Customer Reviews

The History of Africa

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Dr. Asantes work, as most of his writings on anything African, lacks depth. Granted, he is attempting to scan +6,000 years of African history (referring to the Badarian in Egypt up to the present time); however, none of his sources are among the main works cited by authors working on the time and space periods about which he writes. A review of his bibliography will show this (no citations of Tarikh as-Soudan or Tarikh el-Fattash, only now is Asante making his own translations from the glyphs, yet writes about Nubia without citing, or evening mentioning, major authors and excavations at key sites). In addition, there are numerous historical inaccuracies in the work, which are clear to anyone with a background in the areas about which he's writing, but will stand as truth to the un-initiated reader.

What's left is an attempt to gloss over Africa as if it were one, mass, glorious entity, but without paying adequate attention to its complexities. Such is in fact a disservice to the groups he claims to be fighting for, as Asante refuses in the majority of his work, to engage primary source materials. This is done largely because he cannot. (Note the other review mentions his failure to "put the nail in the coffin" with respect to Obenga's classifications of African languages; Asante's work does not show that he was the depth and breadth of knowledge to grasp and comprehend this. Evidence of this comes simply in the fact that he does not produce similar work). One must, therefore, love and respect Dr. Asante for his passion for African people, but, in the same vein, detest his scholarship and all assumptions borne from it (as it is, in fact, not scholarly).

Those looking for better works on Africa would be better served reading Diop himself (Precolonial Black Africa), Theophile Obenga or John Hunwick.

Dr. Asante moves swiftly and confidently to lay out a new history of Africa ,(almost) free of the Eurocentric distortions, race- based assertions and Hegelian dogma that veiwed African people as being outside of human history .
I say "almost" because even Dr. Asante seems reluctant to step all the way out of the European intellectual framework when he state that Dr. Obenga only "challenged" the deeply flawed classification of African languages by Greenberg( see Appendix3 Major Linguistic Complexes).
Obenga gives Greenberg his due but goes on to demolish his "Hamitic-Semitic" and so-called "Afro-Asiatic" classifications: " Ainsi, le "chamito-semitique" ou " afro-asiatique" n'existe pas dans la materialitie des faits linguistiques. C'est une illusion, un mythe." pp 96, Origin Commune De L'Egyptien Ancien Du Copte...L'Harmattan,1993.(Thus, the "Hamitic/Semitic" nor the "Afro-Asiatic" has any factual basis
in linguistics. It is an illusion, a myth.(My translation)
Greenbergs's classification of African
languages supports the Eurocentric paradigm by classifying the language
of KMT in the same family as Arabic, Hebrew,Berber, Akkadian, etc... I
urge Dr. Asante to put the nail in the coffin. As Obenga has written and
demonstrated time and time again: no competent linguist can demonstrate
that the language of the ancient Egyptians, Kemetou is genetically related to Semitic languages!! It can not be done! The language spoken by the ancient Africans who lived in "ancient Egypt" was an African language.
Dr. Asante's book is a wonderful example of modern African historical insights and a fresh new provocative historiography, free of deliberate Euro-centric distortions and out dated Hegelian dogma. Loaded with information!!

THIS IS AN OUTSTANDING BOOK BY AN OUTSTANDING SCHOLAR. IT'S AN INDISPENSABLE GUIDE FOR EVERY STUDENT, TEACHER, SCHOLAR, OR ANY PERSON INTERESTED IN TRUE AFRICAN HISTORY. IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT YET GO GET IT!