Title: The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa has Played in World History. New York: International Publishers, 2015 [1946].
Author: W.E.B. Du Bois
Year of Publication: 2015 [1965]
Thesis:
Time:
Geography:
Organization:
Forward:
- Du Bois takes a similar approach as he does in the introduction to Black Reconstruction, pointing out the importance of Africans as human beings. With a Marxist lens, he points makes the point that it is impossible to understand the fall of Europe as a dominant power without understanding the role of Africa and Africans. It has a contributionist feel to it.
Quotes:
- “here is a history of the world written from the African point of view; or better, a history of the Negro as part of the world which now lies about us in ruins.” (viii)
- “…that black Africans are men in the same sense as white European and yellow Asiatics, and that history can easily prove this—then I shall rest satisfied even under the stigma of an incomplete and, to many, inconclusive work.” (xii)
Chapter I - The Collapse of Europe: This is a consideration of the nature of the calamity which as overtaken human civilization
In this chapter, Du Bois reiterates the importance of Africa. Offers a list of actions Germany took leading up to war. Mentions spheres of influence in Africa (6). Most importantly, he points out the Pan-African Congress, where in an article his interest in participation in creation of an “Africa” based on common experiences and common needs (he outlines them when he discusses the list of changes former German colonies demands) he also reveals his elitism & poorly thought out ideas of civilizing projects. Points out U.S. enters WWI primarily to protect economic interests. Notes how appeasement fails. (14)
Quotes:
- “We realize that history is too often what we want it to be and what we are determined men shall believe rather than a grim record of what has taken place in the past.” (2)
- “The real battle then Bega; the battle of the Nazi-Fascist oligarchy against the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (14)
Chapter II - The White Masters of the World: This is an attempt to show briefly what the domination of Europe over the world has meant to mankind and especially to Africans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Stated purpose of this chapter is to outline the effects of colonial domination, and he points out that the 19th century had 150 wars, mostly by Europeans trying to maintain control over colonies. The doctrine of “superior” and “inferior” races aligned science, religion, and other forms of social thought to support it. He notes how this caused a number of paradoxes to arise: the golden rule, the White Man’s Burden, the idea of poverty as natural, democracy, peace (17) This, according to Du Bois, was the first time in which “negro” was pinned not only to negative stereotypes (and conversely “white” to positive) but also to slavery. Any progress made by Black people was explained as a matter of miscegenation, not racism. (20)
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By way of comparison and making the point that slavery has oriented the world toward these contradictions, he shows the Fanti Federation’s points against apartheid & the Herrenvolk regime in South Africa. (39) He goes on to use an example of a suburban woman playing piano, blissfully unaware of of how she was able to enjoy that positionally, as the problem the world faces: there is nobody to blame. He argues finally that understanding slavery is key to understanding how we got to this point.
Quotes:
- “to us it is ludicrous that this same South African Herrenvolk should speak abroad of a new beginning, of shaping a new world order, whereas in actuality all they wish is the retention of the present tyranny in South Africa, and its extension to new territories….For of what value can it be that the very same people who speak so grandiosely abroad of the inviolability of human rights, trample ruthlessly underfoot those same in-alienable rights.” (40)
“When a culture consents to any economic result, no matter how monstrous its cause, rather than demand the facts concerning work, wages, and the conditions of life whose results make the life of the consumer comfortable, pleasant, and even luxurious, it is an indication of a collapsing civilization.” (41)
“I believe that the trade in human beings between Africa and America, which flourished between the Renaissance and the American Civil War, is the prime and effective cause of the contradictions in European civilization and the illogic in modern thought and the collapse of human culture. For this reason I am turning to a history of the African slave trade in support of this thesis.” (43)
Quotes:
- Carnegie: “…we are not talking about peace among unimportant people; we are talking about peace among the great states of the world.” (18)
Chapter III - The Rape of Africa: Nothing which has happened to man in modern times has been more significant than the buying and selling of human beings out of Africa into America from 1441 to 1870. Of its world-wide meaning and effect, this chapter seeks to tell.
In this chapter, Du Bois points out shifting culture & thought in Europe happening simultaneously with mass trade and slavery. He points out Portuguese in Africa created mixing of peoples within Portugal and even with the Portuguese, and then Italian royalty. As slavery knew no particular color line in Europe, in the West this phenomenon was developing differently. Religion used for a convenient excuse to subjugate people as improving the lives of “heathens,” but not in the sense it improved their lives at all. (53)
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The latter half exposes the hypocrisy of the British as they sought to slow the ivory trade yet built up a market system based on colonial exploitation in goods (good quote, p. 74). He calls it “colonial imperialism,” and points out how keeping existing leadership in place and coercive extraction proved most effective. The legacy of slavery, then, creates a legacy of despotic leadership within states trading/as subjects of British Empire.
Quotes:
- “The idea of the ‘barbarous Negro’ is a European invention which has consequently prevailed in Europe until the beginning of this century.” (79)
“All that was human in Africa was deemed European or Asiatic. Africa was no integral part of the world because the world which raped it had to pretend that it had not harmed a man but a thing.” (80)
“Rape” as a metaphor for this deserves some attention by readers of this.
Chapter IV - The Peopling of Africa: This is the story based on science and scientific deductions from the facts as we know them concerning the physical development of African peoples.
Chapter IV - The Peopling of Africa: This is the story based on science and scientific deductions based on the facts as we know them concerning the physical development of African peoples.
In this chapter, Du Bois discusses the history of the continent and peoples, noting the diversity both in climate and geography as well as in people. He moves against collapsing the continent into a singular entity with a singular people.
Quotes: “Africa is a beautiful land; not merely comely and pleasant, but haunted with swamp and jungle; sternly beautiful in its loveliness of terror, its depth of gloom, and fullness of color; its heaven-tearing peaks, its silver of endless sand, the might, width, and breadth of its rivers, depth of its lakes and height of its hot, blue heaven. There are myriads of living things, the voice of the storm, the kiss of pestilence and pain, old and ever new, new and incredibly ancient.” (85)
“These Negroid busts are most attractive and intelligent looking and have no exaggerated features.” (88)
“The name ‘Negro’ originally embraced a clear conception of ethnography—the African with dark skin, so-called ‘wooly’ hair, thick lips and nose; but it is one of the achievements of modern science to confine this type to a small district even in Africa. Gallas, Nubians, Hottentots, the Congo races, and the Bantus are not ‘genuine’ Negroes from this view, and thus we find that the continent of Africa is peopled by races other than the ‘genuine’ Negro… Nothing then remains for the Negro in the ‘pure’ sense of the word save, as Waitz says, ‘a tract of country extending over not more than ten or twelve degrees of latitude, which may be traced from the mouth of the Senegal River to Timbuktu.’” (91)
Chapter V - Egypt: This is the story of three thousand years, from 5000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., and it tells of the development of human culture in the Valley of the Nile below the First Cataract.
Du Bois brings up the question as to how Egyptians viewed themselves and were viewed by others; were they African? (Yes) vs. an intent to whiten them because of the kinds of civilizations they were able to create.
I am reminded in this chapter that Du Bois continues to describe people’s physical characteristics. At first I assumed this was part of him trying to argue within the racist pseudoscientific structure for their beauty, but in several places he argues that Black people who history has repainted white may have been Black by their appearance and descriptions (Hannibal Barca, for example).
Quotes:
“It would be interesting to know what the Egyptians, earliest of civilized men, thought of the matter of race and color. Of race in the modern sense they seemed to have had no conception.” (105) He goes on to discuss their categories, but this fits into his argument that slavery was the cause for the modern conception of color and race.
“…but in Egyptian monuments slavery was never attributed solely to black folk.” (106)
“We conclude, therefore, that the Egyptians were Negroids, and not only that, but by tradition they believed themselves descended not from the whites or the yellows, but from the black peoples of the south. Thence they traced their origin, and toward the south in earlier days they durned the faces of their buried corpses.” (106)
Chapter VI - The Land of the Burnt Faces: This is the story of fifteen hundred years in the valley of the Nile from 2000 B.C. to A.D. 500.
Du Bois opens the chapter pointing out that similar efforts on Ethiopia took place as on Egypt to whiten their history.
He goes on to describe trade, politics, and famous folks who had physiological traits attributed to Africans. By the end of this chapter, it is clear to me that “influence” in his sense of the word referred also or even predominately to offspring created by the union of Africans and other peoples around the world.
Quotes:
“The theory of absolutely definite racial groups was therefore abandoned, and “pure” racial types came to be regarded as merely theoretical abstractions which never or very rarely existed.” (116)
“…in the usage of many distinguished writers there really emerged from their thinking two groups of men: Human Beings and Negroes. And the thesis of this book is that this extraordinary result came from the African slave trade to America in the eighteenth century and the capitalistic industry built on it in the nineteenth.” (116) I would argue the roots of this began much earlier.
“Egypt brought slaves from black Africa as she did from Europe and Asia. But she also brought citizens and leaders from black Africa.” (117)
“The attitude of scientists toward these questions has thus been colored almost entirely by their attitude toward modern Negro slavery.” (118)
“Again, the mixture of blood among the three races is referred to as an explanation of the advance among Negroes and the retrogression among whites. Is this scientific? A “white” or Asiatic aristocracy is repeatedly adduced as accounting for the rise of the Sudan, the government of Uganda, the industry of the Bushongo, and even the art of the Ashanti. Nothing is ever said of the influence of the Negro blood in Europe and Asia, yet distinct Negroid features can be seen today all over Europe.” (118) I see connections with this even with ideas around desegregating schools; both Du Bois and Carmichael talked about how the folly around integration was that white people somehow conferred better learning onto Black folk. Also, I believe this is the first moment I realized why he was so careful about explaining the physiological features of African Americans.
“We may give up entirely, if we wish, the whole attempt to delimit races, but we cannot, if we are sane, divide the world into whites, yellows, blacks, and then call blacks white.” (119) Perhaps it was here when I realized even further his description of physiological traits and their connection to “progress.”
“His granite head in the British Museum [Tuthmosis III] has distinct Negro features.” (128) Here is where I wrote: “Now it’s clear why he focuses on “Negro/id” featuers—it is to show how Black people have been erased from history and changed into white people.”
Chapter VII - Atlantis: This is the story of the West Coast of Africa and its relation to the development of the world from A.D. 500 to 1500.
This chapter begins with a restatement of an earlier claim, that white society is collapsing. Surely this is the same collapse that was part of the popular discussion about the World Wars.
He goes on to discuss art, music, architecture, and technology, especially iron smelting, which was unique to the African continent. It was on page 157 I began thinking about what other goods were trafficked on these routes besides human beings. He discusses secret societies, and I also notice he seems wedded to an idea of societies on a continuum of progress (interrupted by slavery, of course, but there is still an overall sense of history as progress).
Quotes:
“Science was built on Africa and Religion on Asia.” (149)
On the written document and the confluence of all sources of history, including secondary sources but especially inclusive of oral histories, beautifully stated:
“This brings the curious assumption that lack of written record means lack of matter and deed worth recording. The deeds of men that have been clearly and accurately written down are as pinpoints to the oceans of human experience. To recall that experience we must rely on written record, varying from direct narrative to indirect allusion and confirmation; we must rely also on memory—the memory of contemporary on-lookers, of those who heard their word, of those who over a lapse of years interpreted it and handed it on; we must rely on the must but powerful testimony of habits, customs, and ideals, which echo and reflect vast stretches of past time. Finally, we agree upon as true history and actual fact any interpretation of past action which we today believe and want to believe is true. The relation of this last historical truth to real truth may vary from fact to falsehood.” (150)
“The population invented systems of writing of which at least two on the Guinea Coast and the Cameroons have come down to our day. There were probably others. Thus alphabets which were never invented in Europe came to the world through Asia and Africa.” (159)
“But the English during these days were wavering between two ideas: between the suppression of the slave trade to America and emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, and the newer idea of reducing West Africa to colonial status.” (161) He mentions again the concept of colonial imperialism, on which they eventually settled upon.
“Of all this West African cultural development our knowledge is fragmentary and incomplete, jumbled up with the African slave trade. There has been no systematic, general study of the history of humanity on this coast. Nearly all has disappeared in the frantic effort to paint Negroes as apes fit only for slavery and then to forget the whole discreditable episode, wipe it out of history, and emphasize the glory and philanthropy of Europe. The invaluable art treasure which Britain stole from Benin has never been properly classified or exhibited, but lies in the British Museum.” (163)
“‘Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, West Africa had a more solid politico-social organization, attained a greater degree of internal cohesion and was more conscious of the social function of science than Europe.’ What stopped and degraded this development? The slave trade; that modern change from regarding wealth as being for the benefit of human beings, to that of regarding human beings as wealth. This utter reversal of attitude which marked the day of a new barer in human flesh did not die with the slave, but persists and dominates the thought of Europe today and during the fatal era when Europe by force ruled mankind.” (163) In a sense, I can hear the Ira Berlin echoing the concept of a society with slaves vs. a slave society.
Chapter VIII - Central Africa and the March of the Bantu: The story of Central Africa, the Congo valley, the region of the Great Lakes and the South-central lands, together with their invaders.
Du Bois begins this chapter by discussing how history has often been told by the winners, and particularly for Central Africa, on which he looks at Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other countries with Bantu-speaking peoples. He emphasizes, like in other sections, their development of economics through agriculture and trade, gold mining, and a one-thousand-year migration. He also mentions the positive comments by travelers of their culture and societies (this rhetoric, it seems, is prevalent everywhere it seems prior to the onslaught).
Quotes:
“Unfortunately, any reconstruction of this ancient African culture and history must be pursued today mainly in the Negro-hating atmosphere and amid the color-caste system of South Africa. Despite some eminent and fair scholars, the main situation is like setting Nazis to study Jews.” (172)
“The Africans, even in modern times, were so resentful of European exploitation that they prevented the whites as far as possible from learning the whereabouts of the mines. In the nineteenth century English explorers found natives gold mining at depth, with buckets, ropes, axes, and charcoal.” (173)
Chapter IX - Asia in Africa: The story of the outpouring of Asia into Africa from A.D. 500 to 1500, and the effect to which the interaction of these two continents had on the world.
This chapter might be also titled “Africa in Asia,” as Du Bois points out the long-reaching influence of Africans in Asia, either as traders or enslaved people. He builds a case, for example, that the Buddha had African blood. Subsequent pages discuss successive Muslim rulers, and the chapter ends with how Black folks of different religions (Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim) were pitted against one another as part of a larger global struggle over religion. He pauses to mention the Mamelukes, who were white enslaved people, to emphasize the difference between chattel and African slavery. One of the most poignant points is using Napoleon’s observations of Africans, and how in his estimation, the union of insiders and outsiders through “polygamy” was a way to increase equality. Modern objections to miscegenation then make a lot of sense in light of this. Finally, I wonder how or if he conceives of a “pure Negro” race. (See p.184)
Quotes:
“The contrast between this white slavery and black American slavery was striking. It involved no inborn racial differences, and because of this Nordic historians have neglected white slavery and tied the idea of slavery to Negroes. The difference between the two groups of slaves was clear: the white slaves, under leadership like that of the colored Mustansir and Saladin the Kurd, opened the way to civilization among both white and black. Had it not been for the attack on this culture by the heathen East and Christian West, the flowering of civilization in Africa might have reached great heights and even led the world.” (193)
Napoleon Bonaparte - “These countries were inhabited by men of different colors. Polygamy is the simple way of preventing them from persecuting one another. The legislators have though that in order that the whites not be enemies of the blacks, the blacks of the whites, the copper-colored of the one and the other, it was necessary to make them all members of the same family and struggle thus against a penchant of man to hate all that is not like him.” (194)
“So, for a thousand years Asia and Africa strove together, renewing their spirits and mutually fertilizing their cultures from time to time, in West Asia, North Africa, the Nile valley, and the East Coast. But at last Europe encompassed them both. In Africa she came to the south as settlers, to the west as slave traders, and to the east as colonial imperialists. Africa slept in a bloody nightmare.” (200)
Chapter X - The Black Sudan: How civilization flamed in the Sudan in a culture which was African and not Arabian and which helped light a renaissance of culture in Europe.
Du Bois begins by pointing out that rather than all “high culture” in Africa coming from Islam, it was precisely the reverse—that Islam and Muslim garb came from the existing cultures in Sudan. As I read this chapter, I get the sense that Du Bois is arguing that as everyone has African blood and culture, it makes no sense we should fight with one another. It makes sense to look at “integration” with more depth than a simple question of white and non-white people sitting together at a desk.
In the latter part of the chapter, Du Bois discusses the ways in which capitalistic endeavors, along with religious battles sealed the fate of the continent. He briefly pontificates on an alternate route if “the Christian Church had retained its hold upon Asia and Africa instead of expelling these countries and turning to the Nordic barbarians.” But he quickly about faces, noting that “[w]hen Christianity met black folk in the African slave and red men in America, it regarded them as lost heathens to be exterminated or enslaved. Thus the Church upheld the slave trade and its consequences.” (220) Note to return to pp.221-223 to figure out what he is saying.
Quotes:
“Nothing that ever touched Africa could evade fertilization of Negroid culture and Negroid blood. Black universities sent black scholars to learn and lecture to the Mediterranean world… From this Africa a new cultural impulse entered Europe and became the Renaissance.” (223)
Later: Capture quotes on pp.223-224 - all on erasure of Black history, racialization of slavery, and the relevance of color in the 12th century only insofar as it pertained to culture.
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Come back to this.