Description
Book SynopsisThe idea of an inherent backwardness of technology and material culture in early sub-Saharan Africa is a persistent and tenacious myth in the scholarly and popular imagination. Due to the emergence of the field of African studies and the upsurge in historical and archaeological research, in recent decades the stridency of this myth has weakened, and the overtly racist content of arguments mustered in its defense have tended to disappear. But more important are transformations in social, political, and cultural consciousness, which have worked to reshape conceptualizations of African peoples, their histories, and their cultures. Precolonial African Material Culture offers a thorough challenge to the myth of technological backwardness. V. Tarikhu Farrar revisits the early technology of sub-Saharan Africa as revealed by recent research and reconsiders long-possessed primary historical sources. He then explores the ways that indigenous African technologies have influenced the world beyond the African continent.
Trade ReviewDivided into three sections, this text examines early African technologies and their impact, challenging old presumptions of backwardness. In the first segment Farrar (City College of San Francisco) critiques the ideology of several scholars, including Eric Jones, John Morgan, and Jack Goody, emphasizing the evolution of race theory and its influence on subsequent researchers. His excursion into classical Greece and Rome further illuminates this discourse. Farrar leaves no stone unturned in providing an insightful analysis of the ideology emanating from the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, referencing scholars such as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Hegel, whom he identifies as “fundamental to the origins and unfolding of modern race theory.” The author’s difficult journey across the intellectual horizon of bigotry, arrogance, and supremacist ideology culminates in challenges from Edward Blyden, Melville Herskovits, William Hansberry, and Carter Woodson. This sets the stage for the rest of the text, an in-depth historiographical and evidence-based discussion of African technological accomplishments in agriculture, metallurgy, textiles, and building technology. . . this scholarly text provides a welcome corrective lens to view Africa’s material culture. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.
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Table of ContentsPreface: Technology and the Black Peoples
Part One
Africa: A Continent without History, Progress, or Native Genius: The Origins of a Legend
Chapter :1 Narratives on Precolonial African Material Culture and Technology: A Lesson in the Evolution of an Idea in the Cauldron of Modern Race Theory
Chapter 2: Perceptions of Technological Backwardness in Precolonial Africa in the Late Twentieth Century: Some Africanist Views
Chapter 3: Africans in the Eyes of Others Across Time: From the Ancient World to the Enlightenment
Chapter 4: The Origins of Modern Race Theory and the Theory of Socio-cultural Evolution, c. 1680–1800: The Enlightenment
Chapter 5: The Convergence and Crystallization of Modern Race Theory and Socio-Cultural Evolution: c. 1800–1900
Chapter 6: Racial Models of African History and Culture in the Twentieth Century: c. 1900–1975
Chapter 7: A Critical Look at Some Theories of Precolonial African Technological Development
Part Two
Aspects of Technology and the Material Conditions of Life in Tropical Africa
Chapter 8: Indigenous Systems of Tropical African Agriculture
Chapter 9: Metallurgy: African Traditions in Ironworking
Chapter 10: Textile Manufacture
Chapter 11: Indigenous African Building Construction: Some Considerations of Building Materials and Techniques
Chapter 12: Subsistence Systems, Settlements, and Commerce: The Trade in Foodstuffs and Its Relation to the Expansion of Systems of Water Transport, Economic Growth, and the Proliferation of Cities. The West African Evidence
Part Three
“All That Is Hidden in Darkness Will One Day Come to Light”: Africa in America
Chapter 13
The African Impact on Technology and Material Culture in the Americas: Evidence and Meanings
