Yeah...the weekend has already happened. We've moved on to talking about Ed Gein and African swim meets.

LOL. I'd totally forgotten how this thread had started out...

my bad guys

It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the lamp again. I couldn't figure out how to incorporate a 'colonialism screwed up Africa to its present-day status, also blood diamonds' smart remark there. Also I had to google Ed Gein and then I mocked myself so you don't have to.


Are you a size 12?

Each one teach one. :)


Nope.

Did you know...tribes as we know them in Africa today did not exist until Colonial times when they were created on a geographical basis for administrative ease. Everyone else likes to tell me I'm absolutely crazy for saying that because they refuse to believe it. But, for instance, the Hutus lived very far away from the major cities in Rwanda and the Tutsis lived very close (the geographical splitting), so the Hutus were pretty poor and the Tutsis much less so, with their access to much better jobs. However, that's only one aspect to why civil war does break out so much amidst African nations. If I went on, I'd end up with an essay. A long one.

The more you know... Western African Politics was one of my favourite classes ever.

Also you're ineligible for my skinsuit. I need a new candidate. Own up, who's a size 12? I need you to lotion yourself and then hand over your backskin.

Actually you are wrong. To a large degree. I'm assuming you're talking MODERN Western African Politics and the context of the second wave of colonial empire in the 19th c.--when the British and African powers conquered and colonized most of Africa. Yes, that is certainly a time of cultural transformation in African history and many cultural boundaries and ethnic identities.

Besides calling attention to the fallacy that a central state power can completely & successfully accomplish cultural transformation, I encourage you to read up on various "tribes" of Africa in the pre-colonial period. I guess it depends on what word you're using--and we certainly could have that semantic argument--but "tribes," "cultural groupings," etc certainly existed before European contact. It's also been argued to what degree Western and Central Africans shared certain cultural and religious ideologies before European contact--the point being that they often shared very similar beliefs & practices but there was violence and "tribal" (maybe the better word would be political) conflict in Africa before European contact.

It's important to remember that Europeans were exploiting Africans long before actual colonization (the only really significant European colony per se in pre-19th c. times was the Portuguese Kingdom of Kongo--the other lands were in African control but often ruled by those who collaborated with Europeans). To argue that Africans were a cultural "blank slate" on which Europeans wrote cultural and political divisions is highly misleading and ethnocentric...

Not saying that's what you were doing. I actually don't think that's what you were doing.

OMG I need to stop with the history today, before Senusret sends me another "The More You Know" message. :cool:

Actually, I'm not wrong. I'm more than aware that there were cultures, villages, societies if you will before the Colonial period. However, they managed to live basically in peace side by side. But they weren't 'tribes' as we know them today at all. Not even close to.

As I said, if I had explained myself further, this would have turned into a gigantic essay of a post. History of pre-colonized African society, the system used by the colonials to group these people together, the instability within these new tribes, etc. etc. I was totally trying to avoid that because it just gets out of hand.

See...your post got ridiculously long. I tried to simplify mine down for the general public who haven't studied political science and history extensively. As in...what you see today is kinda what we helped to create, go us!

Enough discussion, just thank you for not insisting that the hostile tribal war we see today is just a historical fact we had nothing to do with. Oh, and apparently, 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' doesn't count as a good citable source because it was written by a socialist. I had no idea, but there's a big movement for a lot of nations to switch to socialism in Africa. They feel it'll break the coup-corruption cycles and lift poverty boundaries.

Okay, end of hijack. Thanks for knowing what's up and realizing I'm not an idiot pulling this stuff out of my ass. This is hardly something to go down in the history books for British Schoolkids. 'And this one time, we started shipping out the negroes for our plantations in the Caribbean. Then we began stripping the land of its natural resources and organized those heathen pygmies. It was a good time had by all. They were grateful for us.' /end tongue-in-cheek
I'd love to PM about this so as not to continue the hijack. Or we can start a new thread in Politics.

It's just the differences between "cultures and societies" and the assigned "tribe/tribal" terminology.

The part in bold is the part I'm disputing with you. Pre-contact Africans were not a peaceful, idyllic people. Neither were Native Americans. Such ideas are perpetuated by a type of ethnocentrism that claims 'undeveloped' peoples don't experience and perpetuate violence.

Besides, in Western African before contact there were significant state systems and political wars going on. We don't have to call them tribes if you don't want to. As I mentioned before that terminology is in dispute. But there certainly were cultural and political groupings that went to war together.

I certainly agree with you on your main point that European colonialism created many problems in Africa that persist to this day.

I recommend John Thornton's African and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, if anyone is interested in these issues.

Generally...yes. But it gets more complex because tribes such as the Hutus and Tutsis (I apologize for using them so often, it's just an easy example) were the societies that beforehand, lived next to each other, basically peacefully. Now they've been told they need to merge their idealogies, cultures, ways of life etc. They barely like each other. But they live far away from the city so their jobs suck, they're very poor. The Tutsis are close to the city. They have the same inner turmoil within their new 'tribe' but their jobs are better, they have more money and opportunity for their family.

Etc. etc. this is coming from my head since it's been a couple of years since my class. Could be a little off.

Every civilization has its power struggles and conflicts. Starting with the earliest humans who learned how to order, categorize, and create systems.

European colonialism is an issue because they were outsiders controlling other groups, taking from their civilizations, bringing their own problems to these civilizations, and then pretending that THEY are the good and pure who were sent to civilize and save a group of people.

If this good versus evil hadn't been perpetuated by people of European descent for so long, there would be less of a need/desire for others to pretend that Africans, Native Americans, and other groups that have been infiltrated were peaceful and idyllic. It's an attempt to balance the scale.

Disclaimers suck. ;) Bow out gracefully.

What you're saying is correct, in general, but again this is an issue of attention to details. Living peacefully side-by-side doesn't mean there weren't conflicts of any sort. It just means that conflicts did not turn into all-out wars until the people had some scarce resource to war over. Whenever that happened is up for debate (not in this thread, though) but it certainly increased once outsiders began colonizing.

I remember when I got fussed out by an Eritrean years ago for thinking she was Ethiopian. I mean, one country is smaller than the other but other than that...:confused: I had no idea they were battling the way they are until a decade ago when I started hanging out with more Africans.

That wasn't on my reading list at all. I need to get it.

The book I mentioned is actually online in its entirety.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/afri...rope/index.htm

Wish I could remember my other sources. I don't doubt you, merely because I haven't studied that far back. I'll admit to when I'm wrong or uninformed. I am, however, extremely passionate about the problems we caused that need undoing yet don't see an end in this lifetime. That just pisses me off. Or people who say, 'they were better off when we colonized them. And stripped them off all their natural resources. And left them with poverty and destitution. Hell let's bring back the apartheid.'

What I actually want to do with my life is get my RN, specialize in critical care, trauma and tropical medicine and then work for Medecins Sans Frontieres for the rest of my life. Especially considering my aunt goes 'on mission' with her church to India, stays in a 4 star hotel, goes to a temple type thing (not clear on that) for 5 days, comes back to the 4 star, showers, comes home and then tells us that the poverty in India is all a myth. Um...words fail me. She even leaves with an empty suitcase and just buys her clothes in India, then gives them to charity shops when she comes back because it's so cheap. It's such...a British attitude that it winds me up no end. I can't help but see red. No poverty? Did you even leave your air-conditioned room? No, the British Empire had nothing to do with that either.

Okay, that's waaay off-topic now. BreathesGelatin, can I get that book on Amazon or is it out of print do you know?

Okay.

I'm a Marxist-functionalist. :)

I recommend taking Walter Rodney's 1973 book in context. You and breathesgelatin aren't debating opposite ends of the spectrum. You're debating different interpretations of history. Both agree with the outcome of colonialism but have been reading different takes on the condition that Africa was in before colonialism hit.

There are few unbiased historical accounts because history has been reported and interpreted to fuel racial and capitalist agendas and are in line with the conflict theorist vs consensus theorist vs functionalist approaches to history. The truth lies in the middle.