From: Michael Hoover <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us> Subject: Re: M-I: Black Man's Burden Date: Fri, 30 May 97 13:27:15 18000 > Basil Davidson > 1992 "Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State". > places Africa's difficulties > in a historical materialist context. > Louis Proyect Davidson has been an important source of my, admittedly less than adequate, understanding of Africa...and I generally agree with the Louis' comments on the above book...however, Davidson's *BMB* has has been criticized for idealizing Africa's past...in contrast, interestingly enough, to some of his own earlier work...for example, D suggests in *BMB* that pre-colonial tribalism contained elements of an indigenous nation-state...but in *African Slave Trade* (1980), he argued that such features could be traced to contact with Europeans in which certain African peoples were forced to either engage in capturing slaves or be enslaved themselves...Davidson cites the state-like character of the Dahomey (sp?) in West Africa... secondly, *BMB* has been faulted for failing to put failures of the African nation-state into the context of continuing Western domination...rather, D is said to have reduced the problem of Western influence to the historical legacy of the nation-state... I'm not suggesting that these criticisms are necessarily correct, but that they exist...of course, at some point, sectarian differences with Davidson's focus on the nation-state can run to claiming that he plays into the hands of Westerners who see the failure of the African nation-state as a reason for why Africa must be treated differently... in this scenario, he unwittingly sows seeds for the return of the white man's burden...I'd say balderdash to that...Michael --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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