THE COLONIALIST PERSPECTIVES ON AFRICAN HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

Since the late 1919 century the study of African history has undergone radical changes. From about 1885 to the end of the Second World War most of Africa was under the yoke of colonialism and hence colonial historiography held sway. According to this Imperial historiography, Africa had no history and the African were a people without history. They propagated the image of Africa as a dark continent: Any historical process or movement in the continent was explained as the work of outsiders whether these are mythical hamates.

THE COLONIALIST PERSPECTIVES ON AFRICAN HISTORY

Ø  The structure of  African historiography had more to do with the beginning of the trans Atlantic slave trade than with African experiences ,African history should be per iodized in a such a way that the multiple fragments of her past especially culture, languages , religions, philosophies, music dance, warfare, architectures, farming, rituals, navigation , craft, and industries are taken into account in order to represent the perculiarities of the continent's history

Ø  The writing African history has been challenging and mostly difficult due to a lack of both comprehensive written records and holistic archaeological evidence that covers all the zones of African from past times. This has left Africans historical scholarship in the hands of foreign sailors, writers and amateur historians

Ø  Some European authors had assailed and even doubted about Africans historical heritage, one even went as far as to say "African had no history prior to European exploration and colonization that there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness" examples (Hegel:1956,99, The philosophy of History) denying the association  of a whole continent with any kind of civilization, which means that the civilization of Africa are the Hamites.

Ø   African history was for the most part seen as the history of European in Africa, a part of the historical progress and development of the western Europe and appendix of the the national history of the metropolitan .it was argued at because history begins with writing and thus with arrival of the Europeans, Thus African historiography was close linked with the colonial period and its own official historiography.

Ø  This is an outlook of European historians on they interpret and view the Pre-Colonial Africa social formation in idealistic way of thinking; it is mostly advocated by conservative bourgeoisie concepts. It approaches African history in a racist way, for example the reasons given by the Europeans nations for colonizing Africa were the responsibility of Whites to civilize the backward people of Africa. Such answer lacks historical support, so they aim at only justifying their act of colonizing Africa but no spelling out the truth. And one among the prominent scholars in this school of thought is George W. F. Hegel.  

Ø  Colonialist argued that African historiography was stagnant, because there was no any changes of any kind and any level of development, backwardness of all sort like living necked, eating no food, stateless, barbaric, and uncivilized disorders was order of the day, for example Henley Stanley a European scholar reported that, he found the Ngoni killing left-right during the Mfecane period, and it was him who saved the society from total collapse by introducing colonialism.

Ø  Colonialist argue that Africa was dark content because was no any subject of history that implies than nothing can be written from African history than its darkness, Colonialists viewed that the civilization of Africa are the civilization of hamites; its history is the record of this peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the negro, and bushmen.  These two races were incapable of archiving anything without the hermitic influence. So these remarks about African past all arose as a result of inclination of section humanity and denigrate another.

Ø  The history of Africa tended to focus on the activities of  the two groups , the Arabs and the Europeans  in Africa, This situation produced a merely of confusion in African historiography as African history was written merely from the birds-eyes view of aliens and second  was sequenced following patterns of historical developments outside the continent, The consequences was that African's  historical sequence become jumbled  and externalities not congruent with trends in African's past and shaped her historical

CONCLUSION

In1980’sto1990’sthehistography of Africa become more complex nits explanation s, African historical scholarship  cannot submit totally to the Eurocentric format of historicizing events in Africa; it opined that  Africa    should devise her own scales and periods to accommodate ether peculiarities and challenges. It also examined the emergence of African historiographical scholarship, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara, by looking at the roles of pioneer African historians like Kenneth Dike, who insisted that African history should be about events in Africa and the forces that shaped those events.

REFERENCES

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Nkrumah, kwame, (1964), “Address delivered to mark the opening of the first international Congress of Africanists” in the proceeding of the international congress of africanists, (northwestern university press)

Afigbo ,Adiele Eberechukwu(1984),K. O .Dikeand The African Historical Renascence ,(Nigeria: Rada  Publishers ,Owerri).

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