On April 14, 1915, James Hutton Brew died in London at age 71, bringing to a close the life of one of the most important African political thinkers and journalists of the 19th century.
Born in Cape Coast in July 1844, Brew belonged to a prominent Fante family with both African and Irish roots and at age eight, he was sent to England for school, an unusual opportunity at the time. Brew returned to the Gold Coast as a young man and, in 1864, became one of the colony’s first African lawyers.
Brew quickly emerged as a leading voice for African self-government and in the late 1860s and early 1870s, he helped organize the Fante Confederacy, an alliance of Fante leaders and educated Africans who sought greater local control over the Gold Coast. Brew wrote the confederacy’s 1871 constitution, one of the earliest formal political documents produced by Africans in colonial West Africa.
In 1874, Brew founded The Gold Coast Times, the first major African-owned newspaper in the colony. Later, he launched The Western Echo. Through his newspapers, Brew argued that Africans should have a greater role in governing their own affairs and facilitated this by mentoring younger activists, including J.E. Casely Hayford, who would later become a major figure in Gold Coast nationalism.
Brew became especially important during the British campaign to abolish domestic slavery in the Gold Coast. While colonial officials formally outlawed slavery in 1874, they did little to help formerly enslaved people support themselves. Brew slammed the policy and forewarned that freed people could be forced back into slavery through poverty, at the same time, arguing that the government should provide land and compensation so emancipation would be real, not symbolic.
In later years, Brew moved back to England and spent much of his time lobbying British officials on behalf of Gold Coast interests. He wrote petitions and letters about land rights, colonial policy and the treatment of the Asante people. Financial problems, including bankruptcy, marked his final years, but he continued to speak for African political rights.
When Brew died at his home in Camberwell, London, his work was largely overlooked but today, historians recognize him as a frontiersperson of African journalism.
