The following summary is inadequate at conveying the concise and
informative nature, especially the economic insight, of the book
itself. It is placed here for my study and for the benefit of those
unable to read the real thing. I may refine repeatedly this precis
and I'll never match the original.

The Making of Contemporary Africa, Bill Freund, Lynne Rienner
Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 1998 (1982)

This second edition's preface states that the author received requests
from teachers of African history for an update of the earlier edition.

The first edition's preface declares the work introductory, a
materialist presentation of African political history in the context of
internal class relationships and external intervention.

1. "Africanist History and the History of Africa" (1-13): Africans long
transmitted history. Europeans, while collecting African history, were
most concerned with anthropology. A few early Christian educated
Africans produced ethnic histories. Diaspora Africans more keenly
perceived continental unity. European anthroplogy and Islamic
Orientalism greatly influenced perceptions of Africa's history. African
Studies became established in Europe and the US in the mid Twentiweth
Century.

Afrocentric historians in Africa described national emergence. More
recent writing indicated Africa's inclusion in European and US
capitalist underdevelopment of other lands.

2. "Material and Cultural Development in Africa Before the Nineteenth
Century" (14-33): Removing Western stereotypes and misconceptions of
Saharan and oceanic trade barriers, illuminates African diversity and
intercontinental relations. Dynamic change, especially southers
Africa's Mfecane and West African jihads, immediately preceded European
occupation. Earlier foraging proceeded to fish farming, hunting,
agriculture, iron smelting, increased population, more complex social
organization, lineage groups and ancestor worship.

Long range trade developed in iron, salt, dried fish, tin, copper and
gold. States (e.g. Axum, Meroe, Sennar, Ghana, Borno, Asante, Buganda,
Rwanda, Kongo, Bulozi and Zulu) formed. Trade also brought Islam and
literacy. Class consciousness was complex and coexisted with other
identities.

3. The European Intrusion in the Era of Merchant Capital" (34-50):
First came Portugal seeking gold. From Fort Elmina they dominated the
Gold Coast from 1481-1637. Impressive Kongo received priests and
American cassava and maize. Portuguese explored Angola, reached along
the continent's eastern coast, up the Zambesi (disappointing gold
seekers) and into Ethiopia, where they restored defeated Christians to
power and exerted influence until 1634.

European sugar plantations spread from Cyprus to Sicily and Portugal,
Atlantic islands, Brazil and the Caribbean. These were labour intensive
fostering the slave trade, a foundation of capitalism. The Dutch
founded Cape Town in 1652. By 1700 some 25,000 settlers had arrived and
were pushing inland.

4 "The Era of Legitimate Commerce, 1800-70" (51-72): Throughout the
Nineteenth Century, the slave trade and slavery were abolished in
Europe and America. "Legitimate commerce" included: beeswax, wild
rubber, ivory and, above all, the vegetable oils derived from palm,
palm kernel and ground-nuts." (p. 53) Africa imported textiles, liquor
and arms. Increased trade increased slavery in Africa. Freedmen were
involved in coastal West Africa. Increasingly England and France gained
knowledge of and exerted influence in West Africa.

East African trade expanded. Ivory and slaves came from far inland.
Zanzibar's prosperity from this trade and from its own cloves and
coconut palms increased. In 1840 Oman's Sultan Seyyid Said made the
island his capital. Egypt exerted influence afar. Finally in 1875-6, a
resurgent Ethiopia repelled an Egyptian invasion. Imerina on Madagascar
developed industry, including armaments manufacture.

British merchants replaced the Dutch in South Africa. Wine and wool
were exported to Britain. Settlers trekked away from the British. These
struggled with Africans and advancing English. Complex class structures
formed throughout Southern Africa.

5 "The Conquest of Africa" (73-96): European imperialists scrambled to
partition Africa. Lenin's analysis of capitalism's militarism (distinct
from some assumptions of pacifist capitalism) included awareness of
Africa. Imperialism's economic interests were supported by nationalism
and racism. England and France paid African troops to extend quickly
inexpensively the reach of imperial power. Gold led England to expand
in South Africa, even to waging the Boer War (where some three hundred
thousand British troops fought). African rulers varied co-operative and
resistance policies.

6 "The Material basis of Colonial Society, 1900-40" (97-124): Conquest
sought resources, including labour, and the transformation of society
to render it suitable for capital penetration. Forced labour, at heavy
cost of lives, to construct transportation networks, work plantations
and mines became poorly paid wage work. White settlers, often expecting
to use enforced African labour, could be an economic and political
liability to the metropole. Efforts to use African aristocrats as
capitalist farmers largely failed. African peasants produced cash crops
to obtain money needed for bride payments.

World War One brought hardship and transfer of German colonies. Later
population and wealth increased. Numerous middlemen, many foreign,
sought the wealth, most of which ended up in the hands of large
monopolistic corporations. The British colonial state, using Lugard's
policy in Nigeria, attempted indirect rule; continental Europeans used
a more direct exercise of power.

7 "Culture, Class and Social Change in Colonial Africa, 1900-40" (125
to 148): European capitalist land privitization did not permeate
colonial Africa. Wage labour co-existed with pre-capitalist forms.
Consuming classes (e.g. chiefs) existed. Companies and the state
required educated men who saw themselves as comprising a class. Urban
settings produced new cultural organizations: dance societies, football
clubs, African churches, etc. Ethnicity groupings were fluid. Some
missionaries supported Africans, but, "they did not oppose the essence
of the colonial system: segregation, land alienation and migrant
labour." (p. 137

African churches, often assumed subversive, usually were more, "an
ideological alternative to an historical outlook" (p. 139) than
anti-colonialist resistance. Mass resistance was not supported by those
African elites owing their positions to the colonial system.

8. "Industrialization and South African society, 1900-40" (149-166):
Mining, farming and manufacturing needs for labour produced struggles
that led to a racial arrangement that was not inevitable.

(To be Continued)


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