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In almost every respect,
Black Africa was more advanced than White Europe before outside
influences touched their cultures. The most glaring difference between
the rise of each region was the initial change that occurred after having
extended contact from the outside world. When people from the north came
upon black Africa they made little impact on the region because black Africa had already reached a high degree of
civilization. When the North Africans traveled south they came upon great
West African merchant kingdoms and cities that contained powerful armies,
complex governments, well enforced laws, and a people, "who,"
Ibn Battuta reported, "most abhor injustice," so that,
"Neither traveler nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from
robbers or men of violence."1
El Mas'udi, Edrisi, and many other medieval Arab writers wrote that when
Arabs settled in the black regions they quickly intermarried with local
woman and learned the language and culture.2
The only impact northern settlers and merchants had on the black kingdoms
and cities was that it produced a literate culture among the wealthy,
some Islamic law mixed with native law, some government policy
infiltrated into the traditional (this was often because writing allowed
different tasks to be performed) and it sometimes led to the building of
mosques and different styles of architecture. These elements had little
impact on the overall culture, wealth, economy, safety, military power or
freedom of the kingdoms--with some exceptions of course.
When the Portuguese came
upon advanced kingdoms in the southern half of Africa, such as the Kongo,
Great Zimbabwe, and Monomotapa the Portuguese were likely the first
non-African people these kingdoms ever saw; still these kingdoms were
vastly more advanced agriculturally, governmentally, and economically
than the white Europeans before extensive outside contact.
When Arabs began to arrive
on the Swahili
Coast many African
trading cities already existed. Even in Ethiopia--where outside influences was rather large--the
change wasn't as dramatic as on Europe
because the Ethiopians already farmed and
traded goods.
In contrast, white Europe was completely changed in every way by the infiltration
of knowledge from the Romans, Greeks, and Arabs--mostly because there was so much room to improve. Before
the partial Romanization of the northern
regions, followed by the spread of Christianity, white Europe was a poor
and frightening place, much more a Dark Continent in every respect than Africa. Many ancient and medieval maps of white Europe warn, "Here do be monsters."3
The Germans did not even practice agriculture before the Romans taught
them.4
When the Romanized monk Patrick, who lit the spark that spread
Christianity and civilization throughout western and northern Europe,
traveled into Ireland in the 5th century he found a completely
illiterate, semi nomadic region where crimes, even murder, were frequent
and of no consequence. He saw a place where human sacrifice was commonplace,
and where the kidnapping of children in the night for slavery and other
purposes was prevalent.7
The Western Europe that Patrick found
had no towns, just isolated farms and scattered huts.8
He met a people who Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved
Civilization, wrote "sacrificed prisoners of war to the
war gods and newborns to the harvest gods….they displayed proudly
the heads of their enemies in their temple's and on their palisades; they
even hung them from their belts as ornaments, used them as footballs in
victory celebrations, and were fond of employing skull tops as
ceremonial drinking bowls. They also sculpted heads--both shrunken,
decapitated heads."
By the time of Patrick's death,
murder and other crimes had decreased tremendously--although tribal warfare remained prevalent. His monasteries
become the first population centers of the region; although they weren't
big enough to be classified as cities, the centers became, "hubs of
unprecedented prosperity…and learning," in white Europe.
He declared that human sacrifice was no longer needed because Jesus
Christ had been sacrificed for all, and he changed the attitude of the
people from God hates us to God loves us. Thomas Cahill tells us that the
Romanized monk, "transformed Ireland into Something New,
something never seen before--a Christian
culture, where slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable, and
warfare, though impossible for humans to eradicate, diminished markedly.
The Irish, in any case, loved physical combat too much for intertribal
warfare to disappear entirely. But new laws, influenced by Gospel norms,
inhibit such conflicts severely by requiring that arms be taken up only
for a weighty cause."12
That type of incredible
change, for a people who were in desperate need of one, swept throughout
white Europe. "Soon enough…people
began to come from all over Ireland to sit at the feet of the monks and
learn all they had to teach…thousands of hopeful students first from all
over Ireland, then from England, and at last from everywhere in
Europe."13
Even the, "ferocious Picts," to their north, "who painted
pictures all over their bodies, horrifying the Romans," and who
served the Irish as a constant reminder of their pre
un-Christian-un-Romanized age, eventually succumbed to the spread of
Patrick's European fire. "Wherever they went the Irish brought with
them their books… tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish
heroes had once tied to their waste their enemies’ heads."14
Around AD500 the Franks,
located in Gaul (modern France),
accepted the Catholic form of Christianity--which was supported by the Bishops of Rome. The
Heritage of World Civilizations, a book
compiled by Harvard and Yale professors, states, "the Franks
ultimately dominated most of Western Europe, helping convert the Goths and
other barbarians to Roman Christianity."15
This led to further Romanization in Europe;
the impact of which has had an incredible effect on our world.
"Western Europe soon discovered that the Christian church was its
best repository of Roman administrative skills and classical culture…Latin
Language, Nicene Christianity, and eventually Roman law and government
were to triumph in the west during the Middle Ages16
….Beginning with the Renaissance, they provided the foundation for most
subsequent European law down to the nineteenth century, and they were
especially helpful to rulers who aspired to centralize their
states."17
Spruyt wrote this on the
impact of Christianization and Romanization: The church (mostly in the 12th century):
"broke up older tribal and kin relations and made it impossible
later to organize market exchange along those lines…Second, the
church had tried to diminish the level of ubiquitous violence by
outlawing war on particular days and regulation certain modes of combat.
In proclaiming the Peace and Truce of God, the church thus appropriated
the role of a public actor. One function of this authority was to
maintain the general peace. In so doing the church created the idea that
one of the roles of government was to provide for the collective good….Moreover….the
church engaged in the codification of systematic written law.
…In response secular rulers turned to systematic and written law to
justify their own positions. Roman law, which contained the
concepts of sovereignty and exclusive jurisdiction, seemed particularly
favorable for the purpose."18
The French Kings, for
instance, "posed Roman law with its well-defined notion of private
property, codification, interest charges, and trial
by evidence."19
The foreign diffusion of
Italian laws and Christianity were absolutely essential for Europe to advance out of its state of primitive and
savage misery.
The Arab influence on white
Europe was also profound; The Arab's role as the civilizer of white Europe
is arguably as great as the Italians and Greeks. The Heritage of World
Civilizations wrote, "The more advanced Arab civilization…taught
western farmers how to irrigate fields and western artisans how to
tan leather and refine silk… thanks to Arabic translators,
major Greek works in astronomy,
mathematics, and medicine
became available to scholars in much of the west for the first time in
Latin translation. And down to the sixteenth century, after the works of
the famous ancient physicians Hippocrates and Galen, the basic gynecological
and child-care manuals followed by western midwives and physicians
were compilations by the famed Baghdad
physician Al-Razi, the philosopher and physician ibn-Sina (980-1037) and
Averroes (1126-1198), Islam's greatest authority on Aristotle."20
Arab contact was obviously a
dramatic factor for white Europe. The
techniques the Arabs taught the white Europeans, on the other hand, were
already prevalent in black Africa before
the Arabs made contact with them. Black civilizations were clearly more
advanced than white civilizations before extensive foreign contact.
When Viking, Magyars, and
Saracens raids became commonplace in Europe, European
clans organized for protection, subsequently forming white Europe's first kingdoms. Many castles were built
for defense. The lands that the Vikings conquered became white Europe's first cities. 21
European feudalism was born in response to Magyars, Saracens, and Viking
raids.
When the nations formed out
of necessity it was the Latin, Greek, and Arab culture that was borrowed.
Due to Greek, Italian, and Arab influence, white Europe
rose from a brutal tribal and savage land, which was occupied by people
living in small huts periodically spread out over the countryside, to the
advanced civilization we know today.
The culture of white Europe
completely changed under the influence of the advanced civilizations from
the south because it had so much room to improve, while the culture of
black Africa was hardly even touched--assimilating most of
the northern settlers rather than being influenced by them.
Unfortunately, the perspective of most lay people is the complete
opposite. This of course was brought on by the racist Eurocentric
historians of the past who wanted to glorify white Europe and its
accomplishments while mitigating black Africa's
accomplishments at every opportunity. Today, because the facts are known,
Euro centrism can no longer postulate lies, but it nevertheless continues
with the omission of African accomplishments. Hopefully knowledge will
spread and the past will be unknown no more and thus historical knowledge
will make false-stereotypes and racism much more difficult to justify.
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1Davidson,
African Kingdoms, 104
2Davidson,
Lost Cities, 140
3Connah,
136
4Davidson,
African Kingdoms, 104
5Ibid
6Connah,
134
7Connah,
136
8Iliffe,
John. African: The History of a Continent. Great
Britain: University
of Cambridge, 1995,
78
9Davidson,
African Kingdoms, 104
10Iliffe,
John, 78
11The
Heritage of World Civilizations: Volume One: To 1650, 4th ed. Editor,
Owen, Cralyce. Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Simon & Shuster, 1997, 505
12Davidson,
Lost Cities, 134
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