IV, 5. ANOTHER NARRATIVE

4.5. Another narrative

EMPHASIZING SLAVE RAIDERS 
PUTS AFRICANS CENTER STAGE... 

While stressing resistance to Europeans
makes them supporting players only 

 

"African Hero of the Resistance to the Colonial Invasion" 

• Bad guy or good guy, same tale

• Nationalist history's usefulness in practice 

• History that highlights Europeans 

• Africans take center stage 

*     *     * 

Next,

Bad guy or good guy, same tale

BAD GUY OR GOOD GUY, SAME TALE

TAKE ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS AFRICANS
OF THE 19TH CENTURY:
SAMORY TURE

Foe or hero,
the colonialist and nationalist stories
are essentially the same   

"Capture of Samory by lieutenant Jacquin"

 Internet (no source given) 

• The nationalist view

is exclusively about opposing the French

° A classic pop tune:

Bory, Bory Samori

 "Flee, flee, Samori, the Whites are coming, they have sworn to kill you." 

-- By Alpha Blondy, 1984

° Yet the Senufo of Djimini recall him with terror

° When his son and chosen successor returns 

from a visit to France

and tells him that resistance is hopeless,

Samory lets him die of starvation.

• The real Samory:
Cruelty, courage, sadness and dignity,
a figure to see 
in the context of his time

Prisoner of the French (in 1898)

Viewing past through modern values

may be satisfying.

But enlightening? 

*    *     *

Next,
Nationalist history's usefulness in practice

NATIONALIST HISTORY'S USEFULNESS IN PRACTICE

EMPHASIS ON EUROPEAN VICTORS 

AND AFRICAN VANQUISHED
LETS MODERN POLITICIANS APPROPRIATE THE PAST

• Stressing a fight that is over
lets modern leaders change the subject
from problems now

Statue in Conakry / Internet

The paunch, an invention, is a sign of prestige when food is scarce (like Bornu's obese kings) and sets the leader apart from the people.

• ...and ignores how the past resurfaces.

Take Boko Haram
and its effect on Mandara,
thehinterland of Bornu and Logone
where adult male prisoners were killed
by cutting off a leg

A member of a Mandara noble clan states, 
"...my uncles were taken as slaves. 
We do not forget,
 and Boko Haram reminds us 
of the times our elders described."

-- Donald Tada, 

 cited in  In the Cameroon hills: the persecuted of Boko Haram
 by Joan Tilouine, « le Monde », May 25, 2018, 4

Indo-Asian News Service

Boko, book; haram, forbidden: the Nigerian government of the south provided few schools in the north, so youths there saw education as excluding them. 

Were memories of northerners' slave raids and the start of colonisation a reason why southern politicians ignored them?

Returning to a conquest that is over
helps ignore issues that are not.

*     *     *  

 Next,

  History that highlights Europeans

HISTORY THAT HIGHLIGHTS EUROPEANS

THE AFRICAN PAST IS STILL VIEWED
THROUGH WESTERN LENS 

 •  This map of 2001 entitled 
 "The slave trade's main sectors"
shows the coast alone,

not those for North African or local markets 

http://afriquepluriel.ruwenzori.net/esclavag1.htm

"The great sectors of the slave trade"

Even when North African markets are mentioned, local ones are not: slaving "catered not only to trans-Atlantic demand but also supplied Muslim merchants from Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere." (bold and underlining added)

-- Introduction by Paul Lovejoy,
 Hugh Clapperton and the interior of Africa,
 records of the second expedition, 1825-1827, 2005, 36

• Most studies of Africa's past 

deal with places familiar to Westerners,

or an aspect of the outside world

° The sole popular subject that deals with Africans alone:
The 19th-century theocracies and their Islam.

But choosing Muslim rather than animist states,
fervent Islam rather than "lax" (syncretic) beliefs
and Islam rather than animism
implies a value judgement...

      Photos by Daniel Lainé in Rois d'Afrique, 1991

°...while emphasizing the theocrats' wish to "purify" Islam 

makes it as un-African as possible.

Yet crowds follow an explorer as they follow al-hajj Umar Tall along the Senegal and Middle Niger, and Amadu Tall has 800 wives and proclaims Segu a pilgrimage site equal to Mecca, 

 African animists transformed modern art and music,
while the impact of Muslim Africans on the West
is only beginning.

Yet the latter alone attract attention. 
Because they are associated with the elites of the north,
who are urban, commercial, literate -- 
and white?

*     *     * 

Next,
Africans take center stage 

AFRICANS TAKE CENTER STAGE

FOR AN AFRICAN HISTORY THAT HOLDS WATER,
GIVE SLAVE RAIDERS AND SLAVE-OWNING PRODUCERS
THE PLACE THAT BY THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST
THEY HELD IN FACT

That suggestion opposes the (involuntary) assumption
that Africans were essentially victims, collaborators 
or opponents of whites --
that is, subordinates.

Western hegemony began only with slave emancipation 
-- the destruction of the producers' labor force --
and so has lasted for little more than a lifetime.

Giving those fervent, ferocious and dynamic predators 
their merited place suggests that it will pass.

Al-hajj Umar Tall on a Dakar wall / Internet, no photographer named

End of Part IV.

*      *      *
Part V,
"The past is another country:"
Take pre-industrial France