African History

African History

In the opening chapter of Parker and Rathbone’s African History: a Very Short Introduction they establish the basis for the fluid analysis of a constantly morphing historiography. Because the continent is so culturally, economically, sociologically, and geographically diverse the authors emphasize the importance of viewing Africa’s ever changing past in an impermanent context using the accounts of various observers and participants. The objective of the analysis is to correspondingly study the richness of a place and it’s people, and evaluate the myriad portrayals of those same peoples and places; from the earlier racist, Eurocentric representations up to the more recent and (dare I say) enlightened interpretations of African existence. Through the combined lenses of history, sociology, science, economics, and art, African History seeks to address the following considerations: Does the history of Africa pertain to the vast array of cultures spanning the entire landmass? Or does it constitute only the ‘Black’ Africans of the sub-Saharan portion of the continent? If the latter, does this story include the diaspora of tens of millions of ‘Black’ Africans across the globe due to centuries of slave-trade? To what extent has the impact of white imperialism altered the records of this uniquely intricate place? And where does Africa’s distinct geography fit into the complex deciphering process? In chapter one, Parker and Rathbone chart the enigmatic history of the eclectic peoples and places of Africa, and map out the transformation of those histories.
The history of Africa is a relatively new and highly controversial field of study. Up until the middle of the 20th century the history of the continent was widely understood through a Eurocentric filter designed to justify an exploitive European agenda by altering and suppressing facts as well as opposing view points. To exonerate centuries of cultural and ecological rape, early ‘White’ historians falsified a...

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