1818 Pinkerton Map

It is has been expressed that Africa, in effect, had “no history” prior to western colonialism. On the contrary, curiosity attracted me to continent, wherein I easily found much.  I read books as a child which described the ‘mythical city’ of Timbuktu; I learned of the vast resources of the Congo, (as Zaire), merely by watching contemporary television coverage. Early on, I was led to a picture book of the Great Zimbabwe society, and fascinated by the stone structures that seemingly stretched across much of the southern third of the continent; as well as the ancient gold mines nearby.

When Oxford University History Professor Trevor Roper to claim in 1964 that “there is only the history of Europeans in Africa,” there could be no statement further from the truth.  With that type of instruction, taught to a nation’s most brightest students, it is no wonder that recent statistics show students to disbelieve in Timbuktu, as pure myth, akin to an African ‘El Dorado’. It is known, though apparently not taught well enough, that the city actually exists, and was THE center of Islamic learning (and by extension, world learning) during from the middle ages until the rise of European powers. Roper would say I’m “seduced…by the changing breath of journalistic fashion,” in hoping that the ‘common knowledge’ become commonly known. Granted, modern technology has put libraries at my fingertips, where I can explore the continent, virtually, at whim. However, this history has always been there to find, and an Oxford Professor of 50 years past, had just as much resource, if not more in terms of primary sources and artifacts.

Africa is a story about the loss of human capital, extracted like a resource from their people of origin. Why is the memory short on Africa? Is it that “Darkness is not a subject for history,” as Oxford University Professor of History, Trevor Roper, expresses? He charges that students should be taught about black African history, that unless it is, history will only be known from the European perspective… and that perspective, much like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America, it “is largely darkness.”

In order to fully grasp the state of current affairs, one should look to the past to see how things were before they became the way they are. It puts into context and grounds one to the material, in that that the learner may realize the changes that have occurred between two times in history. In our schools we are taught about the “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” but what is taught is merely cursory, and oftentimes simplified to less than a page, to where all ‘history’ is merely the modern era, and everything before: ‘ancient’. One can only begin to make sense of the mad reality and come to terms towards a peace and reconciliation by a deeper, more historical understanding of the issue, and moving beyond the Euro-centric conception of the African continent. Well-travelled 14^th century explorer Ibn Battuta described the African people he encountered in Mali as “seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people.” He described the peace and security maintained by the people and noted that “neither traveler nor inhabitant has anything to fear.”[1]

This greatly contrasts the European vision presented hundreds of years later, in 1831 by German philosopher George Wilhelm Hegel, who declared the African “completely wild and untamed,” and “unhistorical.” Justifying his lack of wont to guess a timeline for African self-governance, Governor of Kenya Sir Philip E. Mitchell urged that “it is necessary to realize that history began for these African people about 1890.” Which the Governor said in 1947, making one wonder: when is the start year for African history? It’s obvious to many, including L.S.B. Leaky, that Africa, rather than being without history, “was the birthplace of man himself, and that for many hundreds of centuries thereafter, Africa was in the forefront of all world progress.” And that many people “should know better.”[2]

Even still, history occurs in real time, and it is just as much a contemporary study, then as it is now. Did Roper not understand French (or implications) when it was uttered “Ou es Carlucci?” following the Western ‘intervention’ and deposing of Lumumba.  Roper pines: “Undergraduates… demand that they should be taught the history of black Africa,” as if he didn’t want to teach it. Rather than curiosity, he clings to academic self-preservation, but not before using subtle innuendo to describe his vision of African history as “largely darkness” and that “darkness is not a subject for history.” Whether a product of his times, with racism still in the collective ethos, or an intellectual bully with his steadfast, biased vision of history, regardless of the evidence; there is something to explore.

[1] Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1334

[2] The Progress and Evolution of Man in Africa (OUP. 1961:1)

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was the ‘international’ agreement to settle the territorial Scramble for Africa, led largely by France and Britain. It set the ground rules for taking of African land and resources between European powers, in order to avoid war and international conflict. African historian Basil Davidson notes in “The Magnificent African Cake” that by the 1880’s, industrialized Europe saw in Africa “new sources of raw materials for its factories, new markets for its manufactures, and new positions of advantage against its rivals.”[1] Represented in Berlin were fourteen different countries; of these, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the primary stakeholders, holding the largest share of Africa at the time.

At the time of the conference, most colonial holdings were limited to coastal areas of Africa. The conference, among its range of purposes, was foremost convened to decide the interior boundaries between the European powers in order to avoid conflict between Europeans. Africans were not represented at the conference, nor were African leaders consulted on boundary exchanges.[2] However, its outcomes are responsible for the aggression of Europeans and the visiting of conflict upon the African people. The African people would effectively be rendered non-persons, suppressed further from the Atlantic Slave Trade of prior centuries; an act which set precedent for the theft of Africa’s resources and incarceration or murder of its human capital. The outcome of the Slave Trade, and that of the Berlin Conference, created a long-term chaos in African society which forms the root of the continent’s contemporary issues.

As is the modern rhetoric when one country intervenes upon another, the notion of Humanitarian concern was visited as a motive for Africa’s partitioning. Africans were viewed, paradoxically, as “lazy” or “savages” that required conversions to Christ, and taxation schemes to develop a western work ethic, under the instruction European empire.  Whether the phrase “humanitarian reasons” would be conveyed sincerely or euphemistically,  a conference of that nature—stealing and sharing an inhabited continent—would not be allowed by the collective morality, were it not for racism and the predominate view of Africans as sub-human. The land itself was seen as empty, and for the taking. Davidson describes how Belgian King Leopold “Spoke for them all when he said, “I am determined to get my share of this magnificent African cake.””[3] Africa was not seen by the European powers as belonging to someone else.

The land and Africa’s other natural resources, were sought for a number of reasons, from which they are largely the result of the “dynamic growth of industrial capitalism.”[4]  The British needed new markets, The French had a desire for land largesse, and needed to nurture the cultural ego, while their European territory was contracting[5]. The Portuguese concerned themselves with the perpetuation of their coastal trade outposts, which were among the earliest modern European settlements on the continent; the earliest, European settlements, Sub-Saharan, that history can establish. The Dutch, much like the Germans, sought fertile land and homesteads and religious freedom. Each saw Africa as a means to their survival against competing powers; Resources, to sustain industrialization and capitalism; Redemption and espousal of cultural identity; continuation of naval trade dominance, and land for the political or religious refugee. Religion would also settle Africa; missionaries of a certain nationality in a particular area would be used to justify a land claim[6], and the scramble saw waves of missionaries make their trek into the interior; a practice that still occurs to this day.

The primary stipulation to any land claim was the principle of ‘effective occupation. “Any power that could occupy African soil could, effectively, claim it,” as Basil Davidson describes.  In addition to settler colonies and forts on the frontier, claims by the European nations were bolstered by the presence of missionaries and explorers within a desired territory. Commercial companies, like the Imperial British East African Company, were the foundation for British claims in the East, while the entrepreneurial efforts of Cecil Rhodes were responsible for British claims in Southern Africa. Davidson likens the strategy to a “great game” which purpose “was to get hold of places and positions of advantage over rivals, no matter what irrational frontiers might result.”[7]

In The words of British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, European nations were “engaged in drawing lines on map where no man’s foot has ever trod. We’ve been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where we were.”[8] Wherein the Berlin Conference signatories were to inform other signatories and Western nations of their land claims[9], they were not required to inform the people of Africa, which who were more or less captured, coerced, or strong-armed into ‘agreement’.

[1] Basil Davidson, “The Magnificent African Cake,” Documentary film, 1986.

[2] Amii Omara-Otunu, Lecture, University of Connecticut, September 24^th, 2013.

[3] Basil Davidson, “The Magnificent African Cake,” Documentary film, 1986.

[4] Amii Omara-Otunu, Lecture, University of Connecticut, September 26th, 2013.

[5] Amii Omara-Otunu, Lecture, University of Connecticut, September 19th, 2013.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Basil Davidson, “The Magnificent African Cake,” Documentary film, 1986.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Amii Omara-Otunu, Lecture, University of Connecticut, September 19th, 2013.