Quote:
Originally Posted by breathesgelatin
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.  |
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.