It's a history class (Final Exam (Take Home), 30%) - Essay Example

In his book, he claimed that Africa had no future of its own yet, but only that of Europeans in the continent (Trevor-Roper et al 72). After much research into the past of the African people before colonization, it has been found that the views of these two men were to say the least, misplaced, deceitful and unfounded. A critique of Hegel’s and Hugh’s comments Before the coming of the white man, the continent of Africa was home to the native Africans who possessed their customs, politics and economies.

Through the passage of time, these factors remained of their own making. Their history was marked with events of peace, strife, ceremonies and rituals, and as barbarous or primitive as it seemed, it was their own history with no external influences (Nnoromele 43). When the Europeans arrived to Africa, they denied it a place in world history. Georg Hegel, Hugh Trevor Roper and other Western philosophers called it a land without norms that needed to be cultured. In other words, they viewed Africa as a wild beast that possessed no knowledge of right and wrong or his identity and his interests.

According to them, he was occupied with nothing else but the instinct of daily survival from factors like hunger and other beasts. For this reason, he needed some taming with religion and domestication with civilization, both of which, they believed he lacked (Rodney 43). To the whites, Africans had no religion and thus no idea of God. To them, their belief was fetish that is the belief in inanimate objects. For this reason, African religious objects were stashed as myths and artifacts in boxes then ferried away to the Western museums as a nagging reminder that they might never learn.

Prior to the Europeans, Africans were engaged in various traditional religions. The generalization of these religions is difficult due to the diversity of Africa’s pre-colonial cultures, but they had some similar characteristics. These similarities included the belief in a supreme being, spirits and other various divinities, the use of magic, the veneration of ancestors, the use of traditional medicine and an oral basing rather than a scriptural one. Another major generalization was the belief that humanity existed to harmonize the physical world with the supernatural one.

These religions were passed down from one generation to the other through art, festivals, rituals, word of mouth, songs and dances, names of people, proverbs, myths, beliefs and customs. Upon entry of the Europeans, Africans did not just sit back and allow the dissolution of their religious institutions. In southern Nigeria, for example, opposition from highly organized traditional religious institutions met the Christian missionaries. Religious societies like the Okigwe and the Obgunorie clashed with the missionaries in several occasions.

Another resistance to religious colonization was the maji maji (sacred water) revolt of 1905-1907, which took place in Tanzania. The movement’s leader, Kinjeketile, convinced his fighters that he possessed some sacred water, which, upon drinking, would make one invulnerable to bullets from the Europeans. However, just as many other African revolts, they lost the battle and had to adhere to the white man’s demands. To end the strife and come to a standpoint, the missionaries in many African lands sat with the indigenous leaders to come up with the African