Africa: the White man's burden????

 

The Allempires forum have included many discussions on various civilizations: China, Japan, Egypt, Iraq, Mayan, Persia, Turkish, Greek, Roman, etc. Yet, I havnt heard any discussion regarding of the contribution Black Africans made to this world.

 

If you go to China, Chinese would tell you that if it want the great Chinese inventions, Europe wouldnt achieve modernity.

 

If you go to India, they would tell you about Indians' tremedous contributions in relgions and mathmatics.

 

If you go to Greece (I went there to attain 2004 Summer Olympic game in Athens), Greeks would tell you it was Greeks revolutionized our thought (although a Greek university student told me that if it wasnt Greeks, Europeans would still live in cave and running naked!!)

 

If you meet a Muslim (my roomate is a Muslim), they would tell you that Iraq was the cradle of civilizations (including Greek civilizatoin) as they invneted wheel, numbers, writing, etc. and Muslim perserved the Hellenic tradtion during the Dark Age..

 

etc. etc......

 

 

But, how about Africa? When I took courses on ancinet civilizations in university, they covers most of civilizations we most talked about here in this forum. BUT, they never mentioned the Africa. Certainly, African did have empires such as Nubian. But, none of them had any significant place as other major civilizations or achieve the sophistication that Greeks and Chiense done.

 

I am a political science honor student and proverty in Africa has always hot debate in my class. Most of my classmates blame European colonization and a African friend argue white people have 100% responsiblity for the proverty and AIDS in Africa. However,  I know that South Korea was much poorer than most of Afrian countires 50 years ago, and China and India wasnt better than Africans few decades ago. Yet, today they are the driving force of global economic growth.

 

So, whats wrong?

 

I know that the sophistication of Confucian ideology and well-estalbished imperial government (bureaucracy tradition) helped East Asians to adopt Western ideologies rapidly. As some modern economist claimed Chinese culture endorsed commerce as Chinese immigrants rivals Jewish in the Western world: Chinese immigrants controled around 40% of South East Asian economy yet their population only occupied less than 5%.

 

The East Asian miracle have been well-studied since 1970s, but recent economic growth in India support native Indian argument that Indian culture emphasize in education especially in mathmatics.

 

These two giants along other little Dragons (Singapore, Taiwan, Korea are all under the Confucian sphere of influence) had well established culture and ethic that are conpatible with Western capitlaism and legal system.

 

The proverty in Africa today, other than the problem of racism colonianism (which occured in Asia too) and AIDS, the lack of well-established government and kingdoms prior the contact with Europeans prevent a much smoother trasition to industrialization. In other words, a huge gap exists between a tribal society and a industrialized state. Whereas China and India were agricutlure-based economies and therefore experienced smoother transitions than that of tribal societies in Africa. This too can be demonstrates in Japan's case during the Meiji restoration which many historians argued the modernization began before the encoutner with Americans. That is, under Tokugawa rule, Japan was well-governed, the the population was well-educated, and Japan did experience trade boom during the Tokugawa period. As a result, it was a rather rapid trasition during the Meiji restoration as ruling Samurais had experience as bureaucrats in government and thus quickly adopted the western-style admisnistration in few years. Japan's transition was comparable with other late industralized nations such as Germany, France, and Russia which had much larger argricutlure-based economies.

 

In terms of so-called African civilization, I also took a course on it, but my prof. (who is an African) told me that the Western definition of civilization is too narrow. In other words, tribal societies do not include within the definition of civilization.

 

Tobodai, if you can give me examples that show that the so-called "African cvilizations" does exist and "comparable" to any other civilization, please show me. Civilizations, like Edward Said said in his revolutionary theory "Orientalism", is Western intention to group OTHERS in relation to itself. As a result, academic historians and textbooks (ask your classic and history professors) do no include Africa as civilizations. Thus, to call African civilization simply intend to "orientalize" African cultures, which place African culture in inferior relation to others. As long as people and academic world do not redefine "civilizations", African and Natives of America would always be treated as "less sophisticated". When I took the African history, there are only 15 people in my class whereas there are overwhelming 120 people in my Hellenic studies. Why? It is simply that "Africa" do not "comparable" with other classic civilizations (likewise, it is also shown in our forum where fewer people interests in "African civilization" than other sections and fewer discussions on it).

 

Recently, there are voices in Canada that calls a education reform in order to address the overwhleming uneducated Native children. When one report asked a Native girl why she is not interests in school works, she replied: "Why would I be interests, when the textbook is about White men stuffs; technology, writing, Westrn art...". How can African and Native cutlures be treated respectuflly if people include them with other civilizations; it is inevitable for people to interpret it in relations with "classical definiton of civilization: writing, religions, agriculture, philosophy, and technology".

 

   Even though racism is pretty much a thing of the past in the western world, a kind of a 'post colonialism menatality' still exist sub-conciously, and I stess the word sub-conciously. Even here in Australia, such things can be seen day in day out across the board on all levels. Kid's example where he suggested text books to include African civilisations among others is a good step towards stemming out those mentalities that lies beneath the surface.

 

I think that the wonderfull comments by GCLE aptly illustrate the narrowness of the approach to this subject, the problem as he has rightly pointed out is with the basic premise used for the "value judgement".

 

To simplyfy the issue, i would argue they didint because they didnt need to.(develop)

 

European empires messed with the borders, but they brought many things with them as well.  The empires arent to blame for lack of development, but the slave trade is.  A contient with low population density, robbed of 20 million people, and a trade that became the entire economy, and then stopped suddenly.  Thats a big deal, and its not just Africa, the more slave dependent a place was the worse off its economy is around the world.  In the United States the former slave states are observably poorer and more backward, so too in Europe where the east with the "slavs" who were subject to slavers tend to be worse off than the west.

Culture is inclusive of technology. The japanese were clearly inferior to the Americans under Commodore Perry, however 50 years later they were the superior of many a European power after Taushima.