Africa and Africans

"Westerners who are thoroughly familiar with market economy and with the particular tensions and insecurities it brings, would do well to remember that subsistence economy also brings its own tensions: food during the next year is totally dependent on ones own labors and on the fruits of ones fields, more or less ameliorated by dependence on kinsmen. Droughts and floods, locusts and birds are personal enemies. Religious myth and ritual, like insecurity, center around food production. Africans who have entered a market economy are adjusting to new types of insecurities: unemployment, boring jobs, loss of self-determination"

"By the 1880s machine guns and light artillery capable of firing explosive shells gave the Europeans an incomparable advantage over any African opponent. Medical progress meant that European soldiers and administrators could be sent to tropical Africa without the old constraint of astronomical death rates from disease. Naturally, none of these changes could cause the conquest of Africa, but they slashed the price of any military action a European government might choose to consider, European economic growth made the cost smaller still in terms of resources available."

"other nations, seeing Britain as the economic leader of Europe and also in possession of the largest overseas empire, could easily assume that empire brought wealth"

"Central governments in Europe were often reluctant to annex African territory, but the Europeans in the trade enclaves were tempted to use force whenever they came into conflict with weak or recalcitrant African states."

"One reason for the decline of conversionism was the rise of a competing group of ideas that can be labeled "permanent trusteeship" or paternalism. The point of departure was pseudoscientific racism, with its view that Africans were permanently inferior to Europeans and could never successfully adopt the "civilization" of Europe. Believers in trusteeship nevertheless regarded Africans as human beings deserving the protection of their "superiors."

"Different market places specialize in different goods and in different activities. One market is a good place to buy X and sell Y. The next one is a good place to buy Y and sell X. Another may be well known for its beer-drink, and another for its wise counselors and judges. Such specialization when combined with the fact that markets do not meet every day--leads to two vital points about the marketing system of Africa, particularly West Africa and the Congo Basin. First of all, every community is at the center of a group of markets which meets every fourth, fifth, or seventh day, depending on the area. There is, therefore, an association of market places with time as well as with special products."