By
Sampson i. Onwuka
Joseph E. Harris, with his Ph.D in ‘Africans and Their History’, is a book of great importance concerning Africans and their academic environment. Part of the nomenclature for this reading is a background on the formative years of African history -- and in many ways than one, the current history of Africa is a footnote to the European adventures in Africa. Some of these adventurers were research scientists and working members of major clubs in Europe and they brought with them their own discipline which influenced their attitude towards understanding Africa. These disciplines - especially historical disciplines with background to world history and perhaps religion were conduits for world history and narrative on African history through their devotion, through the bible for instance whose interpretation of world history began with the stories of Eden, Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain, leading to major departures from the narrow circle of Eden and much of the middle east to the deaths of the descendants of the first couples, and the questions of morality following the story of Seth and Ham. We can not complain that reading through the work of Joseph Harris, that we can truly see an encyclical of recent African history, how they have fared and how they have triumphed, and it narrows on the relationship between Africans and their society and the rest of world. He may or may not be part of the same interpretation of Africa, but he lives in that century where the stories of Earth under the superior notions of those who know better. The work of Harris is very monumental to the point that only little can done be added in terms of its content to expedite on African synthetic history. Yet his work is not deep enough and general graft misleads the untrained historian. There is so much that we find to be generally missing in his book, beginning for instance with the new discoveries in archeology and what the stones tell us about Africa. His major contribution however is on what the African languages tell us about the past of the continent, a point he only briefly torched on and did not expand. Harris emphasized the history of Egypt from ancient times to perhaps the time of the last dynastic, with special emphasis on the 12th, yet much of the history of Egypt so to speak was severely limited to Africa and to the documentary retention of Egyptian history, as if nothing exist for the contention. We learn about the psychological influences of the thinkers of history, much about the view of blacks as wanting in just about anything we know about the continent.
For instance, Professor Harris reminded the reader of the story concerning a certain John C. Calhoun, on his challenge to the world that if he could find a ‘black man’ able to read the ‘Greek syntax’, he will then consider ‘the black race human’. Ali Mazrui was supposed to have responded to have cited Kwame Nkrumah’s reaction to Calhoun, saying “what might have been the sensation kindled by the Greek syntax in the mind of the famous Southerner, I have so far been unable to discover, but…I could show him among black men of pure African blood those who could repeat the Koran from memory, skilled in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic”. What was the point of raising this in African history? It was perhaps to disabuse the mind of the readers and the listening crowd, perhaps to encourage and lead them into a certain direction for instance - , history of Africa is one that we are yet to understand, perhaps it was to expedite on the obstacles to African history and knowledge, which he may or may not be suggesting is intricately bound with the native Africans and perhaps those who resemble the produce at large in Africa. There is no denying that Professor Harris was making a case for Africa since he highlighted the influences guiding world historians and the perception if not pre-occupation of such history. Assuming this is not the case, we may look at other instances where his reflections on African history essentially appeared in part of his book, in light perhaps of Jewish history. It may be said that Jewish history survive today largely for the devotion to the literature and to the course of re-interpreting world history through Jewish sources - perhaps vice versa, In this instance, we may look at the historical Jewish enactment, and draw special attention on some of commentary on the subject on the context of He cited the comments about world history concerning a misguiding view of Babylonian Talmud of the 6th century on the nature of Noah’s course that “it must Canaan, your first born, whom they enslave Canaan’s children shall be born ugly and black…your grand – Children’s hair shall be twisted into kinks…(their lips) shall swell. Men of his race are called 'Negroes', their forefather Canaan, commanded them to love theft and fornication, to be banded together in hatred of their masters and never to tell the truth”. Such position is genuinely laughable - even for 6th century or especially for 6th century when the world was upon that too. For anyone unaccustomed to Jewish history and tradition, he or she may just take the history for good of it, that the theater for these writing is setting upon something else than what we know.
In context of other histories of the world, and in view of other failures of the world to realign each other with these history, African history through source other than Bible or through Koran or to a large extent Torah Commentaries are heavy and draw-down on images on say Africans. When Jewish history adjust to use Art forms in interpretation there are gaps which history and things can not cover. For one, there are are degrees of comparison between Jewish history and African history that may be useful, and there are degrees of interpretation setting forth the theme of African history in the way we perceive such history but these differ when there are stories on sculpture and buildings reaching back to even to time that Jesus Christ was among the living. Further still, there are histories of Africa through its architecture that reach even further to Alexander the Great, to the time of Plato and Socratis - schooled in Thebes - further still to other unrealized historical figures such as the earlier prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, to David and Solomon of the Bible, to the time of Moses and then to Abraham whose counterparts are Achilles and the Aegaen. After a while, the structure may only speak of African History and its structure, to empires rising and collapsing, especially empires without corollary to other histories of the world. We can rule the following is important dictates of world history and the factors which may or may not lead to the right direction (1) There is no doubt that some versions of Christian and Jewish history make outrages claims about Canaan and the sons of Ham, but the story as we note from these lines are seriously misleading, so misleading that the much later....
2013
Sampson i. Onwuka
Joseph E. Harris, with his Ph.D in ‘Africans and Their History’, is a book of great importance concerning Africans and their academic environment. Part of the nomenclature for this reading is a background on the formative years of African history -- and in many ways than one, the current history of Africa is a footnote to the European adventures in Africa. Some of these adventurers were research scientists and working members of major clubs in Europe and they brought with them their own discipline which influenced their attitude towards understanding Africa. These disciplines - especially historical disciplines with background to world history and perhaps religion were conduits for world history and narrative on African history through their devotion, through the bible for instance whose interpretation of world history began with the stories of Eden, Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain, leading to major departures from the narrow circle of Eden and much of the middle east to the deaths of the descendants of the first couples, and the questions of morality following the story of Seth and Ham. We can not complain that reading through the work of Joseph Harris, that we can truly see an encyclical of recent African history, how they have fared and how they have triumphed, and it narrows on the relationship between Africans and their society and the rest of world. He may or may not be part of the same interpretation of Africa, but he lives in that century where the stories of Earth under the superior notions of those who know better. The work of Harris is very monumental to the point that only little can done be added in terms of its content to expedite on African synthetic history. Yet his work is not deep enough and general graft misleads the untrained historian. There is so much that we find to be generally missing in his book, beginning for instance with the new discoveries in archeology and what the stones tell us about Africa. His major contribution however is on what the African languages tell us about the past of the continent, a point he only briefly torched on and did not expand. Harris emphasized the history of Egypt from ancient times to perhaps the time of the last dynastic, with special emphasis on the 12th, yet much of the history of Egypt so to speak was severely limited to Africa and to the documentary retention of Egyptian history, as if nothing exist for the contention. We learn about the psychological influences of the thinkers of history, much about the view of blacks as wanting in just about anything we know about the continent.
For instance, Professor Harris reminded the reader of the story concerning a certain John C. Calhoun, on his challenge to the world that if he could find a ‘black man’ able to read the ‘Greek syntax’, he will then consider ‘the black race human’. Ali Mazrui was supposed to have responded to have cited Kwame Nkrumah’s reaction to Calhoun, saying “what might have been the sensation kindled by the Greek syntax in the mind of the famous Southerner, I have so far been unable to discover, but…I could show him among black men of pure African blood those who could repeat the Koran from memory, skilled in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic”. What was the point of raising this in African history? It was perhaps to disabuse the mind of the readers and the listening crowd, perhaps to encourage and lead them into a certain direction for instance - , history of Africa is one that we are yet to understand, perhaps it was to expedite on the obstacles to African history and knowledge, which he may or may not be suggesting is intricately bound with the native Africans and perhaps those who resemble the produce at large in Africa. There is no denying that Professor Harris was making a case for Africa since he highlighted the influences guiding world historians and the perception if not pre-occupation of such history. Assuming this is not the case, we may look at other instances where his reflections on African history essentially appeared in part of his book, in light perhaps of Jewish history. It may be said that Jewish history survive today largely for the devotion to the literature and to the course of re-interpreting world history through Jewish sources - perhaps vice versa, In this instance, we may look at the historical Jewish enactment, and draw special attention on some of commentary on the subject on the context of He cited the comments about world history concerning a misguiding view of Babylonian Talmud of the 6th century on the nature of Noah’s course that “it must Canaan, your first born, whom they enslave Canaan’s children shall be born ugly and black…your grand – Children’s hair shall be twisted into kinks…(their lips) shall swell. Men of his race are called 'Negroes', their forefather Canaan, commanded them to love theft and fornication, to be banded together in hatred of their masters and never to tell the truth”. Such position is genuinely laughable - even for 6th century or especially for 6th century when the world was upon that too. For anyone unaccustomed to Jewish history and tradition, he or she may just take the history for good of it, that the theater for these writing is setting upon something else than what we know.
In context of other histories of the world, and in view of other failures of the world to realign each other with these history, African history through source other than Bible or through Koran or to a large extent Torah Commentaries are heavy and draw-down on images on say Africans. When Jewish history adjust to use Art forms in interpretation there are gaps which history and things can not cover. For one, there are are degrees of comparison between Jewish history and African history that may be useful, and there are degrees of interpretation setting forth the theme of African history in the way we perceive such history but these differ when there are stories on sculpture and buildings reaching back to even to time that Jesus Christ was among the living. Further still, there are histories of Africa through its architecture that reach even further to Alexander the Great, to the time of Plato and Socratis - schooled in Thebes - further still to other unrealized historical figures such as the earlier prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, to David and Solomon of the Bible, to the time of Moses and then to Abraham whose counterparts are Achilles and the Aegaen. After a while, the structure may only speak of African History and its structure, to empires rising and collapsing, especially empires without corollary to other histories of the world. We can rule the following is important dictates of world history and the factors which may or may not lead to the right direction (1) There is no doubt that some versions of Christian and Jewish history make outrages claims about Canaan and the sons of Ham, but the story as we note from these lines are seriously misleading, so misleading that the much later....
2013
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