How did people in East Africa come to see themselves as 'Africans', and where did these concepts originate from? Utilizing a global intellectual history lens, Ethan Sanders traces how ideas stemming from global black intellectuals of the Atlantic and others shaped the imaginations of East Africans in the early twentieth century. This study centres on the African Association, a trans-territorial pan-Africanist organization that promoted global visions of African unity. No mere precursor to anti-colonial territorial nationalism, the organization eschewed territorial thinking and sought to build a continental African nation from the 1920s to the 1940s, at odds with later forms of nationalism in Africa. Sanders explores in depth the thought of James Aggrey, Paul Sindi Seme, and Julius Nyerere, three major twentieth-century pan-Africanists. This book rethinks definitions of pan-Africanism, demonstrating how expressions of both practical and redemptive pan-Africanism inspired those who joined the African Association and embraced an African identity.

‘Drawing on a wide range of institutional and private archives, including Julius Nyerere's library, Ethan Sanders offers a new way of thinking about eastern African political thought, moving us beyond the limitations of territorial nationalism. Building the African Nation fundamentally challenges our understanding of African intellectual history by showing how the African Association first imagined a united political community across eastern Africa.'

Jonathon L. Earle - Centre College

‘In this carefully researched book Ethan Sanders gives Pan-Africanism an altogether richer history. We usually think that national independence was the essential result of African political development; but here, in the history of the African Association, we glimpse the more capacious solidarities that early thinkers organized around. In a time such as ours, when resurgent nativisms cloud our vision and limit our charity, it is important to have a book such as this.'

Derek R. Peterson - University of Michigan