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Michael Gomez
5640954
AFH 2000
Africa in World History
African history is closely connected to the identity to which it’s been attached, it’s culture
and it’s overall contribution to the world. This unique connection is a result of the vulnerability
created by foreigners when history challenged the Africans’ deepest assumptions and
convictions. Unless questioned and challenged through learning undisputed facts, perceived
through a variety of lenses other than their own, Africans could not benefit fully from its
contributions to world history and it’s reputation could never advance. 1This paper goes on to
explain how African history has been regarded through a diversity of lenses and how the
inaccurate representation of the country is unjustly depriving people all over the world from
learning how important Africa’s first civilizations were to the development and even survival of
humanity.
The complexity of African history is a conception that is enthralled in the threat posed to
the people of Africa from it’s trading partners.2 I will use five main subjects to portray the history
of Africa. The first of these is the concept of financial enslavement and the leadership crisis that
demonstrates ways the Europeans exploited the lack of African leadership to imperialize the
continent of Africa and basically govern its assets. Second is the subject of African
miss-education, or lack of history and thus the collective historic “dementia.” The third lens
alludes to the ways western philosophy further interrogated the continent of Africa from history’s
1Yoffee, The Cambridge World History.
2The National Archives, “Africa Through A Lens | The National Archives.”
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expansion since the education received was simply whatever the author wanted to be believed,
hence the falsification of history. The fourth subject is the identity and culture crisis that included
an extremely slow effort to create an identity in respect to the others that existed.3Lastly, the fifth
lens exposes ways that religion was introduced in the enslavement era and finally lead to the
liberation of the African people. The burden rests just as much on African people rather than any
other culture that disrupted its equilibrium and uncovered its individuality and retrospect.4
The project of decolonization in the 1950s in north and west Africa is better understood
when it’s geography is taken into consideration. Northern African land has a unique closeness to
Asia and Europe which influenced the role that Africa will play in the trade route. The Horn of
Africa is culturally and geographically connected to the Arabian Peninsula. For the past 2000
