10-03-2004 21:08									#301
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom Indeed- African mariners could confidently sail away from sight of land in the Indian ocean before Europeans were routinely doing the same in the North Atlantic.

To be fair, the North Atlantic is a substantially rougher ocean than the Indian. So much so that the ships the Portugese had to build in order to survive it were structually superior to Arab, Indian, and African ships in the Indian, and were better able to withstand combat than their counterparts. Despite the numerical superiority of the Turks, Arabs, Indians, etc, the Portugese were able to turn the Indian Ocean into a Portugese lake in a matter of decades.

	10-03-2004 21:25									#302
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quote: Originally posted by Sikander So the increases in population, lifespan, wealth, knowledge, opportunity and the increases in freedom from clan and private warfare, disease, access to international markets, vast improvements in transportation and communication etc. all would have occurred in such a widespread fashion as rapidly without colonialism?

This is an extremely recent and post-colonial development. By and large, the advent of colonialism meant a marked decrease in standard of living and life-span for indigenous people's everywhere the pirates landed. India was a very wealthy area before the British took over. So wealthy that it was the destiniation for traders for millenia. Europeans named other areas after India in their quest for wealth, the West Indies, the East Indies, Indo-China, etc. It is only now recovering from 150 years of British plundering.

Africa got it far worse. While the depredations of the Belgians were the extreme end, it wasn't the only area in Africa that saw mass murder at the hands of the colonizers. Mass graves are being uncovered in Namibia, perpetrated by the Germans. French colonial methods resulted in the starvation of masses of people. Add to that the theft of 100,000,000 people over three centuries. The economy of Africa was utterly destroyed by the Europeans.

As for whether Blacks would be better off in Africa without slavery or not, the simple fact is, they would not exist. First, Africans were taken from the whole of Africa, and people were thrown together in one great mass. American Blacks are African mutts, just as most American whites are European mutts.

Secondly, most Black people have European ancestry (as well as Amerindian ancestry). Black people are an American group, bred and creted in the Americas with genetic ties to three continents. They belong in Africa no more than they belong in Europe. Blacks are similar to Northern Indians, a hybrid people.

	11-03-2004 03:13									#303
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara To be fair, the North Atlantic is a substantially rougher ocean than the Indian. So much so that the ships the Portugese had to build in order to survive it were structually superior to Arab.

Although true, the Portuguese ships were hybrid Arab/European designs, a cross between the sturdy Hanseatic style sailing ships and the faster Arab dhows.

Still it is worthy of note that cities such as Malindi, Kilwa and Sofala and Great Zimbabwe were trading with India and China in the 14th and 15th centuries- Malindi sent a giraffe as a gift to the Chinese Emperor in 1401, I.I.R.C. .

I think if Zheng He/Cheng Ho had been allowed to maintain a trading presence in the Indian Ocean, then East and South East Africa might have been better prepared to resist the Portuguese.

What I find interesting is that similar concepts in Africa and Europe are called by different names- ethnic/political strife in Europe is rarely ever described as tribalism in serious reportage or history books, and yet the Walloon/Fleming divide or the Ulster Protestant/Catholic divide, or Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim strife in the Balkans is no less tribal than the Hausa/Yoruba division in Nigeria.

Similarly, religion in Africa was described mockingly in terms of animism and fetishes- when god worship and theology were a part of African civilizations too- and no one describes rosaries and crucifixes as fetishes (well, maybe hard shell Baptists do).

If one looks at, for instance, the parchments recovered from the Cairo synagogue's Geniza, one sees Africans (and Jewish middlemen, and Arabs) engaged in trade from Central Asia to North West Africa- at a time when Western Europe was still agog at tales of Prester John and exotic Cambay and far Cathay.

West African gold supplies/mines provided the basis for the European gold standard, the florin of Florence, which supplanted the Islamic dinar as the standard unit of international trade in Europe (not as Theben suggested, Mansa Musa's bullion on the hajj to Mecca) although this could not have happened without the explosive growth in European manufacturing and trade and demand, and the increasingly sophisticated means for accounting, insuring and financing developed in northern Italy.

Even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Africans were depicted in literature and art as being different but equal- if you look at the Dutch Golden Age paintings, at Italian Renaissance works, or Velasquez's paintings, the Africans depicted are shown as being as fully human as the Europeans, not as next to apes.

A Scottish poet wrote this:

"Long have I sung of ladies white
Now of a black I will indite
That landed out of the last ships
Who fain would I describe perfect
My lady with the muckle lips"

in praise of an African woman chosen as the Queen of Beauty at the court of the Scottish king, James IV in 1507.

A far cry from the 19th century exhibition of the Hottentot Venus as an object for prurient curiousity and ridicule.

http://www.frif.com/new99/hottento.html

	11-03-2004 03:22									#304
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interesting info, Molly

	11-03-2004 03:27									#305
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That's just revisionism, Molly. Everyone knows Africans were always backwards savages.

	11-03-2004 03:49									#306
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quote: Originally posted by MrFun interesting info, Molly

Studying art history had some uses- other than making fun of Sloane Rangers called Sumaya and India and Maisie who said 'Yah! O.K.!' when they meant yes.

Looking at paintings of British interiors from the eighteenth century you notice very quickly the number of black servants- pages, maids, footmen, butlers- which alone would indicate the black population of the United Kingdom to be higher then than most people would have assumed it was, today.

In my last post in London, I visited a heritage listed house in Soho which had a very small room set under the eaves, which was thought to be where the black pageboy or maid would have lived in the eighteenth century. It was a very melancholy and sobering experience to crawl into such a small space and imagine what a cold winter in London would have been like for such a person.

English literature is also useful in exploring the differences that came about with the expansion of the North Atlantic slave trade and the success of European colonialism- the contrast between the reception and treatment of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, being a salient example of the change in attitudes from the more enlightened Renaissance period.

http://www.maryseacole.com/maryseacole/biography/

Florence Nightingale already has a memorial, a statue near Pall Mall- Mary Seacole's is yet to be established.

	11-03-2004 04:06									#307
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I think that another reason Europeans gained the upper hand on the seas is that the timber used by Europeans offered a better balance of toughness and workability. Many of the ships on the Indian Ocean were built of softer woods. While some Chinese ships were built of tougher woods like mahogony these woods were more difficult to work with using the tools of the day.

Something that troubles me about the use of the "n" word by blacks is that most of the time I here it used it's used in anger or in a disapproving tone. I fear that it's often used as a means of attempting to gain the upper hand in an argument and I wonder how often its use is a factor during a verbal conflict between two black people that results in violence.

One reason why some people prefer the use of "African-american' over "black" is that it's very easy to convey a negative feeling if a person uses the wrong inflection when saying the word "black". I have sometimes heard even well- respected black speakers utter the word in a manner that I thought conveyed a measure of disdain. African- american is longer and more neutral sounding.

	11-03-2004 04:12									#308
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A lot of people have forgotten the original reason Rev. Jackson first began pushing the term, African-American. It wasn't to be seperatist or to claim a connection to Africa. In a poll taken by the Chicago Tribune a few years after that speah, the CT found that a majority of whites did not consider Black people to be true Americans. The purpose of the term African-American is lay a claim to being American.

	11-03-2004 04:26									#309
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Yes, but it's also very easy to pronounce the word "buh-laaaackkk", sounding like a slur.

	11-03-2004 04:27									#310
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove One reason why some people prefer the use of "African-american' over "black" is that it's very easy to convey a negative feeling if a person uses the wrong inflection when saying the word "black". I have sometimes heard even well- respected black speakers utter the word in a manner that I thought conveyed a measure of disdain. African- american is longer and more neutral sounding.

It also has to do with cultural attributes attached to various meanings and uses of 'black' in English too- 'black mischief', 'the devil damn thee black', a 'blackout', a 'black day', and so on. Compare these with 'white as the driven snow', or 'pure white', or any meanings of white that have to do with purity, or wholeness, or being unspotted, or unspoilt, and it's easy to see the uphill battle speakers of English of African descent would have had to be proud of the term 'black' when applied to themselves.

I still remember people like Bob and Marcia and Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin singing 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black' as if in the knowledge that they could celebrate what was once seen as a deficiency with pride. Of course at the same time you also had the Last Poets singing 'Wake Up, N!gger' and Leroi Jones writing poetry about 'n!ggers' before he discovered his roots and became Amiri Baraka.

	11-03-2004 14:59									#311
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quote: Originally posted by BeBro I think it is difficult to say colonialism as a whole was good for the development in the colonized territories. On the one hand you have India, China, and a lot smaller Asian states which seem to do very well now, however - but were is the big increase of lifespan, wealth, knowledge, opportunity and freedom in Africa?

In most African countries there has been a significant increase in population and a less significant increase in lifespan. There has also been an enormous absolute increase in opportunity, knowledge, wealth and certain sorts of freedom. Unfortunately for Africa these increases have not kept pace with even greater strides made in other parts of the world, which means that Africa in a comparitive sense is no better off than it was before, in fact probably worse off depending upon where in time you make your measurements. But in absolute terms there is no doubt that Africa is better off.

quote: Originally posted by BeBro Even when we conclude that the colonial powers built up effective bureaucratic structures in their African colonies too, that they improved infrastructure, maybe also education, that they established (or tried to do so) - at least in certain aspects - a rule of law, even sometimes granted modern rights to the colonized people we can on the other hand not ignore that all this was done for the main purpose to ensure the primary function of the colonies - which was to serve their motherlands economically. I don't dispute that perhaps many in the west thought they'd do a good and right job in "civilizing" the "uncivilized", but that does not change the real economic role colonies had to play, and in praxis this turned often out as blatant racism.

No argument on most of these points, many of which I made myself more generally in my post. It should be noted though that most countries invested more money in their colonies in Africa than they gained in profits, though contrary to Marxist theory these investments tended to be relatively small. Still they had an enormous impact where many of the peoples were so primitive.

quote: Originally posted by BeBro And of course, all this was also done by (willingly or not) destroying older African societal structures. So when you destroy established structures and enforce "western" ideas in every field a relation between these facts, and the fact that all those nice western achievements quickly faded away and were replaced by corruption, dictatorship, and endless wars between differents fractions, or clans in many ex-colonies after the decolonialization seems quite probable. For Africa I don't see big positive consequences of colonialism.

Africa in many places wasn't a clean pure land before Western intervention, change was already happening for centuries via trade and subjugation by various Arab groups. What changed in part was the imposition of a higher tech colonialism for a lower one and an increase in the rapidity and scope of the colonialism which in time embraced almost the entire continent for a short time.

I agree that in many / most places and cases things got worse when Europe pulled up stakes and left abruptly, but I don't think things were worse in general than when the Europeans first arrived.

Certainly as far as warfare is concerned it was a much worse problem (by an order of magnitude at least) before the Europeans arrived than since they have left. Even though in some places states have failed outright or have been riven by civil war, the spatial scale of these wars nonetheless has been much larger on the average. That seems bad until one considers that this leaves much larger areas safe enough to remain unravaged and capable of growing crops and sustaining other economic activity than would be the case if clan wars were still the norm. As a percentage of manpower armies and wars consume many fewer soldiers than they did in the days before the Europeans came. This means that more labor is available for peaceful purposes. Thus economic activity is much less disrupted with larger scale conflicts, just as the Roman Empire was much more populous and productive than the feudal states which supplanted it. Oh, and of course the Europeans ended slave raiding and the slave trade for all intents and purposes, which was an extremely debilitating practice in some areas of Africa. So destroying the old order came with a lot of benefits.

Dictatorship by a weak and distant government may not be as bad as subjugation by a near and less than dear rival group, in fact in most instances it is preferable. Corruption exists to be sure and it is debilitating in a competitive sense when compared to most of the rest of the world, but not nearly so bad as to reduce incomes below what they were when the Europeans arrived. It is difficult to speculate what would have become of Africa had the Europeans not become involved to be sure. But I don't see too many candidate societies who were aware, willing and able to promote internal development at a pace which could have matched that which the Europeans forced by their presence.