Reading about African history is always so interesting to me as an American because I feel like the histories of colonialism I’m used to reading always focus on the English speaking independent settler colonies where the end of the history book is “The indigenous peoples are still around but as a small minority and there’s some sort of inadequate government commission for their affairs that makes gestures at respecting sovereignty or autonomy but ultimately doesn’t implement substantial reparations.”
But with Africa, every single history eventually leads to achieving independence and the restoration of power to the indigenous peoples who were colonized but remained the majority. And the ways that they achieve independence, and then how they participate in the complex process of nation-building in the aftermath of colonialism, ends up being completely unique to every country and the history continues onto all the challenges they face as an independent nation and also all of the incredible achievements and the ways that independence always seems to bring with it a huge boom in arts and culture.
You can also see the ways that the former colonial powers set up these independent countries for neocolonialism before their eventual ceding of independence. French Cameroon was ostensibly “helping them develop into what will eventually be an independent country when they’re ready” but they treated it mostly like any other colony including doing as much as possible to intertwine the economy of Cameroon with the economy of France. So even after independence, Cameroon is hugely economically intertwined with France in ways that mostly benefit France.
I wonder sometimes if the ways Americans are never taught African history is not just out of Eurocentric disinterest and ignorance (especially since the history of Africa is also the history of Europe. Like if you’re only interested in Europe, they are very much also There in African History), but is also in a sense a careful avoidance of discussing successful revolutions. Perhaps because it is embarrassing to the former colonial powers to discuss themselves being ousted from power fifty-four times in a row, which does sort of pull the carpet out from their reminiscing of glory days. Perhaps because it is impossible to look at the history of Africa and to not see the European empires are plainly and simply evil incarnate. Their menacing foreign flags flying everywhere. The countless horrifying practices and massacres.
And perhaps because every single time, the story will lead to African peoples across different ethnic groups uniting together to successfully fight and win. Every time, an African person becomes the president. And sometimes that president becomes a dictator and sometimes that president does so much more amazing things for the region than the imperial powers had ever achieved. But what you see every time is that the supposedly backwards and supposedly uncivilized stand a good chance of successfully liberating themselves. Even if it takes a hundred years, it always happens, in these histories in particular.
And that definitely isn’t the kind of lessons that America generally likes people to take from history. Usually our histories focus on lessons like “all of human history was a steady process of advancement towards the United States as the pinnacle of human civilization” and “the specific political structure of the United States may be imperfect but it’s the best option you have. I mean, have you seen how messed up the alternatives are?”
Idk. I just think history and geography are neat and I highly recommend just like, every so often picking a country you don’t know anything about and going to its Wikipedia page and reading its continuous history from start to present, and then if you want more checking the further readings and picking up a book on that country’s history. The more you look at lots of different places the more you see all the different ways things can happen or ways things can be, and also the more you see certain patterns that pop up again and again and that affects how you see the world.
