THE AFRICAN PAST REVISITED

THAT WHITES DOMINATE THE AFRICAN PAST IS INSTINCTIVELY ASSUMED

This work, for example, shows slaves being led toward a white dealer. There is nothing about Dahomey's ritual decapitation of slaves, or about the 300 sacrificed so as not to be fall into producers' hands.

     The Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Eyes of an African Artist at the Abomey palace in Benin, 2022 / zoom

If you click "African slave trades images" (please notice the plural) on the web, you will find dozens of pictures dealing with the Atlantic slave trade, a few with that to North Africa but except for lines of chained captives who could be going anywhere, almost none within Africa itself.  

Even images on the Atlantic slave trade show Africans taking second place:

     The Slave Trade by Auguste François Biard, 1840 / zoom

A dead captive lies in the center, but the light shines on the white doctor and white master.

Written history makes the same assumption: 

"The Atlantic trade was the form of slavery that indisputably contributed most to the present situation of Africa. It permanently weakened the continent, led to its colonisation by the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and engendered the racism and contempt from which Africans still suffer."

-- La Dimension africaine de la traite des noirs by M. Bokolo, 1998 

 in the esteemed French monthly "Le Monde diplomatique:" / zoom

Th two explanations of the African past are that...

• "Decline" followed a time of greatness when empires that stretch across much of the savannah. Its causes were European: the fall of the price of gold due Spain's imports from South America, and the population loss, devastation and insecurity brought by the Atlantic slave trade.

• Pockets of prosperity suggest "stability," or changelessness: Since whites do not provoke change, there isn't any.

Emphasis on the West determines the topics usually chosen...

Such a the conquest or resistance to it, the Atlantic slave trade and trade with the outside world.

States / populations that are relatively familiar: There are many on West Africa, few on the area between Lake Chad and the Nile.

And how one views geography itself: 

• Trans-Saharan exchanges brought a rise in local production that developed over centuries. Europeans arrived on the coast much later, which explains the much more primitive forest economies.

 African zones, a clear map that is no longer on the web.

• Instead, of viewing Africa as savannah and forest, we separate "West Africa" and treat as a whole. Because it is a bulge on our maps? 

# # #

The suggestions that follow come from collating

the economic data for all of the Sudanic Belt

from medieval times to colonialist's liberation of slaves,

from determining how the source of income 

affects ideas and behavior

and from examining the impact of economic growth

on communal societies.

End of this short section.

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Next section,
V.2.
The effects of commerce on primal societies