taught or mentored are testament to his success. Non-Alignment and Cold War diplomacy Blyden was a first-hand observer and participant at many key events that would shape the geopolitics in the second half-of the 20th Century. Under the auspices of Harvard University, he was a student observer at the Treaty of San Francisco that formally ended World War II. He toured Asian and Far Eastern Universities as a visiting lecturer, coming in contact with intellectuals involved in Asian independence struggles. In 1954 he was the sole delegate from colonial Sierra Leone to the Eighth General Assembly of UNESCO in Montevideo, Uruguay. Thus by the mid-1950s, Blyden's African perspective on post-colonial nationhood and self-determination was widely known and respected among Africans and Asians seeking to define the roles of post-colonial nations on the world stage. At the 1962 conference on international politics billed "New Nations in a Divided World: The international relations of Afro-Asian states", Blyden presented the paper African Neutralism and Non Alignment. The conference organizers would ultimately publish the conference proceedings in a book of the same name (Praeger, NY) edited by Kurt London, with the following commentary: Of all current political and ideological concepts, few have stirred more controversy than that of non-alignment-- the doctrine devised by those Afro-Asian leaders who are seeking a 'third way' in the East-West struggle. Their unwillingness to align themselves with either of the two great power blocks now confronting each other cannot fail to have enormous and far-reaching effects – now and in the future – upon the shape of the world. The publisher went on to say: In his contribution, Blyden reviewed the history and origin of African ideas on neutralism and non-alignment from James Aggrey and J. E. Casely Hayford, through Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah to the Bandung Conference. Blyden summarised the primacy of Africanism in the policy-making of newly independent nations: A point that may be obvious but can hardly be overstated in any assessment of African Policies of non-alignment is that African political leaderships do not conceive of their policies as Eastern or Western, but as African. Africanism is the touchstone of the policy-maker in the new African states. It is noteworthy in this regard that serious writers on Africa have been struck by the pervasiveness of the pan-African impulse in contemporary African politics. Leading students like Padmore, Shepperson, Fyfe, Hargreaves, and Dike have been unanimous in