File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9705, message 140


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
 


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