african life and customs

This book, based on lectures given by Edward Wilmot Blyden during his tenure as Liberia's secretary of state, details the past, present, and future of Liberia as a Pan-Africanist state. Blyden believed that European culture was not relevant to Africans, and that it only diverted attention from African intellectualism. One of the earliest Pan-Africanists, Blyden encouraged all people of African descent to celebrate their heritage and to live in African nations. African Life and Customs was published by C.M. Phillips in London in 1908. The first five chapters of the book were untitled.

PREFACE

The following pages have been written with the desire, if possible, of unfolding the African, who has received unmixed European culture, to himself, through a study of the customs of his fathers, and also of assisting the European political overlord, ruling in Africa, to arrive at a proper appreciation of conditions.

It is now recognised on all hands that the usefulness, true progress, ...