In Africa''''s Discovery of Europe David Northrup
explores African perspectives on contact with Europe and Europeans in the four
centuries to 1850. This is done using life stories and personal accounts,
though in many cases these are only known indirectly, through European texts.
Early encounters included
official delegations from African states to Europe, Africans enslaved in
Europe, and encounters with Europeans in Africa. With the latter, case
studies include Europeans shipwrecked in Southeast Africa and the integration of the
Portuguese into Kongo cosmology.
Religion and
politics were
hard to separate in African states, and motives for conversion by rulers were
mixed: "sincerity" was not incompatible with efficacy, in either
Iberian Catholicism or many traditional African religions.
When it came to commerce and
sex, Africans had "a powerful role in forging and building
relationships" with Europeans, and often felt they were getting the better
deal. Northrup examines some specific areas here: the inland trade, textiles
and metals, tobacco and spirits, and guns and their relationship with politics.
Turning to slavery, Northrup
presents some narratives of capture and transport, but emphasizes the formation
of new identities. Here he focuses on Sierra Leone, looking at processes of
creolization and Africanization, at the adaptation to and reworking of European
cultures and the creation of both "national" regional identities and
in some cases of a broader "African" identity.
Finally Northrup presents
some of the experiences of Africans in Europe, from 1650 to 1850. Most of the
accounts are from educated individuals, many of them scholars or missionaries,
but Ukawsaw Gronniosaw ended up as husband to a poor English weaver named
Betty. Considering the extent to which racial prejudice was prevalent, Northrup
suggests that in this period it had not yet acquired either the strength or the
pervasiveness it was to have later.
Africa''''s Discovery of
Europe is a slim but rewarding volume. Obviously no systematic treatment
is possible in such limited space, but the use of relatively detailed case
studies lifts it above boring generality. It does a good job countering
stereotypes of Africans as victims, highlighting instead their resilience in
the face of and adaptability to change, but it is not tendentious. It could be
read by itself, or used as a complement to a more
general history of Africa, by
students or general readers.