For 40 years, Davidson (Can Africa Survive?, 1974, etc.) has fought
to secure Africa's place in world history. The stakes in this
battle have been more than academic, as the commonly accepted
notion that "Africa had no history" served as justification for the
European colonial domination of the continent and its peoples.
Here, Davidson shows how that historical denial not only allowed
colonialism to take root but also contributed to the imposition of
European-style national governments after independence. At
independence, according to Davidson, a Western-educated African
elite rose to power over traditional African leaders because it was
commonly assumed that Africa had no indigenous models for ruling
nation-states. Gathering the historical evidence, Davidson shows
that, before the imposition of colonialism in the late 19th
century, Africa was well along in the process of evolving its own
models for the nation-state. The Asante kingdom of modern-day
Ghana, for example, was "manifestly a national state on its way to
becoming a nation-state with every attribute ascribed to a Western
European nation-state." Historians, though, neglected or were
unaware of Africa's rich political history; and so Davidson
portrays an Africa stripped of tradition. Africans under
colonialism were told that, in order to be civilized, they must
cease being African - while at the same time they could never be
European. Ironically, this view didn't change after independence,
with adherence to African tradition still derided as "tribalism"
and seen as an obstacle to development. What Africa's leaders
inherited, says Davidson, was "a crisis of social disintegration."
From here he charts the plummeting spiral of economic and social
decay that has brought Africa to its current political crisis.
Davidson's reach emends through medieval Europe, 19th-century
Japan, and to the quandary faced by Eastern European nations today.
He offers a rich and fascinating history, essential for any
understanding of modern Africa's troubles - and a welcome contrast
to the blame-the-Africans-for-their-problems books that have
proliferated in the past decade. (Kirkus Reviews)
Basil Davidson is the most effective popularizer of African history
and archaeology outside Africa and certainly the best trusted in
Africa itself. - Roland Oliver in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Basil Davidson on the nation-state in Africa and its huge
disappointments, its relationship to the colonial years and the
parallels with events in Eastern Europe. North America:
Times/Random House
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