Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- 1 The historical geography of Africa
- 2 Kingdoms on the Nile
- 3 The peoples of sub-Saharan Africa: society, culture, and language
- 4 Crops, cows, and iron
- 5 Northeast Africa in the age of Aksum
- 6 Empires of the plains
- 7 East Africa and the Indian Ocean world
- 8 The Lake Plateau of East Africa
- 9 Societies and states of the West African forest
- 10 Kingdoms and trade in Central Africa
- 11 The peoples and states of southern Africa
- Part II Africa in World History
- Part III Imperial Africa
- Part IV Independent Africa
- Index
- References
3 - The peoples of sub-Saharan Africa: society, culture, and language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- 1 The historical geography of Africa
- 2 Kingdoms on the Nile
- 3 The peoples of sub-Saharan Africa: society, culture, and language
- 4 Crops, cows, and iron
- 5 Northeast Africa in the age of Aksum
- 6 Empires of the plains
- 7 East Africa and the Indian Ocean world
- 8 The Lake Plateau of East Africa
- 9 Societies and states of the West African forest
- 10 Kingdoms and trade in Central Africa
- 11 The peoples and states of southern Africa
- Part II Africa in World History
- Part III Imperial Africa
- Part IV Independent Africa
- Index
- References
Summary
Europeans and North Americans imagine Africans to be rural, unsophisticated people who have, until relatively recently, lived in a pristine, unchanging state of nature. Such images are the stock in trade of a century of Hollywood movies. They continue to permeate Western media, from credit-card commercials to tourist advertisements. Nineteenth-century imperialists relied on these stereotypes to justify their conquest of the continent. More recently, many in the West have turned the stereotypes on their head, idealizing Africans as more spiritual, and less materialistic and wasteful, than themselves. There are grains of truth to this oversimplification. Throughout their history, Africans have been less likely to live in cities than their contemporaries in Europe or Asia. There are profound continuities in African history that have at times acted as a brake on dramatic change, and over the past millennium, African economies have not matched regions such as Europe and Asia in their output of manufactured goods. But this monolithic view of Africans, whether held by neo-imperialists or critics of globalization, is very much a stereotype, the oversimplification of which hides the remarkable diversity that characterizes the peoples of the continent.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Sub-Saharan Africa , pp. 40 - 51Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013