Africa: Historical Attitudes & Ethnocentrism

Narrated by British Historian Basil Davidson, Africa: The Story of a Continent attempts to correct historically bigoted and supremacist attitudes about Africa and its indigenous populations.  Using the "different but equal" model, Davidson alludes to civilization as a premise to anchor his argument of pre-colonial African advancement.  Davidson explains throughout the film, that contrary to the accounts of European thinkers, Africans were indeed the pioneers of civilization who harnessed a rich and extensive history to prove it. Rich in abundant resources, cultures, languages, customs, and laws, the film argues that Africa is without a doubt not only the birthplace of civilization as humanity knows it, but the birthplace of humanity itself.

Much to the world’s chagrin, European greed, merchant and exploitative interests gave rise to dangerous debate, skewed conclusion, and hideous conquest.  Davidson explains that Africans found themselves precariously wedged between racial/ethnic exoticism and racism.  European interests and motifs were not complex and can be best compared to a toddler’s ill-parented behavior when he or she wants candy that is already in the possession of another toddler.  In essence, Davidson’s interpretation of the childish conquests of Europeans can be reduced to nothing more than "I want what you have, and I am going to take it".

In the film, we see that to eliminate the conscience in the European-colonial psyche meant instituting a strategy of irresponsibly maintaining a public persona of disinterest and ignorance of African society and culture.  Davidson’s best example of this strategy is how religion was used to justify the colonialism, institutional conquests, enslavement, and subjugation of African people.  Euro-ethnocentric interpretations of Christianity propagated perspectives that Africans were primitive, barbaric and uncivilized and therefore needed the divine intervention of Christian doctrine (hence the Jesuits). This attitude was widely believed to be the duty of Christians.  Throughout the film, images of warriorship, community engagement, spiritual worship, and rites of passage proved to be nothing more than examples of savagery, inferiority, and barbarianism to Europeans.  According to the film, these attitudes lead to the demise of the "Mbuila" Congo Kingdom in 1665 by the colonial endeavors of the Portuguese and similarly in South African with the white occupation in 1862.  With there being no "apparent" written record of African life, European thinkers were free to recreate and determine African history.  Dismissing both Oral Tradition and African Art as valid tools and evidence of documenting, archiving and chronicling African life, Europeans concluded that Africans were socially, biologically, and culturally unequal, subservient, incompetent and inferior.  

Davidson does immense counter-research against the bigoted perceptions of Africa.  He alludes mainly to the ancient Egyptian civilization and the cultural contributions Western and Sub-Saharan societies made to its potency.  While proliferated realization of Africa’s advancement reached acceptable status in ladder European Academia, racist attitudes persisted and a new emerging paradigm arose to isolate and disassociate Egypt from Africa.  Nonetheless, citing indisputable evidence of medical, mathematical, and astrological advancement, wealth, hierarchy, and superior systems of documenting and writing, the film disputes and refutes prejudiced Eurocentric ideals of Africa.  But faced with the everlasting stench of denial, the film hints of an emerging anthropological excavation set to prove the authentic pioneering of civilization as it was once known.