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Authors: Chinua Achebe
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British penetration of West Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century was not achieved only on the field of battle, as in Benin, but at home also, in churches, schools, newspapers, novels, et cetera by the denigration of Africa and its people. The frankness of those days was nowhere better demonstrated than in an editorial by
The Times
of London expressing its outrage at the decision of Durham University to affiliate with Fourah Bay College in West Africa.
The Times
asked Durham quite pointedly if it might consider affiliating with the zoo!
Apart from the vast quantity of offensive and trashy writing about Africa in Victorian England, there also developed later a more serious “colonial genre,” as biographer and historian Jeffrey Meyers calls it, beginning with Kipling in the 1880s, proceeding through Conrad to its apogee in E. M. Forster andending with Joyce Cary and Graham Greene, even as colonialism itself began to end.
John Buchan was in the middle ground between the vulgar and the serious in this body of work. He was also interesting for combining a very senior career in the British colonial service with novel writing. What he says about natives in his novels takes on, therefore, an additional political significance. Here is what an “approved” character in his novel
Prester John
says:
That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility… As long as we know and practice it we will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live only for their bellies. 2
White racism in Africa, then, is a matter of politics as well as economics. The story of the black man told by the white man has generally been told to serve political and economic ends.
Take no one’s word for anything, including mine … know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you … it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by … never being allowed to spell your proper name. 3
Let us now look briefly at Baldwin’s “fearful conundrum” of Africans selling their brothers and sisters and children forbauble. Was that truly what happened? What about the sad, sad story of that king of the vast kingdom of Bukongo who reigned as a Christian king, Dom Afonso I, from 1506 to 1543; who built schools and churches and renamed his capital São Salvador; whose son was bishop of Utica in Tunisia and from 1521 bishop of Bukongo; who sent embassies to Lisbon and to Rome? This man thought he had allies and friends in the Portuguese Jesuits he had encouraged to come and live in his kingdom and convert his subjects. Unfortunately for him, Brazil was opening up at the same time and needing labor to work its vast plantations. So the Portuguese missionaries abandoned their preaching and became slave raiders. Dom Afonso in bewilderment wrote a letter in 1526 to King John III of Portugal complaining about the behavior of Portuguese nationals in the Congo. The letter went unanswered. In the end, the Portuguese gave enough guns to rebellious chiefs to wage war on Bukongo and destroy it, and then imposed the payment of tribute in slaves on the kingdom.
The letter Dom Afonso of Bukongo wrote to King John III of Portugal in 1526 is in the Portuguese archives and reads in part as follows:
[Your] merchants daily seize our subjects, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives… They grab them and cause them to be sold: and so great, Sir, is their corruption and licentiousness that our country is being utterly depopulated… [We] need from [your] Kingdoms no other than priests and people to teach in schools, and no other goods but wine and flour for the holy sacrament: that is why we beg of Your Highness to help and assist us in this matter, commandingyour
British penetration of West Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century was not achieved only on the field of battle, as in Benin, but at home also, in churches, schools, newspapers, novels, et cetera by the denigration of Africa and its people. The frankness of those days was nowhere better demonstrated than in an editorial by
The Times
of London expressing its outrage at the decision of Durham University to affiliate with Fourah Bay College in West Africa.
The Times
asked Durham quite pointedly if it might consider affiliating with the zoo!
Apart from the vast quantity of offensive and trashy writing about Africa in Victorian England, there also developed later a more serious “colonial genre,” as biographer and historian Jeffrey Meyers calls it, beginning with Kipling in the 1880s, proceeding through Conrad to its apogee in E. M. Forster andending with Joyce Cary and Graham Greene, even as colonialism itself began to end.
John Buchan was in the middle ground between the vulgar and the serious in this body of work. He was also interesting for combining a very senior career in the British colonial service with novel writing. What he says about natives in his novels takes on, therefore, an additional political significance. Here is what an “approved” character in his novel
Prester John
says:
That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility… As long as we know and practice it we will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live only for their bellies. 2
White racism in Africa, then, is a matter of politics as well as economics. The story of the black man told by the white man has generally been told to serve political and economic ends.
Take no one’s word for anything, including mine … know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you … it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by … never being allowed to spell your proper name. 3
Let us now look briefly at Baldwin’s “fearful conundrum” of Africans selling their brothers and sisters and children forbauble. Was that truly what happened? What about the sad, sad story of that king of the vast kingdom of Bukongo who reigned as a Christian king, Dom Afonso I, from 1506 to 1543; who built schools and churches and renamed his capital São Salvador; whose son was bishop of Utica in Tunisia and from 1521 bishop of Bukongo; who sent embassies to Lisbon and to Rome? This man thought he had allies and friends in the Portuguese Jesuits he had encouraged to come and live in his kingdom and convert his subjects. Unfortunately for him, Brazil was opening up at the same time and needing labor to work its vast plantations. So the Portuguese missionaries abandoned their preaching and became slave raiders. Dom Afonso in bewilderment wrote a letter in 1526 to King John III of Portugal complaining about the behavior of Portuguese nationals in the Congo. The letter went unanswered. In the end, the Portuguese gave enough guns to rebellious chiefs to wage war on Bukongo and destroy it, and then imposed the payment of tribute in slaves on the kingdom.
The letter Dom Afonso of Bukongo wrote to King John III of Portugal in 1526 is in the Portuguese archives and reads in part as follows:
[Your] merchants daily seize our subjects, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives… They grab them and cause them to be sold: and so great, Sir, is their corruption and licentiousness that our country is being utterly depopulated… [We] need from [your] Kingdoms no other than priests and people to teach in schools, and no other goods but wine and flour for the holy sacrament: that is why we beg of Your Highness to help and assist us in this matter, commandingyour
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