Semper novi quid es Africa. Always, Africa gives us something new.
So wrote W.E.B. DuBois in his oft- forgotten article, "The African Roots of War", published in the May 1915 Atlantic Monthly, nine months after the beginning of the so-called War to End All Wars.
The article is about the imperial scramble for African territory, and the resources on and under the land. It tells of near-wars, and actual wars that took place on the continent in the three decades leading up to World War 1. Present in this article are Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and others, all angling for political leverage. We are given accounts of Britain and France almost going to war over who is going to control Fashoda, a strategic location on the Nile River; of the Boer Wars between the British and Dutch-descended Afrikaners about who will control the gold and diamond riches of South Africa. There is Kinng Menelik of Ethiopia rendering a mighty blow to the italian invaders at Adwa. And the Mahdi wiping out the British garrison at Khartoum.
These conflicts pale [the pun is intended!] in comparison with an ongoing contradictions conflagrations that, since DuBois wrote this article, has yet to run its course almost 100 years later. This war is [DuBois] "the result of jealousies engendered by the recent rise of armed national associations of labor and capital whose aim is the exploitation of the wealth of the world mainly outside of the European circle of nations".
Here in this essay is also to be found the history of how the European slave trade segued into colonialism based upon the seizure and exploitation of gold, diamonds, ivory and other inventory, small pickings compared with what has been discovered in Africa since the 1870s.
In the past two decades alone there have been millions of violent deaths, torture, rape, and maiming of African non-combatants, caught up in civil wars in the mineral- rich Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ... just two of some fifty-plus nations on the African continent.
In reading DuBois's article, i had to pinch myself several times to remind myself: he is writing in 1915 and not 2011. We have witnessed this past year, struggles for democracy in North Africa, in Tunisia and Egypt, U.S.- led military intervention in Libya and the targetted assassination of its president, Moammar Ghadafy, the increased military ventures of AFRICOM and other U.S.military entities. The increasing collusion and contention... mostly the latter... of U.S. and Chinese presences on the continent.
Ninety six years after the publication od DuBois's article, the night is dark. And we are still far from home.
So wrote W.E.B. DuBois in his oft- forgotten article, "The African Roots of War", published in the May 1915 Atlantic Monthly, nine months after the beginning of the so-called War to End All Wars.
The article is about the imperial scramble for African territory, and the resources on and under the land. It tells of near-wars, and actual wars that took place on the continent in the three decades leading up to World War 1. Present in this article are Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and others, all angling for political leverage. We are given accounts of Britain and France almost going to war over who is going to control Fashoda, a strategic location on the Nile River; of the Boer Wars between the British and Dutch-descended Afrikaners about who will control the gold and diamond riches of South Africa. There is Kinng Menelik of Ethiopia rendering a mighty blow to the italian invaders at Adwa. And the Mahdi wiping out the British garrison at Khartoum.
These conflicts pale [the pun is intended!] in comparison with an ongoing contradictions conflagrations that, since DuBois wrote this article, has yet to run its course almost 100 years later. This war is [DuBois] "the result of jealousies engendered by the recent rise of armed national associations of labor and capital whose aim is the exploitation of the wealth of the world mainly outside of the European circle of nations".
Here in this essay is also to be found the history of how the European slave trade segued into colonialism based upon the seizure and exploitation of gold, diamonds, ivory and other inventory, small pickings compared with what has been discovered in Africa since the 1870s.
In the past two decades alone there have been millions of violent deaths, torture, rape, and maiming of African non-combatants, caught up in civil wars in the mineral- rich Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ... just two of some fifty-plus nations on the African continent.
In reading DuBois's article, i had to pinch myself several times to remind myself: he is writing in 1915 and not 2011. We have witnessed this past year, struggles for democracy in North Africa, in Tunisia and Egypt, U.S.- led military intervention in Libya and the targetted assassination of its president, Moammar Ghadafy, the increased military ventures of AFRICOM and other U.S.military entities. The increasing collusion and contention... mostly the latter... of U.S. and Chinese presences on the continent.
Ninety six years after the publication od DuBois's article, the night is dark. And we are still far from home.
