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  • Garvey, Garveyism and the Antinomies in Black Redemption
  • Gerald Horne
C. Boyd James . Garvey, Garveyism and the Antinomies in Black Redemption. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2009. xxiv + 462 pp. Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index. $34.95. Paper.

The movement led by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, extended its reach into North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The political platforms of these different manifestations represented a reaction to the depredations of European colonialism, and thus Garvey and his comrades were harassed severely by the North Atlantic powers, particularly as the conclusion of World War I created a crisis for the entire system of imperialism.

Garvey's movement has attracted considerable attention from historians, with the multivolume collection of documents edited by Robert Hill preeminent in this regard. The volume at hand is somewhat old-fashioned in that it contains lengthy disquisitions on various topics that an alert editor would not deem germane to the main topic. Nevertheless, any student of this movement or this era could profit from a close reading of this book, which represents decades of research.

This book is biographical in that it contains an exploration of the life of Garvey—maintaining, for example, that he was originally named Malchus Garvey. The author studied land records in the Jamaican archives in an effort to clarify the class background of his subject. However, he did not explore Garvey's marriages, a subject covered expertly and adroitly by another historian, [End Page 243] Ula Y. Taylor. By contrast, James does seek to clarify the ideological influences on Garvey, with particular focus on Duse Mohammed Ali, a London-based intellectual of "Sudanese-Egyptian" origins (66). The author also notes the influence of the multilingual—and sweepingly intellectual—Liberian leader Edward W. Blyden (born in the Virgin Islands), who was also profoundly color- and "race"-conscious, with his barbs extending not just to those defined as "white": "When I am dead," Blyden purportedly asserted, "write nothing on my tombstone but . . . 'he hated mulattoes'" (109). As is typical of this thorough author, James traces these tensions back to revolutionary Haiti, and in the process he suggests wisely that a new narrative of this topic is needed desperately.

The author also sketches non-African influences on Garvey and his movement, asserting at one juncture that "Garvey was not only a proponent of the policies and actions of Hitler and Nazi Germany. He was also a passionate supporter and proponent of the universal ideology of racial particularity and nationalism that ransacked Europe from 1848 until 1945[,] . . . all these articulations being logical outcomes of European Enlightenment" (139). Too often it is forgotten that the bestiality of colonialism—such as the plunder of what is now Namibia by Germany more than a century ago—paved the way for the tragedy that befell Central Europe in succeeding decades; similarly, there were those who thought that the ideas that took hold in Berlin were little more than the natural and inexorable efflorescence of white supremacy, a doctrine that had potent patrons in the U.S., where Garvey spent considerable time before being deported in the early 1920s.

The book contains one of the most extensive excavations extant of Garvey's star-crossed relationship with Liberia. Inevitably, James analyzes the controversial role of W.E.B. Du Bois in this scenario, for this West African nation attracted the intense attention of numerous Africans in the Western Hemisphere. Nigeria also does not escape his gaze, as the author points out that the "Lagos division was the largest" in Garvey's African apparatus (233). The author also gives considerable attention to the South African Blackman, which Jan Smuts (he is referred to in these pages as "Jon") sought to suppress in the heady post–World War I era (232). "Nowhere else in Africa," says the author, speaking of South Africa, "had the inhabitants devoured the spirit of Garveyism with more intensity; consequently, in [sic] nowhere else was the spirit more determinably [sic] entrenched" (233). Is this book sprawling? Assuredly, yes. Does it wander down byways that should have been avoided? Certainly. But the major point left with this reviewer after closing this weighty volume is that it represents a...

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