III. Government
Much has been said about the feeble government which the African sets up. More has been said of his innate inability in matters of civic importance. The matter of government is important, for it is doubtful if there can be any approach to any civilization worthy of the name without some stable form of government. It is generally conceded that the democratic form of government is the best developed stage of the body politic; but this form even at present is far from realization. While it is a great and inspiring ideal, its presupposition is that people are capable of self-government and in many cases this is a supposition that is not based on fact and cannot be corroborated in practice. If democracy is the highest form, absolute monarchy may be the lowest form. Yet monarchy is a form of government and despite the low esteem in which it is held within recent years, it must be admitted that for ages monarchical government was the guardian and custodian of civilization. It is more necessary to have some government than it is to have good government.
Africa is no exception to this rule. Frobenius goes so far as to say that the government in the Yorubaland was fashioned after a republic.[16] With superior and subordinate officials the Yorubans had the semblance of an orderly government. There was the king with a senate which filled the function of cabinet as well. At the court were counsellors-at-law and attorneys for the state. Says Frobenius: "Before the advent of Mohammedanism, forms of civilization of equal value and significance must have been operative in the Soudan."[17] "In fact," he continues, "the government was excellent and I was delighted with the simple administration of the law and official summary punishment in Makwa."[18] Of the Great Benin tribes Roth says: "If theft is seldom heard of here, of murder we hear still less.[19] When the Arabs first visited Negroland by the western route in the eighth and ninth centuries of our era, they found the black kings of Ghana in the height of their prosperity. But the black kings of Ghana had long passed into oblivion when Edris, one of the greatest kings of Bornu, was making gunpowder for the musketeers of his army contemporary with Queen Elizabeth."[20]
El Bekri, a Spanish Arab and author of Tarikh-es-Soudan says of Mansa Musa one of the nobles of Ghana: "He was distinguished by his ability and holiness of life. The justice of his administration was such that it still lives."[21] Three hundred years later a Songhay said of him: "As a pious and equitable prince, he was unequalled for virtue and uprightness."[22]
The duration of the Soudanese empires, moreover, will bear comparison with that of others which are better known to fame. Ghana enjoyed an independent existence of about eleven hundred years—that is, a period nearly equivalent to the period of existence of the British Empire from the abolition of the Saxon Heptarchy to the present day. Melle which succeeded Ghana had a shorter national life of about two hundred and fifty years. Songhay counted its kings in regular succession from 700 to 1591—a period which almost equals the life of the Roman Empire from the foundation of the republic before the Christian era to the downfall of the empire in the second half of the fifth century. The duration of Bornu was less reputable.
The civilization represented by these empires was no doubt, if judged by modern standards, exceedingly imperfect. "The principle of freedom, as we understand it, was probably unknown; authority rested upon force of arms; industrial life was based upon slavery; social life was founded on polygamy. Side by side with barbaric splendor there was primeval simplicity. Luxury for the few took the place of comforts for the many. Study was devoted to what seems to us unprofitable ends. Yet the fact that civilization, far in excess of anything which the nations of northern Europe possessed at the earlier period of Soudanese history, existed with stability enough to maintain empire after empire through a known period of about 1500 years in a portion of the world which mysteriously disappeared in the sixteenth century from the comity of modern nations."[23]
Bent holds that "three hundred years before the Portuguese came to this country the natives were ruled over by a chief with the dynastic name of Nonomapata. From the evidence brought forward we are well within the range of probability when we say that in various parts of Africa there has been a very close approach to well-ordered government dating from ancient days. That these governments are non-existent today can not be laid to their discredit nor to their faulty organization. It is a fact that the earth has not produced the government that could very long defy the ravages of time. A journey down the wreckstrewn highway of the ages will reveal the dry bones of a thousand empires and it is not surprising that the humbler states of Africa can be numbered among them. The fact that there are evidences of decadent states in tribal Africa has its parallel in various parts of Europe today."
We have shown that archaeological research has revealed that the darkness in Africa has not been from time immemorial. We have found that the "quod novi ex Africa" is obsolete in an archaeological sense. We have brought forward testimony deduced from reliable sources that Africa is not without an historic past. We have further shown that in eastern, central and western Africa the natives not only exhibit now these cultural manifestations, but also there is revealed abundant evidence of a prehistoric culture that compares favorably with the earlier cultures of Europe. We are candid enough to admit that in standard the cultures of Africa are inferior to our own, but we must also admit that the present high standards in our own ethics, art and government have not always prevailed and that there is a past to these standards which is not always assuring.
There is one question that demands an answer before we have concluded. It is a question that is as reasonable as it is vexatious. Why have not the nations of Africa kept pace with other mightier countries? Why is Africa at present suffering political dissection which would have been impossible had she fully developed the cardinal elements of ethics, art and government? Why is there no help for her dismemberment which constitutes the pity of the age? The answer to these questions is obvious when we shall have considered, first, one of the fundamental propositions in human psychology. The rise of one nation may hinder the rise of the other. It is not improbable that an accentuated civilization in Europe might have retarded civilization in Africa. We do know that the slave trade had a tremendous effect on their fortunes. When once a group makes unusual progress and by its ambition destroys the bridge over which it passed, it cannot be doubted that its ambitions considerably alter the fortunes of others at its mercy. Lady Lugard cannot be gainsaid when she asserts thus with regard to the slave trade: "Through the chaos of these conflicting interests, the practice of slave-raiding, carried on alike by the highest and lowest, ran like the poison of a destructive sore, destroying every possibility of peaceful and prosperous development."[24]
There may be further asked the question why did not Africa rise as did the other peoples and make her exploitation impossible. We are forced to turn from social to natural factors. The geography of Europe is quite different from that of Africa. When wave after wave of migrants left the Iranian plains and turned west and east and south, it is clear that those who turned into Africa had an endless journey before them ere they had to the margin come. Of great mountain ranges there were none. On the monotonous plains of Africa the cultural extensions must have been horizontal. The races that went into Europe were more quickly stayed in their onward march by the coldness of the north. Not only this but they were in the midst of a mountainous country where tribes and peoples could drift into human eddies and there remain out of the current of human activities for ages. Not only might they remain aloof from the busy thoroughfare of migrating myriads but within each eddy there was the possibility of a growth in culture in its simpler aspects. By and by, the culture of one eddy was crossed with the culture of other eddies that had developed in other cultural directions or farther in the same direction. In time there was by reason of the northern limit of Europe a rebound of the population and this was also a rebound of cultures. The various crosses and modification of cultures made it more probable that civilized progress would be accelerated. The culture of Europe was, by reason of the physical geography, a heterogeneous culture, while that of Africa was necessarily homogeneous in view of the geography of that continent.
In support of my contention I refer to Ripley who says: "The remarkable prehistoric civilization of Italy is due to the union of cultures, one from Hallstatt region having entered from the west via the Danube, the other coming from the southeast by sea being distinctly Mediterranean. From the fusion of these cultures came the Umbrian and Etruscan civilizations." Ripley further contends that the ancient high civilization of Mesopotamia was possible because it was a point of convergence of immigration and invasion. Civilization has always been accentuated at points where cultures could cross.[25] There are few or none such points in Africa; hence the retardation of cultures there. As Lady Lugard said, the slave trade aggravated the cultural disadvantages which grew out of the physical geography of Africa, and because of its monotony of environment there has been little or no cross fertilization of cultures, the indispensable requisite to cultural development.[26]
Gordon Blaine Hancock