“Africa is the birthplace of humankind itself, yet little of its ancient and modern history is widely known,” writes Zeinab Badawi in her ambitious new book. Reading it, we are reminded yet again that it can take hundreds and thousands of years for the sun to set on empires but longer still for historical perceptions to shift; for one, “the myth of ‘primitive Africa’ has proved remarkably persistent”.
A visit by the author to the Great Zimbabwe world heritage site is instructive as to the devaluation of African achievement down the ages. “We mused on the scepticism about Great Zimbabwe’s origins and how it connects to the outmoded beliefs that Africans somehow remained on the sidelines, spectators and observers to others making history,” Badawi writes. “Rather like Ancient Egypt, achievements of the magnitude of Great Zimbabwe could not be accepted by later Europeans as having emerged from an ‘African’ civilisation”.
Particularly galling for Badawi are the views of one-time regius professor of history at Oxford University, Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper, who dismissed Africa as “unhistoric”. He wrote in 1965: “Perhaps, in trhe future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness. And darkness is not a subject for history.”
For the author, a manifesto no doubt took shape, and the result is An African History of Africa, in which she argues for greater reliance on the scholarship of African intellectuals, and for supplementing the work of western historians with more local perspectives. And so, Badawi, president of SOAS University of London and former chair of the Royal African Society, travelled to more than 30 African countries over a period of seven years to write this book, a big achievement.
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In 17 highly readable chapters, we follow Badawi in her peregrinations in search of fascinating African pasts. We watch her go up “the steep metal steps into the tomb of Thutmose III”, down into the burial chamber of Tutankhamen, and on to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. Is there a lone monk, whom no one has ever seen, who watches over the equally unseen Ark of the Covenant in a small outbuilding of a church in Aksum? Badawi stands outside the building and contemplates the mystery.
Fabled monks will not be discounted in this historical account. As the author writes of the Ethiopian attachment to the Queen of Sheba, “Even when historical fact and archaeological evidence contradict such beliefs, tradition has a powerful role to play in augmenting, explaining and preserving the past, as well as articulating present identities.” And so Badawi accords special significance to African knowledge systems such as compiled in the 13th century by Kebra Nagast, source of the Queen of Sheba legend.
Chiefly, An African History of Africa draws on “one of the continent’s best-kept secrets”, the Unesco General History of Africa (GHA). “Using the GHA as my inspiration and compass, my sources and references are predominantly African and non-European, in contrast to the many histories of Africa written by Western authors,” Badawi writes.
One part of the continent that has never been in danger of falling into history’s shadows is Egypt, a “glittering civilisation that is often not even recognised as African”. As Badawi argues, “The point is not to define ancient Egypt as being African or not on the basis of the race of its inhabitants; it is about the need to challenge our definitions, and perhaps our stereotypes, of Africans.” With the decoding of hieroglyphics thanks to the Rosetta Stone, much is known about the ancient Egyptians; this book delves into the exploits of the notables, and places some of their achievements in contrast to contemporaneous Europe, to powerful effect.
One of Badawi’s objectives is the reclamation of African historical figures who have been underserved or demonised in western accounts – such as Cleopatra. “Much of what we know about her is derived from Roman historians such as Plutarch, writing nearly 200 years after her death.”
The author takes a walk with Dr Bahia Shaheen of Alexandria University, whose view of Cleopatra relies more on medieval Islamic writings. These accounts “stand in fulsome contrast with her exoticisation as a devious femme fatale in the Roman sources and in her contemporary reception in the modern West, where she has come to exemplify Western ideas of the luxurious and libidinous Orient.” Badawi writes, “I now see how Cleopatra might have been the victim of Roman propaganda; after my time with Dr Shaheen I will not regard her in the same light ever again.” Nor will the reader.
The book runs into an ethnic minefield in its treatment of the Kingdom of Benin and its historic art, which was looted by British soldiers in 1897; we also see the potential pitfalls of appraising whole kingdoms seemingly based on the knowledge of one single scholar – African or otherwise.
The Benin Bronzes are at the heart of the art restitution debate. And with the superstar status of the Bronzes, it’s understandable that Benin Kingdom would command increasing attention in books of this nature. However, in a chapter of more than 20 pages on Benin, one may question whether it is appropriate to relegate a separate and larger group, the Yoruba, into a few erroneous paragraphs.
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The claim that the progenitor of the Yoruba people, Oduduwa, originated from Benin is a contentious one that runs counter to most African and western scholarship, as well as oral traditions. These hold that the Yoruba originate from Ile-Ife, from where an array of historically related kingdoms fanned out, including, supposedly, Benin. The Benin-centric school of thought was floated relatively recently, in 2004, by the late Oba Erediauwa of Benin.
While one does not expect An African History of Africa to be partisan or to adjudicate between these opposing viewpoints, the two should, at the very least, have been placed side by side in the book. Readers may then draw their own conclusions. This has been the approach in several recent works of history, and is worth noting for future editions of this book.
An African History of Africa also appears to present the royal seat of Lagos (which derives from Benin) as a place holder for the entire Yoruba. In truth, Lagos is not even one of the leading kingdoms of the Yoruba, who number a conservative 40 million, and have in their history legendary wars and a 17th-century empire. Thus, a line such as “To this day the Yoruba people venerate the Oba of Benin, and their art” makes for curious reading, as the Yoruba not only have their own venerated kings but also historic art such as the famous Ife sculptures.
Additionally, in a chapter in which the author is at pains to douse the western tendency to charge cannibalism and human sacrifice as a means of denigrating African cultures, it is a wonder that Erelu Abiola Dosunmu of Lagos’s throwaway comment about the Yoruba coronation metaphor of “eating the king” is given ventilation.
Quibbles about the Yoruba aside, this is a magnificent book in the sheer sweep of its vision and its accessibility to everyday readers. Where An African History of Africa excels is in its excavation of epochs seemingly lost in the sands of time. The Kingdom of Kush lasted 3,000 years but little is known of it, even by the modern Sudanese themselves. And yet the Kushite kings built 1,000 pyramids, as well as some of Egypt’s monuments, among many achievements.
Badawi offers several reasons for the relative obscurity of Kush, one being Egypto-centric scholars who saw ancient Sudan as a mere “offshoot” of Egypt. It doesn’t help that the Kushite pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty are often miscategorised as “Nubian”, a term that did not exist in the time of the Kushites. The Kushite script has also not been decoded, and many of their monuments have yet to be excavated, in a continent where archaeological funding is often in short supply, not to mention the peace and security required to conduct detailed findings.
Another outstanding aspect of the book is its foregrounding of the “founding mothers” who helped shape the continent’s history; an array of heroines worthy of another look or who deserve to be better known. These include the woman pharaoh Hatsheput, the Kanakas of Kush, Queen Elyssa aka. Dido, founder of Carthage; Abena Pokou and Yaa Asantewaa of Asante; and Njinja of Kongo and her epic potboiler of a life.
Badawi describes her book as “a panoramic sweep across Africa: a short history of the continent with the longest human history in the world”. And a richly rewarding panoramic sweep it is. Readers will find a huge cast of African greats whose stories should help challenge many preconceptions of the continent from whence we all came.
Further reading
African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History (Penguin) charts the presence of people of African descent over 2,000 years. This is a landmark work by Hakim Adi, the first person of African heritage to become a history professor in Britain.
Untold Histories of Nigerian Women: Emerging from the Margins (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), by historian Tayo Agunbiade, is an extensively researched book that unearths hidden narratives of Nigerian women and their contributions to the struggle for independence and the project of nation-building.
Operation Legacy: Looting & Losing Africa’s Kingdoms (Quramo Publishing), by Olasupo Shasore, examines the long history of looted records and artefacts across Africa during colonisation. The book illustrates the violence and wilful destruction often involved, and the consequences for Africans and their reckoning with history.
Great Kingdoms of Africa (Thames & Hudson), edited by John Parker, is a groundbreaking publication aimed at everyday readers. Each chapter considers an ancient African kingdom on its own terms, and not as an undifferentiated ‘precolonial’ period.
