"Between Colonialization and Post-Colonialism: Nicholas Said's Nuanced Nationalism

Finally, demonstrating the intertwined nature of Reconstruction-era policies and attitudes towards African Americans and global colonial initiatives, the African-born Nicholas Said (1836-82), a formerly enslaved African Muslim... [ view full abstract ]

Finally, demonstrating the intertwined nature of Reconstruction-era policies and attitudes towards African Americans and global colonial initiatives, the African-born Nicholas Said (1836-82), a formerly enslaved African Muslim and former Union Army soldier, serves intervenes in The Atlantic Monthly’s imperialist rhetoric with his ten-page, abbreviated, autobiographical sketch, “A Native of Bornoo” (1867). Though he does not wholly reject Westerners' attitudes about the inferiority of African peoples in this piece, he tempers the prevailing assessment of the West’s role in facilitating African progress, and outright rejects of the rhetoric of colonialism. Furthermore, he offers a post-Civil War, post-colonialist strategy to address African people’s omission from westernized conceptions of history and culture. Arguing that his northern African homeland of Bornou is not too dissimilar from that of the United States, he concludes that, white supremacy notwithstanding, the post-Civil War nation is poised to become an exemplar of what colonized African nations can become in the wake of revolution.  He posits himself as an example of the transformative power of education and social mobility for an otherwise self-governing people whose ancestors once had been kidnapped into American bondage.  His ability to introduce these ideas in the context of a journal, The Atlantic Monthly, that publishes both imaginative literature and news reportage synthesizes the elements of slave memoir and journalism.