Let us begin with the fact that the ubiquitous phrase is almost exclusive in its application to Africa: âprecolonial Africaâ. How often do we encounter this designation in discourses about other continents? If not, what explains the peculiar representation â treating the continent as if it were a single unit of analysis â when it comes to Africa? I am afraid it comes from a not-so-kind genealogy that always takes Africa to be a simple place, homogenises its peoples and their history, and treats their politics and thought as if they were uncomplicated, each substitutable for the other across time and space. Once you are thinking of âAfricaâ as a simple whole, it becomes easier to grossly misrepresent an entire continent in the temporal frame of âprecolonialâ.
In reality, âprecolonialâ Africa never existed....
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For one thing, the role of African thinkers in the evolution of Christianity becomes elided by a periodisation that does not see a continuity between African events and events elsewhere, from Europe to Asia to the Americas. It also makes it difficult to track demographic continuities when it comes to cultural hybridities, including citizenship, in different parts of the Mediterranean continuum. And, as long as Roman colonialism lasted in North Africa, the region was not hermetically sealed from the rest of the continent, both across the Sahara, and east to the northern reaches of present-day Kenya.
As used, the term âprecolonialâ Africa and the distortions it represents cannot illuminate our understanding of Africa and its history.
More importantly, it is wrong to think of colonialism as a non-African phenomenon that was only brought in from elsewhere and imposed on the continent. Africa has given rise to a rich tapestry of diverse colonialisms originating in different parts of the continent. How are we to understand them? For example, if âprecolonial Moroccoâ refers to the time before France colonised Morocco, it must deny that the 800-year Moorish colonisation of the Iberian Peninsula, much of present-day France and much of North Africa was a colonialism. For, if it were, then âcolonial Moroccoâ must predate âprecolonial Moroccoâ. I do not know how any of this helps us understand the history of Morocco. Similarly, a âprecolonialâ Egypt that refers to Egypt before modern European imperialism would also deny Mohammed Aliâs colonial adventures at the head of Egypt in southern Europe and Asia Minor. Was ancient Egypt part of some precolonial formation? That strains credulity. To conceive of the history of Africa and Africans in terms only, or primarily, of their relation to modern European empires disappears the history of Africans as colonisers of realms beyond the continentâs land borders, especially in Europe and Asia...
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
dededos
