Africa needs to rewrite history books

Oct 29, 2009

<b>Letter of the day</b><br><br>EDITOR—Why was Ethiopia left uncolonized?<br>President Museveni is quoted to have said: “The fact that the whole continent was conquered except Ethiopia, the traditional systems notwithstanding, should not be lost on

Letter of the day

EDITOR—Why was Ethiopia left uncolonized?
President Museveni is quoted to have said: “The fact that the whole continent was conquered except Ethiopia, the traditional systems notwithstanding, should not be lost on anybody here.

Ethiopia preserved their sovereignty their low technology notwithstanding. So did Japan and China.” Museveni is no doubt a very good history teacher and a Pan-Africanist.

However, others could help him with perspectives to theorise why Ethiopia was left uncolonized. Ethiopia was earlier on known as Abyssinia. If the President’s speech is left uncritiqued, some students of history might never know why European colonialists left Abyssinia alone. It must have been that at the Berlin Conference of 1885, European colonizers plotted not to touch Ethiopia or Abyssinia, but to preserve its independence, save for 1896 when King Menelik routed the Italian forces in their attempt to colonise Abyssinia. There was also the myth of the legendary Christian king Prester John of Ethiopia that the Europeans believed was a Whiteman of some sorts. And who knows, but the colonialists themselves, as to what their agenda was of leaving Ethiopia and its ancient civilisation untouched, because presumably, a ‘White’ Christian king could have ruled there already. On the other hand, the Oromo, for example, also regard Abyssinia as another colonising power. Moreover, Ethiopia as a name for the current country could have come about after the invasion of the country by Italian forces and especially the Mussolini forces during the World War II. There was also the Persian King Xerxes, who divorced beautiful Queen Vashti because of her alleged disobedience in order to marry another equally beautiful Jewish orphan Esther. This Persian king had provinces that stretched from India to Ethiopia. It might not have been the present- day Ethiopia, but Athiopia, which in Greek is said to mean the land of Black people. That land could have been the Sudan, Egypt or even the current-day Ethiopia. Eurochristendom could not have colonised another ancient Christian civilisation. Moreover, Moses the servant of God to whom He gave the Torah was married to an Ethiopian woman, meaning he was married to an African. Ethiopia’s lack of colonisation could have been a European agenda as well because of their connecting European Westernism with Christian civilisation, something that the current Ethiopia already had to a great extent. The European colonizers’ use of religion to conquer Africa should not be left alone. Most of the European explanations written in books about their ‘magnanimity’ in going to Africa to liberate the people there from ignorance, disease and so on and so forth should be challenged. Left unchallenged, even our leaders might adopt it and reinforce Eurocentric history about Africa to Africans as true. We need to rewrite history books in Africa. We could even turn to our oral history and validate it instead of depending on history written by colonialists or books written by colonial anthropologists. Let us decolonise our minds and our education. Let us continue to remind Europeans of the evil of their colonisation of Africa as even current European ‘friends’ continue to cling to colonial ideas to forge colonial relationships with our ‘independent’ states.

Jenn Jagire
Canada

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