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UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies

Title The Persistence of Colonial Thinking in African Historiography: A Case Study

Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w12533q

Journal Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 7(2)

ISSN 0041-5715

Author O'Toole, Thomas

Publication Date 1977

DOI 10.5070/F772017423

Peer reviewed

eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library of California 43

TI1E PE~ISlENCE OF ~IAL TI11NKING IN AFRICPN HISTORIOGRWHY: A CASE SnJDY

by

Thanas o' Toole

Introduction

Though historical writing about has nultiplied in both quantity and quality in the past fifteen years, IIU.lch of it still bears a oolonial flavor. One major difficulty faced by those who wish to teach a deoolonized is the persistence of oolonial-inspired thinking of many African scholars . 1 Many European educated Africans seem to suffer fran a peculiar love-hate schizcphrenia which results in their per­ petuation of oolonial viewpoints to the present. 2

This article maintains that it is irrp)rtant for teachers aiXl students of African histo:ry to oonsider the paradigms3 through which historians of Africa filter their data. Such an explanation-fonn4 tmderlying a single historical essay is pre­ sented in order to identify the persistence of the oolonial para­ digm in this particular autror' s thinking aiXl to reveal the pre­ sent inadequacies of this explanation-fonn in African historio­ graphy.

A Case Study

An essay by Dr. A.L. Mabog1mje in J.F. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, History of (1971) has been specifically chosen as a case study.S Ajayi and Crowder's text is an inpor­ tant reference work for teachers and serves as a general badc­ gro..url for all interested in west African studies. '!he aura of autrority and CXJ'I!>rehensi veness of this text - written by over thirty internaticnally .recognized sdlolars - lends credence to it and nrultiplies its effect. Therefore,special inporta:nce should be attached to a careful analysis of the crucial first essay in this work, since it maintains the anachronistic oolonial paradigm in a readily a<::a!ssible fonn. Furthenoore, such a text is not subject to the sanre degree of critical awraisal as a nonograph in a scholarly journal would be.

Alirost half of Mabogunje' s essay is devoted to ethno- 44

graphic data on the origins arrl cultures of West African peoples which he has excellent credentials to write about. He served as Professor of Geography and Dean of SOcial Sciences at the University of . His publications include Yoruba Towns (1962), The City of Ibadan (1967) and Urbanization in (1969) . Yet his e)(J)lanation-fonn perpetuates the colonial para­ digm in so blatant a fashion that few students of African studie s who have a::ne of age within the less ethnocentric paradigms of the past fifteen years will aooept his conclusions. 6 Rather than si.nply operating within the perspective of the out:Iroded colonial paradigm, teacrers and students should critically ex­ amine Mabogunje' s ~lanation-forrrs before aooepting his con­ clusions.

Inadequate Sources

Mabogunje ' s CM'l intellectual background, a Ph. D. in Geo­ graphy at the University of IDndon, in the late 1950s helped to create his basically colonial paradigm. 7 In his essay, for ex­ arple, he uncritically uses two out:Iroded sources. One of these w01::ks, Murdock' s Africa: Its Peoples and Their CuZtlAX'

Murdock hill1self revealed his greatest weakness in a field where oral traditions have bea::ne crucial to historical recon­ struction. He ~licitly denied the validity of oral traditions stating: "no dependence whatsoever is plaoed upon evidence of this type." ll Without oral traditions Murdodc had to use the technique of "inferring earlier fonn of social organization in a particular society fran structural inconsistencies. "12 Sudl inferences prove unaooeptable as history because they repre.sent deductions in abstracto without enpirical foundations.

Extensive use of Gabriels. Seligman' s Races of Africal3 reveals Mabogunje' s uncritical use of sources even nore tell­ ingly. As distinguished Professor of Ethnology in Mabogunje' s CM'l University of London fran 1913 to 1934 (when he chose to be­ a::ne a German citizen!) Seligman held forth with a vengeance praising Caucasian origins for the states of sub-Saharan Africa. Seligman's 1930 division of African peoples into 1) Hamites, 45

2) Semites, 3) Negroes, 4) Bushmen and Hottentots and 5) Negril­ los, has been thoroughly discredited by scholars. But its sim­ plicity has made it an extrerrely popular sourCE for the less kn<:Mledgeable. This schema or a further simplified caucasoid­ Negroid-Bushrnanoid triad represents a

. . . mishmash, based on some head meaaurements (now known to be meaningless), language families (now outmoded by newer classifications based on far more extensive infoZ'TTKJ.tion and finer scholar­ ship), geographic Location, and a variant of Herbert Spencer's theory of the conquest origin of the state. At best they form a pseudo-scientific rationalization for a common sense, naked eye view.l4

Yet Mabogunje retains this racial sd'lene.

Placing too rntldl trust in sudl oolonial explanation- tonne; Mabogunje states that a majority of the approximately one mil-. lion Malinke remain pagan today .15 Yet presently in the Maninka heartland (Mal.inke is a French word) fonnc; an integral part of the cultural ~tage. One scarCEly finds a single vil­ lage without a rrosque even on the fri.n:]es of the areas inhabited by the rrore than four mitlion Maninka.l6

Tre specious etyrrology and phenotypical distinctiveness implied in Mabogune 1 s uncritical statenent that " . • • today the 1 1 Tukolor are regarded as a peq>le of boll:roolours - the negroid and caucasoid•• • "17 allows him to rrove to the rrore ridiculous extrare of describing the Fulani (sic) 18 as a " • • • caucasoid group with a strong negroid intennixture. "19 For Mabogunje the " •• . origins of Fulani becane a matter of oonsiderable ccnjec­ ture. "20 But this seardl for extraordinacy origins of the Fulbe only reveals the persistent oolonial paradigm. 21 Fran the middle of the nineteenth CEntury, there was a re-occurring referenCE to the Fulbe as a "raCE apart. n22 The German linguist Bauman and his oolleague Westermann naned the Fulbe anong the "white African raCES , " 23 denied that the '1\lkolor were white and ooncluded that the originators of the ~ire of were Fulbe. 24 Yet both maintained that Pulai:e (the language of the Fulbe and Tukolor) was a "sani-bantu" language. 25 Lydia Hcrrr burger, a fonrer evangelical rnissionacy, and the Director of African Linguistic at L 1 Eoole Practique des Hautes Etl.lOOs had translated Bauman and Westennann1 s woik into Frendl. She had stated. elsewhere that one oould find Egyptian, Coptic and Taga­ log words spoken by the Fulbe. She also stated that the Fulbe were white pastoralists wl'¥:> had introduced long-homed to Africa. 26 One of Harburger1 s oolleagues and a fonrer oolo­ nial administrator, MauriCE Delafosse, had written in 1912, that Jews fran Cyrenica had helped found Qlana and then beoc:rre ana:stors to the Fulbe. 27 46

Just as tre Wolof and their other African neighbors oon­ sider tre Tukolor and FUlbe as both being hapularen28 with little regard for phenotype differences J'OClSt Africanists have also d.rq:ped sudl forced distinctions. It would seem that if MaOOgun­ je was not trapped within his oolonial ~lanation-fonn.he would realize that tre uncritical use of seoondhand sources in and Alrerica has gradually given way to m:>re fruitful studies of tre Tukolor and Fulbe in an African oontext. ~t prooably tre origins of both the Fulbe and Tukolor can be found within tre oonfines of tre present nations of , Mauritania and , arxl trere is no need to posit "external" white inv~ to ex­ plain their origins.

Elsewhere Mabogunje' s use of secondary sources proves inadequate for a oolleqe text.bock whidl seeks to be "auth.orita­ tive." His aCCEptanCE of Seligman' s view that the Kanuri owe their "higher civilizations" to Arab o.:m;JUeSt seem; questiooable. In Mabogunje ' s defense ore should note that the basic non- sourCEs available to him included H.R. Pallrer's Bornu, and sudan29 and y. Urvoy I Histoire de z , Empire du Bornu. 30 'fuese seoorxlazy worl

With the Hausa, again, Mabogunje sinply states a Muslim tradition a:mtDn in today that the Hausa States (arxl by extension the Yoruba) derive fran "Bayajidda, son of Abdullahi, king of Baghdad. "32 Of oourse, even M.G. Smith's view that the origin of the can be found in an adnixture of Berl:>er i.rnni.grants with black IX'I?ulations of the savannah repre­ sents only a variant of the oolonial ~lanation-fonn. 33 Ore can understand the birth of birane (city states) anong the Hausa in lllCll1¥ other weys than corquest or migrant hero "civili ­ sateurs" . 34

When Mabogunje turns to the "forest dwellers" anong whcm he nurcbers his own people, the Yoruba, he goes fran er.rors re­ sulting fran an uncritical acreptanoe of seoondary sourCEs to outright factual mistakes. West of the Bandama River, he seys, there are " . . .n1..lll'er0us small tribes who exhibit cultures far less o::rcplex than those we have so far a:nsidered but who reveal an appreciable treasure of cultural harogene.i.ty. "35 Arrong these he oonsiders four "worthy" of special trention -- the Kru, I

cally... belong to Greenburg's Kwa division of the -Congo group."37

One can accept that there exist sare l.U'liversal cultural patterns shared by all peoples. But Mabogunje' s failure to note the alrrost infinite diversity of fonns that these general pat­ terns take proves misleading. kn.yore who has lived anong the Kpelle and Mende can posit great a.tltural differences between these two peoples. Furthenrore, only the Kru belong, even ten­ tatively, to the Kwa linguistic group.38 'lhe Mende and Kpelle once shared the Foro "fraternity" and Sande "sorority" with the Temne. But the Temne speak a West African language while both the Kpelle and Mende speak fonns of western Mande. 39

Perhaps the non-centralized peoples of West Africa seerred a "-welter of tribes"40 to Maboglmje v.hile he was studying in London during the late 1950s vtl.en colonial historiogrcq;hy about Africa prevailed. r.t:>re recent historiogrcq;hy seeks to avoid asstmptions whidl flav fran sudl d:>viously colonial rrodels. 41 It seems likely that Mabogunje' s persistent use of value laden tenns and colonial perspectives results fran his uncritical acceptance of the daninant racist or at least Eurocentric views of Africa' s past whidl he incorporated as a graduate student in England.

'lhi.s colonial paradigm could also account for Mabogunje' s conclusions ". • . that rrost historical troVellel1ts of the past have been influenced by various " ' push' factors emanating fran the international relations of West Africa with peoples of nor­ them and Saharan Africa, "42 and that the goverrurents of the various West African countries ought to " . • • organize the de­ velcprent of t!Eir land and peoples as to ac::oelerate the rrove­ nent into the cities [in order to create] out of tiE welter of tribes nation-states whose glory and i.Irportance may yet surpass those of tiE various enpires that energed in West Africa in the distant past."43

'lhe colonial interpretations of the origins and develop­ nent of major state fanning peoples sudl as the Fulbe, Akan, Fon, Mande, WOlof and Yoruba arerged fran colonial social real­ ities. Theories that maintain that all societies should evolve tavard centralized states with w:ban centers like those of the "West" and oorollaries vtl.idl hold that societies v.hidl did rot evolve sudl states and urban centers would prove inferior to rrore organized groups ~ very widespread in colonial tiires. 44 Thus, the daninant Western views of African history have re­ maired, until quite recently, racist or at least Eurocentric. Even as sare of the rrore overtly racist views about Africa re­ ceded, these state theories persisted often maintaining that the centralized state was brought to Africa by the Hamites, 48

allegedly, a branch of the "Caucasian" ra~ . 45 Mabogunje' s overenphasis on northern OOIX:jU:St origins for West African states perpetuates this view. His eJ!Planations for the states of West Africa a~pts the view that naoadic "Hamitic" (Berber, etc. ) invaders fran the Sahara or further north i.nposed a state­ like structure on a nUTber of politically segrrented agricultural peoples in the grasslands and forests south of the Sahara and thus led to the fonnation of states in black Africa. 46

Such si.nplistic and superficially reasonable eJ!Planations of rorrplex processes fit Western ideological frarre-work but do not ne~ssarily rorrespond to newer per~ptions or realities of Africa. Persisten~ of such interpretations cx:rrpound the diffi­ culties of cross-cultural understanding and dcta interpretation. Only a critical historical sttrly of the eJ!Planation- forms of scholars who hold such theories can help stOOe.nts free t:hertr selves from the straight jacket of both personal and socially fo:rned interpretations.

Even Mabogune, elsewhere, has hinted that the origins of w:ban life and state fonnation might have origins other than those of outside ~t. For his own ethnic group, the Yoruba, Mabogunje has disrovered that besides local of residents in a tam there existed, before the nineteenth ~­ tury, an extensive system of periodic markets between kingdans. He noted that this trade was usually ronducted aloo.g north­ south routes and was nost widespread in the open grassland in the northern half of Yorubaland. Yet Mabogunje apparently re­ mained so a:mnitted to the external origins hypotheses that he failed to see that trade needs might have ne~ssitated the in­ ternal creation of religio-political linkages rather than an i.nposed unity. 4 7

Conclusion

It becmes d:>vious that the rolonial paradigms in African history are at a crisis point48 and that rew eJ!Planation forms which relate historical events in Africa to processes in which human societies in general participate must take their pla~. Studies operating· fran an internal African perspective49 can help to clear up a heritage of enomous ronfusion in the ethno­ graphic and historical literature of precolonial West Africa. Furthemore, a deeper, m:>re rreaningful understanding of the integrated use of oral traditions and anthropological, geo­ graphical and linguistic as well as m:>re traditional historical sources fer teachers and undergr~uates will energe fran classes which critically ronfront the out:noded rolonial explanation­ foms. 49

Footnotes

1. The ~tioned racist and ethnocentric assunpticns that Africa was culturally and intellectually in£erior to the oolonial p

2. See Chinwiezu, The West and the Rest of Us. (New York: Ran­ dan House, 1975) , pp. 292 ff and passim for an insightful critique of this prd:>lem.

3. Paradigm is used here in the sense enplcyed by '1hanas S. Kuhn, i.e. : " •• . the entire constellation of beliefs, val­ ues, techniques, and so on shared by the menbers of a given ccmnunity. " Kuhn, 'lllanas s. The Structure of Scientific Revol-utions. 2nd ed. (Oricago: University of Oricago Press, 1970)' p . 175.

4. This key teJ:m is Gene Wise's. He uses it as a parallel in historians' ccmmmi.ties to Kuhn' s "paradigm" in scientific cx:.mnunities. Wise, Gene . American Historical E:r:planations. {Harewood, Ill. , 'Ihe Dorsey Press, 1973) , p. viii.

5. Mabogune, A.L., "1he Land and Peoples of West Africa," in . Vol. I, J .F. .Ade Ajayi and Michael Crc:Mder, eds. (Landen: Longmans, 1971), pp. 1- 32.

6. Curtin, Philip D. Precol-onial- African History. (Washington, D.C. : Arre.rican Historical Association, 1974), pp. 63-66.

7. Or at least let' s assUll'e that this is the case and then see heM it helps to explain IlUldl of Mabogunje' s thought. See Wise, Gene, "Pictures in OUr Heads: Syrrbolic FOlJTIS Jlmid the Flux," in American Historical- E:r:planations. Wise. 1973, W · 3-32, specifically, p. 7.

8. Murcbdc, George Peter·. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cul-tural­ History (New York: Mdiraw Hill, 1959).

9 . Reviewed by Gulliver, Phillip H. , American Anthropol-ogist. LXII (Oct., 1960), pp. 900-903. See also J.D. Fage' s review article, "Anthrq;x:>logy, Botany and the History of Africa, " Journal of African History II (1961) 1 pp. 299- 309; and

Vansina1 Jan, "The Use of Process~ in African History, " in Historian in Tropical- Africa, Jan Vansina, Rayiocnd Mauny

and L. v. 'lb:::mas 1 eds. (London: Oxford University Press 1 1964), pp. 375-389.

10. MurOOc::k. 19591 P• vii. 50

11. Ibid., p. 301.

12. Ibid., p. 42 .

13. First published in 1930 and reprinted in 1957 and again in 1966 with no real changes. See Seligman, Gabriel S. Races of Africa . (London: OXford University Press, 1966) .

14. Bohannan and Curtin. 1971, W · 42- 43 .

15. Mabogunje . 1971, p. 18.

16. Based on the present writer' s personal kncMledge gathered on a study trip in Mali, Seregal, Upper VOl ta, the Garbia and Sierra leone in 1970 and two years residenoe in . These perceptions were verified in a::nversation with Dr. Lansine Kaba, Associate Professor of African Histm:y, University of Minnesota, himself a Muslim Maninka and Kankan and Mr. Mark LaPointe, long tine resident of Mali and Guinea. See also Bird, lishing Co:rps., 1970) , pp. 146- 159.

17. Mabogunje, 1971, p. 19; the spelling of regroid and cauca­ soid are Mabogunje' s.

18. These people are roore prcperly nared Fu.lb:\ thOU!jl in sin­ gular this is pul-lp and henoe the Wolof and s\i>sequent French teDn Peul. .Fulani crnes into use in English through British adcpticn of the Hausa tenn. See Labouret, Henri, II I La Langue des Peuls ou Foul.be" (Dakar: IFAN, 1952), p. 2; and Greenberg, J05efil H., The (Bloan­ ington, Indiana: '!he University of Indiana Press, 1966) , pp. 24-25. In this essay the anglicized FUlbe will re­ plaoe the linguists • Fu.lb:\.

19. Mabogunje, 1971, p. 26.

20. Ibid.

21. '!be FUlbe are "one of Africa's great enigmas ••• there can be little doubt that they originate elsewhere ••• [than] where they have been living for well over 1000 years. " Johns·ton, H.A. S., The FuLani Empire of (Lcnc:bn: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 17.

22. See for exanple, D'Eidlthal, Gustave, Histoire et Origins des Foul-ana ou FeUahs (Paris: Mre. ~ Donday-Dup~ , 1841) who sought to prove that the FUlbe were Polynesians. 51

23. Bauman, H. and Westennann, Diedridl, Les Peuples et les Civilizations de l'Afrique suivi de les Languages et l 'Education. Lydia HCll'burger, trans. (Paris: Payot, [1948] 1957) ' p. 389.

24. Ibid. ' pp. 391-392.

25. Ibid. ' p. 457.

26. HCll'burger, I?{dia, Les Langues Negroo-Africaines. (Paris: Payot [1941] 1957) , pp. 322-323.

27. Delafosse, Maurire, Haut Senegal-Niger. Vol. II (Paris: E. La.R:>se, 1912), p. 219.

28. Pulare' speakers.

29. Palner. H.R. The Bornu, Sahara and . (Londcn: J . Murray, 1936).

30. Urvoy, Y. , Histoire de l 'Empire du Bornu (Paris: Lalbse, 1949) .

31. see Smith, Abdul.lahi, 'IIDle Early States of the Central SUdan," in History of West Africa. Vol. I, J . F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crl::Mder, eds. (Lcnchn Lcngmans, 1971), pp. 164- 174.

32. Mabogunje, 1971, p. 20.

33. Smith, M. G. "'!he Beginnings of Hausa Society A.D. 1000- · 1500," in Historian in Tropical Africa· Jan Vansina, Raym::r1d Mauny and L. v. 'lhanas, eds. (Lcndon: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 339-357.

34. Ibid., pp. 187- 196.

35. Mabogunje, 1971, p . 25. 36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.' p. 22.

38. Greenberg' 1966' pp. 38-39.

39· Greenberg, 1966, p. 8; Gibbs, Jates L., Jr., "'!he Kpelle of Liberia," in Peoples of Africa, Janes L. Gibbs, Jr. , ed. (New Ym:k : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 197- 240; and Kenneth Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone. (Lcndon: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. , 1951). 52

40. Mabogunje, 1971, p. 32.

41. See Fage, J.D., "Continuity and Olange in the Writing of West African History," African Affairs OCLXXX (July, 1971) , pp. 236-287.

42. M.abogunje, 1971, p. 30.

43. Ibid. , p. 32.

44. See Bohannan and Curtin, 1971, pp. 3-15 and 135- 147; and Harris, Jose);il E. , "A Tradition of~ and Stereotypes," in Africans and Their History. (New York: New 11rterican Library, 1972), FP· 11-25.

45. See Sender, Edith R., "'lhe Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Function in Time Perspective, " Journal, of Afriaan His­ tory X (1969) pp. 521- 532.

46. Page, J.D., A History of West Afriaa. (Canbridge: Universiq Press, 1969) , pp. 6-10.

47. Mabogunje, llki.n L., "Urbani.zaticm. and Olange," in The Afriaan Experience. Vol. I, Jolm N. Paden and F.dolard w. Soja, eds. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 331.

48. " •••A paradigm strain••• where one' s fonns for thinking don't jibe with what he sees." Wise, 1973, FP· 179-180.

49. Using eJq?lanation- fonns of the "Wisoonsin school" sort. CUrtin, 1974, p. 58. * * * * *

Thomas O'TooLe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Western CarooUna University, Cut'Low­ hee, North CaroLina.

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