The West is complicit in the crises in Africa!

[Navy9]

By Gerald Caplan
November 2, 2006



(Second in a three-part series) — How do we account for Africa's plight and what should be done? The conventional wisdom is that the problem is African and the solution is for the rich, white Western world to save Africa from itself, its leaders, its appetites and its apparent incapacity for civilization.
We give, they take. We're active and entrepreneurial, they're passive and dependent. We help, they're helpless. There is in this neat equation more than a hint of centuries-old racist attitudes toward Africans, our era's version of the white man's burden.
But there's an alternative perspective on the “African problem,” one that is not nearly as self-congratulatory and dishonest. This interpretation says that rather than being the solution to Africa's plight, Westerners are a very substantial part of the problem and have been for centuries. None of this condones or justifies African malfeasance. But it does help to explain it and to indicate different directions that need to be taken if Africa is to find its path to a better future.
The very notion of Africa as “the dark continent” — dark in skin colour, in obscurity, in primitivism — is a major distortion of historical reality. Over the millennia before colonialism, sub-Saharan Africa was home to a series of great civilizations. Mali, Bornu, Fulani, Dahomey, Ashanti, Songhay, Zimbabwe, Axum — all were powerful empires that made their mark on the world. Here is Basil Davidson, the British historian who did much to rescue Africa's remarkable history from oblivion and Western derision:
“The great lords of the Western Sudan grew famous far outside Africa for their stores of gold, their lavish gifts, their dazzling regalia and ceremonial display. When the most powerful of the emperors of Mali passed through Cairo on pilgrimage to Mecca in the fourteenth century, he ruined the price of the Egyptian gold-based dinar for several years by his presents and payments of unminted gold to courtiers and merchants.”
No one who has seen the underground churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia or the magnificent bronze and brass Ife sculptures of western Nigeria can doubt the extraordinary potential of African technology and creativity. For much of its history, Europe had little to surpass these achievements. We'll never know the outcome had Africa been permitted to develop based on its own skills and resources, as Europe was, but it was allowed no such luxury.
History matters, and for Africa, the slave trade and colonialism matter enormously in understanding its subsequent evolution. In many respects the continent has never recovered from either.
Enlightenment Europe had guns and ships, and it unleashed them against Africa. The slave trade ended barely 150 years ago, three and a half centuries in which an estimated twenty million Africans — an astonishing proportion of the continent's population — were uprooted from their lands.
Perhaps twelve million finally arrived alive, and their labour enabled the development of both the United States and Europe, a relationship between Africa and the West that has remained largely unaltered. Arab slavers shipped millions more Africans out of eastern Africa. The continent was left reeling.
Hard on the heels of the slave trade came full-blown Western colonialism, institutionalized with the “scramble for Africa” at the Congress of Berlin in 1884-85. Undeterred by ignorance and driven by greed and racism, Europe's leaders blithely partitioned almost the entire continent among themselves. To this day, probably every single border in Africa arbitrarily divides at least one ethnic or cultural group.
South Africa has been free from white rule for only a dozen years, and until their very last moments of power, the white minority kept nearly 40 per cent of the continent destabilized. From Angola, Zambia, and Tanzania south, no normal governance was possible while apartheid wielded its formidable power. The rest of the continent has been independent for a mere 40 to 45 years, and every country endured colonialism for many decades longer than it's been independent.
The paternalistic fashion of the moment is to rhapsodize about the good old colonial days. What Africa needs, we are told, is a form of benign colonialism or liberal imperialism.
British scholar Niall Ferguson, for example, has gained prominence arguing that imperialism was the greatest thing that could have happened to Africa (and Asia). Nothing could be further from the truth. Colonialism by definition and in practice was based on dictatorship, violence, coercion, oppression, forced taxation and daily racial humiliation. Not a single colonial power — France, Germany, Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy — is innocent.
Look at King Leopold's Congo: half of its twenty million people dead. In the name of bringing civilization to Africa, Belgium introduced the practice of amputating arms as punishment, an abomination replicated a century later by Africans in Sierra Leone's civil war.
The list of atrocities perpetrated by Europeans is long and bloody — Belgian-like tactics emulated in the surrounding French and Portuguese colonies, Germany's genocide against the Herero people of South West Africa (now Namibia), the blatant theft of land by Afrikaners and Cecil Rhodes's British-backed gang of marauders across southern Africa, the wars of the British in the Gold Coast, the cruelty of the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, the indiscriminate slaughter of Ethiopians by Italy. In today's terms, every single European power in Africa was guilty of multiple crimes against humanity.
Africa's partition by European powers was implemented with a fine disdain for existing realities. Families, clans, ethnic groups and nations were all divided from each other in a purely arbitrary manner. Those unrelated to each other suddenly found themselves locked together under new and alien governments.
For many Africans, identifying with these new artificial colonial constructs made little sense; rather than adopting Nigerian or Rwandan or Kenyan nationality, they found it more natural to reaffirm their identities as Yoruba or Hutu or Luo. Paradoxically, then, the imposition by Europe of new nations in Africa served instead to reinforce ties of ethnicity or clan.
In most colonies, with only a tiny number of whites actually on hand, indirect rule prevailed. The European occupier, frequently in collaboration with Christian missionaries, privileged a particular group to help administer the new territory, invariably causing the hapless majority to deeply resent the chosen minority.
Together with the meaningless boundaries, such divide-and-rule strategies undermined loyalty to the new nation. Instead, as the end of colonial rule and the emergence of independent African governments drew nearer, the state came to be seen as an ethnic preserve rather than a national entity. Control of the state became the means to reward the rulers' ethnic followers and to exploit, oppress or ignore all others.
This phenomenon is still prevalent. Political parties and liberation movements became — and often remain — the instruments of specific ethnic groups. This made untenable the notion of a loyal opposition that could form a new government after winning a free election. It would be tantamount to turning the state over to an illegitimate, antagonistic, and hitherto excluded ethnic group.
For the loser, surrendering control of the instruments of the state meant losing everything under a new ethnicity-based government. The role of government came to be seen not as developing the entire nation but as maintaining the loyalty of the rulers' followers and clients. Political dictatorship became the form of government most appealing to ruling groups.
Conversely, violent coups to usurp those dictatorships, often led by factions within the military, seemed the logical means for marginalized groups to dislodge them. Voluntarily surrendering power was unthinkable, sometimes literally suicidal. A substantial chunk of post-independence African history, from the Biafran War to the genocide in Rwanda, can be accounted for in this way.
Much of the tumult that has engulfed Africa over the past half-century results from policies imposed by European powers during the colonial era. All metropolitan governments criminally neglected the welfare of their colonies. Colonies had one purpose only — to serve the interests of the metropole.
Only when the spectre of independence finally loomed after World War II was some small thought given to local interests. Even then, until the very last moment, the Belgians in the Congo, the British in Kenya, the French in Guinea, and the Portuguese in Mozambique demonstrated all that was most malignant about colonialism. Historian Walter Rodney caught the spirit with his powerful indictment of the colonial system, neatly summarized in the title of his 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
In country after country, independence was ushered in under ethnic leaders pretending to be nationalists, in countries with minimal infrastructure or human capacity, with a heritage of violence and authoritarianism, and through structures that drained Africa's wealth and resources to the rich world.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the struggle to end colonial rule spread inexorably through the Third World. In the imperial homelands, the anti-colonial movement was one of the great causes of the mid-twentieth century. Progressive internationalists were convinced that independence would open a dramatic new chapter in the history of human emancipation.
Africa, especially, embodied the boundless dream of a continent that would show the world how to live without racism, violence, oppression, exploitation and inequality.
But almost everywhere, what in fact followed the raising of national flags was the continued underdevelopment of Africa. An implicit bargain was struck between the new African ruling elites and their old oppressors in Western governments, plus the corporate world, plus the new international financial institutions, to perpetuate old patterns under new circumstances.
Instead of building nations that repudiated the policies and behaviour of the colonial era, the reign of the “Big Men” spread across Africa, bringing with it terrible brutality, bottomless venality, and an almost sadistic callousness.
All the while, Africa's resources continued to pour out of the continent into the coffers of the rich world. The difference now was that the new African élites — whether Jomo Kenyatta and his Kikuyu cronies in Kenya, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, or the new rulers in every one of the former French African colonies save for maverick Guinea — split the plunder with their former Western overlords.
The betrayal by the new élites is not the entire story of the continent's continuing crises. For centuries Africa's history and development had been profoundly influenced by outsiders, both Europeans and Arabs, and external influence by no means disappeared with independence. And just as most of the pre-independence impact was exploitative, so has it remained.
Yet the conventional wisdom remains the opposite: Africa is the problem, the West is the solution. The Blair commission on Africa, the 2005 Gleneagles summit and the Geldof/Bono sing-alongs are all manifestations of the West fulfilling its sacred moral obligation to save Africa from itself.
The reality is demonstrably different. The fact is the West is deeply complicit in the crises bedevilling Africa, and we're up to our necks in all manner of retrograde practices, virtual co-conspirators with monstrous African Big Men in underdeveloping the continent and betraying its people.
In almost every case of egregious African governance, Western powers have played a central role. Hardly a single rogue government would have attained power and remained in office without the active support of one or another Western government, primarily the United States and France, with the United Kingdom and Belgium in the game as well.
And few of the conflicts that have ravaged the continent would have lasted long without the active intervention of mainly Western governments or, in certain cases, the USSR, including the promiscuous provision of weapons to any and all parties.



Gerald Caplan is the principal author of Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (2000), has been a senior consultant to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and teaches at the international University for Peace. This article has appeared in The Walrus.

[1nemansquad]

Very fine read mi Lady

Asxantu

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

There is a lot wrong with the rationale being played out here. The authors version also smacks of racism - poor, exploited black people. It's not their fault that they can't govern themselves. We did it to them.

OK, "We" also did it to the Asians, but they are doing allright. We did it to the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Arabs........but most of these places have developed far ahead of Africa. South Korea sufferd the worst example of colonialism in world history, yet look at it today. In fact, Korea makes a good exmaple for several reasons. Until 1945, the Peninsula was essentially united. After WW II, with the division into two spheres, we can now see in graphic manner the difference between decent (not even good) governance, and bad governance and how, over the span of 50 years, that plays out.

Secondly, Europe was not allowed to develop at its own pace, free from interference. Man, this guy needs a history lessons. There were the barbarian invasions, the Goths, the Vandels, latter the Vikings, who did a job on different European societies. There were the Mongol invasions. Then there were the Islamic invasions, which put enormous pressure on Europe into the 16th century. Develop at it's own pace?? What a bunch of rubbish.

On to African empires. Yes, there were a few. They never developed ANYTHING even remotely close to the Roman Empire, the Egyptian empire, the great Chinese dynasties. I am not going to attribute this lack of development to race, but it is a fact that these "great empires" left very little in the way of culture, technology or artifacts. Also, most of these dynasties were avracious, attacking and slaving their neighbors. They were not peace-loving, innocent, in tune with nature natives.

The slave trade and colonialism did have a huge impact on Africa. But let us not forget that without African participation, there would have been no slave trade. It was Africans selling Africans to the white man, not white men going inland and plundering.

Yes, it is true the colonial boundaries were arbitrary and divided ethnic groups. It is also true that prior to colonial boundaries there were no boundaries and that inter-ethnic conflict was constant. I am reminded of a little historical bite I read "When the Portuguese arrived in Mogadischu in the 16th century, they found the then tiny city riven with clan conflict." What would Africa look like today had there been no colonial boundaries? Would the Somali and the Amharic suddenly be friends? Would the Somali and the Kikuyu be bosom buddies?

I am not excusing any of the history here, but at the end of the day, Africans are responsible for how Africa is. The author lived there long enough to know this. That's not to say we are good guys and they are bad guys, but it is to say they are responsible for their welfare just as we for ours. There are no free rides out there.

[X.Playa]

Mad Mac,

Where have you read that the Mangol hords invaded Europe?. Both the Mangols and Muslim Turks never threatened Western Europe, you can't compare the Vandles , the Goths, Vikons to a foreign invasion, all these barbarians were Europeans in fact the Normans, the Ruus and Saxsons are all Vikon tribes, the true blond beast the savage who harssed the Romans. We can use that silly logic and states that the great invasion of the Galla tribes, the Zulu nation etc as though the Zulus and the Galla's have never affected Africa?? as though these tribes were foreginers?.

Let me use your logic, Europe never produced any ancient civilization, and Italy and Greec is part of the meditrenean the same logic you Europeans or western Europeans use to devoid Africa out of Egypt as though Egypt lays in some other continent. The Romans never considered themselves realted by any means to the People of the North nor the Greecs.

The fact is the modern western Europeans who base their civilization on the antiquity of the Roman and Greec have nothing to do really with both of these civiliztions, to the Romans Western Europe was a nothing but mere colonies setteled by people that have nothing todo with the Roman civilizations. There was no blue eyed blond caser Julius Ceaser never regarded himself as part of the " Blue Eeye Blond Beast" as he called the Europeans.

We can apply the same racist hype Euro-centerist use to deprive Black Africa of the antiquity of Egypt, the argument is the dark modern Greecs and Italians are the same people as the Finish , despite the fact that they have nothing in common beyond living in a region called Europe. The Greecs or the Athenians are more related to the middle east and Asia minor then say England or Germany.

The tactic and the argument used for Africans doesn't follow the same platform, the obvious black ancient Egptians who clearly depicted themselves to be of African origin and called the land to to south sub-Sahara Africa "the land of the gods" and their orginal home and even called Egypt Khamet the Balck Land and even all ancient histroians the Greec themselves called Ethopians and describe them as been the same people as the Balcks in Ethopia and attributed their entire civiliztion to these Balck people, is all of a sudden void, then and there the whites like Mad Mac would call Heroadut not the Father of History but the Father of Lies... why?? because simply he stated the fact , and the fact is that Greec was child of Egypt and the Greec associated blackness with antiquity and wisdom a thing modern Aryans histroians can't tolerate, so Egypt had to be white washed...

Its true that blaming Africa's backwardness on the colonialism and slavery is just as racist as comapring Africa to Europe, Africa is a massive continent Zair alone is bigger then all of western Europe and more ethinically diversed. The majority of europeans speake less then 20 langauges only a third of that in Zair alone. Speaking lessor languages and been belonging to a more or less similar ethicity is conductive for buidling a nation or the sense of beloging to a nation, in Africa that fact was altered , even those who were a nation like the Zulu, Somalis, Husa were divided into more then one nation. In Africa borderes were drwan first before nations developed, in Europe nationhood developed first and then borders were formed.

What Africa lacks and most Europeans nation and Asians later gained is strighat transfere of technology, if GMC and Bowen moved to Africa and trained Africans , in less then 20 years.. Mad Mac's airplanes and f16 would be built by Africans and these same Africans can stop selling airplanes to Europeans... and send them back to the stone age.

As long as Europe holds tight grip in its know how and tecenology, sending USA AID to Africa and teaching them how to farm tobbaco won't get Africa out of its hell hole.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Playa
You have some ridiculous arguments here:

"The fact is the modern western Europeans who base their civilization on the antiquity of the Roman and Greec have nothing to do really with both of these civiliztions, to the Romans Western Europe was a nothing but mere colonies setteled by people that have nothing todo with the Roman civilizations. There was no blue eyed blond caser Julius Ceaser never regarded himself as part of the " Blue Eeye Blond Beast" as he called the Europeans."

All of the languages, minus the nordic ones, of Western Europe are derived from Latin. Nothing to do with Rome and Greece. The political culture of Western Europe is and was PRFOUNDLY impacted by Rome and Greece. Where have you been? How could you miss that? Hell, the word Democracy comes from ancient Greece!

"We can apply the same racist hype Euro-centerist use to deprive Black Africa of the antiquity of Egypt, the argument is the dark modern Greecs and Italians are the same people as the Finish , despite the fact that they have nothing in common beyond living in a region called Europe. The Greecs or the Athenians are more related to the middle east and Asia minor then say England or Germany."

I would disagree that it is racist. The Nubians, who were Hamitic, played a significant role in Egyptian history. But it is obvious that the history of Egypt and the peoples of the upper Nile have NOTHING - not language, not culture, not ethnicity - with the peoples of sub-saharan Africa.

As for the development of Europe (what do you mean it was never threatened by the Mongols?) it did not happen in a void, with the lucky Europeans just getting a free ride. Whether it was pure dumb luck, or geography or whatever, the Europeans shot ahead technologically in the 13th through 17th centuries. The Arabs kept pace for a while, but eventually they too fell off the horse. In the world of international relations, power was everything. It as the only thing that counted. It largely still is. Trying to moralize over such issues is a HUGE waste of time. Do you think the Zulus, had they developed the power to conquor Europe, would have been benign conquorors?

Africa suffered the same fate at Asia minor and southeast Asia. They came out of the colonial experience differently. It is well worth examining why that is. Sitting around, wringing our hands, and saying "those poor Africans got a bas break" isn't going to do them any good at all.

[LAFO-LAFO]

Western history did begin after Egypt and Mesopotamia

Egypt - c. 4000 BC Longest continuous civilization
Religion, Architecture, Maths
Mesopotamia - also c. 4000 BC - in Iraq. Astronomy and Astrology

[X.Playa]

The langauge of Europe was not the language of the Romans to begin, its fact that most modern European langauges are drived from Latin except the Germans and Nords who still maintaine their pre-colonial langauges, but you are mixing tow things, you are implying that just because European langauge post-Roman colonization and civilization is an indicative of Europeans having the same origin as Romans wich is a drivel. Romans colonized Europeans and hense assmilated them culturaly and linguistically and through centuries the blond blue eye savage fill to the language of his masters, all native Americans today speak English by the process of colonization but we can't make the silly argument that just because they happen to speak English cheif Geronomo is from England.

The orgin of the word Philosophy and Democracy has nothing todo with Europe , there was no such a thing called Europe when Socartes debated his student on the best form of goverment and Europeans only applied this system very recently after the French revolution, you make it sound as though you laid the democracy egg, people for 1000's of years applied consensus to govern themselves, the word perdated the concept, yes indeed i would give Greec the articulation of the concept.

"I would disagree that it is racist. The Nubians, who were Hamitic, played a significant role in Egyptian history. But it is obvious that the history of Egypt and the peoples of the upper Nile have NOTHING - not language, not culture, not ethnicity - with the peoples of sub-saharan Africa. "


Now there you have blown your argument, the Nubians and the people of Eygpt are one and the same, just as your beloved Greecs said so, who are you and I to argue with the Greec Historians the father of history.Both the Nubians and Egyptians are Hamtic people, both spoke Hamatic language the same branch Somali belong to, the ancient Egyptian and the Nubians shared the exact culture, from rites of circumsion to the ritual of death and birth and marriage and there is enough literature on that subject to prove you other wise. Most famous phearos from the eraliest dynsties to the founder of the 18 dynsty Ahmos originated from Nubia. When Nubians drove the Persian out in 700 B.C, the Nubians rose ancient Egyptian culture and brought the worship of the pre-Persians gods, gods that had their origin in the early pre-dyntic times, the Nubians were more Egyptians then the Egpytian themslves, Tahraqa, Shabaaka and all these Phearos brought back the culture of burrying the horse with its soldeir upon his death a practice that was long gone from Egypt.

The European case for Greec and Roman is based on colonization and assmilation, Egypt never managed to colonize the rest of Africa while the Romans managed so and imprinted their culture, language on their conqured European subject. Thats the difference, but Greec and Roman civilization has nothing to do with Europe and its origin is more to Egypt and Africa influence then Nords or Germanic tribes,.

Despite all that modern Europeans love to sell us the fantasy that it was them who orginated these civilaztions and by virtue of race they are the one and same, but not Egypt and Africans, the issue of color and features becomes vague and starnge when debating Egypt but not when debating Greec, a modern Mad Mac doesn't look Greec nor dark Italian , but modern Iman looks quite Egyptian ,,, classical fanatics even went as far as creating a mythical black/white man the so called Euro-Africans just so their argument for white egypt or semtic egypt might fly.

Up to the 16 century most European historians placed Egypt in Africa and as a black civilization the famouse Count Velony is one, after the 16 century when the book of Race came about and the German so called secintest coined the Term Cacusians ( a pure mythology placing the origin of the white people on the Cacus mountains which was the highest known summit to the Europeans then, implying the white people originated on the top of the world) then history had to be written to reflect the triumph of Europeans..

Last but not least Mad Mac, the Manglos never passed Mosco Europe was saved when Jenkis Khan died and all his troops and sons had to go back to chose a new Khan among them, Europe was saved by pure luck u got that one right..

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

"The langauge of Europe was not the language of the Romans to begin, its fact that most modern European langauges are drived from Latin except the Germans and Nords who still maintaine their pre-colonial langauges, but you are mixing tow things, you are implying that just because European langauge post-Roman colonization and civilization is an indicative of Europeans having the same origin as Romans wich is a drivel."

I am insinuting no such thing. But ancient origin is wholly, and completely, irrelevent. Most of western Europe was conquored and colonized by the Romans. They left a very distinct mark on subsquent cultures where they ruled. Linguistically and culturally. This is indisputable.

"all native Americans today speak English by the process of colonization but we can't make the silly argument that just because they happen to speak English cheif Geronomo is from England."

This is an absurd comparison and not the argument I am making. A more reasonable comparison would be that modern Native American culture has been profoundly influenced by Western European culture.

"The orgin of the word Philosophy and Democracy has nothing todo with Europe , there was no such a thing called Europe when Socartes debated his student on the best form of goverment and Europeans only applied this system very recently after the French revolution, you make it sound as though you laid the democracy egg, people for 1000's of years applied consensus to govern themselves, the word perdated the concept, yes indeed i would give Greec the articulation of the concept."

Again, you are confusing the issue of origin with the issue of impact. Two completely different things.

"Now there you have blown your argument, the Nubians and the people of Eygpt are one and the same, just as your beloved Greecs said so, who are you and I to argue with the Greec Historians the father of history.Both the Nubians and Egyptians are Hamtic people, both spoke Hamatic language the same branch Somali belong to, the ancient Egyptian and the Nubians shared the exact culture, from rites of circumsion to the ritual of death and birth and marriage and there is enough literature on that subject to prove you other wise. Most famous phearos from the eraliest dynsties to the founder of the 18 dynsty Ahmos originated from Nubia. When Nubians drove the Persian out in 700 B.C, the Nubians rose ancient Egyptian culture and brought the worship of the pre-Persians gods, gods that had their origin in the early pre-dyntic times, the Nubians were more Egyptians then the Egpytian themslves, Tahraqa, Shabaaka and all these Phearos brought back the culture of burrying the horse with its soldeir upon his death a practice that was long gone from Egypt. "

They are not one and the same. Egyptians were of predominantly semitic stock. But there was apparently a lot of inter-breeding and there is no doubt that the Nubians influenced Egyptian society in ways we do not completely understand even today. It's not that what you are saying above about Nubian contribution is not true, merely that it is not complete.

"The European case for Greec and Roman is based on colonization and assmilation, Egypt never managed to colonize the rest of Africa while the Romans managed so and imprinted their culture, language on their conqured European subject. Thats the difference, but Greec and Roman civilization has nothing to do with Europe and its origin is more to Egypt and Africa influence then Nords or Germanic tribes,. "

This was EXACTLY my piont. So what are you trying to say? On the one hand, you are saying no, that Western European culture was not impacted by the Romans and Greeks, in the next, you say it was. Make up your mind.

"Despite all that modern Europeans love to sell us the fantasy that it was them who orginated these civilaztions and by virtue of race they are the one and same, but not Egypt and Africans, the issue of color and features becomes vague and starnge when debating Egypt but not when debating Greec, a modern Mad Mac doesn't look Greec nor dark Italian , but modern Iman looks quite Egyptian ,,, classical fanatics even went as far as creating a mythical black/white man the so called Euro-Africans just so their argument for white egypt or semtic egypt might fly."

Ahhh and here we get to the core of your position. That race counts. It doesn't. MAD MAC is not arguing that one race is superior or that Western Europe gets some sort of moral bonus points for contribution to global society. None of that means shit. There are no good guys and bad guys in world history. Esspecially ancient history where the details have faded to memory. I am not saying that Europeans are somehow superior, but quite clearly EUROPE was.

"Up to the 16 century most European historians placed Egypt in Africa and as a black civilization the famouse Count Velony is one, after the 16 century when the book of Race came about and the German so called secintest coined the Term Cacusians ( a pure mythology placing the origin of the white people on the Cacus mountains which was the highest known summit to the Europeans then, implying the white people originated on the top of the world) then history had to be written to reflect the triumph of Europeans.. "

The Nubians are hamitic, and the hamitic are caucasion. Take race away from the discussion, because it isn't about race. It's about culture. I can a white newborn, put him in an Amharic family, and he will grow up with Amharic culture and predilictions as his own. I can take an Asian, put him in an English family at birth, and his culture and predilictions will be English. This discussion is not about race.

Furthermore, history doesn't have to imply the trumph of Europeans, quite obviously they did triumph. That's what everyone is bitching about now.

See the link below concerning Mongol conquest. The Mongols had an effect even in places they didn't conquor. But they made it to modern day Austria, Hungary and Serbia.

[Kamal35]

X.Playa: A correction here about the concept of Europa:

From wikipedia.

Etymology
In Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in bull form and taken to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. For Homer, Europe (Greek: Εὐρώπη Eurṓpē; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation. Later Europa stood for mainland Greece, and by 500 BC its meaning had been extended to lands to the north.

The Greek term Europe is derived from Greek words meaning broad (eurys) and face (ops) – broad having been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion; see Prithvi (Plataia). A minority, however, suggest this Greek popular etymology is really based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian erebu meaning "sunset"[1] (see also Erebus). From the Middle Eastern vantagepoint, the sun does set over Europe, the lands to the west. Likewise, Asia is sometimes thought to have derived from a Semitic word such as the Akkadian asu, meaning "sunrise",[2] and is the land to the east from a Middle Eastern perspective.

The majority of major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the continent – e.g. Chinese uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲), which is abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲).

[Kamal35]

And more to say:

Spanish, for example, is a language based about 60% on Latin, 15% Greek and 25% Arabic.

Same for Portuguese.

Italian, Romanian, French are based about 70-75% on Latin.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

X Playa, where did you go?

[Gedo_Boy]

Maybe the West is 'complicit' in the African Crisis, but 'complicit' with who?


With Africa.

[gurey25]

I believe that AID or interferance is actually determinate to the developement of africa.

I mean nobody interfered when the Europeans were starving and slaughtering each other, so let the africans massacar themselves.

allow the formation of more durable states, and governing structures.

[X.Playa]

A-They are not one and the same. Egyptians were of predominantly semitic stock. But there was apparently a lot of inter-breeding and there is no doubt that the Nubians influenced Egyptian society in ways we do not completely understand even today. It's not that what you are saying above about Nubian contribution is not true, merely that it is not complete.

B-The Nubians are hamitic, and the hamitic are caucasion. Take race away from the discussion, because it isn't about race. It's about culture. I can a white newborn, put him in an Amharic family, and he will grow up with Amharic culture and predilictions as his own. I can take an Asian, put him in an English family at birth, and his culture and predilictions will be English. This discussion is not about race.

.................................................................................................

Mad Mac,

Your argument is more based on faith then reason, without historical evidence you still stubornly insist the Egptians are of Semetic stock, how I yet to hear your proof.

1- Egyptian language has nothing in common with the Semtic language

2- Egptian religion has absoloutly nothing to do with people of the "sand" religion.

Yet you insist it does and it has nothing todo with Africa, the Egyptian called the land south of Khamet the the land of their ancestors and Punt (modern east Africa) The Land Of The Gods, not the middle east or southern Europe as you imply by your Caucasian fantasy.

Your argument is contadictory, at one hand your fighting for White Rome, Greece and even white Egypt and yet in the other hand you said:

"The Nubians are Hamitic, and the hamitic are caucasion. Take race away from the discussion"

Since when the Hamites named after Ham the son of Noa the father of Kush and the Blacks is all of a sudden white and Caucasian?. Mad Mac do you really know what are you talking about here or is it just a pure stuborness that drives your argument?.

The Nubians or the Kushites are pure Africans, there is no argument there , even the Euro-centrst long ago gave up to salvage Nubia the conqueres of Egypt in 700 B.C for Europe. The issue her is Egypt, few in modern world argue for the Nubian origin other then Nubia itslef and thats Africa, the ancient Nubians resemble todays modern Sudanes then any other Africans , they are the same blue black then and now.

Lets debate on facts not faith there are less evidence for a white Rome/Greece then for Black Nubia/Egypt.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

While I collect some research on the Ancient Egyptians, let's assume you are correct, and the Nubians and the Egyptians were one and the same. None of that changes the core of my argument, now does it? Even if Nubians were an abberation, and developed a great society, it does not change the fact that by the middle of the 15th century, Black Africa had failed to developed socieites that could technologically compete with European societies. Which is one of the cores of my argument.

Nor does it change the fact that black Africa now continues to struggle to change its political culture and, like Asia, develop vibrant and responsible economic governance.