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