PDF Download The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state, by Basil Davidson
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The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state, by Basil Davidson
PDF Download The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state, by Basil Davidson
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Review
...truly a tour de force, a bold and stimulating work. With skill and sympathy, Basil Davidson sets up the lines of a debate that has long been waiting to be born. - Ivor Wilks, author of Asante in the Nineteenth Century Few people know sub-Saharan Africa better than Basil Davidson. Few people know more about its history. None has analysed its heritage and its dramatic predicament today with greater perceptiveness and passion. This is a book of major importance. The Black Man's Burden is not only about Africa, but about ethnicity, nations, and the problem of living together in society everywhere. - Eric Hobsbawm, author of Nations & Nationalism Basil Davidson gives us an informed and concerned reflection on Africa's current deep disappointments with the nation-state. His exploration of its relation to the wasted years of colonialism and also its parallel with the dramatic developments of Eastern Europe offer a clear and illuminating explanation. This is exciting reading. - Immanuel Wallerstein It is a great read. His attacking power springs from lucidity, humanity and dramatic artistry...Of the recent general books on nationalism this is the most useful one to recommend to undergraduate historians - John Lonsdale in JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY In this sustained attack upon nation-statism and its oppressive tendencies, Davidson brings to bear his vast knowledge of both Africa and the Balkans. This is a knowledge born not only of study, but of tramping through the bush with the guerrillas of Vojvodina and Angola. Davidson's admiration for the democratizing effects of grass-roots mobilization goes right back to his youthful years with Tito's partisans; and his attack upon rampant nationalism in Africa is equally relevant, as he demonstrates, to the bloody disintegration of Tito's federation... - Gerald Moore in LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE
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Product details
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: James Currey (September 24, 1992)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0852557000
ISBN-13: 978-0852557006
Product Dimensions:
5.8 x 0.9 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.6 out of 5 stars
14 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,054,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Black Man's Burden is a strong argument against the imperialist imposition of the idea of the nation=state on Africa. In fact against the nation-state anywhere. Basil Davidson is at heart a true internationalist.
Davidson's starting point is that colonialism caused a profoundly negative impact on African societies, and this impact is evident in the dysfunctional African states of the modern era, wherein governments struggle for legitimacy while civil unrest and low living standards are commonplace. Overall, the writing style is very agreeable, the volume is a little more than it needs to be to impart his message, and the conclusion is poorly supported by the main body.Davidson's ambition is to describe an elegant model wherein the colonial importation of the nation-state model for political organization so distorted African societies that they became structurally locked into a path towards failed statehood. The explanation is that the colonials uprooted traditional institutions that had governed societal behavior. European bureaucracy took their place and created a situation whereby Africans competed with each other for government jobs and the attendant elevated social status and revenue stream. A gap between urban elites and rural peasants developed. Independence only exacerbated the divide and the environment of opportunism. African nations were thus predatory states, as elites jousted for political power while ignoring, at best, or exploiting the rural majority. The response to the lack of state security was creation of "kinship corporations" that became patron/client networks. Western excuses often (incorrectly) blame this and the associated corruption on primitive practices of "tribalism."Ultimately Davidson is unsuccessful in his broad explanatory goal; the various regions of Africa had sufficiently different colonial experiences to resist a unifying explanation for modern Africa's malaise. His argument focuses on West Africa but largely sidesteps northern and southern regions. He spends a good deal of effort trying to show (eastern) European parallels to African difficulties in making the nation-state work. On one hand he decries the nation-state as alien to Africa and untenable, yet he acknowledges the existence of African states before colonialism and external factors after independence that would be difficult for ANY developing people to deal with, nation-state or not.The conclusion section comes across as dated and rather illogical. It seems to be tinged with the post-Cold War spirit of democracy ascendant, most famously expounded by Fukiyama's "End of History." The solution to the alien imposition of nation-state is an equally alien commodity: Western democracy (with an emphasis on federation, as in Germany). Never mind that Western democracies are ensconced as nation-states to begin with. However, Davidson's attempt is worthy in that it provides the serious reader on Africa many quite valuable insights about the colonial-African experience, including the slave trade from West Africa, the trajectory of early African intellectuals, lasting European efforts at neo-colonialism, tribalism as a manufactured tool of Western "divide and rule" strategy, and a close look at the die hard end of colonialism with the Portuguese. He deserves particular credit for at least mentioning intertwined ecological problems ahead of the greater Homer-Dixon wave.A final caution: Davidson was an elder statesman of African studies by the time he published this book in 1992. He provides little in the way of academic references in the text; basically he tells the reader that he's studied Africa for 40-plus years, and take his word for it. Perhaps this is suited to a former British military officer who served during WWII and has "been there and done that."
What a waste of time! Written in 1992, it is essentially just another old white British guy saying "Africa is struggling today because of colonization" Davidson says in about 300 pages what he could say in about 5 good paragraphs. Let me summarize his argument here: modern Africa has so many problems today because it "imported" a European model of government, the nation state. Africa was doing just fine on its own before Europeans came and colonized the whole thing. Then during colonization, the educated, elite Africans fell into the same pattern of administration that their White colonizers had brought from Europe. Then independence came, and Europeans just left with no exit plan, but those who took over were in love with the nation state model and "self alienated". He has essentially taken a universally accepted idea, that Africa is still reeling from the impact of colonization and rambled on and on and on and on about it for 300 pages. If you're looking for a book on African studies, look elsewhere. If you have to buy this book for a class, you might consider taking another class.
Just what i needed. great condition!
Basil Davidson's "The Black Man's Burden" is a go-to source to understanding Africa's struggle with the nation-state system. There are many theories accounting for Africa's push through development and stable governance. Davidson's own thesis is considered common knowledge and mainstream in African studies today, to the point that it barely needs a citation.It is standard in African studies to describe how the European colonizers carved up Africa, drawing political borders without respect to Africa's ethnic groups and languages. It is understood that while some pre-colonial lands, like Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa may have faired slightly better than the rest in preparation for independence, the European politicians as a whole did next to nothing during their imperial reigns to encourage African social, economic and educational growth.It has also become textbook answer to describe the first African political elites as copy-cats of their greedy colonial masters. Even if Tanzania's first president, Julius Nyerere, had claimed it was "impossble" to recarve Africa's map (pg. 184), it is still a stretch to say that he believed it was so for selfless reasons. Davidson traces the development of Africa's countries through colonialism and up through independence, comparing Africa's transition to the nation-state system to other non-African experiences (a little long winded but a necessary non-African detour to solidify the thesis). As the author claims, the nation-state system was poorly suited to Africa's cultural context and much less so after the imposition of baseless political borders.But Davidson also explores another element in Africa's recent history. He begins by describing the internal termoil between embracing African traditions and transforming to European values familiar to many western educated Africans in the 1800s. African individuals like James Africanus Horton held that Africans should reject their African traditions and embrace a "modern" European philosophy. Davidson describes an early 19th century British army that was not racist but instead, mixed. All the way up to WWI African writers were ridiculing their own "savage" past... and then something changed.That change for "African solutions", the respect for the traditional past and the pride in pre-colonial kingdoms is the language and thesis we utilize today. The "African solution" is to embrace an African socio-culture, as many are now arguing. Blaming the age of colonialism for Africa's current plight will only achieve so much. Davidson's counterfactuals shed a positive light on Africa's potential and pose some interesting questions. What if Africa's tribes had united against the colonizer instead of succumbing to realism's alliances? What if the flourishing West African mercantilists in the 1800s had a chance to expand to compete with the European market?These counterfactuals breathe an African strength into the pit of bitterness that has become African politics and international relations. Africans can address their own corruption and lack of governance by pressing their leaders for accountability. Instead of allying with a fatalist view of colonial history, there is a counterfactual that could still be won over. It's not pan-Africanism as much as it is hope in one's own nation and state.
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