Concepts of race in the Historicography of northeast Africa
Recent accounts of the proto-history of Africa use data from physical anthropology, but also concepts of race which physical anthropologists in general have abandoned as unsatisfactory; the paper seeks to explain this phenomenon sociologically. Late nineteenth-century political and sociological trends helped to produce patterns of thought which can no longer be regarded as affording adequate explanations of social processes. These patterns combined idealism, or the method of contrasting ideal types, with pseudo-Darwinism, which sought the origins of political development in the interaction of differently endowed groups. In African ethnography of the early twentieth century such concepts led to the view that the continent was inhabited by two groups, Caucasoids and Negroids, and by mixtures of the two which remained mixtures, to be analysed as such. The Caucasoid and Negroid types were regarded as absolute and universal, represented equally in the biological, linguistic, cultural and political aspects of man.
The First Appearance of the Negroes in History
ACCORDING to the popular conception Africa is the Black Continent, the domain of the Negroes, in which other races play only a quite subordinate part. Neither for the present time, however, nor as regards antiquity does this view correspond to the facts. I t is truer to say in general terms that there are two great families which share possession, Negroes and Hamites; not that one half of Africa is exclusively inhabited by the one, the other half by the other, but rather that throughout the whole region Hamitic population varies with Nigritic. The modern distribution of languages in Africa shows Hamitic idioms, whether pure or vestigial, in the east between the Lower Nile and the Red Sea, the whole complex south of this down to and including German East Africa being dominated by them; in South Africa we find the Nama and Korana languages in German South-West Africa and its surroundings; in the west, parts of French West Africa, and in the north large tracts of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; to these must be added the Tuaregs in the Sahara. Yet these linguistic areas represent only a part of the Hamitic domains. I n not a few other cases we certainly have a Hamitic population which has lost its own language; I need only mention Egypt and other regions of northern Africa. Thus, throughout the whole continent we have a motley mixture of groups belonging to both races. I n addition to this there is at many points a mingling of the races, as probably with the Bantu ; in other cases we see a Negro population dominated by a Hamitic superstratum. I n brief, all degrees of intermixture are to be found. This state of affairs must be the result of many migrations and numerous conflicts with varying issues, which began in immemorial times and have continued, to a lesser extent, down to the modern period. Of all these events history knows very little. I n the majority of cases it can but argue back from the nature of the results to the anterior stages, and this only for fairly recent epochs. Now, that an attempt should be made to throw some light on the history of the Blacks from the Egyptological side needs no justification. For Egypt is a part of Africa, and has the oldest history accessible to us. Its soil has not only yielded us a great abundance of witnesses to all phases of its own development, but has also preserved in copious measure documents relating to the history of the neighbouring races. Especially the excavations of the last few decades have provided us with rich material which is of the highest interest particularly for the study of foreign peoples. No more need be recalled here than the
A Sudanese Historical Legend: The Funj Conquest of Sūba
The Funj were a people of uncertain origin who, in the early sixteenth century, established themselves in the valley of the Blue Nile with their capital at Sennar (Sinnār), and acquired the hegemony over the Muslim Arab tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. The present investigation attempts an analysis of the documentary information on the inception of the Funj hegemony. It develops certain criticisms made by Dr. A. J. Arkell in his article, ‘Fung origins’ (Sudan Notes and Records, XV, 2, 1932, especially pp. 209–13), in connexion with an hypothesis, which he has since abandoned, that the Funj were Shilluk. It does not deal with the controversial general problem of Funj origins.