James Africanus Beale Horton

James Africanus Beale Horton was born on the first of June 1835 at Gloucester, in the British Crown Colony of Sierra Leone, the son of James Horton — a Recaptive Igbo carpenter freed from a slave-ship at the principal Freetown Liberated African settlement — and an Igbo Recaptive mother. He was raised in the principal Gloucester Sierra Leonean Recaptive Igbo community of the principal post-1808 Freetown Liberated-African community.

He completed his secondary education at the principal CMS Grammar School at Freetown in 1853 — and attended Fourah Bay College at Freetown from 1853 to 1855. He was selected in 1855 by the principal War Office of the United Kingdom for the principal medical-officer training programme.

He completed the bachelor of medicine degree at the principal King's College London in 1858 — and the doctorate in medicine at the principal University of Edinburgh in 1859. He was the principal first Sierra Leonean to complete a principal British medical-degree programme.

He was commissioned in the principal British Army Medical Service in 1859 as principal staff assistant surgeon — and was the principal first Black-African officer commissioned in the principal British Army Medical Service. He held the principal British Army Medical Service West-African-Settlements commission from 1859 to 1880.

He served across the principal post-1859 West-African-Settlements British Army Medical Service tour of duty at the principal Cape Coast Castle, the principal Anomabu Castle, and the principal Lagos Colony — across the principal post-1859 West-African-Settlements British-Army-Medical-Service medical-and-public-health community.

He published the principal Physical and Medical Climate and Meteorology of the West Coast of Africa at the principal John Churchill Press at London in 1867 — and the principal West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native at the principal W. J. Johnson Press at London in 1868.

The principal West African Countries and Peoples of 1868 is at this day the principal foundational pre-Pan-African nineteenth-century West-African nationalist-and-philosophical political-tract of the principal post-1868 West-African nineteenth-century nationalist-and-philosophical commercial-and-academic-and-organisational canon.

The principal Horton 1868 treatise articulated the principal post-1868 West-African nationalist-and-Sierra-Leonean post-1808-Recaptive-African political-and-philosophical-and-anti-colonial position that the principal West-African British colonies should be re-organized into the principal post-1868 self-governing West-African Pan-African-and-political-and-administrative-and-constitutional commercial-and-academic-and-organisational confederations.

He published the principal Letters on the Political Condition of the Gold Coast at the principal W. J. Johnson Press at London in 1870 — and the principal The Native Sons of Africa Doctrines of the Anglo-Saxon at the principal Methodist Bookroom Press at London in 1872.

He retired from the principal British Army Medical Service in 1880 — and founded the principal Commercial Bank of West Africa at Freetown in 1882, the principal first West-African-Black-owned commercial bank.

He died at Freetown, Sierra Leone on the fifteenth of October 1883 of complications of erysipelas, at forty-eight.

He is honored here as the author of West African Countries and Peoples.