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E. F RAN K LIN FRAZIER
B E QUE S T
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE TO THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA
(Harvard Historical Studies, No. I, I896)
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY STUDIES OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM
(eighteen numbers, z896-I9z4)
THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO
(Publication of the Unioersity of Pennsvluariia series on Political Economy
and Public Law, No. I4, z899)
SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
Essays and Sketches, I90)
JOHN BROWN
(American Crisis Biographies, I909)
QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE
a. novel, I9II
THE NEGRO
I9I5
DARKWATER: VOICES FROM WITHIN THE VEIL
I920
THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK: THE NEGRO IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
I924
DARK PRINCESS
a novel, I928
BLACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA, 1860-1880
I935
BLACK FOLK: THEN AND NOW
I9)9
DUSK OF DAWN: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RACE CONCEPT
I94°
COLOR AND DEMOCRACY: COLONIES AND PEACE
I945
THE WORLD
AND
AFRICA
An inquiry into the part which Africa
has played in world history; by
W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS
PUBLISHED BY THE VIKING PRESS
New York . 1947
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TO
NINA
FOR
OUR GOLDEN WEDDING
l )904,6
/
C I {
COPYRIGHT 1946, 1947 BY W. E. B. DU BOIS
PUBLISHED BY THE VIKING PRESS IN JANUARY 1947
PUBLISHED ON THE SAME DAY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
BY VAIL·BALLOU PRESS, INC.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD vii
I. THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 1
II. THE WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 16
III. THE RAPE OF AFRICA 44
IV. THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA 81
V. EGYPT 98
VI. THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 115
VII. ATLANTIS 148
VIII. CENTRAL AFRICA AND THE MARCH OF THE BANTU 164
IX. ASIA IN AFRICA 176
X. THE BLACK SUDAN 201
XI. ANDROMEDA 226
THE MESSAGE 261
INDEX 263
v

FOREWORD
SIN CE the rise of the sugar empire and the resultant cottonkingdom, there has been consistent effort to rationalize
Negro slavery by omitting Africa from world history, so that
today it is almost universally assumed that history can be truly
written without reference to Negroid peoples. I believe this to
be scientifically unsound and also dangerous for logical social
conclusions. Therefore I am seeking in this book to remind
readers in this crisis of civilization, of how critical a part Africa
has played in human history, past and present, and how im-
possible it is to forget this and rightly explain the present plight
of mankind.
Twice before I have essayed to write on the history of Africa:
once in 1915 when the editors of the Home University Library
asked me to attempt such a work. The result was the little
volume called The Negro, which gave evidence of a certain
naive astonishment on my own part at the wealth of fact and
material concerning the Negro peoples, the very existence of
which I had myself known little despite a varied university
career. The result was a condensed and not altogether logical
narrative. Nevertheless, it has been widely read and is still in
print.
Naturally I wished to enlarge upon this earlier work after
World War I and at the beginning of what I thought was a new
era. So I wrote Black Folk: Then and Now, with SOmenew rna-
vii
Vlll FOREWORD
terial and a more logical arrangement. But it happened that I
was writing at the end of an age which marked the final catastro-
phe of the old era of European world dominance rather than at
the threshold of a change of which I had not dreamed in 1935. I
deemed it, therefore, not only fitting but necessary in 1946 to
essay again not so much a history of the Negroid peoples as a
statement of their integral role in human history from pre-
historic to modern times.
I still labor under the difficulty of the persistent lack of in-
terest in Africa so long characteristic of modern history and
sociology. The careful, detailed researches into the history of
Negroid peoples have only begun, and the need for them is not
yet clear to the thinking world. I feel compelled nevertheless to
go ahead with my interpretation, even though that interpreta-
tion has here and there but slender historical proof. I believe
that in the main my story is true, despite the fact that so often
between the American Civil War and World War I the weight
of history and science supports me only in part and in some cases
appears violently to contradict me. At any rate, here is a history
of the world written from the African point of view; or better, a
history of the Negro as part of the world which now lies about us
in ruins.
I am indebted to my assistant, Dr. Irene Diggs, for efficient
help in arranging the material and reading the manuscript.
I feel now as though I were approaching a crowd of friends
and enemies, who ask a bit breathlessly, whose and whence is
the testimony on which I rely for something that even resembles
Authority? To which I return two answers: I am challenging
Authority--even Maspero, Sayee, Reisner, Breasted, and hun-
dreds of other men of highest respectability, who did not attack
but studiously ignored the Negro on the Nile and in the world
and talked as though black folk were nonexistent and unim-
portant. They are part of the herd of writers of modern history
who never heard of Africa or declare with Guernier "Seule de
taus les continents l'Afrique n'a pas d'histoire!"
FOREWORD ix
For chapters one and two I have relied upon my own travel
and observation over a fairly long life. For confirmation I have
resurrected William Howitt's Colonization and Christianity, a V
popular history of how Europeans treated the natives in their
colonies. The book was published in London in 1838, and since
then imperial Europe had tried to forget it. I have also made
bold to repeat the testimony of Karl Marx, whom I regard as
the greatest of modern philosophers, and I have not been
deterred by the witch-hunting which always follows mention of
his name. I like Robert Briffault's The Decline and Fall of the
British Empire (1938) and George Padmore's How Britain Rules
Africa (1936). I have mentioned the work of Anna Graves, who
is usually ignored because she does not follow the conventions of
historical writing and because no publisher has thought that he
could make money out of her work.
In chapter three, on the slave trade, I have especially relied
on Eric Williams' new and excellent work, Capitalism and
Slavery; also on Wilson Williams' work published in the first
number of the Howard University Studies in the Social Sciences.
My own Suppression of the Slave Trade has continued to be of
service. Rayford Logan's work on the United States and Haiti
and Chapman Cohen's Christianity, Slavery, and Labor (1931)
have also been used. Reginald Coupland's East Africa and Its
Invaders (1938) has been valuable. But my greatest help in this
chapter after Eric Williams, has been E. D. Moore's Ivory: The
Scourge of Africa (1931); it is an invaluable book and I am
deeply indebted to its author for facts.
In chapter four I have relied on Edwin W. Smith, now Editor
of Africa and Julian Huxley; also on C. G. Seligmann, whose
Races of Africa (1930), is priceless and marred only by his obses-
sion with the "Hamites."
In chapter five on Egypt there is naturally the greatest diver-
sity of opinion. My attention to the subject was first aroused by
the little pamphlet published by Alexander F. Chamberlain in
1911, "The Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization."
x FOREWORD
Naturally one must read Maspero, Breasted, Rawlinson, and the
other earlier and indefatigable students; but I have mainly de-
pended upon W. M. Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt and on
the sixth volume of the work on Egypt in the Middle Ages by
E. Stanley Lane-Poole edited by Petrie. The travels of Ibn
Batura and Duarte Barbosa form a firm background to the
modern research of Arthur Thomson, David Randall-Maclver,
and Grace Caton-Thompsen. Especially Egyptian Civilization
by Alexandre Moret, published in French in 1927 and shortly
thereafter in English has been illuminating. I have looked
through. the splendid reproductions of Karl R. Lepsius'
Denkmdler, I have read Eduard Meyer's Geschichte des Alter-
turns (1910-13); but of greatest help to me has been Leo Hans-
berry. Mr. Hansberry, a professor at Howard University, is the
one modern scholar who has tried to study the Negro in Egypt
and Ethiopia. I regret that he has not published more of his
work. The overwhelming weight of conventional scientific
opinion on Africa has overawed him, but his work in manu-
script is outstanding. Arthur E. P. B. Weigall's Short History
of Egypt has also been of use.
In chapter six I have depended upon Hansberry. One always
turns back to Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man for renewal
of faith. The works of Sir Ernest Budge, George A. Reisner,
A. H. Sayee, and F. L. Griffith have naturally been of use when
they were not indulging their opinions about Negroes.
I should like to have used the researches on the Negro in
classic Europe of Dr. Frank Snowden of Howard University .
But classical journals in America have hitherto declined to
publish his paper because it favored the Negro too much, leav-
ing the public still to rely on Beardsley's stupid combination of
scholarship and race prejudice which Johns Hopkins University
published. I tried to get Dr. Snowden to let me see his manu-
script, but he refused.
In chapter seven I have relied upon Leo Frobenius. Frobenius
is not popular among conventional historians or anthropol-
FOREWORD Xl
ogists. He indulged his imagination. He had strong beliefs; but
he was a great man and a great thinker. He looked upon Africa
with unprejudiced eyes and has been more valuable for his in-
terpretation of the Negro than any other man I know. The
many works of Robert S. Rattray and Meek, Westermann and
Schapera, cannot be ignored. African students like Soga and
Caseley-Hayford have helped me, and younger men like Orizu.
Mbadiwe, and Ojiki. Basic is the fine unprejudiced work of
Maurice Delafosse. I have used Flora Lugard, although she is
not a scientist; and also a new young Negro writer, Armattoe.
In the eighth chapter I have naturally depended upon Sir
Harry H. Johnston and his study of the Bantu languages; the J
splendid work of Miss Caton-Thompsen. I have learned much
from James A. Rogers. Rogers is an untrained American Negro
writer who has done his work under great difficulty without
funds and at much personal sacrifice. But no man living has
revealed so many important facts about the Negro race as has
Rogers. His mistakes are many and his background narrow, but
he is a true historical student.
In chapter nine there is reliance on Lane-Poole and Cooper,
whom I have mentioned before, and on the new points of view
brought by j awaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography (1940) and
his Glimpses of World History (1942). The study of Egypt and
the East by Alfred T. Butler and Palon have shed much needed
light; and general anthropology is gradually revealing the trend
of the Negro in Africa as we emerge from the blight of the
writers of current history.
Chapter ten is built on the work of Maurice Delafosse and of
William D. Cooley (1841), with help from H. R. Palmer, Flora
Lugard, and many others.
Chapter eleven depends on current thought and documents;
and books like Leonard Barnes' Soviet Light on the Colonies
(1944) and Harold Laski's Rise of Liberalism (1936).
In fine, I have done in this book the sort of thing at which
every scholar shudders. With meager preparation and all too
xu FOREWORD
general background of learning, I have essayed a task, which, to
be adequate and complete, should be based upon the research of
a lifetime! But Iam faced with the dilemma, that either I do this
now or leave it for others who have not had the tragedy of life
which I have, forcing me to face a task for which they may have
small stomach and little encouragement from the world round
, about. If,out of my almost inevitable mistakes and inaccuracies
1 and false conclusions, I shall have at least clearly stated my main
I issue-that black Africans are men in the same sense as white
1 European and yellow Asiatics, and that history can easily prove
this-then I shall rest satisfied even under the stigma of an in-
complete and, to many, inconclusive work.
w. E. B. DuBois
New York
May 1946
CHAPTER I
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE
This is a consideration of the nature of the calam-
ity which has overtaken human civilization.
WE ARE face to face with the greatest tragedy that has everovertaken the world. The collapse of Europe is to us the
more astounding because of the boundless faith which we have
had in European civilization. We have long believed without
argument or reflection that the cultural status of the people of
Europe and of North America represented not only the best
civilization which the world had ever known, but also a goal of
human effort destined to go on from triumph to triumph until
the perfect accomplishment was reached. Our present nervous
breakdown, nameless fear, and often despair, comes from the
sudden facing of this faith with calamity.
In such a case, what we need above all is calm appraisal of the
situation, the application of cold common sense. What in reality
is the nature of the catastrophe? To what pattern of human
culture does it apply? And, finally, why did it happen? In this
search for reasons we must seek not simply current facts or facts
within the memory of living men, but we must also, and es-
pecially in this case, seek lessons from history. It is perhaps the
greatest indictment that can be brought against history as a
science and against its teachers that we are usually indisposed
2 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to refer to history for the settlement of pressing problems. We
realize that history is too often what we want it to be and what
we are determined men shall believe rather than a grim record
of what has taken place in the past.
Manifestly the present plight of the world is a direct out-
growth of the past, and I have made bold to add to the many
books on the subject of our present problems because I believe
that certain suppressions in the historical record current in our
day will lead to a tragic failure in assessing causes. More par-
ticularly, I believe that the habit, long fostered, of forgetting
and detracting from the thought and acts of the people of Africa,
is not only a direct cause of our present plight, but will continue
to cause trouble until we face the facts. I shall try not to exagger-
ate this thread of African history in the world development, but
I shall insist equally that it be not ignored.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when I was but ten
years out of college, I visited the Paris Exposition of 1900. It was
one of the finest, perhaps the very finest, of world expositions,
and it typified what the European world wanted to think of
itself and its future. Wealth and Science were the outstanding
matters of emphasis: there was the new and splendid Pont
Alexandre crossing the Seine, named for the Czar of Russia;
there was an amazing exhibit of Russian industry at Jaroslav;
and I had brought with me, as excuse for coming, a little display
showing the development of Negroes in the United States, which
gained a gold medal. All about me was an extraordinary display
of wealth, luxury, and industrial technique, striking evidence of
a Europe triumphant over the world and the center of science
and art, power and human freedom.
Itwas easy to see what the great countries of Europe thought
of themselves: France stood pre-eminently for art, for taste in
building, technique, and pure expression; Germany stood for
science and government; England for wealth and power with a
high level of comfort; and America for freedom of human in-
itiative.
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 3
There was even in this French exposition a certain dominance
of the British Empire idea. The British paper promise-to-pay
was actually worth more to the traveler than gold. British in-
dustry was unrivaled in efficient technique. British investments
were the safest; and Great Britain was the widest and most suc-
cessful administrator of colonies. Every kind of tribute was paid
to her; she was the acknowledged leader in such various things
as men's cloth and clothing, public manners, the rate of public
expenditure-and all this showed in the deference a British
subject could demand everywhere throughout the world.
Then came five crashing events in quick succession. First, in
1905, at Saint Petersburg, the shooting down in cold blood of
Russian workingmen in the first organized attempt of the
twentieth century to achieve relief; and by that murderous volley
the Czar killed the faith of working Russia in the Little White
Father. He revealed that Russian industry was paying 50 per cent
and more in profits to Germans and other investors, while the
workers starved. The Czar himself thus sowed the seeds of
revolution.
Second, in 1911 a German warship sailed into Agadir, North
Africa, and demanded in the name of the Emperor that the Ger-
man Reich be consulted concerning the future of Morocco. I
remember how the incident startled London. I was there at the
time, attending the First Races Congress. It is a meeting now
forgotten, but it might have been of world significance. Its advice
might have changed the course of history had not World War I
followed so fast. Meeting at the University of London was prob-
ably the largest representation of the groups of the world known
as races and subraces; they were consulting together under the
leadership of science and ethics for a future world which would
be peaceful, without race prejudice; and which would be co-
operative, especially in the social sciences. Among the speakers
were world leaders-Giuseppe Sergi, Franz Boas, John A. Hob-
son, Felix Adler, Sir Sidney Olivier, and Wu Ting-fang. A hymn
to the peoples was read:
4 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
So sit we all as one
So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves,
The Buddha walks with Christl
And AI-Koran and Bible both be holy!
Almighty Word!
In this Thine awful sanctuary,
First and flame-haunted City of the Widened World,
Assail us, Lord of Lands and Seas!
We are but weak and wayward men,
Distraught alike with hatred and vainglory;
Prone to despise the Soul that breathes within-
High-visioned hordes that lie and steal and kill,
Sinning the sin each separate heart disclaims,
Clambering upon our riven, writhing selves,
Besieging Heaven by trampling men to Hell!
We be blood-guilty! La, our hands be red!
Let no man blame the other in this sin!
But here-here in the white Silence of the Dawn,
Before the Womb of Time,
With bowed hearts all flame and shame,
We face the birth-pangs of a world:
We hear the stifled cry of Nations all but born-
The wail of women ravished of their stunted brood!
We see the nakedness of Toil, the poverty of Wealth,
We know the Anarchy of Empire, and doleful Death of Life!
And hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry:
Save us, World-Spirit, from our lesser selves!
Grant us that war and hatred cease,
Reveal our souls in every race and hue!
Help us, 0 Human God, in this Thy Truce,
To make Humanity divine! 1
1W. E. B. DuBois, Darkwater (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920),
pp. 275-76.
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 5
There were a few startling incidents. I remember with what
puzzled attention we heard Felix von Luschan, the great
anthropologist of the University of Berlin, annihilate the thesis
of race inferiority and then in the same breath end his paper with
these words: "Nations will come and go, but racial and national
antagonism will remain; and this is well, for mankind would
become like a herd of sheep if we were to lose our national
ambition and cease to look with pride and delight, not only on
our industries and science, but also on our splendid soldiers and
our glorious ironclads. Let small-minded people whine about the
horrid cost of dreadnoughts; as long as every nation in Europe
spends, year after year, much more money on wine, beer, and
brandy than on her army and navy, there is no reason to dread
our impoverishment by militarism. Si vis pacem, para bellum;
and in reality there is no doubt that we shall be the better able to
avoid war, the better we care for our armor. A nation is free only
in so far as her own internal affairs are concerned. She has to re-
spect the right of other nations as well as to defend her own, and
her vital interests she will, if necessary, defend with blood and
iron." 2
We were aghast. Did German science defend war? We were
hardly reassured when in printing this speech the editor
appended the following note: "To prevent the last few para-
graphs from being misinterpreted, Professor von Luschan au-
thorizes us to state that he regards the desire for a war between
Germany and England as 'insane or dastardly.' " 3
But it was in vain. In 1914 came World War I; in 1929 came
the depression; in 1939 came World War II. The cost of these
wars and crises in property and human life is almost beyond
belief; the cost in the destruction of youth and of faith in the
world and mankind is incalculable. Why did these things
happen?
2 Gustav Spiller, ed., Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, Universal Races
Congress, I (London: P. S. King & Son, 1911), pp. 23-24.
3 Ibid., p. 24.
6 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
'We may begin with the fact that in 1888 there came to the
throne of Germany a young, vigorous German emperor of
British descent. Wilhelm II had utter faith in the future of Ger-
many. As a student I used to see him often on the Unter den
Linden. Time and again we students swung to the curb, and
through the central arch of the Brandenburg Gate came the
tossing of plumes and the prancing of horses, and splendid with
shining armor and blare of trumpet there rode Wilhelm, by the
Grace of God, King of Prussia and German Emperor.
Back of Wilhelm's faith in Germany lay deep envy of the
power of Britain. In his soul strove unceasingly the ambition of
Bismarck of Prussia and the aristocratic imperialism of his
mother, a daughter of Queen Victoria. The French-British
Entente Cordiale of the new century was faced by a German
demand for "a place in the sun," a right to extract from colonial
and semicolonial areas a share of the wealth which was going to
Britain. When Germany invaded Belgium, and with that
invasion brought war with England, it must be remembered
that by that same token Germany was invading the Bel-
gian Congo and laying claim to the ownership of Central
Africa.
Wor ld War I then was a war over spheres of influence in Asia
and colonies in Africa, and in that war, curiously enough, both
Asia and Africa were called upon to support Europe. Senegalese
troops, for example, saved France and Europe from the first
armed German onslaught. They were the shock troops brought
to be slaughtered in thousands by the climate and cannon of
Europe. The man who brought the African troops to the succor
of France was Blaise Diagne. He was a tall, thin Negro, nervous
with energy, more patriotic in his devotion to France than many
of the French. He was deputy from Senegal in the French
Parliament and had been selected as the man to whom the chiefs
of French West Africa would render implicit obedience. Raised
to cabinet rank, he was made the official representative of the
French in West Africa. The white governor who found himself
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 7
subordinated to this Negro resigned in disgust, but Diagne went
down the West Coast in triumph and sent a hundred thousand
black soldiers to France at this critical time.
One must not forget that incident on the fields of Flanders
which has been so quickly forgotten. Against the banked artillery
of the magnificent German Army were sent untrained and
poorly armed Senegalese. They marched at command in unwav-
ering ranks, raising the war cry in a dozen different Sudanese
tongues. When the artillery belched they shivered, but never
faltered. They marched straight into death; the war cries be-
came fainter and fainter and dropped into silence as not a single
black man was left living on that field.
I was in Paris just after the armistice in 1918, and it was to
Diagne that I went to ask for the privilege of calling a Pan-
African Congress in Paris during the Versailles Peace Con-
ference.
The idea of one Africa to unite the thought and ideals of all
native peoples of the dark continent belongs to the twentieth
century and stems naturally from the West Indies and the
United States. Here various groups of Africans, quite separate
in origin, became so united in experience and so exposed to the
impact of new cultures that they began to think of Africa as one
idea and one land. Thus late in the eighteenth century when a
separate Negro Church was formed in Philadelphia it called
itself "African"; and there were various "African" societies in
many parts of the United States.
It was not, however, until 1900 that a black West Indian
barrister, practicing in London, called together a Pan-African
Conference. This meeting attracted attention, put the word
"Pan-African" in the dictionaries for the first time, and had some
thirty delegates, mainly from England and the West Indies, with
a few colored North Americans. The conference was welcomed
by the Lord Bishop of London and a promise was obtained from
Queen Victoria, through Joseph Chamberlain, not to "overlook
the interests and welfare of the native races."
8 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
This meeting had no deep roots in Africa itself, and the
movement and the idea died for a generation. Then came World
War I, and among North American Negroes at its close there
was determined agitation for the rights of Negroes throughout
the world, and particularly in Africa. Meetings were held and a
petition was sent to President Wilson. By indirection I secured
passage on the Creel press boat, the Orizaba, and landed in
France in December 1918. I went with the idea of calling a Pan-
African Congress, and to try to impress upon the members of
the Peace Conference sitting at Versailles the importance of
Africa in the future world. I was without credentials or influence.
I tried to get a conference with President Wilson but got only as
far as Colonel House, who was sympathetic but noncommittal.
The Chicago Tribune of January 19, 1919, in a dispatch from
Paris dated December 30, 1918, said:
An Ethiopian Utopia, to be fashioned out of the German colonies,
is the latest dream of leaders of the Negro race who are here at the
invitation of the United States government as part of the extensive
entourage of the American peace delegation. Robert R. Moton,
successorof the late Booker Washington as head of Tuskegee Insti-
tute, and Dr. William E. B. DuBois, editor of the Crisis, are pro-
moting a Pan-African Conference to be held here during the winter
while the Peace Conference is in full blast. It is to embrace Negro
leaders from America, Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, the French and
British colonies, and other parts of the black world. Its object is
to get out of the Peace Conference an effort to modernize the dark
continent and in the world reconstruction to provide international
machinery looking toward the civilization of the African natives.
The Negro leaders are not agreed upon any definite plan, but
Dr. DuBois has mapped out a scheme which he has presented in
the form of a memorandum to President Wilson. It is quite Utopian,
and it has less than a Chinaman's chance of getting anywhere in
the Peace Conference, but it is nevertheless interesting. As "self-
determination" is one of the words to conjure with in Paris nowa-
days, the Negro leaders are seeking to have it applied, if possible,
in a measure to their race in Africa.
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 9
Dr. DuBois sets forth that while the principle of self-determination
cannot be applied to uncivilized peoples, yet the educated blacks
should have some voice in the disposition of the German colonies.
He maintains that in settling what is to be done with the German
colonies the Peace Conference might consider the wishes of the
intelligent Negroes in the colonies themselves, the Negroes of the
United States, and South Africa, and the West Indies, the Negro
governments of Abyssinia, Liberia, and Haiti, the educated Negroes
in French West Africa and Equatorial Africa and in British Uganda,
Nigeria, Basutoland, Swaziland, Sierra Leone, Gold Goast, Gambia,
and Bechuanaland, and in the Union of South Africa.
Dr. DuBois' dream is that the Peace Conference could form an inter-
nationalized Africa, to have as its basis the former German colonies,
with their 1,000,000 square miles and 12,500,000 population.
"To this," his plan reads, "could be added by negotiation the 800,000
square miles and 9,000,000 inhabitants of Portuguese Africa. It is not
impossible that Belgium could be persuaded to add to such a state the
900,000 square miles and 9,000,000 natives of the Congo, making an
international Africa with over 2,500,000 square miles of land and over
20,000,000 people.
"This Africa for the Africans could be under the guidance of inter-
national organization. The governing international commission
should represent not simply governments, but modern culture, science,
commerce, social reform, and religious philanthropy. It must represent
not simply the white world, but the civilized Negro world.
"We can, if we will, inaugurate on the dark continent a last great
crusade for humanity. With Africa redeemed, Asia would be safe and
Europe indeed triumphant."
Members of the American delegation and associated experts
assured me that no congress on this matter could be held in Paris
because France was still under martial law; but the ace that I had
up my sleeve was Blaise Diagne, the black deputy from Senegal
and Commissaire-Ceneral in charge of recruiting native African
troops. I went to Diagne and sold him the idea of a Pan-African
Congress. He consulted Clemenceau, and the matter was held up
two wet, discouraging months. Finally we received permission
10 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to hold the Congress in Paris. "Don't advertise it," said Cle-
menceau, "but go ahead." Walter Lippmann wrote me in his
crabbed hand, February 20, 1919: "I am very much interested
in your organization of the Pan-African conference, and glad
that Clemenceau has made it possible. Will you send me what-
ever reports you may have on the work?"
American newspaper correspondents wrote home: "Officials
here are puzzled by the news from Paris that plans are going
forward there for a Pan-African conference. Acting Secretary
Polk said today the State Department had been officially advised
by the French government that no such conference would be
held. It was announced recently that no passports would be
issued for American delegates desiring to attend the meeting.">
But at the very time that Polk was assuring American Negroes
that no Congress would be held, the Congress actually assembled
in Paris.
This Congress represented Africa partially. Of the fifty-seven
delegates from fifteen countries, nine were African countries
with twelve delegates. Of the remaining delegates, sixteen were
from the United States, and twenty-one from the West Indies.
Most of these delegates did not come to France for this meeting
but happened to be residing there, mainly for reasons connected
with the war. America and the colonial powers had refused to
issue special visas.
The Congress influenced the Peace Conference. The New
YOTk Evening Globe of February 22, 1919, described it as "the
first assembly of the kind in history, and has for its object the
drafting of an appeal to the Peace Conference to give the Negro
race of Africa a chance to develop unhindered by other races.
Seated at long green tables in the council room today, were
Negroes in the trim uniform of American Army officers, other
American colored men in frock coats or business suits, polished
French Negroes who hold public office, Senegalese who sit in the
French Chamber of Deputies .... "
4 Pittsburgh [Pa.] Dispatch, February 16, 1919.
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE 11
The Congress specifically asked that the German colonies be
turned over to an international organization instead of being
handled by the various colonial powers. Out of this idea came
the Mandates Commission.
The resolutions of the Congress asked in part:
A. That the Allied and Associated Powers establish a code of law
for the international protection of the natives· of Africa, similar
to the proposed international code for labor.
B. That the League of Nations establish a permanent Bureau
charged with the special duty of overseeing the application of
these laws to the political, social, and economic welfare of the
natives.
C. The Negroes of the world demand that hereafter the natives of
Africa and the peoples of African descent be governed according
to the following principles:
1. The land: the land and its natural resources shall be held in
trust for the natives and at all times they shall have effective
ownership of as much land as they can profitably develop.
2. Capital: the investment of capital and granting of concessions
shall be so regulated as to prevent the exploitation of the na-
tives and the exhaustion of the natural wealth of the country,
Concessions shall always be limited in time and subject to State
control. The growing social needs of the natives must be re-
garded and the profits taxed for social and material benefit of
the natives.
3· Labor: slavery and corporal punishment shall be abolished
and forced labor except in punishment for crime; and the
general conditions of labor shall be prescribed and regulated
by the State.
4. Education: it shall be the right of every native child to learn
to read and write his own language, and the language of the
trustee nation, at public expense, and to be given technical in-
struction in some branch of industry. The State shall also edu-
cate as large a number of natives as possible in higher tech-
nical and cultural training and maintain a corps of native
teachers.
5. The State: the natives of Africa must have the right to partici-
12 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
pate in the government as fast as their development permits,
in conformity with the principle that the government exists
for the natives, and not the natives for the government. They
shall at once be allowed to participate in local and tribal gov-
ernment, according to ancient usage, and this participation
shall gradually extend, as education and experience proceed,
to the higher officesof State; to the end that, in time, Africa
be ruled by consent of the Africans.... Whenever it is
proven that African natives are not receiving just treatment
at the hands of any State or that any State deliberately ex-
cludes its civilized citizens or subjects of Negro descent from
its body politic and cultural, it shall be the duty of the League
of Nations to bring the matter to the notice of the civilized
World.5
The New York Herald of February 24, 1919, said: "There is
nothing unreasonable in the program drafted at the Pan-African
Congress which was held in Paris last week. It calls upon the
Allied and Associated Powers to draw up an international code
of law for the protection of the nations of Africa, and to create,
as a section of the League of Nations, a permanent bureau
to insure observance of such laws and thus further the racial,
political, and economic interests of the natives."
We were, of course, but weak and ineffective amateurs chip-
ping at a hard conglomeration of problems about to explode in
chaos. At least we were groping for light.
Not only Africa but Asia took active part in World War I on
the side of the Allies. India saw for the first time a prospect of
autonomy within the British Empire. Japan wanted to be
recognized as the equal of white European nations, and the
Chinese Republic started on its new path to modern civilization.
Peace dawned, and the war came to be known as "the War to
End War." But in vain, for this war had not ended the idea of
European world domination. Rather it had loosened the seams
of imperialism.
5 Broadsidepublished by the Pan-AfricanCongress,Paris, 1919.
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE
In Africa, Negro troops had conquered German colonies, and
now British West Africa demanded a share in government. In
the very midst of war came labor revolt in Russia, which Europe
and North America tried to repress, but they did not succeed.
There came from the colonies in Africa and Asia insistent
demand for freedom and democracy. It was in 1915 that the
Congress of West Africa appealed to Great Britain in these
words:
In the demand for the franchise by the people of British West
Africa, it is not to be supposed that they are asking to be allowed to
copy a foreign institution. On the contrary, it is important to notice
that the principle of electing representatives to local councils and
bodies is inherent in all the systemsof British West Africa."
In the interval between World War I and World War II,
India's determined opposition to British rule increased under
the leadership of Gandhi, who sought to substitute peaceful non-
co-operation for war. The answer was the massacre of Amritsar.
In America organized industry rose in its might to realize
fantastic profits through domination of world industry. It fought
labor unions and tried to nullify democracy by the power of
wealth and capital. In the very midst of this, the magnificent
structure of capitalistic industry collapsed in every part of the
world. Make no mistake, war did not cause the Great Depression;
it was the reasons behind the depression that caused war and
will cause it again.
The world tried to meet depression and unemployment and
to compose differences between capital and labor. Faced by the
threat of Russian Communism, Italy, which with Spain was the
most poverty-stricken country in Western Europe, seized control
of the nation and of industry with the object of ruling it through
an oligarchy, eliminating all democratic control. This was the
answer of capitalists to the growing and threatening political
G Memorandum of the case of the National Congress of British West
Africa ... , March 1920, p. 2.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
power of the workers. Hitler followed, opposing the Socialist
state of Weimar, with its unemployment and political chaos,
with a new state and a new nationalism. The industrial leaders
surrendered their power into his hands; the army followed suit;
unemployment disappeared, and Hitler diverted the nation
with visions of vengeance to be achieved through a new state
ruled by German supermen. Simultaneously, Japan, having
been rebuffed by England and America in her plea for racial
equality before the League of Nations, saw an. opportunity in
this new order to displace Europe in the control of Asia.
Then came rumblings of World War II. The Axis wooed first
England and France and then Russia. Britain made every offer
of appeasement. Ethiopia was thrown to the dogs of a new
Italian imperialism in Africa. Everything was offered to Hitler
but the balance of power in Europe and the surrender of
colonies. America, hesitating, was ready to fight for private
industry against Nazism and to defend Anglo-American in-
vestment in colonies and quasi-colonial areas.
Hitler would not be appeased. So war began. Hell broke loose.
Six million Jews were murdered in Germany through a propa-
ganda which tied the small shopkeepers back of Hitler and
placed unreasoning race prejudice back of war. France feared
to trust colonial Africa. De Gaulle and the black Governor
Eboue, with co-operation from England and France, could have
established a new black France in Africa and shortened the
war; but France yielded to Germany. England resisted doggedly.
Russia yielded and joined hands with Germany, but not for long.
The real battle then began; the battle of the Nazi-Fascist
oligarchy against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Germany
determined first to crush Russia and then with Russian resources
to destroy the British Empire. Japan aroused Asia, and by
attacking America thus furnished the one reason, based on race
prejudice, which brought America immediately into the war.
India protested, China starved and struggled, the horrible world
war with uncounted cost in property, life, and youth came to
THE COLLAPSE OF EUROPE
an end, and with it came the discovery of the use of atomic
energy.
It was significant that the man who invented the phrase
"White Man's Burden" and who was its most persistent propa-
gandist, also wrote its epitaph:
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law-
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word-
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! 7
7 Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."
CHAPTER II
THE WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
This is an attempt to show briefly what the domi-
nation of Europe over the world has meant to
mankind and especially to Africans in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries.
WHAT are the real causes back of the collapse of Europe inthe twentieth century? What was the real European im-
perialism pictured in the Paris Exposition of 1900? France
did not stand purely for art. There was much imitation, con-
vention, suppression, and sale of genius; and France wanted
wealth and power at any price. Germany did not stand solely
for science. I remember when the German professor at whose
home I was staying in 1890 expressed his contempt for the rising
businessmen. He had heard them conversing as he drank in a
Bierstube at Eisenach beneath the shade of Luther's Wartburg.
Their conversation, he sneered, was Lauter Geschiijtl He did not
realize that a new Germany was rising which wanted German
science for one main purpose-wealth and power. America
wanted freedom, but freedom to get rich by any method short of
anarchy; and freedom to get rid of the democracy which allowed
laborers to dictate to managers and investors.
All these centers of civilization envied England the wealth
and power built upon her imperial colonial system. One looking
at European imperialism in 1900 therefore should have looked
16
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
first at the depressed peoples. One would have found them also
among the laboring classes in Europe and America, living in
slums behind a facade of democracy, nourished on a false edu- •
cation which lauded the triumphs of the industrial undertaker,
made the millionaire the hero of modern life, and taught youth
that success was wealth. The slums of England emphasized
class differences; slum dwellers and British aristocracy spoke
different tongues, had different manners and ideals. The goal
of human life was illustrated in the nineteenth-century English
novel: the aristocrat of independent income surrounded by a
herd of obsequious and carefully trained servants. Even today
the British butler is a personage in the literary world.
Out of this emerged the doctrine of the Superior Race: the
theory that a minority of the people of Europe are by birth and
natural gift the rulers of mankind; rulers of their own sup-
pressed labor classes and, without doubt, heaven-sent rulers of
yellow, brown, and black people.
This way of thinking gave rise to many paradoxes, and it was
characteristic of the era that men did not face paradoxes with
any plan to solve them. There was the religious paradox: the
contradiction between the Golden Rule and the use of force to
keep human beings in their appointed places; the doctrine of
the ''''hite Man's Burden and the conversion of the heathen,
faced by the actuality of famine, pestilence, and caste. There was
the assumption of the absolute necessity of poverty for the
majority of men in order to save civilization for the minority,
for that aristocracy of mankind which was at the same time the
chief beneficiary of culture.
There was the frustration of democracy: lip service was paid
to the idea of the rule of the people; but at the same time the
mass of people were kept so poor, and through their poverty so
diseased and ignorant, that they could not carryon successfully
a modern state or modern industry. There was the paradox of
peace: I remember before World War I stopping in at the Hotel
Astor to hear Andrew Carnegie talk to his peace society. War
18 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
had begun between Italy and Turkey but, said Mr. Carnegie
blandly, we are not talking about peace among unimportant
people; we are talking about peace among the great states of the
world. I walked out. Here I knew lay tragedy, and the events
proved it; for the great states went to war in jealousy over the
ownership of the little people.
The paradox of the peace movement of the nineteenth century
is a baffling comment on European civilization. There was not a
single year during the nineteenth century when the world was
not at war. Chiefly, but not entirely, these wars were waged to
subjugate colonial peoples. They were carried on by Europeans,
and at least one hundred and fifty separate wars can be counted
during the heyday of the peace movement. What the peace
movement really meant was peace in Europe and between Eu-
ropeans, while for the conquest of the world and because of the
suspicion which they held toward each other, every nation main-
tained a standing army which steadily grew in cost and menace.
One of the chief causes which thus distorted the development
of Europe was the African slave trade, and we have tried to re-
write its history and meaning and to make it occupy a much less
important place in the world's history than it deserves.
The result of the African slave trade and slavery on the
European mind and culture was to degrade the position of labor
and the respect for humanity as such. Not, God knows, that the
ancient world honored labor. With exceptions here and there,
it despised, enslaved, and crucified human toil. But there were
counter currents, and with the Renaissance in Europe-that new
light with which Asia and Africa illumined the Dark Ages of
Europe-came new hope for mankind. A new religion of per-
sonal sacrifice had been building on five hundred years of the
self-effacement of Buddha before the birth of Christ, and the
equalitarianism of Mohammed which followed six hundred
years after Christ's birth. A new world, seeking birth in Europe,
was also being discovered beyond the sunset.
With this new world came fatally the African slave trade and
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 19
Negro slavery in the Americas. There were new cruelties, new
hatreds of human beings, and new degradations of human labor.
The temptation to degrade human labor was made vaster and
deeper by the incredible accumulation of wealth based on slave
labor, by the boundless growth of greed, and by world-wide
organization for new agricultural crops, new techniques in
industry, and world-wide trade.
Just as Europe lurched forward to a new realization of beauty,
a new freedom of thought and religious belief, a new demand
by laborers to choose their work and enjoy its fruit, uncurbed
greed rose to seize and monopolize the uncounted treasure of
the fruit of labor. Labor was degraded, humanity was despised,
the theory of "race" arose. There came a new doctrine of uni-
versallabor: mankind were of two sorts-the superior and the
inferior; the inferior toiled for the superior; and the superior
were the real men, the inferior half men or less. Among the white
lords of creation there were- "lower classes" resembling the in-
ferior darker folk. Where possible they were to be raised to
equality with the master class. But no equality was possible or
desirable for "darkies." In line with this conviction, the Chris-
tian Church, Catholic and Protestant, at first damned the hea-
then blacks with the "curse of Canaan," then held out hope of
freedom through "conversion," and finally acquiesced in a
permanent status of human slavery.
Despite the fact that the nineteenth century saw an upsurge in
the power of laboring classes and a fight toward economic equal-
ity and political democracy, this movement and battle was made
fiercer and less successful and lagged far behind the accumu-
lation of wealth, because in popular opinion labor was funda-
mentally degrading and the just burden of inferior peoples.
Luxury and plenty for the few and poverty for the many was
looked upon as inevitable in the course of nature. In addition to
this, it went without saying that the white people of Europe had
a right to live upon the labor and property of the colored peoples
of the world.
20 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
In order to establish the righteousness of this point of view,
science and religion, government and industry, were wheeled
into line. The word "Negro" was used for the first time in the
world's history to tie color to race and blackness to slavery and
degradation. The white race was pictured as "pure" and su-
perior; the black race as dirty, stupid, and inevitably inferior;
the yellow race as sharing, in deception and cowardice, much of
this color inferiority; while mixture of races was considered the
prime cause of degradation and failure in civilization. Every-
thing great, everything fine, everything really successful in
human culture, was white.
In order to prove this, even black people in India and Africa
were labeled as "white" if they showed any trace of progress; and,
on the other hand, any progress by colored people was attributed
to some intermixture, ancient or modern, of white blood or
some influence of white civilization.
This logical contradiction influenced and misled science. The
same person declared that mulattoes were inferior and warned
against miscegenation, and yet attributed the pre-eminence of
a Dumas, a Frederick Douglass, a Booker Washington, to their
white blood.
A system at first conscious and then unconscious of lying about
history and distorting it to the disadvantage of the Negroids
became so widespread that the history of Africa ceased to be
taught, the color of Memnon was forgotten, and every effort was
made in archaeology, history, and biography, in biology, psy-
chology, and sociology, to prove the all but universal assump-
tion that the color line had a scientific basis.
Without the winking of an eye, printing, gunpowder, the
smelting of iron, the beginnings of social organization, not to
mention political life and democracy, were attributed exclu-
sively to the white race and to Nordic Europe. Religion sighed
with relief when it could base its denial of the ethics of Christ
and the brotherhood of men upon the science of Darwin, Go-
bineau, and Reisner.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 21
It was bad enough in all conscience to have the consequences
of this thought, these scientific conclusions and ethical sanctions,
fall upon colored people the world over; but in the end it was
even worse when one considers what this attitude did to the
European worker. His aim and ideal was distorted. He did not
wish to become efficient but rich. He began to want not comfort
for all men, but power over other men for himself. He did not
love humanity and he hated "niggers." When our High Com-
missioner after the Spanish War appealed to America on behalf
of "our little brown brother," the white workers replied,
"He may be a brother of William H. Taft,
But he ain't no brother of mine."
Following the early Christian communism and sense of
human brotherhood which began to grow in the Dark Ages and
to blossom in the Renaissance there came to white workers in
England, France, and Germany the iron law of wages, the pop-
ulation doctrines of Malthus, and the bitter fight against the
early trade unions. The first efforts at education, and par-
ticularly the trend toward political democracy, aroused an
antagonism of which the French Revolution did not dream. It
was this bitter fight that exacerbated the class struggle and
resulted in the first furious expression of Communism and the
attempt at revolution. The unity of apprentice and master, the
Christian sympathy between rich and poor, the communism of
medieval charity, all were thrust into the new strait jacket of
thought: poverty was the result of sloth and crime; wealth was
the reward of virtue and work. The degraded yellow and black
peoples were in the places which the world of necessity assigned
to the inferior; and toward these lower ranks the working classes
of all countries tended to sink save as they were raised and sup-
ported by the rich, the investors, the captains of industry.
In some parts of the world, notably in the Southern states of
America, the argument went further than this: frank slavery of
22 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
black folk was a better economic system than factory exploi-
tation of whites. It was the natural arrangement of industry. It
ought to be extended, certainly where colored people were in the
majority. For half a century before 1861 the bolder minds of
the South dreamed of a slave empire embracing the American
tropics and extending eventually around the world. While their
thought did not go to a final appraisement of white laboring
classes, they certainly had in mind that these classes must rise or
fall; must be forced into the class of employers with political
power, or, like the poor whites of the South, be pushed down be-
side or even below the working slaves.
This philosophy had sympathizers in Europe. Without doubt,
a large majority of influential public opinion in England, and
possibly in both France and Germany, favored the South at the
outbreak of the Civil War and sternly set its face against allow-
ing any maudlin sympathy with "darkies," half monkeys and
half men, in the stern fight for the extension of European dom-
ination of the world. Widespread insensibility to cruelty and
suffering spread in the white world, and to guard against too
much emotional sympathy with the distressed, every effort was
made to keep women and children and the more sensitive men
deceived as to what was going on, not only in the slums of white
countries, but also all over Asia, Africa, and the islands of the
sea. Elaborate writing, disguised as interpretation, and the
testimony of so-called "experts," made it impossible for charm-
ing people in Europe to realize what their comforts and luxuries
cost in sweat, blood, death, and despair, not only in the remoter
parts of the world, but even on their own doorsteps.
A gracious culture was built up; a delicately poised literature
treated the little intellectual problems of the rich and well-born,
discussed small matters of manners and convention, and omitted
the weightier ones of law, mercy, justice, and truth. Even the
evidence of the eyes and senses was denied by the mere weight
of reiteration. The race that produced the ugly features of a
Darwin or a Winston Churchill was always "beautiful," while
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
a Toussaint and a Menelik were ugly because they were black.
The concept of the European "gentleman" was evolved: a!
man well bred and of meticulous grooming, of knightly sports-
manship and invincible courage even in the face of death; but
one who did not hesitate to use machine guns against assagais
and to cheat "niggers"; an ideal of sportsmanship which re-
flected the Golden Rule and yet contradicted it-not only in
business and in industry within white countries, but all over
Asia and Africa-by indulging in lying, murder, theft, rape,
deception, and degradation, of the same sort and kind which has
left the world aghast at the accounts of what the Nazis did in
Poland and Russia.
There was no Nazi atrocity-concentration camps, wholesale
maiming and murder, defilement of women or ghastly blas-
phemy of childhood-which the Christian civilization of Europe
had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts
of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior
Race born to rule the world.
Together with the idea of a Superior Race there grew up in
Europe and America an astonishing ideal of wealth and luxury:
the man of "independent" income who did not have to "work
for a living," who could indulge his whims and fantasies, who
was free from all compulsion either of ethics or hunger, became
the hero of 'novels, of drama and of fairy tale. This wealth was
built, in Africa especially, upon diamonds and gold, copper
and tin, ivory and mahogany, palm oil and cocoa, seeds extracted
and grown, beaten out of the blood-stained bodies of the natives,
transported to Europe, processed by wage slaves who were not
receiving, and as Ricardo assured them they could never receive,
enough to become educated and healthy human beings, and
then distributed among prostitutes and gamblers as well as
among well-bred followers of art, literature, and drama.
Cities were built, ugly and horrible, with regions for the cul-
ture of crime, disease, and suffering, but characterized in pop-
ular myth and blindness by wide and beautiful avenues where
24 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
the rich and fortunate lived, laughed, and drank tea. National
heroes were created by lopping off their sins and canonizing
their virtues, so that Gladstone had no connection with slavery,
Chinese Gordon did not get drunk, William Pitt was a great
patriot and not an international thief. Education was so ar-
ranged that the young learned not necessarily the truth, but
that aspect and interpretation of the truth which the rulers of
the world wished them to know and follow.
In other words, we had progress by poverty in the face of ac-
cumulating wealth, and that poverty was not simply the poverty
of the slaves of Africa and the peons of Asia, but the poverty of
the mass of workers in England, France, Germany, and the
United States. Art, in building, painting, and literature, became
cynical and decadent. Literature became realistic and therefore
pessimistic. Religion became organized in social clubs where
well-bred people met in luxurious churches and gave alms to
the poor. On Sunday they listened to sermons-"Blessed are the
meek"; "Do unto others even as you would that others do unto
'You"; "If thine enemy smite thee, turn the other cheek"; "It is
more blessed to give than to receive"-listened and acted as
though they had read, as in very truth they ought to have read
-"Might is right"; "Do others before they do you"; "Kill your
enemies or be killed"; "Make profits by any methods and at any
cost so long as you can escape the lenient law." This is a fair
picture of the decadence of that Europe which led human civil-
ization during the nineteenth century and looked unmoved on
the writhing of Asia and of Africa.
Nothing has been more puzzling than the European attitude
toward sex. With professed reverence for female chastity, white
folk have brought paid prostitution to its highest development;
their lauding of motherhood has accompanied a lessening of
births through late marriage and contraception, and this has
stopped the growth of population in France and threatened it
in all Europe. Indeed, along with the present rate of divorce, the
future of the whole white race is problematical. Finally, the
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 25
treatment of colored women by white men has been a world-
wide disgrace. American planters, including some of the highest
personages in the nation, left broods of colored children who
were sometimes sold into slavery.
William Howitt (1792-1879), an English Quaker, visited
Australia and the East early in the nineteenth century and has
left us a record of what he saw. Of the treatment of women in
India he wrote: "The treatment of the females could not be de-
scribed. Dragged from the inmost recesses of their houses, which
the religion of the country had made so many sanctuaries, they
were exposed naked to public view. The virgins were carried to.
the Court of Justice, where they might naturally have looked
for protection, but they now looked for it in vain; for in the face
of the ministers of justice, in the face of the spectators, in the
face of the sun, those tender and modest virgins were brutally
violated. The only difference between their treatment and that
of their mothers was that the former were dishonoured in the
face of day, the latter in the gloomy recesses of their dungeon.
Other females had the nipples of their breasts put in a cleft
bamboo and torn off. What follows is too shocking and indecent
to transcribe! It is almost impossible, in reading of these fright-
ful and savage enormities, to believe that we are reading of a
country under the British government, and that these unmanly
deeds were perpetrated by British agents, and for the purpose·
of extorting the British revenue." 1
It would be unfair to paint the total modern picture of Europe
as decadent. There have been souls that revolted and voices
that cried aloud. Men arraigned poverty, ignorance, and disease
as unnecessary. The public school and the ballot fought for up-
lift and freedom. Suffrage for women and laborers and freedom
for the Negro were extended. But this forward-looking vision
had but partial and limited success. Race tyranny, aristocratic
pretense, monopolized wealth, still continued to prevail and
1William Howitt, Colonization and Christianity (London: Longman,
Orme, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1838),pp. 280-81.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
triumphed widely. The Church fled uptown to escape the poor
.and black. Jesus laughed-and wept.
The dawn of the twentieth century found white Europe
master of the world and the white peoples almost universally
recognized as the rulers for whose benefit the rest of the world
existed. Never before in the history of civilization had sel£-
worship of a people's accomplishment attained the heights that
ithe worship of white Europe by Europeans reached.
Our poets in the "Foremost Ranks of Time," became dithy-
rambic: "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay!"
In home and school the legend grew of this strong, masterful
,giant with mighty intellect, clear brain, and unrivaled moral
'Stamina, who was conducting the world to the last heights of
'human culture. Yet within less than half a century this magnifi-
-cent self-worshiping structure had crashed to the earth.
Why was this? It was from no lack of power. The power of
white Europe and North America was unquestionable. Their
-science dominated the scientific thought of the world. The
only writing called literature was that of English and French
writers, of Germans and Italians, with some recognition of
writers in Spain and the United States. The Christian religion,
.as represented by the Catholic Church and the leading Protes-
tant denominations, was the only system of belief recognized as
real religion. Mohammedans, Buddhists, Shintoists, and others
were all considered heathen.
The most tremendous expression of power was economic;
the powerful industrial organization and integration of modern
industry in management and work, in trade and manufacture,
was concentrated in England, France, Germany, and the United
States. All Asia and Eastern Europe was an appendage; all
Africa, China, India, and the islands of the sea, Central and
South America and the Caribbean area were dominated by
Europe, while Scandinavia, Holland, and Belgium were silent
-copartners in this domination.
The domination showed itself in its final form in political
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
power either through direct rulership, as in the case of colonies,
or indirect economic power backed by military pressure exer-
cised over the backward nations. It was rather definitely assumed
in the latter part of the nineteenth century that this economic
domination was but a passing phase which in time would lead to
colonial absorption.
Particularly was this true with regard to Asia. India was al-
ready a part of the British Empire, and Burma. Indonesia was
Dutch and Indo-China, French. The future of China depended
upon how Europe would divide the land among the British
Empire and the Germans, American trade, Italy, France, and
Russia. It was a matter simply of time and agreement. General
consent had long since decided that China should no longer
rule itself.
With regard to the South American countries there was the
determination that they must obey the economic rule of the
European and North American system. The world looked for-
ward to political and economic domination by Europe and
North America and to a more or less complete approach to
colonial status for the rest of the earth. Africa of course must
remain in absolute thrall, save its white immigrants, who would
rule the blacks.
The reason for this world mastery by Europe was rationalized
as the natural and inborn superiority of white peoples, showing.
itself not only in the loftiest of religions, but in a technical
mastery of the forces of nature-all this in contrast to the low
mentality and natural immorality of the darker races living in
lovely lands, ",Vhere every prospect pleases, and only Man is
vilel"-as the high-minded Christians sang piously. But they
forgot or never were told just how white superiority wielded its.
power or accomplished this dominion. There were exceptions.
of course, but for the most part they went unheard. Howitt, for
instance, wrote from personal knowledge as well as research on
the colonial question and described some phases of the pressure'
of Europe on the rest of the world in the centuries preceding the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
nineteenth. Speaking of the Indians of America, Howitt said:
"All the murders and desolation of the most pitiless tyrants that
ever diverted themselves with the pangs and convulsions of
their fellow creatures, fall infinitely short of the bloody enormi-
ties committed by the Spanish nation in the conquest of the New
World, a conquest on a low estimate, effected by the murder of
ten millions of the species! After reading these accounts, who can
help forming an indignant wish that the hand of Heaven, by
some miraculous interposition, had swept these European
tyrants from the face of the earth, who like so many beasts of
prey, roamed round the world only to desolate and destroy; and
more remorseless than the fiercest savage, thirsted for human
blood without having the impulse of natural appetite to plead
in their defence!" 2
Howitt turned to the Portuguese in India: "The celebrated
Alphonso Albuquerque made the most rapid strides, and ex-
tended the conquests of the Portuguese there beyond any other
commander. He narrowly escaped with his life in endeavouring
to sack and plunder Calicut. He seized on Goa, which thence-
forward became the metropolis of all the Portuguese settlements
in India. He conquered Molucca, and gave it up to the plunder
of his soldiers. The fifth part of the wealth thus thievishly ac-
quired was reserved for the king, and was purchased on the spot
by the merchants for two hundred thousand pieces of gold.
Having established a garrison in the conquered city, he made a
traitor Indian, who had deserted from the king of Molucca and
had been an instrument in the winning of a place, supreme
magistrate; but again finding Utimut, the renegade, as faithless
to himself, he had him and his son put to death, even though
a hundred thousand pieces of gold, a bait that was not easily
iresisted by these Christian marauders, was offered for their lives.
He then proceeded to Ormuz in the Persian Gulph, which was a
great harbour for the Arabian merchants; reduced it, placed a
:garrison in it, seized on fifteen princes of the blood, and carried
:2 Ibid., p. 61.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
them off to Goa. Such were some of the deeds of this celebrated
general, whom the historians in the same breath in which they
record these unwarrantable acts of violence, robbery, and
treachery, term an excellent and truly glorious commander! He
made a descent on the isle of Ceylon, and detached a fleet to the
Moluccas, which established a settlement in those delightful
regions of the cacao, the sago-tree, the nutmeg, and the clove.
The kings of Persia, of Siam, Pegu, and others, alarmed at his
triumphant progress, sought his friendship; and he completed
the conquest of the Malabar coast. With less than forty thousand
troops, the Portuguese struck terror into the empire of Morocco,
the barbarous nations of Africa, the Mamelucs, the Arabians,
and all the eastern countries from the island of Ormuz to
China." 8
Turning to the Dutch, Howitt continued:
"To secure the dominion of these, they compelled the
princes of Ternate and Tidore to consent to the rooting up of
all the clove and nutmeg trees in the islands not entirely under
the jealous safeguard of Dutch keeping. For this they utterly
exterminated the inhabitants of Banda, because they would
not submit passively to their yoke. Their lands were divided
amongst the white people, who got slaves from other islands to
cultivate them. For this Malacca was besieged, its territory rav-
aged, and its navigation interrupted by pirates; Negapatan was
twice attacked; Cochin was engaged in resisting the kings of
Calicut and Travancore, and Ceylon and Java were made scenes
of perpetual disturbances. These notorious dissensions have
been followed by as odious oppressions, which have been prac-
ticed at Japan, China, Cambodia, Arracan on the banks of the
Ganges, at Achen, Coromandel, Surat, in Persia, at Bassora,
Mocha, and other places. For this they encouraged and estab-
lished in Celebes a system of kidnapping the inhabitants for
slaves which converted that island into a perfect hell." 4
a Ibid., pp. 176-77.
4 Ibid., p. 194.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Howitt then turned to England in India: "Unfortunately, we
all know what human nature is. Unfortunately, the power, the
wealth, and the patronage brought home to them by the very
violation of their own wishes and maxims were of such an over-
whelming and seducing nature that it was in vain to resist them.
Nay, in such colours does the modern philosophy of conquest
and diplomacy disguise the worst transactions between one state
and another, that it is not for plain men very readily to penetrate
to the naked enormity beneath." 5
"But if there ever was one system more Machiavelian-more
appropriative of the shew of justice where the basest injustice
was attempted-more cold, cruel, haughty, and unrelenting
than another-it is the system by which the government of the
different states of India has been wrested from the hands of their
respective princes and collected into the grasp of the British
power." 6
"The first step in the English friendship with the native
princes, has generally been to assist them against their neigh-
bours with troops, or to locate troops with them to protect them
from aggression. For these services such enormous recompense
was stipulated for, that the unwary princes, entrapped by their
fears of their native foes rather than of their pretended friends,
soon found that they were utterly unable to discharge them.
Dreadful exactions were made on their subjects, but in vain.
Whole provinces, or the revenues of them, were soon obliged to
be made over to their grasping friends; but they did not suffice
for their demands. In order to pay them their debts or their
interest, the princes were obliged to borrow large sums at an
extravagant rate. These sums were eagerly advanced by the Eng-
lish in their private and individual capacities, and securities
again taken on lands or revenues. At every step the unhappy
princes became more and more embarrassed, and as the em-
5 Ibid., p. 209.
6 I bid., p. 210.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
barrassment increased, the claims of the Company became pro-
portionably pressing. In the technical phraseology of money-
lenders, 'the screw was then turned,' till there was no longer
any enduring it." 7
We may turn now to the conquest of Africa. The Portuguese,
Dutch, and British decimated the West Coast with the slave
trade. The Arabs depopulated the East Coast. For centuries the
native Bantu, unable to penetrate the close-knit city-states of the
Gulf of Guinea, had slowly been moving south, seeking pasture
for their herds and protecting their culture from the encroach-
ment of the empire-building in the black Sudan.
In the nineteenth century black folk and white-Hottentot,
Bushman and Bantu, French, Dutch, and British-met at the
Cape miscalled "Good Hope." There ensued a devil's dance
seldom paralleled in human history. The Dutch murdered,
raped, and enslaved the Hottentots and Bushmen; the French
were driven away or died out; the British stole the land of the
Dutch and their slaves and the Dutch fled inland. The incoming
Bantu, led by Chaka, the great Zulu chieftain, fell on both Dutch
and English with a military genius unique in history.
The black Bantu had almost won the wars when a mulatto
native discovered diamonds. Then English and Dutch laid bare
that cache of gold, the largest in the world, which the ocean
thrust above the dark waters of the south five million years
ago. Enough; the greed of white Europe, backed by the British
Navy, fought with frenzied determination, world-wide or-
ganization, and every trick of trade, until the blacks were either
dead or reduced to the most degrading wage bondage in the
modern world; and the Dutch became vassals of England, to
be repaid by the land and labor of eight million blacks.
Frankel, the complacent servant of capitalists and their de-
fender, has written: "The wealth accruing from the produc-
tion of diamonds in South Africa has probably been greater
7 Ibid., pp. 1113-14.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
than that which has ever been obtained from any other com-
modity in the same time anywhere in the world." 8
This was but a side enterprise of Britain. By means of its
long leadership in the African slave trade to America, Great
Britain in the nineteenth century began to seize control of
land and labor all over Africa. Slowly the British pushed into
the West and, East coasts. They overthrew Benin and Ashanti.
A British governor of Ashanti later admitted: "The earliest
beginnings, which had their inception in the dark days of the
slave trade, cannot but hold many things that modern Eng-
lishmen must recall with mingled shame and horror. The
reader will find much to deplore in the public and private acts
of many of the white men who, in their time, made history on
the Coast; and some deeds were done which must forever re-
main among the most bitter and humiliating memories of
every Britisher who loves his country and is jealous of its fair
name." 9
The French conquered Dahomey and the remains of the
Mandingo, Haussa, and other kingdoms. The British pitted
Christianity against Islam in East Africa and let them fight it
out until at last Uganda became a British protectorate.
In Abyssinia the natives drove back British, Egyptians, and
Italians, and the Mahdi with his black Mohammedan hordes
came in from the west and drove England and Egypt out of
the Sudan. The threat of the French and their possible alli-
ance with Abyssinia brought the British back with machine
guns.
It is said that Kitchener's warfare against the followers of
the Mahdi was so brutal that even the British Tories were re-
volted. His own brother-in-law said of him: "Well, if you do
J not bring down a curse on the British Empire for what you
have been doing there is no truth in Christianity." His dese-
8 S. Herbert Frankel, Capital Investment in Africa (London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1938),p. 52.
9 W. Walton Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti (London:
John Murray, 1915),Vol. I, p. ix.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 33
cration of the Mahdi's tomb even Winston Churchill called
a "foul deed." And when Kitchener found that even the pro-
moters of the inexcusable war could not swallow this last, he
tried to put the blame of the desecration onto Gordon's nephew
by making absolutely false accusations.'? Everywhere is this
sordid tale of deception, force, murder, and final subjection.
We need hardly recall the Opium War in China, which the
British, followed by the Americans and French, made excuse
for further aggression.
The singular thing about this European movement of ag-
gression and dominance was the rationalization for it. Mis-
sionary effort during the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury was widespread. Millions of pounds and dollars went into
the "conversion of the heathen" to Christianity and the edu-
cation of the natives. Some few efforts, as in Liberia and Sierra
Leone, were made early in the nineteenth century to establish
independent Negro countries, but this was before it was real-
ized that political domination was necessary to full exploita-
tion.
Slowly the Sudan from the Atlantic to the Nile was con-
quered. Slowly Egypt itself and the Egyptian Sudan passed
under the control of Europe. The resistance of Nubia and
Ethiopia was almost in vain down into the twentieth century.
West Africa fought brilliantly and continuously. But in all
this development the idea persisted in European minds that
no matter what the cost in cruelty, lying, and blood, the
triumph of Europe was to the glory of God and the untram-
meled power of the only people on earth who deserved to rule;
that the right and justice of their rule was proved by their
own success and particularly by their great cities, their enor-
mous technical mastery over the power of nature, their gi-
gantic manufacture of goods and systems of transportation
over the world. Production for production'S sake, without in-
10 Ct. Wilfrid Seawen Blunt, My Diaries (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1921), Vol. I, pp. 311, 313, 317, 319, 322, 323-24. The brother-in-law was
Sir William Butler.
34 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
quiry as to how the wealth and services were distributed, was
the watchword of the day.
For years the British imperial government avoided direct
responsibility for colonial exploitation. It was all at first "free
enterprise" and "individual initiative." When the scandal of
murder and loot could no longer be ignored, exploitation be-
came socialized with imperialism. Thus, for a century or more
the West India Company, the Niger Company, the South and
East Africa Companies, robbed and murdered as they pleased
with no public accounting. At length, when these companies
had stolen, killed, and cheated to such an extent that the facts
could not be suppressed, governments themselves came into
control, curbing the more outrageous excesses and rational-
izing the whole system.
Science was called to help. Students of Africa, especially
since the ivory-sugar-cotton-Negro complex of the nineteenth
century, became hag-ridden by the obsession that nothing
civilized is Negroid and every evidence of high culture in
Africa must be white or at least yellow. The very vocabulary
of civilization expressed this idea; the Spanish word "Negro,"
from being a descriptive adjective, was raised to the substantive
name of a race and then deprived of its capital letter.
Then came efforts to bring harmony and co-operation and
unity-among the exploiters. A newspaper correspondent who
had received world-wide publicity because of his travels in
Africa was hired by the shrewd and unscrupulous Leopold II
of Belgium to establish an international country in central
Africa "to peacefully conquer and subdue it, to remold it in
harmony with modern ideas into National States, within whose
limits the European merchant shall go hand in hand with the
dark African trader, and justice and law and order shall pre-
vail, and murder and lawlessness and the cruel barter of slaves
shall be overcome." 11
11.J. Scott Keltie, The Partition of Africa (London: Edward Stanford.
1B95), p. 132.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 35
Thus arose the Congo Free State, and by balancing the secret
designs of German, French, and British against each other,
this state became the worst center of African exploitation and
started the partition of Africa among European powers. It was
designed to form a pattern for similar partition of Asia and
the South Sea islands. The Berlin Congress and Conference
followed. The products of Africa began to be shared and dis-
tributed around the world. The dependence of civilized life
upon products from the ends of the world tied the everyday
citizen more and more firmly to the exploitation of each
colonial area: tea and coffee, diamonds and gold, ivory and
copper, vegetable oils, nuts and dates, pepper and spices, olives
and cocoa, rubber, hemp, silk, fibers of all sorts, rare metals,
valuable lumber, fruit, sugar. All these things and a hundred
others became necessary to modern life, and modern life thus
was built around colonial ownership and exploitation.
The cost of this exploitation was enormous. The colonial
system caused ten times more deaths than actual war. In the
first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century famines in
India starved a million men, and famine was bound up with
exploitation. Widespread monopoly of land to deprive all men
of primary sources of support was carried out either through
direct ownership or indirect mortgage and exorbitant interest.
Disease could not be checked: tuberculosis 'in the mines of
South Africa, syphilis in all colonial regions, cholera, leprosy,
malaria.
One of the worst things that happened was the complete and
deliberate breaking-down of cultural patterns among the sup-
pressed peoples. "Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian
atrocities, and they were terrible indeed; but what we, who
were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the
real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in
the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless de-
struction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal
law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
chiefs of the people dumb with horror-in a word, a veritable
avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo
tribes." 12
The moral humiliation forced on proud black people was
illustrated in the British conquest of Ashanti. The reigning
Asantahene had never been conquered. His armies had re-
peatedly driven back the British, but the British finally tri-
umphed after five wars by breaking their word and overwhelm-
ing him by numbers and superior weapons. They promised
him peace and honor, but they demanded a public act of sub-
mISSIOn.
"This, of course, was a terrible blow to Prempi's pride.
It was a thing that no Ashanti king had ever done before, ex-
cept when Mensa voluntarily made his submission by deputy
in 1881; and was the one thing above all others that he would
have avoided if he could. For a few moments he sat irresolute,
nervously toying with his ornaments and looking almost ready
to cry with shame and annoyance; but Albert Ansa came up
and held a whispered conversation with him, and he then
slipped off his sandals and, laying aside the golden circlet he
wore on his head, stood up with his mother and walked re-
luctantly across the square to where the Governor was sitting.
Then, halting before him, they prostrated themselves and em-
braced his feet and those of Sir Francis Scott and Colonel
Kempster.
"The scene was a most striking one. The heavy masses of
foliage, that solid square of red coats and glistening bayonets,
the artillery drawn up ready for any emergency, the black
bodies of the Native Levies, resting on their long guns in the
background, while inside the square the Ashantis sat as if
turned to stone, as Mother and Son, whose word was a matter
of life and death, and whose slightest move constituted a com-
mand which all obeyed, were thus forced to humble themselves
in sight of the assembled thousands." 13
12 Harris, Dawn in Africa. p. 66.
13 Claridge. op. cit., Vol. I. P: 413.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 37
Perhaps the worst thing about the colonial system was the
contradiction which arose and had to arise in Europe with
regard to the whole situation. Extreme poverty in colonies was
a main cause of wealth and luxury in Europe. The results of
this poverty were disease, ignorance, and crime. Yet these had
to be represented as natural characteristics of backward peo-
ples. Education for colonial people must inevitably mean un-
rest and revolt; education, therefore, had to be limited and
used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole colonial
system be overthrown.
Ability, self-assertion, resentment, among colonial peoples
must be represented as irrational efforts of "agitators"-folk
trying to attain that for which they were not by nature fitted.
To prove the unfitness of most human beings for self-rule and
self-expression, every device of science was used: evolution was
made to prove that Negroes and Asiatics were less developed
human beings than whites; history was so written as to make
all civilization the development of white people; economics
was so taught as to make all wealth due mainly to the technical
accomplishment of white folks supplemented only by the brute
toil of colored peoples; brain weights and intelligence tests
were used and distorted to prove the superiority of white folk.
The result was complete domination of the world by Europe
and North America and a culmination and tempo of civiliza-
tion singularly satisfactory to the majority of writers and think-
ers at the beginning of the twentieth century. But it was a re-
sult that was hollow, contradictory, and fatal, as the next few
years quickly showed.
The proof of this came first from the colonial peoples them-
selves. Almost unnoticed, certainly unlistened to, there came
from the colonial world reiterated protest, prayers, and appeals
against the suppression of human beings, against the exclusion
of the majority of mankind from the vaunted progress of the
world. The world knows of such protests from the National
Congress of India, but little has been written of the protests
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
of Africa. For instance, on the Gold Coast, British West Africa,
in 1871, some of the kings and chiefs and a number of edu-
cated natives met at Mankesim and drew up a constitution for
self-government. These members of the Fanti tribe were in
alliance with England and had supported the British against
the Ashanti in the five long wars. They now proposed an alli-
ance with Britain to establish self-government. This constitu-
tion, the Mfantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw or Fanti Confederation,
agitated in 1865, organized in 1867, and adopted in 1871, con-
sisted of forty-seven articles, many of which were subdivided
into several sections. Some of the principal articles were as
follows:
Article 8. That it be the object of the Confederation
§ 1. To promote friendly intercourse between all the Kings
and Chiefs of Fanti, and to unite them for offensive and
defensive purposes against their common enemy.
§ 2. To direct the labours of the Confederation towards the
improvement of the country at large.
§ 3. To make good and substantial roads through-out all the
interior districts included in the Confederation.
§ 4. To erect school-houses and establish schools for the edu-
cation of all children within the Confederation and to
obtain the service of efficient schoolmasters.
§ 5. To promote agricultural and industrial pursuits, and to
endeavour to introduce such new plants as may hereafter
become sources of profitable commerce to the country.
§ 6. To develop and facilitate the working of the mineral and
other resources of the country.
Article 12. That this Representative Assembly shall have the power
of preparing laws, ordinances, bills, etc., of using proper
means for effectually carrying out the resolutions, etc., of
the Government, of examining any questions laid before
it by the ministry, and by any of the Kings and Chiefs,
and, in fact, of exercising all the functions of a legislative
body.
Articles 21 to 25 deal with education.
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 39
Article 26. That main roads be made connecting various provinces
or districts with one another and with the sea coast. ...
Article 37. That in each province or district provincial courts be
established, to be presided over by the provincial assessors.
Article 43. That the officers of the Confederation shall render assist-
ance as directed by the executive in carrying out the
wishes of the British Government.
Article 44. That it be o?mpetent to the Representative Assembly, for
the purpose of carrying on the administration of the
Government, to pass laws, etc., for the levying of such
taxes as it may seem necessary.t+
This was the so-called Fanti Federation, and in punishment
for daring to propose such a movement for the government of
an African British colony, the participants were promptly
thrown in jail and charged with treason.
This attitude toward native rights and initiative has con-
tinued right down to our day. In 1945 the colored people of
South Africa, speaking for eight million Negroes, Indians,
and mixed groups, sent out this declaration to the proposed
United Nations:
The non-European is debarred from education. He is denied access to
the professions and skilled trades'; he is denied the right to buy land
and property; he is denied the right to trade or to serve in the army-
except as a stretcher-bearer or servant; he is prohibited from entering
places of entertainment and culture. But still more, he is not allowed to
live in the towns. And if it was a crime in Nazi Germany for an "Aryan"
to mix with or marry a non-Aryan, it is equally a criminal offence in
South Africa for a member of the Herrenvolk to mix with or marry
with the slave race .... In the majority of instances there is a sep-
arate law for Europeans and a separate law for non-Europeans; in
those rare cases where one Act legislates for both, there are separate
clauses discriminating against the non-Europeans. While it is true that
there are no Buchenwald concentration camps in South Africa, it is
equally true that the prisons of South Africa are full to overflowing
with non-Europeans whose criminality lies solely in the fact that they
14 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 617-18.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
are unable to pay the poll-tax, a special, racial tax imposed upon them.
But this law does not apply to the Aryan; for him there is a different
law which makes the nonpayment of taxes not a criminal, but a civil,
offence for which he cannot be imprisoned.
But if there is no Buchenwald in South Africa, the sadistic fury with
which the Herrenvolk policemen belabour the non-European victim,
guilty or not guilty, is comparable only to the brutality of the S.S.
Guards. Moreover, the treatment meted out to the non-European in
the Law Courts is comparable only to the fate of the non-Aryan in the
Nazi Law Courts. But the fundamental difference in law and morality
is not only expressed in different paragraphs of the Legal Statutes, it
lies in the fundamentally different concept of the value of the life of a
non-European as compared with the value placed upon the life of a
European. The life of a non-European is very cheap in South Africa,
as cheap as the life of a Jew in Nazi Germany.
From the foregoing it is clear that the non-Europeans of South Africa
live and suffer under a tyranny very little different from Nazism. And
if we accept the premise-as we hope the Nations of the World do-
that peace is indivisible, if we accept that there can be no peace as
long as the scourge of Nazism exists in any corner of the globe, then
it follows that the defeat of German Nazism is not the final chapter
of the struggle against tyranny. There must be many more chapters
before the peoples of the world will be able to make a new beginning.
To us in South Africa it is indisputable that there can be no peace
as long as this system of tyranny remains. To us it is ludicrous that
this same South African Herrenvolk should speak abroad of a new
beginning, of shaping a new world order, whereas in actuality all they
wish is the retention of the present tyranny in South Africa, and its
extension to new territories. Already they speak of new mandates and
new trusteeships, which can only mean the extension of their Nazi-
like domination over still wider terrain. It is impossible to make a
new start as long as the representatives of this Herrenvolk take any
part in the shaping of it. For of what value can it be when the very
same people who speak so grandiosely abroad of the inviolability of
human rights, at home trample ruthlessly underfoot those same in-
alienable rights? It is the grossest of insults not only to the eight mil-
lion non-Europeans of South Africa, but to all those who are honestly
striving to shape a world on new foundations, when the highest repre-
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
sentative of the Herrenvolk of South Africa, Field-Marshal Smuts,
who has devoted his whole life to the entrenchment of this Nazi-like
domination, brazenly speaks to the Nations of the World of the "sanc-
tity and ultimate value of human personality" and "the equal rights
of men and women." 15
This does not say that all European civilization is oppres-
sion, theft, and hypocrisy; there has been evidence of selfless
religious faith; of philanthropic effort for social uplift; of in-
dividual honesty and sacrifice. But this, far from answering
the indictment I have made, shows even more clearly the
moral plight of present European culture and what capitalistic
investment and imperialism have done to it.
Because of the stretch in time and space between the deed
and the result, between the work and the product, it is not
only usually impossible for the worker to know the consumer;
or the investor, the source of his profit, but also it is often made
impossible by law to inquire into the facts. Moral judgment
of the industrial process is therefore difficult, and the crime
is more often a matter of ignorance rather than of deliberate
murder and theft; but ignorance is a colossal crime in itself.
When a culture consents to any economic result, no matter how
monstrous its cause, rather than demand the facts concerning
work, wages, and the conditions of life whose results make the
life of the consumer comfortable, pleasant, and even luxurious,
it is an indication of a collapsing civilization.
Here for instance is a lovely British home, with green lawns,
appropriate furnishings and a retinue of well-trained servants.
Within is a young woman, well trained and well dressed, in-
telligent and high-minded. She is fingering the ivory keys of
a grand piano and pondering the problem of her summer
vacation, whether in Switzerland or among the Italian lakes;
her family is not wealthy, but it has a sufficient "independent"
income from investments to enjoy life without hard work.
15 A Declaration to the Nations of the World issued by the Non-
European United Committee, Cape Town, South Africa, "945.
42 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
How far is such a person responsible for the crimes of coloni-
alism?
It will in all probability not occur to her that she has any
responsibility whatsoever, and that may well be true. Equally,
it may be true that her income is the result of starvation, theft,
and murder; that it involves ignorance, disease, and crime on
the part of thousands; that the system which sustains the se-
curity, leisure, and comfort she enjoys is based on the sup-
pression, exploitation, and slavery of the majority of mankind.
Yet just because she does not know this, just because she could
get the facts only after research and investigation-made diffi-
cult by laws that forbid the revealing of ownership of property,
source of income, and methods of business-she is content to
remain in ignorance of the source of her wealth and its cost
in human toil and suffering.
The frightful paradox that is the indictment of modern
civilization and the cause of its moral collapse is that a blame-
less, cultured, beautiful young woman in a London suburb
may be the foundation on which is built the poverty and
degradation of the world. For this someone is guilty as hell.
Who?
This is the modern paradox of Sin before which the Puritan
stands open-mouthed and mute. A group, a nation, or a race
commits murder and rape, steals and destroys, yet no indi-
vidual is guilty, no one is to blame, no one can be punished!
The black world squirms beneath the feet of the white in
impotent fury or sullen hate:
I hate them, 0 I hate them welll
I hate them, Christ, as I hate helll
If I were God, I'd sound their knell,
This day!
The whole world emerges into the Syllogism of the Satisfied:
"This cannot be true. This is not true. If it were true I would
not believe it. If it is true I do not believe it. Therefore it is
false!" Only an Emerson could see the paradox:
WHITE MASTERS OF THE WORLD 43
o all you virtues, methods, mights;
Means, appliances, delights;
Reputed wrongs, and braggart rights;
Smug routine, and things allowed;
Minorities, things under cloud,
Hither take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me.
In 1945 Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, who
had once declared that every white man in South Africa be-
lieves in the suppression of the Negro except those who are
"mad, quite mad," stood before the assembled peoples of the
world and pleaded for an article on "human rights" in
the United Nations Charter. Nothing so vividly illustrates the
twisted contradiction of thought in the minds of white men.
What brought it about? What caused this paradox? I believe
that the trade in human beings between Africa and America,
which flourished between the Renaissance and the American
Civil War, is the prime and effective cause of the contradic-
tions in European civilization and the illogic in modern
thought and the collapse of human culture. For this reason I
am turning to a history of the African slave trade in support
of this thesis.
CHAPTER III
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
Nothing which has happened to man in modern
times has been more significant than the buy-
ing and selling of human beings out of Africa
into America from I44I to I870. Of its world-
wide meaning and effect, this chapter seeks to
tell.
THE rebirth of civilization in Europe began in the fifteenthcentury. At this time African and Asiatic civilizations far
outstripped that of Europe. In the black Sudan nations, civili-
zations had risen and fallen even earlier. Melle, which flour-
ished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, fell before the
empire of the Songhay, which in the fifteenth century became a
vast, organized government two-thirds the size of the United
States, with trade and commerce and cultural connections,
through its University of Sankore, with Spain, Italy, and the
Eastern Roman Empire. The city-states and Atlantic culture
of the West Coast of Africa had fought back triple pressure
from the Sudan, the Arabs in the Nile valley, and the emigrat-
ing Bantu sweeping down on the kingdoms of the Congo.
It was here that the rape of Africa began and transformed
the world. There can be little doubt but that in the fourteenth
century the level of culture in black Africa south of the Sudan
44
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 45
was equal to that of Europe and was so recognized. There is
even less doubt but that Negroid influence in the valley of
the Nile was a main influence in Egypt's development from
2100 to 1600 B.G; while in East, South, and West Africa hu-
man culture had from 1600 B.C. to A.D. 1500 its monuments
of a vigorous past and a growing future. What changed all
this? What killed the Sudanese empires, brought anarchy into
the valley of the Nile, decimated the thick populations of East
and Central Africa, and pressed the culture of West Africa
beneath the ruthless heel of the rising European culture?
In Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
there began to appear national integration of culture patterns,
with no little inspiration from the East and from Africa. There
followed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries increased
freedom of thought and impatience with dogma; and in the
seventeenth, came scientific inquiry and the beginning of a
demand for democratic control of government.
But from 1400 to 1800 also came discovery, trade, and the
beginnings of a new enslavement of labor. In the eighteenth
century these developments leaped into opposition. The slav-
ery of labor expanded enormouslyjn the New World, con-
current with a new development of trade, industry, and wealth
in the Old. These trends met head on with a revolutionary de-
mand for democracy and social freedom in Europe. The clash
of ideals was revealed in the nineteenth century by freedom
for exploitation of slaves in America and a consequent reaction
against the demands of European labor led by Napoleon and
British capital. Let us follow the details of this story.
The importance of the discovery of America was not the
treasure of precious metals it provided, but the new and wid-
ening market and source of supply it offered European manu-
facturers by the exchange of tobacco, sugar, and cotton for
manufactured goods. Its first effect was to raise the mercantile
system to glory and splendor. World trade increased enor-
mously. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
centuries of trade, and eventually, by the rise of capitalism, the
nineteenth century became the century of production.
During the Middle Ages there had been little direct com-
merce between Europe and West Africa. Arabs, Berbers, and
eventually Negroids like the Mandingos became intermediaries
for the trade between Europe and the Sudan. Rumors filtered
through the Moroccan ports regarding the Kingdom of Ghana,
the Niger, "the western Nile," and the black peoples round
about. The Arabs bought gold from the Negroes and sold it to
the Jewish merchants in Majorca.
The demand of Europe in the fifteenth century was for new
and shorter paths to the East, to the spices, silks, and other lux-
urious articles of the East. In this quest Spain found silver in
the New World, and Portugal triumphed when she found
gold in Africa. The Portuguese trade monopoly with Africa
and thence to India extended over half a century. She developed
an empire of tremendous wealth.
The object of Prince Henry (1394-1460) of Portugal was
mainly trade to India. At the same time he hoped by union
with Prester John of Ethiopia to evangelize the Negroes of all
Africa and make common cause against the Mohammedans.
Henry heard of the gold for which the Carthaginians had
bartered at Timbuktu. Having seized Ceuta, he began to ex-
plore, and after nineteen years his seamen rounded Cape
Bojador.
In 1441 Goncalves brought to Lisbon the first cargo of slaves
and gold. Very shortly a flourishing trade in gold, slaves, os-
trich feathers, amber, and gum opened up between Portugal
and black Africa. The Portuguese tried to conceal this trade
from the rest of Europe. They did not actually find the black
kingdom of Ghana, but they called the coast which" they did
discover "Guinea," after mysterious Ghana. They heard of
the empire of Melle at Timbuktu but did not actually reach
it. They had commerce with the kingdom of the Jolofs and
with other coast tribes. Eventually they reached the Gold
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 47
Coast, or as they called it, "the Mine," where gold could be
had in large quantities. They found that these Negroes were
great traders who brought the gold from the interior when
they could persuade the coast tribes who lived by fishing to let
the gold bearers through. Eventually they came in contact with
the kingdom of Benin and a mighty interior empire whose
sovereign was the Ogani.
For fifty years, from 1480 to 1530, the Portuguese had a
monopoly of the Guinea trade and reaped huge profits, sel-
dom less than 50 per cent and sometimes as high as 800 per
cent. Between 1450 and 1458 ten or twelve ships a year were
sent to Guinea, and the amount of gold dust reached a value
of over two million dollars a year, and after 1471 rapidly ex-
ceeded this.
Next to the trade in gold came the highly important im-
portation of labor into Portugal. By the middle of the fifteenth
century nearly a thousand blacks had been imported. A cen-
tury later a vast majority of the inhabitants of the southern-
most province were Negroids, and even up as far as Lisbon,
Negroes outnumbered the whites. The two races intermingled,
resulting in the Negroid characteristics of the Portuguese na-
tion even today.'
The royal family became more Negro than white. John IV
was Negroid; and the wife of the French ambassador described
John VI as having Negro hair, nose, lips, and color.
Negro blood in the fifteenth century extended from Spain
and Portugal to Italy. The Medici had colored descendants like
Alessandro, first reigning duke of Florence, whose father was
reported to be the Pope. This new strain of Negro blood
reached Albania and Austria. Angelo Solliman, a Congo Ne-
gro, was a favorite of Joseph II and of Prince Lichtenstein in
1Mary Wilhelmine Williams, writing on Slavery in the Encyclopedia of
the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1934) Vol. 14, p. 80.
For other facts and allusions in this chapter, consult John W. Blake,
European Beginnings in West Africa (New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1937)'
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
the eighteenth century. He married into the Austrian nobility,
and his daughter married Baron Eduard von Feuchtersleben.
Their son inherited the title. Recently in Rome a monument
was dedicated to the colored consort of Garibaldi, Anita, a
Brazilian.
The Guinea trade was at first mainly in gold, pepper, and
other commodities, with some trading in slaves which went
to Europe. In the sixteenth century, however, it began to
change, and slaves began to be sent to South America. This
was not at first a large trade and did not compete with legiti-
mate commerce; but it grew, and by 1540 reached ten thou-
sand slaves a year. The reason for this was not far to seek.
Between 1480 and 1578 the peoples of Guinea enjoyed a vigor-
ous life with economic independence based on foreign trade.
Gold, ivory, and pepper were valuable as exports before the
discovery of America and continued long afterward. But by
the middle of the sixteenth century there was trouble in West
Africa. A vast migration of black people, the Limbas, moved
slowly westward from Central Africa. They were a part of the
migration of the Bantu moving down from the Mohammedan
invasion of the Nile Valley and the empire-building of the
black kingdoms of the Sudan. They destroyed villages, massa-
cred the inhabitants, and were soon in fierce competition with
the Souzas, who possessed the most formidable native army in
West Africa at that time. Migration and native wars lasted for a
generation. This meant that the cheap labor of captives be-
came available on the West Coast and opened the way for the
beginning of the American slave trade. With this slave trade
came trouble, not simply among native tribes but also between
the Portuguese and the natives.
After 1530 the Portuguese empire in Guinea was a vast com-
mercial enterprise, but the overhead charges, caused by diffi-
culties with the natives and the beginning of European com-
petition, equaled and began to exceed production. The first
threat to Portuguese dominance in Guinea came from the
..~-- --.
THE PRODUCTS OF AFRICA
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
French. By the Treaty of Crespy in 1544 the right of French-
men to trade in the Indies, east and west, was proposed but not
ratified. French trade began to multiply after 1553; relations
between Portugal and France became strained on account of
the French pirates and privateers. The monopoly of the Portu-
guese in West Africa practically ended in 1553. The French
Huguenots forced themselves into the Guinea trade after 1571,
under the inspiration of Admiral Coligny. British merchants
during the reign of Queen Mary became interested. Queen
Elizabeth fought the monopoly claims of Portugal and Spain
and herself participated in the Guinea trade.
Between 1559 and 1561 the British explorer, Martin Fro-
bisher, took part in piracy and trade. From 1561 to 1571 the
British trade increased over the French and there was direct
traffic between England and Africa. "The first Englishman of
note to engage in the traffic was the celebrated John Hawkins,
afterwards knighted by Elizabeth and appointed Treasurer to
the Navy. Froude calls him 'a peculiarly characteristic figure,'
and he certainly presents that blending of piracy and piety,
rascality and religion, so common in the days of Elizabeth and
not altogether unknown in ours. Hawkins appears to have had
his eye for a long time on the slave trade as a very lucrative
business, and as the Spaniards claimed a practical monopoly,
patriotic feeling-the desire to break down the Spanish claim
-went, as is again not unusual, with profit. At any rate, after
a reconnoitering trip, Hawkins returned to England and fitted
out an expedition of five vessels, to which were later added
another three. In this venture, the Earl of Leicester, the Earl
of Pembroke, and others took shares. So did Queen Elizabeth.
She lent the ship Jesus, and Hawkins drew up rules for his
men, the two first of which ran: 'Serve God daily,' and 'Love
one another: The piety of the expedition was beyond reproach.
So was its practice, as we read that finding the natives of Cape
Verde to be of 'a nature very gentle and loving,' and 'more
civil than any others,' Hawkins prepared to kidnap a number
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
of them. After sailing for some time, 'burning and spoiling,'
he landed in the Spanish American settlements and compelled
the colonists to purchase the slaves at his own price. Quite fit-
tingly, Hawkins was granted a coat o£arms consisting of 'a
demi-Moor in his proper colours, bound and captive,' as a token
of the new trade he had opened to Englishmen." 2
Meantime disaster overtook the Portuguese. King Sebastian
attacked the Moors in North Africa and was killed. His death
in 1578 changed the position of Guinea. Within two years
Portugal had passed under the domination of Spain, and West
Africa with some resistance submitted to Spain. Philip II of
Spain (1527-1598) was able to defend to some extent his Afri-
can empire, but eventually Spain was cut off from Africa by
papal decree. Then came Portugal's annexation to Spain in
1581 and the loss of Spanish maritime power by the destruction
of the Armada in 1588, which was a death blow to the com-
mercial empire of Spain and Portugal.
The Protestants of England, the Huguenots of France, and
the Calvinists of Holland started mortal struggle for Guinea.
Eagerly the Dutch took over the Portuguese islands and settle-
ments and formed in 1602 the East India Company.
With the seventeenth century the battle of commerce was
on. The Dutch and the British fought to a finish in the At-
lantic to dominate the Atlantic trade. The Portuguese, British,
and Dutch fought in India. Between them they killed the
trade of the German Hanseatic League and overthrew the eco-
nomic dominance of Spain. Cromwell seized Jamaica as a center
of British slavery and the slave trade. In Africa the kingdoms
of the black Sudan moved east and displaced the Nilotic
Negroes. From among these, peoples like those of the Fang
and the Bambara kingdoms between the Nile and the West
Coast pressed farther down upon the withdrawing Bantu.
In the seventeenth century the African slave trade to America
2 Chapman Cohen, Christianity, Slavery and Labour (London: Pioneer
Press, 1931, issued for The Secular Society, Limited), pp. 46--47.
52 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
expanded. It was not yet however a trade which made the word
synonymous with Negro or black: during these years the Mo-
hammedan rulers of Egypt were buying white slaves by 'the
tens of thousands in Europe and Asia and bringing them to
Syria, Palestine, and the Valley of the Nile. In the west, how-
ever, the character of world trade began subtly to change.
While the theory of mercantilism still prevailed in academic
circles and commerce continued to pour African gold into
Europe, and while the Negroes and Arabs sent gold to India
to bedeck the gorgeous moguls, in practical commerce the im-
portation of gold from Africa and silver from Peru was losing
its dominant attraction. What was needed was human labor;
labor to raise food in Spain and Portugal; labor to raise sugar
and tobacco in the West Indies and North America.
The labor situation in Europe at the time made slave labor
in America peculiarly profitable. The working population of
Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was limited.
The devastation of the Thirty Years' War and the demand for
labor and services on the feudal estates made any large-scale
exportation of labor to America unthinkable. On the other
hand, sugar, cotton, and tobacco were suitable to mass produc-
tion on the plantations with conventional standards of work,
simple tools, and comparatively small outlay for clothing and
food. The organized slave gang was more profitable on the land
than the peasant proprietor. The new capitalism as a method
of production and trade began to supplant the farmer and
merchant at home in Europe.
In 1660 the upheaval of Civil War in England was at an
end, and England was ready to embark on the slave trade for
the benefit of her sugar and tobacco colonies .. The Brit-
ish increased the import of slaves to America, raised sugar,
indigo, and cotton, and began to bring these goods to Eng-
land for processing. They then exported some of these proc-
essed foods to Africa to buy more slaves. Trade began to
change from a gambler's search for treasure to investment for
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 53
permanent income; and this income consisted of goods for "
sale which were in practice found more valuable than treasure
for hoarding. To perfect this arrangement slaves and more
slaves must be had.
At the same time, the conscience of the world began to
writhe. "Modern slavery was created by Christians, it was con-
tinued by Christians, it was in some respects more barbarous
than anything the world had yet seen, and its worst features
were to be witnessed in countries that were most ostentatious
in their parade of Christianity. It is this that provides the final
and unanswerable indictment of the Christian Church." 8
There had been the splendor of the Catholic Church under
Alexander VI and Leo X, and then the revolt led by Luther,
the Reformation. Thus was the growing consciousness of the
dignity of the human soul brought face to face with slavery
and a new slave trade. Gradually it was rationalized widely
as a method of rescuing the heathen from perdition and saving
his soul. However, this rationalization meant nothing when
it conflicted with the profits of trade; and planters particularly,
stoutly refused to release converts, and innumerable Chris-
tians often would not allow conversion. The profits of this
new aspect of trade meant investment and the capitalist system.
Investment called for labor, and cheap labor, if the profit
was to be high; but labor was beginning to be conscious and
to revolt. This was the meaning of the Peasant War in Germany
in the sixteenth century. But there was revolt and revolution-
ary thought not only in Europe; indeed it may be insisted that
the revolt of labor against its modern degradation began in
America rather than in Europe. This was the meaning of five
slave revolts among the blacks in America and the beginning
of the fateful dynasty of Maroons, or free Negroes, hiding in
organized rebellion in the mountains of Cuba, Jamaica, and
Haiti, in Mexico and Brazil. In the seventeenth century, with
the increased importation of slaves, there were nine revolts,
tIbid., p. '44
54 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
leading to pitched war in Jamaica and Barbados and Haiti
and to the independent state of Palmares in Brazil.
Nevertheless, England had the bit in her teeth. "Royal ad-
venturers trading to Africa" in 1667 had among them members
of the royal family, three dukes, eight earls, seven lords, and
twenty-seven knights. With the end of the civil war in Eng-
land, British merchants crowded upon the landholding aris-
tocracy for an increased share in the profits of industry. While
the British were fighting ostensibly for dynastic disputes in
Europe, they were really, in the War of Spanish Succession
and in the Seven Years' War, fighting for profit through world
trade and especially the slave trade. In 1713 they gained, by
the coveted Treaty of Asiento, the right to monopolize the
slave trade from Africa to the Spanish colonies. In that cen-
tury they beat Holland to her knees and started her economic
decline. They overthrew the Portuguese in India, and finally,
by the middle of the century, overcame their last rival in India,
the French. In the eighteenth century they raised the slave
trade to the greatest single body of trade on earth.
The Royal African Company transported an average of five
thousand slaves a year between 1680 and 1686; but the newly
rich middle-class merchants were clamoring for free trade in
human flesh. Eventually the Royal African Company was
powerless against the competition of free merchant traders,
and a new organization was established in 1750 called the
"Company of Merchants trading to Africa."
In the first nine years of this "free trade," Bristol alone
shipped 160,950 Negroes to the sugar plantations. In 1760,
146 ships sailed from British ports to Africa with a capacity
of 36,000 slaves. In 1771 there were 190 ships and 47,000·slaves.
The British colonies between 1680 and 1786 imported over two
million slaves. By the middle of the eighteenth century Bristol
owned 237 slave trade vessels, London, 147, and Liverpool, 89.
Liverpool's first slave vessel sailed for Africa in 1709. In
1730 it had 15 ships in the trade and in 1771, 105. The slave
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 55
trade brought Liverpool in the late eighteenth century a clear
profit of £300,000 a year. A fortunate slave trade voyage made
a profit of £8,000, and even a poor cargo would make £5,000.
It was not uncommon in Liverpool and Bristol for the slave
traders to make 100 per cent profit. The proportion of slave
ships to the total shipping of England was one in one hundred
in 1709 and one-third in 1771. The slave traders were strong
in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and
a British coin, the guinea, originated in the African trade of
the eighteenth century.
In the midst of this, a tremendous treasure from India poured
into England. The Battle of Plassey gave India to the British
Empire for plunder on a scale seldom seen before or since.
The enormous extent of robbery of the Indians by British civil
servants has been abundantly proved. Howitt referred to "the
scenes and transactions in our great Indian empire-that
splendid empire which has poured out such floods of wealth
into this country; in which such princely presents of diamonds
and gold have been heaped on our adventurers; from the glean-
ings of which so many happy families in England 'live at home
at ease' and in the enjoyment of every earthly luxury and re-
finement. For every palace built by returned Indian nabobs
in England; for every investment by fortunate adventurers in
India stock; for every cup of wine and delicious viand tasted
by the families of Indian growth amongst us, how many of
these Indians themselves are now picking berries in the wild
jungles, sweltering at the thankless plough only to suffer fresh
extortions, or snatching with the bony fingers of famine, the
bloated grains from the manure of the high-ways of their native
country!" 4
The directors of the East India Company themselves ad-
mitted: "We have the strongest sense of the deplorable state
to which our affairs were on the point of being reduced, from
the corruption and rapacity of our servants, and the universal
4 Howitt, op. cit., pp. 309-310.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
depravity of manners throughout the settlement. The general
relaxation of all discipline and obedience, both military and
civil, was hastily tending to a dissolution of all government.
Our letter to the Select Committee expresses our sentiments
of what has been obtained by way of donations; and to that
we must add, that we think the vast fortunes acquired in the
inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most ty-
rannic and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any
age or country!" 5
However this wealth was obtained and however pious the re-
gret at the methods of its rape, there can be no doubt as to what
became of it. Its owners in the main were not royal spendthrifts,
nor aristocratic dilettantes; and even if some were, their finan-
cial advisers put their funds largely into the safe investment
of West Indian slavery and the African slave trade. Thus an
enormous amount of free capital seeking safe investment and
permanent income poured into the banks, companies, and new
corporations. The powerful British institution of the stock
exchange was born.
It was Karl Marx who made the great unanswerable charge
of the sources of capitalism in African slavery: "The discovery
of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement,
and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the
beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the
turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting
of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta
of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the com-
mercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a
theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from
Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's anti-Jacobin war,
and is still going on in the opium wars against China .... " 6
5 Ibid., p. 262.
6 Karl Marx, Capital, tr. by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Chicago:
C. H. Kerr & Co.• 1909). Vol. I. P: 823.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 57
"With the development of capitalist production during the
manufacturing period, the public opinion of Europe had lost
the last remnant of shame and conscience. The nations bragged
cynically of every infamy that served them as a means of capital-
istic accumulation. Read, e.g., the naive Annals of Commerce
of the worthy A. Anderson. Here it is trumpeted forth as a
triumph of English statecraft that at the peace of Utrecht,
England extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento Treaty
the privilege of being allowed to ply the Negro trade, until
then only carried on between Africa and the English West
Indies, between Africa and Spanish America as well. England
thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish America until
1743 with four thousand eight hundred Negroes yearly. This
threw, at the same time, an official cloak over British smuggling.
Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade. This was its method
of primitive accumulation. And, even to the present day,
Liverpool 'respectability' is the Pindar of the slave trade which
... 'has coincided with that spirit of bold adventure which
has characterised the trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried
it to its present state of prosperity; has occasioned vast em-
ployment for shipping and sailors, and greatly augmented the
demand for the manufactures of the country.' Liverpool em-
ployed in the slave trade, in 1730,15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760,
74; in 1770,96; and in 1792, 132." 7
"T'antae malis erat, to establish the 'eternal laws of Nature'
of the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process
of separation between labourers and conditions of labour, to
transform at one pole the social means of production and sub-
sistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the
population into wage-labourers, into 'free labouring poor,'
that artificial product of modern society. If money, according
to Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain
on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to foot, from
every pore, with blood and dirt." 8
7 lbid., Vol. r,pp. 832-33. Marx quotes the work of Aiken (1795),p. 339.
s Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 833-34.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The method by which slavery and capital investment were
developed by Great Britain can be clearly followed: the "tri-
angular trade" flourished. It depended first mainly upon sugar
and tobacco and later on cotton. The processing of these ma-
terials turned England into a manufacturing country, and the
focusing of the attention of technicians upon methods of manu-
facture brought an astonishing series of inventions in the latter
part of the eighteenth century. The Negroes were purchased
with British manufactures and transported to the plantations.
There they produced sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, and other
products. The processing of these created new industries in
England; while the needs of the Negroes and their owners
provided a wider market for British industry, New England
agriculture, and the Newfoundland fisheries.
By 1750 there was hardly a manufacturing town in England
which was not connected with the colonial trade. The profits
provided one of the main streams of that capital which financed
the Industrial Revolution. The West Indian islands became
the center of the British Empire and of immense importance
to the grandeur of England. It was the Negro slaves who made
these sugar colonies the most precious colonies ever recorded
in the annals of imperialism. Experts called them "the funda-
mental prop and support" of the Empire. The British Empire
was regarded as a "magnificent superstructure of American
commerce and naval power on an African foundation." 9
William Wood said that the slave trade was the "spring and
parent whence the others flow." Postlethwayt described the
slave trade as "the first principle and foundation of all the rest,
the mainspring of the machine which sets every wheel in mo-
tion." 10
The triangular trade made an enormous contribution to
Britain's industrial development. The profits fertilized the
productive system of the country. The slate industry in Wales
9 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, N,C.: University of
North Carolina Press, 1944),p. 52.
10 Ibid., p. 51.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 59
was revolutionized by a plantation owner. The British West
Indies interest was back of the vast railway development. Cot-
ton responded to new inventions. Between 1709 and 1787 the
tonnage of British shipping in foreign trade increased four-
fold. The British nobility benefited largely from the West
Indian trade. The Lascelles were from Barbados, and one of
their descendants is now brother-in-law of the King of Eng-
land. The Earl of Chatham considered the sugar colonies as
"the landed interest of this kingdom." West Indian investors
bought seats in Parliament. The poetry of both Browning and
Barrett with all its depth and beauty grew straight out of
,,yest Indian slavery.
While a profit of seven shillings per head per annum was
sufficient to enrich a country, it was declared that each white
man in the colonies brought a profit of over seven pounds. Sir
Dalby Thomas declared that every person employed on the
sugar plantation was a hundred and thirty times more valuable
to England than one at home. Professor Pitman has estimated
that in 1775British West Indies plantations represented a valua-
tion of fifty million pounds sterling, and the sugar planters
themselves put the figure at seventy millions in 1788. In 1798
Pitt assessed the annual income from West Indian plantations
at four million pounds as compared with one million from the
rest of the world. As Adam Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations:
"The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West Indian
colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cul-
tivation that is known either in Europe or America." According
to Davenant.v- "Britain's total trade at the end of the seven-
teenth century brought a profit of £2,000,000. The plantation
trade accounted for £600,000; re-export of plantation goods,
£120,000; European, African, and Levant trade, £600,000;
East India trade £500,000; re-export of East India goods,
£180,000." 12
11Davenant was the author of Discourses on the Publick Revenues, pub·
lished in London in 16g8.
12 Eric Williams, op. cit., p. 53.
60 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The Napoleonic wars widened the trade empire of Great
Britain and extended the market for her manufactures. After
twenty-two years of fighting, British merchants surpassed in
wealth the landed aristocracy, and the Reform Bill of 1832
reflected this economic fact.
We may pause here to enumerate a series of events which
have been too often looked upon as separate and unconnected.
They are as follows:
1500-1600: The revolt of slaves in the West Indies
1655-1738: War between the British and the Maroons
1750: British free trade in human flesh
1757: The loot of India begins
1774: American association against the slave trade
1775: The American Revolution
1789: The French Revolution
1791-1798: Revolt of Toussaint L'Ouverture
1792-1815: Reaction in France and the rise and fall of Na-
poleon
1800-1900: Capitalism and the factory system in England
1807: Abolition of the British slave trade
1830: The Cotton Kingdom
1833-1838: British abolition of slavery
1846: Repeal of the British Corn Laws; free trade
1863: Emancipation in America
1884: Imperial colonialism.
The slave revolts were the beginnings of the revolutionary
struggle for the uplift of the laboring masses in the modern
world. They have been minimized in extent because of the
.propaganda in favor of slavery and the feeling that the knowl-
edge of slave revolt would hurt the system. In the eighteenth
century there were fifteen such revolts: in Portuguese and Dutch
South Africa, in the French colonies, in the British possessions,
in Cuba and little islands like St. Lucia. There were pitched
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 61
battles and treaties between the British and the black Maroons
and finally there was a rebellion in Haiti which changed the
face of the world and drove England out of the slave trade. A
list of these revolts follows:
1522: Revolt in San Domingo
1530: Revolt in Mexico
1550: Revolt in Peru
1550: Appearance of the Maroons
1560: Byano Revolt in Central America
1600: Revolt of Maroons
1655: Revolt of 1500 Maroons in Jamaica
1663: Land given Jamaican Maroons
1664-1738: Maroons fight British in Jamaica
1674: Revolt in Barbados
1679: Revolt in Haiti
1679-1782: Maroons in Haiti organized
1691: Revolt in Haiti
1692: Revolt in Barbados
1695: Palmares; revolt in Brazil
17°2: Revolt in Barbados
1711: Negroes fight French in Brazil
1715-1763: Revolts in Surinam
1718: Revolt in Haiti
1719: Revolt in Brazil
1738: Treaty with Maroons
1763: Black Caribs revolt
1779: Haitians help the United States Revolution
1780: French Treaty with Maroons
1791: Dominican revolt
1791-18°3: Haitian Revolution •
1794: Cuban revolt
1794: Dominican revolt
1795: Maroons rebel
1796: St. Lucia revolt
1816: Barbados revolt
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
1828-1837: Revolts in Brazil
1840-1845: Haiti helps Bolivar
1844: Cuban revolt
1844-1893: Dominican revolt
1861: Revolt in Jamaica
1895: War in Cuba
These revolts show that the docility of Negro slaves in
America is a myth. They fall into two groups: those before the
French Revolution and those after. The revolt of Maroons in
Jamaica and Cuba and the Bush Negroes in South America and
the repeated attempts in Haiti frightened the slaveholders and
threatened the stability of the whole system. In Jamaica the
Maroons "continued to distress the island for upwards of forty
years, during which time forty-four acts of assembly were
passed, and at least £240,000 expended for their suppression." 13
The governor of Barbados wrote: "The public mind is ever
tremblingly aware to the dangers of insurrection," and the
statute books all over the slave territory testified to this fact.
The next event that opposed the slave trade and slavery was
the American Revolution. Not only did the colonists achieve
their independence through the help of slaves and the promise
of their freedom, and with the co-operation in money and men
from Haiti, but they represented actual working classes rather
than exploiters of labor. Finally, the French Revolution burst
forth as a war against privilege based on birth and demanded
freedom, especially economic freedom to trade and to enter
industry without coercion.
The result was that the slave trade met distinct opposition
based on humanitarian grounds; but this opposition would
'!:tave been powerless to stop the trade if it had not been evi-
dent that the trade itself as a source of profit was threatened.
The revolt of America confirmed the superiority of the French
13 Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British
Colonies in the West Indies (Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 1805),Vol. I,
P·34°.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
sugar colonies. Between 1783 and 1789 the progress of San
Domingo had been amazing. At the end of the eighteenth
century the British sugar planters lost their supremacy to the
French colonies. French colonial exports amounted to eight
millions pounds while British colonial exports amounted to five
million pounds.
When the American colonies won their independence, the
Caribbean ceased to be a British sea and investments began
to be transferred from the West to the East Indies. In 1783
Prime Minister William Pitt showed increased interest in India
and encouraged Wilberforce to propose the abolition of the
slave trade.
Then came the French Revolution and eventually the re-
volt of Haiti. The British made every effort to seize control
of this famous French sugar colony. They tried both force of
arms and bribery, but at last were compelled to recognize the
independence of Toussaint L'Ouverture, whom they tried to
divorce from allegiance to the French.
Nevertheless, with Haiti out of the world market, the British
could have retained their hold upon the sugar industry had it
not been for the continued cultivation of sugar in Spanish and
Portuguese colonies. So long as these colonies could obtain
cheap slaves, they threatened and even destroyed the invest-
ment in slave labor already made by British capital. Looked
upon as machines or "real estate," as slaves legally were, the
investment in Negro labor was being undermined so long as
cheaper Negro labor could be had from Africa.
To keep the prices of slaves from falling, the slave trade
had to be limited or stopped. Otherwise the whole slavery in-
vestment would totter, and that is what England faced after
the revolution of Toussaint. Early in the nineteenth century,
therefore, she began to change, and back of philanthropists
like Sharpe and Wilberforce came the unexpected support of
opportunist politicians like Pitt.
Moreover, capitalism was far enough developed to produce
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
sufficient free finance capital to effect a transfer of investment
from one field to another without such losses as would cripple
the system. Losses there had to be, but they were part of the
anarchy of business methods, which by large-scale gambling and
periodic crises rushed blindly to newer and larger fields of
profit. Eventually Negro slavery and the slave trade were
abandoned in favor of colonial imperialism, and the England
which in the eighteenth century established modern slavery
in America on a vast scale, appeared in the nineteenth century
as the official emancipator of slaves and founder of a method
of control of human labor and material which proved more
profitable than slavery.
For a long time the fiction of the slave trade as a method of
conversion to Christianity had ceased to salve the conscience
of honest-thinking men. Slavery and the slave trade were pour-
ing such treasure into England, building her cities, railways,
and manufactures, and making her so powerful a country that
the defense of the system was fierce. England became mistress
of the seas. The empire sang "Hail Britannia, Britannia Rules
the Waves."
Before the American Revolution, English public opinion
accepted the view of the slavetrader: "Tho' to traffic in human
creatures, may at first sight appear barbarous, inhuman, and
unnatural; yet the traders herein have as much to plead in their
own excuse, as can be said for some other branches of trade .
. . . In a word, from this trade proceed benefits, far outweigh-
ing all, either real or pretended mischiefs and inconven-
iences." 14
The cruelty and inhumanity of the slave trade was a horrible
fact. A committee of the House of Commons described the
"Middle Passage": "The Negroes were chained to each other
hand and foot, and stowed so close that they were not allowed
above a foot and a half for each in breadth. Thus rammed to-
gether like herrings in a barrel, they contracted putrid and
14 Eric Williams, op. cit., p. 50.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
fatal disorders; so that they who came to inspect them in a
morning had occasionally to pick dead slaves out of their
rows, and to unchain their carcasses from the bodies of their
wretched fellow-sufferers to whom they had been fastened." 15
"During the hearing of a case for insurance, the following
facts were brought out. A slave-ship, with four hundred and
forty-two slaves, was bound from Guinea to Jamaica. Sixty of
the slaves died from overcrowding. The captain, being short
of water, threw ninety-six more overboard. Afterwards, twenty-
six more were drowned. Ten drowned themselves in despair.
Yet the ship reached port before the water was exhausted." 16
The revolt against the Protestants began to appear among the
Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers. Methodism condoned slav-
ery but was sensitive to and alarmed over the slave trade. The
Baptists," beginning in England in 1600, developed into an
extremely democratic organization which appealed to workers
and even to slaves; and the general philosophical and economic
enlightenment of the eighteenth century brought men of
learning and artists into a distinct anti-slavery movement.
The slave trade was abolished by England in 1807, and Eng-
land undertook to make the rest of the world outlaw it too.
The United States, Portugal, and Spain gave only lip service
to this program, ami the slave trade continued up to the middle
of the nineteenth century although. to a lessening extent.
With the stopping of the slave trade it was evident that
investment in labor was different from investment in land,
material, and machines; that labor, no matter how much it was
degraded, had initiative and made demands. Revolt of the
working classes, following the incentive of Haiti, spread. The
spectacular and astonishing triumph of revolution in Haiti
threatened the whole slave system of the West Indies and even
of continental America. It was this revolt more than any other
single thing that spelled doom not only of the African slave
15 Ingram, History of Slavery and Serfdom (London, 1895), p. 152.
16 Goldwin Smith, The United Kingdom: A Political History, Vol. II,
p. 247·
66 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
trade but of slavery in America as a basis of an industrial system.
The revolt encouraged the abolition movement in the United
States and in Brazil; it flamed in practically every island of the
West Indies. Unless the slave worker could be pacified, income
based on slave labor would be destroyed. The result was that
in 1833 England abolished slavery. Similar abolition followed
in the United States after civil war.
The Napoleonic wars did not ruin England; together with
the African slave trade, Negro slavery, and the loot of India,
they made the British government the most powerful in the
world; they ruined England's industrial rivals; they left her in
control of the chief sources of raw materials by colonial owner-
ship and with the ready cash to outbid rivals; her vast store of
finance capital enabled her to manufacture machinery and wait
a generation for repayment; British knowledge of science and
technique enabled the country to make the best machines and
tools and render the whole world creditor for their purchase;
Britain ruled the seas and thus monopolized transport. Even
when in the earlier mad rush for profit on the new capitalism,
she reduced her own labor to slavery in the factory system and
faced revolution, she proved the only land able to raise wages
and yet maintain high profit by shifting the burden of pauper-
ized toil to the colonies and dominated peoples; and at the same
time, although author and chief supporter of modern slavery,
Great Britain could hold up her head and, by suppressing a
slavery now becoming unprofitable, lead world philanthropy
as the great emancipator of the slave.
But even as this role rejoiced her greater souls, the British
Empire became the victim of the worst legacy of Negro slavery:
the doctrine of race superiority and the color line, which in a
later century made civilized man commit suicide in a mad
attempt to hold the vast majority of the earth's peoples in thrall
to the white race-a goal to which they still cling today, hidden
away behind nationalism and power politics.
This was not a rake's progress of malevolence; it was a bitter
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
struggle between Good and Evil-between fine and noble souls
and conscienceless desire for luxury, power, and indulgence.
The forces of Evil were continually reinforced by the vast
power which slavery and the exploitation of men put into the
hands of the betrayers of labor, making them the envied of the
earth, until nations became willing to destroy the earth in
order to gain it. Suppose that at any point in this Descent to
Hell, Right had received help and reinforcement? Suppose
that a free America had welcomed a free Haiti into a world
that insisted on freedom for Africa and Asia? But no; slavery
dominated the "free" republic of the west for half a century,
with the slave cotton kingdom as foundation stone for British
manufactures, while Great Britain seized land and labor in
all the dark world. Suppose that England had freed and edu-
cated Africa, emancipated India, and joined hands with Japan
to uplift China, instead of making ignorance compulsory for
the majority of men even in England, in order to build up the
most "comfortable" and envied aristocracy on earth? Suppose
the technique and science of the nineteenth century had been
used to raise the many instead of to enrich the few?
A dream? Perhaps, but even an unrealized dream would be
better than the present nightmare.
The new era of capitalism dawned, springing from Cal-
vinism: thrift, industry, honesty as the best policy, along with
interest and profit. Capitalism passed into high capitalism at
different periods in different nations: In England in 1846,
when English capitalism needed no protective tariff, it smashed
the agriculturists in Parliament and forced the adoption of
free trade; in the United States invested capital passed the
value of the land about 1850. The Revolution of 1848 in France
revealed the power of organized labor as well as the power of
capitalism, which later triumphed. In Germany capitalism
began its full sway after World War 1.
In the British Parliament, after the passage of the Reform
Bill in 1832, capitalism was paramount. The plantation trade
68 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
had formerly meant everything; but in the new capitalist sys-
tem, plantation slavery had little place. Britain's mechanized
'might was still, however, making the whole world her footstool.
She was clothing the world, exporting men and machines, and
had become the world's banker. British capital, like British
production, was thinking in world terms. "Between 1815 and
1830 at least fifty million pounds had been invested more or
less permanently in the securities of the most stable European
governments, more than twenty million had been invested in
one form or another in Latin America, and five or six millions
had very quietly found their way to the United States." 17 But no
new capital went to the West Indies.
This then was the history of the slave trade, of that extraordi-
nary movement which made investment in human flesh the first
experiment in organized modern capitalism; which indeed
made capitalism possible. It accompanied the beginnings of
democracy in the modern world, but that beginning was
hindered and almost stopped by the result which black slavery
had on Africa itself.
In Africa a new and supplementary means of control, devel-
oped by means of the Arab trade in ivory, led to exploration
and eventual annexation under the pretense of attacking slav-
ery. In this whole story of the so-called "Arab slave trade" the
truth has been strangely twisted. Arab slave raiding was in
the beginning, and largely to the end, a secondary result of the
British and American slavery and slave trade and specifically
was based on American demand for ivory. The Arabs had by
the nineteenth century driven back the Portuguese opposite
Zanzibar and had developed two profitable products of trade:
ivory and slaves.
Ivory has a long history. Homer repeatedly mentions it.
Ivory has been found in the ruins of Nineveh and in the days
of Tuthmosis III; cargoes of ivory and ebony in addition to
17 Leland Jenks, Migrations of British Capital to I875 (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1927), p. 64.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 69
gold came down the Nile. In Kings and Chronicles we learn
of the great throne of ivory which Solomon built and hear that
once every three years ships came to Israel with gold and silver,
ivory, apes, and peacocks. Ezekiel laments the ruin of Tyre
with its boxwood benches inlaid with ivory. In Greece the
statue by Phidias of Jupiter Olympus, one of the seven wonders
of the world, was made of ivory, marble, and gold. The seats of
the Roman senators were made of ivory, and large quantities
of ivory poured into Rome from Africa.
By the beginning of the Christian era the trade in ivory had
decreased. The herds of elephants had disappeared, and there
was no organized method of gathering the ivory or of bringing
it to market. Moreover, it was not until the Renaissance, in
the fifteenth century, that renewed demand made search for it
profitable. The Portuguese, both on the West Coast of Africa
and in Mozambique, began to export it. They were so prodigal
that the considerable store which the natives had collected was
almost exhausted by the middle of the seventeenth century.
The Dutch began to collect ivory in South Africa, and there
and in Central Africa a steady supply kept pace with the de-
mand. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, there
came a new demand from the west. The ivory had long been
carried by the slaves to the coast or down the Nile, and then
instead of the bearers being returned, they were sold. Most of
the ivory in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the beginning
of the nineteenth centuries went to Arabia, Persia, and India,
and the slaves to the same parts of the world as soldiers and
servants. The trade was small, and while the slave trade was
a disrupting influence it did not transfer any large number of
persons.
Ivory from about 1840 became increasingly valuable. Its
gathering called for fire-arms and transport. Europe and Amer-
ica furnished the arms in vast quantity. Negro porters bore the
white gold over vast distances on their heads, and the traders
doubled their profit by selling these Negroes into slavery in the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Middle East and America. The result was an industry with
huge profits, which called to service the most vicious elements
of the Nile Valley with its social disintegration of centuries,
aided by the efforts of Mohammed Ali, the ally of white colo-
nial aggression.
It also called white soldiers of fortune like Selous and Lugard,
who slaughtered the herds of half-human elephants in cold
blood. It called the explorers who followed the hunters and
slave traders. After the explorers came the missionaries. Both
pointed out that the ivory-slave business was killing the goose
that might lay even more golden eggs, if instead of killing valu-
able labor, this labor and materials were subject to political
control of Europe and the abundant capital seeking investment.
The missionaries like Livingstone saw in this not only a means
of saving bodies and souls of human beings, but also thrift
and good business, which in the folklore of early capitalism
were the inevitable elements divinely conjoined for modern
civiliza tion.
The rising demand in England and America for the suppres-
sion of the slave trade in East Africa was not pure philanthropy.
It was that "philanthropy and 5 per cent" which was the
transition from the century of human slavery in America to
the century of the transfer of capital from sugar plantations
to colonial imperialism in Africa and Asia. The main end of
both enterprises was profit to the owner and exploiter, mainly
at the expense of poverty, ignorance, and pain for the slave
and native subject.
About the middle third of the nineteenth century the situa-
tion changed abruptly. The demand for ivory increased. In
America, ivory working was an early industry, especially in
New England on the banks of the Connecticut, where ivory
has been cut since 1820. It was processed for carving, for cutlery,
billiard balls, and miniatures, and for piano keys. At Deep
River and Ivoryton and Buffalo the keyboards for all the pianos
in America, Canada, and Australia were made. Because of
THE RAPE OF AFRICA
increased demand, European and American traders set up
establishments for buying ivory in Zanzibar; in the thirties
and forties prices increased. Arabs began to ask for arms in
order to shoot elephants and coerce the natives. Increased ex-
ports of ivory to Europe and America and of slaves to Arabia
and the Persian Gulf, called for increased imports of weapons
and ammunition. The Germans sent thirteen thousand mus-
kets in one year. The British and Portuguese sent thousands
of the old Sepoy guns from India. The French supplied a single-
barrel light weapon. American blasting powder came in ten-
and twenty-five-pound kegs. German cavalry sabers came and
cases of percussion caps. Arabs borrowed from Indian usurers
at 60 to 80 per cent, and set out for the haunts of elephants.w
Curiously enough it was this ivory trade that stimulated and
guided travel and discovery in Central Africa. Explorers fol-
lowed the ivory traders, who were the true discoverers. Burton,
Speke, Livingstone, Stanley, and Cameron started from the
Arab capital of Zanzibar. They followed the lines of traffic set
by the Arab ivory traders. Petherick, the British ivory trader,
preceded Schweinfurth, and the countries he explored were
opened up by the ivory trade. Livingstone found the ivory
traders on the Upper Congo. Cameron left Zanzibar in 1873
and was the first European to cross Africa from east to west
along the ivory traders' routes. Stanley made his second expe-
dition, 1874-1877, and was helped by Tippoo-Tib, the great
Negro slave trader who had also helped Livingstone. The last
of the great expeditions was Stanley's, in 1887-1889, when he
rescued Emin Pasha and his Negro wife.
It was in this way that knowledge of the technique of the
slave trade and its meaning came to Europe at a time when
the slave trade from Africa to America had been largely sup-
pressed. We had a series of first-hand descriptions of this trade.
Ivory became in the last half of the nineteenth century the
18 E. D. Moore, Ivory: Scourge of Africa (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1931), p. 54.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
scourge of Central Africa. The complete story of bloodshed
and cruelty will never be known. Thousands of miles of fertile
country were turned into wilderness and ruin. Hundreds of
thousands of elephants were slain and thousands of human
beings. It has been estimated that not more than one in five
of the captives bearing the ivory ever reached the ocean.
Starved and weakened by disease and the strain of marching,
they lined the long paths with their dead.
"Picture, if you can, a territory nearly as large as the whole
of our United States east of the Mississippi River and Illinois,
terrorized and overrun in all directions with hundreds of rov-
ing bands of plundering murderers armed with invincible
weapons of oppression, a land of blood and might, the nights
filled with flame and destruction, the days weary with the
marching of the coffles and the blood of the despairing, hopeless
slaves. And this for years, for decades." 19
Henry M. Stanley wrote: "Every tusk, piece, and scrap in the
possession of an Arab trader has been steeped and dyed in
blood. Every pound weight has cost the life of a man, woman,
or child, for every five pounds a hut has been burned, for every
two tusks a whole village has been destroyed, every twenty
tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its
people, villages, and plantations. It is simply incredible that,
because ivory is required ... populations, tribes, and nations
should be utterly destroyed." 20
Hamed bin Muhammed, a Negro, better known as T'ippoo-
'Tib, was one of the greatest of slave traders. He eventually
became sultan and overlord of the country of Kassongo in the
very middle of Central Africa, which he made a center of ivory
collecting and slave hunting. He had a thousand muzzle-loading
guns. And it was not until 1905 that he died.
The credit for suppressing the slave-ivory trade must go to
Livingstone who inspired it, to Kirk of East Africa who helped
19 Ibid., p. 63.
20 Henry M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1891),Vol. I, p. 240.
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 73
carry it through, and to Bargarsh, the Negroid Arab, who
actually suppressed the Zanzibar trade. But these three men
represent the curious interests involved: Livingstone was a
humanitarian who thought that trade and commerce was the
best and natural way to improve the condition of man. He
would be horrified to see South Africa and Rhodesia today
and realize the plight into which the natives have been forced
by European trade and industrialism. Kirk was a British im-
perialist who foresaw the colonial era. He was no philanthropist
desirous of the development and rise of the blacks. What he
wanted was to expand the power of England, and he believed
that could be done best by suppressing the slave trade and
slave labor under the Arabs and increasing colonial ownership
and serf labor under Great Britain. The Arab sultan Bargarsh
was persuaded that colonial alliance with Great Britain would
protect his future power and income.
The effect upon Europe was curious. European and Ameri-
can commerce was stimulated. The missionaries, still believing
in the expanding trade of the eighteenth century, coupled
commerce with missionary effort and did not see the inherent
contradiction between them. The result was that the missionary
and the merchant worked side by side and hand in hand. It
was Livingstone who declared that he was bringing commerce
and missionary effort to the natives.
Commercial companies, like the African Lakes Company,
exploited and administered territories and equipped the ele-
phant hunters. They supplied the rifles and sent the hunters,
reserving the right to buy the ivory at a set price. It was thus
that Sir Alfred Sharp and Lord Lugard began life as profes-
sional ivory hunters. The coming of American, British, French,
German and Portuguese traders in the middle of the nineteenth
century furnished the artillery for the worst period in this
ivory-slave trade under the Arabs. At its height thirty thousand
slaves were exported annually through Zanzibar, leaving more
than a hundred thousand who had died on the way to the sea.
74 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Then that extraordinary transformation took place in Brit-
ish public policy. The stopping of the expansion of the Arab
slave trade in East and Central Africa became a means of
building up the British Empire. All that Britain had done in
establishing the new modern slavery in America was forgotten
in her effort to suppress the ivory-slave trade in Africa, and that
effort was only the other side of her building up of a great
African colonial territory which she proposed to exploit by
the use of cheap native labor, the sale of African raw materials,
and the opening of markets for her merchandise. Slavery and
the slave trade became transformed into anti-slavery and colo-
nialism, and all with the same determination and demand to
increase the profit of investment.
It all became a characteristic drama of capitalistic exploita-
tion, where the right hand knew nothing of what the left
hand did, yet rhymed its grip with uncanny timeliness; where
the investor neither knew, nor inquired, nor greatly cared
about the sources of his profits; where the enslaved or dead
or half-paid worker never saw nor dreamed of the value of his
work (now owned by others); where neither the society darling
nor the great artist saw blood on the piano keys; where the
clubman, boasting of great game hunting, heard above the
click of his smooth, lovely, resilient billiard balls no echo of
the wild shrieks of pain from kindly, half-human beasts as
fifty to seventy-five thousand each year were slaughtered in
cold, cruel, lingering horror of living death; sending their
teeth to adorn civilization on the bowed heads and chained
feet of thirty thousand black slaves, leaving behind more than
a hundred thousand corpses in broken, flaming homes.
Quite naturally all this ivory trade centered in London. In
Mincing Lane the ivory of the world was bought and sold from
the time of the eighteen twenties, when the slave cotton king-
dom began to pour profit from American plantations into New
York and Manchester. The annual imports of ivory into Lon-
don rose as follows
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 75
1788-1798: 100 tons a year
1827: 60 tons
1845-1849: 294 tons
1870-1874: 627 tons
1880-1884: 514 tons
This meant the death of seventy-five thousand elephants a
year in the heyday of the trade. An enthusiastic elephant hunter
Idescribed the death of one elephant. They had killed her child.
"She turned with a shriek of rage and made a furious charge.
She charged three or four times. She often stood still and
covered with blood faced the men as she received fresh wounds.
At last with a short struggle she staggered around and sank
down kneeling and dead." Far away over miles and years, on
lovely keys chipped from her curving tusks, men played the
Moonlight Sonata. Neither for the keys nor the music was the
death of the elephant actually necessary.
It was this London market that supplied raw material to
be made into billiard balls and piano keys and lovely little
ornaments to Ivoryton, Connecticut, and also contrived through
the veiled, devious ways of high finance banking to supply Arab
and Negro slave raiders with powder and guns and to buy their
ivory at prices which were fabulous to them. Behind the slave
raiders came the explorers, who pointed out the vast resources
of Africa and the possibilities of African labor; behind the
explorers came the missionaries, who cried out bitterly against
slavery but said nothing and knew less of the white sources of
their power in London and Buffalo.
Gradually the picture changed: the captains of industry saw
new opportunity for capital. They could wrench the profits
of ivory from the Arabs and Negroes; they could wheel England
and world religion back of imperial seizure of Africa from the
Cape of Good Hope to Cairo, with not only petty profit from
ivory, but vaster profits from spices, gold, diamonds, and cop-
per; they could replace wasteful slavery with local black labor
paid at wages from one-half to nine-tenths cheaper than white
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
labor in Europe and America and make white labor like it
because all this could be done to the glory of God and the
superiority of the white race. And it was done.
So colonial imperialism was born. And so some of its leaders
illustrated in their own individual lives its development; there
was Frederick C. Selous, who began as an elephant hunter and
then annexed the peoples and minerals of Mashonaland to the
British Empire; there was Frederick D. Lugard, who first fought
in India, Burma, and the Sudan; then as a big game hunter in
East Africa, where, armed by the African Lakes Company, he
murdered elephants in great numbers and became a part of the
ivory-slave trade complex. Next he appeared in East Africa as
a free-lance fighter against Arabs and Mohammedans and in
defense of Christian missions; he reappeared as agent of the
British East Africa Company and annexed Uganda to Britain.
Thereupon he was recognized as a great champion of imperial
England and went to West Africa to help subdue the falling
remnants of Sudanese culture. Here he shrewdly realized that
conquest of these peoples. could most easily be accomplished
if their tribal government were left undisturbed, while Britain
controlled trade and foreign relations. Having thus invented
"indirect rule," he became a British governor in West Africa.
Eventually he retired, lived in England on a pension paid by
black West Africa, was regarded as the greatest authority on
Africa, and died in honor as a noble British lord.
What effect did all this have upon the dark natives of Africa?
In the past we have dwelt upon physical suffering, the loss of
life, and the devastation of the land, but we have not thought
of the larger and deeper social disintegration. First of all, not
only was the way opened from the Sahara to the Cape of Good
Hope for marauding masses of Bantu warriors, but this great
and long-continued movement became organized for aggression
and conquest. We hear of the fierce onslaughts of wild tribes
like the Yaggas, but we must also remember that there came a
new sort of organization. Negro life could not settle down for
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 77
political organization and empire building. It could not wait
for the development of herdsmen and agriculture. It must
hurry on to safer places and sheltered land and loot. "It was
sorrowfully recognized that the degradation of the Negro
peoples of the nearer African interior was the direct result
of European slave-dealing. The savagery of Dahomey and
Benin was the survival of the ferocity by which native chiefs,
a century earlier, had supplied the demands of English and
Dutch traders for victims for the plantations." 21
This movement culminated in the magnificent and. utterly
ruthless army of a Chaka in the nineteenth century, which
almost successfully battled machine guns with assagais. Then
too on the West Coast came transformation: the city-states
with their intricate social organization and carefully planned
industry and beautiful art were pushed back and overwhelmed
by newer, stronger military states, like that of Dahomey in the
seventeenth century; and the Ashanti earlier had never gained
in the line of peaceful industry and art as much as the new
gains which they made as intermediaries of the slave traders.
The East African slave trade under Negroes like Tippoo-T'ib
became organized. The commercial ends and profits sought by
Europe were subtly introduced into and shared by an Africa
that had been foreign to this kind of life. The mild domestic
slavery of the African tribes and of the Arabs and Persians.
which did not preclude the son of a slave becoming a king,
a statesman, or a poet, was changed into chattel slavery with
hard labor and cruel tasks. The continued development of
African civilization, forecast in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries by that in the Sudan, was prevented and turned
backward into chaos, flight, and death.
Decadence could be seen on the West Coast, in the shadow
of fabled Atlantis, where there emerged in curious juxtaposi-
tion the blood sacrifice of the Benin juju together with the
21 William H. Woodward, A Short History of the British Empire (Lon-
don: Cambridge University Press, 1924), p. 307.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
beautiful bronzes of the Benin sculptors. The great kingdoms
and empires of the Sudan which fell at the battle of Tenkadibou
not only suffered the incubus of a horde of Berber invaders as
they moved east and became the Sudanese kingdoms of Kanem
and Bornu and the realm of the Fung; they approached the
valley of the Nile and came into fierce combat with some of the
worst manifestations of Mohammedanism.
Pushing farther south, the Bantu herdsmen threw them-
selves upon the Congo and Zimbabwe. There came to Africa
an end of industry, especially industry guided by taste and
art. Cheap European goods pushed in and threw the native
products out of competition. Rum and gin displaced the milder
native drinks. The beautiful patterned cloth, brocades, and
velvets disappeared before their cheap imitations in Man-
chester calicos. Methods of work were lost and forgotten.
With all this went the fall and disruption of the family, the
deliberate attack upon the ancient African clan by missionaries.
The invading investors who wanted cheap labor at the gold
mines, the diamond mines, the copper and tin mines, the oil
forests and cocoa fields, followed the missionaries. The author-
ity of the family was broken up; the authority and tradition of
the clan disappeared; the power of the chief was transmuted
into the rule of the white district commissioner. The old reli-
gion was held up to ridicule, the old culture and ethical stand-
ards were degraded or disappeared, and gradually all over
Africa spread the inferiority complex, the fear of color, the
worship of white skin, the imitation of white ways of doing
and thinking, whether good, bad, or indifferent. By the end
of the nineteenth century the degradation of Africa was as
complete as organized human means could make it. Chieftains,
representing a thousand years of striving human culture, were
decked out in second-hand London top-hats, while Europe
snickered.
Frobenius says in his Civilisation Africaine: "When they
(the first European navigators of the end of the Middle Ages]
THE RAPE OF AFRICA 79
arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed at Vaida, the captains
were astonished to find streets well cared for, bordered for
several leagues in length by two rows of trees; for many days
they passed through a country of magnificent fields, a country
inhabited by men clad in brilliant costumes, the stuff of which
they had woven themselves! More to the South in the kingdom
of Congo, a swarming crowd dressed in silk and velvet; great
states well ordered, and even to the smallest details, powerful
sovereigns, rich industries-civilized to the marrow of their
bones. And the condition of the countries on the eastern coast
-Mozambique, for example-was quite the same.
"What was revealed by the navigators of the fifteenth to the
seventeenth centuries furnishes an absolute proof that Negro
Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara,
was in full efflorescence, in all the splendour of harmonious
and well-formed civilizations, an efflorescence which the Euro-
pean conquistadors annihilated as far as they progressed. For
the new country of America needed slaves, and Africa had them
to offer, hundreds, thousands, whole cargoes of slaves. However,
the slave trade was never an affair which meant a perfectly easy
conscience, and it exacted a justification; hence one made of
the Negro a half-animal, an article of merchandise. And in the
same way the notion of fetish (Portuguese feticeiro) was in-
vented as a symbol of African religion. As for me, I have seen
in no part of Africa the Negroes worship a fetish. The idea
of the 'barbarous Negro' is a European invention which has
consequently prevailed in Europe until the beginning of this
century." 22
Who now were these Negroes on whom the world preyed
for five hundred years? In defense of slavery and the slave
22 Leo Frobenius, Histoire de la Civilisation Ajricaine, tr. from the Ger-
man by Back and Ermont (Paris: Gallimard, 1936), 6th ed., p. 56. This work
has never been translated into English and is therefore quoted at length,
since this greatest student of Africa is pow dead and German publ ications
have ceased for the present.
:80 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
trade, and for the upbuilding of capitalistic industry and
imperialistic colonialism, Africa and the Negro have been read
.almost out of the bounds of humanity. They lost in modern
thought their history and cultures. All that was human in Africa
was deemed European or Asiatic. Africa was no integral part
.of the world because the world which raped it had to pretend
that it had not harmed a man but a thing.
In view of the present world catastrophe, I want to recall the
history of Africa. I want to retell its story so far as distorted
-science has not concealed and lost it. I want to appeal to the
past in order to explain the present. I know how unpopular
this method is. What have we moderns, we wisest of the wise,
to do with the dead past? Yet, "All that tread the globe, are but
a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom," and who
are we, stupid blunderers at the tasks these brothers sought
to do-who are we to forget them?
I remember once offering to an editor an article which began
with a reference to the experience of last century. "Oh," he
'Said, "leave out the history and come to the present." I felt like
going to him over a thousand miles and taking him by the
lapels and saying, "Dear, dear jackass! Don't you understand
that the past is the present; that without what was, nothing is?
That, of the infinite dead, the living are but unimportant bits?"
So now I ask you to turn with me back five thousand years and
more and ask, what is Africa and who are Negroes?
CHAPTER IV
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA
This is the story based on science and scientific
deductions from the facts as we know them con-
cerning the physical development of African
peoples.
SEERS say that for full two thousand million years this worldout of fiery mist has whirled about the sun in molten metal
and viscous crusted ball. That crust, congealing and separating
the solids from the liquids, rose and fell in bulging ridges above
the boiling sea. Five times the mass of land called Africa
emerged and disappeared beneath the oceans. At last, at least
a thousand million years ago, a mass of rigid rock lifted its
crystal back above the waters and remained. Primeval Africa
stretched from the ramparts of Ethiopia to where the copper,
diamonds, and gold of South Africa eventually were found.
More land arose, and perhaps three hundred million years ago
Africa was connected with South America, India, and Australia.
As the ocean basins dropped, the eastern half of Africa was
slowly raised into a broad, flat arch.
The eastern side of this arch gave way, forming the Indian
Ocean, and when the roof of the arch fell in there appeared
the great Rift valley. This enormous crack, extending six
thousand miles from the Zambesi to Ethiopia and Syria, is
81
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
said to be the only thing that Martians can descry as they
look earthward of a starry night. All the great East African
lakes lie in the main rift, and doubtless the Red Sea and the
Sea of Galilee are also part of this vast phenomenon. Later,
about ten million years ago, a second rift occurred, and rifting
and tilting kept on until perhaps a hundred thousand years
before our era.
Recurrent change came in geography and climate. Europe
and Africa were united by land and separated. Lower Egypt
was submerged, and the Mediterranean extended to Persia.
Finally, what the geologists call the modern world emerged.
In Egypt great rivers poured down the hills between the Red
Sea, and the Nile found old and new valleys. The Sahara was
crossed by a network of rivers, pouring into a vaster Lake Chad
and uniting the Niger, the Congo, and the Nile.
Gondwanaland, the ancient united continent of Africa,
South America, and Asia, was divided into three parts by the
new changes which caused the rift valleys. The radioactivity
of the inner earth made the crust break apart. We can see by
the map how Africa broke from South America and Europe
from North America. Changes in climate were caused by the
sun, the earth's inner heat, and by two main glacial periods
in Africa. The rainfall varied, bringing periods of flood be-
tween the glaciers.
The continent of Africa in its final modern form has been
described as a question mark, as an inverted saucer, as the
center of the world's continents. Including Madagascar, it is
, three times the size of Europe, four times the size of the United
States; and the whole of Europe, India, China, and the United
States could be held within its borders. In actual measurement
it is nearly square: five thousand miles long by four thousand
six hundred miles wide. But its northern half is by far the
larger, with the southern half tapering off. In the middle the
equator cuts across Africa, and the whole continent lies mainly
within the tropics.
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA
Of the physical aspects of Africa, its relatively unbroken
coastline has had the greatest effect upon its history. Although
Africa is about three times larger than Europe in area, the
coastline of Europe is four thousand miles longe~ than that
of Africa. In other words, Africa has almost no peninsulas,
deep bays, or natural harbors. Its low and narrow coast, almost
level, rises rapidly to a central plateau with a depression in the
center. Thus the great rivers fall suddenly to the ocean, and
their navigation is impeded by rapids and falls.
Its five areas include the original Great Plateau with an
average elevation of over thirty-five hundred feet, where
mountains crowned with snow rise from thirteen to twenty
thousand feet. Over these open spaces have always roamed
herds of wild animals-elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes.
The second area is the Great Depression, the basin of the
Congo River draining nearly a million and a half square miles.
Its average altitude is a thousand feet and it is the bed of a
former inland sea. As Stanley described it: "Imagine the whole
of France and the Iberian peninsula closely packed with trees
varying from twenty to a hundred and eighty feet in height,
whose crowns of foliage interlace and prevent any view of sky
and sun, and each tree from a few inches to four feet in diam-
eter." 1 In this area lies the Belgian Congo and French Equa-
torial Africa, Liberia and the British West African colonies.
The fourth area is the Sahara, extending from the Atlantic
to the Red Sea. It covers three and a half million square miles
and is divided into desert and fertile islands. In the past the
Sahara was fertile and had a large population. Its surface today
is often a hundred feet below sea level. In the east is Egypt and
the Egyptian Sudan. North Africa lies on the Mediterranean
with Algeria and Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. There are senses
in which it is true that "Africa begins at the Pyrenees," and
also that "Europe ends at the borders of the Sahara."
We may distinguish in Africa equatorial and tropical eli-
1Stanley, op. cit., Vol. II, P: 76.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
mates, and then over smaller areas climates peculiar to specific
areas. The equatorial climate is divided into the climate of
Central Africa and that of Guinea and East Africa. The first
with constant heat, much rainfall, and humidity; the second
with constant heat and smaller rainfall. In both these regions
there is luxurious growth of plant life and dense forests. The
East African climate is hot. There are savannahs and varied
vegetation. Of the tropical climate, there is the Sudanese, with
heat but less rain, and the desert type, with great heat but wide
daily variation and little rain. Besides these, there is the climate
peculiar to the Mediterranean, with hot summers and rain in
winter; and to the Cape district, with more moderate summers
and winters and less rainfall.
This is the climate of Africa today, but it has varied, and
probably greatly, in the vast stretches of past time. The changes
came with the distribution of land and water, the elevation and
subsidence of land, the severance of the continent from Asia
and South America, and the rise of the mountains in India
and Europe that affect the air and sea currents. The rim of
the great inland plateau which forms most of Africa falls to
sea level near the coast and falls so steeply that the valleys of
the rivers draining it do not spread into broad alluvial plains
inviting settled populations. The history of tropical Africa
would have been far different if it had possessed a Saint Law-
rence, an Amazon, a Euphrates, a Ganges, a Yangtze, or a Nile
south of the Sahara. The difference of land level within the
continent brings strange contrasts.
Sixty million years ago vast reptiles and dinosaurs wandered
over this continent. It became, as the years passed, a zoological
garden with wild animals of all sorts. Finally there came
domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats and a tremendous devel-
opment of insects. As Sir Harry Johnston well remarks, "Africa
is the chief stronghold of the real Devil-the reactionary forces
of Nature hostile to the uprise of Humanity. Here Beelzebub,
King of the Flies, marshals his vermiform and arthropod hosts
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA
-insects, ticks, and nematode worms-which more than III
other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin,
veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other verte-
brates the microorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or
debilitating diseases, or themselves create the morbid condition
of the persecuted human being, beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or
fish." 2
Africa is a beautiful land; not merely comely and pleasant,
but haunted with swamp and jungle; sternly beautiful in its
loveliness of terror, its depth of gloom, and fullness of color;
its heaven-tearing peaks, its silver of endless sand, the might,
width, and breadth of its rivers, depth of its lakes and height
of its hot, blue heaven. There are myriads of living things, the
voice of storm, the kiss of pestilence and pain, old and ever
new, new and incredibly ancient.
The anthropoid ape with the great brain who walked erect
and used his hands as tools developed upon earth not less than
half a million years ago. Traces of him have been found in
Africa, Asia, and Europe and in the islands of the sea. Many
types which developed have doubtless been lost, but one species
has survived, driven hither and yon by cold and hunger, segre-
gated from time by earthquake and glacier and united for
defense against hunger and wild beasts.
Groups of this species must have inbred and developed sub-
types over periods of tens of thousands of years. Of the sub-
species thus developed, scientists have usually distinguished at
least three, all of which were fertile in their cross-breeding with
one another. In course of time they have given rise to many
transitional groups and intermediary types, so that less than
two-thirds of the living peoples of today can be decisively
allotted to one or the other of the definite subspecies. These
subspecies include the long-headed dark people with more or
less crinkled hair whom we know as Negroids; the broad-
2 Harry H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World (London: Methuen &
Co., 1910), pp. 14, 15.
86 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
headed yellow people with straight and wiry hair whom we
call Mongoloids; and a type between these, possibly formed
by their union, with bleached skins and intermediate hair,
known as the Caucasoids.
No sooner had these variant types appeared in Central
Africa, on the steppes of Asia, and in Europe than they merged
again. The importance of these types was not so much their
physical differences and likenesses as their cultural develop-
ment. As Frobenius says: "With vast and growing weight there
begins to emerge today out of the microscopic spectacles of
blind eyes, a new conception among living men of the unity
of human culture." Inquiring search has made clear "here
Greek, there old Mexican spirituality; here European economic
development, there pictures of the glacial age; here Negro
sculpture, there shamanism; here philosophy, there machines;
here fairy tale, there politics." 3
Was Africa the cradle of the human race? Did it witness
man's first evolution from the anthropoid ape to Homo sapiens?
We do not know. Charles Darwin thought that "it is somewhat
more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African
continent than elsewhere." Sir G. E. Smith agrees with this
and says that Africa "may have been the area of characteriza-
tion, or, to use a more homely phrase, the cradle, both of the
anthropoid apes and the human family." From Africa, Negroids
may have entered Asia and Europe. On the other hand, the
human race originating in Asia or even in Europe may have
invaded Africa and become Negroid by long segregation in a
tropical climate. But all this is conjecture. Of the origin of the
Negro race or of other human races, we know nothing. But
we do know that human beings inhabited Africa during the
Pleistocene period, which may have been half a million years
ago.
A memoir presented by a well-known Belgian scientist, Al-
fred Rutot, just before World War I, to the scientific section
3 Frobenius, op. cit.
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA
of the Academic de Belgique caused some stir. It was accom-
panied by a series of busts, ten in number, executed under
careful supervision, by M. Louis Mascre. The busts were strik-
ing. The attempt to reproduce various prehistoric types, be-
ginning with Pithecanthropus erectus, was characterized as
"audacious," and, of course, much confirmation is necessary of
the facts and theories adduced.
The chief interest of the paper was the reconstruction of the
Negroids of Grimaldi, so-called from the finds at Mentone,
France, helped out by similar remains found in the Landes and
at Wellendorff in Lower Austria. How did specimens of Negroes
so intelligent in appearance find themselves in the immediate
presence of Caucasians, introducing amongst them the art of
sculpture which presupposes an advanced stage of civilization?
Science explains this phenomenon by the successive cataclysmic
changes on our planet. For the quaternary period, Sicily formed
part of the Italian mainland, the Strait of Gibraltar was non-
existent, and one passed from Africa to Europe on dry land.
Thus it was that a race of more or less Ethiopic type filtered
in amongst the people inhabiting our latitudes, to withdraw
later toward their primitive habitat.
From the position of certain Negroid skeletons exhumed in
France, some have concluded that this race carried and made
use of the bow. This is uncertain; but it is well authenticated
that these visitors brought to the white race the secret of
sculpture, for their bones are almost invariably found in com-
pany with objects sculptured on steatite or stone, in high or
low relief. Some of their sculptures are quite finished, like the
Wellendorff Venus, cut in a limestone block. Of this Venus,
Rutot's Negroid type of man is a replica out of mammoth ivory.
The shell net of four rows adorning the head of this artistic
ancestor is a faithful reproduction of the ornament encircling
the cranium of the skeleton found in the Grotte des Enfants
at Mentone. For the ancient Negroid woman, Mascre has gone
to a figure in relief found in the excavations at Lausses (Dor-
88 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
dogne). The marked horn held in the right hand is that of a
bison, the bracelets and armlets are exact copies of the orna-
ments exhumed at Mentone.
These Negroid busts are most attractive and intelligent look-
ing and have no exaggerated Negro features. The Cro-Magnon
man of Dordogne is a Magdalenian, contemporary with the
Negroid intrusion. The fine proportions of the skull indicate
unmistakable intellectuality. The remains left by this race in
the caves of Perigord reveal great skill in the art of sculp-
ting and painting animals, whereas the Negroids of that time
specialized in the representation of their own species. The
daggers of that epoch, described in Reliquiae A quitaniae, are
engraved on reindeer horn, and the weapons underwent per-
haps many practical improvements due to the effort, eventually
successful, of the Magdalenians to drive out the Negroids, their
artistic rivals.s
"There was once an 'uninterrupted belt' of Negro culture
from Central Europe to South Africa. 'These people,' says
Griffith Taylor, 'must have been quite abundant in Europe
toward the close of the Paleolithic Age. Boule quotes their
skeletons from Brittany, Switzerland, Liguria, Lombardy, Il-
lyria, and Bulgaria. They are universal through Africa and
through Melanesia, while the Botocudos and the Lagoa Santa
skulls of East Brazil show where similar folk penetrated to the
New World.' Massey says: 'The one sole race that can be traced
among the aborigines all over the earth or below it is the dark
race of a dwarf, Negrito type.' " 5
It seems reasonable to suppose that Negroids originating in
Africa or Asia appeared first as Negrillos. The Sahara at that
time was probably covered with rivers and verdure and North
4 Francis Hoggan, "Prehistoric Negroids and their Contribution to Civili-
zation," The Crisis, February 1920, p. 174.
5 J. A. Rogers. Sex and Race (New York: published by the author,
1942-44). Vol. I. p. 32.
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA 89
Africa was in close touch with Mediterranean Europe. There
came upon the Negrillos a wave of Negroids who were hunters
and fishermen and used stone implements. The remains of an
African stone age are scattered over a wide area with amazing
abundance, and there is such a resemblance between imple-
ments found in Africa and those in Europe that we can apply,
with few differences, the same names. The sequence in culture
in Europe resembles the sequence in Africa although they may
not have been contemporary.
The most primitive type of stone implement was found in
Uganda and is known as the pebble tool. The same pebble
industry extended to Tanganyika and the Transvaal. This
gave way to the hand-ax culture, which extended over North
Africa, the Sahara, Equatorial Africa, West and South Africa.
Superb hand axes and other tools are the evidence. Then the
middle Paleolithic flake-tool culture spread over wide areas
of Africa and is shown by perfect implements in South Africa
and other places. The remains indicate a cave-dwelling people
with a great variety of tools as well as beads and pottery.
During the Pleistocene period came a new Stone Age, with
agriculture, domestic animals, pottery, and the grinding and
polishing of stone tools. Evidence of this culture is found in
Egypt and North Africa, the Sahara in West Africa, East and
South Africa.
The Neolithic culture is of great significance. In Egypt it is
found five thousand years before Christ. A thousand years later
it changed from flint to copper. The Predynastic Egyptians who
represented this culture were settled folk; they hunted and
fished, and cultivated grain; made clothes and baskets, used
copper, and were distinctly Negroid in physique. Probably
they came from the south, from what is now Nubia. Later there
came to Egypt other people of the type corresponding to the
modern Beja, who lived in settled communities and used cop-
per and gold. This brown Negroid people, like the modern
go THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Beja, Galla, and Somali, mixed increasingly with Asiatic blood,
but their culture was African and extended by unbroken thread
up the Nile and beyond the Somali peninsula.
The first wave of Negroes were hunters and fishermen and
used stone implements. They gradually became sedentary and
cultivated the soil and must have developed early artistic apti-
tudes and strong religious feeling. They built the stone monu-
ments discovered in Negro Africa and the raised stones and
carved rocks of Gambia. They did not mix with the Negrillos
nor did they dispossess them, but recognized their ancestral
land rights and seized unoccupied land. Thousands of years
after this first wave of Negro immigrants there came another
migration. The newcomers pushed north and west, dispossessed
the Negrillos, and drove them toward the central forests and
the deserts. They mixed more with the Negrillos, developed
agriculture, the use of cattle and domestic fowl. They invented
the working of iron and the making of pottery. Also, those who
advanced farthest toward the north mixed with the Mediter-
ranean race in varying degrees, so that sometimes the resulting
population seemed white mixed with Negro blood and in other
cases blacks mixed with white blood. The languages were mixed
in various ways. Thus we had the various Libyan and Egyptian
populations. All this migration and mixture took place long
before the epoch of the first Egyptian dynasty.
There exists today a fairly complete sequence of closely in-
terrelated types of human beings in Africa, leading from Aus-
tralopithecus to such known primitive African types as Rhode-
sian Man and Florisbad Man. If these types are affiliated with,
if not actually ancestral to, Boskop Man, the common presence
of all three in the southern half of Africa is presumptive evi-
dence that they all emerged on this continent from some com-
mon ancestral stock.
The name "Negro" originally embraced a clear conception
of ethnology-the African with dark skin, so-called "woolly"
hair, thick lips and nose; but it is one of the achievements of
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA 91
modern science to confine this type to a s~all district even in
Africa. Gallas, Nubians, Hottentots, the Congo races, and the
Bantus are not "genuine" Negroes from this view, and thus we
find that the continent of Africa is peopled by races other than
the "genuine" Negro.
Nothing then remains for the Negro in the "pure" sense of
the word save, as Waitz says, "a tract of country extending over
not more than ten or twelve degrees of latitude, which may be
traced from the mouth of the Senegal River to T'imbuktu."
If we ask what justifies so narrow a limitation, "we find that the
hideous Negro-type, which the fancy of observers once sawall
over Africa, but which, as Livingstone says, is really to be seen
only as a sign in front of tobacco-shops, has on closer inspection
evaporated from almost all parts of Africa, to settle no one
knows how in just this region. If we understand that an ex-
treme case may have been taken for the genuine and pure form,
even so we do not comprehend the ground of its geographical
limitation and location. We are here in presence of a refine-
ment of science which to an unprejudiced eye will hardly hold
water." 6
Palgrave says: "As to faces, the peculiarities of the Negro
countenance are well known in caricature; but a truer pattern
may be seen by those who wish to study it any day among the
statues of the Egyptian rooms in the British Museum: the large
gentle eye, the full but n?t overprotruding lips, the rounded
contour, and the good-natured, easy, sensuous expression. This
is the genuine African model; one not often to be met with in
European or American thoroughfares, where the plastic Afri-
can too readily acquires the careful look and even the irregu-
larity of the features that surrounded him; but which is com-
mon enough in the villages and fields where he dwells after his
own fashion among his own people; most common of all in
the tranquil seclusion and congenial climate of Surinam planta-
6 Friedrich Ratzel, The History of Mankind, tr. from the German by
A. J. Butler (London: Macmillan & Co., 1904), znd ed., Vol. II, p. 313.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
tion. There you may find, also, a type neither Asiatic nor Euro-
pean, but distinctly African; with much of independence and
vigour in the male physiognomy and something that ap-
proaches, if it does not quite reach, beauty in the female.
Rameses and his queen were cast in no other mould." 7
What are the peoples who from vague prehistory emerged as
the Africans of today? The answer has been bedeviled by the
assumption that there was in Africa a "true" Negro and that
this pure aboriginal race was mixed with a mythical "Hamitic
race" which came apparently from neither Europe, Asia, nor
Africa, but constituted itself as a "white element" in Negro
Africa. We may dismiss this "Hamitic" race as a quite unneces-
sary assumption and describe the present African somewhat as
follows:
At a period as early as three thousand years before Christ the
people of the North African coastal plains were practically
identical with the early Egyptians and present two types: long-
headed Negroid people and broad-headed Asiatics. Among the
Berber types today are tall and medium long-headed people
with broad faces, swarthy skin, and dark eyes. They have many
Negroid characteristics, especially toward the south. Beside
these there are short, broad-headed people.
These Berbers are the ones who correspond to the ancient
Egyptians and who have close relationship to the Neolithic
inhabitants of France. Among them today the Negro element
is widely represented. It is in every part of Mauritania, where
the reigning family itself is clearly of Negro descent. A large
strain of Negro blood may also be found in Algeria.
In East Africa we have the Massai, Nandi, Suk, and others,
tall, slender, and long-headed. In the case of the Massai the
nose is thinner and the color tinged with reddish-brown. The
Bari people are tall and the Lutoko very tall. Then there are
the Nilotics in the Nile valley, extending south of Khartoum
7 W. G. Pal grave, Dutch Guiana (London: Macmillan & Co., 1876), pp.
192-93.
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THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD
in the twelfth century A.D., according to Lambertus of the Library of Ghent
94 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to Lake Kioga. Physically, as in the case of the Shilluk and
Dinka, they are tall, very black, long-headed people, often with
well-shaped features, thin lips, and high-bridged noses. The
Nuba, tall, long-headed men, live in the hills of Kordofan. East
of Kordofan are the Fung, with many tribes and with much
Asiatic blood; and also broad-headed tribes like the Bongo
and the Asande, a mixed people of reddish color with long
heads.
On the other side of Africa, the lower and middle portion of
the Senegal River forms a dividing line between West African
types of Negroes and the Negroes of the Sudan. South of the
river are the Jolofs and the Serers. With these are the Senegalese,
including the Tukolor and Mandingo tribes. They are dolicho-
cephalic with both broad and narrow noses. They are rather
tall, some of them very tall, and their skin is very dark. The
Mandingo, or Mandi, are among the most important groups
of French Senegal and live between the Atlantic and Upper
Niger. They are tall and slender with fine features, beards, and
rather lighter skin than that of neighboring Negroes.
Among the most interesting of the West African people
south of the Sudan are the Fulani, stretching from the Upper
Niger to the Senegal River. They are Negroids, perhaps with
Asiatic blood. They are straight-haired, straight-nosed, thin-
lipped and long-headed, with slender physiques and reddish-
brown color. The Songhay are tall and long-headed with well-
formed noses and coppery-brown color. The people of Kanem
and the Bagirmi cluster around Lake Chad. They are broad-
nosed and dolichocephalic and resemble the Negroes on the Nile.
In the east and South Africa are the Wachagga and the Fang
and especially the Swahili, mixed people whose language dom-
inates East Africa. They have all possible degrees of physical
characteristics from Arabic to Negro. In South Africa there are
the Bushmen, short, yellow, with closely-curled hair. Beside
them live the Hottentots, probably Bushmen with Bantu ad-
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA 95
mixture and later with white Dutch admixture which gave rise
to the so-called "coloured" people.
The Negroes in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Guinea can
be differentiated at present chiefly by their languages, which
have been called Sudanic. Three great stocks prevail: the Twi,
Ga, and Ewe. Belonging to these are the Ashanti, moderately
tall men, long-headed with some broad heads; the Dahomey,
tall, long-headed, and black; the Yoruba, including the peo-
ples of Benin and Ibo, dark brown or black, closely curled
hair, moderate dolichocephaly, and broad-nosed. Their lips are
thick and sometimes everted, and there is a considerable amount
of prognathism. The Kru, hereditary sailors, are typically Ne-
groid with fine physiques. The Haussa of the central Sudan are
very black and long-headed but not prognathic and with thin
noses.
Finally there are the Bantu, who are a congeries of peoples,
belonging predominantly to Central and South Africa and oc-
cupying the southern two-thirds of black Africa. The Bantu
are defined on purely linguistic criteria. The term "Bantu"
primarily implies that the tribes included speak languages
characterized by a division of nouns into classes distinguished
by their prefixes (usually twelve to fifteen), absence of sex-
gender in the grammar, and the existence of alliterative con-
cord, the prefix of each class (noun-class) being repeated in
some form or another in all words agreeing with any noun of
that class in the sentence. It is the reappearance of the prefix
in every word in agreement with the noun that gives the
alliterative effect.
The southern Bantu outnumber all other groups of South
Africa and are about four times as numerous as the Whites.
They are divided into a large number of tribal units, each
with its own distinctive name. In social organization and re-
ligious system they show broad resemblances to one another,
but in details of history there are a number of important
96 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
differences which permit of their being classified into four
groups:
1. The Shona peoples of Southern Rhodesia and of Portu-
guese East Africa,
2. The Zulu-Xosa, chiefly in the coastal region south and east
of the Drakensberg Mountains.
3· The Suto-Chwana occupy the greater portion of the high
plateau north of the Orange River.
4· The Hercro-Ovambo, in the northern half of Southwest
Africa and in southern Angola.
In skin color the range is from the black of the Amaswazi to
the yellowish. brown of some of the Bechuana. The prevalent
color is a dark chocolate, with a reddish ground tint. The hair
is uniformly short and woolly. The head is generally low and
broad with a well-formed bridge and narrow nostrils. The face
is moderately prognathous, the forehead prominent, cheek-
bones high, lips fleshy. The Negro facial type predominates in
all groups, but side by side with it in the Zulu and the Thonga
sections are relatively long, narrow faces, thin lips, and high
noses.
The inhabitants of Natal and Zululand, divided originally
into more than a hundred small separate tribes, are all now
collectively known as "Zulus," a name derived from one of the
tribes which, under the domination of Chaka, absorbed and
conquered most of the others and so formed the Zulu nation
which played so important a part in the political history of
South Africa during the nineteenth century.
Tribes vary in size, some having from a few hundred to a
couple of thousand members. Others are much larger, for
example, the Bakwena, 11,000; the Batawana, 17,500; the
Bamagwato, 60,000; the Ovandonga, 65,000; the Ovakwan-
yama, 55,000; the Amaswazi- again, number 110,000; while the
Basuto, by far the largest of all and might be called a nation,
number nearly half a million.
THE PEOPLING OF AFRICA 97
The area of the western Bantu includes the Cameroons
(French), Rio Muni (Spanish), the Gaboon (French), French
Equatoria, the Congo (Belgian), Angola (Portuguese), and
Rhodesia, with the fraction of Portuguese East Africa north of
Zambesi. This vast area is the true "Heart of Africa," the tropi-
cal rain forest of the Congo. Johnston enumerated over one
hundred and fifty tribes in this area who speak Bantu or semi-
Bantu tongues. The southern limit of the western Bantu is
vague; the formation of the Lunda empire, the Yagga raids,
and the subsequent encroachments of the Bajokwe (Kioko)
have played havoc with tribal organization. The Bateke occupy
a vast region on the right bank of the Congo which is now
largely peopled by the Fang, who in their various expeditions
and conquests have left their mark on most tribes north of the
Ogowe River. Finally, in the midst of Africa are the Negrillos
or pygmies, small men with reddish-brown or dark skin and
brachicepahalic heads."
These are but a few examples of the infinitely varied inhabi-
tants of Africa. There is thus no one African race and no one
Negro type. Africa has as great a physical and cultural variety
as Europe or Asia.
This is the Africa of which Langston Hughes sings:
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the Pyramids above it.?
8 In this description of African peoples, I have relied principally on
C. G. Seligmann's well-known studies.
9 Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," The Crisis, June 1921,
p. 71.
CHAPTER V
EGYPT
This is the story of three thousand years, from
5000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., and it tells of the de-
velopment of human culture in the valley of
the Nile below the First Cataract.
CIVILIZA TION has flowed down to man along the valley ofgreat rivers where the soil was fertile and man need not
fear hunger, and where the waters carried him to other peoples
who were thinking of problems of human life and solving them
in varied ways. Some say that human culture started in the
valley of the Yangtze and of the Hoang Ho. Some say it came
up from Black Africa; some that it came west from the
Euphrates; but it had begun more than four thousand years
before Christ. '
The development in Mesopotamia in the valley of the Tigris-
Euphrates, which flows into the Persian Gulf and thence to the
Indian Ocean, is striking. Before the year four thousand B.C.
there is evidence that Negroid Dravidians and Mongoloid
Sumerians ruled in southern Asia, in Asia Minor. and in the
valley of the Tigris-Euphrates. Negroids followed them under
Sargon, and Sargon boasted that "he commanded the black
heads and ruled them."
But it was in the valley of the Nile that the most significant
continuous human culture arose, significant not necessarily be-
OS
EGYPT 99
cause it was absolutely the oldest or the best, but because it
led to that European civilization of which the world boasts to-
day and regards in many ways as the greatest and last word in
human culture.
Despite this, it is one of the astonishing results of the written
history of Africa, that almost unanimously in the nineteenth
century Egypt was not regarded as part of Africa. Its history
and culture were separated from that of the other inhabitants
of Africa; it was even asserted that Egypt was in reality Asiatic,
and indeed Arnold Toynbee's Study of History definitely re-
garded Egyptian civilization as "white," or European! The
Egyptians, however, regarded themselves as African. The Greeks
looked upon Egypt as part of Africa not only geographically
but culturally, and.every fact of history and anthropology proves
that the Egyptians were an African people varying no more
from other African peoples than groups like the Scandinavians
vary from other Europeans, or groups like the Japanese from
other Asiatics. There can be but one adequate explanation of
this vagary of nineteenth-century science: it was due to the
slave trade and Negro slavery. It was due to the fact that the
rise and support of capitalism called for rationalization based
upon degrading and discrediting the Negroid peoples. It is
especially significant that the science of Egyptology arose and
flourished at the very time that the cotton kingdom reached its
greatest power on the foundation of American Negro slavery.
We may then without further ado ignore this verdict of history,
widespread as it is, and treat Egyptian history as an integral
part of African history.
"The land of Egypt is six hundred miles long and is bounded
by two ranges of naked limestone hills which sometimes ap-
proach and sometimes retire from each other, leaving between
them an average breadth of seven miles. On the north they
widen and disappear, giving place to a marshy meadow plain
which extends to the Mediterranean Coast. On the south they
are no longer of limestone but of granite; they narrow to a
100 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
point; they close in till they almost touch; and through the
mountain gate thus formed, the river Nile leaps with a roar
into the valley, and runs due north towards the sea." 1
It was a marvelous and unusual valley where a great river
flowed out of the highlands of Central Africa and the mountains
of the Horn, cut its way down through cliffs on either side
crowned by deserts. The valley thus made was "burning and
fertile, warm and smiling." Winds from the north tempered the
heat of the sun so that the land was "green with meadows,
golden with harvest, red with the blood of vines, a paradise
of water, fruit, and flowers between two torrid deserts." The
waters of the rivers rose and fell with the cumulative effect of
springtime floods and summer heat. The spectacle of the in-
undation; the mystery of the source of the waters which was
not solved until the nineteenth century, had vast effect upon
mankind, Egyptians, and all who came after them.
The Negroids came as hunters and fishermen. Probably they
came up from Nubia. They began to settle down and till the
soil. They were the Tasians, five thousand and more years
ago; the people of the Fayum and the Marimde, the Badarians,
settled folk, who hunted and fished but also cultivated crops.
They made cloth from flax and skins, wove baskets, fashioned
pottery, and ground ax heads and vessels. They had copper and
varied tools of flint capable of working timber. Ivory was used
for tools.
Amratians wandered in. They were of the type of the Beja.
They used copper and gold. Thus we see in the Nile valley be-
fore the reign of Menes, 3200 B.C., many groups and types of
Negroids filtering in slow hesitant waves and gradually settling
down in the first great experiment in human civilization.
The Nile valley may be said to have invented agriculture.
It was so obvious a way to make an easy living under pleasant
conditions. Fresh rich soil rolled in each year, and the waters
1Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom. of Man (London: John Lane Com-
pany, 1912), aoth ed., p. 1.
EGYPT 101
that brought it kept it moist and fertile. Irrigation became a
prime necessity, and flood control. The use of near-by build-
ing materials-wood, brick, and stone-became natural; fibers
were woven into cloth; architecture followed in the attempt to
honor the dead with buildings which the dry climate preserved.
Tools were invented. The first tools were stone, the eolith
and the stone ax. Then came metals; copper, especially from
Nubia, and then iron. Boats and ships sailed the river and
the seas. The list of things which Egypt learned and handed
down to us from that far day is enormous: the art of shaving,
the use of wigs, the wearing of kilts and sandals, the invention
of musical instruments, chairs, beds, cushions, and jewelry.
The burial customs discovered in Europe came without rea-
sonable doubt from Africa, brought by African invaders. Later
the improvements made by the Egyptians were imitated in
Sicily and Italy. Egyptian culture was in this way the forerunner
of Greece.
In the meantime, other people, Mongoloids, filtered in from
Asia. As the years passed a fixed type of Egyptian began to
develop. In Egypt were all the requirements for the first long
experiment in civilization in ancient times: a well-watered
valley, deserts and mountains on the outskirts to keep back the
enemy and the beast; a favorable warm climate and a chance
for contact wi th foreigners which could be regulated so as to
keep out the invader and trade with him in goods and ideas.
The civilization of Egypt began with their invention of fixing
a calendar, 4241 B.C.
There has been a great deal of contradiction and uncertainty
concerning the peoples of Northwest Africa, variously called
Libyans, Berbers, "Hamites," and Arabs. The Libyans or Ber-
bers were akin to the Egyptians. They arose in prehistoric times
in all probability, out of the mixture of Negroid and Mongoloid
peoples, Negroids coming up from Central Africa and Mon-
goloids crossing from Asia. The two types of long-headed and
broad-headed peoples can be distinguished even today. Toward
102 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
the east and the Nile delta were the Egyptians, forefathers of
the peoples today called Beja, Galla, Somali, and Danakil.
The Egyptian of predynastic times belonged then to the
short, dark-haired, dark-eyed group of peoples, such as are
found on both shores of the Mediterranean. The same stock
extended beyond Upper Egypt into Nubia. Their physical
characteristics exhibited a remarkable degree of homogeneity.
Their hair was dark brown or black, and either curled or wavy.
In the men there was scant growth of facial hair except on the
chin, where a tuft was found. They had long, narrow foreheads
and prominent occiputs. The faces were long and narrow
ellipses; the noses were broader and especially flatter than
those of the Europeans.
The predynastic Egyptian was short, scarcely over sixty-four
inches, dolichocephalic, with a nasal index of about 50, all
characteristics of a group of people known as Beja, a black
people who inhabit the eastern desert of Egypt, the Red Sea
province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and extend through
the Italian colony of Eritrea to Abyssinia. The Beja are di-
visible into four groups, one of which is the "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" of
the British soldier. They are the least modified of the Beja
tribes and are the modern representatives of the old predynastic
Egyptian stock.
In Egypt there is evidence of a gradual modification in the
population from the beginning of dynastic times, so that by
the Pyramid period Egyptians were of heavier build, with
broader skulls and faces and heavier jaws. These are the people
portrayed in such magnificent works of art of the Pyramid
period as the sphinxes of Gizeh and the Louvre, and they are
no doubt representative of a considerable part of the popula-
tion of the Ancient Kingdom. They were the creators of the
finest statuary, wall paintings, and sculptures in low relief to
which Egypt attained, and the consciously archaistic Egyptians
of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty endeavored to imitate their work
as representing the highest development of national art. This
EGYPT 103
applies only to Upper Egypt. We have no knowledge of what
was happening in the delta through dynastic and predynastic
times; the remains are hidden under great masses of alluvial
deposits.
The type described persisted and probably increased in
number through dynastic times, and it is that of the fellahin
of the present day. The modern Egyptian, with a stature of
about sixty-six inches, shows no great variation between Up-
per and Lower Egypt. He is long-headed. Moreover, in pass-
ing southward, it has been pointed out that the eye and skin
color darken, that the proportion of unusually broad noses in-
creases, and spiral and crisp hair become more frequent.
The history of civilization which began in Egypt was not so
much a matter of dynasties and dates. It was an attempt to settle
certain problems of living together-of government, defense.
religion, family, property, science, and art. What we must re-
member is that in these seven lines of human endeavor, it was
African Egypt that made the beginning and set the pace.
In some respects what they did has not been greatly im-
proved upon even down to the twentieth century. In a primi-
tive tribe, government was the family. But the valley of the
Nile had to expand, rebuild, and implement this. It devised
a ruler, a ruling family, and a ruling caste. It put them penna-
nently upon a throne which became so old and stable that no
man remembered when there was not an Egypt, and when
there had been another world worth knowing. This govern-
ment had to be built up from the family and clan, and this was
accomplished through religion.
The Egyptian religion came naturally from the primitive
animism of the African forest and progressed to the worship
of Ra, the sun god, giver of life and beauty to the Nile valley
which was the world. Opposite Ra was Osiris, god of waters
and fertility, and his sister and wife Isis, the black woman. Thus
from earliest times women in Egypt had singular prominence
and power. The gods reflected the physical facts of the valley.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The Greeks called the Egyptians "the most religious of men."
There developed an oligarchy of gods and a priesthood which
became a center of scientific knowledge; the laws of nature
were studied and mathematical formulas devised.
The work of the nation had to be organized, the toil of
planting and reaping, irrigation, burden-bearing. Work was
organized so that the great mass of the laborers toiled under
the whip but toiled according to plan. From their toil arose
the concept of property, of wealth to be used by king and
priest and noble. Power became concentrated in the hands of
the Pharaoh, who headed the clans and nomes. There was a
long prehistoric period when many kings fought for supremacy
in the valley, but at last there came concentration and unity
which existed for an extraordinary length of time.
Egypt did not remain a tyranny; an oligarchy of priests and
nobles eventually took power from the Pharaoh. Then in time
a popular revolution emancipated the masses. The people of
Egypt were not enslaved. They have been described as a "sub-
missive lighthearted race content with little, singing at their
toil, working with taste and patience." This was the result of
an unusually favorable economic organization. There was no
need of starvation, exposure, or want. There was plenty in the
valley if the river flow was controlled.
The first duty of government was this control of the river,
which led to the power of the king, to the science of the priest,
to the independence of the laborer. Egypt under the Eighteenth
Dynasty, 1500 B.c., has been called the first human example
of state socialism, which was developed to an astonishing de-
gree. Nor was the Egyptian formal and conventionalized. From
a stiff traditional art in the earliest days, he developed in-
dividuality in expression. His spirit inquired into fresh knowl-
edge in this land where knowledge was "old as the world." The
art of hieroglyphic writing was complete at the dawn of his-
tory, 3500 B.C., and it lasted three millenniums, until in the
fourth century B.C.' it was replaced by Coptic and Greek.
EGYPT
Beyond this was the gift of an unusual climate: the dry
atmosphere with its baking sun; the chance to preserve what
man delineated and carved and built, so that the art and
literature of Egypt became first in the world and handed down
inestimable treasure to succeeding peoples. The Egyptians
studied and knew human beings; they separated their fellows
into black people and brown, yellow people and white. They
themselves were brown and black and so depicted themselves
on their monuments. Many of the yellow peoples from the
East filtered in and gradually there evolved a type which we
know and would call a mulatto type, although that word
brings the notion of a mixture of primary races, which was not
true in Egypt. Here then, from the time that the Egyptians
began history down to the birth of Christ, for five thousand
years mankind evolved a pattern of human culture which be-
came the goal of the rest of the world and was imitated every-
where. When persons wished to study science, art, government,
or religion, they went to Egypt. The Greeks, inspired by Asia,
turned toward Africa for learning, and the Romans in turn
learned of Greece and Egypt.
It would be interesting to know what the Egyptians, earliest of
civilized men, thought of the matter of race and color. Of race in
the modern sense they seemed to have had no conception. On
their monuments they depicted peoples by the color of their skin
and their hair. The hair was treated in many ways: sometimes it
was straight and Mongoloid; perhaps more often it was curled
and Negroid. Now and then it was curly and hidden by wigs. The
Egyptians painted themselves usually as brown, sometimes dark
brown, sometimes reddish-brown. Other folk, both Egyptians
and non-Egyptians, were painted as yellow. Often brown Egyp-
tians were coupled with yellow women, either signifying less
exposure to the sun or intermarriage with Mongoloids and
whites. A few were painted as white, referring to some parts of
North Africa and Europe.
106 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The separation of human beings by color seemed to have had
less importance among the Egyptians than the separation by
cultural status: black Pharaohs and black women; brown and
yellow Pharaohs and yellow women. Their attitude toward
people, white or black, was based on cultural contact. Black
people and yellow people were often depicted as conquered
and yielding obeisance to their brown conquerors. Sometimes
they appeared as equals, exchanged gifts and courtesies. Some-
times the Mongoloids and Negroids and whites were bound
slaves: but in Egyptian monuments slavery was never attributed
solely to black folk.
We conclude, therefore, that the Egyptians were Negroids,
and not only that, but by tradition they believed themselves
descended not from the whites or the yellows, but from the
black peoples of the south. Thence they traced their origin,
and toward the south in earlier days they turned the faces of
their buried corpses.
Gradually, of course, the Egyptians became a separate inbred
people with characteristics quite different from their neighbors.
They were brown in color and painted themselves as such, but
they recognized other colors and sorts of men. They were in
continuous contact with the blacks to the south. Now and then
they enslaved the blacks as they did the whites to the west and
the yellow people to the east. But in the main their intercourse
with the blacks consisted of trading. and fighting with a people
against whom they must defend themselves fiercely, but upon
whom they depended for trade and for immigrants. Continu-
ally, black faces appear as Egyptian citizens. Herodotus in the
fifth century B.C. described the Egyptians as black with curly
hair. "The more we learn of Nubia and the Sudan," wrote Dr.
D. Randall-MacIver, "the more evident does it appear that
what was most characteristic in the predynastic culture of
Egypt is due to intercourse with the interior of Africa and the
immediate influence of that permanent Negro element which
EGYPT
has been present in the population of southern Egypt from
remotest times to our own day." 2
Sir Flinders Petrie, in the same vein, wrote that it was re-
markable how renewed vitality came to Egypt from the south."
Seligmann said: "On one of the great proto-dynastic slate
palettes dating from circa 3200 B.C. are represented captives
and dead with woolly or frizzy hair and showing the same form
of circumcision as is now practiced by the Masai and other
Negroid tribes of Kenya Colony. Thus, though there is not,
and cannot be, any records of skin color, there is every reason
to believe that these men were as much 'Negroes' as many of
the East African tribes of the present day to whom this name is
commonly applied. Moreover, the Archaeological Survey of
Nubia has brought to light a burial-with typical Negro hair
-dating to the Middle Kingdom (about 2000 B.C.), while four
Negresses were found in a single cemetery, dating as far back
as the late predynastic period-say about 3000 B.C." 4
Randall-MacIver of the Department of Egyptology and
Arthur Thomson, professor of Anatomy, at Oxford, in a report
on what is one of the most extensive and complete surveys of
Ancient Egyptian skeletal material ever made, stated that
of the Egyptians studied belonging to the periods from the
Early Predynastic to the Fifth Dynasty, 24 per cent of the males
and 19Y2 per cent of the females were to be classified as Ne-
groes. "In every character of which we have a measure they
conform accurately to the Negro type."
For the period extending from the Sixth to the Eighteenth
Dynasty, of the specimens studied about 20 per cent of the
males and 15 per cent of the females are grouped with the
2 Arthur Thomson and David Randall-Maclver, Ancient Races in the
Thebaid (London: 1905).
8 W. M. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to
the XVI Dynasty (London: Methuen & Company, 1903), 5th ed., Vol. 1.
4 C. G. Seligmann, Races of Africa (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1930),
Ch. III. P. 52.
108 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Negroes. For both periods there was a goodly per cent of
specimens, the "intermediates," that show some Negroid traits,
but in the "intermediates" the Negro features were not suf-
ficiently numerous or distinct enough to warrant such skeletons
being classed with the Negroes." In the United States all these
would be legally Negroes.
According to Dr. F. L. Griffith of Oxford, writing of the Ne-
groids of the Old Kingdom, "more than one Nubian (nh'si),
dark-colored or Negroid, can be traced as holding a high posi-
tion in Egypt or even in the royal court at Memphis during the
Fourth and Fifth Dynasties."
There are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts two excellent
limestone portraits of an Egyptian prince and his wife dating,
according to their discoverer, Dr. Reisner, from the Old King.
dom. The prince shows practically none of the features that
are traditionally regarded as being distinctive of the Negro, but
the princess presents every earmark of the extreme Negro type.
The famous Stele of Una discovered by Mariette at Abydos
is "the longest narrative inscription and the most important
historical document from the Old Kingdom." Dr. Breasted's
interpretation of the text records among other things how
Uni, an officer of King Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty, annihilated
a group of Asiatics to the north of Sinai and invaded Palestine
with an army "of many tens of thousands," made up of sol-
diers recruited among "the Irthet Negroes, the Mazoi Negroes,
the Yam Negroes, the Wawat Negroes, the Kau Negroes, and
Negroes from the land of Temeh." Each of the districts here
named has been identified with districts in Ethiopia. The in-
habitants of Egypt were thenceforth a Negroid people in which
Semitic, Nilotic, and Sudanese-Negro elements were fused.
Before the First Dynasty there must have been a long series
of rulers who came out of the south, conquered the people, and
consolidated their powers. Upper Egypt historically always
had precedence over Lower Egypt, and the First Dynasty came
5 Thomson and Randall-Maciver, op. cit.
TI-IE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA
1325 B.C.-A.D. 1850
(The dates indicate roughly the widest development of the different states;
the lines show approximately the boundaries of the states at the date of
widest expansion.)
110 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
from the direction of the heart of Africa. Eight kings are known
in this dynasty, during which there was gradual advance in use
of writing. Memphis was established as capital, and the eastern
borders of the valley firmly conquered.
The First Dynasty appears to have moved up from Punt.
The Third Dynasty, which led to the Fourth, shows a strongly
Ethiopian face in Sa Nekht; the Twelfth Dynasty we can trace
to a Galla origin; the Eighteenth Dynasty was Ethiopian paled
by marriage; the Twenty-fifth Dynasty was from distant Meroe.
Among the Pharaohs of the earlier dynasties whose statues
or recovered bones show them to have been deeply tinged with
Negro blood are King Den of the First Dynasty, King Khase-
khemui of the Second Dynasty.
Sir Harry Johnston wrote: "The Dynastic Egyptians were
not far distant in physical type from the Galla of today, but
they had perhaps some element of the proto-Semite; and their
language is still rather a puzzle to classifiers, though mainly
Kushite in its features. The Dynastic Egyptians evidently con-
centrated themselves in the narrow strip of fertility along the
banks of the Nile, not colonizing very markedly the Red Sea
coastlands. By about 8000 years ago they had become the con-
querors and rulers of Lower and Upper Egypt."
Stone in the Third Dynasty began to be used for building.
In the Fourth Dynasty came the great Pyramid of Gizeh, "the
greatest monument that any man ever had." It contains more
stone than any other building ever erected and yet is one of
the earliest structures of the world. Herodotus tells us that one
hundred thousand men were levied for three months at a time
during the season of inundation when ordinary labor was at
a standstill; and yet at this rate the building occupied twenty
years. There was probably no hardship in the employment of
a small percentage of the people at this work when all were
idle, and the training and skill were of great advantage to the
nation.
In the Fourth Dynasty was erected the well-known statue of
EGYPT 1111
the Sphinx with the lion's body and Negro head entirely carved
in native rock. It must have been carved out of the rocky knoll
of a hill. In this dynasty too there was the artistic attempt of
man to rival nature. Vast buildings were placed before a back-
ground of hills or on a natural height. An artificial hill was
built on which some great work of man was placed. Vast masses
were used in construction. The sculptor sought to rival and
even surpass nature. The painter used coloring and tints.
In the Fifth Dynasty the power of the priests was evidently
growing, and religious foundations appear and with it a decline
in the boldness of assertion of the earlier architecture. In the
Sixth Dynasty came some of the great raids upon the Libyans
to the east of Egypt. Tens of thousands of soldiers, Negroes
particularly from the Sudan, beat this part of the land into
subjection. Then the Pharaoh's army turned south and west
and went through Nubia to force into subjection Negroes
who were pressing northward upon the Egyptian state. Trad-
ing expeditions were sent to Punt. This was a time of active
foreign conquest and exploration. One of the kings brought
back to Egypt a dwarf from the Sudan.
The Seventh and Eighth Dynasties form an early inter-
mediate period. The power of the kings at Memphis seems to
have fallen into decay, perhaps through foreign invasion in
the delta. During the Ninth and Tenth dynasties the invading
race spread their rule over Upper Egypt. The Middle King-
dom began with the Eleventh Dynasty, when the Princes of
Thebes became independent again. The ruler, Usertesen I, is
pictured as triumphing over Asiatic and Negro. Evidently the
defense of the kingdom from invaders became a serious prob-
lem when Egypt grew great and rich. A new vigor came into
the administration with Amenemhat, who fought the Nubians
and the Asiatics. The history of Sanehat (Sinuhi) is illustrative
of the time. Because of the death of his father, he fled to Syria,
where he became a ruler. "It gives a very curious view of the
relation of Egypt to Syria at the beginning of the Twelfth
112 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Dynasty. A fugitive Egyptian was superior to the Syrians, and by
his education and ability might rise to high power, much like
some English adventurer in Central Africa at the present time." 6
Ameny has left us a record of what a powerful noble of his
day did for the workers. "1 was in favour and much beloved,
a ruler who loved his city. Moreover, 1 passed years as ruler
in the Oryx nome. All the works of the king's house came into
my hands. Behold he set me over the gangers of the lands of
the herdsmen in the Oryx nome, and 3000 bulls of their draught
stock .... Not a daughter of a poor man did I wrong, not a
widow did 1 oppress, not a farmer did 1 oppose, not a herds-
man did 1 hinder. There was not a foreman of five from whom
I took his men for the works. There was not a pauper around
me, there was not a hungry man in my time. When there came
years of famine, 1 arose. 1 ploughed all the fields of the Oryx
nome, to its southern and its northern boundaries. I made its
inhabitants live, making provision for them; there was not a
hungry man in it, and 1 gave to the widow as to her that had a
husband: nor did 1 favour the elder above the younger in all
that 1 gave. Afterward the great rises of the Nile came, pro-
ducing wheat and barley, and producing all things, and I did
not exact the arrears of the farm." 7
In this dynasty the Pharaohs began to associate their sue-
cessors with them so as to make less danger of change at the
time of their death. The lakes of Moeris were dammed, and
the overflow of the Nile was thus regulated by a vast embank-
ment twenty miles in length.
One king of the Twelfth Dynasty, Usertesen III, was espe-
cially triumphant over the Negroes who were threatening'
Egypt from the south, and this Pharaoh set up a boundary
across which the Nubians must not come. To celebrate this
dash between the Negroid Egyptian and the Central African,
we have the first specimen of Egyptian poetry extant:
6 Petrie. op. cit., Vol. I. p. 156.
7 Ibid.) Vol. I, pp. 160-61.
EGYPT
He has come to us, he has taken the land of the well,
the double crown is placed on his head.
He has come, he has united the two lands,
he has joined the kingdom of the upper land with the lower.
He has come, he has ruled Egypt,
he has placed the desert in his power.
He has come, he has protected the two lands,
he has given peace in the two regions.
He has come, he has made Egypt to live,
he has destroyed its afflictions.
He has come, he has made the aged to live,
he has opened the breath of the people.
He has come, he has trampled on the nations,
he has smitten the Anu, who knew not his terror.
He has come, he has protected his frontier,
he has rescued the robbed.
He has come ...
of what his mighty arm brings to us.
He has come, we bring up our children,
we bury our aged by his good favour.s
One can see from this poem what national fervor of delight
arose in Egypt when the further aggression of Central African
tribes was stopped.
The Twelfth Dynasty marks the firm organization of the
country and brilliancy of development under able leaders
followed by internal prosperity. Then there was a tide of foreign
conquest under Usertesen III, a splendid reign under Amenem-
hat III, followed by a time of decay. The art work of the dy-
nasty was fine, with great technical perfection.
From the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Dynasties there
comes a period which is obscure. During this time Egypt was
conquered by the Hyksos kings, who were probably from the
Arabian desert; but whether at the beginning or at the end of
this period we are not certain. At the end of the kings of the
8 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 183.
114 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Thirteenth Dynasty comes Ra-Nehesi, the king's eldest son,
who is clearly called a Negro. This shows, of course, the de-
velopment that had taken place in Egypt during two thousand
years. There had grown up an Egyptian mulatto race differ-
-entiated in color and other physical characteristics from the
Central Africans. So much so that the great triumph of Egypt
was the conquest over these Africans.
But this did not mean that there were no black folk in Egypt.
Despite the general development of the mulatto race, the Negro
<typeemerges here and there and especially in the case of Ra-
Nehesi. Perhaps this black Pharaoh was the last defender of
Egypt against the Hyksos who came in from Syria and began
the conquest of Egypt, which the historian Manetho thus de-
scribed: "We had formerly a king whose name was Timaios.
In his time it came to pass, I know not how, that God was
displeased with us; and there came up from the East in a strange
manner men of an ignoble race, who had the confidence to in-
vade our country, and easily subdued it by their power without
a battle. And when they had our rule in their hands, they burnt
-our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and in-
flicted every kind of barbarity upon the inhabitants, slaying
some, and reducing the wives and children of others to a state
of slavery." 9
The redemption of Egypt from the Hyksos came in the
Eighteenth Dynasty through an Ethiopian power. The Hyksos
held Egypt perhaps five hundred years; then came Aahmes of
the Thebaid. With Aahmes was associated the black Queen
Nofritari, or Nefertari.
The stream of Egyptian history in the day of its proudest
triumphs now merges into that of Ethiopia, the Land of the
Blacks; in such wise that Ethiopian history is seen to be the
main current of Negro culture, from the Mountains of the Moon
to the Mediterranean, blossoming on the lower Nile, but never
severed from the Great Lakes of Inner Africa.
9 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 233-34.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES
This is the story of fifteen hundred years in the
valley of the Nile from 2000 B.C. to A.D. 500.
INGREEK legend, Ethiopia, "land of the burnt faces," layeither side of the Red Sea in Africa and Asia and was in-
habited by black folk. Eventually the blacks mixed with yellow
Asiatics. After the fifth and fourth centuries B.G the term
Ethiopia was used usually to designate regions in Africa corre-
sponding to what we now know as Nubia or the Egyptian Su-
dan. The Sudan was known to the Egyptians and Hebrews as
Kash or Cush. In Hebrew folklore the descendants of Ham
"were Cush and Egypt."
If efforts have been made to separate the history of Egypt
from Africa and the Negro race, a similar determination with
regard to Ethiopia is even more contradictory. Science for years
tried to separate men into great groups called races; at first the
object was to explain human history by human differences. The
scientific basis of race difference, however, appeared increas-
ingly difficult as observation and measurement became more
accurate. Three, five, twenty races were differentiated, until at
last it was evident that mankind would not fit accurately into
any scientific delimitation of racial categories; no matter what
criteria were used, most men fell into intermediate classes or
116 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
had individual peculiarities. The theory of absolutely definite
racial groups was therefore abandoned, and "pure" racial types
came to be regarded as merely theoretical abstractions which
never or very rarely existed.
On the other hand, individual variations among men were
extraordinary and intriguing; and group differences in physique
and cultural habits were equally interesting. It would there-
fore be helpful to science if the broad hypothetical division of
men into three or five great groups in accord with physique
and culture were provisionally maintained to facilitate, but
certainly not to obstruct, further study. This was the scientific
status of the race theory early in the twentieth century, and in
accord with this we spoke of three "races"-Caucasoid, Ne-
groid, and Mongoloid-as comprising mankind, knowing well
that no scientifically accurate definition of these races could be
made which would not leave most of mankind outside the
limits.
There was, however, persistent exception to this general
agreement; under Caucasoid were included men of widely dif-
ferent physique inhabiting Europe; the term Mongoloid was
even more vague and indefinite and nearly fell into disuse.
But the term "Negro," as a definite and scientific race designa-
tion, persisted, and its use was defended with bitter determina-
tion by men who otherwise ranked as leading scientists. De-
spite the fact that the number of human beings corresponding
to the current definition of the word "Negro" was narrowed
again and again in space and number to a small remnant even
in Africa, nevertheless in the usage of many distinguished writ-
ers there really emerged from their thinking two groups of
men: Human Beings and Negroes. And the thesis of this book
is that this extraordinary result came from the African slave
trade to America in the eighteenth century and the capitalistic
industry built on it in the nineteenth. The facts referred to are
illustrated by the treatment of Ethiopia in archaeology, an-
thropology, and history. The contradictions concerning this
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 117
land and people would be ludicrous if the results were not so
tragic.
If we follow inherent probability, ancient testimony, and
legend, this would seem to have been the history of northeast
Africa:
In Ethiopia the sunrise of human culture took place, spread-
ing down into the Nile valley.
Ethiopia, land of the blacks, was thus the cradle of Egyptian
civilization.
Beyond Ethiopia, in Central and South Africa, lay the gold
of Ophir and the rich trade of Punt on which the prosperity
of Egypt largely depended.
Egypt brought slaves from black Africa as she did from Eu-
rope and Asia. But she also brought citizens and leaders from
black Africa.
When Egypt conquered Asia, she used black soldiers to a
wide extent.
When Asia overwhelmed Egypt, Egypt sought refuge in
Ethiopia as a child returns to its mother, and Ethiopia then
for centuries dominated Egypt and successfully invaded Asia.
Neither Greece, Rome, nor Islam succeeded in conquering
Ethiopia, although they pushed her back and shut her up
in East and Central Africa, and hindered all contact between
her peoples and the world until the day of colonial imperial-
ism.
But this interpretation of Negro history contradicts the
theory of the natural and eternal inferiority of black folk,
which rendered them natural slaves and a cheap labor force
for nineteenth-century industry. Those who depended on slav-
ery and colonialism for living and luxury naturally, and often
without conscious intent, sought eagerly for a science and his-
tory which would deny this interpretation of African history.
They came gradually to declare vehemently that Egypt began
her culture in the delta region, and Ethiopia was a far-off
frontier and slave mart; that Punt and Ophir were in extreme
118 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
East Africa or Asia; that the Asiatic conquest of Egypt marked
her decline and the feeble efforts of Ethiopia showed an era
of decadence; that even if Ethiopia showed some imitative cul-
ture, this was not due to black folk, since the Ethiopians were
not Negroes!
The attitude of scientists toward these questions has thus
been colored almost entirely by their attitude toward modern
Negro slavery. The Frenchman Volney called the civilization
of the Nile valley Negro after his visit. But such a barrage of
denial from later men met him that he withdrew his earlier
conclusions, not because of further investigation, but because
of scientific public opinion in the nineteenth century. Reisner
unearthed a civilization of black folk in Ethiopia, but hastened
to declare that they were not Negroes! Reisner was born in sight
of Negro slavery in America and never forgot it. Flora Shaw
wrote of the blackest men of the Sudan and their brilliant
.civilization, but warned her readers that they were not Negroes!
So here in Ethiopia, "Land of the Blacks," country of the
"Burnt Faces," we are continually faced with the silly paradox
that these black folk were not Negroes. What then are Negroes?
Who are Africans? Why has the whole history of Ethiopia
been neglected or ascribed to white "Hamites"? And why does
every historian and encyclopedist, whenever he writes of the
civilization of the upper Nile, feel compelled to reiterate that
these black people were "not NegToes"?
Again, the mixture of blood among the three races is always
referred to as an explanation of the advance among Negroes
and the retrogression among whites. Is this scientific? A "white"
or Asiatic aristocracy is repeatedly adduced as accounting for
the rise of the Sudan, the government of Uganda, the industry
-of the Bushongo, and even the art of the Ashanti. Nothing is
ever said of the influence of Negro blood in Europe and Asia,
yet distinct Negroid features can be seen today all over Europe.
When a black Jew boasts to his fellow religionists "I am black,
but comely, 0 ye daughters of Jerusalem," he is supposed to
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 119
be tanned; when Syria and Arabia show in hair and color their
Negro blood, this is completely ignored and their culture
called "white." When Buddha appears all over Asia portrayed
as black and curly-haired, science makes little effort to investi-
gate or explain.
There was and is wide mingling of the blood of all races
in Africa, but this is consistent with the general thesis that
Africa is predominantly the land of Negroes and Negroid peo-
ples, just as Europe is a land of Caucasoids and Asia of Mon-
goloids. We may give up entirely, if we wish, the whole attempt
to delimit races, but we cannot, if we are sane, divide the world
into whites, yellows, and blacks, and then call blacks white.
As in the case of Egypt, I shall hereafter assume that the
Ethiopians were Negroids and shall try to let the facts prove
their contribution to civilization.
In the eyes of the Greeks a thousand years B.C. and even in
the age of Pericles, black Africans were considered equal to
though different from Greeks, and superior to European and
Asiatic barbarians. Significant indeed was the attitude of the
early Greeks toward Africa. It was to them a land of ideals.
Here in legend their gods retired to rest and recuperate. In the
dawn of Greek literature, in the Iliad, we hear of the gods
feasting among the "blameless Ethiopians."
According to mythology, the Greek people themselves came
into being as the result of miscegenation. Zeus, the Father of
the Gods, mates with the fair Greek maiden 10, and has a
mulatto son, Epaphus, who is born in Egypt. Aeschylus says of
this union, "And thou shall bring forth black Epaphus, thus
named from the manner of Zeus' engendering. . . . Fifth in
descent from him fifty maidens shall return to Argos [Greece].
not of their choice but fleeing marriage with their cousin
kin." Also, "Call this the work of Zeus, and that his race sprang
from Epaphus, and thou shalt hit the truth." 1
1Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, line 850; The SujJPliant Maidens, line
859·
120 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Two of the most illustrious writers of Greece were called
Negroes-Aesop and Sappho. Planudes asserts this; Zundel,
Champfleury, and others think that the "woolly-haired Negro"
on the coins of Delphos was Aesop. Ovid makes it clear that
the ancients did not consider Sappho white. She is compared
with Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, black King of Ethiopia.
Ovid says: "Andromede patriae fusca colore suae." In Epistle
XV of the Heroides of Ovid (translated by Ridley), Sappho
says to Phaon, "I am small of stature but I have a name that
fills all lands. I myself have produced this extended renown
for my name. If I am not fair, Andromeda, the daughter of
Cepheus, was swarthy though the complexion of her coun-
try was pleasing to Perseus. White pigeons, too, are often
mated with spotted ones and the black turtledove is often
beloved by a bird that is green." 2
Paul Lacroix says of Sappho: "Although Plato graces her
with the epithet of beautiful and although Athenaeus is per-
suaded of her beauty on the authority of Plato, it is more
probable that Maximus of Tyre who paints her for us as little
and black is in conformity with more authentic tradition." 8
Pope's translation of Ovid reads: "Brown as I am, an Ethi-
opian dame."
Another Negro is mentioned in the Homeric legends, Eury-
biates. Homer speaks of his "woolly hair" and "sable skin" and
compares him with Ulysses, greatest of the heroes.
Eurybiates in whose large soul alone
Ulysses viewed an image of his own.
The Ethiopian Tithonus of Greek legend has been identified
with Dedun, the Negro god of the Second Cataract.
"Of all the classical countries Ethiopia was the most romantic
and the most remote. It was situated, according to the Greeks,
2 Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 84.
S Paul Lacroix, History of Prostitution (New York: Covici, Friede, 1931),
P·150.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 121
on the extreme limits of the world; its inhabitants were the
most just of men, and Jupiter dined with them twice a year.
They bathed in the waters of a violet-scented spring, which
endowed them with long life, noble bodies, and glossy skins.
They chained their prisoners with golden fetters; they had
bows which none but themselves could bend. It is certain
that Ethiopia took its place among the powers of the ancient
world. It is mentioned in the Jewish records and in the Assyrian
cuneiform inscriptions." 4
In Africa were great and powerful kingdoms. When Greek
poets enumerated the kingdoms of the earth, it was not only
natural but inevitable to mention Memnon, King of Ethiopia,
as leader of one of the great armies that besieged Troy. When
a writer like Herodotus, father of history, wanted to visit the
world, he went as naturally to Egypt as Americans go to Lon-
don and Paris. Nor was he surprised to find the Egyptians, as
he described them, "black and curly-haired."
Herodotus says that the names of nearly all the Greek gods
are derived from Egypt, and certainly the Greeks continually
turned toward Egypt for cultural inspiration and scientific in-
formation. Homer openly borrowed from Egypt his story of
• Ulysses, and the islands of forgetfulness were based on Egyptian
stories.
The Ethiopians are closely linked with the rising and set-
ting of the sun. Memnon, the son of Eos, says Hesiod, is their
king. Aeschylus describes the Ethiopians as dark and living
near the springs of the sun. Arctinus of Melitus writes of Mem-
non celebrating his participation on the side of the Trojans
and his victory over Antilochus, the son of Nestor, and his
eventual death at the hands of Achilles. In a myth of the fifth
century B.C., Andromeda was pictured as the black daughter
of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, rulers of Ethiopia. She was bound
to a rock and saved by Perseus on his return from his battle
with the Medusa. Both Sophocles and Euripides wrote plays
4 Reade, op. cit., pp. 37-38.
122 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
about Andromeda, and Perseus, Memnon, and Andromeda were
worshiped as heroes in Africa and Ethiopia.
The culture of Egypt went out across the Mediterranean,
lighting fires in Crete, inspiring Asia from southern Arabia
to Syria and western Asia Minor. In Cretan art Negro heads
appeared, and in the late Minoan Age, at the time of the ex-
pansion overseas, a black Minoan captain led Negro troops.
Doubtless Minoans made use of black regiments in their final
.conquest of Greece, and from vases dated the latter part of
the sixth century B.C. it seems clear that Ethiopians entered
Greece even before the time of Xerxes. Herodotus tells that
in the army of Xerxes there were Ethiopians clothed in leopard
and lion skins and armed with bows and arrows. He distin-
guishes between oriental Ethiopians and western Ethiopians;
both were black, but the hair of the former was straighter than
the close curled-hair of the latter and they spoke different
languages.
Herodotus reduced the races of Ethiopia to four: two native
and two foreign; the native were the Ethiopians and the Lib-
yans, and the foreign, the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Among
the Libyans, Herodotus and the Egyptians distinguished be-
tween Negroids and the Mongoloids: the Negroids came from
the south and the Mongoloids from the east. They had mingled
in various ways so that one reads of black Getuli and white
Ethiopians. The Periplus of Scilex records four Libyan popu-
lations, and Diodorus Siculus speaks of three Libyan tribes of
which one is Negroid. Thus the Negroid peoples of Africa
were represented in neighboring Asia and in North Africa, as
well as in the valley of the Nile and Central and West Africa.
Greek culture affected Africa at an early period, and Africa
in turn affected Europe. According to Frazer: "It is no longer
possible to regard the rule of succession to the priesthood of
Diana at Aricia as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a wide-
spread institution, of which the most numerous and the most
similar cases have thus far been found in Africa. How far the
THE LAND OF THE 13URNT FACES
facts point to an early influence of Africa on Italy, or even to
the existence of an African population in southern Europe, I
do not presume to say." 5
It is admitted today that pre-Greek peoples assembled a con-
siderable body of notable scientific knowledge. Individuals
approached their problems with logical powers of deduction
and methods of systematization. Two thousand years before
Christ an Egyptian physician had made the heart the center
of the human system, measured the pulse, and had written
down his observations and advice.
In art no race was so interesting to the artists of Greece and
Rome as the black man. Other races in the classical world were
pictured far less often in Hellenistic and Roman times; the
Negro was rendered with fidelity during the most idealistic
period of Greek art and with full appreciation of his type of
beauty. Appearing at the earliest time, the Negro type con-
tinued to be popular throughout the whole period of Greek
classical art. The myths of Hercules and of Busirus are painted
on a vase dating from the sixth century B.C. Hercules is rep-
resented as black and curly haired; the Egyptians of Busirus
are represented as both black and yellow, and a bodyguard of
five Ethiopians are marching to the defense of Busirus.
There was close and fairly frequent connection between
Europe and Africa. In prehistoric times the continents were
connected by land. They were separated by no obstacles which
hinder migration. The large number of islands scattered
through the Mediterranean served as bridges, and peninsulas
stretched out from Europe toward Africa. African colonists
passed over to Greece by way of the islands beginning with
Crete. From Numidia they crossed into Sicily, Italy, and south-
ern France; by Gibraltar into Spain. There is evidence of
Negro blood in Asia Minor as far as the Black Sea and the
Caucasus Mountains.
5 James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York: The Macmillan
Co., 1940),Vol. I, pp. vi, vii.
124 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The history of Ethiopia consists of a prehistoric period run-
ning down to 3500 B.C., a protohistoric period from 3500 to
1723 B.C., and a historic period from 723 B.C. to A.D. 355. In
prehistoric times the Ethiopians looked upon themselves as
the source of Egypt and declared, according to Diodorus Siculus,
that Egyptian laws and customs were of Ethiopian origin. The
Egyptians themselves in later days affirmed that their civiliza-
tion came out of the south, and modern research confirms this
in many ways.
If, as is possible, the historic beginnings of Egyptian culture
were in the delta, it was doubtless preceded by a long series
of cultures streaming up from the south until they met the
barriers of the sea and the desert and the invitation of the rich
delta soil. Here in the Ethiopia of the Greeks culture became
stationary, tied to the soil, expressing itself in agriculture and
irrigation; but at the same time it was renewed and chal-
lenged by the Negroes who continued to come up from the
south.
The incense needed for Egyptian worship was brought to the
African coast; the logs of Sudanese ebony, so greatly prized
by the Egyptians, grew along the upper course of the Blue
Nile. Two trade routes can be traced from the coast of the Red
Sea to the valley of the Nile. One followed the course of the
Blue Nile and crossed the level plain and the Nile port of
Wady Ban-Naga. The other struck across the land to the At-
bara, and from there to the fertile valley which ends at Meroe.
The Fourth and Fifth Cataracts were avoided by leaving the
Nile and striking across the desert to Napata. To what distant
date these trade routes go back may be concluded from the
predynastic slates which represent the Egyptians invading the
country of a woolly-haired race where giraffes browse upon the
palms and the guinea-fowl abounds. The home of the giraffe
and guinea-fowl since the beginning of the Neolithic period
has been the neighborhood of the Blue Nile.
The history of early Egypt was that of a duel between Ethiopia
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES
and Egypt, that is, between the ancient African cultures of the
Upper Nile and the settled Egyptian culture entrenched in
the Nile valley. Over this long stretch of Egyptian history, bio-
logical as well as cultural differences appeared. The Egyptians.
became a settled race-type, brown and yellow in color, with a
splendidly developed civilization.
The Ethiopians, on the other hand, were more purely Ne-
groid, brown and black of skin and curly-haired. They were'
divided into various kingdoms and tribes and were continually
raiding Egypt or defending themselves from Egypt, chiefly for
the advantages of trade. They eventually became traders and
middlemen between Egypt and Central and South-central
Africa, and indirectly between Egypt and India. Their own de-
velopment was in a way changed and directed by the fact that
their leaders of ambition and ability were continually drawn
off into the Egyptian civilization and rose in many cases to be
leaders in Egypt. As Egypt expanded the Ethiopians were
pushed back from the First to the Second, Third, and Fourth
Cataracts.
During the middle kingdom of Egypt an independent Ethi-
opian culture developed, centered at Napata and Meroe, which
carried on widespread trade in gold, ivory, precious stones,
wood, and handicrafts. When at the end of this time the'
Asiatic Hyksos overthrew Egypt, Ethiopia became a refuge for
the conquered Egyptians both physically and culturally. No-
ble Egyptian families migrated to Ethiopia and intermarried,.
and one such family formed the great Eighteenth Dynasty which-
rescued Egypt. From then on larger parts became incorporated'
into Egypt, and the son of a Pharaoh took the title of Royal
Son of Kush. When, however, the Libyans in the Twenty-
first Dynasty overthrew Egypt, the Ethiopians organized in-
dependently, and from 750 B.C. to A.D. 355 there are records
of seventy-six rulers of Ethiopia.
Let us turn back to early Egypt and see the relation between,
its development to the fall and rise of Ethiopia. From 3115 B.C..
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to 2360 B.C., for a thousand years, the old kingdom of Egypt
was under the stern rule of despotic kings; but with the Sixth
Dynasty the power of the pyramid builders began to collapse,
and during the years 2360 to 2150 the mass of Egyptian people
obtained religious and political rights. During the Middle
Kingdom the people began to be admitted to religious rites
which were no longer the sole secret of the priesthood.
The monarchy centering at Thebes endured a thousand
years, from 2160 B.C. to 1100 B.C. The courts became centers
of social law, and by the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty a state
socialism had been established. Egypt in these days was not a
large country according to modern ideas. It had during the
Theban monarchy some eight million people. In the end it
was the Saiti kings from the delta who opened Egypt to a flo,od
of foreigners. The Greeks came, and Egypt was turned into
a teacher of the world; its culture spread. Alexander and the
Caesars sat at its feet.
With the Eighteenth Dynasty came the New Empire, and
we are on firm historical grounds as to dates. It came to power
in 1580 B.C. and lasted until 1345. Its center of power was
Thebes, three hundred miles from Memphis and four hundred
miles south of the Mediterranean. It was less than one hundred
miles from the First Cataract, the legendary southern boundary
of Egypt. The power of Aahmes was probably reinforced by
his marriage with an Ethiopian princess, Nefertari, or Nofri-
tari, who was invariably painted black in Egyptian art and yet
who was, as Petrie says, "the most venerated figure of Egyptian
history."
Her statue in the Turin Museum represents her as having
black skin. She is also painted black standing before Amenothes
in the Deir el Medineh tomb, now in the Berlin Museum. This
queen with a black skin has therefore been regarded as a
Negress, the daughter of an Ethiopian Pharaoh, or at any rate
the daughter of a chief of some Nubian tribe; 6 it was thought
6 Edward Meyer, Geschichte des Alten Aegypten (1887), p. 224, note I.
THE. LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 127
that Aahmes must have married her to secure the help of the
Negro tribes in his wars, and that it was owing to this alliance
that he succeeded in expelling the Hyksos.?
Naturally the legend of this black queen has caused heart-
searching among white Egyptologists; they have called her
"Libyan"; and Libya was certainly partly Negroid in race; but
since the Libyans have usually been counted "white," why was
the Libyan Nofritari black?
Nofritari reigned fora time conjointly with Amenothes, and
we know that her rule was a prosperous one and that she was
revered by her subjects. The remembrance of Nofritari always
remained distinct in their minds, and her cult spread until it
became a kind of popular religion."
In the Eighteenth Dynasty all workers were organized in
guilds under the state. There were scribes to guide them and
voice the law. There were local assemblies to stop oppression
"of the free man." Legally the Pharaoh owned all the land,
but it was assigned to individuals and descended through the
eldest son. The Pharaoh always kept the right of eminent do-
main. Soldiers were established upon freeholds and the priests
had large holdings; then came lands assigned to the peasants
and to tenants.
Except for the religious land for temples and burial places,
the Pharaoh represented the state, held eminent domain over
all land, all workers, and all renters. All sources of' revenue
belonged to the state, and the exploiters of the land and of
trade must account to the state, usually through the head of the
family. There could be no change of ownership without con-
sent of the Pharaoh or his representative. Usually the state
collected one-fifth of the crop as tax. The artisans worked in
state studios. The slavery of aliens was limited by treaties with
their chiefs. The state controlled all commerce.
7 G. C. G. Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, ed. by A. H. Sayee, tr. by
M. L. McClure (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897), pp. 98'99'
B Maspero, op. cit.
128 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Thebes was at the time a city of one hundred thousand and
a state capital a thousand years before Rome. It was a planned
city, as all Egyptian communities were planned, centering
around the square with four walls, and six streets lined with
workers' houses on each side. Each house had four rooms and
a second story.
Aahmes reigned from 1580 B.C. to 1577 B.C., and his son,
Amenophis I, from 1577 B.C. to 1536 B.C. Amenophis I finally
conquered an Ethiopian Kingdom named Kerma, which had
been threatening Egypt since the Twelfth Dynasty, or about
1785 B.C. Then came by marriage Tuthmosis I, the conqueror
of Syria and the valley of the Euphrates, where the Egyptians
probably for the first time in their history saw mountains
covered with snow. Tuthmosis I pushed Egyptian domination
beyond the Third Cataract. After Tuthmosis I came his son
Tuthmosis II, who reigned conjointly with his half-sister Hat-
shepsut for two or three years, then associated upon the throne
a son by a concubine, Tuthmosis III. After the death of Tuth-
mosis II, Hatshepsut assumed full power and was the acknowl-
edged ruler of Egypt. The temple of Deir el Bahri, "Sublime
of the Sublime," designed by Tuthmosis II was completed by
her in 1500 B.C., and it represented her expedition to Punt.
The king and queen of Punt are represented as of the modern
Hottentot type, and the queen with the characteristic stea-
topygia. After Hatshepsut's death Tuthmosis III came into full
power.
His granite head in the British Museum has distinct Negro
features. He extended Egyptian power east and south. He
conquered Syria in seventeen campaigns and crossed the Eu-
phrates. He fought in Libya and in Ethiopia. His reign was
without doubt, as Petrie said, "one of the grandest and most
eventful in Egyptian history." He repressed robbery and in-
justice, did much building and adorning of temples with the
labor of his captives; and by taking the children of subdued
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 129
kings in Asia a~ hostages to Egypt, established his empire on a
sound basis perhaps for the first time in history. His empire
extended from Napata to the Euphrates. The Assyrians and
Babylonians sent their daughters to him in marriage, and the
descendants of Syrian rulers, conquered by his father and edu-
cated in Egypt, ruled as slaves of the Pharaoh. Tribute poured
into Egypt. He reigned thirty-six years until the Hittites from
the north and the Khabiri from the east began to press down
upon Syria. His son Amenophis II, whom he had associated on
his throne, reigned twenty-six years, leaving his throne to
Tuthmosis IV.
This monarch married a black woman, Mutemua. Their son,
Amenophis III, succeeded about 1400 B.C. He built the temple
of Luxor at Karriak. He inherited his mother's Negroid fea-
tures and married the brilliant Taia. It is possible that the
Greeks derived the name of "Memnon, king of the Ethiopians,"
from this Pharaoh. J. G. Wilkinson says of Amenophis Ill:
"The features of this monarch cannot fail to strike everyone
who examines the portraits of Egyptian kings as having more
in common with the Negro than those of any other Pharaoh." 9
Anna Graves says: "Amenophis, or Amenhotep, III (1411-
1375 B.C.) was evidently what, south of Mason and Dixon
would be called a 'colored man,' and his chief queen Taia
must have had much more Negro blood than her husband.
Indeed, judging from her portrait bust in the Berlin Gallery
... she may have been very nearly pure Nubian. Their son,
Amenophis, or Amenhotep, IV (1375-1358 B.C.), who later
took the name Akhnaton, or Akhenaton, though less Negroid
than his mother was more of the mulatto type than his father,
and the portrait bust of his daughters show them all to be
beautiful quadroons, though perhaps octoroons. And this
mulatto Pharaoh, Akhenaton, was not only the most interesting
9 J. G. Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians (London: 1878), quoted in
Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 42, 54.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Pharaoh in all the long lines of the many dynasties; but he was
in many ways one of the most remarkable human beings who
ever lived." 10
It was this ruler who brought profound revolution in the
religion of Egypt, changed it to an imperial monotheism, and
introduced a philosophical worship of the powers of nature.
The great hymn to the sun came from this reign:
In the hills from Syria to Kush, and the plain of Egypt,
Thou givest to everyone his place, thou framest their lives;
To everyone his belongings, reckoning his length of days;
Their tongues are diverse in their speech,
Their natures in the colour of their skin.
As a divider, thou dividest the strange peoples.t-
Along with this religious change went a change In ethics,
and the glorifying of war almost disappeared. "Living in
truth" was made characteristic of the Pharaoh and domestic
affection the ideal of life. In art there was a direct study of
nature and drawing away from convention.
Universal humanitarianism arose under the reforms of
Amenophis IV:
Thou didst create the earth in thy heart, the earth with people, herds,
and floods ... the foreign lands: Syria, Nubia, Egypt. Thou settst
every man in his place.... They speak in diverse tongues, they are
varied in form and color of sk in.t?
During the reign of his successor Tutankhaton, or Tutankh-
amen, whose tomb was found by Lord Carnarvon and Howard
Carter, there was a reaction toward the older forms of religion,
until in a succeeding reign Akhenaton was reviled as a crim-
inal.
The founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, Rameses I, and his
10Anna M. Graves,Benvenuto Cellini Had No Prejudice against Bronze
(Baltimore:WaverlyPress,1943), p. xix.
11 Petrie, op, cit., Vol. II, p. 216.
12 Ct. translationsby JamesH. Breasted,History of the Ancient Egyptians
(New York,1908), p. 275; Arthur Weigall,Life and Times at Akhnaton (Lon-
don, 1922), p. 132.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES
son, Seti I, became great builders of temples at Karnak and else-
where. Then came the long reign of sixty-seven years of Rameses
II, the Conqueror, who built monuments all over Egypt and
Nubia and fought against the Libyans, Syrians, and Hittites.
His conquests eventually exhausted the nation, which became
prey to the Libyans and the peoples pressing down from the
delta.
It was around 2500 B.G that the Hebrew nation had begun
to arise. It became enslaved in Egypt, perhaps in the time of
Rameses 1. Its history touched Ethiopia at many points, and
Jews showed the blacks the highest respect.
In personal relations there were repeated bonds between
Jews and Ethiopians. A black minister of state, Ebedmelech,
rescued the prophet Jeremiah from prison:
Now when Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs which
was in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the
dungeon; the king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin; Ebedmelech
went forth out of the king's house, and spake to the king, saying, My
lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to
Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and he
is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more
bread in the city. Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethio-
pian, saying, Take from hence thirty men with thee, and take up
Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon, before he die. So Ebed-
melech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king
under the treasury, and took thence old cast clouts and old rotten rags,
and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. And Ebed-
melech the Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, Put now these old cast clouts
and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords. And Jeremiah
did so. So they drew up Jeremiah with cords, and took him up out of
the dungeon: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.is
Moses married a black woman:
And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethio-
13 Jeremiah 38:7-13.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
pian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian
woman.t-
Jehovah is said to have punished these protests by making
Miriam a leper. Aaron admitted:
We have done foolishly.
The writer of the Song of Solomon defended the color of the
Ethiopians:
I am black but comely, 0 ye daughters of Jerusalem!
Jewish writers pictured Ethiopia as one of the most power-
ful countries of their day, equal in strength to Egypt, Persia,
Assyria, and Babylon:
Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and
Lubim were thy hclpers.w
With twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen:
and the people were without number that came with him out of
Egypt; the Lubims, the Sukkiims, and the Ethiopians.w
The prophet Isaiah wrote the well-known appeal to Ethiopia:
Ah! Land of the buzzing wings,
Which lies beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,
That sends ambassadors by sea,
In papyrus vessels on the face of the waters:
To a nation tall and sleek,
To a nation dreaded near and far,
To a nation strong and triumphant.it
Jews hoped that Ethiopia might turn to the Jewish faith:
Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her
hands unto God.l8
14 Numbers 12:1.
15 Nahum 3:9.
16 II Chronicles 12: 3.
17 Smith and Goodspeed, The Complete Bible (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1944).
18 Psalms 68:31.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 133
Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, 0 children of
Israel? sairh the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of
Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? 19
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:
I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.20
The sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.s-
And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan.s=
Shabaka of Ethiopia or "So, King of Egypt," as the Jews
called him,23 was the cause of the overthrow of Hoshea, last
king of Israel. Isaiah summoned the Ethiopians in the strug-
gle against Sennacherib. Repeatedly the Jews made alliance
with the Ethiopians.
And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come
forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers
to Hezekiah .... 24
He was assured that with this mighty ally the God of Israel
would overthrow the Assyrians.
Taharqa joined battle against Sennacherib in accordance
with the treaty made with Hezekiah. Sennacherib's army was
destroyed miraculously, as the Jews believed, and Taharqa
recovered the cities of Palestine which had formerly belonged
to Egypt.
The Jews envied the resources of Ethiopia:
Come up, ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the mighty men
come forth; the Ethiopians and the Libyans, that handle the shield;
and the Libyans, that handle and bend the bow.25
But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and
over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethio-
pians shall be at his steps.26 ~
19Amos 9:7.
20 Isaiah 43:3.
21 I Chronicles 1 :8.
22 Genesis lO:6.
23 II Kings, 17:4.
24 Isaiah 31'9.
25 Jeremiah 46:9.
26 Dan iel 11 :43.
134 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
They threatened that great as Ethiopia was, the Lord of
Israel would eventually overcome them and other enemies:
Thus saith the Lord, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of
Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto
thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they
shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make
supplication unto thee, saying Surely God is in thee; and there is none
else, there is no God.27
And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in
Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away
her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down. Ethiopia,
and Libya and Lydia, and all the mingled people, and Chub, and the
men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them by the sword.
Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and
helmet. ... 28
Rameses III represented the decadence of Egypt and con-
centration of land ownership in the hands of the priests. The
end of this dynasty came in 1100 B.C., and from then on Egypt
declined. First there were the Libyan dynasties in the delta
from 1100 to 945. The Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dy-
nasties had rival princes fighting among themselves and seeking
to re-establish their control over Egypt. But in the meantime
Ethiopia arose, and the Ethiopian, Piankhi, became head of
the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, 712 B.C.
When the New Empire began to decline, a governor-general
rebelled and the kingdom of Ethiopia was established. It was
a dominion composed of brown men and black men, shepherds
and savages, Egyptians and Negroes, ruled over by a king and
a college of priests. It was enriched by annual excursions into
the black country, and by th~ caravan trade in ivory, gold dust,
and gum. It also received East Indian goods and Arabian pro-
duce through its ports on the Red Sea. Meroe, its capital, at-
tained the reputation of a great city; it possessed temples and
27 Isaiah 45:14.
28 Ezekiel 30:4, 5; 38:5.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 135
pyramids like those of Egypt, only on a smaller scale. The
Ethiopian empire, in its best days, comprised the modern
Egyptian provinces of Kordofan and Senaar, with the moun-
tain kingdom of Abyssinia as it existed under Theodore.
The first capital of the Sudan was Napata. Here Arne-
nophis II of the Eighteenth Dynasty brought one of the rebel-
lious princes of northern Syria, and, after putting him to death,
hung his body on the walls of the city as a warning to the
Sudanese tribes. How much older than the Eighteenth Dynasty
Napata may have been is uncertain.
As long as the Sudan continued as part of the Egyptian em-
pire, it was ruled by Egyptian viceroys. The name and wor-
ship of Ammon, the god of Thebes, were carried southward,
and it is possible that Napata, of which Ammon became the
supreme divinity, was under Theban priests. When the Libyan
Shishak usurped the throne of the Pharaohs in the tenth cen-
tury B.C., the descendants of the Theban priest-kings of the
Twenty-first Dynasty are believed to have retreated to Napata
and there established a theocratic monarchy. The decline of the
Bubastite dynasty enabled one of these, Piankhi, to assert once
more the claim of his family to the throne of Egypt, and to
overrun the valley of the Nile almost as far as the Medi-
terranean. He led the Ethiopians against the Libyans and over-
threw them; and he made Egypt a dependency of Ethiopia. The
heir to the throne was called "Prince of Egypt." At his death
in 710 B.C., Shabaka became king of the two lands. Herodotus
said that he abolished capital punishment in Egypt. Kashto,
Sahbatok, Taharqa, and Tanut-Amon, succeeded Piankhi and
founded the Ethiopian dynasty which governed Egypt from
715 B.C. onward, un til they were driven back to Ethiopia by
the Assyrians.
Their names show that the ruling caste in the Sudan was
Ethiopian, and they were hailed in Upper Egypt as the rightful
lords of the country and as the successors of the ancient
Pharaohs. On a stela of the Assyrian king Esar-haddon, Taharqa
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
is depicted as a Negro with a ring through his lip; but Taharqa
was never a prisoner in Assyrian hands. We see now that out
of the remote regions of the Upper Nile the Ethiopians emerged
and attempted in the world an imperial role, but they faced
in the years from 750 B.C. to 500 B.C. the empire building in
western Asia.
The history of western Asia and Asia Minor during this
period is difficult to summarize, but in earliest times we find
Sumerians in the Tigris-Euphrates area, evidently Mongoloids.
They attempted development there similar to the development
in the Nile valley. Then out of Arabia began to stream a series
of peoples. The Babylonians appeared more than three thou-
sand years B.C. In the eighth century before Christ the Hittites
moved eastward from Asia and threatened Egyptian power
until Rameses II defeated them at Kadesh. Then from the
mountain lands northeast of the Euphrates the Assyrians came
down, "like a wolf on the fold." They overthrew Nineveh in
612 B.C. and themselves bowed before the Scythians and the
Medes. A new Babylonian imperialism followed, and then
came Cyrus, the Persian. In the sixth century B.C. Sardis fell,
and soon the cry "Babylon is fallen, is fallen," went through-
out the East.
Asia precipitated itself upon Africa. Egyptian civilization
fell before the Mongoloid intruder. The Nile valley was swept
by vast forces just as the renewed Ethiopian kingdom came to
power. It was the heyday of Negro imperialism. Black Africa
was still pressing up from the center of the continent, as it had
for thousands of years. Yellow Asia was bearing down on Egypt
in flood after flood of differing oncoming peoples. Phoenicia
was inspiring Carthage and beginning North African de-
velopment, which pressed on western Egypt. In the center of
these forces the Egyptian empire, incredibly ancient, had fallen,
first before the Hyksos, and then later before other eastern
Asiatic tribes. Ethiopia had restored her, but the situation in
the closed valley of the Nile did not invite or encourage ex-
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 137
pans ion in face of the increased might of armed enemies.
Ethiopian imperialism, therefore, while striking and effective,
lasted but two centuries.
The Assyrians defeated the forces of Egypt and drove back
the Ethiopians until at last, from 688 B.C. to 663 B.C., came
the greatest of the Ethiopian kings, Taharqa.
His reign was an era of prosperity and cultural advancement.
Weigall called his reign "that astonishing epoch of nigger dom-
ination"; and Randall-MacIver said: "It seems amazing that
an African Negro should have been able with any sort of jus-
tification to style himself Emperor of the World." Taharqa
ascended the throne in 688 B.c. at the age of about forty-two.
For fifteen years he fostered the economic, cultural, and re-
ligious life of Ethiopia and Egypt. The trade of the country
increased, and there was money to repair the ancient temples
and build new ones. Taharqa established friendly alliances
with western Asia and with Assyria. The Hebrew Bible chron-
icles this in the downfall of Sennacherib, and notes Ethiopia's
rrade.s?
Taharqa's building at Karnak was planned as one of the
most striking in the ancient world. The temple built at Thebes
had a relief representing the four courts of the four quarters
of the Nilotic world: Dedun, the great God of Ethiopia, rep-
resents the south; Sopd, the eastern desert; Sedek, the western
desert; and Horus, the north. According to Petrie: "This shows
how southern was the center of thought when the whole of
Egypt is reckoned as the north. Some writers say that Taharqa
led expeditions as far as the Strait of Gibraltar." so
Eventually the Assyrians were too strong for Taharqa and he
had to give up Egypt and retire into Ethiopia and the "night
of death." Tanutamen, his successor, held back the Assyrian
storm for awhile.t- but Ethiopian and Egyptian strength were
29 Isaiah 18:2, 37:9.
so Petrie, op. cit., p. 301.
S1 Nahum, 3:1-19.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
eventually dashed to pieces. Egyptian temples were wrecked,
and the conqueror, Ashurbanipal, declared: "I captured
Thebes like a flood .... "
Aspeluta, a full-blooded Negro, ruled probably from 593
B.C. to 567 B.G. In 524 B.C. Cambyses, the Persian, having con-
quered Egypt, tried to invade Nubia, but was defeated and
his fleet destroyed. Horsiatef (c. 372-361 B.G.) made nine ex-
peditions against the warlike tribes south of Meroe, which was
attacked unsuccessfully by the Rehrehsa under their chief Arua.
One successor was Nastasen (c. 328-308 B.G.) , who removed the
capital from Napata to Meroe, although Napata continued to
be the religious capital and the Ethiopian kings were still
crowned on its golden throne. Nastasen was saluted king by the
priests of Ammon from both Meroe and Napata. He called
himself king of To-Kenset (or Nubia, including Dongola), and
of the city of Alut. Alut was an alternative name of Meroe.
Meroe, between the Atbara River and the Blue Nile, was
founded later than Napata, probably around the eighth cen-
tury B.C. The site of the town was well chosen. It stood on the
bank of the Nile, between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, and
at the end of a valley which extended for many miles into the
interior. During the rainy season the valley afforded an easy
road for caravans coming across the Atbara from the Red Sea.
The city of Meroe was the natural outlet on the Nile of the
more northern prehistoric trade route from the East. Immedi-
ately to the north of it were hills containing the extensive
quarries where stones used in the construction of its buildings
were worked. Northward there was navigation down the Nile
to Berber, where the desert road to Napata left the river.
The mission sent by Nero to discover the sources of the Nile
reported that Meroe was three hundred and sixty Roman miles
from Napata, and seventy miles south of the Atbara. Opposite
the city was the island of Tadu, which sheltered the harbor
from the northwest wind. At the time of the visit of the Romans
the town seems to have fallen into decay in consequence of its
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 139
capture and partial destruction by some enemy, but it was said
to have once supported two hundred thousand soldiers and
four thousand artisans. It was then ruled, according to Pliny,
by a queen named Candace, who had had forty-four prede-
cessors on the throne.
During the period from 308 B.C. to 225 B.C., there were ten
rulers, five reigning at Napata and five at Meroe. The Ptolemies
did not invade Nubia but tried to obtain trade by peaceful
inroads. Ergamenes (225-200 B.C.) who was brought up at
the court of Ptolemy II, united the "nine nations" of Ethiopia.
Six kings reigned over the whole of Ethiopia; then came nine
kings, of whom four reigned at Meroe, and five at Napata,
These were succeeded by three kings ruling over a united
Ethiopia. A great builder, Netekamane, appeared, who with
his queen Amanetari is depicted on temples at many points up
the Nile.
This history of Ethiopia 32 means that out of the south for
many thousands of years migrations streamed northward for
settlement and for trade, to furnish soldiers for the armies of
the Pharaohs and to reach a better climate and opportunities
for defense. Down toward the hot center of Africa human cul-
ture had to fight the insects and disease and found no natural
barriers to protect them against oncomers. There were prob-
ably movements south and west from the Great Lakes, but the
lure of Egypt attracted the larger streams, and, as Chamberlain
has said, this migration was at once advantageous and detri-
mental to Central Africa. It continually siphoned off the able
and the adventurous into the great opportunities of Egypt.
Egypt profited and grew on these new resources of inspiration.
Individual Negroes became Egyptians and occupied high
places, but left their own southern brethren the poorer from
this continuous loss of ability and strength.
Books were written about Ethiopia by Dalion, Aristocreon,
32 For the history of Ethiopia I have leaned heavily on ms. material fur-
nished me by Professor Leo Hansberry of Howard University.
140 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Basilis, Bion, and Simonides the Younger, the last of whom
resided for five years in Meroe.w As early as 431 B.C. the trade
of Egypt was well known in Athens. Sails and papyrus rolls
came from Egypt and ivory from Libya. The slaves were usually
not from Africa but from Asia.
It was natural that Alexander, seeking to conquer the world,
should bring his conquest to a triumphant end by overthrowing
Egypt and establishing there his capital, Alexandria. Alexander
had Negroes in his armies. One of the most illustrious was
Clitus, his best beloved, whom he made King of Bactria and
commander of his cavalry. Clitus' mother, Dropsica, was Alex-
ander's nurse, and Clitus is mentioned by Plutarch and others
as Clitus Niger, that is, "Clitus the Negro." 34
There are legends of the visit of Alexander the Great to
Candace, Queen of Meroe. Fabulous perhaps, but they show
her fame. It is said that Candace would not let Alexander enter
Ethiopia and warned him not to scorn her people because they
were black, for they were whiter in soul than his white folk.
"She sent him gold, maidens, parrots, sphinxes, and a crown of
emeralds and pearls. She ruled eighty tribes, who were ready
to punish those who attacked her." 3~ The Ptolemies were in
contact with the Abyssinians. The earliest Ptolemies were
white; but as time went on they changed more and more toward
the Negroid. "The Negro strain in Alexander II is apparent,
and still more so in Ptolemy XIII, the flute-playing father of
the most celebrated of the Cleopatras. Ptolemy's mother was a
slave. Cleopatra herself is known through tradition as having
been of a tawny, or mulatto color." 36
From 332 B.C., when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt,
down to the conquest of Egypt by Rome after the birth of
83 J. Garstand, A. H. Sayee, and F. L. Griffith, Meroe (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1911),pp. 4-5.
34 Plutarch, Alexander the Great; Diodorus Siculus, Book XVII, Ch. 2.
85 W. E. B. DuBois, Black Folk: Then and Now (New York: Henry Holt
& Company, 1939),pp. 32,33.
86 Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 57.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 141
Christ, Egyptian civilization was subject to increasing Grecian
influenc~s and Grecian migration. During the time of Augustus
Caesar a club for women existed in the Egyptian capital,
Alexandria. About 240 B.C. there was said to have been four
hundred and ninety thousand rolls of manuscript in the
Alexandria library. The directors of this library were dis-
tinguished literary and scientific figures.
When Greece fell under the domination of expanding Rome,
the greatest prize of the new empire was Egypt, not simply the
valley of the Nile, but the whole of North Africa from the
Strait of Gibraltar east and across the Red Sea. The Romans
called the district about Carthage, Africa. It held not only
Caucasoids from Europe and Mongoloids from Asia, but brown
Moors and black Numidians. Roman expeditions went south
toward the center of Africa where other black folk and great
beasts like the rhinoceros were discovered. There was an ex-
pedition under the Romans led by Julius Maternus under the
Emperor Domitian in A.D. 80, which searched for gold mines
in the Sudan.
The duel between Europe and Africa came wi th the Punic
Wars: the first from 264 to 241 B.C.; the second from 218 to
201 B.C.; and the final one from 149 to 146 B.C. These wars
started as efforts to defend Italy against migration and conquest
from Africa, where Mongoloids and Negroids with some in-
filtrating of Europeans had built the city of Carthage. Within
this city all races were represented, and Carthage secured a
stronghold in Sicily which the first Punic War was fought to
break.
The second Punic War began with the invasion of Spain
by Carthage and the eruption of the Carthaginian army into
Italy. The leader, Hannibal, was finally driven back into
Africa. Hannibal and his African troops must have brought a
strong Negro strain into the Roman population. For thirteen
years they dominated the peninsula from Naples to the Alps.
Hannibal himself, if we believe his coins, may well have been
142 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
a Negro with woolly hair. His wife was Spanish;" In Rome the
spread of the plantation system after the second Punic War led
to the wide use of slaves, but these slaves were from Greece and
from Spain.
It was during the next fifty years that the cry raised by Cato
the Elder, "Carthage must be destroyed," spread through
Rome, making common cause with the black rebel, Massinissa.
The Romans attacked again and Carthage fell. Fifty thousand
Carthaginians were sold into slavery. Massinissa died in 143
B.G and was succeeded by his son Micipsa, and his grandson
jugurtha, It was Jugurtha who called Rome "a city for sale
and doomed to perish as soon as it finds a purchaser." The war
was renewed in Africa, but finally Jugurtha fell into an ambush
and was carried as a prisoner to Rome. He and his two sons
figured in the triumphs of Marius. He was murdered in prison
beneath the capitol.
In Numidia, Rome found itself opposed by the Negroid
king Cyphax. Under Diocletian, Numidia was separated from
Africa and became one of the seven provinces of the continent.
It reached under Constantine a high degree of civilization, but
was overthrown by the Vandals in A.D. 428 and again by the
Arabs in the eighth century.
On the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became a province of the
Roman Empire and Augustus sent a prefect there. The power
of Ethiopia had already declined before black invaders from
the west. The prefect Gallus summoned these chiefs and
granted them their independence under the power of Rome
in A.D. 29. After his death the blacks revolted and advanced
northward. The Romans sent a great army of ten thousand
infantry and eight hundred cavalry to suppress thirty thousand
rebels. The Romans were victorious and advanced on the
Ethiopians at Napata, where a Candace, "a masculine woman
37 P. R. Carrucci, La Monete dell' Italia Antica (Rome: 1885). Part II,
p. 58; Plate No. LXXV. Coin Nos. i i , 12, 13. 14,15.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 143
with one eye," was reigning. She is probably the "Candace"
mentioned in Acts 8: 27:
And he arose and went; and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch
of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had
charge of all her treasure, and had to come to Jerusalem for to worship,
Was returning and sitting in his chariot. ...
Petronius captured Napata, and a thousand prisoners were
sent to Caesar as slaves and many were sold at auction. Never-
theless, as soon as Petronius left, Candace attacked the Roman
garrison. The Ethiopians demanded the right to lay their case
before Caesar, which was granted, and Caesar remitted the
tribute.
In this era there was born in the Egypto-Syrian area, with its
Mongoloid and Negroid elements, a social reformer called
Jesus Christ. Nordics who have never accepted his doctrine of
submission to evil, repudiation of riches, and love for mankind,
have usually limned him as Caucasoid. He was probably a
swarthy Syrian Jew, with hooked nose and curled hair; per-
haps he even inherited Ethiopian blood. He probably looked
like that Jew at whom Hitler stared in Vienna: "One day when
I was walking through the inner city, I suddenly came upon
a being clad in a long caftan, with black curls." 88 From that
day dates his active anti-Semitism. Jesus tried to make men
better, simpler, truer; he did not succeed. He was charged with
blasphemy and treason, and hanged on nails until he was dead.
Around legends of his person and ideals have been built creeds,
churches, inquisitions, and dreams. Finally there arose the or-
ganized and institutionalized Christian Church.
The Roman Emperor Nero, A.D. 54-68, planned to invade
Ethiopia and sent some scouts to report. They penetrated as
far as the region of the Saad. For the next two hundred years
the Nubians and other desert tribes did as they pleased: the
38 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 73.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
power of Ethiopia continued to decline. From the beginning
of the third century tribes from the eastern desert, probably
the modern Beja, invaded Egypt and plundered; they became
masters of southern Egypt during the reign of Aurelian. The
Romans continued to have so much trouble with their Ethio-
pian frontier that finally, when the Abyssinians appeared in
the east, the Emperor Diocletian invited the Nubians from the
west to repel them. These Nubians finally embraced Chris-
tianity, and northern Ethiopia came to be known as Nubia.
The Roman garrisons were withdrawn and the Romans de-
pended upon the Nubians from Darfur and Kordofan to pro-
tect their interests. Diocletian gave these Nubians land and a
yearly subsidy and also subsidized the Beja. During the reigns
of Theodosius and Justinian these tribes again and again
broke into uneasy revolt.
Black Africa widely influenced Rome. Many of her great
men were called "African" because of their birth, and some
of these had Negro blood. Terentius Afer (Terence the African)
was an ex-slave whose complexion was described by Suetonius,
as [uscus, or dusky. Terence was the greatest of the Latin
stylists, the author of six plays. He is famous mostly, however,
for his "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto"-ClI
am a man and nothing human is alien to me."
Virgil mentions a beautiful black boy:
quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses
a formose puer,
nimium ne crede colori:
alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur.
Two Latin epigrams praised the Egyptian hunter Olympius:
Nil tibi forma nocet nigro fuscata colora.
Vivet [ama tui post te longaeva decoris
Atque tuum nomen semper Karthago loquetur,
Mongoloid and
11111111 mixed Mongolo~eI,and Negroids
I t Negroids
,Bantu ..speaking
~' peoples
Sudanese ond
Nilo';c Negroes
Hottentots) Khoisan
peoples
and mixed
"colored"
Bushmen people
Other smaller groups: Eur~peans, Negrillos
RACES IN AFRICA
From Les Races de L'Ajrique, Paris. Payot. 1935.
146 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
In A.D. 330 the Eastern Roman Empire was established at
Constantinople. It became Greek rather than Roman, and
Christian even before Rome was Christian. This empire had
strong connections with Africa: it traded not only with the
valley of the Nile but even with the West Coast of Africa. As
Mommsen said: "It was through Africa that Christianity be-
came the religion of the world. Tertullian and Cyprian were
from Carthage; Arnobius from Sicca Veneria; Lactantius, and
probably in like manner Minucius Felix, in spite of their Latin
names, were natives of Africa, and not less so, Augustine. In
Africa the Church found its most zealous confessors of the faith
and its most gifted defenders." 39
Origen, Athanasius, and Saint Cyril were from the Nile
valley. At the head of the Catholic hierarchy at Rome, three
popes were African by birth: Victor I (187-198), who defended
the Roman date for Easter; Miltiades (311-314), who was pope
when the Emperor entered Rome as a Christian; and Gelasius I
(492-496), who defended the rights of the papacy against the
state.
The Africa here referred to was the Africa above the Sahara
Desert; there, as we have seen, Negroid blood was widespread,
and in the valley of the Nile the Coptic Church, representing
black Africa more directly, was organized. The patriarchate
had a hundred bishoprics in the fourth century. In 330 Saint
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, consecrated Fromentius as
Bishop of Ethiopia.
On the highlands of Ethiopia, Negroid and Mongoloid
peoples had united to found a center of trade and government
more than a thousand years before Christ. From this Axumite
Kingdom came the legend of the Queen of Sheba. As early as
1800 B.C. the descendants of Jokdan, seafaring Arabs, had
conquered the shores of the Red Sea opposite Abyssinia and
founded Yemen. It was along this route that Pharaoh Neche's
89 Theodor Momrnsen , The Provinces at the Roman Empire, tr. from the
German by Dickson (London: Bentley, 1886), Vol. II, p. 345.
THE LAND OF THE BURNT FACES 147
expedition went around Africa from east to west. The Periplus
of the Erythraean Sea, dated from A.D. 60 to 80, shows the in-
<creasingcommerce around this eastern horn to Africa.
Abyssinia for a time controlled both its own country and
Yemen, and King Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held
it fifty years. Eventually the Abyssinians were expelled from
Arabia and shut themselves up on their highlands where, as
Gibbon said, "encompassed by the enemies of their religion,
the Ethiopians slept for nearly a thousand years forgetful of
the world by whom they were forgotten." Throughout the
Middle Ages the legend of this Christian kingdom under Prester
John persisted. At one time the Abyssinians established them-
selves at Meroe, but were driven back by the Nubians who had
made league with Rome.
Finally in A.D. 450 the Nubians under Silko embraced
Christianity and made old Dongola their capital. This city
replaced Napata and Meroe, and by the twelfth century had
churches and brick dwellings.
In A.D. 525 there was considerable trade between Abyssinia
and Central Africa. Spices and gold were imported in return
for cattle, salt, and iron.
Thus the flood of Mohammedanism as it pressed up the Nile
valley was held back for two centuries by a solid Christian
phalanx in Abyssinia and Nubia. For years the dream of the
Europeans was to make contact and alliance with the forces
of Prester John and the other African Christians. It was not
until 1270 that Saladin crushed the Nubians and annexed
Nubia. The Christian kingdom of the Nubians finally fell in
the sixteenth century.
CHAPTER VII
ATLANTIS
This is the story of the West Coast of Africa and
its relation to the development of the world
from A.D. 500 to I500.
ITHAS long been the belief of modern men that the historyof Europe covers the essential history of civilization, with
unimportant exceptions; that the progress of the white race
has been along the one natural, normal path to the highest
possible human culture. Even in its collapse today, the domi-
nant opinion is that this is but an unfortunate halting on the
way; the same march must and will be resumed after a breath-
ing space for recovery.
On the other hand, we know that the history of modern
Europe is very short; scarcely a moment of time as compared
with that of eternal Egypt. The British Empire is not more
than two hundred and fifty years old; France in her present
stature dates back three hundred years; the United States was
born only a hundred and seventy years ago; and Germany
less than one hundred years. When, therefore, we compare
modern Europe with the great empires which have died, it is
not far different in length of days from the empires of Persia,
Assyria, the Hittites, and Babylon. Ethiopia ruled the world
longer than England has.
ATLANTIS 149
It is surely a wider world of infinitely more peoples that
Europe has ruled; but does this reveal eternal length of rule
and inherent superiority in European manhood, or merely
the temporary possession of a miraculously greater brute force?
Mechanical power, not deep human emotion nor creative
genius nor ethical concepts of justice, has made Europe ruler
of the world. Man for man, the modern world marks no advance
over the ancient; but man for gun, hand for electricity, muscle
for atomic fission, these show what our culture means and how
the machine has conquered and holds modern mankind in
thrall. What in our civilization is distinctly British or Ameri-
can? Nothing. Science was built on Africa and Religion on
Asia.
Was there no other way for the advance of mankind? Were
there no other cultural patterns, ways of action, goals of
progress, which might and may lead man to something finer
and higher? Africa saw the stars of God; Asia saw the soul of
man; Europe saw and sees only man's body, which it feeds and
polishes until it is fat, gross, and cruel.
Let us turn to West Africa, where man tried a different way
fora thousand years. First we face the query: how do we know
what man did in West Africa, since black Africa has no written
history? This brings the curious assumption that lack of written
record means lack of matter and deed worth recording. The
deeds of men that have been clearly and accurately written
down are as pinpoints to the oceans of human experience. To
recall that experience we must rely on written record, varying
from direct narrative to indirect allusion and confirmation; we
must rely also on memory-the memory of contemporary on-
lookers, of those who heard their word, of those who over a
lapse of years interpreted it and handed it on; we must rely
on the mute but powerful testimony of habits, customs, and
ideals, which echo and reflect vast stretches of past time.
Finally, we agree upon as true history and actual fact any
interpretation of past action which we today believe and want
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to believe is true. The relation of this last historical truth to
real truth may vary from fact to falsehood.
Climate, with sun and ice, gave Europe opportunity to ex-
pand vastly the Asiatic and African invention of written rec-
ords. Heat and rain made written record in West Africa almost
impossible and forced that land to rely on the memories of
men, developed over the centuries to a marvelous system of
folklore and tradition. But back of both methods lay real
human history recorded in cultural patterns, industry, religion,
and art.
One of the extraordinary developments of civilization in
Africa was on the West Coast around the great Gulf of Guinea.
Frobenius has fancifully called this "Atlantis" and regards it
as possibly a development of the culture of that fabled island
in the Atlantic. Whatever its origin, there grew up on the
West Coast of Africa a peculiarly African state. How far back
its development extends, no man knows. We have a fairly
authentic history from the seventeenth century on, creditable
but discontinuous reports in the sixteenth and fifteenth, and
before that only customs, tradition, and legend.
On a coast protected from inland by mountain, forest, and
desert, and on the west by the ocean, there grew up an agri-
cultural culture centering in the village. On this was developed
in time, industry and art. Industry discovered division of labor
between cities; each town had its own peculiar industry and
then traded its surplus with the other towns. The towns were
united in a loose confederacy with councils and chiefs.
Six hundred years before Christ, Phoenicians traded on the
West Coast of Africa and a century later the Carthaginians.
From prehistoric times this coast was peopled by the black West
African type of Negro. The center of their culture lay above
the Bight of Benin, along the slave coast, and reached east
and north. It can be traced in stone monuments, architecture,
works of art, and especially patterns of culture.
ATLANTIS
The fabrication of cloth and tools was widespread and
leisurely, as befitted a tropical sun. For there was here the
fierce fight with the mosquito, just as in the Congo, and east
there was the duel with the tsetse fly; and this battle with ma-
laria, sleeping-sickness, and a dozen enemies of man was as.
much a part of the struggle for life and happiness as any of
man's activities. Despite this, not only the making of cloth.
the fashioning of garments, and the welding of iron reached
a high development but there grew up also an art, primitive
but of exceptional power, which has influenced the modern
world and deserves to be called one of the three or four original
art forms of this earth. Agriculture and fishing, manufacturing
and pottery, the welding and processing of metal, the devel-
opment of painting and art, characterize this Negro cul-
ture.
In Ashanti weaving was done with simple tools, calling for
great skill, and resulted in cloth artistically beautiful. There
was wood-carving, divided into many separate branches;
carvers made fetishes and drums and figures which were indi-
vidual and original. "Regarded in the light of certain modem
aesthetic tendencies, they possess an individuality and peculiar
merit which astonish many people who see them for the first
time. Love and appreciation of what is artistic and beautiful
are attributes which cannot be said to be the prerogative of
all of us. In Ashanti, however, such traits seem to be possessed
by what we should call 'the uneducated masses.' There is.
hardly any object capable of artistic treatment which is not
made the medium for some ornamental design which gives.
aesthetic delight to the African's mind and eye; such as stools,
spoons, combs, wooden plates, calabashes, doors, sticks, staves of,
office, canoes, wari boards, knives, mortars, drums, ivory tusks,
pots, pipes, weights and scales, metal work of every description,
walls of temples and dwellings, and textiles of every kind.
Even the tools and appliances used to obtain these effects, the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
forge itself, the shuttle, the mesher used for making nets, are
ornamental, being decorated with artistic effects, which, how-
ever crude, are never vulgar and inartistic." 1
The true West African showed great skill in plastic art; he
carved ivory and wood, and the bronzes of Benin are among
the most noteworthy remains of artistic effort in the world.
When the state was seized by the British in 1897, they found
carved elephant tusks, bronzes cast by the eire-perdue process,
including the well-known bronze head of a Negress, now in the
British Museum, a masterpiece of art.
A bronze head was discovered by Frobenius in Nigeria in
1910-1912. In this remarkable figure we have what is perhaps
<thefinest known example of African achievement in the realm
of the plastic arts. In the words of its discoverer, "the setting
of the lips, the shape of the ears, the contour of the face, all
prove, if separately examined, the perfection of a work of true
art which the whole of it obviously is. . . . It is cast in what
we call the 'eire perdue: or the hollow cast, and is very finely
chased, indeed like the best Roman examples." 2
Considerations growing out of the study of this and terra-
cotta specimens, supplemented by many other findings reported
by previous investigators, led Frobenius to the daring conclu-
sion that this art belongs to the old order of Central African
civilization whose beginnings go back perhaps to the second
millennium before Christ. He was also of the opinion that there
is sufficient evidence to warrant the assumption that there were
important links between this ancient culture and some of those
famous and widely heralded civilizations which flourished
along the banks of the Nile and in the Mediterranean Basin
in the Classical and pre-Classical Ages.
The oldest art is that of pottery, of which there are endless
remains in West Africa. Traces of pottery-making go back
1Robert S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1927), pp. 269-70.
2 Frobenius, op. cit.
ATLANTIS
certainly five hundred years and possibly a thousand years on
the West Coast. It is done chiefly by women and is a hereditary
craft handed down from mother to daughter.
It may well be that the West Coast Negroes first gave to
civilization the art of welding iron which spread over all Africa
and then eventually into Europe and Asia. It is of course pos-
sible that iron welding was discovered on other continents
independently of Africa, but no continent had so wide a use
of iron in earliest times.
According to Boas: "It seems likely that at times when the
European was still satisfied with rude stone tools, the African
had invented or adopted the art of smelting iron. Consider for
a moment what this invention has meant for the advance of
the human race. As long as the hammer, knife, drill, the spade.
and the hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be made
of shell or hard wood, effective industrial work was not im-
possible, but difficult. A great progress was made when copper
found in large nuggets was hammered out into tools and later
on shaped by melting; and when bronze was introduced; but
the true advancement of industrial life did not begin until
the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikely that the
people who made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron
ores by smelting were the African Negroes. Neither ancient
Europe, not ancient western Asia, nor ancient China knew iron.
and everything points to its introduction from Africa. At the
time of the great African discoveries toward the end of the
past century, blacksmiths were found all over Africa from north
to south and from east to west. With his simple bellows and a
charcoal fire he reduced the ore that is found in many parts
of the continent and forged implements of great usefulness and
beauty." 8
Torday has argued: "I feel convinced by certain arguments
that seem to prove to my satisfaction that we are indebted to
the Negro for. the very keystone of our modern civilization
3Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19.
154 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
and that we owe him the discovery of iron." 4 Togoland is
perhaps the oldest and most famous iron-working area in
Africa.
According to Reclus, "The smelting and working of iron,
most useful of all metallurgic discoveries, has been attributed
to the Negroes as well as to the Chalybes of Asia Minor; and
the Bongos of the White Nile, as well as some other African
tribes, have constructed furnaces of a very ingenious type. Their
smelters and forgers are, for the most part, satisfied with rude
and primitive implements, in the use of which they, however,
display marvellous skill. The Fangs of the Ogowe basin pro-
duce excellent iron, whose quality is scarcely equalled by Eu-
ropeans themselves. In most of the native tribes the smiths
constitute a special caste, much respected and even dreaded for
their reputed knowledge of the magic arts." 5
Concerning West African art in general, Sir Michael Sadler
said: "West Africa has made its own characteristic contribution
to the artistic treasures of the world." Sir William Rothenstein
added: "I know nothing of the culture which produced these
noble pieces, nor what influences, native or alien, inspired
them. I know only that they are superb works of art, worthy to
be set beside the best examples of sculpture of any period."
According to 1- 1- Sweeney, the American critic: "As a sculp-
tural tradition, African art has had no rival." 6
Professor Roger Fry, distinguished British art critic, said:
"We have the habit of thinking that the power to create ex-
pressive plastic form is one of the greatest of human achieve-
ments, and the names of great sculptures are handed down from
generation to generation, so that it seems unfair to be forced to
admit that certain nameless savages have possessed this power
4 Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. XLIII, p. 14.
5 Eli see Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Africa (New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1882-1895), p. 22.
6 J. J. Sweeney, African Negro Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1935)· Sir Michael Ernest Sadler, Arts oi West Africa (London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1936), p. 2.
ATLANTIS
not only in a higher degree than we at this moment, but than
we as a nation have ever possessed it. And yet that is where I
find myself. I have to admit that some of these things are great
sculpture, greater, I think, than anything we produced even
in the Middle Ages. Certainly they have the special qualities
of sculpture in a higher degree. They have indeed complete
plastic freedom; that is to say, these African artists really con-
ceive form in three dimensions. Now this is rare in sculp-
ture." 7
In drum and strings African music reached a high degree of
originality and perfection. The development of the drum lan-
guage by intricate rhythms enabled the natives not only to
lead in dance and ceremony, but to telegraph all over the
continent with a swiftness and precision hardly rivaled by the
electric telegraph. Von Hornbostel said of African music,
particularly in Togo: "The African Negroes are uncommonly
gifted for music, probably, on an average, more so than the
white race. This is clear not only from the high development
of African music, especially as regards polyphony and rhythm,
but a very curious fact, unparalleled, perhaps, in history, makes.
it even more evident; namely, the fact that Negro slaves in
America and their descendants, abandoning their original
music style, have adapted themselves to that of their white
masters and produced a new kind of folk music in that style.
Presumably no other people would have accomplished this. In
fact, the plantation songs and spirituals and also the blues and
ragtimes which have launched or helped to launch our modern
dance music, are the only remarkable kinds of music brought
forth in America by immigrants." 8
Professor von Luschan considered the craftsmanship of
Benin workers equal to the best that was ever produced by
Cellini. Yet at the time they were creating, "in 1550, not a single
7 Roger Eliot Fry, Vision and Design (London: Chatto and Windus, 1920),
pp.65-66.
8 Memorandum IV, International African Institute, London, p. 33.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
peasant's house in Scandinavia had a window; and as late as
1773 Dr. Johnson and Boswell entered during their tour of the
Hebrides, a hovel which 'for a window had only a small hole,
which was stopped with a piece of turf, that was taken out
occasionally to let in light.' In Berlin at the time of the Great
Elector (1681), many houses in the capital had pigsties imme-
diately below the front windows." 9
Frobenius wrote of West African cultures: "What these
old captains recounted, these chiefs of expeditions-Delbes,
Marchais, Pigafetta, and all the others, what they recounted
is true. It can be verified. In the old Royal Kunstkammer of
Dresden, in the Weydemann collection of VIm, in many an-
other 'cabinet of curiosities' of Europe, we still find West
African collections dating from this epoch. Marvellous plush
velvets of an extreme softness, made of the tenderest leaves of
a certain kind of banana plant; stuffs soft and supple, brilliant
and delicate, like silks, woven with the fibre of a raffia, well
prepared; powerful javelins with points encrusted with copper
in the most elegant fashion; bows so graceful in form and so
beautifully ornamented that they would do honor to any mu-
seum of arms whatsoever; calabashes decorated with the great-
est taste; sculpture in ivory and wood of which the work shows
a very great deal of application and style.
"And all that came from the countries of the African periph-
ery, delivered over after that to slave merchants ....
"But when the pioneers of the last century pierced this zone
of 'European civilization' and the wall of protection which had,
for the time being raised behind it-the wall of protection of
the Negro still 'intact'-they found everywhere the same
marvels which the captains had found on the coast.
"In 1906 when I penetrated into the territory of Kassai-
Sankuru, I found still, villages of which the principal streets
were bordered on each side, for leagues, with rows of palm trees,
9 R. E. C. Armattoe, The Golden Age of Western African Civilization
(Londonderry: Lomeshie Research Center, 1946),p. 41.
ATLANTIS
and of which the houses, decorated each one in charming
fashion, were works of art as well.
"No man who did not carry sumptuous arms of iron or of
copper, with inlaid blades and handles covered with serpent
skin. Everywhere velvets and silken stuffs. Each cup, each pipe,
each spoon was an object of art perfectly worthy to be compared
to the creations of the Roman European style. But all this was
only the particularly tender and iridescent bloom which adorns
a ripe and marvellous fruit; the gestures, the manners, the
moral code of the entire people, from the little child to the
old man, although they remained within absolutely natural
limits, were imprinted with dignity and grace, in the families
of the princes and the rich as in the vassals and slaves. I know
of no northern people who can be compared with these primi-
tives for unity of civilization. Alas these last 'Happy Isles'J
They, also, were submerged by the tidal wave of European
civilization. And the peaceful beauty was carried away by the
floods.
"But many men had this experience: the explorers who left
the savage and warrior plateau of the East and the South and
the North to descend into the plains of the Congo, of Lake
Victoria, of the Ubangi: men such as Speke and Grant, Liv-
ingstone, Cameron, Stanley, Schweinfurth, Junker, de Brazza-
all of them-made the same statements: they came from coun-
tries dominated by the rigid laws of the African Ares, and
from then on they penetrated into the countries where peace
reigned, and joy in adornment and in beauty; countries of old
civilizations, of ancient styles, of harmonious styles." 10
All this industry in West Africa was developed around the
Africans' ideas of religion: the worship of souls of trees and
plants of animals; the use of the fetish; the belief in fairies
and monsters. Along with this went training for medicine men
and chiefs, and careful rules for birth, marriages, and funerals.
Of religion Frobenius said: "There is, among the deities
10 Frobenius, op. cit.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
possessed by all the other dark-skinned African nations com-
bined, not one who can equal Shango, the [West African]
Yoruban God of Thunder, in significance. This country's first
royal ruler sprang, as its people believe, from his loins. His
posterity still have the right to give the country its kings.
"Myth relates that Shango was born of the All-Mother,
Yemaya. Powerful, warlike, and mighty, he was as great a
God as was ever created in the minds of a nation striving for
self-expression. He was the Hurler of Thunderbolts, Lord of
the Storm; a God who burns down cities and rends trees. He
is cruel and savage, yet splendid and beneficent.
"The floods which he pours give life to the soil and gladden
the fields. Mankind fears him, yet loves him. Terrified by his
wrath, they pray for his presence. They picture him riding a
ram. They represent him with his hands full of thunderbolts,
surrounded by his wives, the Lakes and the Rivers. He lives
in a palace of brass, which is dazzlingly bright, and whence light-
ning shoots forth. He has a mighty 'medicine: which he takes
through his mouth, and fire comes out when he opens it." 11
The architecture of the West Coast was strikingly integrated
with climate, physiography, and culture. The lovely buildings
of Benin and Ashanti have been described. A traveler in 1835
described the palace of a chief in Togoland: "Glele's palace
was enormous-it had housed in its time more than two
thousand people-but the greater part is falling into ruins .
. . . This palace is by far the largest and most elaborate piece
of Negro architecture I have seen; it was with that of Great
Benin I imagine the most important in West Africa." 12
In 1787 the Chevalier de Boufflers, writing to the Comtesse
de Sabran, spoke of his enthusiastic admiration of the beauty
and cleanness of the townships in the Senegal.
The climate and physical surroundings conditioned much
of this human development. There was lacking here the stone
11 Ibid.
12 Armattoe, op. cit., p. 29.
ATLANTIS 159
and dry climate which made it easy to preserve records in the
Nile valley. Material on the West Coast disappeared before the
dampness and the hosts of insects. This made the art of memory
recording, of tradition handed down, of unusual importance,
and here it was developed to an astonishing extent; The popu-
lation invented systems of writing of which at least two on
the Guinea Coast and the Cameroons have come down to our
day. There were probably others. Thus alphabets which were
never invented in Europe came to the world through Asia and
Africa.
Certain states on the West Coast were politically noteworthy.
Among these were the Mossi states, two of which still exist.
Each state consisted of several kingdoms of which one had the
leadership. According to Delafosse: "This organization, which
still functions in our day at Wagadugu and at Yatenga,
strangely resembles that which, according to what has, been
told us by Arab authors and the writers of Timbuktu, existed
at Ghana, at Diara, at Gao, and at Mandingo, as well as what
could formerly be observed at Coomassie, at Bonney, in certain
states of subequatorial Africa, and also what can be studied
in some of the little kingdoms of the Senegal, principally the
Jolof, and elsewhere." 18
This seems to constitute the type, perhaps more perfected
at Mossi than elsewhere, of all the states worthy of that name,
great or small, that have been developed all across Negro Africa
since the most remote antiquity. "If the Mandingo empire,
founded and directed by Negroes of probably pure race, could
nevertheless have benefited by some foreign influence through
the canal of Islamism, if the kingdoms of Ashanti and Da-
homey, as those of the Senegal and of the Congo, might have
received some inspiration from the Europeans, it seems very
certain that the Mossi empires have always been sheltered from
all non-Negro interference as well as non-Negro influence, and
18 Maurice Delafosse, The Negroes of Africa, tr. from the French by
F. Fligelman (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1931),p. xxxii.
160 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
consequently the political institutions which characterize them
and which are found almost all over Negro Africa are of in-
digenous origin." 14,
The Mossi state did not make territorial conquests and al-
ways constituted a rampart against the extension of Moham-
medanism. In its integrity it represented a civilization uniquely
and really Negro.
Secret societies have always played an important part in West
Africa. They include a large variety of associations, of which
the majority are mutual benefit clubs. Membership confers
social distinction and are methods of bestowing charity. Some
have six or seven grades and judicial functions, with execution
for recalcitrants. One which was perhaps known to Ptolemy,
the geographer of the second century, is associated with the
leopard and has made difficulties for administrators in modern
times. The secret societies used masks and ceremonies and are
peculiarly West African.
The whole culture complex of the African West Coast is
native and original. It is a picture of the development of human
institutions unique in the history of mankind, and we can only
lament that we know so little of it and have studied it so
imperfectly. This body of culture grew up strong and self-
contained upon the West Coast and met in time the sudden
impact of two outer forces: Islam from the north and Christian-
ity from the west.
"West Africans are still today in the period of integral col-
lectivism, known to our ancestors before the Middle Ages,
while we have arrived at individualism. The question which
presents itself is to know whether indeed we have made defini-
tive progress in this line, since many of our thinkers, of the
so-called advance guard, demand, as a benefit, the return to
collectivism, although of a somewhat different form. This
proves that the peoples of Negro Africa have not marched at
the same rate of speed as the peoples of Europe, but in nowise
14 lbid., pp. 69-,]0.
ATLANTIS
proves that the former are inferior to the latter. Who knows,
indeed, whether the latter have not gone too fast?" 15
Among the groups which showed striking intellectual devel-
opment were the Abron, whose state dates from the fifteenth
century; the Akan people, including the Ashanti, whose known
history goes back beyond 1600. In addition there were the Ewe,
Yoruba, people of Benin, Dahomey, and Nubia. Benin was
among the oldest of the states and has a legendary history going
back to A.D. 880 or perhaps earlier. It was a carefully organized
state with a remarkable native culture. It was with Benin that
the Portuguese made contact in the fifteenth century and
traded in slaves and other produce. The people of Yoruba,
with a notable culture, moved westward as the kingdoms of
the Sudan began to expand, and attacked Dahomey;
Dahomey has a known history that dates from before the
sixteenth century; it had a well-organized state with farmers
and artisans, but they became middlemen in the slave trade.
In the nineteenth century they made a treaty with the French,
but finally war broke out and the country became a French
pro tectora te.
The Ashanti played a notable part in West Africa. They
conquered the Fanti people and fought six wars with England
between 1803 and 1874; they were finally subdued in 1894.
Their king, Osai Tutu Quamina, was a man of intelligence
and character who would have made advantageous contact
between whites and Negroes if he had been treated fairly.
But the English during these days were wavering between two
ideas: between the suppression of the slave trade to America
and emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, and the
newer idea of reducing West Africa to colonial status. For a
time they hesitated, even setting up the Negro state of Sierra
Leone to be ruled by free slaves, and co-operating with the
similar American experiment in Liberia. Finally, however,
when the clear meaning of colonial imperialism began to be
15 Ibid., p. xxxii.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
understood, they turned to definite conquest. The Fanti people
who had helped the English conquer the Ashanti attempted
to organize their relation to England by a federation, but the
constitution that they adopted was regarded as treasonable
and those who drafted it were put in jail, although afterward
released by the Home Secretary.
The whole European situation was changing in the late
nineteenth century. The Franco-Prussian war had been fought,
Germany was a great power, and England was consolidating a
wide colonial empire. The native culture on the West Coast
underwent various consecutive changes. The powerful states
of earlier days had been pressed back by the developments in
the Sudan and even in the Nile valley. They found prosperity
and encouragement in the new trade to the West, which devel-
oped and degenerated into man-hunting; most of the black
kingdoms on the coast became intermediaries. The slaves and
prisoners captured during the internal wars became no longer
incidents of these wars, but the wars became deliberate efforts
to gather slaves for trade and export.
The character of culture on the slave coasts slowly changed;
an element of cruelty crept into states like Benin and Da-
homey, although other states, like that of the Yoruba, seem
to have resisted to some extent. But the ancient culture of the
Atlantic coast was ruined by the trade in slaves, by the im-
portation of gin, and by the European trade; European goods
drove out native art and artistic industry.
Of all this West African cultural development our knowl-
edge is fragmentary and incomplete, jumbled up with the
African slave trade. There has been no systematic, general
study of the history of humanity on this coast. Nearly all has
disappeared in the frantic effort to paint Negroes as apes fit
only for slavery and then to forget the whole discreditable
episode, wipe it out of history, and emphasize the glory and
philanthropy of Europe. The invaluable art treasure which
ATLANTIS
Britain stole from Benin has never been properly classified or
exhibited, but lies in the British Museum.
Yet on the West Coast was perhaps the greatest attempt in
human history before the twentieth century to build a culture
based on peace and beauty, to establish a communism of
industry and of distribution of goods and services according
to human need. It was crucified by greed, and its very memory
blasphemed by the modern historical method.
There can be no doubt but that the level of culture among
the masses of Negroes in West Africa in the fifteenth century
was higher than that of northern Europe, by any standard
of measurement-homes, clothes, artistic creation and ap-
preciation, political organization and religious consistency.
"Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, West Africa had
a more solid politico-social organization, attained a greater
degree of in ternal cohesion and was more conscious of the social
function of science than Europe." 16 What stopped and de-
graded this development? The slave trade; that modern change
from regarding wealth as being for the benefit of human beings,
to that of regarding human beings as wealth. This utter reversal
of attitude which marked the day of a new barter in human
flesh did not die with the slave, but persists and dominates the
thought of Europe today and during the fatal era when Europe
by force ruled mankind.
16Armattoe, op. cit., pp. 33, 35.
CHAPTER VIII
CENTRAL AFRICA AND
THE MARCH OF THE BANTU
The story of, Central Africa) the Congo valley)
the region of the Great Lakes and the South-
central lands) together with their invaders.
THE story of the Congo valley and the Great Lakes regionhas never been written save from the piecemeal points of
view of special interests: the explorers, the travelers, the mis-
sionaries, the slave raiders, the hunters for ivory, game, gold,
and territory. There is practically no coherent account of the
millions of human beings who have lived here for thousands
of years, nor any body of study to guide the sociologist or
historian.
Yet this is the Africa whence all the other Africas have
emerged; this is the hot heart of that mighty land which
probably first gave birth and sustenance to human beings, and
from which they crept, crawled, and marched to the conquest
of the earth. Later, in the vast upheavals of the land and the
vaster stirrings of nations, groups, and peoples, the folk of this
area streamed back and forth, marched up and down and
across, in refuge and pursuit, in quest and conquest, until in
the last fateful and far-reaching march of the Bantu they
settled in something like the present distribution of African
peoples. Around this march and countermarch, this endless
164
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MARCH OF THE BANTU 165
battle and strife, circled the fate of the whole earth, its labor,
its trade, its jewels and gold, its conquest, mastery, slavery,
power, and fall. It should be worth a study which it never has
received.
Journeying south from Egypt, one finds on the left the high-
lands of Abyssinia; on the right, the River Nile and what is
now the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan leading south to the Great
Lakes and the Congo valley. It was out of these lakes, forests,
and valleys that the trade of Egypt came: the gold and ivory,
the ostrich feathers, the gum and incense, and all the vast body
of goods which made the connection so strong between Egypt
and the south. It has been a matter of long dispute as to how far
south this trade reached. Logically it seems that gold must
have been brought from the same South African reefs which
still furnish the largest supply in the world; but some might
have come from mine- and placer-digging on the way, and even
from West Africa.
The organization of human beings here varied from millen-
nium to millennium and from century to century. Probably
the first settlers or autochthonous inhabitants of the Lake
region of Africa were the little Negrillos. Upon these in the
long course of time descended the tall, black Africans, possibly
from Asia, or from the land connecting Asia and Africa, pos-
sibly from neighboring parts of Africa. These Africans moved
from the Great Lakes northward, pushing the pygmies before
them. The Sahara at that time was not yet a desert, but
abounded with rivers and forests, inviting invaders even to
the shores of the Mediterranean. These users of stone imple-
ments gradually became agriculturalists and developed art and
religion.
Thousands of years after this first wave of Negro immigrants
there came another migration. The newcomers pushed north,
west, and south, dispossessed the remaining Negrillos of the
soil and greedily drove them toward the central forests and the
deserts. They developed agriculture, the use of cattle and
166 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
domestic fowls. They invented the working of iron and the
making of pottery. Also, those who advanced farthest toward
the north mixed with the Europeans and Asiatics in varying
degrees so that sometimes the resulting population seemed now
white and yellow mixed with Negro blood, and in other cases
blacks mixed with white and yellow blood. The languages were
mixed in similar ways. Thus arose the various Libyan and
Egyptian populations. All this migration and mixture took
place long before the epoch of the First Egyptian Dynasty.
As Egypt developed, the peoples of Central Africa as well
as those in North Africa set out toward the Nile valley. Over
thousands of years a stream of Negroes passed down the Nile,
as migrants, as traders, as soldiers, as slaves. They further
developed that Ethiopia whence Egypt s-prang and which later
conquered the Nile valley and the world.
Later the peoples from West and North Africa as well as Asia
began to press down upon Ethiopia, as Nubia and Dongola rose
to power. Abyssinia, turning back from Asia, encroached on
Ethiopia from the south. These developments must have turned
the tide of migration from Central Africa south toward the
Cape of Good Hope. Hottentots and Bushmen, people formed
by mixture of the tall tribes and the Negrillos and by absorp-
tion of other strains, left the Great Lakes region and migrated
to South Africa more than a thousand years before Christ.
South Africa was already occupied by peoples who had come
there from thirty thousand to fifty thousand years before, pos-
sibly from Asia, and who, living long in a temperate climate,
were less Negroid than the invaders. The Bushmen exhibited
a marvelous gift for drawing and engraving and left their
pictures not only in South Africa but in North Africa and
Europe, raising the baffling question of their origin and wan-
derings.
Meantime the so-called Bantu began to develop. Various
black tribes began to be pushed west and south by the develop-
ments in the Nile valley and the western Sudan, as well as by
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MARCH OF THE BANTU 167
the strong defense and even aggression from the West Coast,
which threw out arms of trade and cultural contact to Egypt,
Greece, and Rome. With the coming of Islam into Africa in
the seventh century their march became a steady but slow
movement lasting several hundred years. In their path were a
large number of different tribes and nations, in various stages
of cultural development. Gradually these peoples, some con-
quering, some overcome by conquest and infiltration, came to
be known as Bantu, from the languages they used, adopted,
and rebuilt.
The migration and formation of the Bantu peoples was a
long slow movement beginning a thousand years or more before
Christ and extending to the nineteenth century of our era with
periods of stoppage and acceleration.
The oldest of these languages were formed around the head-
waters of the Nile in the Great Lake region of Equatorial
Africa. Thence the Bantu apparently spread south across the
mountains and plateaus of southern Congoland to the Atlantic,
east and south to the Indian Ocean, and south across the
Zambesi to South Africa.
In Africa before them had been inhabitants for many thou-
sands of years: the pygmies and perhaps other forest and Su-
danese Negroes. In South Africa, however, when the Bantu
crossed the Zambesi, perhaps around 700 B.C., they found the
land occupied by the Bushmen and the Hottentots.
This movement of the Bantu south led to the barrier of the
wide sea, a new contact with the European slavery, and a new
approach toward Asia over the ramparts through which the
Zambesi had to force its way. The great rift opposed its moun-
tains and valleys. There must have come in these thousand
years all sorts of cultural events: the overthrow of well-
developed kingdoms and cultures; the wild forays on estab-
lished centers of life, like that of the Jaggas, of whom we
continually hear, east and west; the more or less increased
mingling of people of different origins and cultures, until at
168 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
last there emerged new languages and one dominant Bantu
tongue.
Sir Harry Johnston wrote: "What are the Bantu languages?
And why should they have been preferred as a special subject
of interest in philological research to a degree far exceeding
that of other language families of purely African location?
They constitute a very distinct type of speech which, as con-
trasted with others amongst the groups of Negro tongues, is
remarkable as a rule for the Italian melodiousness, simplicity
and frequency of its vowel sounds, and the comparative ease
with which its exemplars can be acquired and spoken by Euro-
peans. The Bantu languages are attractive to the explorer, not
only from the harmonious adjustment of vowels and conso-
nants, but from the logic of their grammatical structure, which,
in the majority of these tongues, provides for a wide range and
a nice discrimination in the expression of ideas." 1
The result of this march of the Bantu was extraordinary,
but it is difficult for the student today to distinguish between
pre-Bantu and Bantu cultures. Or perhaps it would be clearer
to say that we do not know when and how particular cultures
became Bantu-ized, and just what they were before the Bantu
influx and influence.
Possibly the first of the ancient Bantu tribes moved eastward
toward the mountain Nile and the Great Lakes from the
valley north of the Albert Nyanza. They remained in the
southwestern part of what is now the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
until 300 or 400 B.C. when they started south. Probably at the
beginning of the Christian era the Bantu were settled on the
Indian Ocean, and there the Arab traders cultivated relations
with them and mingled their blood. Eventually the Bantu
invaded the Congo basin, already possibly inhabited by Negroes
of the West African type and by pygmies. First the Bantus
went round and not through the forests, but finally they broke
1Harry H. Johnston, A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu
Languages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), Vol. I, p. 15.
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MARCH OF THE BANTU 169
through the forests and sent migrants across Congoland as
far as the coast, where they met the West African Negro culture.
These Bantu peoples were of many types. Livingstone, Stan-
ley, and others were struck with the Egyptian features of many
of the tribes of Africa, and this is true of many of the peoples
between Central Africa and Egypt, so that some students have
tried to invent a "Hamitic" race to account for them-
an entirely unnecessary hypothesis. The Bantu cultures in-
cluded the herdsman craft, agriculture with the hoe, knowledge
of iron and copper. It is quite possible that the Bantu invasion
was facilitated by their iron weapons."
It is difficult to rebuild today a picture of civilization in
Central Africa in these times. We have notes by travelers of
numbers of centers of culture: north of the kingdom of the
Congo lay the kingdom of Ansika; the kingdoms of Luanda,
including Katanga and other states, founded by the Luba-Iunda
people, extended into the valley of the Kasai and the Zambesi.
Here also was the realm of the celebrated Muata Yanvo, the
last of fourteen rulers, who was lord of three hundred chiefs
two million inhabitants spread over a hundred thousand square
miles.
The Portuguese came on their way to India and occupied
the East African Coast as a stopping point on the way to India.
They became excited by the tales of African kingdoms and
especially by that of gold in Sofala. By 1506 the Portuguese
were participating in the wealth of these gold mines. They
mentioned the kingdom of Velanga and especially the empire
of the Monomotapa. Vasco da Gama found prosperous and
busy cities, some built of stone and mortar. The Portuguese
established themselves on the coast but could not penetrate
into the Bantu interior.
When the Portuguese arrived on the West Coast in the
fifteenth century, a large state known as the kingdom of the
2 See map of Bantu language migrations, Johnston, ibid., Vol. II, frontis-
piece.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Congo had already been in existence for centuries and extended
over modern Angola as far east as the Kasai and the upper
Zambesi Rivers. Its emperor was converted to Christianity and
his sons were educated in Portugal. Several Congolese became
priests and one became a bishop.
In its capital, San Salvador, were numerous cathedrals.
"Early in the sixteenth century it became a Christian land,
whose wealth and pomp dazzled all Christendom. Its emperors
and courtiers vied in their splendour with the grandees of
Spain and Portugal and its native prelates were ordained by
Rome. Never again will an African kingdom exhibit so much
refinement and so much grace. We have it on the authority of
the ancient chroniclers that in their deportment and attire,
in their manners, and in their conversation, they had nothing
to learn from the illuminati of Europe.
"Then came the seventeenth century when the power of the
court began to wane and a mere parish priest from Europe
could threaten to depose the Emperor. With the eighteenth
century came the decline, and towards its end, the very
memory of what it once was had been lost upon the new
generation." 3
Duarte Lopes, whom Philip II of Spain and Portugal sent
to the Congo, related his experiences to Filippo Pigafetta, a
papal official, who published his accounts in Rome in 1591.
In 1574 Paulo Diaz, grandson of Bartolomeo, the explorer,
visited Angola and was deeply impressed by the high culture
of the inhabitants.
Upon these old centers of culture moved slowly the oncom-
ing Bantu from the Nile valley and the Sudan and the Lake
regions. They established new kingdoms, of which one was that
of the Bushongo. This organized state instituted or adopted
a new industrial political system; it was ruled by a national
council containing representatives of the various arts and crafts
as well as representatives from territorial divisions. The
3 Armattoe, op. cit., p. 30.
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MARCH OF THE BANTU 171
Bushongo made remarkable damask embroidery and velvets
and had skilled social leadership.
Of some Negro states we know only that they existed and had
power, but little of their history. There was for instance the
Kitwara empire, whose greatness is attested to by the fact that
out of it grew Uganda, one of the best organized states of Africa
in the Middle Ages. Of the origin of Kitwara we have only
legend, which says that the common founder and first ruler,
Kintu, came from the north, bringing with him a single cow,
goat, chicken, banana root, and sweet potato; these, increasing
miraculously, soon stocked the country, the potato being
especially apportioned to Banyoro and the banana to Uganda.
Presently Kintu became weary of his people's stupidities and
blood-shedding and disappeared, but since it was known that
he did not die, it became traditional for his successor to seek
for him. At last he was found by a king, Ma'anda, as an aged
man, seated on a throne in the forest, his beard white with age
and his followers white-skinned and clothed in white robes.
The story tells how Ma'anda committed some act of bloodshed,
whereupon Kintu and his followers vanished and have been
seen no more.
The kingdom of Kitwara, the vaster empire of the Mono-
motapa, the kingdom of the Congo, and the various organiza-
tions of the Lunda people in the Congo valley, probably pre-
dated and at the same time were the results and remains of
the migration of the Bantu. For two reasons the history of this
movement and clash of cultures have been lost: first, the
climate, which records could not withstand; and second, be-
cause the movement of these people was toward a dead end in
a slave-ridden South, differing from similar movements in Asia
which led toward the Islamic culture of Bagdad and to Egypt;
and movements in Europe which led toward Rome.
The Bantu nations thus formed, found, or transformed a
multitude of kingdoms and cultures, and with our present
knowledge we cannot say just how a given culture fits into the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
picture, whether as a civilization existing prior to the coming
of the Bantu or as a state which the invaders transformed.
Certain it is that the greatest kingdom of Central Africa
was that of the Monomotapa, and the greatest cultural remains
of the Monomotapa are the celebrated ruins of Zimbabwe.
An early Negro migration, some thousand years before Christ,
had come upon or founded the remarkable civilization which
we know as that of Zimbabwe. By the tenth century a later
Bantu migration had overthrown and reorganized it, estab-
lishing among the Maka-langa, Matabele, and Mashona, a line
of rulers called the Monomotapa.
Zimbabwe was an extensive state. In the seventeenth century
it stretched from the Zambesi River down to the Fish River,
ran seven hundred and fifty miles inland, and was approxi-
mately the size of Mexico. Frobenius regarded it as undoubtedly
a "very great kingdom"; the king was powerful and conducted
courts of justice in spring and fall. After seven years the reign-
ing king was killed by the people and a new king crowned. The
name itself means "prince of the mine," and the area was a
mineral center from which came gold, diamonds, and rubies
long before modern times.
The ruins of Zimbabwe show today an extraordinary cul-
tural past, presenting certain phenomenal remains not to be
found anywhere else in Africa south of the Great Lakes. Among
these are extensive gold mines sunk to a depth in rock; scores
of colossal stone buildings; forms of ceremonial not common
among present Bantu people; impressions of some Asiatic
influence; and the presence of many nonindigenous plants and
trees.
Unfortunately, any reconstruction of this ancient African
culture and history must be pursued today mainly in the Negro-
hating atmosphere and amid the color-caste system of South
Africa. Despite some eminent and fair scholars, the main situa-
tion is like setting Nazis to study Jews.
The area of these prehistoric mines is strewn over large
CENTRAL AFRICA AND MARCH OF THE BANTU 173
tracts of territory, measuring over forty thousand square miles.
Only a few of these tracts have yet been explored, but the par-
tial exploration has already yielded relics of birds of stone,
phalli, great soapstone bowls, and gold ornaments.
It is evident that the vast amount of gold extracted from
prehistoric Rhodesia, as indicated in the Hebrew Scriptures
and by ancient historians before the commencement of the
Christian era, exceeded that obtained within historic times.
Gold mines discovered in the northern part of Rhodesia
show that gold was mined and used in Africa in the Stone Age.
Caton-Thompson has assured us that the belief that the natives
of earlier days knew nothing about depth mining is quite un-
true. The Africans, even in modern times, were so resentful
of European exploitation that they prevented the whites as
far as possible from learning the whereabouts of the mines. In
the nineteenth century English explorers found natives gold
mining at depth, with buckets, ropes, axes, and charcoal.
It is not difficult to account for the gold mined between the
ninth and sixteenth centuries. ,Probably the bulk of it went to
India. The wealth of the Hindu kings in the fourteenth cen-
tury was astonishing. Firishtah, the Persian historian in A.D.
1311 recorded a hoarding of gold worth a hundred million
pounds sterling. In the sixteenth century a Portuguese corre-
spondent described the immense revenue, the gold-covered
furniture, and trappings of the kings of Vijayanaga and of the
religious institutions.s
"The interest in Zimbabwe and the allied ruins should to all
educated people be enhanced a hundredfold; it enriches, not
impoverishes, our wonderment at their remarkable achieve-
ment: it cannot detract from their inherent majesty: for the
mystery of Zimbabwe is the mystery which lies in the still pul-
sating heart of native Africa." 5
4 C. Caton-Thompson, The Zimbabwe Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1931),pp. 194, 195, Ig8.
5 Ibid., P: 199.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
What was it that overthrew this civilization? Undoubtedly
the same sort of raids of barbarous warriors that we have
known in our day. For instance, in 1570 there came upon the
country of Mozambique, farther up the coast, "such an inun-
dation of Pagans that they could not be numbered. They came
from the part of Monomotapa where is the Great Lake from
which spring these great rivers." 6 In later days throng upon
throng of herdsmen invaders overthrew Bantu settlers and
were in turn overwhelmed.
That Asiatic and even Chinese influences were present at
times in this remarkable cultural development, with its irri-
gation and fortresses, is not improbable. The trade between
Asia and Africa by way of the East Coast dates back to pre-
history and was especially rife when Mohammedans took
refuge there in the seventh, eighth, and. ninth centuries. But
just as neither Arabs, Persians, nor Portuguese ever dominated
the blacks here in historic times, so the culture of Zimbabwe
was without doubt always dominantly Negro, with that cul-
tural inspiration that everywhere comes with foreign contacts.
There is continued difficulty in disentangling the threads of
African culture in this region of the continent, but that.it is
authentically and indubitably African there can be no doubt.
Schweinfurth said: "Not a custom, not a superstition is found
in one part which is not more or less accurately repeated in
another; not one contrivance of design, not one weapon of
war exists of which it can be declared that it is exclusive prop-
erty of anyone race. From north to south, and from sea to sea,
in some form or other, every invention is sure to be repeated;
it is 'the thing that has been.' If we could at once grasp and set
before our minds facts that are known (whether as regards
language, race, culture, history, or development) of that vast
region of the world which is comprehended in the name of
Africa, we should have before us the witness of an intermingling
6 DuBois, Black Folll, p. 75.
ANCIENT ITALIAN COINS OF THE THIRD OR SECOND CENTURY
BEFORE CHRIST
of races which is beyond all precedent. And yet, bewildering as
the prospect would appear, it remains a fact not to be gain-
said, that it is impossible for anyone to survey the country as
a whole without perceiving that high above the multitude of
individual differences there is throned a principle of unity
which embraces well-nigh all the population." 7
To the final eruption of the Bantu into South Africa and
their contact with the Dutch and British we have already
alluded. It leaves there today perhaps the worst interracial
situation in the world, with caste, ignorance, cruelty, and dog-
matic religious hypocrisy. Together with the southern United
States, it forms the most backward section of the world in
race relations.
7 Georg A. Schweinfurth, Heart Of Africa, tr. from the German by Ellen
E. Frewer (London: Sampson, Low, Marston Low & Searle, 1873), Vol. I,
P·313·
CHAPTER IX
ASIA IN AFRICA
The story of the outpouring of Asia into Africa
from A.D. 500 to I500, and the effect which the
interaction of these two continents had on the
world.
THE connection between Asia and Africa has always beenclose. There was probably actual land connection in prehis-
toric times, and the black race appears in both continents in
the earliest records, making it doubtful which continent is the
point of origin. Certainly the Negroid people of Asia have
played a leading part in her history. The blacks of Melanesia
have scoured the seas, and Charles Tauber makes them in-
ventors of one of the world's first written languages: thus "this
greatest of all human inventions was made by aborigines
whose descendants today rank among the lowest, the proto-
Australians." 1
The ethnic history of India would seem to be first a pre-
historic substratum of Negrillos or black dwarfs; then the
pre-Dravidians, a taller, larger type of Negro; then the Dra-
vidians, Negroes with some mixture of Mongoloid and later
of Caucasoid stocks. The Dravidian Negroes laid the bases of
Indian culture thousands of years before the Christian era. On
1Charles Tauber, Seafarers and Hieroglyphs (American Documentation
Institute, Washington, D.C.).
ASIA IN AFRICA 177
these descended through Afghanistan an Asiatic or Eastern
European element, usually called Aryan.
The Rig Veda, ancient sacred hymns of India, tells of the
fierce struggles between these whites and blacks for the mas-
tery of India. It sings of Aryan deities who rushed furiously into
battle against the black foe. The hymns praise Indra, the white
deity, for having killed fifty thousand blacks, "piercing the
citadel of the enemy" and forcing the blacks to run out in
distress, leaving all their food and belongings. The blacks un-
der their renowned leader Krishna, that is, "The Black," fought
back with valor. The whites long held the conquered blacks
in caste servitude, but eventually the color line disappeared be-
fore commerce and industry, intermarriage, and defense against
enemies from without.
In the Gangetic region caste disappeared. The whites en-
listed in the service of the blacks and fought under Negro chiefs.
In the famous battle of the Ten Kings, one of the leading
Aryan chiefs was a Negro. Nesfield said: "The Aryan invader,
whatever class he might belong to, was in the habit of taking
the women 'of the country as wives, and hence no caste, not
even that of the Brahman, can claim to have sprung from
Aryan ancestors." 2 Today some of the Brahmans are as black
and as flat-nosed as the early Negro chiefs. Max Muller said
that some Brahmans are "as black as Pariahs." 8
The culture of the black Dravidians underlies the whole
culture of India, whose greatest religious leader is often limned
as black and curly-haired. According to Massey: "It is certain
that the Black Buddha of India was imaged in the Negroid
type. In the black Negro God, whether called Buddha or Sut-
Nahsi, we have a datum. They carry their color in the proof
of their origin. The people who first fashioned and worshipped
the divine image in the Negroid mould of humanity must,
according to all knowledge of human nature, have been Ne-
2 Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 62.
8 Ibid., p. 63.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
groes themselves. For blackness is not merely mystical, the
features and hair of Buddha belong to the black race and Nahsi
is the Negro name. The genetrix represented as the Dea Multi-
mammia, the Diana of Ephesus, is found as a black figure, nor
is the hue mystical only, for the features are Negroid as were
those of the black Isis in Egypt." 4
Of the thirty apostles who took Buddhism to China, ten are
represented as yellow, ten brown, and ten black. The Indian
blacks, mingling with the straight-haired yellow Mongoloids,
tended to have straighter hair along with their dark color than
Africans, although this was not true in the case of the island
Negroes.
According to Balfour: "Ethnologists are of the opinion that
Africa has had an important influence in the colonization of
Southern Asia, of India, and of the Easter Islands in time prior
to authentic history or tradition. The marked African features
of some of the people in the extreme south of the Peninsula of
India, the Negro and Negrito races of the Andamans and
Great Nicobar, the Semang, Bila, and Jakun of the Malay
Peninsula, and the Negrito and Negro, Papuan and Malagasi
races of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, Australia, and
Polynesia, indicate the extent which characterizes their coloni-
zation .... The spiral-haired Negro race seem to have pre-
ceded the lank-haired brown race .... When we consider the
position of India between the two great Negro provinces, that
on the west being still mainly Negro, even in most of its im-
proved races, and that on the east preserving the ancient Negro
basis in points so near India as the Andamans and Kedah, it
becomes highly probable that the African element in the pop-
ulation of the Peninsula has been transmitted from an archaic
period before the Semitic, Turanian, and Iranian races entered
India and when the Indian Ocean had Negro tribes along its
northern as well as its eastern and western shores .... Perhaps
4 G. Massey, A Book of the Beginnings (London: Williams & Norgate,
1881), Vol. I, pp. 18, 218.
ASIA IN AFRICA
all the original population of southern Arabia, and even of the
Semitic lands, generally was once African." 5
Widney has said: "They [the Negroes] once occupied a much
wider territory and wielded a vastly greater influence upon
earth than they do now. They are found chiefly in Africa, yet
traces of them are to be found through the Islands of Malaysia,
remnants, no doubt, of that more numerous black population
which seems to have occupied tropical Asia before the days
of the Semites, the Mongols, and the Brahminic Aryan. Back
in the centuries which are scarcely historic, where history gives
only vague hintings, are traces of a widespread, primitive
civilization, crude, imperfect, garish, barbaric, yet ruling the
world from its seats of power in the valley of the Ganges, the
Euphrates, and the Nile, and it was of the Black races. The
first Babylon seems to have been of a Negroid race. The earliest
Egyptian civilization seems to have been Negroid. It was in
the days before the Semite was known in either land. The
Black seems to have built up a great empire, such as it was, by
the waters of the Ganges before Mongol or Aryan. Way down
under the mud and slime of the beginnings ... is the Negroid
contribution to the fair superstructure of modern civiliza-
tion."6
H. Imbert, a French anthropologist, who lived in the Far
East, has said in Les Negritos de la Chine: "The Negroid races
peopled at some time all the south of India, Indo-China, and
China. The south of Indo-China actually has now pure Ne-
gritos as the Semangs, and mixed as the Malays and the Sakais .
. . . In the first epochs of Chinese history, the Negrito type
peopled all the south of this country and even in the island
of Hai-Nan, as we have attempted to prove in our study on
the Negritos, or Black Men, of this island. Skulls of these Ne-
5 Edward G. Balfour, ed., "Negro Races," Cyclopaedia of India (London:
Quaritch, 1885), 3rd ed. Vol. II, p. 1073.
6 Joseph P. Widnev, Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (NewYork: Funk and
WagnaIJs, 19°7), Vol. II, pp. 238-39.
180 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
groes have been found in the island of Formosa and traces of
this Negroid element in the islands of Liu-kiu to the south of
Japan. In the earliest Chinese history several texts in classic
books spoke of these diminutive blacks; thus the Tcheu-Li,
composed under the dynasty of Tcheu (1122-249 B.C.), gives
a description of the inhabitants with black and oily skin ....
The Prince Lin-Nan, who died in 122 B.C., speaks of a king-
dom of diminutive blacks in the southwest of China."
Additional evidence of Negroes in China is given by Pro-
fessor Chang Hsing-land in an article entitled, "The Importa-
tion of Negro slaves to China under the T'ang Dynasty, A.D.
618-907": "The Lin-vi Kuo Chuan (Topography of the Land
of Lin-yi) contained in Book 197 of the Chiu Tang Shu (Old
Dynastic History of Tang) says: The people living to the
south of Lin-yi have woolly hair and black skin.''' Chinese
folklore speaks often of these Negroes, he says, and mentions
an empress of China, named Li (A.D. 373-397), consort of the
Emperor Hsiao Wu Wen, who is spoken of as being a Negro.
He adds that according to the writings of a later period-the
seventh to the ninth century-Negro slaves were imported into
China from Africa."
According to Professor Munro, one of the foremost students
of Japanese life and culture: "The Japanese are a mixture of
several distinct stocks-Negrito, Mongolian .... Breadth of
face, intraorbital width, flat nose, prognathism, and brachy-
cephaly might be traced to the Negro stock." 8
The Asiatic and African blacks were strewn along a straight
path between tropical Asia and tropical Africa, and there was
much racial intermingling between Africa and western Asia.
In Arabia particularly the Mongoloids and Negroids mingled
from earliest times. The Mongoloids invaded North Africa
in prehistoric times, and their union with the Negroids formed
the Libyans. Later there was considerable commerce and con-
7 Quoted in Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 67.
8 Munro, Prehistoric Japan (Yokohama: 1911), pp. 676-78.
ASIA IN AFRICA 181
tact between the Phoenicians of North Africa, especially Car-
thage, and the black peoples of the Sudan.
Speaking of the mixture that went on in this area between
Elamite black and Aryan white, Dieulafoy has said: "The
Greeks themselves seemed to have known these two Susian
races, the Negroes of the plains and the Scythian whites of
the mountains. Have not their old poets given to the direct
descendants of the Susian, Memnon, the legendary hero who
perished under the walls of Troy, a Negro father, Tithon,
and a white, mountain woman as mother-Kissia? Do they
not also say that Memnon commanded an army of black and
white regiments? 'Memnon went to the succor of Priam with
ten thousand Susians and ten thousand Ethiopians.' . . . I
shall attempt to show to what distant antiquity belongs the
establishment of the Negritos upon the left bank of the Ti-
gris and the elements constituting the Susian monarchy. . . .
Towards 2300 B.C., the plains of the Tigris and Anzan-
Susinka were ruled by a dynasty of Negro kings.
"The coming of this dynasty of Medes corresponded perhaps
to the arrival in the south of an immense Scythian invasion.
pushed back by the black Susians after having taken pos-
session of the mountains, the whites poured into the plains of
the Tigris and remained master of the country until the time
when Kudur Nakhunta subdued Chaldea and founded Anzan-
Susinka. He added to the territory of the blacks-Nime, Kussi,
Habardip-all the mountainous districts once inhabited by
the whites of the Scythian race." 9
Herodotus, who visited this region in the fifth century B.C.,
mentioned the dark skins of the people. He called them
Ethiopians, but said their hair was straighter than those of
the western Ethiopians, who had woolly hair. The Elamites,
however, seemed rather to have belonged to the more Negroid
stock of the west; their hair, as seen on the monuments, is short
9 Marcel A. Dieulafoy, L'Acropole de Suse (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1893),
pp. 27,44,46,57-86, 102, 115.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
and woolly. "The Elamites," said Sir Harry Johnston, "appear
to have been a Negroid people with kinky hair and to have
transmitted this racial type to the Jews and Syrians. There is
curliness of the hair, together with a Negro eye and full lips
in the portraiture of Assyria which conveys the idea of an evi-
dent Negro element in Babylonia. Quite probably the very
ancient Negro invasion of Mediterranean Europe (of which
the skeletons of the Alpes Maritimes are vestiges) came from
Syria and Asia Minor on its way to Central and Western Eu-
rope." 10
Professor Toynbee also says, "The primitive Arabs who were
the ruling element of the Omayyad Caliphate called them-
selves 'the swarthy people' with a connotation of racial su-
periority, and their Persian and Turkish subjects, 'the ruddy
people: with a connotation of racial inferiority, that is to say,
they drew the distinction that we draw between blonds and
brunets but reversed the value." 11
Carthage especially traded with the Sudan for gold dust,
ostrich feathers, and ivory in exchange for textiles, cloth, cop-
per, and beads. Often the Carthaginians settled among the
Negroes and the Negroes among them. As a result the horse
became known in the Sudan, textiles were made from cotton,
and gold was gathered and worked. The glass industry was
born and spread. The Libyans, or Berbers, were descendants
from the populations of North Africa which consisted of an
Asiatic element that came in prehistoric times and mixed with
the Negroids. From these mixed races came the Sudan stone
houses and the cemented wells and the spread of cattle-raising
and gardening.
The whole population becomes darker and darker toward
the south, until it merges into the blacks of the Sudan. The
divisions, especially the political units-Tripoli, Tunisia, AI-
10 Harry H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World, pp. 24-27.
11Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (London: '934), Vol. I, p. 226.
ASIA IN AFRICA
geria, and Morocco-have no anthropological significance and
do not correspond to any ethnic division. There are many
striking groups: the Negroid Tuareg, or people of the Veil;
the Tibu, or rock people, Negroids with mixed Mongoloid or
Caucasoid blood; the dark Fulani, scattered all over North
Africa from the Upper Niger to the Senegal and forming
often the dominant political power in the lands toward the
coast.
Mohammedanism arose in the Arabian deserts, starting
from Mecca which was in that part of the world which the
Greeks called Ethiopia and regarded as part of the African
Ethiopia. It must from earliest time have had a large popula-
tion of Negroids.
The two greatest colored figures in the history of Islam are
Bilal-i-Habesh (Bilal of Ethiopia) and Tarik-bin-Ziad: "Bilal-i-
Habesh was Mohammed's liberated slave and closest friend to
whom he gave precedence over himself in Paradise. The Prophet
liberated all his slaves, and they were all well-known figures in
the early Islamic history. He adopted as his own son another
Negro, Zayd bin Harith, his third convert, who rose to be one
of his greatest generals. Later, to show his regard for Zayd,
he took one of Zayd's wives, the beautiful Zainab, as his own.
But Bilal stands out in greatest relief. Apart from his services
in the cause of Islam, it was through him that the Moslems
decided to use the human voice instead of bells to call the Mos-
lems to prayer. He had evidently a marvelous voice and was
the first who called for prayers in Islam.
"Tarik-bin-Ziad also was a slave and became a great g-eneral
in Islam and was the conqueror of Spain as the commander
of the Moorish Army which invaded Spain. Jebel-u-Tarik (the
mount of Tarik), that is, Gibraltar, is named after him. One
of the greatest Turkish classics is called "Tarik-bin-Ziad' and
has him as its hero. It was written by Abdul-Hak-Hamid, our
greatest poet (alive though 84) and equals any tragedy of
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Corneille. I do hope that some time the biographies of these
great figures will be written in English." 12
The Mohammedans organized for proselyting the world,
overthrew Persia, and took Syria and eventually Egypt and
North Africa from the Eastern Roman Empire. They went
east as far as India and west to Spain, and eventually the Golden
Horde, as the Russian Mongols had come to be called, be-
came followers of Islam and thus religious brothers of the
Mohammedan Arabs.
The Arabs brought the new religion of Mohammed into
North Africa. During the seventh century they did not migrate
in great numbers. Spain was conquered not by Arabs, but by
armies of Berbers and Negroids led by Arabs. Later, in the
eleventh century, another wave of Arabs came, but the num-
ber was never large and their prestige came from their religion
and their language, which became a lingua franca for the
peoples north and south of the Sahara. The total substitution
of Arabian for Berber or Negro blood was small.
Anyone who has traveled in the Sudan knows that most of
the "Arabs" he has met are dark-skinned, sometimes practically
black, often have Negroid features, and hair that may be
almost Negro in quality. It is then obvious that in Africa the
term "Arab" is applied to any people professing Islam, however
much race mixture has occurred, so that while the term has a
cultural value it is of little ethnic significance and is often
misleading.
The Arabs were too nearly akin to Negroes to draw an ab-
solute color line. Antar, one of the great pre-Islamic poets of
Arabia, was the son of a black woman; and one of the great
poets at the court of Harun-al-Rashid was black. In the twelfth
century a learned Negro poet reside,d at Seville.
The Mohammedans crossed the Pyrenees in A.D. 719 and
met Charles Martel at Poi tiers; repulsed, the invaders turned
12 A letter to J. A. Rogers, December 15, 1933, quoted in Rogers, op. cit.,
Vol. I, p. 286.
ASIA IN AFRICA
back and settled in Spain. The conflict for the control of the
Mohammedan world eventually left Spain in anarchy. A prince
of the Omayyads arrived in 758. This Abdurahman, after thirty
years of fighting, founded an independent government which
became the Caliphate of Cordova. His power was based on
his army of Negro and white Christian slaves. He established a
magnificent court and restored order, and his son gave pro-
tection to writers and thinkers.
Eventually rule passed into the hands of a mulatto, Alman-
zar, who kept order with his army of Berbers and Negroes,
making fifty invasions into Christian territory. He died in
1002, and in a few years the Caliphate declined and the Chris-
tians began to reconquer the country. The Mohammedans
looked to Africa for refuge.
In the eleventh century there was quite a large Arab immi-
gration. The Berbers and some Negroes by that time had
adopted the Arab tongue and the Mohammedan religion, and
Mohammedanism had spread slowly southward across the Sa-
hara.1s
The invasions of the eleventh century were launched in
1048 by the Vizier of Egypt under the colored Caliph Mus-
tansir. Each man was provided with a camel and given a gold
piece, the only condition being that he must settle in the west.
In two years they pillaged Cyrenaica and Tripoli and cap-
tured Kairwan. The invaders for the most part settled in
Tripoli and Tunis, while their companions pressed on west-
ward into Morocco. This exemplifies the process of arabization
in North Africa, and it was to a large extent a reflex from the
invasion that had most to do with the arabization of the Nile
valley. It is thus responsible for much of the present-day dis-
tribution of the "Arab" tribes of the Sudan.
The Arabs invaded African Egypt, taking it from the East-
ern Roman Emperors and securing as allies the native Negroid
1S See DuBois, Black Folk, pp. 41-53.
186 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Egyptians, now called Copts, and using Sudanese blacks, Per-
sians, and Turks in their armies. They came in 639 under
Amr-ibn-el-Asr, partly as friends of Egyptians against the
tyranny of the Eastern Roman Empire, partly even as de-
fenders of the heretical Coptic Church. Itmust be remembered
that they were related by blood and history to the Negroid peo-
ples. One of Mohammed's concubines was a dark curly-haired
Coptic woman, May; and Nubians from the Sudan took fre-
quent part in these wars. Alexandria surrendered in 642, and
ten years later the Arabs invaded Nubia and attacked Dongola
crying, "Ye people of Nubia, Ye shall dwell in safety!" 14
For two centuries from 651 there were ninety-eight Moham-
medan governors of Egypt under Caliphs of Medina, Damas-
cus, and Bagdad. The Copts, representing the majority of the
Egyptians, for the most part submitted to this rulership, but
the black Nubians continued to be unruly and even came to
the defense of the Copts. In 722 King Cyriacus of Nubia
marched into Egypt with one hundred thousand soldiers and
secured release of the imprisoned Coptic patriarch. There is
an intriguing story of a black virgin whom the Mohammedans
had seized and who promised them an unguent to make them
invulnerable. To prove it she put it on her own neck, and
when the Arab soldier swept his sword down upon her, her
head fell off jlS she had intended.v
The change from the Omayyad to the Abasid Caliphs took
place in Egypt peacefully in the middle of the eighth century.
By 832 Egypt had become almost entirely Mohammedan, by
conversion of the Copts through economic and social pressure.
In 852 the last Arab governor ruled in Egypt, and in 856 the
Turks began to replace the Arabs and to favor the Copts. There
was much misrule, and from 868 to 884 Ahrnad-ibn-Tulun,
14 E. Stanley Lane-Poole, History ot Egypt in Medieval Times, edited by
W. M. Flinders Petrie (London: Methuen & Co., 1914), Vol. VI, pp. 22,
28, 89.
15 ct., ibid., p. 28.
ASIA IN AFRICA
a Turkish slave, ruled. The Berga people of the Sudan refused
further tribute of four hundred slaves annually and revolted
in 854; the army of Ali Baba, "King of the Sudan," led the re-
volt, but spears and shields strove against mail armor and Arab
ships, and failed.
We know that in 850 four hundred black East Africans had
been enrolled in the army of Abu'l Abbas, ruler of Bagdad,
and that they rose in revolt with a Negro, called "Lord of the
Blacks," at their head. In 869 the Persian adventurer, Al
Kabith, summoned the black slaves to revolt, and they flocked
to his side in tens of thousands. In 871 they captured Basra
and for fourteen years dominated the Euphrates delta. When
Masudi visited this country fourteen years later, he was told
that this conquest by famine and sword had killed at least a
million people.
Syria was annexed to Egypt in 872, and from that time until
the eleventh century Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia
form one realm, more or less closely united. When Syria was
first annexed, Egypt ruled from the Euphrates to Barka and
Aswan, and the famous black cavalry of ten thousand or more
took part in the conquest. In 883 the Zeng Negroes of East
Africa revolted, and some settled in Mesopotamia. The Tulum
dynasty finally ended in 905, and there were thirty years of
unsettled rule in Egypt under the suzerainty of weak caliphs.
From 935 to 946 Ikshid was governor of Egypt.
He was succeeded by a black Abyssinian eunuch, Abu-l-
Misk Kafur, "Musky Camphor," for whom Ikshid named a
celebrated garden in Cairo. Kafur was a clever man of deep
black color with smooth shiny skin, who had been guardian
of the sons of Ikshid. He read history and listened to music
and was lavish with his vast wealth. Daily at his table there
were served two hundred sheep and lamb, seven hundred and
fifty fowls, and a thousand birds and one hundred jars of
sweetmeats. He attracted men of learning and letters and
188 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
began an era of art and literature which placed Egypt as a
cultural center next to Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova.w The
poet Muttanabi praised him as "The Moon of Darkness."
Kafur ruled Egypt for twenty-two years, from 946 to 968; he
was regent for nineteen years, but the two sons of Ikshid who
were nominally on the throne were playboys without power.
Kafur ruled three years alone, from 965 to 968. He conquered
Damascus and Aleppo and incorporated Syria under Egyptian
rule. Trouble arose from time to time in Syria, while in Egypt
there were earthquakes, bad Nile seasons, and a Nubian re-
volt. Nevertheless, in general good order was maintained. He
died in 968 and was succeeded by a child, then by the Caliph
Hoseyn, and finally by Moizz.
The Shiites or Fatimids from Morocco, under the man who
called himself the Mahdi, now began to war on Egypt and
conquered it. They sent an embassy to George, King of Nubia;
reconquered Syria and became rich with gold and jewelry,
ivory and silk. By the middle of the twelfth century the Mo-
hammedan empire included North Africa, Syria, Sicily, and
Hejaz; Turkish slaves and Sudanese troops held the empire.
Moizz was helped by Killis, a Jew who had been Kafur's
righthand man; and had a bodyguard of four thousand young
men, white and black. By the help of Negro troops another
Syrian revolt was quelled. Then came the reign of mad Hakim
and finally Zahir.
Zahir ruled Egypt from 1021 to 1026. His wife was a black
Sudanese woman, and after the death of her husband largely
influenced the rule of her son, who came to the throne in
1036 and ruled until 1094, the longest reign in the dynasty.
This son, M'add, took the name of Mustansir and is regarded
as the best and ablest of the rulers of his time. He loved and
encouraged learning and had a library of a hundred and twenty
thousand volumes. The Black Dowager, who had great influ-
ence over him, sailed the Nile in her silver barge and imported
16 Ct. ibid., p. 89.
ASIA IN AFRICA 189
additional Negro troops from the south, until Mustansir had
in his escort fifty thousand black soldiers and swordsmen,
twenty thousand Berbers, ten thousand Turks, and thirty
thousand white slaves. For years all Upper Egypt was held by
black regimen ts.
Mustansir had enormous wealth, including his celebrated
golden mattress. Makrizi described his jewels, gold plate, and
ivory. Cairo consisted at this time of twenty thousand brick
houses; there was art in pottery and glass work, and a beau-
tiful "Lake of the Abyssinians." Mustansir had difficulties with
Syria and nearly lost his power in 1068; his library was de-
stroyed and the Black Dowager had to flee to Bagdad for sanc-
tuary. Through the aid of Bedar, his prime minister, he re-
gained power and restored Syria to Egyptian rule.
Then the Seljukian Turks appeared. They subdued Persia,
captured Bagdad, and attacked Syria. Jerusalem was captured
in 1071, and this became the excuse for the European Crusades
which began in 1096, two years after Mustansir died. The Eu-
ropeans took Jerusalem in 1099 and later seized most of Syria,
but Egypt, with the aid of the black veterans of Mustansir's
former army, eventually defeated Baldwin in 1102. From 1169
to 1193 Saladin, the Kurd, ruled Egypt and the East.
After Saladin's accession, black Nubian troops attacked
Egypt, and the rebellion continued for many years. Gradu-
ally Saladin asserted his power in Nubia, and peace was made
with the African Zeng in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia had been
ruined by the Mongols, and Cairo now became the greatest
cultural center in the Orient, and indeed in the world, from
1196 to 1250. Saint Francis of Assisi preached there in 1219,
and world trade centered in Alexandria.
Artists flocked to Egypt from Asia Minor. Men of culture
lived at court, poets and writers. The Thousand and One
Nights stories were collected. Indian stories and European ro-
mances were combined with Egyptian materials. A companion
collection of poems made at this time were those of Antar-bin-
Ig0 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Shaddad. He was born about A.D. 498, the son of a black slave
girl, Zebbeda, and of Shaddad, a nobleman of the tribe of Abs.
Antar is famous. One of his works is found as the sixth poem
of the Mo'al laqat-s-the "golden verses"-which are considered
in Arabia the greatest poems ever written. The story is that
they were hung on the Ka'bah at the Holy Temple at Mecca
so that 3.11the pilgrims who came there might know them and
do obeisance to them. The Mo'allaqat belongs to the first
school of Arabian poetry-to the "Gahilieh"-"time of ig-
norance." The Antar poem belongs to the time of the war of
Dahis, and, like the five poems which preceded it in the epic,
it lauds the victors of the battlefield, describes the beauties of
nature, and praises the camel of the desert. The main theme,
however, is love.
Rimski-Korsakov's Symphony Antar, with its wealth of bar-
baric color and oriental fire has been deservedly popular. The
libretto is drawn from the voluminous work known as The
Romance of Antar, which was published in Cairo in thirty-two
volumes and has been translated in sections from the Arabic by
various scholars. There are two editions of the work-one
known as the Syrian Antar, the other as the Arabian Antar.
The abridged work was first introduced to European readers
in 1802; a translation was made and issued in four books by
Terrick Hamilton in 181g. The Romance is a companion
piece to the Arabian Nights and is a standard Arabian work.
The seemingly numberless tales that are incorporated in The
Romance of Antar are traditional tales of the desert that were
retold and preserved by Asmai during the reign of Harun-al-
Rashid.
As autocratic power grew among the Mohammedans, a
number of religious and political malcontents migrated down
the eastern coast of Africa. They filtered through for a num-
ber of centuries, not as conquerors, and they were permitted
to live and trade in limited areas and mingled and intermar-
ried with the black Bantu. An Arab settlement was made
ASIA IN AFRICA
about A.D. 684 under a son-in-law of Mohammed. Then came
another migration in g08, and many of the Arabs wandered
inland. Cities were established and soon were trading with the
gold-mining peoples of Sofala. Masudi, an Arab geographer,
visited this part of Africa in the tenth century and described
the gold trade and the kingdom of the Waklimi. Marco Polo,
writing in 12g8, described the island of Madagascar and Zanzi-
bar as peopled with blacks.
There are indications of trade between Nupe in West Africa
and Sofala on the East Coast, and certainly trade between Asia
and East Africa dates back earlier than the beginning of the
Christian era. Asiatic traders settled on the East coast, and by
means of mulatto and Negro merchants brought Central Africa
into contact with Arabia, India, China, and Malaysia.
Zaide, great-grandson of Ali, nephew and son-in-law of Mo-
hammed, was banished from Arabia. He passed over to Africa
and formed settlements. His people mingled with the blacks,
and the resulting mulatto traders, known as the Emoxaidi, seem
to have wandered as far south as the equator. Other Arabian
families came over on account of oppression and founded the
towns of Magadosho and Brava, both not far north of the
equator. The Emoxaidi, whom the later immigrants regarded
as heretics, were driven inland and became the interpreting
traders between the coast and the Bantu. Some wanderers
from Magadosho came into the port of Sofala and there learned
that gold could be obtained. This led to a small Arab settle-
ment at that place.
Seventy years later, and about 150 years before the Norman
conquest of England, certain Persians settled at Kilwa in East
Africa, led by Hasan-ibn-Ali, who was the son of a black Abys-
sinian slave mother, and accompanied by his own six sons.
Ibn Batuta, who was acquainted with Arab life on the Medi-
terranean coast and at Mecca in the fourteenth century, was
surprised by the wealth and civilization of East Africa. Kilwa
he describes as "one of the most beautiful and best built towns."
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Mombasa is a "large" and Magadosho an "exceedingly large
city."
Duarte Barbosa, visiting the coast ten years later, described
Kilwa as "a Moorish town with many fair houses of stone
and mortar, with many windows after our fashion, very well
laid out in streets, with many fiat roofs. The doors are of
wood, well carved, with excellent joinery. Around it are streams
and orchards and fruit-gardens with many channels of sweet
water .... And in this town was great plenty of gold, as
no ships passed to or from Sofala without coming to this is-
land." Of the Moors, he continued: "There are some fair and
some black: they are finely clad in many rich garments of gold
and silver in chains and bracelets . . . and many jewelled
ear-rings in their ears." Mombasa, again, is "a very fair place,
with lofty stone and mortar houses, well lined in streets ....
Their women go very bravely attired." 17
It is probable that Chinese ships traded directly with Africa
from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. When the Portuguese
came they found the Arabs intermarried and integrated with
the Bantu and in control of the trade.
One of the most astonishing developments in Africa was the
rule of the Mameluke slaves in Egypt for six centuries, from
1193 to 1805. There has been no exact parallel to this in his-
tory, and yet students have neglected this period with singular
unanimity. The Mamelukes were white slaves bought by the
thousands in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and the Near East.
They were used mainly as soldiers and shared in the conquests
of Islam and especially in the capture and holding of the Nile
valley. At first they were auxiliary troops under strong and
ambitious sultans, several of whom were of Negro descent.
Then at the time of the Mongols and Christian Crusades, the
Mamelukes, organized by groups of hundreds, began to choose
their own chiefs and even raised them to the sultanate. Usually
17 The Book of Duarte Barbosa, tr. from the Portuguese by M. L. Davis
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1918), Vol. I, pp. 11-13, 18-20.
ASIA IN AFRICA 193
such sultans ruled but short periods, averaging five years.
Strong men, like Saladin, held the Mamelukes in control and
imposed their policies upon them. Other such powerful rulers
were Bibars, who became sultan in 1260; and Kala'un, 1272,
whose "Golden Age" was praised by Machiavelli. But gradu-
ally the level of culture declined, and instead of the literature
and art of Saladin came the brawling, raping, and thieving of
ignorant demagogues.
At first these white slaves served side by side with black
Sudanese, and even under Negroid rulers. But as the Egyptian
sultans tried in vain to conquer Nubia and the south, the
Mamelukes found themselves in opposite camps, and white slave
rule with few Negroids prevailed in the north, while in the
south the Negroes stubbornly held their ground down to the
nineteenth century.
The contrast between this white slavery and black American
slavery was striking. It involved no inborn racial differences,
and because of this Nordic historians have neglected white
slavery and tied the idea of slavery to Negroes. The difference
between the two groups of slaves was clear: the white slaves,
under leadership like that of the colored Mustansir and Saladin
the Kurd, opened the way to civilization among both white and
black. Had it not been for the attack on this culture by the
heathen East and Christian West, the flowering of civilization
in Africa might have reached great heights and even led the
world.
Napoleon Bonaparte explained the difference between slav-
ery in the East and West:
"These countries were inhabited by men of different colors.
Polygamy is the simple way of preventing them from persecut-
ing one another. The legislators have thought that in order
that the whites be not enemies of the blacks, the blacks of
the whites, the copper-colored of the one and the other, it
was necessary to make them all members of the same family
and struggle thus against a penchant of man to hate all that
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
is not like him. Mohamet thought that four women were
sufficient to attain this goal because each man could have one
white, one black, one copper-colored, and one wife of an-
other color. . . .
"When one wishes to give liberty to the blacks in the colonies
of America and establish a perfect equality, the legislator will
authorise polygamy and permit at the same time a white wife,
a black one, and a mulatto one. Then the different colors mak-
ing part of the same family will be mixed in the opinion of
each. Without that one would never obtain satisfactory re-
sults. The blacks would be more numerous and cleverer and
they would hold the whites in abasement and vice versa.
"Because of the general principle of equality that polygamy
has established in the East there is no difference between the
individuals composing the house of the Mamelukes. A black
slave that a bey had bought from an African caravan became
katchef and was the equal of a fine white Mameluk, native of
Circassia; there was no thought even of having it otherwise.
"Slavery has never been in the Orient what it was in Eu-
rope. The customs in this respect have remained the same as
in the Holy Scriptures; the servant marries with the master.
In Europe, on the contrary, whoever bore the imprint of the
seal of slavery remained always in the last rank .... " 18
According to W. G. Palgrave: "Negroes can without any
difficulty give their sons and daughters to the middle or lower
class of Arab families, and thus arises a new generation of
mixed race. . . . Like their progenitors, they do not readily
take their place among the nobles or upper ten thousand;
however, they may end by doing even this in process of time;
and I have myself, while in Arabia, been honoured by the in-
timacy of more than one handsome 'Green-man' (mulatto)
with a silver-hilted sword at his side and a rich dress on his
dusky skin but denominated Sheik, or Emeer, and humbly
18 Memoirs of the History ot France (London: Colburn, 1823-24),and ed.,
Vol. III, pp. 152-54,259-76.
ASIA IN AFRICA 195
sued by Arabs of the purest Ishmaelitish or Kahtanic stock .
. . . All of this was not by Act of Parliament but by individual
will and feeling." 19
There arose numbers of cases of ruling blacks and mulattoes in
the Near East. Nedjeh, a Negro slave, and his descendants ruled
Arabia from 1020 to 1158. Again in 1763 Abbas, called "El
Mahdi," black, thick-lipped and broad-nosed, ruled Yemen.
The Crusades and Mongols distracted the paths of leaders
and left Africa and the Middle East to the ravages of the
leadership of the degenerate Mamelukes of the eighteenth
century. The black slaves taken to America became after a
short period of hesitancy part of a new system of industry.
They were chained to hard labor, kept in ignorance, and given
no chance for development. Their one goal became freedom,
and the Maroons were the nearest counterpart to the Marne-
lukes. Toussaint in Haiti was the first successful black sultan
of the West. Byano and Palmares cleared his way.
There were twenty-five sultans of the Bahrite Mamelukes
dynasty; among them was Bibars, who restored Syria to Egypt
and attacked the Negroes of the Sudan between 1272 and
1273· Nubia regained its independence in 1320, and there was
strife between Nubia and Egypt in 1366, 1385, and 1396. Nubia
became practically independent after 1403.
Most scientists agree that the modern Beja are nearest the
Egyptian type. Ibn Batuta described them in the fourteenth
century. "After fifteen days' travelling we reached the town of
Aydhab, a large town, well supplied with milk and fish; dates
and grain are imported from Upper Egypt. Its inhabitants are
Bejas. These people are black-skinned; they wrap themselves
in yellow blankets and tie headbands about a finger-breadth
wide around their heads. They do not give their daughters any
share in their inheritance. They live on camels' milk and they
ride on Meharis (dromedaries). One-third of the city belongs
1'9 W. G. Pal grave, Narrative at a Year's Journey Through Central and
Eastern Arabia (London: 1866), Vol. I.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to the Sultan of Egypt and two-thirds to the King of the Bejas,
who is called al-Hudrubi. On reaching Aydhab we found that
al-Hudrubi was engaged in warfare with the Turks (i.e., the
troops of the Sultan of Egypt), that he had sunk the ships and
that the Turks had fled before him." 20
A new dynasty of the Circassian Mamelukes reigned in Egypt
from 1382 to 1517 and included twenty-three sultans. Litera-
ture and architecture still were cultivated, but there was li-
cense and fighting and slave purchases of Mongolians.
Nizir ruled from 1310 to 1341 in Egypt and exchanged em-
bassies with the Mongols of Kepchak, with the Syrians, with
the kings of Yemen and Abyssinia, and with West Africa, as
well as with the emperors at Constantinople and the kings of
Bulgaria.
Africans later were imported into India. King Rukn-ud-
din-Barbak, who ruled at Gaur from 1459 to 1474, possessed
eight thousand African slaves and was the first king of India
to promote them in large numbers to high rank in his service,
In 1486 these slaves rebelled, killed Fath Shah, and set their
leader on the throne with the title Barbah Shah. Another
African, Indil Khan, remained loyal to Fath and, returning
from a distant expedition, killed Barbah and accepted the
crown under the title of Saif-ud-din-Firuz. Firuz quelled
the disorders of the kingdom and restored the discipline of the
army. He was succeeded in 14~9 by Fath Shah's young son
under a regency exercised by another African; but before a
year was out still another Negro, Sidi Badr, murdered both
child-king and regent and usurped the throne. He reigned
three years. In 1493 he was killed at the head of a sortie against
rebel forces that were besieging Gaur, and with his death this
remarkable Negro regime in Bengal came to an end. An Asiatic
from the Oxus country was elected to the throne, and one of
his first acts was to expel all the Africans from the kingdom.
20 Ibn Batuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, I325-I354, tr. by H. A. R.
Gibb (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1929), pp. 53, 54, 321, 322, 328, 329, 330.
ASIA IN AFRICA
The exiles, many thousands in number, were turned back from
Delhi and Jaunpur and finally drifted to Gujarat and the Dec-
can, where the slave trade had also created a considerable
Negro population.w
In the fourteenth century Islam in the West had been
shorn of its outposts in Spain and Sicily, but in the East had
been extended into India and Malaysia. It had beaten back
the Crusaders, but nevertheless signs of weakness appeared.
For two centuries Islam had struggled against the Europeans,
and the rule in the Mohammedan world had passed from the
Arabs and Persians to the Turks. After the year one thousand,
Turkish generals and chieftains had torn the body of Islam,
had devastated its land, until at length the heathen Mongols
from Central Asia started west against the Turks and in 1258
made the eastern lands of Islam a province of the Mongol
empire. Timur the Lame took Bagdad in 1393.
The history of the Nile valley from the time of Saladin to
the nineteenth century reads like a phantasmagoria. The prom-
ise of high and delicate culture was there; but toward the east
rose menacingly the threat of Turkey, forming the right wing
of Islam and ready to overwhelm Egypt. If it had not, the his-
tory of Europe might have been the history of Egypt. From
the west came the steady pressure of a new and virile Negro
culture, but one destined to be suddenly arrested by the re-
pulse of the left wing of Islam in Spain, the record of the
Sudan, the stubborn resistance of Atlantis overwhelmed by the
slave trade to America, and the march of the Bantu toward
the Great Lakes.
The effort of this ancient land of Egypt to achieve a new
independence and a renewed culture depended on a fusion
of Syria and Nubia with Egypt. But the rough and ignorant
white slaves, who had lost all culture patterns and learned no
new ones, and who nonetheless held all power of government,
21 Reginald Coupland, East Africa and Its Invaders (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1938),pp. 3~-33.
198 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
stifled the budding culture which might have been an African
Renaissance and led to futile efforts to conquer Nubia. This
distraction of power lost Egypt control of Syria.
Nubia gained independence in 1403, and from the west
came the Fung and the people of Darfur, while farther down
the Shilluk and Central 'Africa still resisted. It was in vain
that Bibars and Kala'un revived Egypt; most of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries were filled with struggles of weak and
degenerate leaders. Then Selim the Great of the Ottoman em-
pire conquered and annexed Egypt in 1517. Egypt was di-
vided into twenty-four districts, each under Mameluke beys
and all under a Turkish pasha. Degeneration set in after the
seventeenth century.
Thefts and mutinies filled the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and in the eighteenth century the French Revolu-
tion tried to unload Napoleon on Egypt and Asia. England
thwarted him in far-flung defense of India. In 1811 came
Mehemet Ali, a Rumelian, who rid Egypt of the Mameluke
beys by deliberate murder and set about the conquest of the
Sudan. He overran Nubia in 1820, but lost his son in the mad
resistance of the blacks. Meantime he courted Europe by trade
and political alliance and tried to share in the profits of the
ivory-slave trade. He provoked resistance and rebellion and
died a madman in 1849.
His successor, Ishmael, fell into the snare of colonial im-
perialism, baited by Lord Beaconsfield. Britain saw in the Suez
Canal, once conceived by the Pharaohs and dug by the French
thousands of years later, a link to unite the British Empire,
guard her Indian investment and consolidate her control of
trade. Beaconsfield bought the canal from Ishmael after the
British and French had involved him hopelessly in debt.
When France declined to enter what was to her a doubtful part-
nership, England practically annexed Egypt to the British
Empire.
Why was this? Was it "race"? "Surely," answered the nine-
ASIA IN AFRICA 199
teenth century, fattening on the results of Negro slavery and
sneering at the mongrels of the Nile valley. But the answer
was nothing so simple as the color of a man's skin or the kink
of his hair. It was because Egypt during centuries of turmoil
and foreign control could achieve no nationhood; because her
ancient sources of self-support failed under exploitation, and
her ancient culture patterns were submerged and could no
longer be renewed from Central Africa by reason of the per-
sistent and continued effort to conquer Nubia. Her new flower-
ing of art in the thirteenth century had died. No democracy
could arise in the years from Saladin to Mehemet Ali, and by
that time the slave trade for ivory, succeeding the slave trade
for sugar, backed by the same demand from Europe and
America, had put all Africa beyond the pale of civilization.
One result of Egyptian pressure on Central Africa and its
connection with modern colonization is shown by the history
of Kilwara in East Africa. The empire was dismembered, the
largest share falling to Uganda. When King Mutesa fame to
the throne of Uganda in 1862, he found Mohammedan in-
fluences in his land and was induced to admit Protestants and
Catholics. The Protestants, representing British imperialism,
tried to convert the king, and the Catholics, representing
French imperialism, tried to make him a Catholic. In the
midst of this more Mohammedans appeared, seeking also to
convert Mutesa. He refused all these faiths and died a rugged
pagan.
He was succeeded by his son Mwanga, who distrusted the
whites. He ordered the eastern frontier closed against Eu-
ropeans, and when the Protestant Bishop Hannington at-
tempted to cross in 1885, he had him killed. The Protestants
organized against Mwanga, and he banished both Protestants
and Catholics. The Mohammedans became the power behind
the throne. The Protestants withdrew from Buganda into
Angola and organized a united front of Christians against
Mohammedans and Mwanga. They captured Mwanga's capital
200 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
and divided it between Protestants and Catholics. The Mo-
hammedans began to fight back, and finally the Protestants
appealed to the British East Africa Company. In 1889 the
company dispatched a military mission to Uganda which was
later joined by Lugard. Open civil war ensued between Catho-
lics and Protestants.
"At the head of a considerable military force, Captain Lu-
gard, of the Imperial British East Africa Company (Ibea),
penetrated as far as Mengo, the residence of King Mwanga, and
forced upon him a treaty of protectorate; then, turning against
the Catholics, he attacked them on some futile pretext, and
drove them onto a big island in Lake Victoria. There, around
the king and the French missionaries, had gathered for refuge
a considerable multitude of men, women, and children. Against
this helpless and defenseless population Captain Lugard turned
his guns and maxims. He exterminated a large number and
then, continuing his work of destruction, he gave full rein to
his troops and adherents, who burnt all the villages and sta-
tions of the White Fathers, their churches and their crops." 22
The British Protestant version of this story varies from this
in many particulars.
Mwanga was finally defeated in 1899, taken prisoner and
deported. Uganda then became a British protectorate.
So for a thousand years Asia and Africa strove together,
renewing their spirits and mutually fertilizing their cul tures
from time to time, in West Asia, North Africa, the Nile valley,
and the East Coast. But at last Europe encompassed them both.
In Africa she came to the south as settlers, to the west as slave
traders, and to the east as colonial imperialists. Africa slept in
bloody nightmare.
22 Leonard Woolf, Empire and Commerce in Africa (London: Allen and
Unwin, n.d.), p. 288.
CHAPTER X
THE BLACK SUDAN
How civilization flamed in the Sudan in a culture
which was African and not Arabian and which
helped light a renaissance of culture in Eu-
rope.
EARLY in the seventh century Islam had entered NorthAfrica and proselyted among the Berbers and Negroes.
Aided by black soldiers, the Moslems crossed into Spain; in
the following century, repulsed in Europe, they crossed the
west end of the Sahara and came to Negroland. Later, in the
eleventh century, Arabs penetrated the Sudan and Central
Africa from the east, filtering through the Negro tribes of
Darfur, Kanem, and neighboring regions.
Frobenius reminded us that the ensuing culture was not
Arab but Negro: "The revelations of fifteenth and seven-
teenth century navigators furnish us with certain proof that
Negro Africa, which extended south of the Sahara desert zone,
was still in full bloom, in the full brilliance of harmonious
and well-formed civilizations. In the last century the super-
stition ruled that all high culture of Africa came from Islam.
Since then we have learned much, and we know today that the
beautiful turbans and clothes of the Sudanese folk were already
used in Africa before Mohammed was even born or before
Ethiopian culture reached inner Africa. Since then we have
201
202 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
learned that the peculiar organization of the Sudanese states
existed long before Islam and that all of the art of building
and education, of city organization and handwork in Negro
Africa, were thousands of years older than those of Middle
Europe.
"Thus in the Sudan old real African warm-blooded culture
existed and could be found in Equatorial Africa, where neither
Ethiopian thought, Hamitic blood, or European civilization
had drawn the pattern. Everywhere when we examine this
ancient culture it bears the same impression. In the great mu-
seums- Trocadero, British Museum, in Belgium, Italy, Hol-
land, and Germany--everywhere we see the same spirit, the
same character, the same nature. All of these separate pieces
unite themselves to the same expression and build a picture
equally impressive as that of a collection of the art of Asia.
The striking beauty of the cloth, the fantastic beauty of the
drawing and the sculpture, the glory of ivory weapons; the
collection of fairy tales equal to the Thousand and One Nights,
the Chinese novels and the Indian philosophy.
"In comparison with such spiritual accomplishment the im-
pression of the African spirit is easily seen. It is stronger in
its folds, simpler in its richness. Every weapon is simple and
practical, not only in form but fantasy. Every line of carving is
simple and strong. There is nothing that makes a clearer im-
pression of strength, and all streams out of the fire and the
hut, the sweat and grease-treated hides and the animal dung.
Everything is practical, strong, workmanly. This is the char-
acter of the African style. When one approaches it with full
understanding, one immediately realizes that this impression
rules all Africa. It expresses itself in the activity of all Negro
people even in their sculpture. It speaks out of their dances and
their masks; out of the understanding of their religious life,
just as out of the reality of their living, their state-building,
and their conception of fate. It lives in their fables, their fairy
THE BLACK SUDAN
stories, their wise sayings, and their myths. And once we are
forced to this conclusion, then the Egyptian comes into the
comparison. For this discovered culture form of Negro Africa
has the same peculiarity." 1
It was Asia and Africa which in the thirteenth century pre-
pared Europe for the Renaissance through Genghis Khan and
the Crusades. Negroes were building then in the Sudan the be-
ginnings of the great states which flourished in the fourteenth
century and which became an integral part of the cultural
complex of the Middle Ages. For a century Ghana had been
trading across the sands with Europe. Already the power of
the Mandingos was being felt in West Africa, which in another
century would build the great kingdom of Melle known to
all Europe. In Asia, the black slaves from Africa had revolted,
seizing power and becoming great rulers. The Almoravides,
Berbers with Negro blood, and hosts of pure Negro adherents
had invaded and seized Morocco. On the African East Coast,
Arabs and Persians with troops of Negroid mulattoes had built
large and beautiful cities and were trading not only with the
black kingdoms of the interior but with China and India. The
Crusades, beginning in the eleventh century and extending
through the thirteenth, had brought crude Europe into close
touch with the civilization of the Orient and led to a desperate
effort to ally the Christian Church of Rome with black Prester
John of Ethiopia in an attack upon Islam.
Sidjilmessa, the last town in Lower Morocco toward the
desert, was founded in 757 by a Negro who ruled over the
Berber inhabitants. Indeed, many towns in the Sudan and
the desert were thus ruled and felt no incongruity in this ar-
rangement. They say, to be sure, that the Moors destroyed
Howdaghost because it paid tribute to the black town of
Ghana, but this was because the town was heathen and not be-
cause it was black. There is a story that a Berber king overthrew
1Frobenius, op. cit., p. 56.
204 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
one of the cities of the Sudan and all the black women com-
mitted suicide, being too proud to allow themselves to fall into
the hands of white men.
In the west the Moslems first came into touch with the
Negro kingdom of Ghana. Here large quantities of gold were
gathered in early days, and we have the names of seventy-four
rulers before A.D. 300, running through twenty-one genera-
tions. This would take us back approximately a thousand
years, to 700 B.C., or about the time that Pharaoh Necho of
Egypt sent out the Phoenician expedition which circumnavi-
gated Africa; and possibly before the time when Hanno, the
Carthaginian, explored the West Coast of Africa.
By the middle of the eleventh century Ghana was the princi-
pal kingdom in the western Sudan. Already the town had a
native and a Mussulman quarter, and was built of wood and
stone with surrounding gardens. The king had an army of
two hundred thousand. The wealth of the country was great.
A century later the king had become Mohammedan in faith.
He had a palace with sculptures and glass windows. There was
a prosperous desert trade. Gold, skins, ivory, kola nuts, gums,
honey, wheat, and cotton were exported, and the whole Medi-
terranean coast traded in the Sudan. Other and lesser black
kingdoms like Tekrou, Silla, and Masina surrounded Chana.s
Semitic immigrants, who probably invaded this part of
Africa before the Arabs, settled as farmers and shepherds and
had a culture inferior to that of the surrounding Negroes
with whom they mingled.
Under the black rulers of Ghana the state attained its high-
est civilization. Bekri, Yakut, and Ibn Kaldoun testify that it
ruled over the Berbers in what is now Mauritania. The Berber
capital, Howdaghost, paid tribute to the king of Ghana. On
the south its dependencies stretched beyond the Senegal River
to the gold mines of the Faleme and the Bambuk. It touched
the Mandingo on the Upper Niger. Toward the east it ex-
2 The Negro, pp. 50, 51.
THE BLACK SUDAN
tended almost as far as Timbuktu. It was known in Cairo and
Bagdad.
Around 1040 a movement of Mohammedan propaganda
started among the Berbers and Negroes. They formed the
famous sect of the Almoravides and began waging war from
the Sudan into Spain. "The Almoravides ... were Berbers
and were largely mingled with pure Negroes. Yusuf, their
leader, was himself a Negro. The 'Roudh-el-Kartas,' a Moorish
work, describes him as having 'woolly hair' and being 'brown'
in color. Yusuf's favorite concubine was a white captive, Fadh-
el-Hassen (Perfection of Beauty). She was the mother of Yusuf's
successor, Ali. Alphonso VI, the white Spanish King, who was
often defeated by Yusuf, had, in turn, a Moorish Queen, the
lovely Zayda, who was the mother of his favorite son, Sancho.
It was the latter's death in battle that hastened the aged Al-
phonso's death." 3
The Almoravides converted numbers of Sudanese Negroes
but gained no political control over them. They tried to subdue
the kings of Ghana; in 1051 Howdaghost was taken and pil-
laged. Some of the Negroids migrated south while others, at-
tracted by the new religion, joined the Almoravides. Among the
converts was the king of the Mandingos. A number of such
kings and chieftains were converted, but the mass of people
changed their religion slowly. Finally under the Sarkolle chiefs
the Mohammedanized Negroes moved toward the Gulf of
Guinea, founding cities and becoming rich from commerce in
kola nuts, cattle, cloth, and gold. Habits of intellectual re-
search were introduced which have continued until today.
In 1076 the Almoravides captured Ghana and in 1087 Seville
was taken. This made the Almoravides masters of Spain as
well as of Morocco. Consisting not simply of Berbers but of
numbers of converted blacks, the Almoravides set up a king-
dom in Spain, but were finally defeated in 1620. They were
followed by the Almohades, who held the Mohammedan part
s Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 151-52.
206 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
of Spain against the Christians. Under their influence Moorish
power in Spain reached its highest peak of grandeur, and reared
such monuments of artistic splendor as the Alhambra and the
Mosque at Cordova.
In the ninth and tenth centuries Ghana flourished, but
toward the middle of the eleventh century began to decline,
probably because of the encroachment of the desert and the
attack of the Almoravides. Ghana ceased to exist about the mid-
dle of the thirteenth century. Its site was excavated in 1914
and vestiges of a great city were found, with ruins of hewn
stone construction, and some sculpture.
In the meantime, various tribes freed themselves from the
overlordship of Ghana and became independent. The Diawara
dynasty, founded in 1270, maintained its power until 1754.
The great Songhay state, founded about 690, began to de-
velop but was overshadowed by the kingdom of Melle. Melle
was the kingdom of the Mandingos where there ruled and
still rules what Delafosse called "probably the most ancient
dynasty of the world." For seven hundred years the little
village on the Upper Niger was the principal capital of one
of the largest kingdoms in Africa, the empire of the Mandingos,
or Melle. For several centuries the Mansas, or kings of the
Mandingos, ruled their little village. When in 1050 the king
was converted to Islamism by the Almoravides, he made a pil-
grimage to Mecca and established relations with neighboring
states.
"As to the people of Mali [Melle], they surpassed the other
blacks . . . in wealth and numbers. They extended their do-
minions and conquered the Susu, as well as the kingdom of
Ghana in the vicinity of the ocean towards the west. The
Mohammedans say that the first King of Mali was Baramin-
danah. He performed the pilgrimage to Mekkah, and en-
joined his successors to do the same." 4
4 W. D. Cooley, The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained
(London: Arrowsmith, 1841), P: 62.
THE BLACK SUDAN
The territory of Melle lay southeast of Ghana and some
five hundred miles north of the Gulf of Guinea. Its kings
were known by the title of Mansa, and from the middle of
the thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth, the
Mellestine, as its dominion was called, was the leading power
in the land of the blacks. The state was partially overthrown
by the king of Sosa but was restored by Sandiata who captured
Ghana in 1240. He introduced the raising and weaving of
cotton and made his kingdom secure. His successor increased
it. The empire reached its greatest power between 1307 and:
1332. Its greatest king, Mari Jalak (Mansa Musa), made his
pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 with a caravan of sixty thousand
persons including twelve thousand young slaves gowned in
figured cotton and Persian silk. He took eighty camel loads of
gold dust (worth about five million dollars) to defray his ex-
penses, and greatly impressed the people of the East with
his magnificence. During his reign was erected the brick mosque
at Gao with crenelated flat roof and pyramidal minaret, a
type of architecture which was extended through the Sudan.
This type of construction was said to have been originated
by an architect hired by Mansa Musa, who rewarded him
with fifty-four kilograms of gold according to Ibn Kaldoun.
We must remember that at the time of the development of
these Negro kingdoms, Europe was just emerging from the
Dark Ages and was full of "robbers, fetishmen, and slaves." ~
The Mandingan empire of Melle occupied nearly the whole
of what is now French Africa and part of British West Africa.
Its rulers were in close communication with the rulers of the
shores south and north of the Mediterranean.
Ibn Batuta visited Melle in 1352 and wrote: "My stay at Iwala-
tan lasted about fifty days; and I was shown honour and en-
tertained by its inhabitants. It is an excessively hot place,
and boasts a few small date-palms, in the shade of which they
sow watermelons. Its water comes from underground water-
5 Reade, op. cit., p. 30.
208 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
beds at that point, and there is plenty of mutton to be had.
The garments of its inhabitants, most of whom belong to the
Massufa tribe, are of fine Egyptian fabrics. Their women are
of surpassing beauty, and are shown more respect than the
men. The state of affairs amongst these people is indeed ex-
traordinary. Their men show no signs of jealousy whatever;
no one claims descent from his father, but on the contrary from
his mother's brother. A person's heirs are his sister's sons, not
his own sons. This is a thing which I have seen nowhere in
the world except among the Indians of Malabar. But those
are heathens; these people are Muslims, punctilious in ab-
serving the hours of prayer, studying books of law, and memoriz-
ing the Koran.
"I was at Malli during the two festivals of the sacrifice and
the fast-breaking. On these days the sultan takes his seat on
the pempi after the mid-afternoon prayer. The armour-
bearers bring in magnificent arms-quivers of gold and silver,
swords ornamented with gold and with golden scabbards, gold
and silver lances, and crystal maces. At his head stand four
amirs driving off the flies, having in their hands silver orna-
ments resembling saddle stirrups. The commanders, qadi}
and preachers sit in their usual places. The interpreter Dugha
comes with his four wives and his slave-girls, who are about
a hundred in number. They are wearing beautiful robes, and
on their heads they have gold and silver fillets, with gold and
silver balls attached. A chair is placed for Dugha to sit on.
He plays on an instrument made of reeds with some small
calabashes at its lower end, and chants a poem in praise of the
sultan, recalling his battles and deeds of valour. The women
and girls sing with him and play with bows. Accompanying
them are about thirty youths, wearing red woolen tunics and
white skull-caps; each of them has his drum slung from his
shoulder and beats it. Afterwards come his boy pupils, who
play and turn wheels in the air, like the natives of Sind. They
show a marvellous nimbleness and agility in these exercises
THE BLACK SUDAN
and play most cleverly with swords. Dugha also makes a fine
play with the sword. Thereupon the sultan orders a gift to be
presented to Dugha and he is given a purse containing two
hundred mith.qals of gold dust, and is informed of the contents
of the purse before all the people.
"The Negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are
seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than
any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who
is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their
country. Neither traveller nor inhabitant in it has anything to
fear from robbers or men of violence. They do not confiscate
the property of any white man who dies in their country, even
if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into
the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites, until
the rightful heir takes possession of it.
" ... one has the impression that Mandingo was a real
state whose organization and civilization could be compared
with those of the Musselman kingdoms or indeeed the Chris-
tian kingdoms of the same epoch." 6
Cooley has told us: "Ibn S'aid, a writer of the thirteenth cen-
tury, has enumerated thirteen nations of blacks extending across
Africa, from Ghana in the west, to the Beja on the shores of
the Red Sea in the east." 7
Professor Leo Hansberry of Howard University gives me the
following list of rulers and the various Sudanese countries:
SOME KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES IN WEST AFRICA IN THE MIDDLE AGES
1. The kingdom of Ghana 6. The kingdom of Borgu
2. The kingdom of Melle 7· The kingdom of Mossi
3· The Mellestine empire 8. The kingdom of Nupe
4· The kingdom of Songhay g. The kingdom of Yoruba
5. The empire of Songhay 10. The kingdom of Benin
6 Ibn Batuta, op. cit., pp. 321-22. 328. 329.330.
7 Cooley, op. cit., p. viii.
210 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
SOME KINGS OF MELLE AND THE MELLESTINE FROM 1213 TO 1464
1. Mausa Allakoy 7· Mausa Sakura
2. Mausa Jatah 8. Mausa Gongo-Mussa I
3· Mausa Wali I 9· Mausa Suleiman
4· Mausa Wali II 10. Mausa Magha
5· Mausa Khalifa 11. Mausa Mussa II
6. Mausa Abu Bekr 12. Mausa Mahmud
SOME RULERS OF SONGHAY FROM 679 TO 1592
1. Za Alayaman 33. Sonni Ali-Kolon
2. Za Zakoi 34. Sonni Selman Nare
3. Za Takoi 35-51. Sixteen Others of this Dy-
4- Za Akoi nasty
5. Za Kou 52. Sonni Ali
6. Za Alifoi 53. Askia El Hadj or Askia the
7. Za Biyai Great
8. Za Biyai 54. Askia Moussa
9. Za Karai 55. Askia Mohammed-Beukan
a o. Za Yam a I 56. Askia Isma'il
11. Za Yama II 57. Askia Ishaq I
12. Za Yama III 58. Askia Daoud
13. Za Koukorai 59. Askia El Hadj II
14-32. Nineteen Others of this 60. Askia Mohammed-Bano
Dynasty 61. Askia Ishaq II
The greatest development of civilization in Africa, after
Egypt, arose late in the fifteenth century in the empire of the
Songhay, east of the Mellestine. The story is that a king of
Melle, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, stopped at
Timbuktu, where a black and ancient dynasty was ruling. He
seized two young princes and carried them home to educate
them and bring them up subservient to his power. Eventually
they escaped, returned home, and founded the Songhay state.
It expanded rapidly; first westward, where it absorbed the
THE BLACK SUDAN 2U
Mellestine and the remains of ancient Ghana. Then it turned
south and drove the peoples of the Mossi and the city-states
of the coast south, beyond the Kong mountains. Under the
victorious Sonni Ali, the Songhay began to expand east toward
the Nile valley, starting ever-widening centers of culture
among the Haussa, the peoples of Bornu; and centuries later
among the Fung and the folk of Kanem un til in the nine-
teenth century this western culture came in contact with
Mehemet Ali in Egypt and the Nubians of the Sudan.
The organized Songhay state at the height of its power under
the black Mohammedan Askia the Great was a remarkable
state from any point of view. Its organized administration, its
roads. and methods of communication, its system of public
security, put it abreast of any contemporary European or
Asiatic state. It was as large as Europe. The emperor "was
obeyed with as much docility on the farthest limits of his
empire as in his own palace." Gao, Timbuktu, and Jenne
were intellectual centers, and at the University of Sankore
gathered thousands of students of law, literature, grammar,
geography, and surgery. A literature began to develop in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The University was in
correspondence with the best institutions on the Mediter-
ranean coast.
Art, especially in building and manufacture, reached a high
level. The system of labor rested in part on domestic slavery,
but that slavery not only protected the slave from exploitation
and poverty, but left the way open, with no barrier of class
or color, for him to rise to high positions of state. The clan
organization of the artisans gave each one a chance for indi-
vidual taste in his work and no fear of hurry or hunger.
Leo Africanus describes the kingdom of Songhay under the
Askias in the fifteenth century: "Corne, cattle, milke, and but-
ter this region yeeldeth in great abundance: but salt is verie
scarce here; for it is brought hither by land from Tegaza,
which is fiue hundred miles distant. When I my selfe was here,
212 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
I saw one camels loade of salt sold for 80 ducates. The rich
king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some
whereof weigh 1300 poundes: and he keepes a magnificent and
well-furnished court. ... Here are great store of doctors,
iudges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully
maintained at the kings cost and charges. And hither are
brought diuers manuscripts or written bookes out of Berbarie,
which are sold for more money than any other merchan-
dize .... " 8
It is a matter for reflection to ask what influence Africa
might have had on the world if the Songhay state had been
able to fulfill its promise. But a singular fate overtook it. First
came the Mongol and the Turk from Asia. The Turk seized the
Eastern Roman Empire and in the west drove Arab and Berber
from the coast down into Africa and below the barrier of
desert sand. Armed with gunpowder, these fugitives fell upon
the Songhay and overthrew their state and culture at T'enkadi-
bou in 1591. Shutting themselves up in North Africa, they
degenerated and dragged the Songhay with them, leaving only
the eddies of their culture to move farther east. If the culture
of Ethiopia had not been imprisoned by the desertion of Eu-
ropean Christianity, it might have expanded under another
Taharqa and rescued the Songhay culture. On the contrary,
it was nullified by the decline of the Mamelukes after the
brilliant age of Saladin.
For one hundred and twenty years after 1660 these pashas
of mixed Turkish, Berber, and Negro blood ruled Timbuktu,
paying tribute to the black Bambara kings and bribing the
Tureregs. Finally in 1894 the city was taken by Marshal Joffre
of France.
East of the Songhay there developed two powerful states.
The Haussa states were formed of seven cities, among which
were Kano and Katsina. They were centers of cotton and
8 Leo Africanus, History and Description of Africa, tr, by John Pory
(printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1896),Vol. III, pp. 824,825.
THE BLACK SUDAN
leather manufactures, agriculture and trade, smelting, weav-
ing and dyeing. Katsina in the middle of the sixteenth century
was thirteen miles in circumference and divided into quarters
for the different trades and industries. The Haussa fell under
the control of other rulers and finally was governed by Mo-
hammed Bello in the eighteenth century. Bello was a noted
man of letters. The Haussa states were occupied by the British
in 1904.
Still farther east was the domain called Bornu in the west
and Kanem in the east. The population occupied a large
territory and was of mixed Negro and Berber descent. The
first ruler was Saefe, and the kings took the title of Mai. Mai
Idris I (1352-1376) was visited by Ibn Batuta, who found cop-
per mines in full operation, the Negro custom of concealing
the king behind a curtain, and the use of drums to send
messages.
In the political development of the western Sudan the king-
dom of Bornu played a notable part and has a recorded history
as far back as the tenth century A.D.9 The influence of its rulers
extended far. The kingdom or empire of Bornu had its begin-
nings probably within two hundred years of the opening of
the Mohammedan era. During these centuries the Christian
West had remained ignorant, rude, and barbarous, while Sara-
cenic culture passed on the torch of civilization to future ages.
The kingdom of Bornu drew its inspiration from Egypt and
North Africa. The degree of civilization achieved by its early
chiefs would appear to compare favorably with that of Eu-
ropean monarchs of that day. It was probably during the
twelfth century that a settled capital was founded at Nnjimi
(Sima) near Mao, in Kanem, east of Lake Chad. From thence
a redoubtable warrior, Mai Dunama Dabalemi (1221-1259),
extended the Bornu empire up to Kauwar and Tibesti in the
north, and to the regions southwest of Lake Chad.
9 H. R. Palmer, Mai Idris of Bornu (Lagos: Government Publication,
1926), preface.
214 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
At the dose of the period, rendered illustrious for Bornu
by Dunama Dabalemi, there occurred the sack of Bagdad by
the Mongols under Hulagu Khan. This event caused an in-
creased number of itinerant Arab divines to go west and enter
Egypt and Africa, taking with them the teaching of the vari-
ous Tarikas of Islam which had arisen in Irak.w
Though the royal line was continuous from the beginning
(A.D. 750 to 800) till it was superseded by the Kanembu Ku-
buri about 1810, there were fundamental differences between
the Bornu (Kanem) kingdom as it existed at the time of the
death of Dunama Dabalemi in the thirteenth century and the
revived Bornu kingdom which was established about 1470. The
earlier kingdom was a rule established by camel-men over the
tribes extending from Lake Chad east to Borku and Wadai.
These monarchs conquered the Teda, or Tebu, races which lay
to the north of them and solidified their position by marrying
into the Tebu royal clan.
Athwart the direct road to the East from Kanem now lay
the Fung dynasty of Senaar on the Blue Nile and the Christian
Dongola kingdom. One tradition survives of a time when the
Meks of Senaar, possibly a remnant of the Meroitic kingdom,
were connected with the early Bornu Mais of Wadai.
Within a hundred years of the date of the conquest of Con-
stantinople by the Turks, Idris Alooma had as mercenaries
Turkish musketeers. The keeping open of all routes from
the Mediterranean and Egypt was at least one service of the
kingdom.u
Southwest of Lake Chad in 1520 was the sultanate of Bagirmi,
which was annexed by the French in 1896. In the eastern Sudan,
Darfur and Kordofan arose to power in the sixteenth and
seventeenth century. Kordofan was allied with Napoleon in
the Egyptian campaign.
10 Ibid., p. 2.
11 Ibid., p. 5.
THE BLACK SUDAN
In the nineteenth century the central power of eastern Su-
dan was Rabah. At one time Rabah conquered Bornu and
brought a considerable part of North Africa under his control,
overthrowing Bagirmi, Bornu, and other states around Lake
Chad. He was the son of a Negro woman and was finally con-
quered and killed by the French in 1900.
Since the fifth century the capital of Nubia had been at old
Dongola, where Silko, King of the Beja, had embraced Chris-
tianity in 450. As the Mohammedans pressed up the Nile valley,
the Nubians held them back for two centuries. For a period
of six hundred years they were compelled to pay tribute to
the Mohammedans; then were annexed to Egypt in 1275 but
became independent in 1403. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries fighting went on between the Nubians and Arabians,
but the Christian kingdom of Nubia finally fell to Islam in the
sixteenth century.
Farther south, the Fung pushed up out of the Sudan and
made their capital at the junction of the White and Blue Nile.
When Selim invaded Egypt in 1617, the Fung became Mo-
hammedan and arranged to divide Ethiopia between them and
the Arabs. They ruled from the Third Cataract to Senaar
during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
Eventually they conquered the Shilluk and later the Abyssinians.
The state of Darfur reached great proportions in the early
seventeenth century.
Meantime the Portuguese had reached Abyssinia and opened
it again to the knowledge of Europeans. Abyssinia had reached
a high degree of culture before that, but at the time of the
arrival of the Portuguese had fallen into a number of petty
states. The Fung now tried to annex northern Ethiopia but
were driven back with slaughter by the new ruler of Egypt.
Mehemet Ali sent his son to conquer them. The son was killed
in 1822 just as he had founded Khartoum. His father wreaked
216 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
a terrible vengeance on the Sudanese for this death and then
in 1839 began to plan to take part in the ivory-slave trade
which now was reaching up from East Africa.
This trade and turmoil reduced the Sudan to a state of
ruin and misery in the nineteenth century. Thereupon Mo-
hammed Ahmad, the Mahdi, revolted in 1881 and, aided by
the Dinka, another Negro tribe, drove both the Egyptians
and English out of the Sudan for sixteen years. The Mahdi
was a black Kushite. He escaped capture and in 1883 saved
Kordofan, where he massacred the English army led by Hicks
Pasha in southern Equatoria. In 1885 the Mahdi captured
Khartoum and killed Chinese Gordon. He died the next year,
and his successor attacked Abyssinia and killed the Emperor
John.
In Abyssinia, Menelik of Shoa became ruler and resisted
the efforts of Italy to reduce his country to vassalage, over-
throwing the Italians at the battle of Adua in 1896. The Brit-
ish Empire in Africa was now threatened by two black men,
one in Abyssinia and one in the Sudan, and when Menelik and
the French made alliance, the English army started imme-
diately, captured Khartoum in 1898, killing twenty-seven thou-
sand natives, and defeated the successor of the Mahdi.
Through this development in Egypt and in the Sudan there
had gone on in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen-
turies a significant interchange of culture between the East
and the West through Africa. Greek scientists made pilgrim-
ages to Egypt and Assyria and carried home the lore of yellow
and black sages. As the Greek-Roman culture declined, the
Arabs seized intellectual leadership and developed it in Africa,
marching to western Asia and southern Europe. With the Cru-
sades came a new period of intercourse between Negroid Africa
and other areas of civilization.
Constantine the African (1020-1087) mayor may not have
had some Negro blood. He was born in Carthage where all
races were represented. He became one of the important medi-
THE BLACK SUDAN 217
cal writers of the Middle Ages and started the translation from
Latin to Arabic. His work began the end of the Dark Ages
in Europe, and the dawn of scholasticism and his imperfect
efforts marked the flow of Greek culture into Europe through
Africa.
Whether or not Constantine himself was Negroid, many
Negroes shared in later phases of this same cultural inter-
course.
Because of this, by the thirteenth century the European
world looked upon the black world with romantic respect.
As early as the fifth century the legend of Saint Moor occurs:
the legend of a saint of the Roman Catholic Church who was
a black man and was reputed to have been a prince in Egypt.
In the tenth century Otto of the Holy Roman Empire chose
Saint Mauritius as the patron saint of Germany, and from
1000 to 1500 his statues and his worship were dominant in
central Europe. Walter von der Vogelweide sang of knightly
virtues regardless of skin color:
Many a Moor is rich in virtues within:
Behold their white hearts, if someone turns them round.
In the epic Parsifal, Wolfram von Eschenbach in the thir-
teenth century portrayed a white man and a black man as
brothers. A European knight comes to the country of Zassa-
mank, whose Queen Belakane and people were described as
"nocli schwarzer waren als die Nacht" (even blacker than the
night). He falls in love with the queen, courts and marries
her, because her noble and pure character seems to him quite
equal to that of a Christian. Later, however, disturbed by
the difference in their religions, he abandons her, and back
in his own country of Valois he wins the Queen of Valois in a
tournament and becomes king. Yet always he cherishes a deep
feeling of love for, and sense of wrong toward, his abandoned
black wife. After his death, his son Parsifal becomes the great
knight who leads the search for the Holy Grail. But meantime
218 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
the deserted black queen has given birth to a son, and this son
is miraculously black and white ("ein sohnlein das zweifarbig
war") and therefore named Feirefiz, or "colored man" Cbunte
sohn"). Later Parsifal meets this brother, and not knowing
him, joins battle with him in the hardest fight he ever had.
In the duel his sword breaks and he would have been killed
had it not been for the generous mercy of his colored foe.
Finally they recognize each other as half-brothers and Feirefiz
proves as faithful as any Christian. Led by his love for a white
European woman, he agrees to baptism and then carries Chris-
tianity to the East.
This story of the crossing of the paths of Parsifal and Feirefiz
is more than a side issue to· the main story of the Holy Grail.
It points toward the bridging of the gaps between creeds and
races and is of great significance in revealing the thought of en-
lightened and civilized society in Europe in the thirteenth
century.v Throughout the Middle Ages, in German and in
Latin Europe, statues of the "Black Virgin Mary" and portraits
of Negro saints of the Church were widely exhibited. The
stained glass of the Cathedral at Chartres especially illustrates
this.
Shakespeare, writing to entertain England in the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth centuries portrayed a black man
not only as a courageous soldier, but also a great gentleman
who sued successfully for the hand of the daughter of a sen-
ator of the richest Italian state; and in The Merchant of Venice,
too, a black suitor for a white princess is portrayed as natural
and equal.
In Shakespeare's Othello 23 there are ten allusions to his race
and color: to his thick lips (Act I, Scene II, line 66); to his
"sooty bosom" (Act I, Scene II, line 70); when Emilia calls him
"black" (Act V, Scene II, line 130); when the duke alludes to
12 Ct. Phylon, Vol. II, pp. 375-76.
13 Hudson Shakespeare, edited by E. C. and A. K. Black (New York:
Ginn and Company, 1926).
THE BLACK SUDAN 219
him as "black" (Act I, Scene III, lines 288-89); and especially
when Othello alludes to himself, "black as mine own face"
(Act III, Scene III, lines 286-87), and says, "haply for I am
black" (Act III, Scene III, line 263). There are any number
of other allusions to the contrast of color that first startled
Desdemona (Act III, Scene III, lines 229, 230; Act I, Scene III,
line 98); and in Desdemona's defense of a black woman (Act
II, Scene II, lines 132-34)' Yet with all this Shakespeare did not
hesitate to allude to Othello as descended from kings (Act I,
Scene II, lines 21-22), and all Othello's companions agree as to
his nobility of character: "a worthy governor," "brave Othello,"
"noble" and "true of mind," "great of heart," and especially
Iago's tribute:
The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,
Is of a constant, loving, noble .nature,
And I dare think he'll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband. (Act II, Scene I, lines 278-82)
Despite this there are critics who have almost had hysterics
in seeking to deny that Shakespeare meant to paint a Negro as
a noble warrior and successful suitor of a beautiful white
woman.
When Italian painters and others began to paint the legend
of the three kings who visited the cradle of Christ, it seemed
logical that one of the three princes, who represent the three
great peoples of earth, should be a black Negroid of Africa
as the other two represented yellow Asia and white Europe.
In the same fourteenth century we see growing in the Sudan
the expansion of imperialism in black Africa. The movement
of Islam up the Nile continued from the middle of the thir-
teenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. As a result,
the Bantu tribes, which probably had originally moved north
from the Great Lakes toward the Mediterranean, began a count-
ermovement perhaps long before the eleventh century. They
moved toward the West Coast and the kingdom of the Congo,
220 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
which dominated the valley and forests of the great Congo
system; they pressed upon the Great Lakes, threatening the
Negroids and mulattoes on the East Coast; and they fell upon
the civilization of the Monomotapa centering at Zimbabwe.
They overthrew and changed the culture while at the same
time continuing it. They marched on in a series of stops and
forays until they reached South Africa at the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
In the west came greater disaster to black Africa. The city-
state coast culture, withdrawing from the Sudanese imperial-
ism, met expanding Europe; and that Europe, beginning with
trade in gold and pepper, turned to a trade in human flesh on
the greatest scale the world has ever seen. The gain from
American black labor together with the loot of India changed
the face of world industry. Built on a miraculous union of
science and technique, the capitalistic system was founded on
African slavery and degradation. The very name of the Songhay
was forgotten, and Europe ruled the world.
This thousand years of history might have been different if
the Christian Church had retained its hold upon Asia and
Africa instead of expelling these countries and turning to the
Nordic barbarians. In Northern Africa, the Nile valley, and
Ethiopia, in Syria and the Middle East, the Catholic Church
had wide range and power during the early Middle Ages.
Through the greed of the Eastern Roman Empire, and because
of endless controversy and disputes like that of Arianism, all
these churches were lost to the Roman hierarchy. Thus when
Islam came to the valley of the Nile it came to defend Egyptian
Christians and was welcomed by them, instead of meeting
opposition from the organized Christian Church. When, on
the other hand, Christianity met black folk in the African
slave and red men in America, it regarded them as lost heathens
to be exterminated or enslaved. Thus the Church upheld the
slave trade and its consequences.
Was it possible that so fine a flowering of culture as that
THE BLACK SUDAN 221
of the Sudan should have had no influence on the renaissance
of culture in Europe? There was but scant indigenous culture
in Arabia. The rise of civilization among Arabs, as among all
peoples, took place where they were fired by contact with
Mongoloids at Bagdad, Negroids in the valley of the Nile;
and in Spain after the Arabs had passed slowly and in com-
paratively small groups through Africa and augmented their
numbers with black and brown Negroids and mixed Berbers.
So much so that Europe for five centuries described Islamic
culture in Spain as a civilization of colored people, "Moors"
-Blackamoors and Tawny Moors; and the whole discussion
of human skin color and its social implications in the Middle
Ages assumed that Moors and Negroes were identical.
"Adolphe Bloch has given the following precise description
of the present race of the Moors and the manner in which black
and white amalgamated over long centuries to form it. He says:
'The race which gave birth to the Moroccans can be no other
than the African Negroes because the same black type with
features more or less Caucasian is found all the way to Senegal
upon the right bank of the river without counting that it has
been recognized in various parts of the Sahara . . . and from
there come black Moors who still have thick lips as a result of
Negro descent and not from intermixture.
" 'As to the white, bronze, or dark Moors, they are no other
than the near relations of black Moors with whom they form
the varieties of the same race; and as one can also see among
the Europeans, blonds, brunets, and chestnuts in the midst of
the same population, so one may see Moroccans of every color
in the same agglomeration without its being a question of their
being real mulattoes.' " 14
These Moorish sea-rovers sailed along the coasts of Scotland
for centuries. David McRitchie has told of them: "Allan
McRuari, the black-skinned Hebridean pirate of the fifteenth
century, is one notable instance of these black invaders."
14 Rogers, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 112.
222 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
George Hardy said: "The Moors profited by their maritime
situation to create a powerful fleet and to undertake against
the Christian countries of the Mediterranean a savage struggle.
From their ports left armed ships manned by men of proved
bravery and maintained by communal societies. These 'corsairs'
descended unexpectedly upon the coasts or isles of the Mediter-
ranean, and they captured and sold as slaves the sailors and the
passengers. A veritable terror reigned in the Mediterranean .
. . . They ravaged the coasts of Portugal, Spain, Southern
France-and even went as far as Britain." 15
Draper, writing of the eleventh century, speaks of the vastly
superior social and artistic development of the swarthy Moors,
who, he says, might well have looked "with supercilious con-
tempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and
England, which were scarce better than stables-chimneyless,
windowless, and with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape
like the wigwams of certain Indians." 16
Lately some recognition of the part that the Mohammedan
East and Asia played in the European Renaissance has been
made; but significant silence and indisposition to investigate
has been shown in the case of the black Sudan. Centers of cul-
ture and learning are known to have existed there long before
they arose in France, Germany, or England. But if they are
recognized at all, it is assumed that the leaders were "Arab"
or "Berber." In literature alone, and there sparingly, have
single black men been mentioned; but is it reasonable to sup-
pose that in Cairo and Seville, in the Universities of Sankore
and Timbuktu, black brains did not function? It is unreason-
able only to those who accept and spread the American slave
theory of the eternal inferiority of Negroes.
Remember that Europe did not raise herself out of the semi-
barbarism of the Dark Age and bring back the culture of
15 George Hardy, Les Grands Etapes d l'Histoire du Maroc (Paris, 1921),
Pp·50-54·
16 J. W. Draper, A History oi the Intellectual Development ot Europe
(London: Bell, Daldy, 1864), Vol. II, pp. 26, 29.
THE BLACK SUDAN 223
Greece and Rome. After Greece had floundered in petty feuds
and Rome had fallen in senile decay, Byzantium, through
Constantinople, handed Greek culture back to Asia and Africa,
whence it came. At Bagdad and Alexandria and Cairo it flamed
anew under Islam. It was not "Arabian"; the nomad Arabs
carried culture but seldom originated it. From the Euphrates
and the Nile the renewed civilization moved into North Africa,
into Moorish Spain, and into black Africa. Nothing that ever
touched Africa could evade the fertilization of Negroid culture
and Negroid blood. Black universities sent black scholars to
learn and lecture to the Mediterranean world. Black historians,
like Abderrahman Es-Sadi, wrote the "Bible of the Sudan"-
Tarikes-Sudan; and the Tarikh-el-Fettach. From this Africa
a new cultural impulse entered Europe and became the Ren-
aissance.
Was it possible or inherently probable that black Africa had
no creative part in all this? That none of the science and
literature came from black brains? That the Europe which
praised and lauded black folk of that day, did it in mere
curiosity or charity? Or is it more probable that the cultural
contributions of many Negroids have been forgotten or un-
recognized because their color seemed unimportant, or was
unknown or forgotten; and because to modern Europe, black
civilization has been a contradiction in terms? Renaissance
Europe, bounding forward on new cultural conquests, flowered
in art, science, and literature; then traded with the world and
discovered endless profit in stealing and selling human beings
and in the scientific enslavement of the major portion of man-
kind, until in the twentieth century came suicide and collapse,
analogous to, but on a vaster scale than, the Peloponnesian
War.
A determined legend can successfully contradict fact;
Australian and New Zealand soldiers coming to Egypt in 1919
were astonished to find that Egyptians were "N iggers"; that
is, not "white" as they had always been told; troops quartered
224 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
in Germany by the French in 1919 were reviled by Americans
as "Negroes." No, said the French, they were "white" Alge-
rians! Visitors to North Africa are surprised to find so many
Negroes and mulattoes and hasten to explain it as the result of
the modern slave trade. There were Negroes and mulattoes in
North Africa in Egyptian times.
It must be remembered that in ancient and medieval days
the color of a man's skin was usually not stressed or even men-
tioned unless it had cultural significance; that is, if a group
of black folk had a particular cultural pattern, then reference
to the skin color of an individual belonging to that group fixed
his cultural status. On the other hand, a man might be black
and not belong to a black cultural group; in that case his skin
color would not be mentioned at all. Thus Ra Nesi, Pharaoh
of Egypt, was mentioned as black probably because he was also
a member of an Ethiopian clan; while Nofritari, although
black, was called Egyptian. In North Africa a follower of
Mohammed in 800, as in 1800, was a Mohammedan, no matter
what his color; but a member of a Sudanese tribal clan was
referred to as "black," because of his political and religious
affiliations. So in East Africa, the powerful Tipoo-Tib is always
called an "Arab," when his pictures clearly show him to be
what Americans would denominate a "full-blooded" Negro.
Moreover, "black" is a relative expression; no human skin
is absolutely black, and any so-called black skin can be called
"dark." Thus many persons of Negro lineage appear in history
simply as brunets or without reference at all to color. In African
history particularly, tens of thousands of persons have thus
been assigned to the "white" race, partly because their descent
was not known and partly because color did not matter in
the twelfth century as it did in the nineteenth.
A work by Al-Jahiz, a writer, whom Christopher Dawson
calls the greatest Arab scholar and stylist of the nineteenth
century, is a book entitled Kitab al Sudan wa'l-Bidan, or
The Superiority of the Black Race over the White. "White"
THE BLACK SUDAN 225
here does not mean the fair whites, but dark-skinned whites
and mulattoes. The fair white is called "red man." Jahiz in-
cluded the East Indians among the blacks.
If when the civilization of the Sudan turned eastward it
had been inspired by the best culture of Asia and Europe, what
might not have happened? But Europe at that hour regarded
both continents as enemies of the "City of God" and was also
moving rapidly toward a conception of economic mastery of
the world beginning with conquest and loot, marching thence
to human slavery on an unprecedented scale, and ending in
capitalistic exploitation not simply of the working class in
Europe but especially of the dark workers of Asia and Africa.
All this ended in colonial imperialism. In this direction, then,
there was after the Battle of Tenkadibou no hope for a wel-
coming hand in work, faith, or self-development in culture
from Europe. Civilization in the Sudan died of strangulation
by slavery and the European determination to master the
world, no matter what the cost in degradation and pain.
CHAPTER XI
ANDROMEDA
Of the future of the darker races and their rela-
tion to the white peoples.
INGREEK mythology Andromeda was the black daughter ofCepheus, King of Ethiopia and of Cassiopeia,
That starr'd Ethiop Queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise
Above the sea nymphs and their powers offended.
It is said that Poseidon, angry at this black woman's affront
to the Nereids ... threatened to flood the land and send a sea
monster. The Egyptian oracle of Ammon foretold that only
the sacrifice of Andromeda to the monster could stay destruc-
tion. Thus Andromeda was chained and exposed on a headland
facing the sea; Perseus, forefather of the Asiatic Persians of
Iran, returning from the slaying of Gorgon, freed Andromeda
and married her. After her death she reigned among the stars,
her arms extended and chained, together with Cassiopeia and
Perseus; and anyone may see them shining upon a beautiful
night.
It might be asked what has this or any fairy tale to do with
a world stricken, starving, and half-insane; or with the rela-
tions of Africa to Europe and America? Very little perhaps;
226
ANDROMEDA 227
and yet we must remember that this folk tale was part of the
culture complex of the Mediterranean area where there was no
color bar and no name for race; and where, at least in theory,
the world was a fight between civilization and barbarism. Per-
haps then in some way this legend may guide us in the present
and the future. What in truth is going to be the future of
black folk? Are they going to die out gradually, with only
traces of their blood to remind the world of their former
existence? Are they going to be permanently segregated from
the world in Africa or elsewhere, leaving the white world free
of its fear and repulsion? Or in some slow or fast intermingling
of peoples will all colors of mankind merge into some in-
distinguishable unity? None of these solutions seems practi-
cable or imminent for many a long day. And, after all, none
would really solve the basic problem of the relations of peoples;
for even if extremes of human differences vanish, there will
always remain differences, and around them the problems of
human living-together.
Facing then the present problem, may we not frankly ask:
Does the world need Africa? What has Africa to offer Europe,
Asia, and America? Does Africa need the world? Certainly in
the past the world has needed and used the Negro race: in
Egypt and Ethiopia, and even in Asia; in the first building of
the Christian Church and in the encouragement and trans-
mission of thought and science from the East to the West that
is known as the Renaissance; and especially in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the Negro
race has been the foundation upon which the capitalist system
has been reared, the Industrial Revolution carried through,
and imperial colonialism established.
If we confine ourselves to America we cannot forget that
America was built on Africa. From being a mere stopping
place between Europe and Asia or a chance treasure house of
gold, America became through African labor the center of the
sugar empire and the cotton kingdom and an integral part of
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
that world industry and trade which caused the Industrial
Revolution and the reign of capitalism.
Through the nineteenth century America, on the strength
of its black labor as well as white, grew in wealth and impor-
tance. It became the greatest experiment in modern democracy,
seeking to embrace eventually not simply the white but the
black worker. Today not only is the Negro an important part
of the world of labor and art in all the Americas, but beyond
this the trade of America is built in large degree upon the
products raised by Africans and their children the world over.
But beyond America and in the main states of the modern
world the cold economic fact is that Africa, its labor and
products, are of prime importance. Of the typical products of
Africa, cotton, one of the oldest there, is still valuable, and
cotton cloth was exported from Africa long before it was woven
in England. Sisal, hemp, and other fiber plants and flax are
indigenous to Africa. The vast demand for vegetable oil has
resulted in the oil industry, especially in West Africa. Palm
oil is used for margarine, soap, lubrication, "olive oil," and for
other industrial purposes. Thus the oil palm of West Africa
is a valuable product and supplies palm kernels which are
exported from the whole West Coast. The ground nut and
cocoa-nut also produce oils. The coconut palm is found all
over the continent north of the Tropic of Capricorn and also
south of the date-palm line.
The shea-nut tree grows where the oil palm does not, and its
fat is used for food, soap-making, and butter. The cocoa indus-
try of West Africa now supplies two-thirds of the cocoa of the
world. Kola nuts are also exported. In the Mediterranean area
practically all grains cultivated in Europe can be grown. Coffee
is native to Africa and is named after the province of Kaffa,
Abyssinia. It grows also in Liberia. The greater part of tropical
Africa produces some kind of rubber. Nearly all the cloves are
gotten from Zanzibar and Pemba. Fruits are grown and ex-
ported from nearly every part of Africa, from the bananas and
ANDROMEDA 229
mangoes III the tropics to the wine grapes of the north and
south. The date palm flourishes throughout North Africa.
Large areas of the continent are suitable for cattle and sheep
raising, although flies and diseases keep them out of other
districts .
• Gold is widely distributed in Africa and has been worked
from prehistoric ages on the West Coast, the Nubian desert,
Central and South Africa. A third of the world's supply of gold
in the world today is mined on the Witwatersrand. Diamonds
are found in three districts of South Africa and in the Belgian
Congo. They are of immense value. There are coal-bearing
areas in South Africa. Iron has been worked from an early
age, and on the Gold Coast, manganese is being developed.
There are four great copper-producing areas, principally in
Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo, and also in the Northern
Transvaal. Lead, graphite, and zinc are widely distributed.
Phosphates occur in the North. Mineral oil has been discov-
ered in Egypt near the Red Sea. Soda is largely an African
product. Maize is cultivated in many regions. Tobacco is a
crop of South Africa. Sugar is grown in Egypt, Mozambique,
and Natal. And there is much valuable timber all over the
continent.
Besides supplying these materials Africa is one of the largest
reservoirs of human labor, not only of common labor, but of
semi-skilled and increasing numbers of skilled laborers. For the
most part these laborers are unorganized and without political
power, and consequently they form the cheapest labor available,
save in Asia.
On account of this wealth of labor and material, not only
in the past but between the two world wars, capital has poured
into Africa. In addition to primary sources of wealth-mining,
agriculture, timber-industrialization has begun, and in the
postwar period larger and larger investments of the accumu-
lated profits of industry will seek new investments in this in-
dustrial paradise, where there are few laws to limit labor, even
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
-of women or children, and where profits are lightly taxed.
It has been argued with regard to this matter of profit in
colonial regions that the profit has not been large and therefore
is not the main object of colonial enterprise. This is especially
the carefully worked out thesis of Lord Hailey's "African
Survey." The survey follows an old pattern of British imperi-
alism. A colonial official with the facts of the situation under
his control writes a history of the condition and past of his
region. It is usually done judiciously, and with much historical
research, but it is, and in the nature of the case, has to be, a
special plea for the defense of imperialism. And it omits con-
sistently the point of view of the native and any body of fact
which weighs against European aggression. Sometimes, as in
Claridge's History of Ashanti, frank criticism of Great Brit-
ain creeps in; but for the most part, as in the works by John-
ston, Lugard, and others the story is heavily weighted on the
side of the imperialists.
It is of especial importance that the assertion of huge profits
from cheap and half-slave labor and low price of materials
should be answered. Consequently, Lord Hailey's co-workers
point out that the "average" rate of profit from investment
in Africa during the last century has amounted to little more
than 4 per cent. Why is it, one asks on reading this, that profits
are always reckoned as a percentage of some fixed sum while
wages and salaries are counted in bulk?
It is, of course, as all men know, because the rate of income
depends entirely upon the capital sum fixed as its base, and
the fixing of the estimated amount of this capital sum is
practically always in the hands and the control of the investors.
Practically, then, the investors can fix their rate of profit at
any sum simply by estimating at their own figure the amount
of capital invested.
What is "investment" and how can we measure it? If ten
dollars' worth of poisonous synthetic gin is exported to Africa,
as it has been by the tens of thousands of gallons, and if there
ANDROMEDA
it buys labor and materials, which, when processed, are worth
a hundred dollars, what is the value of the investment on which
the rate of profit is based? If in the days of Cecil Rhodes lands
stolen from the natives were mined with cheap half-slave labor
and brought gold and diamonds worth a million dollars to
London, at what figure should this mine be "capitalized"? At
the figure paid for its acquisition and cost of carrying on, or the
figure the shares sold for in the stock market? In the great
centers of capital investment, the legal right to determine the
value of capital is today to some extent limited, but it was not
limited in the wild gambling which accompanied the develop-
ment of gold and diamond mining in South Africa, nor in the
returns to trade in West Africa during the seventeenth, eight-
eenth, and nineteenth centuries. No matter, then, how vast a
profit is made in Africa, and that it has been vast there cannot
be the slightest doubt; it can be always made to look modest
by watering the actual investment or putting a high estimate
on good will. The only reason back of colonial imperialism is
a rate of profit which the spread of democracy and trade unions
has curtailed in Europe and North America.
The actual value of capital goods at the time of their in-
vestment in Africa, as compared with the realized value of the
labor and material taken from Africa by investors and other
claimants, legal and illegal, would if known, without shadow
of doubt prove the enormous theft which Europe has perpe-
trated on peoples deliberately made helpless before greed and
aggression. In the face of fact, statements like that of Lord
Hailey as to the meager profits of African exploitation must be
rein terpreted.
For these reasons there is ferment in Africa today to which
• the world must pay more and more attention. Only yesterday
a general strike in Nigeria affected nearly forty thousand work-
ers. But this hardly makes headlines in the news, and few people
who read daily about Argentina realize that Nigeria is twice
as populous.
232 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
The effort to make peace in the world today finds one of
its stumbling blocks in Italy's former African colonies-Eritrea,
Libya, and Somaliland. Two of these are claimed by Ethiopia,
whose conquest was one cause of World War II, and whose re-
construction is attracting capital from America. Native con-
gresses in South and East Africa recently appealed to the
world for the application of the Atlantic Charter to them.
Their voices fell on silent cables. but they were strong enough
and passionate in logic. At the recent Trades Union meeting
in Paris black African unions were for the first time in history
represented by a dozen delegates, telling the world that black
labor is labor. Egypt is straining at British control, and the
Pan-Arab League is demanding Libya. In Kenya has arisen the
problem of forced labor, and all over Africa, the plight of re-
turning black soldiers who fought in Asia and the South Seas.
Political change looms in Rhodesia and Southwest Africa,
while the Belgian Congo simmers in uneasy consciousness of
the anomaly of being fourteen times the size of Belgium itself
with none of that democracy for which Belgium fought. Africa
is quiet today, but may not be tomorrow.
Perhaps one of the most striking protests against conditions
that has come out of Africa is that of the National Congress of
British West Africa which met in 1920. As a statement of
democratic aims it deserves wider circulation than it has had.
I venture to quote parts of it.
MEMORANDUM of the case of the National Congress of
British West Africa for a Memorial based upon the Reso-
lutions to be presented to His Majesty the King Emperor
in Council through the Right Honourable the Secretary
of State tor the Colonies, March I920.
"In presenting the case for the franchise for the different
colonies composing British West Africa, namely, The Gambia,
Sierra Leone. the Gold Coast, and Nigeria. it is important to
remember that each of these colonies is at present governed
ANDROMEDA 233
under the Crown Colony System. By that is meant that the
power of selecting members for the legislative councils is in
the Governor of each colony and not dependable upon the
will of the people through an elective system.
"For a long time in the history of each of these colonies the
anomaly of the nomination of members of the legislative coun-
cil by the Governors and not by the people electing their own
representatives has struck the inhabitants of each community,
and now and again representations have been made with a
view to remedying the disability.
"Up to the beginning of the present year (1920), there had
been no improvement in the situation, with the result that in
March 1920 a Conference of Africans of British West Africa
was held at Accra, the Capital of the Gold Coast Colony, at
which were present the representatives of each of the four
colonies composing British West Africa. . . . A reference to
the programme of the subjects discussed will show the various
topics of importance that came under the consideration of the
Congress. Before the rise of the Conference it resolved itself
into the National Congress of British West Africa as a perma-
nent official body for the purpose of representing constitution-
ally British West African need, political and otherwise. At each
of the sessions an opportunity was given for the full discussion
of the particular subjects under consideration, and upon the
same being fully debated, resolutions arising out of the dis-
cussions were passed .... It will be noticed that the first reso-
lutions deal with legislative (including municipal) reforms and
the granting of the franchise and administrative reforms with
particular reference to equal rights and opportunities ....
"The first submission with respect to this particular resolution
is that in the demand for the franchise by the people of British
West Africa it is not to be supposed that they are asking to
be allowed to copy a foreign institution. On the contrary, it
is important to notice that the principle of electing represen-
tatives to local councils and bodies is inherent in all the systems
234 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
of British West Africa. According to African institutions,
every member of a community belongs to a given family with
its duly accredited head, who represents that family in the
village council, naturally composed of the heads of the several
families. Similarly, in a district council the different represen-
tatives of each village or town would be appointed by the
different villages and towns, and so with the Provincial Council
until, by the same process, we arrive at the Supreme Council,
namely, the State Council, presided over by the Paramount
Chief.
"Again, according to the African System no Headman, Chief,
or Paramount Ruler has any inherent right to exercise juris-
diction unless he is duly elected by the people to so represent
them. This, coupled with the facts in the preceding paragraph
stated, makes the African system essentially a democratic one,
and the appointment to political office depends entirely upon
the election and the will of the people.
"From the foregoing it is obvious that a system by which the
Governor of a Crown Colony nominates whom he thinks
proper to represent the people is considered by them as a great
anomaly and constitutes a grievance and a disability which
they now request should be remedied. Hence the constitutional
agitation in the past, as in the present, for a change in the
constitution of British West Africa so as to enable the people
in the future to elect their own representatives to the Legis-
lative Councils of the different colonies.
"It will be observed in paragraph 2 of the resolutions under
consideration that it is not proposed to disturb the Executive
Council as at present composed. As regards the Legislative
Council, however, a radical change is desired so that one-half
of its members shall be nominated by the Crown and the other
half elected by the people to deal with legislation generally.
A further radical reform is the institution of a House of
Assembly, composed of the members of the Legislative Council
together with six other financial representatives elected by the
ANDROMEDA 235·
people, who shall have the power of imposing taxes and dis-
cussing freely and without reserve the items on the Annual,
Estimates of revenue and expenditure prepared by the Gov--
ernor in the Executive Council and of approving them. The
unofficial elective reform herein proposed includes both Euro--
pean and African representation.
"Before leaving the point under consideration, attention.
may be drawn to what is stated in Gold Coast Native Institu-
tions 1 on page 164:
Legislation to be effectual, must be with the Chiefs in a represent-
ative legislative assembly. Any important measure affecting the people
must be passed with the consent and the direct co-operation of the
Chiefs themselves.
If the policy of the Government had been based upon this,
principle there would be no need today for this work. What
the country requires most urgently today is a National Assem-
bly wherein all sections of the community will be adequately
represented. That is the fundamental element of progress, the-
reform at which all right-thinking men must directly aim." 2
This was written more than seventeen years ago; and as has.
been explained above, by the African system of representation
even the Chiefs are the mere representatives of the people in a
democratic system.
Britain after delay yielded to this demand in characteristic
fashion: it gave Negroes partial elective representation in the
"Legislative Councils," but the councils still "advised" the'
governor, who retained large power of legislation. British in-
dustry sat directly on the Council and in England continued
to name West African governors and dictate colonial policies.
In the first chapter I have told of the Pan-African Congress.
which met in Paris after World War I. Similar efforts of Afri-
1Written by Caseley Hayford, a prominent Negro barrister of the Gold
Coast.
2 Quoted from the official text of the Memorandum as published ins
Lagos, 1920, pp. 1-3.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
cans and peoples of African descent to unite in mutual ex-
change of culture and co-operation for social betterment have
been made since the idea was established in 1919.
We went to work in 1921 to assemble a more authentic Pan-
African Congress and movement. We corresponded with Ne-
groes in all parts of Africa and in other parts of the world and
finally arranged for a congress to meet in London, Brussels,
and Paris in August and September. Of the one hundred and
thirteen delegates to this Congress, forty-one were from Africa,
thirty-five from the United States, twenty-four represented
Negroes living in Europe, and seven were from the West In-
dies. They came for the most part, but not in all cases, as
individuals and more seldom as the -representatives of organi-
zations or groups.
The Pan-African movement thus began to represent a growth
and development; but it immediately ran into difficulties. First
of all, there was the natural reaction to war and the determina-
tion on the part of certain elements in England, Belgium, and
elsewhere, to recoup their war losses by intensified colonial
exploitation. They were suspicious of native movements of
any sort.
Then, too, there came simultaneously another movement,
stemming from the West Indies. This was a peoples' movement
rather than a movement of the intellectuals. It was led by
Marcus Garvey and it represented a poorly conceived but in-
tensely earnest determination to unite the Negroes of the
world, especially in commercial enterprise. It used all of the
nationalist and racial paraphernalia of popular agitation, arrd
its strength lay in its backing by the masses of West Indians
and by increasing numbers of American Negroes. Its weakness
lay in its demagogic leadership, poor finance, intemperate
propaganda, and the natural apprehension it aroused among
the colonial powers.
The London meetings of the Congress of 1921 were preceded
by a conference with the International Department of the
ANDROMEDA 237
English Labor party, where the question of the relation of
white and colored labor was discussed. Beatrice Webb, Leonard
Woolf, Mr. Gillies, Norman Leyes, and others were present.
Otlet and La Fontaine, the Belgian leaders of internationalism,
welcomed the Congress warmly to Belgium, but strong oppo-
sition was encountered. The movement was confounded by
the press and others as a part of, if not the real "Garvey
Movement." The Brussels Neptune wrote June 14:
Announcement has been made ... of a Pan-African Congress or-
ganized at the instigation of the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People of New York. It is interesting to note that this
association is directed by personages who it is said in the United States
have received remuneration from Moscow (Bolsheviks). The associa-
tion has already organized its propaganda in the lower Congo, and
we must not be astonished if some day it causesgrave difficulties in the
Negro village of Kinshasa composed of .all the ne'er-do-wells of the
various tribes of the Colony aside from some hundreds of laborers.
Nevertheless, meetings of interest and enthusiasm were held.
The Congress assembled in the marvelous Palais Mondial.
There were many more white than colored people, and it was
not long before we realized that their interest was deeper, more
immediately significant than that of the white people we had
found elsewhere. Many of Belgium's economic and material
interests center in Africa in the Belgian Congo. Any inter-
ference with the natives might result in an interference with
the sources from which so many Belgian capitalists draw their
prosperity.
Resolutions passed without dissent at the meeting in London
contained a statement concerning Belgium, criticizing her
colonial regime, although giving her credit for plans of reform
for the future. This aroused bitter opposition in Brussels, and
an attempt was made to substitute an innocuous statement
concerning good will and investigation, which Diagne of
France, as the presiding officer, declared adopted in the face
of a clear majority in opposition.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
At the Paris meeting the original London resolutions, with
some minor corrections, were adopted. They were ih part:
To the World: The absolute equality of races, physical, political and
social is the founding stone of world and human advancement. No one
denies great differences of gift, capacity and attainment among indi-
viduals of all races, but the voice of Science, Religion, and practical
Politics is one in denying the God-appointed existence of super-races
or of races naturally and inevitably and eternally inferior.
That in the vast range of time, one group should in its industrial
technique, or social organization, or spiritual vision, lag a few hundred
years behind another, or forge fitfully ahead, or come to differ decid-
edly in thought, deed, and ideal, is proof of the essential richness and
variety of human nature, rather than proof of the co-existence of demi-
gods and apes in human form. The doctrine of racial equality does not
interfere with individual liberty; rather it fulfills it. And of all the
various criteria of which masses of men have in the past been pre-
judged and classified, that of the color of the skin and texture of the
hair, is surely the most adventitious and idiotic ....
The beginning of wisdom in interracial contact is the establishment
of political institutions among suppressed peoples. The habit of de-
mocracy must be made to encircle the earth. Despite the attempts to
prove that its practice is the secret and divine gift of the few, no habit
is more natural or more widely spread among primitive people, or
more easily capable of development among masses. Local self-govern-
ment with a minimum of help and oversight can be established tomor-
row in Asia, in Africa, America, and the isles of the sea. It will in many
instances need general control and guidance, but it will fail only when
that guidance seeks ignorantly and consciously its own selfish ends
and not the people's liberty and good.
Surely in the twentieth century of the Prince of Peace, in the mil-
lennium of Mohammed, and in the mightiest Age of Human Reason,
there can be found in the civilized world enough of altruism, learning,
and benevolence to develop native institutions, whose one aim is not
profit and power for the few ....
What then do those demand who see these evils of the color line and
racial discrimination, and who believe in the divine right of suppressed
ANDROMEDA 239
and backward people to learn and aspire and be free? The Negro race
through their thinking intelligentsia demand:
I. The recognition of civilized men as civilized despite their race
or color.
II. Local self-government for backward groups, deliberately rising
as experience and knowledge grow to complete self-government
under the limitation of a self-governed world,
III. Education in self-knowledge, in scientific truth, and in indus-
trial technique, undivorced from the art of beauty.
IV. Freedom in their own religion and social customs and with the
right to be different and nonconformist.
V. Co-operation with the rest of the world in government, indus-
try, and art on the bases of Justice, Freedom, and Peace.
VI. The return to Negroes of their land and its natural fruits and
defense against the unrestrained greed of invested capital.
VII. The establishment under the League of Nations of an interna-
tional institution for study of the Negro problems.
VIII. The establishment of an international section of the Labor Bu-
reau of the League of Nations, charged with the protection of
native labor ....
In some such words and thoughts as these we seek to express
our will and ideal, and the end of our untiring effort. To our aid we
call all men of the earth who love justice and mercy. Out of the depths
we have cried unto the deaf and dumb masters of the world. Out of
the depths we cry to our own sleeping souls. The answer is written in
the stars.
The whole press of Europe took notice of these meetings and
more especially of the ideas behind the meeting. Gradually
they began to distinguish between the Pan-African Movement
and the Garvey agitation. They praised and criticized. Sir Harry
Johnston wrote: "This is the weakness of all the otherwise
grand efforts of the Coloured People in the United States to
pass on their own elevation and education and political sig-
nificance to the Coloured Peoples of Africa: they know so little
about real Africa."
240 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Even Punch gibed good-naturedly: "'A PAN-AFRICAN MANI-
FESTO' 'NO ETERNALLY INFERIOR RACES' (headlines in The Times)
No, but in the opinion of our coloured brothers, some infernally
superior ones!" 3
The Second Pan-African Congress sent me with a committee
to interview the officials of the League of Nations in Geneva.
I talked with Rappard who headed the Mandates Commission;
I saw the first meeting of the Assembly, and I had an interesting
interview with Albert Thomas, head of the International
Labor Office. Working with Bellegarde of Haiti, a member of
the Assembly, we brought the status of Africa to the attention
of the League. The League published our petition as an official
document saying in part:
The Second Pan-African Congress wishes to suggest that the spirit of
the world moves toward self-government as the ultimate aim of all men
and nations and that consequently the mandated areas, being peopled
as they are so largely by black folk, have a right to ask that a man of
Negro descent, properly fitted in character and training, be appointed
a member of the Mandates Commission so soon as a vacancy occurs.
The Second Pan-African Congress desires most earnestly and em-
phatically to ask the good offices and careful attention of the League of
Nations to the condition of civilized persons of Negro descent through-
out the world. Consciously and subconsciously there is in the world
today a widespread and growing feeling that it is permissible to treat
civilized men as uncivilized if they are colored and more especially of
Negro descent. The result of this attitude and many consequent laws,
customs, and conventions, is that a bitter feeling of resentment, per-
sonal insult and despair, is widespread in the world among those very
persons whose rise is the hope of the Negro race.
We are fully aware that the League of Nations has little, if any, di-
rect power to adjust these matters, but it has the vast moral power of
public world opinion and of a body conceived to promote Peace and
Justice among men. For this reason we ask and urge that the League of
Nations take a firm stand on the absolute equality of races and that it
3 September 7,1921.
ANDROMEDA 241
suggest to the Colonial Powers connected with the League of Nations
to form an International Institute for the study of the Negro problem,
and for the evolution and protection of the Negro race.
We sought to have these meetings result in a permanent
organization. A secretariat was set up in Paris and functioned
for a couple of years, but was not successful. The Third Pan-
African Congress was called for 1923, but the Paris secretary
postponed it. We persevered and finally without proper notice
or preparation met in London and Lisbon late in the year. The
London session was small. It was addressed by Harold Laski
and Lord Olivier and attended by H. G. Wells; Ramsay Mac-
Donald was kept from attending only by the pending election,
but wrote: "Anything I can do to advance the cause of your
people on your recommendation, I shall always do gladly."
The meeting of an adjourned session of this Congress in
Lisbon the same year was more successful. Eleven countries
were represented there, including Portuguese Africa. The Liga
Africana was in charge. "The great association of Portuguese
Negroes with headquarters at Lisbon, which is called the Liga
Africana, is an actual federation of all the indigenous asso-
ciations scattered throughout the five provinces of Portuguese
Africa and represents several million individuals .... This
Liga Africana which functions at Lisbon, in the very heart of
Portugal so to speak, has a commission from all the other native
organizations and knows how to express to the government
in no ambiguous terms but in dignified manner all that should
be said to avoid injustice or to bring about the repeal of harsh
laws. That is why the Liga Africana of Lisbon is the director
of the Portuguese African movement; but only in the good
sense of the word, without making any appeal to violence and
without leaving constitutional limits." 4
Two former colonial ministers spoke, and the following
demands were made for Africans:
4 Statement to the Congressmade by Deputy Megalhaes.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
1. A voice in their own government.
2. The right of accessto the land and its resources.
3. Trial by juries of their peers under established forms of law.
4. Free elementary education for all; broad training in modern indus-
trial techniques; and higher training of selected talent.
s. The development of Africa for the benefit of Africans, and not
merely for the profit of Europeans.
6. The abolition of the slave trade and of the liquor traffic.
7. World disarmament and the abolition of war; but failing this, and
as long as white folk bear arms against black folk, the right of
blacks to bear arms in their own defense.
8. The organization of commerceand industry so as to make the main
objects of capital and labor the welfare of the many rather than
the enriching of the few....
In fine, we ask in all the world, that black folk be treated as men.
We can see no other road to Peace and Progress.What more paradox-
ical figure today fronts the world than the officialhead of a great South
African state striving blindly to build Peace and Good Will in Europe
by standing on the necks and hearts of millions of black Africans?
So far, the Pan-African idea was still American rather than
African, but it was growing and it expressed a real demand
for examination of the African situation and a plan of treat-
ment, from the native African point of view. With the object
of moving the center of this agitation nearer African centers
of population, I planned a Fourth Pan-African Congress in
the West Indies in 1925. My idea was to charter a ship and sail
down the Caribbean, stopping for meetings in Jamaica, Haiti,
Cuba, and the French islands. But here I reckoned without my
steamship lines. At first the French Line replied that they
could "easily manage the trip"; but eventually no accommo-
dations could be found on any line except at the prohibitive
price of fifty thousand dollars. I suspect that colonial powers
spiked this plan.
Two years later, in 1927, American Negro women revived
the Congress idea, and a Fourth Pan-African Congress was
held in New York. Thirteen countries were represented, but
ANDROMEDA 243
direct African participation lagged. There were two hundred
and eight delegates from twenty-two American states and ten
foreign countries. Africa was sparsely represented by represen-
tatives from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria.
Chief Amoah III of the Gold Coast, and anthropologists like
Herskovits, then of Columbia, Mensching of Germany, and .
John Vandercook were on the program. The resolutions stressed
six points:
Negroes everywhere need:
1. Avoice in their own government.
2. Native rights to the land and its natural resources.
3. Modern education for all children.
4. The development of Africa for the Africans and not merely for
the profit of Europeans.
5. The reorganization of commerce and industry so as to make the
main object of caI?ital and labor the welfare of the many rather
than the enriching of the few.
6. The treatment of civilized men as civilized despite difference of
birth, race, or color.
The Pan-African Movement had lost ground since 1921.
In 1929 to remedy this we made a desperate effort to hold a
Fifth Pan-African Congress on the continent of Africa itself;
we selected Tunis because of its accessibility. Elaborate prep-
arations were begun. It looked as though at last the movement
was going to be geographically African. But two insuperable
difficulties intervened: first, the French government very po-
litely but firmly informed us that the Congress could take place
at Marseilles or any French city, but not in Africa; and second,
there came the Great Depression.
The Pan-African idea died apparently until twenty years
afterward, in the midst of World War II, when it leaped to
life again in an astonishing manner. At the Trade Union Con-
ference in London in 1944 to plan for world organization of
labor, representatives from black labor appeared from the
Gold Coast, Libya, British Guiana, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone.
244 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Among these, aided by colored persons resident III London,
Lancashire, Liverpool, and Manchester, there came a spon-
taneous call for the assembling of another Pan-African Congress
in 1945 when the World Federation of Trade Unions would
hold,their meeting in Paris.
After consultation and correspondence with trade union,
co-operative, and other progressive organizations in the West
Indies, West.Africa, South and East Africa, a formal invitation
for the conference was issued. Most of these bodies not only
approved and endorsed the agenda, but pledged themselves to
send delegates. In cases where either the time was too short
or the difficulties of transport too great to be overcome at such
short notice, the organizations gave mandates to the natives
of the territories concerned who were traveling to Paris to
attend the World Trade Union Conference.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress met October IS to 21 in
Manchester, England, with some two hundred delegates repre-
senting East and South Africa and the West Indies. Its signifi-
cance lay in the fact that it took a step toward a broader move-
ment and a real effort of the peoples of Africa and the
descendants of Africa the world over to start a great march
toward democracy for black folk.
Singularly enough, there is another "Pan-African" move-
ment. I thought of it as I sat at the San Francisco Conference
and heard Jan Smuts plead for an article on "human rights"
in the preamble of the Charter of the United Nations. It was
an astonishing paradox. The "Pan-African" movement which
he represents is a union of the white minority in Kenya,
Rhodesia, and the Union of Sou th Africa, to rule the African
continent in the interest of investors and exploiters. This plan
has been incubating since 1921, but has been discouraged by
the British Colonial Office. Smuts is now pushing it again, and
the white legislatures in Africa have asked for it. The San
Francisco trusteeship left a door open for this sort of thing.
Against this upsurges the movement of black union delegates
ANDROMEDA 245
working in co-operation with the labor delegates of Russia,
Great Britain, and the United States in order to build a new
world which includes black Africa. We may yet live to see
Pan-Africa as a real movement.
This Fifth Pan-African Congress placed great hope on the
British Labour movement and its sudden induction as the
government of the British Empire. But the Congress had put
before it a curious example of how organized labor may handle
colonial problems. T-here came before us literally a Man of
Sorrows: black, with a deeply-lined face. Gershon Ashie-Nikoi
was in desperate earnest. He shouted repeatedly: "We must be
free! We will be free!" He said that he represented three
hundred thousand cocoa farmers on the Gold Coast and Nigeria;
that he and his committee had come to lay a petition before
the new Labor Secretary of State and Colonies. He had been
refused audience because Mr. Hall declared that the committee
was not "official"; which meant that it was not appointed in
accordance with the procedure of the colonial governments,
and was not composed of the representatives which these gov-
ernments had officially chosen.
The committee secured a hearing before the Colonial Section
of the Fabian Society, which acts as a sort of Brain Trust to
advise the Labour government on colonial affairs. Among
them were many people of importance: Mr. Creech-Jones, the
Under-secretary of State for the Colonies, Miss Rita Hinden,
Lord Farringdon, the Secretary of the Aborigines Protection
Society, and others. They listened indifferently. The repre-
sentatives of the farmers therefore brought their case to the
Pan-African Congress and laid it before us. The committee had
been sent to London at the expense of the farmers, and had
established a permanent office in Arundel Street. They were
prepared for a long, hard fight, and the Pan-African Congress
pledged help.
Itwill repay us to glance briefly at this tale of the cocoa crop
as illustrating the methods of modern colonial exploitation
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
and its results even under a liberal administration. The world
consumption of cocoa has increased from 77,000 tons in 1895
to 700,000 tons at present. Formerly three-fourths of the cocoa
was raised in South America. Now two-thirds is raised in West
Africa.
This development of a new industry has an interesting his-
tory. A black laborer, Tetteh Quarsie, in 1879 brought cocoa
beans from Spanish Africa and distributed them among his
friends on the Gold Coast, British West Africa. In 1891, eighty
pounds of cocoa were raised by West African farmers. By 1936
this crop on the Gold Coast alone had been increased to 250,-
000 tons. It was purely an indigenous enterprise of black peas-
ant farmers. The deeply laid plan to transfer the raising of
cocoa from Spanish Africa to plantations in British West Africa,
developed by the Cad bury-instituted "boycott," went astray,
and the black peasants took over the job. On their own little
farms, averaging about two and one-half acres, they increased
crops and made cocoa and chocolate in wide demand through-
out the civilized world. Their fathers in Ashanti and Benin
had fought Britain for centuries to retain ownership of this
land.
For cocoa and chocolate today consumers pay annually at
least $500,000,000. Out of each dollar, of this less than three
cents goes to the cocoa farmer; and this is another instance of
the squeezing of agriculture by trade and manufacture.
Since the cocoa in West Africa is not raised on plantations
as it is in the West Indies and South America, the problem
of the traders and manufacturers is to make profit by beating
down the sale price and by manipulation of the world market.
For this reason the price to cocoa farmers has varied from $44
per ton during the depression, to $188 per ton during the time
of scarcity in 1927, and about $60 a ton today.
Ostensibly for correcting this price fluctuation, but really
for controlling the price, the British buyers on the Gold Coast
have for many years tried to come into agreement so as to
ANDROMEDA 247
make one price and one bid for all the cocoa offered. There are
thirteen main buyers: the British Unilevers, Cadbury and Fry,
buying for themselves and the Lyons' Teahouses; and others.
Finally in 1937 these firms came to a buying agreement. The
cocoa farmers desperately resisted. They staged a boycott for
eight months, reducing the sale of cocoa from 250,000 tons
to 50,000 tons. The buyers resisted. They applied pressure on
the Colonial Office in London, and without showing it the text
of the "buying agreement," induced it to advise the natives
that the proposal was for their benefit and to accept it. The
colonial governor, also without sight of the agreement, imme-
diately followed this directive from London and strongly
"advised" acquiescence by the natives. The natives still refused.
Mr. Cadbury then went to the Gold Coast and talked to the
chiefs and farmers. They demanded to see a copy of the agree-
ment. He "regretted" that he had not brought a copy with him.
Finally the British government capitulated and sent a Royal
Commission to the Coast, under Mr. Nowell. This Commission
secured a copy of the agreement, but made public only a part.
After careful investigation, they recommended that the buying
agreement be terminated and that co-operative enterprise be
instituted with representation of the African farmers.
Before this plan could be implemented however, the war
broke out and the Government proposed to take charge of
the cocoa crop, set prices, and sell it for the farmers. They
promised to bear any losses and to distribute any profit among
the farmers. This was satisfactory to the farmers, although
they protested at the low price per ton which the government
set in order to guard itself against loss.
The African colonial governments are virtually ruled by
investors in England. Investors not only dictate the choice of
governors, but these governors have the sole right of legisla-
tion under the Colonial Office in London. They are "advised"
by councils on which business interests are directly represented.
Recently local natives have been elected to such councils; but
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
even so the real power still rests in the hands of the governor.
Government conduct of industry in West Africa, is therefore
conduct by London investors. The whole economy of the
colony is rigged by outside business interests. Instead of a tax
on imports to encourage local effort, the Gold Coast, for in-
stance, claps an export duty on cocoa of $3.75 a ton; and during
the war it added a surtax of $4.58, making a total tax of $8.43
on a ton of cocoa, for which the cocoa farmer has at times
during this war received as little as $37 a ton; and on the aver-
age not more than $52 from 1939 to 1943. At the same time,
English exporters of goods to Africa need pay no import tax.
As a result the cost of imported goods skyrocketed during the
war, so that cotton print which sold before the war for $2.50
rose to $18, Khaki from $.60 to $3.20, and sheet iron from $1.00
to $20. "The result of this situation is that today many of the
farmers have been completely impoverished and paralyzed
economically." (Speech of Ashie-Nikoi.)
However, the whole picture changed in the minds of the
Negro farmers when the Labour party came to power and took
over the Colonial Office. Perhaps they were overoptimistic,
but they were certainly justified in some degree by the results
of government operation during World War II. Instead of the
anticipated losses, the government in five years of operation,
netted the neat profit of $25,000,000. Indeed, if they had
previously built proper storage facilities on the Gold Coast,
instead of compelling farmers to sell and rush the crop im-
mediately to Europe, regardless of prices or conditions of the
market; and if they had ever encouraged simple processing
operations, which would have saved freight and increased local
employment; if such policies had been followed, much cocoa
could have been saved from spoiling, and some 150,000 tons
need not have been burned. The net profit might have been
doubled.
The Labour party came to power and, to the indignation of
the black cocoa farmers, proposed to put all West African
ANDROMEDA 249
produce under control of a board sitting in England with
representation of the manufacturers of cocoa and other mate-
rials and with no representation of the farmers! In addition,
instead of returning the profits of the cocoa pool to the farmers
as promised, the government now proposed to use it "for their
benefit," including the hiring of a number of English "experts"
at high salaries to protect the cocoa trees from disease. The
farmers protested bitterly and demanded:
L That since the war is over, the recommendations of the Nowell
Commission be implemented, and that the Imperial Govern-
ment now make good the promises made to the African farmers.
2. That the price of $160 per ton should be paid farmers, and
should be set for the 1945-1946 season.
3. That the profits from cocoa control since 1939, amounting as it
probably will to $25,000,000, be turned over to the farmers' own
existing organizations as capital for the establishment of co-
operative agricultural banks in British West Africa.
4. That the operations of the West African Produce Control Board
should cease, and a new system of centralized marketing should
be installed. and effective co-operation, under the control of the
farmers' own organizations, be established.
5. That the present quota allocation of the crop to special buyers
be abolished, and that the farmers be free to market their crop
collectively to their own accredited agencies.
6. That the present restrictions of exports and imports be removed
in order to allow the West African farmers to trade with the
United Kingdom and other countries through their own agencies.
7. That an International Council on cocoa should be planned, in
order to adopt a comprehensive approach to all problems of cocoa
as an important world commodity.
8. That the Ordinances of British West Africa with regard to co-
operation be changed so as to correspond to practices in the
United Kingdom.
And the farmers concluded:
This delegation of Gold Coast and Nigerian farmers are of the
opinion that there are enough men and women of good will in the
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
Imperial Government of Britain who might bring economic justice to
bear on these pressing problems, and thus might prevent the occur-
rence of a tragic economic upheaval, the consequences of which, un-
fortunately, might affect the peaceful life of innocent people in all
parts of the world and not only i_nWest Africa and Britain.
If this is not statesmanship, which eventually must be lis-
tened to, I am greatly mistaken. It seems to me to point a path
toward the emancipation of the world's colonial populations
and the beginning of democracy among the majority of the
people of the world, for which we have fought two devastating
world wars, without yet seeing the light.
The cocoa situation in West Africa is only one example of
what colonial imperialism means to the people involved. Turn-
ing from this to our own country, we may ask what is America,
and what duty and opportunity has it toward Africa and the
peoples of African descent who live within her borders? It is
a great working nation, vast, marvelously organized, and rich.
We grow and mine materials; we process and manufacture
them; we trade them, we transport them, we buy and sell them.
Bound up with this, there is not only the planning for this
work, but also the hard digging, lifting, and cleaning, and the
services of parents, and friends, professional men and servants.
With all this we produce goods and homes, buildings and roads,
light and heat, tools and machines, and all manner of transport
from railways and automobiles to airplanes.
Of course, the basic question here is; for whom is all this
work done? How are the goods and services divided among
consumers? Here we realize that all the facts are not known
in America, just as they are partially unknown in other parts
of the world. The distribution of wealth and of human services
is a more or less closely guarded secret. We have some general
ideas and they are disconcerting: we know that the lowest
and hardest work and the work least honored is, despite its
necessity, the lowest paid. We know that men do not get rich
according to ability or according to the degree in which they
ANDROMEDA
serve the public. There is something, of course, of recognition
of talent, but it is confined to certain sorts of talent and it is
not sufficient to keep down dissatisfaction. The demand of the
twentieth century in America, just as the demand of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, is that the
distribution of wealth be more logical and ethical.
Men have tried to avoid action to achieve this by arguing
that the distribution of goods and services is a matter of "natu-
ral" law. We know better than that today; we know, especially
in America, that planning of work does go on on wide scale
and that it involves personal decisions and is based today. on
autocratic will and not on democratic methods. Managers and
groups have power to plan industry and divide its results:
groups carrying on organized industry, like General Motors
and General Electric and the British Unilevers-these groups
own machines, materials, and inventions which enable them to
reap large profits by marvelous and striking organization.
Imports and exports depend upon the decisions of captains of
industry. Monopoly of natural resources and the ownership
of land play a tremendous part. Economic rent that comes
with time and with growth of population, city sites, the shores
of the ocean, the places suited for business and pleasure, all
is controlled and distributed by individual or group decision.
We know that the control of credit, the foreseeing of need for
materials and machines, and supplying capital to those who
can use it most profitably, is in itself a field of tremendous
planning and prophecy. We know that the government must
come in and help this planning where individual initiative lacks
power, and that the field of government in industry is growing
and must grow.
What now are the results of this planning and why do these
results make Americans dissatisfied? We still have poverty, not
nearly as much as many other parts of the world, but most
Americans do not receive an income large enough to allow
them to live in health and decency. This leads not only to
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
envy but to cheating and stealing, to the kind of competitive
struggles which begin as strikes and end as riots. It leads to
widespread loss of belief in hard work and increased reliance
on chance, so that gambling on horse races is today one of our
greatest businesses. All this encourages or compels the post-
poning of marriage and limiting of children.
Poverty, makes for ignorance; not simply illiteracy which is
still serious among us, but for inexperience, the neglect of the
lessons of history, reliance on selfish prejudices and conven-
tions. Poverty leads to disease; it lets us spend more for war
than for the perfectly possible extirpation of tuberculosis, the
lessening of cancer, and the physical welfare of children.
Poverty, ignorance, and disease are back of most of our crime,
and to this is added a curious lack of ethical guidance. Churches
tend to teach dogma rather than what is right and wrong;
and the funny strips exalt craftiness and laugh at suffering.
In contrast to all this comes the reign of luxury, conspicuous
expenditure, the flaunting of diamonds and furs; the demand
for great estates and servants, while round about is sickness,
starvation, and insanity. We grow used to luxury and display
that we know is built upon wealth and work stolen from
suffering mankind. We demand profit for investment even at
the expense of public welfare. Thus the great business organi-
zations of the United States struck and drove a hard bargain
in blood and pain to increase profits during World War II;
America invests in colonies-British, Dutch, and French; and
colonies are slums used to make a profit from materials and
cheap labor. We continually set before us the successful rich
man as more typical of what America means than the student
or the philanthropist or the unselfish man of small income and
simple tastes.
It is this kind of thing which makes for our continued
spiritual slavery. We demand Freedom; but thousands upon
thousands are toiling discontentedly at work which they hate,
when more careful and thoughtful planning could make work
ANDROMEDA 253
much more agreeable by a more efficient distribution accord-
ing to ability and taste. We curb thought and discussion be-
cause we are afraid that those who are powerful and comfort-
able under present conditions may be disturbed in their present
control of the world. Our news is distorted and our newspapers
prostituted by those who own and use them for profit and
propaganda. Our "free press" is a series of tight little princi-
palities which channel public opinion with prejudiced head-
lines and screened news.
Our training for careers and opening of opportunity for
the working masses has been hailed as the greatest in history.
There can be no doubt but that more individuals have had
opportunity to rise from repression and obscurity in America
than in Europe. But even here we have not done anywhere near
what we might, and today in many respects are regressing
toward race and class discrimination and special privileges for
the rich. Only the Jews among us, as a class, carefully select and
support talent and genius among the young; the Negroes are
following this example as far as their resources and knowledge
allow. It is for this very reason that jealousy of the gifted Jew
and ambitious Negro is closing doors of opportunity in their
faces. This led to the massacre of Jews in Germany.
In America the only path to preferment and promotion left
open and beckoning, is that which industry thinks will make
profit. The opening of other paths is left to the rare chance
that genius in literature or art be coupled with "push," which
means the boldness and crudity for self-advertising from which
delicate souls shrink.
When by chance or benevolence a boy "makes good," we
grant him a profession. If he studies law he can gain a large
salary when he becomes a tool by which great corporations
evade those laws which try to curb monopoly and distribute
wealth more equitably. Large numbers of such lawyers become
lawmakers, and they enact laws which can be circumvented.
Others are raised to the bench, where they are above law and
254 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
highly honored. They in many cases protect wealth and
monopoly and "make examples" of the poor. The greatest
work of Franklin Roosevelt was to start cleansing the Supreme
Court of the acccumulated refuse of reaction to economic
democracy. Living men may yet see a Supreme Court with
the guts and common decency to throw out the window the
whole body of legal color-caste in the South and elsewhere as
both unconstitutional and uncivilized. At the other end of
the scale our labor unions are so monopolizing skills by limited
apprenticeship and secret ritual that much "industrial" train-
ing is a farce.
Science is becoming increasingly not the work of free univer-
sities but the property of organizations for private profit and
directed to their objects. Education both in school and out
is encouraging that economic illiteracy which keeps the mass
of American people from knowing and inquiring just how
work is done. To the support of all this comes the theater
and the movies and other forms of arts, serving the idea that
private profit rather than social welfare is the end and aim
of man.
Is there any wonder that the result is widespread Fear? We
are afraid of unemployment and loss of work; we are suspicious
of other men, other races, and other nations; not because we
are the poorest and most wretched, but just because here in
America we have tasted the possibility of comfort and happi-
ness. Perhaps all this is best shown by certain paradoxes in
our daily life, thought, and action. We Americans boast and
strut when we have every cause to be meek and humble. We
seek happiness and escape through drunkenness and night
clubs. We couple our religion with hate, saying, "God so loved
the world," and boasting how much we hate our enemies; we
turn the other cheek to make bombs. We want peace and make
war. We want truth and curb research. We produce our own
wealth and steal it from others.
We Americans have invented an apt phrase to enrich the
ANDROMEDA 255
English language-"So whatl" It expresses a singular complex:
a great statesman comes from Britain and tells us that he wants
a world of free states and democracy-and admits in the same
breath that his Britain admits nine-tenths of the subjects to
neither freedom nor democracy. So what? We see standing
before the United Nations at San Francisco a prime minister
elected by two million whites asking for recognition of "hu-
manity"-and in the same voice tells the world that anyone
who regards the eight million natives of South Africa as human
in the same sense as white folk is "mad, quite mad." We have
a Secretary of State who arraigns Russia for lack of democracy
while he represents South Carolina, where the majority of
the people have never had a chance to vote. So what?
But perhaps our subtlest and most complete contradiction
and paradox comes in our attitude toward servants. We know
that personal services between mother and child, friend and
relative, is the highest form of human effort; but we treat that
same personal service when it is done for pay as the lowest form
of work, paid least and subject to special forms of personal
insult.
What can we do about all this? It is not a matter of law, it
is a matter of the human heart. We know what must be done;
industry must be carried on not primarily for private profit
but for public welfare. We must progressively approach the
time when no person shall have cake while any person is de-
prived of bread. We must increase production and income by
the use of the great natural powers which science has placed
in our hands: electricity which is being kept from the masses
by organized effort in the valley of the Missouri and in the
valley of the St. Lawrence, just as once monopoly fought it in
vain in the valley of the Tennessee and still fights it at Boulder
Dam. We know that automobiles could be built to last ten
years at little greater cost than those which last two years, if the
object was transportation and not gain. We must have schools
that teach truth, despite what some people are afraid to learn.
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
We must use new inventions like the radio for real informa-
tion rather than for quack advertising, and the cinema for
instruction as well as entertainment. We must have a press
that is free and not monopolized by business and hate. We must
have socialized medicine, following the great example being
set today by Britain and going far beyond it as we ought to.
This increase of production for public welfare can only be
brought about by careful intelligent planning and thorough
democratic methods. The workers of the world must have voice
not only on conditions of work but also as to what kinds of
goods shall be produced and what methods of production used.
Industry ruled by monarchs and oligarchies cannot continue
in a democratic world.
Moreover, this increased production must be more equitably
and justly distributed among the workers and among all citi-
zens. Distribution of wealth and services by plan, emphasizing
ability and deserts, and especially the public weal; and guard-
ing mankind from ignorance and disease must be a primary
object of civilization. "To each according to need, from each
according to ability." Here again this can be accomplished
only by widespread and intelligent democracy. It cannot con-
tinue to be a matter of personal wish and whim and of monop-
olized power; it must be the result of intelligent experience,
public opinion working according to enacted law.
Democracy is not privilege-it is opportunity. Just as far as
any part of a nation or of the world is excluded from a share
in democratic power and self-expression, just so far the world
will always be in danger of war and collapse. If this nation
could not exist half slave and half free, then the world in which
this nation plays a larger and larger part also cannot be half
slave and half free, but must recognize world democracy.
How can we accomplish this? We can do it by releasing
black Andromeda, and by that act release ourselves. We can
rise above the insult of the color line in denying work to able
people and in helping hold colonies in thrall; and we can
ANDROMEDA 257
invoke in a real democracy a reservoir of all human ability
and dream and with free vote of intelligent men.
The sin of capitalism is secrecy: the deliberate concealing of
the character, methods, and result of efforts to satisfy human
wants. When men choose and understand their work and see its
results and can sell their toil in open market to those who
want and use it, there is opportunity for ethical judgment,
public justice, and commonweal. But when the nature of work,
its methods and results are hidden behind legal barriers so
that a man knows neither what he is doing nor what the re-
sults of his toil will be, or who will enjoy it, or why nor whence
nor how his income is made, nor at whose hurt or weal; then
the opportunity for human degradation is limited only by the
evil possibilities of the lowest ~f men; murder and theft may
ensue with no chance to fix the guilt. Not mass production
but mass concealment is the sin of the capitalistic system. This
is the meaning of African slavery and this is the virus it poured
into the veins of modern culture and fatally poisoned it. Once
all the facts of the industrial process are known, then if a man
eats, he should work; and if he does not work he should not
eat, unless the free, intelligent judgment of his fellows declares
that his existence at public expense is for the public weal. This
and this alone is Democracy.
Who are we who call ourselves intelligent, and yet in dire
dearth of air and light leave millions of acres of the roofs of
New York and a thousand other cities to a black and dirty
desert of chimneys and ugliness? The horror which today stops
the hearts of men at the mere thought of atomic energy is knowl-
edge of the secrecy which today conceals its use and bids fair
to veil its inhuman force tomorrow in the hands of the most
ruthless of mankind. The iron curtain was not invented by
Russia; it hung between Europe and Africa half a thousand
years. When the producer is so separated from the consumer in
time and space that a mutual knowledge and understanding
is impossible, then to regard the industrial process as "in-
THE WORLD AND AFRICA
dividual enterprise" or the result as "private initiative" is
stupid. It is a social process, and if not socially controlled sinks
to anarchy with every possible crime of irresponsible greed.
Such was the African slave trade, and such is the capitalistic
system it brought to full flower. Men made cotton cloth and
sold sugar; but between the two they stole, killed, and raped
human beings, forced them to toil for a bare subsistence, made
rum and synthetic gin, herded white labor into unsanitary
factories, bought the results of their work under threat of
hunger which forced down their wage, and sold the sugar at
monopoly prices to consumers who must payor go without.
A process of incredible ingenuity for supplying human wants
became in its realization a series of brutal crimes.
There are people, and wise people, who have said that this
can never be accomplished under the present organization of
the world for business, industry, and profit; that in order to
accomplish this we must establish stern dictatorship of a few
who hold to this idea of the commonweal. This is the theory
of Communism. There are many who dislike the idea; there are
some who fear and hate it for obvious reasons. But to these
there is one clear answer: accomplish the end which every hon-
est human being must desire by means other than Communism,
and Communism need not be feared. On the other hand, if a
world of ultimate democracy, reaching across the color line and
abolishing race discrimination, can only be accomplished by
the method laid down by Karl Marx, then that method deserves
to be triumphant no matter what we think or do.
Here in America we must learn to be proud of the things
of which we are ashamed, and ashamed of things of which we
are proud. America should be proud of the fact that she is a
nation with increasing democracy composed of the most un-
likely peoples and groups on earth; that out of criminals,
paupers, and slaves she has built this land of promise. We
should be ashamed that despite this known historical fact, we
are trying to build up class and race differences and refusing
ANDROMEDA 259
to carry out the democratic methods which we profess, because
we deal with people too stupid, diseased, and criminal to make
our own democracy work.
America has need to remember that out of Asia and Africa,
past and present, help can come for this land: Asia has pro-
duced a Gandhi who does not strut or wear Savile Row clothes;
who will not kill-and whom average Americans regard as a
fool. But he is not. Africa has provided in the past group own-
ership of land, family cohesion, and a curious combination of
beautiful art and useful industry. We have helped the world
to despoil this land, enslave its people, decry its ability, and
distort its history. For three centuries we have led in the at-
tempt to degrade Africa in the eyes of men. We owe it to Africa
and ourselves to release Andromeda and place her free and
beautiful among the stars of the sky.
If we refuse to do this; if we stubbornly cling to our race
prejudices, what of the future of this civilization? The con-
tinuity of a social group, the continuity of a civilization is at
best doubtful and precarious. Most of the civilizations of the
world have lasted less than three centuries, save Egypt. Even
Egypt is only an apparent exception since, being for centuries
without effective rivals, it did not actually collapse; but it
changed so radically from age to age as to become almost a
new land and culture. So too India and China lasted longer
in name than in real cultural continuity. The broader the basis
of a culture, the wider and freer its conception, the better
chance it has for the survival of its best elements. This is the
basic hope of world democracy. No culture whose greatest
effort must go to suppress some of the strongest contributions
of mankind can have left in itself strength for survival. War
which typifies suppression and death can never support a last-
ing culture. Peace and tolerance is the only path to eternal
progress. Europe can never survive without Asia and Africa as
free and interrelated civilizations in one world.
"I believe it is specifically the mission of African civilization
260 THE WORLD AND AFRICA
to restore ethical principles to world civilization. Unless this
attempt is made all civilization must come to an end. The
African by virtue of his detachment, his direct vision, and his
innate kindness, is qualified to bring humanitarianism to the
technical and materialistic concepts of the Western World." 5
Few people realize what Africa and her children have done
to win the World Wars. In the first, the Senegalese saved France
at the first onslaught of the Germans; black soldiers of Africa
conquered the German colonies; American Negroes rushed
the critical supplies to Europe which turned the tide of victory.
In World War II thousands of Africans fought in Europe,
Burma, India, and Africa; they formed a large part of Mont-
gomery's Eighth Army in the decisive North African cam-
paign; an American Negro physician contrived the banks of
blood plasma which saved tens of thousands of lives; Negroes
built thousands of miles of strategic road under direct enemy
fire; Negroes handled three-fourths of the ammunition in the
European Theatre of Operations and fired much of it. Negro
fighting troops took part in the invasion of Normandy, in the
invasion of Italy, and as flight squadrons and hospital corps.
In America eight Negro scientists were engaged in the re-
search on the atomic bomb.
The stars of dark Andromeda belong up there in the great
heaven that hangs above this tortured world. Despite the crude
and cruel motives behind her shame and exposure, her degrada-
tion and enchaining, the fire and freedom of black Africa, with
the uncurbed might of her consort Asia, are indispensable to
the fertilizing of the universal soil of mankind, which Europe
alone never would nor could give this aching earth.
5Arrnattoe, op. cit., pp. 18, 19.
THE MESSAGE
READER of dead words who would live deeds, this is theflowering of my logic: I dream of a world of infinite and
invaluable variety; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights.
but in human variety in height and weight, color and skin, hair
and nose and lip. But more especially and far above and beyond
this, in a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fan-
tasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius-all pos-
sible manner of difference, topped with freedom of soul to do
and be, and freedom of thought to give to a world and build
into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each effort to stop
this freedom of being is a blow at democracy-that real de-
mocracy which is reservoir and opportunity and the fight
against which is murdering civilization and promising a day
when neither
... star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken
Nor any sound or sight;
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, .
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.i
There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race.
or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even Peace.
This is this book of mine and yours.
1Swinburne,"The Garden of Proserpine."

INDEX
Aahmes, Pharaoh, 114, 126, 127, 128 Alexander II, Pharaoh, 140
Aaron, 131, 132 Alexander VI, Pope, 53
Abasid Caliphate, 186 Alexandria, 140, 141, 189, 223
Abbas, King, 195 Algeria, 83, 92, 182-83, 224
Abderrahman Es-Sadi, 223 Al-Hudrubi, 196
Abdul-Hak-Harnid, 183 Ali, '9', 205
Abdurahman, King, 185 Ali Baba, King, 187
Abolition of slave trade, 60, 63, 65 Al-jahiz, 224-25
Aborigines Protection Society, 245 Al Kabith, 187
Abron, 161 Almanzor, 185
Abs, 190 Almohades, 205-206
Abu'l Abbas, Caliph, 187 Almoravides, 203, 205-206
Abu-I-Misk Kafur, Caliph, 187-88 Alpes Maritimes, 182
Abydos.u of Alphonso VI, King, 205
Abyssinia, 8,9,32, 102, 135, 140, 144, Alut, 138
146-47,165,187,196,215,228; and Amanetari, Queen, 139
Europeans, 216; and Portuguese, Amaswazi, 96
215 Amenernhat III, Pharaoh, lI3
Accra, 233 Arnenhotep, see Arnenophis.
Achenv zq Amenophis I, 128
Achilles, 121 Amenophis II, 129, 135
Adler, Felix, 3 Amenophis III, 129
Adua (Adowa), 216 Arnenophis IV, 129, 130
Aeschylus, 121; quoted, lI9 Amenothes, 126
Aesop, 120 Ameny, quoted, 112
Afghanistan, 177 Americas: abolition in, 65-66; and
Africa: conquest of, 31-41; early slave trade, 51 II., .57; built with
peoples of, 81 ff.; German claims African aid, 227-28; Indians in,
to, 6; partition of, 35; physical 28. See also United States, Central
geography of, 82 II. America, Mexico, South America.
African Lakes Co., 73, 76 Ammon, 135, 226
Agadir,3 Arnoah III, Chief, 243
Ahmad-ibn-Tulun, 186-87 Amratians, 100
Aiken, quoted, 57 Arnr-ibn-el-Asr, 186
Akan, 161 Amritsar massacre, 13
Akhnaton (Akhenaton), 129, 130 Andaman Islands, 178
Albania, 47 Anderson, A., 57
Albuquerque, Alphonso, 28 Andromeda, 120, 121-22, 226, 256,
Aleppo, 188 259, 260
Alessandro, duke of Florence, 47 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 102, 165. See
Alexander (the Great), 126, 140 also Sudan.
264 INDEX
Angola, 96, 97, 170, 199 Augustus Caesar, 141, 142
Ansa, Albert, 35 Aurelian, Emperor, 144
Antar-bin-Shaddad, 189-90 Australia, 25, 176, 178
Ansika, 169 Australians, 223
Antilochus, 121 Austria, 47, 48,87
Anzan-Susinka, 181 Axumite kingdom, 146
Arabia, 59, 122, 135, 147, 179, 183, Aydhab, 195-96
191, 195, 221. See also Arabs.
Arabian Nights, 189, 190, 202 Babylonia, 132, 135, 182
Arabs, 29, 44, 46, 52, 101, 119, 142, Bactria, 140
145,174, 182-87, 192, 197, 201-204, Badarians, 100
212, 214-15, 222-24; and ivory Bagdad, 171, 186, 187, 188, 189, 197,
trade, 68, 70, 71; and slave trade, Ig8, 205, 214, 221, 223
31,68,70,71,77; culture of, 216; Bagirmi, 94, 214, 215
migration southward, 190-91; on Bahrite dynasty, 195
East Coast, 190-91 Bajokwe,97
Architecture, West Coast, 158 Bakwena, 96
Arctinus of Melitus, 121 Baldwin I, King, 189
Aricia, 122 Balfour, Edward G., quoted, 178-79
Aristocreon, 139 Balkans, 192
Armada, defeat of, 51 Bamagwato, 95
Armattoe, R. E. G., quoted, 155, 158, Bambara, 51,212
153, 170, 259-50 Barnbukv aoq
Arnobius, 145 Banda, 29
Arracan,29 Bantu, 31, 44, 91, 94, 95,96,97,190,
Arts and crafts, 150 ff.; Songhay, 211 191,192,197; migration, 48, 51, 75,
Arua, King, 138 78, 154-75; 219-20
Aryan peoples, 177, 179, 181 Banyoro, 171
Asande, 94 Baptists, and slave trade, 65
Asantahene, 35 Baramindanah, King, 206
Ashanti, 32, 38, 77,95, 118, 159, 151, Barbados, 59; slave revolt in, 54, 61,
162, 230, 246; arts, 151, 158; con- 52
quest of, 35 Barbah Shah, 196
Ashie-Nikoi, Gerson, 245; quoted, Barbosa, Duarte, 186 n., quoted, 192
248 Bargarsh, Sultan, 73
Ashurbanipal, King, 138 Bariv qa
Asia: Africans in, 203; and Africa, Barka, 187
174, 176-200; partition of, 35 Barrett, Elizabeth, 59
Asia Minor, and Africa, 135-38. See Basilis, 140
also Arabia, Persia, Turkey. Basra, 29, 187
Asiento, Treaty of, 54, 57 Basuto, 96
Askia (the Great), King, 211 Basutoland, 9
Asmai, 190 Batawana, 95
Aspeluta, King, 138 Bateke, 97
Assyria, 121, 132, 135, 135---37,182 Beaconsfield, Lord, 198
Aswan, 187 Bechuana, 96
Atbara R., 124, 138 Bechuanaland, 9
Athanasius, St., 146 Bedar, 189
Athenaeus, 120 Beja, 89, 90, 100, 102, 144, 195-96,
Athens, 140 lU5
Atlantic Charter, and native peoples, Bekrir zoa
232 Belakane, Queen, 217
Atrocities, and colored peoples, 23, Belgian Congo, 6, 9, 83, 97, 229, 232,
25, 35-35 237. See also Belgium, Congo.
Augier, quoted, 57 Belgium, 6, 26, 232, 237; and colonial
Augustine, sr., 146 exploitation, 236
INDEX
Bellegarde, M., 240 and cocoa trade, 245 ff.; National
Bengal, 196 Congress of, 232, quoted, 232-35
Benin, 32,47, 77, 78, 95, 161, 162, Browning. Robert, 59
163, 209, 246; arts, 152, 158; Bight Bubastite dynasty, 135
of. 150 Buddha, 18, 119, 177, 178
Berbers, 78, 92, 101, 138, 182, 184, Buddhists, 26
185. 189,201. 203. 204, 205, 212, Bulgaria, 88, 196
213. 222 Burma, 27
Berga, 187 Burton, Sir Richard, 71
Berlin, 35. 126, 129. 156 Bushmen, 31, 94
Bibars, Sultan. 193, 195, 198 Bush Negroes, revolt of, 62
Bible. quoted, 131-34. 143 Bushongo, 118, 170-71
Bila, 178 Busirus, 123
Bilal-i-Habesh, Sultan, 183 Butler, Sir William, quoted, 32
Bion.140 Byano, 195; revolt of, 61
Bismarck, Otto von, 6 Byrnes, James, 255
Black Sea, 123 Byzantium, 223
Blake, John W., 47 n.
Bloch, Adolphe, quoted, 221 Cadbury cocoa deals, 246-47
Blue Nile, 124, 138,214,215 Cairo, 75, 189, 190, 205, 222, 223
Blunt, Wilfrid Seawen, 33 n. Calicut, 28,29
Boas, Franz, 3; quoted, 153 Calvinism: and Africa, 51; and cap-
Bojador, Cape, 46 italism.By
Bolivar, Simon, 62 Cambodia, 29Cambyses, 138
Bongo, 94, 154 Cameron, Verney L., 71, 157
Bonney, 159 Cameroons, 97, 159
Bornu. 78,211,213-15 Candace, Queen, 139, 140, 142-43
Boskop Man, 90 Capitalism: and Africa, 229-30; and
Botocudos, 88 exploitation, 225; founded on
Boufflers, Chevalier de, 158 slavery. 56-57, 58; heyday of, 67-
Boule (anthropologist), 88 68; major sin of, 257
Brava, 191 Caribbean area, 26, 242; decline of,
Brazil, 88; abolition in, 66; slave reo 63; revolt in, 61
volts in, 53, 54, 61, 62. See also Carnarvon, Lord, 130
Palmares. Carnegie, Andrew, 17-18
Brazza, Pierre de, 157 Carter, Howard, 130
Breasted, Dr. James H., 108; quoted, Carthage, 136, 141-42, 146, 150, 181,
130 182,204,216
Bristol, 54-55 Cassiopeia, 121, 226
British Empire: and Africa, 8-g, 31- Caste system, growth of, 17-20
41; and Ashanti, 36; and China, Caton-Thompsen, G., quoted, 173
33; and colonial exploitation, 236; Cato the Elder, 142
and Egypt, 198; and Guiana. 243; Caucasoid peoples, 116, 119, 141, 143,
and Guinea, 50-51; and Haussa, 176, 183; origins of, 85 ff.
213; and India, 12. 13, 25, 30-31, Celebes, 29
51; and Labour Party, 245, 248; Central Africa, 198-99; and British
and Paris Exposition, 3; and slav- Empire, 199-200; and ivory trade,
ery, 58'59, 66; and Sudan, 216; and 69, 71-72; anthropology of, 86;
Suez Canal, 198; and Uganda, 199- climate of, 84; culture of, 45, 152;
200; East Africa Co., 200; economic detailed account of. 164-75; explo-
dominance of, 66; methods of ration of, 71; migration from, 48;
seizing control, 30-31. See also trade with Asia, 191
British West Africa, England. Central America, 26; slave revolts in,
British Museum, 152, 163 61
British West Africa, 13, 37, 83, 207; Cepheus, King, 120, 121,226
INDEX
Ceuta, 46 Cooley, W. D., quoted, 206, 209
Ceylon, 29 Coomassie, 159
Chaka, King, 31, 77, 96 Coptic Church, 146, 186
Chaldea, 181 Cordova, 185, 188,206
Chalybes, IS4 Coromandel, 29
Chamberlain, Joseph, 7 Coupland, Reginald, 197 n.
Champ fleury, 120 Crespy, Treaty of, 50
Chang Hsing-land, Prot, quoted, Crete, 122
180 Crisis, 8
Chartres Cathedral, 218 Cro-Magnon Man, 87-88
Chatham, Earl of, 59 Cromwell, Oliver, 51
Chicago Tribune, quoted, 8-9 Crusades, 185, 189, 192, 195,203,216
China, 12, 14, 29, 191, 203; and Af- Cuba, 242; slave revolts in, 53, 60,
rica, 192; and imperialism, 27; and 61,62
Negroid peoples, 179-80; and Culture: African, 78-79; Arab, 216;
Opium War, 33; survival of, 259 East African, 45; Egyptian, 98-114;
Chiu T'ang Shu, 180 Ethiopian, 115-47; European, pre-
Christ, Jesus, 18, 20, 143 fers to ignore exploitation, 22-23;
Christianity: and Africa, 146; and Mesopotamian, 98; Mohammedan,
slavery, 50-S1, 53, 220; Coptic, 146, 222; Nigerian, 152; South African,
186; early African, 146-47; lost op- 45; Sudanese, 77-78, 201-25; West
portunities of, 220 African, 45, 149 ff.
Churchill, Winston, 22, 33 Cyphax, King, 142
Chwanav qf Cyprian, 146
Claridge, W. Walton, 230; quoted, Cyrenaica, 185
32,36 Cyriacus, King, 186
Clemenceau, Georges, 9; quoted, 10 Cyril, St., 146
Cleopatra, 140, 142 Cyrus, King, 136
Climate: Cape, Central and East
Africa, Guinea, 84; Egypt, 105; Dahis, 190
West Coast, IS8-S9 Dahomey, 32, 77, 95, 159,161,162
Clitus Niger, 140 Dalion, 139
Coch inv sq Damascus, 186, 188
Cocoa problem, African, 24S-So Danakil, 102
Cohen, Chapman, quoted, 50-51, 53 Darfur, 144, 198, 201, 214, 215
Coligny, Adm., So Darwin, Charles, 20, 22; quoted, 86
Collectivism, West African, 160-61 Dawson, Christopher, 224
Colonial imperialism, 76, 229-30; Dea Multimammia, 178
growth of, 74; U.S., 252; vs. slavery, Deccan, 197
63-64 Dedun, 120, 137
Communism: antidote for, 258; birth Deep River, 70
of, 21; threat of, 13-14. See also De Gaulle, Charles, 14
Marx. Deir el Bahri, 128
Company of Merchants Trading to Deir el Medineh, 126
Africa, 54 Delafosse, Maurice, quoted, 159-60,
Conference of Africans of British 160-61,206
West Africa, 233 Delhi, 197
Congo, 79, 151, 157, IS9, 219-20, 229, Democracy: frustration of, 16-18;
232, 237; atrocities in, 35-36; Bel- nature of, 256-57
gian, 6, 9, 83, 97; Free State, 34-35; Den, King, 110
races of, 91; River, 71, 78, 82, 83, Depression, effects of, 13-14,243
164-75 passim Diagne, Blaise, 6-'7, 9,237
Congress of 'West Africa, quoted, 13 Diamonds, 31, 229
Constantine, Emperor, 142 Diana of Ephesus, 178
Constantine the African, 216-17 Diara, 159
Constantinople, 146, 196, 214, 223 Diawara, dynasty, 206
INDEX
Diaz, Paulo, 170 Emoxa idi, 191
Dieulafoy, Marcel A., quoted, 181 Empires, age of modern, 148
Dinka, 94, 216 Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
Diocletian, Emperor, 142, 144 47 n.
Diodorus Siculus, 122, 124 England, 222; and Guinea, 51; and
Disraeli, Benjamin, 198 Napoleon, 198; and Paris Exposi-
Dominican slave revolt, 61, 62 tion, 2-3; and slave trade, 22, 54 ff.:
Dornitian, Emperor, 141 and West Africa, 161-62; envied
Dongola, 138, 147, 186,214,215 for 16-17; trade war vs. Spain, 50-
Dordogne, 87-88 51. See also British Empire.
Douglass, Frederick, 20 Entente Cordiale, 6
Draper, J. W., quoted, 222 Eos, 121
Dravidians, 98,176, 177 Epaphus.u rq
Dresden, 156 Equatorial Africa, 8, 9, 83,89,97,216
Dropsica, 140 Ergamenes, King, 139
DuBois, Dr. W. E. B., 8, 185 n.; Eritrea, 102, 232
quoted, 4, 9, 140, 174 Erythraean Sea, 147
Dugha, 208-209 Esar-haddon, 135
Dumas, Alexandre, 20 Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 217
Dunama Dabalemi, King, 213, 214 Ethiopia, 46, 81, 108, 110, 114, 115,
Dutch: and ivory trade, 69; in Africa, 201-203, 212, 215, 220, 243; and
31; in India, 51. See also Holland. Italian colonies, 232; culture of,
115-47; resistance of, 33; sacrificed,
East Africa, 187, 191, 199, 203, 220; 14
and British Empire, 199-200; and Euphrates, 128, 129, 179, 187, 223.
Portugal, 169; and slave trade, 70; See also Tigris.
climate, 84; culture in, 45; trade Europe: and sex, 24-25; and slavery,
via, 174 22
East Africa Co., 34, 76 Eurybiates, 120
Easter Islands, 178 Ewe, 95, 161
Eastern Roman Empire, 146, 184, Exploitation: colonial, 35-36; of Af-
185-86; and Christianity, 220 rica, 44 If. See also Colonial im-
East India Co., 30-31, 51, 55-.56 perialism.
East Indies, increasing profits in, 63 Exploration, Central African, 71
Ebedmelech, 131 Ezekiel,69
Eboue, Gov., 14
Education, and "white supremacy," Fabian Society, 245
37 Fadh-el-Hassen , 205
Edwards, Bryan, quoted, 62 Faleme, 204
Egypt, 82, 83, 185-86, 187-88, 196- Fang, 51, 94, 97, 154
198,211,213,223,229; and Abys- Fan ti, 161, 162; Confederation, 38-39
sinia, 32; and British Empire, 198, Farringdon, Lord, 245
232; and Ethiopia, 124-26 (see also Fascism, growth of, 13-14
Ethiopia); and Greece, 140-41; and Fath Shah, 196
Marneluke rule, 192-93, 195-96, Fatimids, 188
198; and Nubia, 215; and Rome, Fayum, 100
141; and Sudan, 115, 216; climate Fear, power of social, 254-55
of, 105; culture, 98-114; domina- Fetishism a myth, 79
tion of, 33; failure of, 199; people Feuchtersleben, Baron Edouard von,
of, 90; physical geography of, 99- 48
100; su rvival of, 259 Eirishtah, 173
Elamites, .81-82 First Races Congress, 3-5. See also
Elizabeth, Queen, 50 Pan-American Congress.
Emancipation in U.S., 60 Firuz, 196
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 43 Fish R., 172
Emin Pasha, 71 Florisbad Man, go
INDEX
Formosa, 180 243, 249; and cocoa production,
France, 123, 222; aims of, 16; and 245 ff.
Africa, 31, 32; and Algerians, 224; Goncalves, 46
and Bagirmi, 214; and Brazil, 61; Gondwanaland.Ba
and China, 33; and Dahomey, 161; Good Hope, Cape of, 31, 75, 76; cli-
and Guinea, 50, 51; and India, 54; mate, 84
and Kordofan, 214; and Paris Ex- Gordon, Gen. Charles ("Chinese"),
position, 2; and Senegalese troops, 24, 216
6-7, 260; and Uganda, 199-200; Grant, James A., 157
fears to trust Africa, 16; Negroid Graves, Anna M., quoted, 129-30
skeletons in, 87-88. See also French. Great Britain, see England, British
Francis of Assisi, St., 189 Empire.
Frankel, S. Herbert, quoted, 31-32 Great Lakes, 114, 139, 164, 165, 172,
Frazer, James G., quoted, 122-23 174, 197,219,220
Free trade, 67 Great Nicobar Island, 178
French: Africa, 6-7, 8-9, 83,97,207; Greece, 69,101, 192; and Africa, 122-
Indo-China, 27 123, 216, 223; and Egypt, 140-41;
Frobenius, Leo, 150, 172; quoted, 78- and Negroes, 181; gods of, 119
79, 86, 152, 156-58, 201-203 Griffith, Dr. F. L., quoted, 108
Frobisher, Martin, 50 Grimaldi, 87
Fromentius, 146 Crotte des Enfants, 87
Froude, James A., 50 Guinea: Gulf of, 31, 79,95, 150, 159,
Fry, Roger, quoted, 154-55 205, 207; climate, 84; trade, 46-47
Fulani, 94, 183 Gujarat, 197
Fung, 78, 94,198,211,214,215
Ga,95 Habardip, 181
Gaboon, 97 Hailey, Lord, 230, 231
Galilee, Sea of, 82 Haiti, 8, 9, 63, 67, 195, 240, 242; slave
Galla, 90, 91, 102, 110 revolts in, 53, 54, 61, 62, 65-{i6
Gallus, 14,2 Hakim, Caliph, 188
Gama, Vasco da, 169 Hall, Secretary, 245
'Gambia, 9, 90, 232 Hamed bin Muhammed, 71, 72
Gandhi, Mohandas K., 13, 259 Hamilton, Terrick, 190
Gao, 159, 207, 211 Hamitic race, 92, 101, 115, 169,202
'Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 48 Hannibal, 141
·Garrucci, P. R., 142 n. Hannington, Bishop, execution of,
'Garvey, Marcus, 236, 239 199
'Gaur, 196 Hanno, 204
Gelasius I, Pope, 146 Hansberry, Leo, 139 n., 209
Genghis Khan, 203 Hanseatic League, 51
George, King of Nubia, 188 Hardy, George, quoted, 222
Germany, 217, 222, 224; aims of, 16; Harris, quoted, 36
and Paris Exposition, 2; and Harun-al-Rashid, Caliph, 184, 190
World War I, 5-7, 9, 11-12; col- Hasan-ibn-Ali, 191
onies, 9, 11-12 Hatshepsut, Queen, 128
Cetuli, 122 Haussa, 32, 95, 211, 212-13; and
Ghana, 46, 159, 203, 204, 205, 206, Britain, 213
207, 209, 211 Hawkins, Sir John, 50-51
,Gibbon, Edward, quoted, 147 Hayford, Caseley, 235
Gibraltar, 87,123,137,141,183 Hebrides, 156, 221
Glele, King, 158 Hejaz, 188
Goa, 28, 29 Henry, Prince, 46
Gobineau, Count Joseph, 20 Hererov qti
Gold, 31, 173, 229 Herodotus, 106, 1l0, 121, 122, 135,
Gold Coast, 9, 38, 46-47, 232, 233, 181
INDEX
Herrenvolk, 39, 40, 41. See also Indonesia, 27
Smuts. Inclra, 177
Herskovits, M. J., 243 Industrial Revolution, 58; based on
Hesiod, J2J African exploitation, 227-28
Hezekiah, 133 Internationalization of Africa pro-
Hicks Pasha, 216 posed, 11-12
Hittites, 129, 131, 136 International Labor Office, 240
Hobson, John A., 3 10, 119
Hoggan, Francis, 88 n. Irak,214
Holland, 26, 27; and Guinea, 51; vs. Iranian peoples, 178
England, 54. See also Dutch. Iron curtain, anti-African, 257
Homer, 121; quoted, 120 Irthet, 108
Horsiatef, King, 138 Isaiah, 133; quoted, 132,133,134
Horus, 137 Isis, 103, 178
Hoseyn, Caliph, 188 Italy, 18,87,101,123; and Abyssinia,
Hoshea, King, 133 32, 216; and Fascism, 13; and im-
Hottentots, 31, 91, 94, 128 perialism, 14; colonies of, 232
House, Col. Edward M., 8 Ivoryton, 70, 75
Howdaghost, 203, 204, 205 Ivory, trade in, 68-15
Howitt, William, 27; quoted: on Iwalatan, 207
American Indians, 28; on British
in India, 25, 29-31, 55-56; on Jahiz, 224-25
Dutch in Indonesia, 29; on Portu- Jakun, 178
guese in India, 28-29 Jamaica, 51, 242; slave revolts in, 53.
Hsiao Wu Wen, Emperor, 180 54,61,62
Hughes, Langston, quoted, 97 Japan, 29, 180: and Negroid peoples,
Huguenots, 50; and Africa, 51 180; equality of, 12; expansionism
Hulagu Khan, 214 Of,14
Hyksos kings, 113-14, 125, 127, 136 Jaunpur, 197
Hymn to the peoples, quoted, 4 Java, 29
Jebel-u-Tarik,183
Ibn Batura, 213; quoted, 191-92, 195- Jenks, Leland, quoted, 68
196, 207-209 Jenne, 211
Ibn Kaldoun, 204, 207 Jeremiah, quoted, 131, 133
lbo, 95 Jews, 118, 121, 143, 182; and Ethi-
Idris I, King, 213 opia, 131-34; in U.S., 253; mer-
Idris Alooma, King, 214 chants, 46; persecution of, 14
Ikshid, Caliph, 187, 188 John, Emperor, 216
Iliad, on Ethiopians, 119 John IV, King, 47
Illyria, 88 John VI, King, 47
Imbert, H., quoted, 179-80 Johnston, Sir Harry H., 97, 230;
Imperialism: and China, 27; and quoted, 84-85, 110, 182, 239
Italy, 14,32,216,232; colonial, 63- Jokdan, 146
64, 74, 76, 229-30, 252. See also Jolofs, 46, 94, 159
British Empire. Joseph II, King, 47
India, 14, 26, 27, 69, 191, 197, 198, Jugurtha, King, 142
203; and black peoples, 176--78, Julius Maternus, 141
196-97; autonomy sought for, 12- Junker, Wilhelm, 157
13; British treatment of women in, Jupiter, and Ethiopians, 121
25; exploitation of, 35; falls to Justinian, Emperor, 144
Britain, 55-56; National Congress,
37; survival of, 259; trade with Ka'bah, 190
Africa, 46 Kadesh, 136
Indil Khan, 196 Kaffa, 228
Indo-China, 27; and Negroid peo- Kafur, Caliph, 187-88
ples, 179-80 Kairwan, 185
INDEX
Kala'un, Sultan, 193, 198 Lambertus, 93
Kaleb, King, 147 Lane-Poole, E. Stanley, 186 n.,
Kanelll, 78, 94, 201, 211, 213-14 189 n.
Kanernbu Kuburi, 214 Laski, Harold l, 241
Kano,212 League of Nations, II, 12; and
Karnak, 129, 137 Japan, 14; and local self-govern-
Kasai R., 169, 170 ment, 239; and Pan-African Con-
Kashto Sahbatok, King, 135 gress, 240
Kassai-Sankuru , 156 Legislative Councils, 233-35
Kassongo.Yz Leo Africanus, quoted, 211-12
Katanga, 169 Leopold II, King, 34; and Congo
Katsina , 212, 213 atrocities, 35-36
Kau, 108 Li, Empress, 180
Kauwar, 213 Liberia, 8, 9, 33, 83,161,228,242
Kedah, 178 Libya, 83, 90, 101, 111, 122, 127, 128,
Keltie, l Scott, quoted, 34 180, 182, 232, 243
Kenya, 232, 244 Liga Africana, 241
Kepchak, 196 Liguria, 88
Kerma, 128 Limbasv aS
Khabiri, 129 Lin-vi Kuo Chuan, 180
Khartoum, 92,215,216 Lisbon, 46, 47,241
Khasekhemui, King, 110 Liverpool, 244; and slave trade, 54-
Kill is, 188 55, 57
Kilwa, 191, 192 Livingstone, David, 70, 71, 72, 73,91,
Kilwara , 199 157, 166
Kinshasa, 237 London, 236, 237, 238, 241, 244, 245,
Kintu, King, 171 247; and slave trade, 54, 74-75;
Kioko,97 First Races Congress at, 3-5
Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 15 Lopes, Duarte, 170
Kirk, 72, 73 L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 23, 60, 63,
Kissia, 181 195
Kitchener, H. H., Lord, 32, 33 Lower Egypt, 103, 108. See also
Kitwara, 171 Egypt, Nile.
Kordofan, 94, 135, 144, 216; and Luanda, 169
France, 214 Luba-lunda, 169
Krishna, 177 Lubims, 132
Kru,95 Lugard, Frederick D., 70,73, 76, 200,
Kudur Nakhunta, King, 181 230
Kurds, 189, 193 Lunda, 97,171
Kushites, 110, 216 Luschan, Prof. Felix von, 155;
Kussiv iBr quoted, 5
Luther, Martin, 53
Labor: African, 229-31; and slavery, Lutoko, 92
52 ff.; degradation of, 18-20
Labour Party, 236-37; and British Ma'anda, King, 171
Empire, 245, 248 MacDonald, Ramsay, 241
Lacroix, Paul, quoted, 120 McRitchie, David, quoted, 221
Lactantius, 146 McRuari, Allan, 221
La Fontaine, M., 237 Madagascar, 82, 191
Lagoa Santa skulls, 88 Magadosho, 191, 192
Lake Chad, 82, 94,213,214,215. See Mahdi, 32, 33, 188, 195, 216
also Great Lakes. Mai,213
Lake Kioga, 94 Maka-Ianga, 172
Lake of the Abyssinians, 189 Makrizi, 189
Lake Victoria, 157, 200. See also Malabar coast, 29, 208
Great Lakes. Malagasi, 178
INDEX
Malaysia, 178, 179, 191, 197 Mfantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw, 38
Mamelukes, 29, 194, 212; Circassian, Micipsa, King, 142
196; rule in Egypt, 192-93, 195-96, Middle Passage, 64-65
198 Miltiades, Pope, 146
Manchester, 74, 244 Minoans, 122
Mandates Commission, 11, 240 Minucius Felix, 146
Mandingo (Mandi), 32, 46, 94, 159, Miriam, 131, 132
203, 204, 205, 206, 209 . Missionaries: and Africa, 71, 73; ra-
Manetho, quoted, 114 tionalizations, 33
Mankesim, 38 Mo'allaqat, 190
Mansa Musa, 207 Moeris lakes, 112
Mao, 213 Mohammed, 18, 183, 191, 194
Mari Jalak, King, 207 Mohammed Ahmad, 216
Marimde, 100 Mohammed' Ali, 70
Marius, 142 Mohammedans, 26, 32, 48,174,183 ff.,
Maroons, .53, 195; revolt of, 61, 62 215,224; and Abyssinia, 147; and
Marx, Karl, 258; quoted, 56-57 North Africa, 184 ff.: culture of,
Mascre, Louis, 87 222; eastward expansion, 197; rise
Mashona, 172 of, 183-89. See also Arabs, Moors.
Mashonaland, 76 Mohammed Bello, King, 213
Masina, 204 Moizz, Caliph, 188
Maspero, G. C. G., 127 n. Molucca, 28, 29
Massai, 92 Mombasa, 192
Massey, G., quoted, 177-78 Mommsen, Theodor, quoted, 146
Massinissa, King, 142 Mongoloid peoples, 98, 101, 105, 106,
Massufa , 208 116, 119, 122, 136, 141, 143, 146,
Masudi, 187, 191 176,178,179,180,183,221; origins
Matabele, 172' of, 85 If.
Mauritania, 92, 204 Mongols, 184, 189, 192, '95, '96, 197,
Mazoi,108 212,214
Mecca, 183, 190, 206,207,210 Monomotapa, 169, 171, '74, 220
Medes, 136, 181 Moore, E. D., 71 n.; quoted, 72
Medici, Negro blood among, 47 Moors, 51, 141,183, 192,203,205-206,
Medina, 186 218-19,221, 222; see also Moham-
Megalhaes, Deputy, quoted, 241 medans, Arabs, Morocco.
Mehemet Ali, 198, 199, 211, 215-16 Morocco, 3, 29, 46, 183, 185, 188,203,
Meks, 214 20
Melanesia, 88, 176 5Moses, 131
Melle (Mali), 44, 46, 203, 206-10; Mossi, 159-60,209, 211
rulers of, 210 Mozambique, 69, 79, '74, 229
Memnon, 20,121,122,129,181 Muata Yanvo, King, 169
Memorandum, National Congress of Mliller, Max, quoted, 177
British W. Africa, quoted, 232-35 Music, African, 155
Memphis, 110, Ill, 126 Mustansir, Caliph, 185, 188-89, 193
Menelik , King, 23, 216 Mutemua, Queen, 129
Menes, King, 100 Mutesa, King, 199
Mengo,200 Muttanabi, 188
Mensa, King, 36 Mwanga, King, 199-200
Mentone, 87, 88
Meroe, 110, 124, 125, 134, 138, 139, Nandi,92
140, 1'17 Napata, 124, 125, 129, 135, 138, 139,
Mesopotamia, 187, 189; culture of, '42, 143, 147
98; see also Tigris, Euphrates. Napoleon, 45,60,198,214; on slavery,
Methodists, and slave trade, 65 quoted, 193-94
Mexico, slave revolts in, 53, 61 Nastasen, King, 138
Meyer, Edward, 126 n. Natal, 96, 229
INDEX
National Assn. for the Advancement 224. See also Berbers, Carthage,
of Colored People, 237 Libya, Moors, Morocco.
National Congress: Indian, 37; of Northwest Africa, peoples of, 101
British West Africa, quoted, 232- Nowell commission, 247, 249
235 Nuba,94
Nazis: atrocities vs. "civilized," 23, 25, Nubia, 89, 91,100-102,111, t t z , »s.
35-36; South African regime com- 126, 131, 138, 139, 143, 161, 186,
pared to, 39-41 188, 189, 193, 195, 198, 199, 211;
Necho, Pharaoh, 146, 204 and Egypt, 215; resistance of, 33
Nedjeh, King, 195 Numidia, 123, 141, 142
Nefertari, Queen, 114, 126, 127, 224 Nupe, 191, 209
Negapatan, 29
Negrillos, 88-g0, 97,165,176 Ogani,47
Negritos, 88, 178, 179, 180, 181 Ogowe River, 97,154
Negroes: American, and World War Olivier, Sir Sidney, 3, 241
I, 8; and European bloodstream, Omayyad Caliphate, 182, 185, 186
47-48; and Mohammedan power, Ophir, 117
184-85; and Paris Exposition, 2; in Opium War, 33, 56
two World Wars, 260; named as Orange River, 96
race, 34; origin of term, 90-92,116; Origen, 146
physical types, 91-97. See also Ormuz, 28, 29
Pan-African Congress. Osai Tutu Quamina, King, 161
Negroid peoples, 47, 98, 100-101, Osiris, 103
105, 106-108, 116, 119, 122, 125, Ottoman Empire, 198
141, 143, 146, 177, 179-80, 183-85, Ovakwanyama, 96
193,203,205,221,223; and China, Ovambo, 96
179-80; and India, 176-78, 196-97: Ovandonga, 96
origins of, 85 If. Ovid, quoted, 120
Neolithic culture, 89-90, 92
Nero, Emperor, 138, 143 Paleolithic culture, 87-88
Netekamane, King, 139 Palestine, 52, 108, 187
New England, 58, 70 Palgrave, W. G., quoted, 91-92, 194-
Newfoundlandv yS 195
New York, 74: Evening Globe, Palmares, 54, 61, 195
quoted, 10; Herald, quoted, 12 Palmer, H. R., 213 n.
New Zealanders, 223 Pan-African Congress: ist, 7-12,
Niger Co., 34 235 ff.: znd, 240-41; 3rd, 241-42;
Niger River, 46, 82,94, 183,204,206 4th, 242-43: 5th, 243, 244-45
Nigeria, 9, 231, 232, 242, 245, 249: art Pan-African Movement, white, 244
in, 152 Pan-Arab League, 232
Nile valley, 44,45,51,82, 165, 179, Papuans, 178
192, 197, 219, 220, 221, 223; and Paris, 2-3, 7-12, 16, 235 II., 241
ivory trade, 70; culture in, 98-114; Parsifal, 217-18
Mohammedans in, 48; slavery in, . Peace Conference, Versailles, 7-9
52. See also Blue Nile, Egypt, Ethi- Peace movement, 17-18
opia, White Nile. Pegu,29
Nilotic peoples, 92, 108 Pembav z ad
Nineveh, 68, 136 Pepi I, King, 108
Nizir Sultan, 196 Perigord, 88
Nnjimiv a ig Periplus, 122, 146
Non-European United Committee, Perseus, 121, 122, 226
quoted, 39-41 Persia, 29, 69, 132, 174, 182, 184, 186,
North Africa, 51, 83, 88-89, 183, 184, 187,189, 191, 197,203,226; slavery
188, 201, 212, 213, 223, 229; and in, 77
Rome, 141-42; peoples of, 92, 185, Peru, slave revolt in, 61
INDEX 273
Petrie, Sir W. M. Flinders, 107, casoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Ni-
185 n.; quoted, 111-12, "3, "4, lotic.
125, 128, 130, 137 Rameses I, Pharaoh, 130, 131
Philip II,King, 51, 170 Rameses II, Pharaoh, 92,131,136
Phoenicia, 122, 135, 181, 204; and Rameses III, Pharaoh, 134
West Africa, 150 Randall-MacIver, Dr. David,
Piankh i, Pharaoh, 134, 135 quoted, 106-107, 137
Pigafetta, Filippo, 155, 170 Ra-Nehesi, Pharaoh, 114
Pirates, Moorish, 221-22 Ra Nesi, Pharaoh, 224
Pitt, William, 24, 59, 63 Rattray, Robert S., quoted, 151-52
Pittsburgh Dispatch, quoted, 10 Ratzel, Friedrich, quoted, 91
Planudes, 120 Reade, Winwood, 207; quoted, 99-
Plassey, Battle of, 55 100J 120-21
Pleistocene culture, 89 Reclus, Elisee, quoted, 154
Prempi, King, 36 Red Sea, 82, 83, 110, 115, 124, 134,
Polo, Marco, 191 138, 146, 209, 229
Polygamy, and racial equality, 193- Reform Bill of 1832,60,67
194 Reforms requested, 232-35
Polynesia, 178 Rehrehsa, 138
Pope, Alexander, quoted, 120 Religion: in Egypt, 103-104, 130;
Popes of African birth, 145 West Coast, 157-58
Portugal, 46,174,222; and abolition, Renaissance, 18, 21, 222, 223, 227;
65; and Abyssinia, 215; and Africa, and ivory trade, 69; and slave
31,68,241; and East Africa, 192; trade, 44 II.
and India, 28-29,51,54; and ivory Resolutions, Pan-African Congress,
trade, 69; and Liga Africana, 241; 243; quoted, 238-39
and Pan-African Congress, 241; Revolts: against Mohammedan rule,
and slave labor, 47 II.; dominated 187; slave, 53-54, 60--63, 65-66
by Spain, 51; loses trade domi- Revolution, American, 60, 61, 62, 63
nance, 50--51; trade with Orient, Revolution, French, 60, 52, 63, 198;
46-47. See also Portuguese Africa. of 1848,67
Portuguese Africa, 9, 96, 97, 169-70; Revolution, Russia: of 1905, 3; of
revolt in, 60. See also Portugal. 1917, 13
Poverty, of inferior groups, 21-24 Rhodesia, 73, 96, 97, 173, 229, 232,
Prester John, 46, 147,203 244
Progress, European, on colored Rhodesian Man, 90
backs, 22-24 Rift, origin of, 81
Protestants, and Africa, 51 Rig Veda, 177
Ptolemy (geographer), 160 Rio Muni, 97
Ptolemy II, Pharaoh, 139 Rome, 69, 128; and Africa, 123,216,
Ptolemy XIII, Pharaoh, 140 223; and Egypt, 141; and Ethiopia,
Public welfare, planning for, 255-56 138-39, 142-44
Punic Wars, 141-42 Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin D., 254
Punt, III, "7, 128 Rothenstein, Sir William, quoted,
Pygmies, 97,155, See also Negrillos. 154
Pyramids, 184 Roudh-el-Kartas, 205
Royal African Co., 54
Quakers, and slave trade, 65 Rukn-ud-din-Barbak, King, 196
Quarsie, Tetteh, 246 Russia, 255, 257; and labor move-
ment, 245; Revolution of Ig05, 3;
Ra,103 Revolution of 19'7, 13
Rabah, King, 215 Rutot, Alfred, 86-87
Race theories, 17-19; argument
against, 5, 223-24 Saad, 143
Racial types, 115-16. See also Cau- Sadler, Sir Michael, quoted, 154
INDEX
Saefe, King, 213 Sicily, 87,101,123,141,188,197
Sahara, 76, 82, 83, 88, 89, 146, 165, Sidi Badr, King, Ig6
184, 185, 201, 221 Sidjilmessa, 203
Saif-ud-din-Firuz, 196 Sierra Leone, 9, 33, 161, 232, 242
St. Lucia, slave revolt in, 60, 61 Silko, King, 147, 215
Saiti Kings, 126 Silla, 204
Sakais, 179 Sima, 213
Saladin, Sultan, 147, 189, 193, 197, Simonides the Younger, 140
199 Sin, paradox of, 41-42
San Domingo, slave revolt in, 61 Sind,208
Sandiata, King, 207 Sinuh i, King, III
Sanehat, King, III Slave revolts, 53-54, 60-63
San Francisco Conference, United Slavery, spiritual, 252-53
Nations, 244 Slave trade, 31, 220; abolition of, 60,
Sa Nekht, Pharaoh, 110 65-66; and capitalism, 225; and
Sankore, 44, 211, 222 West African culture, 162-63; Brit-
San Salvador (Congoland), 170 ain and, 32, 60; East African, 70;
Sargon, King, 98 results of, 18-lg, 43, 44 ff., 77;
Sarkolle, 205 white, 52, 185, 189, 192-93
Scandinavia, 26, 156 Smith, Adam, quoted, 59
Schweinfurth, Georg A., 71; quoted, Smith, Sir G. E., quoted, 86
174-75 Smith, Goldwin, quoted, 65
Scilex, 122 Smuts, Jan, 41; and human rights,
Sculpture, 'West African, 152,154-56 41,43,242,244,255
Scythians, 136, 181 So, King of Egypt, 133
Sebastian, King, 51 Sofala, 169, 191, 192
Sedek, 137 Somali, 90, 10.
Self-determination, African, 8-9, Somaliland, 232
238-39 Songhay, 44, 94, 206, 20g, 211-12;
Seligmann, C. G., 97; quoted, 107 rulers of, 210
Selim (the Great), Sultan, Ig8, 215 Song of Solomon, quotedi.igs;
Seljukian Turks, 189 Sonni Ali, King, 211
Selous, Frederick C., 70, 76 Sopd , 137
Semang, 178, 179 Sosa, 207
Semitic peoples, 108, 109, 110, 178, South Africa, 89, 22g, 242; and
179, 204 Bantu migration, 220; and ivory
Senaar, 135,214,215 trade, 69; and Zulus, 96; appeal to
Senegal, 94, 158, 159, 183, 204, 221; U.N. from, 39-41; culture in, 45.
troops from, 6-7, 260 See also Union of South Africa,
Senegal River, gl Smuts, Rerrenvolk.
Sennacherib, 133, 137 South Africa Co., 34
Seti I, Pharaoh, 131 South America, 26; and cocoa, 246;
Seville, 184,222 European domination of, 27; slave
Sex, European attitudes on, 24-25 revolts in, 62; slave trade to, 21-22,
Shabaka, King, 133, 135 48
Shadd ad, Ig0 South Sea Islands, partition of, 35
Shakespeare, William, :08-19; South-West Africa, 96, 232
quoted, 219 Souzas,48
Shango, 158 Spain, 46,123, 183-85, 197,205,221-
Sheba, Queen of, 146 223; and abolition, 50; and Indies
Shiites, 188 trade, 50; and New World natives,
Shilluk, 94, 198,215 28; and Punic Wars, 141; domi-
Shi 11 toists, 26 nates Portugal, 51; loses trade
Shishak, Pharaoh, 135 dominance, 51; trade war vs. Eng-
Shoa, 216 land, 50-51
Shona, 96 Speke, John R., 71, 157
INDEX 275
Sphinx, lID-II Tidore, 29
Stanley, Henry M., 71, 157; quoted, Tigris-Euphrates valley, 98, 136, 181.
72, 83 See also Euphrates, Mesopotamia.
Statecraft: Songhay, 211; West Coast, Timaios, King, 114
159-60 Timbuktu, 46, 91, 159, 205, 210, 211,
Stele of Una, 108 212,222
Stone Age culture, 88-89 Timur the Lame, 197
Sudan, 32, 44,45,46,94, 111,115, i iS, Tippoo-Tib, 71, 72, 77, 224
135, 141, 161, 162, 170, 181, 182, Tirhakah, King, 133
184-88, 193, 195, 197-98; black ex- Tithon (Tithonus), 120, 181
pansion in, 48, .51; climate, 84; con- Togoland, 155, 158; ironworking in,
quest of, 33; culture in, 77-78, 201- 154
225; detailed account of, 201-25; To-Kenset, 138
Egyptian, 83; peoples of, 108 Tombuto, 212
Suez Canal, 198 Toynbee, Arnold .T., 99; quoted, 182
Suk, 92 Trade Union Conference, London,
Sukiims, 132 243
Sumerians, 98,136 Transvaal, 89, 229
Superior Race, 17-19,22,23,223-24. Triangular trade, 58-59
See also Herrenvolk. Tripoli, 182, 185
Surinam, slave revolt in, 61 Trojan War: Ethiopians in, 121;
Susu, 206 Memnon in, 181
Sut-Nahsi, 177,178 Tulum dynasty, 187
Suto, 96 Tunisia, 83, 182, 185, 243
Swahilir qa Turanian peoples, 178
Swaziland, 9 Tureregs, 212
Swinburne, Algernon C., quoted, 261 Turkey, 18, 182, 192, 196
Syllogism of the Satisfied, 42 Turks, 186, 188, 197,212,214; Seljuk,
Syria, 52, 81, 111-12, 114, 119, 122, 189
128, 131, 182, 184, 187, 188, 189, Tutankhaton (Tutankhamen), 130
195, 196, 198, 220 Tuthmosis I, 128
Tuthmosis II, 128
Tadu, 138 Tuthmosis III, 68, 128
Taharqa, King, 133, 135, 136, 137, Tuthmosis IV, 129
212 Twi,95
Taia, Queen, 129
T'ang dynasty, 180
Tanganyika, 89 Ubangi,157
T'arik-bin-Ziad, 183 Uganda, 9, 32,76, 89, ll8, 171; and
Taylor, Griffith, quoted, 88 imperial powers, 199-200
Tebu, 214 Ulm, 156
Teda, 214 Union of South Africa, 9, 244. See
Tegaza, 211 also Smuts.
Tekrou, 204 United Nations: and human rights,
Temehv iofl 43, 244; appealed to, 39-41; San
Tenkadibou, 78, 212, 225 Francisco Conference, 255
Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 26 United States: aims of, 16; and abo-
Terence (Terentius Afer) , 144 lition of slavery, 65, 66; and China,
Tertullian, 146 33; ancllabor movement, 245; and
Thebes, Ill, 126, 128, 135, 137, 138 Paris Exposition, 2; at Pan-
Theodore, King, 135 African Congress, 10; economic
Theodosius, Emperor, 144 .iustice for, 250 II. See also Amer-
Thirty Years' War, 52 icas.
Thonga,96 University: of Berlin, 5; of London,
Tibesti,213 3; of Sankore, 44, 211, 222; of T'im-
Tibu, 183 buktu, 222
INDEX
Upper Congo, 71. See also Congo. minishing profits in, 63; slave re-
Upper Egypt, 102, lO3, lO8, 135, 189, volts in, 60, 61-62, 65, 66
195. See also Egypt, Ethiopia. "White Man's Burden," 15, 17
Usertesen I, Pharaoh, III White Nile, 154, 215
Usertesen III, Pharaoh, 112-13 Widney, Joseph P., quoted, 179'
Utrecht, peace of, 57 Wilkinson, J. G., quoted, 129
Williams, Eric, quoted, 58, 59, 64
Vaida,79 Wood, William, quoted, 58
Vandals, 142 Woodward, William R., quoted, 77
Velanga, 169 WoolE, Leonard, 237; quoted, 200
Victor I, Pope, 146 World Federation of Trade Unions,
Vijayanaga, 173 244
Virgil, quoted, '44
Yaggas, 76, 97
Wachagga, 94 Yakut, 204
Wadai,214 Yam, 108
"Wady Ban-Naga, 124 Yatenga, 159
Wagadugu, '59 Yemaya, 158
Waklimi, 191 Yemen, 146, 147, 195, 196
War, German apologia for, 5 Yoruba, 95, 158,161, 162,209
War of Spanish Succession, 54 Yusuf,205
Washington, Booker T., 20
Wawat, lO8 Zahir, Caliph, 188
Wellen dorff, 87 Zaide, King, '91
West Africa, 44,76,89, '91,203,219; Zainab, Queen, 183
and cocoa trade, 245-50; and ivory Zambesi River, 81,97, 169, 170,
trade, 69; and Portuguese, 169-70; Zanzibar, 68, 71,73, '9,,228
and Spain, 51; culture in, 45, Zassamank r z r s
149 ff.; detailed account of, 148-63; Zayd bin Harith, 183
kingdoms of, 209; migrations in, Zayda, Queen, 205
48; resistance of, 33; ruin of, 220; Zebbeda, 190 ,
social change in, 77 Zeng, 187, 189
West Indies, 9; and British prosper- Zimbabwe, 78, 172, 173, 174, 220
ity, 58-59; and cocoa trade, 246; Zulu, 31, 96
and Pan-African Congress, 7, 10, Zululand, 96
236, 242; and slave trade, 57; di- Zundel, 120

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