Swahili

The History and Legacy of Africa’s Indigenous Culture and the Effects of European Colonization

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Dan Gallagher

Length: 1 hr and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

*Includes pictures
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event—known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the "Scramble for Africa." The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would be granted without evidence of a practical occupation; the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader, a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty.

This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of Chartered Companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies. The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, to intimidate an already broken society and to play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade.

©2018 Charles River Editors (P)2018 Charles River Editors

A thorough white-washing of Europe's atrocities

I was hoping this would book would present more history covering the Linguistic and cultural history of Swahili speaking regions. It did at first, but quickly (within 20 minutes to a half hour) pivoted to a disappointing (but not surprising) white-washedbhistory of European colonization throughout the continet. The book's subtitle should have been "The History and Legacy of European colonization and the effects on African Indigenous cultures" because that's what it was. If you are at all interested in Swahili language and culture, the book's framework is very eurocentric in orientation, and greatly downplays the atrocities facilitated by Leopold and Stanley in the Congo (who are presented as a cunning and heroic). The series of events leading up to the 1865 Berlin conference is most important because of the partitioning of the African continent, but the extensive coverage of those events left less than 5 minutes to give a very rushed resolution about the title topic of the Swahili speaking region or people's history: 1 minute to quickly gloss over the Maumau revolution and African liberation movements, 2 minutes addressing whites concerns and fears of being slaughtered in their beds during a transition to majority rule of Africans on their ancestral lands, and 2 minutes addressing placated African states not ruled by the naughty despots that African governments are notorious for.

Earases the atrocities of European explorers

I just finished Leopold's ghost, which made me want to learn more about the East African slave trade. This book had good additional insight, but completely ignores some of the worst colonial behavior of H. M. Stanley and makes him sound more heroic than I was comfortable with. Same with the approach to King Leopold and others. Very European perspective of history.