Africanus Horton

Who was Africanus Horton?

Africanus Horton, also known as James Beale, was a Creole African nationalist writer and an esteemed Medical Surgeon in the British Army from Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Africanus Horton was a surgeon, scientist, soldier, and a political thinker who worked toward African independence a century before it occurred.

Born as James Beale Horton, the son of an Igbo recaptive slave he was educated at the CMS Grammar School and at the Fourah Bay Institution. In 1853, he received a War Office scholarship to study medicine in Great Britain. He studied at King's College London and Edinburgh University, qualifying as a medical doctor in 1859. While a student, he took the name "Africanus" as an emblem of pride in his African homeland

In his varied career, he served as a physician, an officer in the British Army, a banker, and a mining entrepreneur. In addition, he wrote a number of books and essays, the most widely remembered of which is his 1868 Vindication of the African Race, an answer to the white racist authors emerging in Europe. His writings look ahead to African self-government, anticipating many events of the 1950s and 1960s, and Horton is often seen as one of the founders of African nationalism.