Black Students in Imperial Britain: The African Institute, Colwyn Bay, 1889–1911, by Robert Burroughs

This very good book is about a school for African children and young adults that operated in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, from 1889 to 1911, known initially as the Congo Training Institute or Congo House and later renamed the African Training Institute. The major objectives of the author, Robert Burroughs, are to advance our understanding of the imperial ‘civilizing mission’, to reveal the meaning and consequences of humanitarian missions for the British as well as for Africans, and to demonstrate the agency of the students enrolled in the Institute’s programme.

The Congo Training Institute was founded by the Rev. William Hughes, a Baptist pastor, who had served as a missionary in Africa but had been forced to abandon this work owing to ill-health. He sought to carry on the goal of evangelical humanitarianism by establishing Congo House for the training of young Africans to return to Africa as missionaries. As the Institute required large donations from sympathetic Britons to operate, Hughes devoted enormous efforts to raising money. One of the leading arguments of the book is that a reciprocal exchange arose between students on the one hand and the Institute and its donors on the other, in which providing humanitarian aid yielded returns for both parties. Imperial philanthropy obviously served to legitimate British imperialism. In addition, the Institute’s students reciprocated by expressing their gratitude, extolling the generosity of donors, and affirming the superiority of the culture they were imbibing. More than that, however, Burroughs argues that missionary movements ‘became an integral and intimate part of national and other self-identities’ (p. 9). The goal to civilise others was tied to the goal ‘to civilize the British self’ (p. 84).

The contradiction between the realities of European imperialism and this supposed imperial humanitarianism were blatant from the beginning. An important part of Hughes’s personal brand was his association with Henry Morton Stanley, who became a patron of Congo House. Stanley also secured the patronage of Leopold II, king of Belgium and ruler of the Congo. These relationships became an increasing liability as the European public became more aware of the Congo atrocities, which Hughes was initially reluctant to condemn.

In the early years of Congo House, the agency of students was exercised primarily in relations with the local community and in fund-raising tours during which a handful of students would be presented to specific audiences to perform in ways that demonstrated the success of the training they were receiving. Burroughs contends that students were not mere puppets but active agents in these exercises. Most students developed a passionate belief in the evangelical civilising mission and many of those who returned to Africa as missionaries established independent churches.

Eventually the Institute was drawn into the Pan-African and Ethiopian movements, which sought to advance the welfare and status of Africans rather than furthering European imperialism. In contrast with his reluctance to condemn the Congo atrocities, Hughes was mostly supportive of these movements, and the Institute became one of their bases in Britain. In turn, the Pan-African movement was instrumental both for the African Institute and for the sub-branches that Hughes had founded in Africa, providing him with a new trans-African network for the recruitment of students.

This transition was encouraged by a significant change in the characteristics of the students who attended the Institute and the purposes for which they attended. For some students the Institute became a stepping stone to British universities and to careers as physicians, lawyers or teachers. Over time more of the students came from better-off families in Africa. Some were children of missionaries, others of elites in African countries. This was very different from the social background of the early student cohorts at the Congo Institute, when most students were, or were imagined to be, rescued from destitution. Significantly, however, the rescue narrative persisted in the way the Institute was presented to the British public.

This book illustrates two different types of racism that were particularly manifest in Victorian Britain: biological racism, which posits that certain humans are biologically superior to others; and cultural racism, or what is often called ethnocentrism, which posits that certain humans are superior by virtue of their socialisation in a superior culture. Obviously, many people held both types of racism. Burroughs clearly demonstrates, however, that it was possible to believe in the cultural but not the biological racial superiority of a population. Although the African Institute was not totally free of biological racism, it was based primarily on cultural racism from the very beginning. Biological racism would have undermined its basic raison d’être. Hughes not only believed that he could elevate young Africans to the superior British culture but also that he could persuade members of the public that his students were capable of successfully assimilating this culture. This belief in the innate intelligence of Africans was only strengthened by the association of the Institute with the Pan-African movement.

Cultural racism was a double-edged sword. It justified European imperialism. In the case at hand, Burroughs shows that most Africans associated with the Institute bought into the superiority of European culture. At the same time, however, cultural racism can be challenged, often on its own terms, as demonstrated by the Pan-African and Ethiopian movements. A culture can also be appropriated and modified to serve different purposes, as in the Africanisation of Christianity.

This book should be widely read. It employs an analysis of a single educational institution to reveal much about the larger subject of European imperialism and racism. It also tells a fascinating story.