THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
DUSE MOHAMED ALI: EGYPTIAN NATIONALIST, PAN AFRIKANIST JOURNALIST
By AHATI N. N. TOURE
For Duse Mohamed Ali (21 November 1866-26 February 1945), traveling and forging relationships throughout the Afrikan world were central themes of his 78-year life's journey. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Sudanese mother and an Egyptian father, Ali was destined never to stay long in the land of his birth. The actor, journalist, Pan Afrikanist, and writer related that at nine years old his father, Abdul Salem Ali, an [E]gyptian army officer who was later killed during an abortive nationalist uprising in 1881-1882, sent him to study in England. Ali would eventually lose his knowledge of Arabic and contact with his family. From then on he would spend the rest of his life living away from Egypt, traveling widely throughout the global Afrikan community, and settling variously in England, the United States, and Nigeria.
His first career, which was to last for 24 years, was in the theater. In 1885, at age 19, the orphaned Ali became a stage actor, beginning in Wilson Barrett's theatrical company, and adopting the non-Arabic name Duse. He departed England the following year for touring and performances in the United States and Canada. While in the United States, Ali left the company and worked as a clerk for several years before returning to Britain in 1898 to resume acting for 11 more years.
By his early 40s, however, Ali had decided on a career change. In 1909 he began work as a journalist, publishing articles on Egyptian nationalism and Afrikan oppression in the New Age, an influential London-based socialist weekly literary journal. Two years later he published a short history of Egypt titled In the Land of the Pharaohs. Reputedly the first history of Egypt written by an Egyptian, the book received critical acclaim, catapulting Ali into international, and especially Pan Afrikan, prominence.
In July 1912 he founded in London the African Times and Orient Review, a political, cultural, and commercial journal that advocated Pan Afrikan-Asian nationalism and that was a forum for Afrikan intellectuals and activists from around the world. The journal covered issues in the United States, the Caribbean, West Afrika, South Africa, and Egypt, as well as in Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Marcus Garvey, who was living in London at the time, briefly worked for Ali and contributed an article to the journal's October 1913 issue. It ceased [P]ublication in October 1918, succeeded by the African and Orient Review, which operated through most of 1920.
In the year following the journal's demise, Ali traveled to the United States, never returning to Britain. There he briefly worked in Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association movement, contributing articles on Afrikan issues to the Negro World, and heading a department on Afrikan affairs.
Ali had come to the United States to promote his vision of economic Pan Afrikanism, seeking to set up a commercial link between West Afrikans and US Afrikans. In the 1920s he repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to secure US Afrikan financing to enable West Afrikan produce farmers to secure markets and exports to the United States, wresting control from major British firms, such as Lever Brothers. In the 1930s he failed to gain Euro-American capital for the same purpose.
Ten years after he had come to the United States, Ali left permanently for West Afrika in 1931, settling in Lagos, Nigeria. There he re-established a career in journalism, becoming founder and editor of The Comet, which in 1933 became Nigeria's largest weekly. In 1934 he serialized his novel, Ere Roosevelt Came, which, among other things, touched upon his experiences with the Afrikan struggle in the United States. From June 1937 to March 1938 he also serialized his autobiography, Leaves >From An Active Life. He retired from the newspaper's managing directorship in 1943 and died in Lagos two years later at the age of 78.
Further Reading
"Biographical Supplement: Duse Mohamed Ali," in The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume I: 1826-August 1919, edited by Robert A. Hill and Carol A. Rudisell, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983
Duffield, Ian, "Duse Mohamed Ali: His Purpose and His Public" in The Commonwealth Writer Overseas: Themes of Exile and Expatriation, edited by Alastair Niven, Brussels: M. Didier, 1976
Duffield, Ian, "Duse Mohamed Ali and the Development of Pan-Africanism 1866-1945," Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1971
Duffield, Ian, "John Eldred Taylor and West African Opposition to Indirect Rule in Nigeria," African Affairs, 70, no. 280 (July 1971)
Duffield, Ian, "Some American Influences on Duse Mohamed Ali," in Pan-African Biography, edited by Robert a Hill, Los Angeles: African Studies Center, University of California-Los Angeles, and Crossroads Press, African Studies Association, 1987
Duffield, Ian, "The Business Activities of Duse Mohamed Ali: An Example of the Economic Dimension of Pan-Africanism," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 4, no. 4 (June 1969)
Hill, Robert A., "The First England Years and After, 1912-1916," in Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, edited by John Henrik Clarke and Amy Jacques Garvey, New York: Random House, 1974
Mahmud, Khalil, "Introduction to the Second Edition,"in In the Land of the Pharaohs: A Short History of Egypt, Second edition, by Duse Mohamed, London: Frank Cass, 1968
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Revised: December 11, 2001.
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