African Political Thought: An Intellectual History of the Quest for Freedom

African liberation is often seen in terms of heroism, but seldom in terms of thought. Even Sartre, in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s seminal The Wretched of the Earth, wrote of the ‘native’ with his coiled muscles about to explode into rebellion. The African and the black person are denied the condition of philosophy, apparently driven only by frustration and anger.

Stephen Chan’s new book charts the long history of African political thought, from the years of North American slavery, through ...