain. xvii, 229pp. Lightly edge worn, with gentle pushing to corners and ends of spine; pages marked and lightly soiled; square binding opens somewhat easily between gatherings; Very Good or better. Unclipped jacket is soiled, creased, and scuffed; consistent edgewear has resulted in shallow creasing and closed tears throughout, although all material is present; spine sunned; also Very Good.. Charles V. Hamilton's working copy of Ghanaian independence leader and prominent African anti-colonial figure Kwame Nkrumah's book on African self-determination, cited and quoted multiple times in Hamilton's seminal book with Kwame Ture [Stokely Carmichael] Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967).

Hamilton's blue pen runs through much of the book, both highlighting and bracketing pages as well as holding notes and thoughts in the margins, often with the focus of how to work Nkrumah's ideas into his own work-in-progress: "quite similar to Southern negro sharecropper system" [p.39]; "show similarity w/ long-standing conditions in this country - consult Civil Rights 1961 report" [p.36], etc.


Beyond Hamilton's ownership signature to front free endpaper and the same edition being cited in Black Power's bibliography, further support for this being unquestionably the working copy used by the author stands in its direct correlation of notations to the published book: Black Power first extensively quotes from Africa Must Unite in their first chapter, "White Power: The Colonial Situation," saying: Former President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, described the colonial situation in pre-independent Africa in his book Africa Must Unite: The principle of indirect rule adopted in West Africa, and also in other parts of the continent, allowed a certain amount of local self-government in that chiefs could rule their districts
provided they did nothing contrary to the laws of the colonial power, and on condition they accepted certain orders from the colonial government. The system of indirect rule was notably successful for a time in Northern Nigeria, where the Emirs governed much as they had done before the colonial period. But the system had obvious dangers. In some cases, autocratic chiefs, propped up by the colonial government, became inefficient and unpopular, as the riots against the chiefs in Eastern Nigeria in 1929, and in Sierra Leone in 1936, showed.
In wide areas of East Africa, where there was no developed system of local government which could be used, headmen or "warrant" chiefs were appointed, usually from noble families.They were so closely tied up with the colonial power that many Africans thought chiefs were an invention of the British [p. 18]." To page 18 of Hamilton's copy, we see not only that exact passage bracketed (as opposed to his more common underlining), but a stain of ash from Hamilton's perennial tobacco pipe to the gutter between pp 18-19, possibly from its prolonged drooping over the page as he copied over that very passage.


A remarkable association copy of this scarce work, and an important foundational copy for one of many bridges between African and African-American revolutionary theory of the time.