r/history Jan 13 '23

The idea of ‘precolonial Africa’ is vacuous and wrong | When ‘precolonial’ is used for describing African ideas, processes, institutions and practices, through time, it misrepresents them. Article

https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-precolonial-africa-is-vacuous-and-wrong?utm_source=rss-feed
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u/Saucialiste Jan 14 '23

I'm open to be corrected, but I'm not sure the main arguments of the author actually support their thesis.

First, "precolonial" is used to describe the Americas, Australia, and possibly places like South-East Asia. It's not a special way to demean Africa, it's simply a way, albeit western-centric, to state there was a period when European Great Powers essentialy tried to subjigate the world.

Second, there's a lot of energy deployed to illustrate the great variety of cultures and power dynamics of Africa troughout history. But the reductive part of "Precolonial Africa" is not precolonial, it's Africa. Can a continent is a useful scope to talk about the human experience? It's debatable, but "Modern Africa" is as reductive, and the same is true, even more so, with something like "Ancient Asia".

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u/turtley_different Jan 14 '23

I think you're entirely right. Unless I have missed something major in the text.

Maybe the author's framing was just an excuse to write an article to get eyeballs on African history topics. In which case, goal achieved, and such are the necessities of academic self-promotion.

But I cannot understand why pre-colonial Africa as a term does the harm the author proposes to understanding of History in the region (reductive and eliminates consideration of diversity within the region or timespan prior to the event). Of course the African continent has the same depth and complexity of power struggles and innovation as anywhere else in the world.

All regions, countries and timespans get marked up with reductive labels by historians for the purpose of shorthand classification. I have no idea why this would be ridiculous solely in the case of Africa. Eurocentric habits are a limited viewpoint but that offers the smart historian the chance to come up with a more useful lens with which to view the history of a region.

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u/Jordan_Feeterson Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

There's a sentiment in a lot of Indigenous and POC academic spaces that "pre-colonial" means that those cultural sentiments and values have ended and that whiteness / post-colonial society has somehow "civilised" or otherwise "cured" a more savage pre-colonial way of life. In Indigenous Australian spaces at least (idk enough about other regions to talk on that), it's important that culture be understood as continuous, while pre- and post-colonial are instead used to refer to historic points rather than playing into what we'd call a white settler narrative, that being that the European colonists "settled" Indigenous people along with the land.

It's a really poorly explored discourse in the text imo.

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u/HephaestusHarper Jan 14 '23

Huh, that's exactly how I assumed the term was used. Not as a value judgement but just a way of delineating periods of large-scale change, much in the same way you might refer to "pre-revolution France" or "post-9/11 America" or "post-Cultural Revolution China."

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u/Jordan_Feeterson Jan 14 '23

Yeah, like, one mechanism of racism is that dickheads will take neutral terms like "post-colonial" and use it in ways that it eventually takes on a secondary meaning for the affected group. So relevant again to Australia, you often hear right-wing weirdos react to incentives to "close the gap" (read: address racism) with "this is a post-colonial society" (read: we do not care, just act white and she'll be right), thus opening the door to a lot of semantic and rhetorical fighting.

It starts getting really technical and complex really fast, hence why I don't feel comfortable trying to address the same subject in the context of Africa, because like, that's a really big continent I've never been to lol.

My point is more that sometimes these terms exist in a conversation happening between invested parties and that due to culminative layered meaning, some of it is lost on people outside of the discourse. This is especially a struggle because when you've been in a discourse for so long you can kinda forget that not everybody has the same background in homework, y'know?

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u/turtley_different Jan 14 '23

terms exist in a conversation happening between invested parties and that due to culminative layered meaning, some of it is lost on people outside of the discourse. This is especially a struggle because when you've been in a discourse for so long you can kinda forget that not everybody has the same background in homework

Great point. Worth raising as a main comment. I wonder if that is a major factor in the OP article.

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u/turtley_different Jan 14 '23

"pre-colonial" means that those cultural sentiments and values have ended

Interesting idea and certainly something to be avoided. (Although also we would want to avoid trivialising the impact of major colonial activity on locals)

But that feels like picking an interpretation that is not explicit in the text and presupposing that everyone else has that interpretation also.

Thanks for raising the point.

Ps. Although I suppose that people come to that interpretation by encountering enough discourse that does behave that way so perhaps it is an unfair criticism...

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u/DukeAttreides Jan 14 '23

Is certainly a layered issue. To my ears, a term like "post-colonial" is a nod to the fact that colonial influences haven't ended (but have changed). In other words, what we have now is different but inherently tangled up in that past. I could imagine myself using such a term in an effort to avoid exactly the sort of connotation that some here (and probably the article author) assign to it.

Words are tricky things. I'm clearly "outside" here, but sometimes it's hard to know when there's an "inside" you're out of.

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u/boluroru Jan 14 '23

I can kind of see the point the author is trying to make

The history of sub saharan Africa is 90% of the time only seen in terms of its relationship with Europeans moreso than the pre columbian Americas even

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u/nadiaco Jan 14 '23

well for one it centers colonialism

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u/thedrew Jan 14 '23

I’d say the point the author is trying to make is that we don’t refer to the Byzantine Empire as “pre-Ottoman.” But I otherwise agree with you.

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u/AKravr Jan 14 '23

You bring a good point that I'm happy to say made me think, but the difference lies in the fact that the Roman Empire was a single polity that can be discussed, there was a social-political succession of power going from the Roman Empire in Anatolia to the Ottomans. Pre-Colonial Africa is a continent, they didn't have a wide spanning polity that was consumed by a single following entity.

And I don't hear anyone talk about Pre Roman Europe, since of course they didn't control all of Europe. But colonialism did touch all of Africa.

Also if we're talking about historical accuracy then Byzantines is a revisionist term. They considered and called themselves Romans until after their fall.

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u/Tenpat Jan 14 '23

Colonialism fundamentally changed whatever place it touched.

The parts of Africa that were colonized were forever changed and splitting a discussion of the history of those places into BC/AC is similar to discussing parts of Europe before and after the industrial revolution.

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u/godhandbedamned Jan 14 '23

The argument being made isn't that it is uniquely demeaning to Africa, but that collecting all of African history prior to the Atlantic slave trade into a label that defines Africa into its relation to Europe. This is true of those other nations. Its reductive and Eurocentric. Its like summarizing all of African American history after 1864 'post slavery history' it would be somewhat insulting to characterize the whole of Black history through one action inflicted upon them. The terms we use to describe history impacts how we view said history, think how European historians don't use 'dark ages' or even medieval as they both simplify and mischaracterize the history of the period. Historians. Like calling all of European history prior to the Roman empire, the pre roman period. If you were making a book primarily about the roman period and were comparing the history directly with roman period it would make sense but applying the label generally would as the pre roman period would be centering roman history unnecessarily. Its complex but it breaks down to just a skewed perspective that levies European point of view over African view of their own history.

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u/Dwarf-Lord_Pangolin Jan 14 '23

think how European historians don't use 'dark ages' or even medieval as they both simplify and mischaracterize the history of the period

I'm not a European historian, but I did get my bachelors in history, and historians absolutely use both of those terms. Oxford has a page on Medieval History right here.

And as others have pointed out, we do in fact call all of European history prior to the Roman empire the pre-Roman period, when that is the relevant context in which to view it.

When we talk about "precolonial Africa," we do so in roughly the same way that paleontologists talk about biological history prior to the K-Pg event -- that is, the history prior to a highly disruptive and destructive event that substantially changed that which is being studied.

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u/Infamous-Bag-3880 Jan 14 '23

I was going to say the same thing. Two of my best friends are history professors, one of them specifically teaches Western European history from the medieval era through the early modern period. She says "medieval " all of the time.

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u/EnemyPigeon Jan 14 '23

Plus, medieval is a fun word.

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u/Afraid_Concert549 Jan 14 '23

Its reductive and Eurocentric.

All labels, without exception, are reductive. Most are massively reductive. And this is fine. In fact, there is no alternative, except paragraphs-long labels, which are untenable and which would very quickly be shortened to a couple words anyway.

And complaining about Eurocentrism here is just silly. Contact with certain European powers changed Africa massively, and referring to this change brought about by Europeans with a word that references what the change was is the only logical thing to do.

Its like summarizing all of African American history after 1864 'post slavery history' it would be somewhat insulting to characterize the whole of Black history through one action inflicted upon them.

Dividing AA history into "slavery" and "post-slavery" as a first approximation is the only accurate way to do it, because there is no other force, event or institution that changed life for African-Americans more profoundly.

Like calling all of European history prior to the Roman empire, the pre roman period.

Dude, "Pre-Roman Britain" is an entire multidisciplinary field of study!

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u/KnotSoSalty Jan 14 '23

Dividing American history into pre-1877 and post-1877 periods was accepted practice when I was in school. 1877 being the end of reconstruction and by some measures the Civil War.

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u/CTeam19 Jan 14 '23

At least 3 colleges in Iowa use that "pre-1877" and "post-1877" to describe their level 100 American History classes. The text book does as as well. For my college for European Civilization classes Martin Luther's Reformation was used granted it was a Lutheran College.

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u/_moobear Jan 14 '23

if you're going to split all of african history into phases, it's the only way that makes sense. There are no other markers even close to being universal era defining events for all of africa. If you're talking about a specific region, you have more specific region markers. Europe has more specific era markers because it's history is more well recorded, it's a smaller area where things like the renaissance would have an impact all over. You wouldn't say "medieval eurasia" or "enlightenment eurasia" because medieval and enlightenment influences didn't impact outside of europe in anything resembling the same way, at the same time.

You could say "pre/post mali west africa" but saying "pre/post mali africa" would be meaningless

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u/WholesomeWhitney Jan 14 '23

Absolutely agree. Currently an undergrad for a History degree. Labels like this are reductive and that's the point, they're meant to evoke the paragraph long description in your head. It's better not to think of labels as descriptions set in stone of an event, but one way to frame it. You can talk about pre and post Roman Britain, or you can talk about pre-Anglo-Saxon and post-Anglo-Saxon Britain, for instance.

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u/Parrotparser7 Jan 14 '23

In fact, there is no alternative, except paragraphs-long labels

You could just use something more precise.

  • Imperial Songhai
  • New Ibadan era
  • 14th c. Kongo

etc.

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u/JorusC Jan 14 '23

Yeah, you use those too. But sometimes they're not broad enough to encompass what you're talking about.

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u/Afraid_Concert549 Jan 14 '23

You could just use something more precise.

Those terms aren't more precise, they're more specific. And they're great for when you're specifically focusing on these specific places and times. But how do you refer to something more general that affected them all? With a more general term, of course.

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u/Parrotparser7 Jan 14 '23

But how do you refer to something more general that affected them all?

I thought the entire reason we didn't have such a term was because there was no such thing.

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u/Afraid_Concert549 Jan 14 '23

I thought the entire reason we didn't have such a term was because there was no such thing.

But there is such a thing, and so we do have such a term ("pre-contact", etc.).

All that's going on here is that someone doesn't want anyone to use that term because their particular ideological agenda is at odds with it.

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u/Parrotparser7 Jan 14 '23

But there is such a thing, and so we do have such a term ("pre-contact", etc.).

I'm talking about Africa.

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u/Afraid_Concert549 Jan 15 '23

I'm talking about Africa.

And the bone of contention was the term "pre-colonial" Africa.

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u/tach Jan 14 '23

That label does not define but categorise, in the same way that 'mammal' does not define nor accounts from differences between a mouse and an elephant.

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u/WarrenPuff_It Jan 14 '23

What are you talking about?

Historians absolutely do use "dark ages" and medieval period as reference to a particular period of European history. Show me any university right now with a European history curriculum that doesn't offer a class specifically labeled "medieval history" or some derivative of that. It literally implies what time it is occurring in, and dark ages is used these days to shine a light on how not dark it actually was, as well as historiographical surveys of that middling period. Both terms are used by historians now and in the past.

As for classics/antiquity, if you're talking about Northern Europe than there absolutely is a "pre Roman" period used by historians, but for Europe as a whole people refer to it as the iron age because Rome didnt conquer the entire continent and different cultures subside at different times. With Africa the entire continent was conquered, and Europe established colonies across the whole continent, and every single modern African nation owes its current borders and national identities to that colonial and post-colonial period.

The author isn't doing anything except regurgitating the same "this [insert thing] is problematic" approach that is prevelant in low effort critical academic literature these days. Throw it on the pile of essays talking about the intersectionality of two random words or how gender and environmental change had been the unrecognized cause of everything in our past.

If they want to talk about the history of Africa in a macro scale, they will have a hard time discussing the people and events without making a direct reference to the changes that happen once European cultures arrive, those two paths intersect no matter how you want to frame it. Eurocentric or not, it would be quite the oversight to discuss the history of a continent such as Africa without discussing the political and economic events that shaped it, which ultimately does involve at least some input from events happening in Europe and around the world as a result of said colonial period. We can go further back and still be tied to transcontinental ties, you can discuss northern Africa without also making reference to events happening in medieval Europe during the Arab conquests, just like you can't discuss the rise and fall of Carthage without also referencing Rome, just like you can't discuss Egypt without also talking about the Bronze age collapse and subsequent Greek dark age (that's the literal term, not trying to be cute).

Africa is a massive continent with a very long human history. Lots of things happened over that timeline, and there are lots of histories that can be written and read and discuss at length. But due to its close proximity to Europe, and near eons of history being linked through trade and culture and political events, if you want to talk about one or the other you're going to eventually run into the colonial period.

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u/-Merlin- Jan 14 '23

Would you not consider the introduction of European’s and subsequent colonialism to be the largest impact on the continent in its history? Cultures were literally annihilated since the introduction of colonialism; separating time periods by this event isn’t reductive, it makes perfect sense. Separating these two periods isn’t insulting, it’s objectively important.

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u/Snorumobiru Jan 14 '23

Did we read the same article? Africa had native empires and colonies well before the European scramble for Africa. Europeans didn't introduce colonialism, the Carthaginians, Egyptians and Yoruba already had it. The author argues that calling that time period "precolonial" erases all the African empires in favor of the European ones and in so doing characterizes Africans as simple people who did not build empires until Europe showed them how.

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u/Live_Raise_4478 Jan 14 '23

It's only a bifurcation if not enough different stories are told. It isn't zero sum. We just need to expand pre colonial African historical research. The label points to the problem, and the problem isn't the label

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u/0x4A5753 Jan 14 '23

I mean, at an academic level I understand that, but it's also easily the single most disruptive socioeconomic activity that has happened to Africa in perhaps the past 1,000 years. It's like saying you can't refer to Jewish culture as pre and post holocaust. Like... colonialism and the slave trade destroyed and ruined their domestic economies and growth. We held them back for centuries, and waged horrific amounts of violence on them. Eurocentric it may be, but it's also objectively a crucial relative reference point.

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u/Silkkiuikku Jan 14 '23

I mean, at an academic level I understand that, but it's also easily the single most disruptive socioeconomic activity that has happened to Africa in perhaps the past 1,000 years

I'm pretty sure that the Arab Slave Trade in Africa was rather more disruptive, as it affected more people and lasted longer. Yet we don't usually talk about "pre-Arabic Africa".

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u/Alis451 Jan 14 '23

Yet we don't usually talk about "pre-Arabic Africa".

pretty sure they do, we may not as it isn't as pertinent to modern conversations, usually regarding current or immediate history. Ancient history is a different field of study.

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u/Silkkiuikku Jan 14 '23

You may be right. However, at least to me it seems that pre-colonial seems to be much more common. This is perhaps a bit eurocentric, because why should we define Africa based on European colonisation, when arguably the Arab conquest was at least as influential, if not more. And then there's the Bantu expansion too.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

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u/BobbyP27 Jan 14 '23

The Atlantic slave trade ended several decades before European colonialism became significant in Africa.

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u/Gordon_Goosegonorth Jan 14 '23

Sometimes a particular historical framework requires that Africa be defined in relation to Europe. Nonetheless, Africa will bounce back, and in the next instance, it will be defined in some other way.

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u/Saucialiste Jan 14 '23

The argument being made isn't that it is uniquely demeaning to Africa, but that collecting all of African history prior to the Atlantic slave trade into a label that defines Africa into its relation to Europe. This is true of those other nations. Its reductive and Eurocentric.

It did not click that way in my head, but you're right. For me, talking in terms of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial is a way to emphasize the disruptive aspect of European imperialism on Africa or other parts of the world. But I don't see the precolonial period as a out-of-time stasis, but rather as a historical period of fuller agency. But that's not the layperson historiographical conception of African history in the Western world.

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u/Photon_Pharmer Jan 14 '23

Post slavery history? Africa had slavery well before the colonial period and well after it. In fact, African countries still have modern day slavery.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa

The whole of black history? Are you insisting that only “black people” live in Africa?

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u/killcat Jan 14 '23

Let alone the fact that it ignores all of the pre-European colonization, and it's impacts.

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u/AnaphoricReference Jan 17 '23

All of European history before the Roman Empire is typically referred to as prehistory in Western Europe when history is painted in broad strokes: Europe before the arrival of chroniclers writing in Latin. Even though the historical period is a lot older along the Meditteranean coasts and parts of Northern Europe don't enter history until centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. The abstraction has little value for a Greek or a Finn. But they are the first to cover enough of Europe to consider their chronicles as a kind of historical snapshot of the continent.

For Africa the cesure between pre-colonial and post-colonial has a similar function: the first chroniclers arrive that shed light on the continent as a whole. And here the abstraction has little value as well for for instance Egypt, the Horn of Africa, or the Swahili coast.

Of course one can tell stories of kingdoms named in some early isolated source, of material cultures, of the spread of language groups, of haplotypes etc, but the fact remains that the arrival of the colonial powers on all coasts of the continent and the start of history proper (as a study of written sources) is an important cesure for a historian.

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u/cornonthekopp Jan 14 '23

I agree with what you're saying but at the same time, precolonial really is kinda an unhelpful term for africa, and in general kinda reductive because like the author says, it gives the idea of all the histories before a certain date point and just kinda squishes them all together into this nebulous "pre-colonial" time period.

The "africa" part is also reductive in its own way but even looking at the same geographic region I've definitely seen societies from vastly different eras grouped together, like ghana, mali, and songhai. As if they were all some sort of related groups or direct lineage

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u/Africa-Unite Jan 14 '23

albeit western-centric

And that's the primary reason. Of course non-westwerners would find issue with this framing.

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u/LouisSaintJust1789 Jan 14 '23

“Pre colonial” is hardly a demeaning term. It’s no different from describing Britannia in 50BC as pre Roman

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u/darkslide3000 Jan 14 '23

The difference is that there are too few Celts (at least by cultural identity, not so much by genetics) left to become fake outraged about historians describing historical facts as they are, not as our modern and very period-specific sensibilities would prefer them to have been.

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u/Plarsetic_Paddy Jan 14 '23

Too few Celts

The Welsh, the descendants of and those with the closest cultural ties to the Britons subjugated by Rome still exist, they just don’t have people on Twitter to rage over this for them. I’m pretty sure most people in Africa would agree that their history changed massively when the colonials came along

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u/Usernametaken112 Jan 14 '23

The histories of ALL people's have massively changed in the last 400 years.

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u/WolfingMaldo Jan 14 '23

Of course, but this is a thread specifically related to colonialism and it’s effects

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u/ImmaPullSomeWildShit Jan 14 '23

Wales/Ireland/Scotland/Brittany

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u/blueshark27 Jan 14 '23

Everyone in the USA too, apparently

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u/Neb_Djed Jan 14 '23

Me, an Irish speaker: How many claiming that in America actively speak a Celtic language and are accepted as such by others in the community? Oh, oh I see.

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u/Neb_Djed Jan 14 '23

Bimíd fós feasta an inár maireachtaint ó háit go háit, but yah call it pre-Roman. Just wish every Wikipedia page didn't start with Rome, but that really is down to not enough people to update the articles if it bothers.

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u/IrishRage42 Jan 14 '23

Just as antebellum was misconstrued as being a racist term when it just describes a certain time period. Depending on what context you're talking about Africa saying pre colonial is totally acceptable.

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u/Kasekubrick Jan 14 '23

Nobody misconstrues the word antebellum. Its the glorification if the time period in America that is always the issue. You had the audacity to leave out context in that regard but not pre-colonial Africa.

The Antebellum South in America was literally the period of time between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. How can you call the glorification of a period in which “slavery as a positive good” led to the most devastating war in the history of this country, not racist?

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u/Cunningham01 Jan 14 '23

There was a great deal of difference between the colonialism of Greco-Rome and the Imperialist age. 'Pre-colonial' functionally refers to time before European people decided to pay a visit.

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u/AKravr Jan 14 '23

True, Roman "colonialism" was much harsher and deviating in the long term.

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u/Cunningham01 Jan 14 '23

I have to disagree. The colonialism of Africa, Australia and America (among others) effectively ended cultures in a dramatically short amount of time. An example, the British settlement in Tasmania led to an ever encroaching "black line" throughout the island which saw the groups there exterminated (almost entirely). That was less than 200 years ago. It's inpossible to compare "the long term" because we're still living with it.

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u/AKravr Jan 14 '23

I'll agree that we are living through the long term now but I can't think of any culture that survived the Roman Empire from within besides the Greeks, you could argue the Egyptians but the Greeks had already subsumed them. The Romans practiced complete cultural genocide. There are hundreds of more cultures and languages that survived and currently are surviving colonialism and its after effects.

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u/LouisSaintJust1789 Jan 14 '23

The Roman’s regularly annihilated tribes and cultures that did not submit to their will. The Belgae are perhaps one of the best examples. Their entire tribe was killed and enslaved. The conquest of Carthage was nothing more than genocide. The destruction of that city can be rightly compared to the worst atrocities during the period of European colonialism. To try and say that one is worse than the other is pointless

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u/Cunningham01 Jan 14 '23

I'm not trying to say that one atrocity is worse than another. That is ridiculous and frankly insulting.

My remarks are regarding ancient colonialism to that of Imperial powers. They are not comparable and it's an exercise in futility, you're right.

However, if we're talking about scale then I think Imperial colonialism has it beat. As cold hearted as it is, I don't live with the impacts of Roman colonialism, I live with British colonialism in Australia and all that entails.

They are not comparable but one is lived and the other is ancient.

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u/Borigh Jan 14 '23

Fascinating example of the euphemism treadmill, here.

We obviously need a way to refer to the time before Europeans started carving up African territory and rewriting its political and economic geography, but the actual fact that such a thing happened is so offensive that we must change the term every half-century or so.

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u/forestwolf42 Jan 14 '23

Preeurocolonialization?

I do agree with the point that precolonial tends to be used exclusively to refer to European colonization, and I feel like I definitely encounter people under the illusion that colonization is an inherently European activity, which is a harmful and inaccurate way to view history in so many ways.

However it's also true that this particular European colonization was, and continues to be historically important so we need a convenient way to refer to it, and pre/post colonial is a nice way to do that.

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u/zaypuma Jan 14 '23

Since it was occidental powers and cultures descended upon these places and told the stories in their language and from their point of view, it makes some sort of ironic sense that today's occidental powers and cultures return to tell revised stories, again in their own language and again from their point of view.

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u/Vo_Mimbre Jan 14 '23

The irony here being that if we were to create a new term for when "Europeans" (by landmass) started carving up African territory (by landmass), we're back to the Bronze Age at least. I totally agree. "European colonialism" is offensive and of a time of abject racist and supremacist beliefs written by invaders.

That's the problem with trying to simplify eras with ethnocentric terms that basically boil down to superior/dominant/invader vs inferior/submissive/defender terms. It's further exacerbated by geographical boundaries. Peoples in areas of what we call South America invaded Central, Central invaded North, western Europe and eastern Europe took turns invading each other.

Keep it to specific invaders and what they did. "Colonialism" sounds like bringing culture where needed. "Conquistador" meanwhile is much more accurate to that culture and action.

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u/pk10534 Jan 14 '23

To try and pretend the onset of large-scale European colonization wasn’t a critical juncture for Africa that altered huge swaths of people, governments, and society is just ridiculous. Africa can be multicultural and have had immigrants/emigrants and still have a point in history where things changed drastically. The UK had machines and industry before the Industrial Revolution, that doesn’t mean that’s not a good place to separate the before and after

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u/AKravr Jan 14 '23

The place where France now is had everything different before the Romans came. Genetically, culturally, linguistically. There have been some modern Gaelic cultural revanchism but the actual pre-Roman culture of La Tène has been completely lost.

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u/fantomen777 Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

Never heard about things like Pre-Roman Britain? Or the Moorish Era in Spain.

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u/CowboyOfScience Jan 13 '23

Is just an arbitrary line. They get drawn quite a bit in history. Here in the US we can it "pre-contact". It's actually a pretty logical point to draw a line. The New World changed DRASTICALLY once non-indigenous people showed up.

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u/MattSR30 Jan 14 '23

I feel like ‘the Middle Ages’ is the ultimate form of arbitrary line-drawing.

450 to 1450 is a massive timeframe to lump under a single name. I even find myself doing it, though, because people ask what I studied in and I just wind up saying ‘the Middle Ages.’

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u/Neon-Ink Jan 14 '23

But isn't it subdivided into early, high and late middle ages? It's like a form of historical revision in which people are trying to be respectful or accommodating, but in doing so lose helpful markers. When people ask me what I studied I say "Early modern Europe." It's less time than your period but still a substantial amount of time. We still need some starting point no matter how arbitrary.

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u/Zenso_Si Jan 14 '23

It’s kind of reflected in the name to Middle Ages is pretty non specific and defined by have two boundaries. I guess you could say that it’s defined by the rise and decline in feudalism, but even that doesn’t take into account places like china.

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u/ImmaPullSomeWildShit Jan 14 '23

Middle ages is used in relation to Europe I think. I thought in China they divided historical periods by dynasties, but I might and probably am wrong

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u/Paladingo Jan 14 '23

The rough markers for the middle ages are the fall of the Western Roman Empire and then the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, both of which had profound effects in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Its pretty West-centric, but like was said, its an arbitrary date to note eras of change to help neaten things up.

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u/monsantobreath Jan 14 '23

How could we ever sufficiently define any era that isn't overly centric to one area or another? Surely time is relative to geography in terms of how we define its parameters.

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u/JojenCopyPaste Jan 14 '23

But the middle ages are west-centric. Just as talking about the warring states period in China as a time period in Europe, it doesn't make sense to talk about the middle ages in China. Same with the Middle East and North Africa. They had their own stuff going on.

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u/blueshark27 Jan 14 '23

It can be helpful for contextualising and thats the only sense i've seen it used, like if you were telling someone about when the Mongols took over China you might say "in the Middle Ages" as most people in the west will get what you mean: while the middle ages were happening in Europe, this other thing was happening in China.

That sort of periodisatiom helps if you dont know exact centuries or if the person you're talking to is not big into history. Saying "the 13th century" might not really tell them much, but middle ages people have an idea. Usually wrong and stereotypical, but an idea nonetheless.

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u/ImmaPullSomeWildShit Jan 14 '23

That’s why some people use fall of Constantinople, Battle of Mohács or even the French Revolution as the end of Middle Ages. Also I’ve never heard of Middle Ages being applied outside of Europe

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u/grufolo Jan 14 '23

Of course it is, and of course because it was written by European historians

Categories always reflect those who draw the lines

Nevertheless they are useful, and it is perfectly fine is Chinese history has different ages related to the different dynasties.... Who cares

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u/AX11Liveact Jan 14 '23

It's between the final collapse of Roman influence and the Renaissance resp. the invention of the book press. There's nothing arbitrary about that, specifically as 450 C.E. is not a fixed number.

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u/Paladingo Jan 14 '23

*Western Roman influence.

And the secondary date thats the start of the Renaissance is the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, ending the Eastern Roman Empire.

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u/JojenCopyPaste Jan 14 '23

Almost as if all of Europe was just waiting around for 1000 years for the empire to finally fall before it could move on.

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u/Siegnuz Jan 14 '23

It didn't help that artists/scholars from ERE immigrated to the west and hugely influenced western culture when the empire finally fall

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u/rammo123 Jan 14 '23

It's not "Francocentric" to talk about pre- and post-conquest England either. Fact is some foreign interventions have huge internal effects and mark a legitimate milestone in a location's social, political and military history.

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u/Lord0fHats Jan 14 '23

To point out how it's even more arbitrary, the Vikings got there a few hundred years before Columbus, and just maybe Southeast Polynesians got there even before that!

But when Columbus arrived it basically flipped the entire continent on its head in the course of about 35 years and the other events had more nebulous/unclear consequences so 'Pre-Columbian' it is!

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u/BrokenEye3 Jan 14 '23

Columbus is important to history not because he was the first to discover America but because he was the last

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u/JovahkiinVIII Jan 14 '23

I think the key clarification is permanent contact

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u/OuchieMuhBussy Jan 14 '23

Also the greater contact which allowed the transmission of disease in a way that the Vikings didn’t (as answered 50x on askhistorians).

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u/Lord0fHats Jan 14 '23

The early modern Europeans also had more diseases to spread. Small Pox wouldn't become firmly established in the European population, perpetually cycling in and out of pandemic outbreaks, until after the Crusades for example and small pox is a ravager.

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u/Thelk641 Jan 14 '23

It's 3am at the end of a long day. Reading this I just realized why it's called "Pre-Columbian"... Columbus... seems obvious, but it wasn't to me for some reason. I've never been interested enough to search it, but every time I heard it, some part of my brain wondered what Columbia had to do with mayan and other populations like them, after all it's just one country... wait. Columbia. It's named after Columbus.

I don't know if I'm happy to have finally solved this puzzle for myself or if I feel very dumb. Either way, thank you random redditor for having put it in a way that made my brain tick.

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u/Lord0fHats Jan 14 '23

No worries.

I once thought it was 'before Columbia.' You know. The country XD

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u/CowboyOfScience Jan 14 '23

You're welcome. There's an important difference you're missing. Columbus was an Italian guy. Colombia is a country in South America. Or as one of my professors used to put it: "Less 'U' and more 'O'".

And yes - 'pre-Columbian' is spelled with a 'U'.

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u/ChrysMYO Jan 14 '23

Check out the story of Grand Columbia

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u/DaddyCatALSO Jan 14 '23

The Vikings fialed,a nd Polynesians didn't like continents, their economy wasn't suited to them

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u/FoolInTheDesert Jan 14 '23

Not to mention the Inuit, paleo-eskimo and multiple other migrations of peoples who are genetically, culturally and linguistically distinct from each other.

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u/retroretaliation Jan 14 '23

The article points out that there wasn’t really a period in Africa were new comers suddenly showed up or arrived, and that alot of African communities had been multicultural and interacting with europe before the colonial age. So i’m not sure I get your point here.

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u/jl_theprofessor Jan 14 '23

There is a definitive point where colonialism came to Africa, which is significantly different from saying people came to Africa throughout its history. We can pretend as if the Portuguese didn't bring about a significant shift in Europe's approach to Africa, but that wouldn't be useful. Because from that point onward there is a shift in the trends regarding how Europe viewed Africa and one that has a legacy that persists even today.

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u/BrokenEye3 Jan 14 '23

Yeah, but interacting with foreigners vs being taken over by them is still a pretty big change

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u/darkslide3000 Jan 14 '23

The article is cherry-picking its examples heavily to support that thesis. Contact with non-Mediterranean parts of Africa (i.e. ~90% of the continent) was incredibly sparse and limited before the sudden influx during the colonial age.

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u/AKravr Jan 14 '23

Exactly, caravans crossing the Sahara were 99% indigenous to the area. The mass contact with Europeans, really at first, the Portuguese, was an entirely different affair.

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u/LiamColeE Jan 14 '23

There is a point when they were colonized and heavily exploited.

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u/ObsceneGesture4u Jan 14 '23

We even have a name for that era: Scramble for Africa

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u/mollymuppet78 Jan 14 '23

I've never thought about it that way. Precolonial is what was going on in a place before colonizers came. It's neither good nor bad. It's just a frame of reference. It doesn't misrepresent them any more than saying "post independence" or "pre-revolution" in speaking of other places.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

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u/appollyon_11 Jan 14 '23

It's a term that describes precolonial Africa, nothing more. It's on a par with pre Roman Britain or pre industrial Europe.

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u/HolidayInn9 Jan 14 '23

I believe the validity/impact of this statement is killed when “them” is used. This is arguing for someone else. Put your energy towards questioning someone who this history belongs to as to whether they have a stance on the use of ‘pre-colonial’ as a description. It may be an insulting or malice description when viewed from outside by someone who wants to be offended for someone else, but it may also be important to “them” as a valid description of a turning point description to when their history was affected by outsiders or such.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

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u/cerreur Jan 13 '23

Like BCE and such?

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

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u/Kronos5678 Jan 14 '23

They lump Africa together in this as well. It constantly talks about Roman and Ottoman "colonization" of Africa. The Romans were not a European empire, they were a Mediterranean empire which later expanded into northern Europe. They mention nothing of the Greek rulers of Egypt for hundreds of years, tying Egypt into this Mediterranean identity. The Roman conquests of Carthage and Egypt were of Hellenized groups of the same Mediterranean identity as Rome, and thus is no different to European wars among themselves in the middle ages.

The Ottomans were also not a European empire at all, and had far more in common with the Egyptians and North Africans than they did with the French or Austrians etc. They were united by an Islamic identity, and still the Mediterranean identity still existed, with the Ottomans in Anatolia for the very reason of the Mediterranean identity: the ease of trade due to the many islands and coastline, and with this ease of trade, taxing popular routes became very profitable, and in the case of the Ottomans this was specifically the Dardanelles. To call this European colonization of Africa shows both a distinct lack of knowledge and a grouping together of Africa as a whole, ignoring the very different cultures and identities that those in Egypt had opposed to those in Kongo.

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u/smilelaughenjoy Jan 14 '23

"The Romans were not a European empire, they were a Mediterranean empire which later expanded into northern Europe."

You're not wrong that Rome/Italy is Mediterranean, but it is also European. Part of Turkey (previously, part of the Ottoman Empire) is physically in Europe, and culturally, they have influences from Roman/Byzantine.

Egypt is African, but borders on West Asia ("Middle East") and it has been colonized by Arab tribes (Umayyad Empire/Caliphate) which is why Egypt is mostly muslim and speaks Arabic.

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u/Kronos5678 Jan 14 '23

I agree that they are in Europe, but at the time there was no European identity, someone in Rome would have far more in common with someone in Carthage than someone in Denmark.

I was not talking about physically as that is not relevant, I am well aware that Egypt is in Africa.

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u/smilelaughenjoy Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

Even today, Europe is not a unified culture, so "European" refers to location (where a person's country is or where the person's ancestors came from if they live outside of Europe). Even today, many Europeans feel more attached to identifying with their country or with a region of their country instead of as "European", with the only exception being Budapest (Source: European Quality of Government Index 2021).

Denmark and Italy/Rome are still different, but Spain (which was a part of the Roman Empire) is more similar to Italy than Northern Germanic countries like Sweden or Norway. German tribes took over the more northern parts of Europe (Denmark/Sweden/Norway), while the Romans took over the more southern areas such as Spain and Greece as well as France.

Morocco (in North Africa like Carthage was), was controlled by Spain at one point, so at that point in time, Morocco in North Africa would have had more in common with Spain in Europe than with Saudi Arabia. It is the Arab colonizing that caused a change. Colonization is what make the main difference rather than label of the continent (Europe/European"). US is American in terms of continent/location but culturally, it's European rather than Native American.

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u/Kronos5678 Jan 14 '23

I would argue today an Italian would have more in common with a German than with a libyan

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u/smilelaughenjoy Jan 14 '23

And Libya also got taken over by Muslims, so of course the culture changed in Libya too and became less influenced by Europe/Rome since ancient times.

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u/Kronos5678 Jan 14 '23

What is your point here? I am saying that it was not colonization because it was just like France conquering Belgium or something, and you are trying to argue against that by just saying stuff. What is your point?

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u/smilelaughenjoy Jan 14 '23

If you forgot the point I was making, it was in my first response to you:

"You're not wrong that Rome/Italy is Mediterranean, but it is also European."

If you're talking about the colonization of Africa, then I also disagree with this statement that you made: "I am saying that it was not colonization because it was just like France conquering Belgium or something"

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u/PeterNiers Jan 14 '23

The name of this subreddit should be changed to r/revisionisthistory

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u/GreyhoundsAreFast Jan 14 '23

This could easily be applied to the “pre-Colombian” Americas

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u/Dottox Jan 14 '23

It is true that the idea of precolonial Africa as a blank and underdeveloped place is a stereotype that has been perpetuated for a long time and has contributed to a distorted view of African history and culture. It is important to keep in mind that precolonial societies in Africa had complex political and economic systems, and a rich cultural and artistic history. It is necessary to re-evaluate our understanding of African history and recognize the richness and complexity of precolonial societies on the continent in order to have a more accurate and complete understanding of Africa and its place in the world.

It is also important to note that it is necessary to have a vision from different perspectives and not limit ourselves to Eurocentric history, as this allows for a deeper and more complete understanding of historical events and their impact on current society.

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u/gammonbudju Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

and underdeveloped place is a stereotype

Underdeveloped is relative. It's arguably undeveloped right now.

That language is used by the UN right now to refer to Africa as a region.

https://unctad.org/topic/least-developed-countries/list

It is important to keep in mind that precolonial societies in Africa had complex political and economic systems, and a rich cultural and artistic history.

Large swaths of Africa did not have any written history until the arrival of Europeans.

Africa is/was underdeveloped, a large part of it lacks any written history prior to European settlement. It's not prejudiced, racist or discriminatory to say that. It's just fact.

It doesn't make Africans inferior. They were just in a different period of development relative to other parts of the world.

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u/MulatoMaranhense Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

While I agree with you on the semantics of the word underdeveloped, I really must question your benchmarks. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Andean peoples built kingdoms and confederations that controlled sizeable areas of modern Ecuator, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, and none had written language. Similarly, none had figured ironworking, which was well-known by the Africans. Meanwhile, in the Far East and with relatively more contact with Europe, had little knowledge of glassmaking and neglected their naval studies. I think that talking about "they were in a different development periods" is wrong as it assumes there is an standard, and that standard is the European.

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u/Szabe442 Jan 14 '23

I really must question your benchmarks.

What benchmark would you use to consider African countries before colonization developed then?

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u/MulatoMaranhense Jan 14 '23

I don't divide things between developed or underdevelop unless we are talking about things in the post-WWII world. I just say "things were this way before the Europeans arrived" and "things were this way after they arrived".

Besides, a good number of places in Africa and Americas were not "uplifted" by the Europeans. They just said "now you pay taxes to us" and left at that instead of immediatelly establishing anything resembling what was the average in the metropolis at the time.

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u/Plarsetic_Paddy Jan 14 '23

I think you’re conflating written sources with development, Africa housed huge kingdoms with thriving societies at one point but didn’t have much of the same technology as Europe did. Development isn’t linear might I add so it’s not exactly like Africa was underdeveloped, it was simply developing differently. Nowadays though after having the European structure of development and technology imposed on them most countries in Africa really are underdeveloped, some are getting significantly better though

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u/gammonbudju Jan 14 '23

If you read my comment I'm not saying all Africa. It should be obvious that I'm saying there are large parts of Africa without a written history before Europeans showed up.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Really interesting and thought provoking article. Thanks for posting.

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u/DefenestrationPraha Jan 14 '23

So is the idea of "modernity", "Stone Age" and other generalizations. Trying to squish huge periods of time and huge regions of the world into a few words is necessarily reductive; that said, we have to do it, otherwise some ideas would not be expressible at all, or only in an awkward way.

For example, precolonial Americas didn't have smallpox and Stone Age societies didn't have metal tools. In such statements, the generic and not very exact word does good job in communicating something, and it doesn't make sense to try to ban it.

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u/FrostPDP Jan 14 '23

You know, as someone with a BA in history and thus some understanding of what's being said...

I kinda get it! And, in fact, as I read (I'm pretty deep, but not finished), I find myself agreeing more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure that the label is completely useless (it might be, it might not be - I'm leaning towards it needing replacement), but the question that the author raises about empires existing in Africa is compelling. Africa was certainly colonized, but not in the same sense as the Americas or Oceania. Africa was very much a part of the "Old World," as evidenced by, y'know, ancient Egypt, among many others.

I mean, sure, it was colonized and heavily partitioned by European powers in the 1800's, but it was exploited long before and long after that. Still is, when you think about it.

To be fair, I'm no specialist in African history. I was more trained in Hellenistic and/or New World history. I couldn't begin to suggest what the new definitional points should be, but I do know that there are ways to organize that.

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u/SimpleYellowShirt Jan 14 '23

When Europeans left Africa, the African nations were disenfranchised with the West, they sided with Russian communist. This was their biggest mistake and the reason why they are so far behind. Not because of the word "pre colonialism". Look at the capitalism in South Africa as a comparison. South Africa is booming compared to the rest.

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u/Thereminista Jan 14 '23

Reminds me of when "developers" refer to pristine forest or open land as "undeveloped". Leave it the hell alone! It's great the way it is!

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u/drfiz98 Jan 14 '23

> For example, if ‘precolonial Morocco’ refers to the time before France colonised Morocco, it must deny that the 800-year Moorish colonisation of the Iberian Peninsula, much of present-day France and much of North Africa was a colonialism.

Comparing hundreds of years of developing Muslim Iberia into a center of culture and knowledge to the rape and exploitation of Africa at the hands of Europeans is laughable. Developments made under Islamic rule transformed the Iberian peninsula from being a backwater of the old Roman Empire to one of the richest parts of Europe. After all, the industries needed to finance the colonization of the New World had to come from somewhere.

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u/Whiplash17488 Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

Can a similar argument be made when we say “Roman Empire” or “Achaemenid Empire”?

In some context saying “pre-colonial x” makes sense. It doesn’t make it a rule that time only began when the place was colonized.

Belgium is a colonizer. But the area of Belgium itself was also colonized, and conquered under many flags. That is the way of history is it not?

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u/Dramatic_Reply_3973 Jan 15 '23

How about calling it the "Kingdoms Period"?

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u/only4adults Jan 15 '23

I hate how academics go on and on as if they get paid by the word. This article definitely needs a TLDR.

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u/Known-Command3097 Jan 20 '23

Wait here’s an idea- seems like the problem with “precolonial” as a term is that it’s too vague, cause, yknow, being colonial is a thing that has happened all throughout history on just about every landmass. So, how about “industrial colonialism”, or “industrocolonialism” ? I mean, let’s be honest, it was a very short period where a lot of stuff happened, but it’ll just be a footnote in a few hundred years.