Why Africana History? by Dr. John Henrik Clarke. Africa and its people are the most written about and the least understood of all of the worlds people. This condition started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the African s. They were not meeting them for the first time; there had been another meeting during Greek and Roman times. At that time they complemented each other. The African , Clitus Niger, King of Bactria, was also a cavalry commander for Alexander the Great. Most of the Greeks thinking was influenced by this contact with the African s. The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word Africa. According to most records, old and new, African s are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called African s not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe. When the early Europeans first met African s, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the African s were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born. In this period of history, what was to be later known as Africa was an unknown place to the people who would someday be called, Europeans. Only the people of some of the Mediterranean Islands and a few states of what would become the Greek and Roman areas knew of parts of North Africa, and that was a land of mystery. After the rise and decline of Greek civilization and the Roman destruction of the city of Carthage, they made the conquered territories into a province which they called Africa, a word derived from afri and the name of a group of people about whom little is known. At first the word applied only to the Roman colonies in North Africa. There was a time when all dark -skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, The Land Of The Burnt -Face People. If Africa, in general, is a man -made mystery, Egypt, in particular, is a bigger one. There has long been an attempt on the part of some European scholars to deny that Egypt was a part of Africa. To do this they had to ignore the great masterpieces on Egyptian history written by European writers such as, Ancient Egypt. Light of the World, Vols. I & II , and a whole school of European thought that placed Egypt in proper focus in relationship to the rest of Africa. The distorters of African history also had to ignore the fact that the people of the ancient land which would later be called Egypt, never called their country by that name. It was called, Ta- Merry or Kampt and sometimes Kemet or Sais. The ancient Hebrews called it Mizrain. Later the Moslem Arabs used the same term but later discarded it. Both the Greeks and the Romans referred to the country as the Pearl Of The Nile. The Greeks gave it the simple name, Aegyptcus. Thus the word we know as Egypt is of Greek Origin. Until recent times most Western scholars have been reluctant to call attention to the fact that the Nile River is 4,000 miles long. It starts in the south, in the heart of Africa, and flows to the north. It was the worlds first cultural highway. Thus Egypt was a composite of many African cultures. In his article, The Lost Pharaohs of Nubia, Professor Bruce Williams infers that the nations in the South could be older than Egypt. This information is not new. When rebel European scholars were saying this 100 years ago, and proving it, they were not taken seriously. It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers. It was not until near the end of the 18th century when a few European scholars learned to decipher their writing that this was understood. The Greek traveler, Herodotus, was in Africa about 450 B.C. His eyewitness account is still a revelation. He witnessed African civilization in decline and partly in ruins, after many invasions. However, he could still see the indications of the greatness that it had been. In this period in history, the Nile Valley civilization of Africa had already brought forth two Golden Ages of achievement and had left its mark for all the world to see. Slavery and colonialism strained, but did not completely break, the cultural umbilical cord between the African s in Africa and those who, by forced migration, now live in what is called the Western World. A small group of African -American and Caribbean writers, teachers and preachers, collectively developed the basis of what would be an African Consciousness movement over 100 years ago. Their concern was with African , in general, Egypt and Ethiopia, and what we now call the Nile Valley. In approaching this subject, I have given preference to writers of African descent who are generally neglected. I maintain that the African is the final authority on Africa. In this regard I have reconsidered the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, George Washington Williams, Drusilla Dungee Houston, Carter G. Woodson, Willis N. Huggins, and his most outstanding living student, John G. Jackson. I have also re-read the manuscripts of some of the unpublished books of Charles C. Seifert, especially manuscripts of his last completed book, Who Are The Ethiopians? Among Caribbean scholars, like Charles C. Seifert, J.A. Rogers (from Jamaica) is the best known and the most prolific. Over 50 years of his life was devoted to documenting the role of African personalities in world history. His two -volume work, Worlds Great Men of Color, is a pioneer work in the field. Among the present -day scholars writing about African history, culture and politics, Dr. Yosef ben -Jochannans books are the most challenging. I have drawn heavily on his research in the preparation of this article. He belongs to the main cultural branch of the African world, having been born in Ethiopia, growing to early manhood in the Caribbean Islands and having lived in the African -American community of the United States for over 20 years. His major books on African history are: Black Man of the Nile , 1979, Africa: Mother of Western Civilization, 1976, and The African Origins of Major Western Religions , 1970. Our own great historian, W.E.B. DuBois tells us, Always Africa is giving us something new . . . On its black bosom arose one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of self -protecting civilizations, and grew so mightily that it still furnishes superlatives to thinking and speaking men. Out of its darker and more remote forest vastness came, if we may credit many recent scientists, the first welding of iron, and we know that agriculture and trade flourished there when Europe was a wilderness. Dr. DuBois tells us further that, Nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of Africa. It was through Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world . . . It was through Africa that Islam came to play its great role of conqueror and civilizer. Egypt and the nations of the Nile Valley were, figuratively, the beating heart of Africa and the incubator for its greatness for more than a thousand years. Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as Western Civilization, long before the greatness of Greece and Rome. This is a part of the African story, and in the distance it is a part of the African -American story. It is difficult for depressed African -Americans to know that they are a part of the larger story of the history of the world. The history of the modern world was made, in the main, by what was taken from African people. Europeans emerged from what they call their Middle-Ages, people-poor, land-poor and resources -poor. And to a great extent, culture-poor. They raided and raped the cultures of the world, mostly Africa, and filled their homes and museums with treasures, then they called the people primitive. The Europeans did not understand the cultures of non -Western people then; they do not understand them now. History, I have often said, is a clock that people use to tell their political time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been. It also tells a people where they are and what they are. Most importantly, history tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be. READ MORE HERE: hunter.cuny.edu/afprl/clarke/why-africana-history-by-dr.-john-henrik-clarke
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 12:35:57 +0000
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