Blackwell Reference Online

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Anton Wilhelm Amo (sometimes referred to by the anglicized name Anton William Amo), one of the first Africans to study and teach at European universities, was a philosopher from the West African region now known as Ghana. He lectured at the German universities of Halle, Wittenberg, and Jena. He published on a variety of issues, ranging from black people's rights in eighteenth-century Europe, to medicine, epistemology, and psychology. His academic career, his stance for black people's rights, his affirmation of his African identity, as well as his decision to return home to find his family, are outstanding achievements at a time when many other West Africans – including his own brother, who was deported to Suriname – were stripped of their rights, denied their humanity, and enslaved in European colonies. Born in Axim, in today's Ghana, at around 1703, he was presented as a “gift” to the Dukes August Wilhelm and Ludwig Rudolf von Wolfenbüttel by the Dutch West India Company in 1707. He was named after Anton Ulrich von Wolfenbüttel and his first son, Wilhelm August. The name Amo is Ghanaian, suggesting that Amo was old enough to remember his name when he arrived in Germany. The practice of presenting enslaved Africans as “gifts” was common among European nobility at the time. Africans were used as exotic servants and symbols of status, power, and affluence. Amo could thus have served ... log in or subscribe to read full text