Parmzhelp:
WHAT WAS THE REST OF THE WORLD DOING WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN DEVELOPING THE WORLD?


The answer to this question raised by people like John Henrik Clarke is in not too far-fetched. In order to justify slave trade and colonization, Europe needed to fabricate a history that emphasised its presumed superiority and minimize the contributions of all other groups of people. The easiest way to justify slavery and colonization was through the fabrication of a history that glorified the role of the white race as the only race which had the ability to civilize the world. To do so, they had to deny the roles of all other peoples and in the process dehumanize them.
Those of you like me who are naturally skeptical might also ask when and how did this false claim gain ground?
There are some historians who shed light on these questions: John Henrik Clarke and John G. Jackson identity the 15th and 16th centuries, the same period when Europe extended itself to Africa and Asia as the period when this claim became institutionalized. These views were reinforced by people like Hegel who described the African as ‘undeveloped, still involved in the conditions of mere nature; devoid of morality, religions and political constitution’. Beliefs like Hegel’s helped justify Europe’s enslavement and colonization of Africa because Europe’s territorial ambition needed a deliberate policy to colonize minds by falsifying history. So they put forward Ancient Greece as the cradle of civilization.

However, as Prof Ali Mazrui points out, the civilization of Ancient Greece would have been impossible without Egyptian civilization, which predates it and from which it borrowed heavily. Even when some western historians are forced to concede that Greek and Roman civilizations borrowed heavily from Ancient Egypt, they are quick to push forward another falsehood: that Ancient Egypt was completely isolated from other parts of Africa and so the Egyptian civilization should not be construed as having originated from Africa. Some even go as far as trying to claim that Egypt is an extension of the European continent! This is why other historians, like Robert. R. Palmer and Joel Colton start their account of world history by first, it is wrong to point to Greece or Rome as proof of European influence in civilization because the idea of Europe as an entity is a very recent phenomenon. These historians also show that on the other hand, it is more historically accurate to trace the contribution of black Africans to Ancient Egypt than to link Europe’s claim to any Greek or Roman civilization which followed the Greek one as evidence of their contribution to world civilization. In other words, they challenge claims by Eurocentric historians who project the idea of Europe as the forerunner of world civilization. Palmer and Colton prove that even the very word Europe did not exist during the Greek civilization and it was hardly used by Ancient Romans. As a matter of fact, Romans considered other Europeans as Barbarians.

There is evidence to support the fact that in spite of Ancient Roman snobbery, and they were famous for looking down on all other people, they did not discriminate on the bases of race. Rather, their system was based on Roman citizenship. Many of the neighbouring people in what is now known as the European continent whom they conquered were subjugated alongside people of other races who came under Roman rule.

So, I hope that answers the question about when history as most of us know it became skewed. My next posting will further challenge the idea of Europe as the cradle of civilization.

By Bunmi Oyinsan, PhD

Link http://bunmioyinsan.com/sankofa-part-3/