I bought this book because I know next to nothing of Africa’s history; I guess I am one of many such purchasers. So how can I review it?
Beginning
at the beginning, I was reminded of those old histories of England written for
school children, me included, giving them the dates of kings and queens,
recounting endless dynastic rivalries, marital alliances, and wars; adding in
the histories of religious conflicts; and not much else, excepting some peasant
revolt which couldn’t be entirely ignored. They were top-down comfortable
Establishment histories which blanked a great deal of the past, and much of
this book belongs to the same supra-genre. It has been given an enthusiastic
Establishment reception. Paucity of evidence is part of the explanation for the
emphasis but the tone is enthusiastic, like those school textbooks of old.
I
start from the assumption that on the long view of history life for most human
beings has been nasty, brutish and short – and not because of the absence of a
Leviathan but because in the long view most Leviathans have been predominantly
extractive and exploitative, taking the fruits of people’s labour or their
labour itself to build palaces for rulers, erect monuments to rulers, pay for
the costly imports which rulers and their retinues alone consume, provide
subsistence for the skilled labour which produces jewels, garments, works of
art, and splendid feasts without which labour there could be no ostentation, no
conspicuous consumption. Badawi describes such worlds in detail with few
suggestions that it might have been less than satisfactory for the majority of
people. Indeed, she presents it as generally positive, as giving peoples their
identity and a history they can be proud of, symbolised by individuals who in
post-independence African countries now have statues, European style (plinth,
upright, gaze to heaven), erected to their memory.
Here
in England, I am supposed to get my identity from Nelson on top of his column
and just down the road the murderous Earl Haig on horseback, not to mention
decadent King George the Fourth, back in Trafalgar Square, up there on a plinth
and on a horse he could not possibly have mounted unaided. All this in prime
locations at the very centre of the old Empire. It’s the physical embodiment of
those old school textbooks.
If
they are lucky in date and time of birth, ordinary people may enjoy relative
peace. Without peace no one who lives by tilling the earth, watching their
flocks, making clay pots or weaving cloth, is secure against the devastations
wreaked by invading armies and marauding bands who can destroy in a few hours
not only a year’s crops and all the cattle but years of investment in
cultivating fruit trees and olive groves. Just for good measure, they will burn
houses to the ground and rape women and children. As I write, the RSF is doing just
that in Sudan.
In
history, the very fortunate lived under regimes which invested at least
something into public works of benefit to everyone: ensuring clean water; creating
flood defences; building roads; minting coinage widely accepted; and offering
at least some degree of personal safety. Badawi does provide some examples, notably the
Kingdom of Benin. But you were one of the very lucky ones if born into such
happy times. The opening chapters of this book did not create, in my reading, any
sense of the fraught worlds ordinary people normally experienced, focussed as
they are on the names, appearance, and style of kings and queens, and the expansion
or contraction of their empires sometimes by marital alliance, more often by
bloody and cruel conflict. (There is a note in my head to ask whether some of the
pastoralist tribes of southern Africa avoided this narrative).
The
Big Three monotheisms soon appear in this history of Africa working their way
down from the north and inwards from the East and West coasts. I guess that
Judaism was the most benign influence: religious Jews did not seek to
proselytise because the heart of their religion provided no basis for it. If
you are a chosen people promised a land there is no need for recruits. The most
important thing is to avoid dilution of the tribe; marrying out is a red line. I
understand that Sephardic Jews were more relaxed than Ashkenazi Jews, or at
least they were when faced with persecutions like those launched in the
European middle-ages by Christian Spain and Portugal; marrying out provided a
measure of protection. Eventually, you assimilated and, even if not, then you
were widely tolerated. Muslims could be more tolerant than Christians: the
former recognised Jews as also “People of the Book”, the latter in their main organised
Catholic incarnation and until very recently held the Jews collectively
responsible for the death of Jesus. Expelled from the Iberian peninsular, many
Jews settled in Morocco and stayed there; in the eighteenth century (I read
recently) British diplomats were unhappy with the major part in Morocco’s
public life played by Jews.
Later
in the book, Badawi writes about the slave trade, dominated by Islamic traders
in the East and North and Christian traders in the West, and acknowledges local
African co-operation with the trade. I don’t think that requires any special
explanation or apology: if you live in a tribal society in which neighbouring
tribes are always potential enemies, at least to their rulers – and that is a
large part of Badawi’s main narrative - then passing members of that next door
tribe into slavery is simply self-protective; true, it attracts remuneration
but is otherwise little different to selling on captives taken in warfare who
would otherwise probably be killed.
Badawi
deploys elements of a modern traveller’s journal into her narratives, bravely visiting
difficult to get to places and meeting people with titles: academic, political,
regal. This does contribute to the top-down feel
of the history, at its worst when Charles and Camilla turn up as VIP guests at the Akwasidae "one of the highest profile, most frequent and extravagant manifestations of African regal tradition, a precious example of an ancient, august African institution that has withstood the pressures of centuries of social change and the depredations of colonialism" (p 288). What can one say? #NoMoreKings.
Rather
jarringly with what has gone before, Badawi states bluntly that
post-independence “due to corruption and economic mismanagement, Africa’s
wealth has so far been used to fill the pockets of its ruling class and their
foreign collaborators” (page 386). Independence across the continent was
achieved as early as 1957 by Ghana and concluded belatedly by South
Africa in 1994; it’s not as if it’s that new. What she calls the ruling class
dresses either in military uniforms modelled on the European (gold braid,
tassels, epaulettes, medals, suffocatingly hot) or in the suit and tie deemed
obligatory by Mr Trump, among others. Badawi is lukewarm about demands for
reparations for colonialism; rightly so, they would fill the usual pockets.
The
current history of Africa can’t be written without reference to the continuing
malign influence in Africa of foreign state actors, China and Russia (partly in
the form of freelance mercenaries) now added to the original list of European
nations and the CIA-USA. They all want rare earths, the new gold. Badawi does
not engage with the (Western) literature on “the resource curse” which I feel
makes a lot of sense of the predicament in which many African states find
themselves.
My
only studious encounter with African history was back in 1968 when the American
economist, Sean Gervasi, employed me – newly PPE graduated (Badawi studied for
the same degree but a decade later) – as a summer-long research assistant. He
had a United Nations grant to research the economy of Rhodesia where the white
minority had declared unilateral independence under Ian Smith. He delegated to
me the task of writing up a history of Land Apportionment which, progressively
over time, produced the result that the best land belonged to Whites and the
worst to Blacks. At the same time, a supply of labour to White estates was
created by such simple means as the requirement that taxes to the government be
paid in cash, not kind; the only way to get cash was through wage labour. It
was all there on microfilm in the library of Oxford’s Commonwealth Institute
where I sat each day transcribing the details and writing up the narrative.
An
African History of Africa is a well-intentioned work with
plenty of I Didn’t Know That material in its 500 pages. I found it
disappointing; I was hoping for something sharper.
