The African Historiography Of Africa Essay - 1420 Words

The historiography of Africa has been a complex matter from the start such that it took some time for some historians to acknowledge that Africa even had a history, when they would much rather believe that Africa was a timeless state with little to no past. This thinking was the result of history only being considered a written account of past events, and since Africans did not develop a widespread form of writing their history the general belief was that African historiography has no place in the world. This lack of African history in the eyes of the Westerners resulted in Africa being labeled as a land of primitive people, with homogenous states and tribes. This paper argues that until the Marxist analysis of Africa, the West’s idea of Africa was implemented, but later Marxist emphasis on social struggles opened the way for development of a broader based social history that was not of high politics, but rather of ordinary men and women (Parker, J. and Rathbone, R., 2007:142) . The analysis of archeological remains in Africa, and the impact of colonialism are concepts that can be better understood when employing Marxism, as it allows us to look past the West’s previous identity of Africa and looks towards the new and much more accurate picture of Africa and its people. Marxism is a method of analysis that focuses on class struggles in the examination of social change. While the varieties of Marxist analysis that attempted to apply more universal concepts to Africa fadedShow MoreRelatedThe Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad973 Words   |  4 Pagesviews of Africa. Africa is a very large continent consisting of various countries, cultures and ethnic groups, but the image of Africa that is portrayed in modern media via the news, television and movies is completely different. Most media sources depict Africa as being a single country filled with villages of starving children that always have flies on their faces. This image usually comes from commercials that are trying to play on the viewer’s sympathy by emphasizing the idea of Africa needingRead MoreCauses of the Mfecane881 Words   |  4 PagesTopic – Discuss the causes of the Mfecane, taking into consideration the variety of historiography on this event. Although no one can pinpoint exactly what caused the Mfecane, most believe the causes emerged at the end of the eighteenth and the start of the nineteenth centuries. Based on the historiography covering this event, historians believed many elements caused the Mfecane. Originally, everyone believed it was exclusively due to the rise and expansion of the Zulu nation under the rule ofRead MoreShould The Hiv / Aids Epidemic?918 Words   |  4 PagesHIV/AIDs epidemic in Africa be described as a feminist issue? With higher transmission rates concentrated among African women, and the vast majority of new mother-child transmissions occurring within African countries, HIV seemingly fits into the scope of feminist concerns. As described in Oppong and Kalipeni’s contribution to Kalipeni, et.al.’s HIV AIDS in African: Beyond Epidemiology, the consistent classifying of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as being the direct result of distinct African sexuality by prominentRead MoreThe Trans At lantic Slave Trade2208 Words   |  9 PagesCurtin described the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade as a â€Å"Numbers Game.† Curtin found that historians conceptualized the commodification of human beings through quantification. A year earlier in 1968, Frederick George Kay claimed in The Shameful Trade that fifty million Africans were exported into slavery in foreign lands. Twenty years later, Paul Lovejoy offered a summary of the field. 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Also, it does not help that the practices of recording history in the past were not the most ethical and sensitive to the people of Africa. With that came the opportunity for stereotyping and not really seeking to understand the complex dynamic of the continent. Africa is vast in size with great diversity withinR ead MoreThe Trade Of The Atlantic Slave Trade3341 Words   |  14 Pagesslaves were taken from West Africa, but the trade also affected other parts of the continent. By the end of the trade, it became the biggest human migration to date. Generally, we know a lot about the effects slavery had in the New World, but we have less information on how the slave trade affected African societies. Although there were no scholars which contested the harm the slave trade caused, however, there is still debate over the effect of the trade within African societies. The debate overRead MoreA Study Of Latin American History1308 Words   |  6 Pagesscholarly activities. This in turn has made the historiography of Latin America to become much more relevant when looking at race around the world. One of the more popular works by Frank Tannenbaum called Slave Citizen drew from many popular sources and historians. It is also important to remember much of the data and sources used when studying conce pts like race in Latin America come from common sources. Comparative approaches have framed the historiography of subjects like race and racism in Latin AmericaRead MoreAfrican American And Middle Eastern Slavery963 Words   |  4 Pagesoccurrence in the twentieth century historiography of American and Middle Eastern slavery is to downplay the significance of African societies as major players in the international trade network, while ignoring the slave trade’s effect on cultures throughout Africa. Paul Lovejoy attempts to highlight these connections by examining how the demand for slaves in the export market altered local political economies and drastically changed the practice of slavery throughout Africa. Transformations in Slavery:Read MoreSouth And Central Afric An Undeveloped Continent1295 Words   |  6 PagesNowadays, Africa is considered to be an undeveloped continent. Out of all the reasons Africa grew out to be this way. In this period, there were many different types of currency in Africa; unlike in other parts of the world where one type of currency was more used than others. For this study have chosen four different types of currency, which are cloth, cowries, gold and slaves. We will see how their nature influenced the economy of precolonial Africa. The conclusion reached is that the nature of