ABSTRACT
IN A WORK first published in 1943, giving excerpts from the writings of early travelers in Africa, there is the following passage:
At school and subsequently, I had absorbed the idea that preEuropean Africa was a place of complete and anarchic savagery. I do not know how this impression was received, but it was probably an accumulation from many sources. Now, as a student of these matters, I have come across many opinions expressed by administrators, missionaries and colonists in Africa, both living and dead, which repeat this view. "South Africa," wrote a Colonial Secretary of the last century, "beyond the reach of the White man is one scene of violence and rapine." This view still lingers, in spite of the revelations of the anthropologists, and it has important results. It helps to fix an uncritical and generalized attitude of superiority towards Africans and it acts not only as a justification of European annexation and government, for which a less gloomy view of the old Africa might suffice, but as an excuse for the less defensible activities of imperialism. How often have I heard it said in answer to some criticism of European policy of conduct, "Well,
52 after all, think what Africa was before the white man came!" Well, what was Africa?
