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Board of Trustees, Boston University Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique? by Cheikh Anta Diop Review by: Daniel F. McCall African Historical Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1968), pp. 134-135 Published by: Boston University African Studies Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/216207 . Accessed: 09/05/2014 15:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Historical Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.108.129 on Fri, 9 May 2014 15:12:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique?by Cheikh Anta Diop

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Page 1: Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique?by Cheikh Anta Diop

Board of Trustees, Boston University

Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique? by Cheikh Anta DiopReview by: Daniel F. McCallAfrican Historical Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1968), pp. 134-135Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/216207 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 15:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.129 on Fri, 9 May 2014 15:12:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique?by Cheikh Anta Diop

134 BOOK REVIEWS

ANTERIORITE DES CIVILISATIONS NEGRES: MYTH OU VERITE HISTO- RIQUE? By Cheikh Anta Diop. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1967. Pp. 299, plates.

C. A. Diop is, in the typology of Sir Isaiah Berlin, a "hedgehog." Sir Isaiah suggested that many historians could be divided into two categories, the foxes and the hedgehogs. This statement was based on a troublesome Greek text which makes the startling statement that the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Applying this to historians, Sir Isaiah finds that some relate everything to one grand theme which is central to all else, while others are eclectic and find a diversity of explanatory factors, the former of course being the hedgehogs and the latter the foxes. Diop "knows" only one big thing -- that Negroes invented civilization. This book, after ten years of further cogitation on his theme, is an extension of his Nations Negres et Culture. Whatever one's assessment of that publication was, it will no doubt suffice for this one.

Intellectually, Diop's closest kinship seems to be with J. A. Rogers, an American Negro with a French degree in anthropology who has produced, among other writings, the multi-volume Race and Sex. Diop and Rogers have sought to show that Africans (or Negroes - - Rogers' framework is the wider of the two) have done something first -- i.e., have invented something or been responsible for some cultural innovation -- and that whites only imitated them or borrowed from them. Since this has sometimes happened in the observable present -- e.g., George Washington Carver's many inventions and improve- ments on agricultural and industrial methods -- it is not unlikely that it has also happened a number of times in the dim recesses of the past. What one distrusts in the Diop or Rogers type of endeavor is the passion to show the black first and always superior to other types. It is easy to recognize the symptoms since we have seen them on the other side of the fence so often, and it is easy to sympathize with reactions against discrimination in a colonial or discriminatory environment, but this reviewer cannot go as far as Jean Paul Sartre, who could accept "anti-racist racism." Scholarship must have a single standard, and we cannot accept the ethics of the political arena. However, the value of the hedgehogs is that they give the foxes more work to do, because they dredge up items otherwise overlooked or improperly dis - missed and force the rest of the scholars to reassess these data. What is to be regretted is that writers like Diop or Rogers could take the lead in the re - assessment.

To descend from the general to more specific judgments, Diop's uses of linguistics are often open to grave criticism, and the book has several examples of the errors of inference warned against by J. Greenberg in "Histori- cal Inference from Linguistic Research in Sub-Saharan Africa" (Boston Univer- sity Papers in African History, I [1964]). Another feature of the book which must be noted is its concern with ancient Egypt, which might have been a virtue but, because of the hedgehog bias, is instead a liability. A treatment which will

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Page 3: Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres: Myth ou Verite Historique?by Cheikh Anta Diop

BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS

relate Egypt to the rest of Africa has long been needed, as Egyptologists are

generally uninterested in the other parts of the African continent, and Africanists are put off by the complexities of Egyptology. Elliott Smith tried to relate all cultures in Africa and elsewhere to an Egyptian origin, but turned out to be a false prophet; now C. A. Diop has become another. Suret-Canale's judgment that it is as misleading to blacken (noircir) Egypt as it is to whiten (blanchir) it, still stands for most non-hedgehogs. Ancient Egypt has been unfortunate in her would-be popularizers.

While, as is obvious, this reviewer does not accept the premises or the conclusions of the author, he does, nonetheless, recommend the book to African historians. It will take a lot of foxes to settle the issues which this hedgehog has raised, and, in addition, the book is an important part of the intellectual

history of our own time.

Daniel F. McCall Boston University

ENGLAND, EUROPE AND THE UPPER NILE. By G. N. Sanderson. Edinburgh: The University Press (distributed in North America by the Aldine Publishing Company), 1965. Pp. xiv, 456. $14.50.

Dr. Sanderson has labored long and hard on the background and events

leading up to the late nineteenth-century confrontation between France and Great Britain in the upper Nile Valley. He has provided a panoramic setting in which both European powers and African states play their proper roles. Most other studies of the Fashoda crisis have neglected to investigate fully the posi- tion of the Mahdist state and the role of Menilek II of Ethiopia. In terms of what actually happened, Menilek's policy was a determining factor. By with-

holding promised military support from the French, Menilek caused their effort at Fashoda to fail, a failure that probably saved Europe from a major war.

As in many diplomatic histories, the minutiae of international relations in Sanderson's account seem to defy criticism and tend to overwhelm even the most devoted reader. Nonetheless, the book is tightly organized, reads well, and appears to be largely substantively correct; it is the most comprehensive volume on the subject. Sanderson's documentation is impressive, even though he does tend to overlook material directly critical to some of his positions. A more serious lapse, however, is the failure to use Belgian archives, even though Leopold's policies and activities are investigated in three chapters and receive

specific attention in other parts of the treatise.

It is not the bibliographic lapses which fundamentally hurt Sanderson's work, but rather some of his analytical assessments. I refer particularly to Sanderson's insistence upon the existence of an entente between the Khalifa

relate Egypt to the rest of Africa has long been needed, as Egyptologists are

generally uninterested in the other parts of the African continent, and Africanists are put off by the complexities of Egyptology. Elliott Smith tried to relate all cultures in Africa and elsewhere to an Egyptian origin, but turned out to be a false prophet; now C. A. Diop has become another. Suret-Canale's judgment that it is as misleading to blacken (noircir) Egypt as it is to whiten (blanchir) it, still stands for most non-hedgehogs. Ancient Egypt has been unfortunate in her would-be popularizers.

While, as is obvious, this reviewer does not accept the premises or the conclusions of the author, he does, nonetheless, recommend the book to African historians. It will take a lot of foxes to settle the issues which this hedgehog has raised, and, in addition, the book is an important part of the intellectual

history of our own time.

Daniel F. McCall Boston University

ENGLAND, EUROPE AND THE UPPER NILE. By G. N. Sanderson. Edinburgh: The University Press (distributed in North America by the Aldine Publishing Company), 1965. Pp. xiv, 456. $14.50.

Dr. Sanderson has labored long and hard on the background and events

leading up to the late nineteenth-century confrontation between France and Great Britain in the upper Nile Valley. He has provided a panoramic setting in which both European powers and African states play their proper roles. Most other studies of the Fashoda crisis have neglected to investigate fully the posi- tion of the Mahdist state and the role of Menilek II of Ethiopia. In terms of what actually happened, Menilek's policy was a determining factor. By with-

holding promised military support from the French, Menilek caused their effort at Fashoda to fail, a failure that probably saved Europe from a major war.

As in many diplomatic histories, the minutiae of international relations in Sanderson's account seem to defy criticism and tend to overwhelm even the most devoted reader. Nonetheless, the book is tightly organized, reads well, and appears to be largely substantively correct; it is the most comprehensive volume on the subject. Sanderson's documentation is impressive, even though he does tend to overlook material directly critical to some of his positions. A more serious lapse, however, is the failure to use Belgian archives, even though Leopold's policies and activities are investigated in three chapters and receive

specific attention in other parts of the treatise.

It is not the bibliographic lapses which fundamentally hurt Sanderson's work, but rather some of his analytical assessments. I refer particularly to Sanderson's insistence upon the existence of an entente between the Khalifa

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This content downloaded from 195.78.108.129 on Fri, 9 May 2014 15:12:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions