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Why Africa's history is more than just the slave trade
00:41:49
Luke Pepera explains why he set out to write a book spanning 500,000 years of Africa's history – and why our focus on slavery has warped our view of the continent's past
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Luke Pepper
Credit.
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Luke Pepper
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Matt Elton
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Recent years have seen a renewed focus on the impact that the transatlantic slave trade had on Africa's cultures and peoples. Yet as Luke Pepper's new book, Motherland highlights, the continent's story is much more diverse and multifaceted than that. Matt Elton caught up with Luke to hear more about these stories, from female led societies to the long history of the rap battle.
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Home Depot Announcer
Luke, thank you so much for being with us today. We're here to talk about your new book, Motherland. Before we go any further, I want to talk about the subtitle, which is a journey through 500,000 years of African history and identity. Was that prospect not enormously daunting when you started?
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Snoop Dogg
Hey Rat, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's such a pleasure to be here. It is a big span, isn't it? I mean, when I pitched the book, I was a naive mid 20 year old, so that probably explains partly why, you know, I'd gone for something so massive. But actually, in all seriousness, the reason it's such a large span and why I went for that is because I really wanted to get across to readers and to history lovers the huge breadth and depth of of African history, the fact that it is where our species originated. And from that time, 500,000 odd years ago to now, there have been people inhabiting what we know as Africa, who, you know, have just been doing things, have been making tools, making art, developing languages, traveling, migrating, hunting, farming, fighting, et cetera, and have been doing it for such a long span of time. So I wanted to really drive that home. And also it gave me so much scope to explore what I thought were the really fascinating parts of that history.
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Home Depot Announcer
And something your book does really nicely is it pairs these big overarching arguments with some really interesting case studies of people and places and themes, some of which we'll get to in a minute. Before we do, though, I want to just unpick a little bit more that you write in the book that we have a warped understanding of Africa's past. Can you talk us through a little bit what you mean by that with that sentence?
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Snoop Dogg
What I'm really trying to get across is that so much of our understanding of Africa's history, its peoples, its cultures, is influenced by our focus on the last 300 years, particularly of African history. So that encompasses the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. And a lot of our perceptions about Africa and its people come largely from that period of time. And it completely warps the way in which we look at African people and we see them mostly because of what happened during that time, as victims, as the conquered, as people who others inevitably look down on. And what I wanted to get across is that although those years are important and are impactful in the history of the continent and the history of its people, it represents just such a small part of what African people are doing and also just a small part of the relationships between Africans and other peoples, including Europeans. You know, a lot of that early history, for example, between Africa and Europe was actually constituted quite equal bilateral political, diplomatic and trade agreements. It wasn't always a story of domination and of conquest. And that is, when you look beyond even just the last 300 years to talk about 500 or 600, you see just a completely different relationship between Africa and other peoples, and particularly between Africa and Europe. And then if you go even further back, it completely transforms the way in which you think about Africa. So, for instance, the further back you go, obviously, the less Europe figures in the story of Africa. The big trade that we consider when we look at last 300 years and what we think of as being so impactful to the development and transformation of African societies is that Atlantic trade and that Atlantic relationship. But for over a thousand years before that, close to 2,000 years before that, it was actually trade across the Indian Ocean. The relationships that African peoples had with those in western Asia, in what's now Oman and Yemen and Iran, and then also further afield to India and China, that was much more important to African societies and had been much more important for a longer time. But that doesn't figure at all in how we understand the way in which African people are and the way in which African people develop because we focus so much on this recent history. So I wanted to redress that balance.
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Home Depot Announcer
And you also make the point that to understand this history fully, we need to perhaps shift our understanding of what that history constitutes. Can you explain a little bit more about how we need to do that and why it's important?
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Snoop Dogg
Yeah, that's a great question, man. Thank you. You know, when you. Especially in the uk, but I think more generally in the Western tradition, what we think of history is based mostly on written documentation and those kinds of source documents. I mean, I trained as an archaeologist and an anthropologist, so when it comes to understanding the past, I was taught that, you know, you have to look wider than just the written documentation. There are so many ways in which the history of people and people's behaviors and actions and deeds are recorded. For instance, through songs, through stories, through material culture, through mythology, etc. And in Africa, where most peoples and most of the cultures there tend to record their history in those kinds of ways, especially through art and architecture and through mythology, through sculpture, etc. You have to consider that even if you just want to build a very basic picture of the past. So I was already forced to look into that, but then it got me questioning why we do put so much emphasis on the written over other forms. And actually, I think that is Changing now you see a lot more historians, for example, using archeology in their practice and to piece together different aspects of past. And actually sometimes to refute written documentation. You can talk about, sometimes you'll have historical documentation that describes a big battle. But. But if you, for example, manage to triangulate the site of that battle and you can't find the same physical evidence that actually causes you to be skeptical of the person who's writing, and then you're thinking about why and whether it is propaganda, you know, what aim or ambition did the person have in constructing that history. So I think history can be all of these things and needs to consider all of these pieces of evidence. But I think traditionally, at least in UK and arguably in the west more generally, we've had this focus on written documentation. But because of the way in which the past is recorded in Africa, I've had to look broader. But then it means that I've actually been able to appreciate what those other pieces of evidence can bring to the table, especially when compared with written documentation. I mean, one example that comes to mind is when you're looking at sort of some of that early but still slightly later contact between Europeans and Africa. You have, for instance, a fair bit of written documentation about African human sacrifice practice and cannibalism practices that Europeans are writing down, but there's a very little physical evidence for it in most places. So it just causes you to question, for instance, and then you say, well, okay, it is, you know, sometimes actually when the early European travelers are writing these things, it is so that they can, they can even just sell or just people will be more interested in their works, you know, potentially allowing them to gain, you know, favor, opportunity from that. So that's one example that comes to mind of why you're trying to square the different evidence together. And it's not that the written stuff can always just be taken for granted.
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Home Depot Announcer
To get into some of these case studies you mentioned, then each chapter of your book explores a different theme and then tells those stories through some various case studies. Could you talk a little bit about ancestral veneration first and about the stories you use to illustrate that part of the story?
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Snoop Dogg
Each chapter covers a different aspect that is integral to African identity. And arguably one of the most integral is ancestral veneration. The others that are explored, you know, they're all important, but you know, others that, that come to mind, that explorer, oral literature and female led societies, migration and multiculturalism, but I would say ancestors is arguably the most important because relationships between people and also Familial relationships are really the foundation of everything Africans do in life. But these relationships don't just exist between people who are living per se, I. E. In the material world with us, but they extend to those who have come before us, either more recently or a long time before. And generally those people are called the living dead, people who have come before us. And then the members of the living dead who have particularly distinguished themselves in life and who we really look up to as role models, etc. Are those that we call the ancestors or those that many African peoples call the ancestors. And it is these people we try to have the strongest relationship with and to venerate because they more often than not have powers or abilities in order to help us in our day to day life. So if we want to have success in something, or if we want confidence in something, etc. We usually African people's appeal or look up to one or more ancestors. I mean, early on in that chapter, the example that I put across is actually my grandfather describing how my relationship to him as an ancestor. And I talk about, you know, after he passed away and going to his funeral. And there's a belief in my culture, the Akan of Ghana, that those who have come before us, and especially the ancestors, still live within these cultural artifacts we have called stalls. And when I went to my grandfather's home that he'd grown up in in his homeland of Abatifi, I saw the stool of my family and there was this, this sense of feeling as though he was still existing in this school as someone I looked up to. But I think what I also wanted to get across in that chapter is what it means when Africans talk about having this relationship with the living dead, believing in people continuing to live on and especially ancestors. So for example, I look at the Dagara of Ghana and they have practices when someone dies. They engage in all these rituals and practices that help them transition from the material world to the spiritual world. So for example, Sunnah, after a person's buried, they brew these two kinds of beer. And that means that people who'd gone before the living dead can take the person who's recently died into the spirit world, for instance. So wanting to get across the importance of that, actually just the importance of community in Africa and the fact that is so important that it doesn't only exist between people who are living in the material world, but actually it extends into the metaphysical. That's how important those relationships are and how important family is.
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Home Depot Announcer
I was also struck by your use of case studies of present day individuals, some of them famous, some of them not. Was that important for you in terms of blending the past and the present and to further extend this idea of things not being as straightforward or straightforwardly linear as we might think in the West?
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Snoop Dogg
Yes, that was probably the main reason I did it. You know, I think as well as when you're looking at Africa, trying to appreciate all these other bits of evidence from songs and stories, et cetera, it was also trying not to think of history as being this sensible, linear, logical progression from one event to the next in a neat line. Because, I mean, I think one of the reasons history has the word story in it is that when you're recounting what happens, the way in which human beings make sense of things is to put them in some kind of narrative, basically. But you can only do that when you're looking backwards. As history is kind of progressing, it's a lot messier. And you know, I wanted to, you know, especially in, in Africa, because a lot of African cultures have existed for so long, the way in which we remember the past, there's a lot less, I want to say, literal or empirical. And what I mean by that is that there's less of a focus on exact dates and things happening in exactly this order at exact time. And it's more about what particular events mean in the creation of the people or culture who still recount these activities. So for example, in Mali, you know, their cast of hereditary storytellers agree as. And these are the people who, you know, I talk about in the oral literature chapter. I mean, they recount epics of kings, some of whom lived, you know, almost a thousand years ago. And some of these epics, epics are so old, they were created just after the kings who they venerated die. And some of them are so old that some of the words are indecipherable, for example. So, I mean, let alone the dates or the events, etc. A lot of that kind of very specific information isn't known. But what is known are what the people did to help found or form the culture and also what they passed on to the people who are now telling the stories of these kings. And that's what's important. And you know, I just want to give people a sense of this fluidity of the African past. You know, there are, as I mentioned actually in the introduction, you know, there are a lot of practices, professions, etc, that start a long time ago and still exist today. But they exist almost in the same way, shape or form that they existed when they were created, then that could have been hundreds, it could have been thousands of years ago. So there is no clear distinction, especially in the cultures as old as Africa's between past and present. And I think to emphasize that I wanted to draw leaks and comparisons and also to put side by side events that people would think of as contemporary or as recent history versus those that occurred a long time ago. I mean, another great example is that or a literature chapter. For example, you know, the Greers, those cast of hereditary storytellers, you know, they still exist and they still tell stories. So I could be talking about them doing what they do, and it could be today or it could be 700 years ago. And also I think what they practice and how they practice and the purposes that it serves in society, there are forms that are a bit more recent, whether it's this literature form, storytelling, or literature which are considered more recent, for example, rap or certain kinds of music that are particular important to African cultures, which also serve the same purpose as something that the Greers were doing as well. So being able to tell the contemporary story and the pastor and comparing those can give people a sense of the deepness and the richness of those activities and of those forms and of the people who practice them. And also, like I say, demonstrate this fluidity and sort of break down a little bit that harsh distinction that we sometimes think of when we're talking about what happens today and also what happened historically.
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Luke Pepper
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- [17:42]
Home Depot Announcer
I wanted to pause a bit here and talk to you about some of these case studies because your section on rap battles is really interesting and a great example of connecting the past to the present. Tell us a bit more about the case study you use in the book and why it was so important to include it.
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Snoop Dogg
Yeah, so in that chapter, I begin by telling the story of what I described as the first modern rap battle. And this is in the early 1980s in Harlem and New York. And it is actually an impromptu rap battle between two MCs at the time, one who's called Cool Moody and another Busy Beastarski. And essentially there's a competition, a rap competition at Christmas at this club called the World, where all the rappers used to go to, all the MCs used to go to, and used to engage in competitions with each other. But, you know, early on, and especially in the early days of this club, these rap contests essentially consisted of several rappers going up onto the stage one after another and saying their rhymes over the same beat. And whoever the audience cheered the loudest for would win. And the rapper that I mentioned earlier, that second rapper I mentioned earlier, Busy B Starski, was a master at this. He was one of the best. And he was winning competitions all over the city. And he goes to this particular competition, it's actually 1981 at the World in Harlem. And, you know, he's doing his thing, he's rapping and he's. And he's bragging, etc, and someone in the crowd basically shouts that he couldn't beat. This other rapper, Kumoidu was recognized as being one of the best at the time, especially with his wordplay, whereas Busy kind of wasn't. He was more of like a party rapper. He could hype up the crowd, but his wordplay wasn't as good as what people felt at the time. So when this person says, you can't be Kumody, who's recognized as being the better rapper, Busy says, no, I can, etc. Etc. And then Kumadi gets annoyed, essentially, and challenges him to A battle gets up on stage of battles against him. And I mean, this is him directly. But that was, you know, the first time in that kind of context that that had sort of been done with him, dissing him. And it affected the way people battle now. It was less about, you know, you trying to say the same rhymes and get the crowd hyped up. And it was more about two rappers being, you know, on the same stage dissing each other, trying to say insults in the. In the most sort of lyrically impressive way. And then I was so keen to link that to these other kinds of riddling and word games that exist in Africa because actually a lot of them sort of served the same purpose. You know, they were about demonstrating your skills. And the same kinds skills were also appreciated. For example, being able to improvise, being able to use witty wordplay and witty insults. And even the formats were, you know, were exactly the same. There's actually an African American word game called the Dozens which a lot of people argue is the precursor sort of to the rap battle because its format is the same. You know, it's that one is a. Is a game played usually amongst male teenagers. It's again, people sort of say insults towards each other in front of an audience and the one the audience cheers the loudest for kind of win. So instead of rats or rhymes, it's insults. Although some of those insults can rhyme. And then, you know, I link it to a game in. In Nigeria, an older game in Nigeria and their children play, which is almost exactly the same as this doesn't. So there is almost a. It's obviously when you're trying to track cultural forms, it's hard to say exactly what came from what. But there is very much a relationship and also seemingly a progression between this game that's played in Nigeria and then the Dozens and then also what happens in America in the 80s. It's almost part of the same tale, it's part of the same tapestry as it were going all the way back. And I thought that was not only a way in which to tell in isolation stories that were interesting in of themselves, but also a way to kind of demonstrate the fluidity of a lot of African cultural forms and also their consistency as well. How can they exist consistently in time and in different times and also in different places? And I mean, that story was so fun to tell, but I was shocked looking at similarities between, let's say the rap battle through the dozens and then looking at this Nigerian word game and actually saying to myself, well, there is some Remarkable similarities here. You know, even if I can't say that one definitely evolved from the other, there is some kind of relationship here. So the Rabbats to me was the grandchild, as it were, of this game and even in of itself is so similar to all these other African riddling games. So I think wanting to draw those links and linkages as well, not just between different forms in different African cultures, but also the cultures themselves.
- [22:03]
Home Depot Announcer
One of the other case studies you mentioned in passing earlier was that that explores female led societies. What misunderstandings you think people in the west might have about female led societies in Africa and what other case studies do you use to tell a different story?
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Snoop Dogg
I mean, what's interesting is that when I first was writing about these female led societies and even when I was talking about them, I used to describe them as matriarchal. And the reason I changed that actually links to your question about what I think is one of the biggest preconceptions or prejudices or mistakes that especially, you know, people generally, but you know, these people that I've spoken to in the UK kind of have about these societies and that's that in a female led society, formerly called matriarchal, that basically they are ruled by women for women, as it were. So the entire structure of authority is basically, it's assumed with women and means that women are, quote unquote, the first class of citizens, whereas men are sort of pushed to the side and maligned. And I think that's because, especially in Western tradition, the idea of Amazonia and the Amazons and that kind of society where a female led society means complete emasculation is sort of in our heads. But what I discovered is that actually in the female led societies that you see in Africa, they tend to be quite egalitarian. And when I say female, I mean that ordinarily the supreme authority in that society is a woman. Even if, for instance, I mean there could still for instance, be a king or there could be a male cabinet, for instance. But in those societies, usually the supreme authority, the person who is the most respected and often has the most say in executive decision making is the woman. So one example, for instance, is again my own culture, specifically the sanity of Ghana, where the queen mother, the mother of the king is the most important person, but there is still a king. And you know, the queen mother has her own government and her own officials and her own court, legal court, and this mirrors perfectly the king's court. And usually issues or disputes are decided between them. But it is recognized that the Queen mother's most important person, you know, she sits behind the king, for example, when he's holding court, so that if there is a threat to her life, the king can step in to intercept it. She's the only one who can castigate the king or any of his ministers in public. She gives him advice and also she chooses as the next king as well. So she has, you know, a lot of executive power. She has her own government which is all female. But together they are not supremely powerful. They balance their power a little bit with men. And what's interesting is that I also found that this was the same thing with one of the other examples I use in the book, which is the ancient Nubians who exist from about 3000 BC to round about 350 AD and they have have three kingdoms throughout that time. But it's really in the last two kingdoms, which are roughly 800 B.C. to about 400 A.D. where women really take on this particularly important role. I mean, even that the first kingdom Karma, which existed from about 3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. there were women had important role as priestesses and they helped deepen the king's religious and political legitimacy by performing certain rituals that strengthened his relationship with the gods. But particularly from sort of 800 BC onwards, the mother of the king. So the Nubian queen mother became almost like the Ashanti queen mother. Basically she had an important part in the decision making process of the next king and whenever a new king was coronated as well, the new queen mother. So when another king was elected, then that person's mother played a really important part part in the coronation process too. But the Nubians sort of culturally believe that duality was really important for the proper functioning of things. So there had to be a balance between male and female especially. But you know, is that poor and rich, weak and strong, male and female, that you had to have duality in order for the proper functioning of things. So that is why even in their government, they wanted to maintain that balance by having as much as possible male and female actors with similar authority. But actually, even later on in Nubia's history, especially in that last kingdom, Meroe, which exists from about like say 300 BC to 315 AD Women in Nubia reached their greatest height and actually were ruling almost independently. Some were ruling with their sons, but others were ruling with their husbands. They are known as the Kandankes, I. E. The ruling supreme authority, queen mothers of Kush, essentially. But you know, even then, like I say, husbands still figured quite importantly and sons figured Quite importantly, even though the women were usually supreme authorities in the kingdom, and even when it came to the really important things like warfare, for example, there were some of these kandankas actually led the army to battle. So that maintenance of balance, I think actually in female led societies is always a feature. And that's what I find quite interesting. I think, I thought, thought that, you know, when I would dig a little bit into, because I know that, you know, women are generally important in African communities because at least traditionally, and that's because the community is really important and women are seen as being so important in the perpetuation of a community, essentially that they have this kind of deeper cultural significance. So that's why usually they've been important in a lot of the cultures. So I knew that that was the case and obviously knowing that in the Ashanti case, but I thought when I dug a little bit deeper, I would see a society ruled by, let's say, a supreme female authority and an all female government or court, and it would mean discrimination against men in some way, shape or form. But that on the whole doesn't seem to have been the case. And discrimination didn't really exist along those lines. There was always this balance, staying with.
- [27:46]
Home Depot Announcer
This idea of complexity and of nuance. There's a really interesting section of your book where you talk about terminology and about identity and about the ways in which people outside of Africa sometimes refer to African peoples unhelpfully using a single term or a single grouping. Can you talk us through those arguments and how you think we need to better describe these people and their history?
- [28:06]
Snoop Dogg
So I think in that particular chapter I was questioning our general perpetual use of the term black quote unquote to describe African peoples. And the reason I was questioning that is I knew and also episode could demonstrate and did demonstrate that there's just mind boggling diversity in Africa. And that is linguistic, cultural, racial and even skin color diversity. So using one term as a catch all for such a broad group of people, I argue is unhelpful. I try to put forward a theory as to why we use this term. How it comes about in early North America, where a new society is being formed by not only the travels and navigations of Europeans to America, but then also the burgeoning transatlantic slave trade and how the influx of people, the peoples from Africa and the relationship between those peoples and also the Europeans and also the Africans who would come and were free Africans originally, and some of whom were even African landowners. But then how this huge influx of enslaved Africans changes the Way in which Europeans relate. Relate to Africans more generally, which features become important and which fall by the wayside. You know, in a society that in the book East Virginia is a case study, and in early Virginia, the society was racially mixed in so many ways. You had Native Americans, you had Europeans from different places, and you also had Africans from a few different places as well. And Christianity was really the thing that people saw as the most important aspect of their identity. And that changes with the demographic shift shifts that come about in large part because of transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. But, you know, I wanted to show that that is something that is happening in that particular place and in that particular time. And, you know, maybe later on with the cultural and political and diplomatic dominance. United States, we've adopted a lot of times from there and a lot of the terminology from there in order to describe a lot of things, including Africans. But in Africa itself, there is this huge diversity. And a big reason for that, if not the reason for that, is it has to do with the fact that Africa has been the place that our ancestors, you know, the ancestors of Homo sapiens, have inhabited the longer. So there's been, across time, so much developing, migrating and mixing different peoples and cultures and behaviors and practices coming out of that, that just means that the diversity of peoples in Africa just increase exponentially. So I want to get that across. You know, for me, one of the things that is particularly striking, I think the more that you learn about Africa and history, and I think is also particularly striking because it contrasts quite starkly with our understanding of Africa. I think Africa's history today, maybe. I think we think of Africa as being a place that generally had very little global significance until it was brought into the global fold or connected to a lot of other parts of the world through Europe. I think that's sort of our perception. And one of the things that I. I knew and actually had a lot of fun bringing out and was really, really keen to. To share with people is, you know, the fact that Africa's been globally important for several thousand years. And that's not even talking about some of the human origin stuff, stuff fact that our species originated that, etc, but that a lot of the natural resources that helped in the formation, for example, of other people's cultures came from Africa. So, for instance, I talk about the medieval Indian Ocean trade. And as part of that, I talk about how East Africans, who knows now is the Swahilia shipping tons of ivory, for instance, to India and China. And in China, the ivory is being use for palanquins amongst the nobility. And there's a source that says that it's actually disgraceful to go into the royal presence in an iron palanquin. You know, you have to use the ivory one. And also that same ivory is being used for chess pieces in India and then also for the hilts of special daggers and swords. And, you know, it's actually affecting attitudes towards wealth and class and social stratification in these societies. And whether that. I mean, it wouldn't have happened the same way and it wouldn't have been those particular items. And it's interesting that it's an African item that becomes particularly important in that context and is affecting the culture of those societies. And, you know, could have been there might have been something else if not for ivory from Africa, that would have been used in a similar way and would have been considered with as much importance. But I find it interesting that actually, because the society is ex exists, those trade relationships exists, you know, the people who procure the ivory exist, the people who can trade it exists, you know, that it does become that item that is probably the most important, if not one of the most important things in that culture. And also the strong relationships that a lot of African societies have with so many other places. Again, talking about that trade from, you know, from what I understand, that was in the early 15th century, the emperor of China receives a giraffe that he knew who came from Kenya. He's actually gifted it by the sultan of Bengal. Really, he receives one from Kenya. So he knows that. And when he gets it, his advisors say it's a mythical creature which is auspicious mythical creature, which is a sign of his greatness and benevolence, et cetera, and he's keen for more of these. But actually, at the same time, or soon after he receives it, there were also diplomats from East Africa who managed to make their way to China. And I mean, this is all happening before some of the very first expeditions of, for instance, the Portuguese into West Africa. So, you know, Africans are in China before Europeans are in Africa. And so when you're thinking about global reach, global impact, global importance, the more you dig into history, the more Africa figures. But again, talking about that warped understanding of its past, we. We sort of think of it as only being important to world affairs and to global affairs from the 17th, 18th century onwards.
- [34:11]
Home Depot Announcer
So having sketched some of these histories and told some of these stories, how do you think we should put right this distortion, this out of balanceness of the emphasis that we place on slavery, on racism, and on the transatlantic slave trade. How should we best conceptualize those things within this wider story?
- [34:26]
Snoop Dogg
I definitely don't want to, you know, downplay those events. They explain a large part why, I mean, a lot of the world is the way it is today, and especially Africa. I think we need to go into the history, and especially the history of African peoples. I think without prejudice. I think there is a tendency just to assume that the African is the victim. And a lot of. Especially in a lot of historical. Actually just in history, generally, to take what happened in the last 300 years and project that backwards. So, for instance, because, let's say anti African sentiment or anti African racism becomes more of a feature of. Of European society, say, and also American society in the 18th and 19th, particularly the 19th century, we think of that as having always been the attitudes of Europeans towards Africans. And we project that backwards in time, saying, actually, if we see someone in Africa in the 14th century, etc, we assume that they would have been treated in exactly the same way certain Africans would have been treated in certain countries, the context of the 19th century. And that means that then we feel a lot less willing to one question it, which then leads us to digging deeper into that history, drawing out other stories, and then, I mean, getting at the truth. I mean, I wouldn't even say it's an alternative view of history. I think that is just the truth of what was happening at that time. I think it begins with understanding that African history is incredibly deep. And that these last few years are. Are we focus on them. So they have a kind of outsized importance in the history of African peoples. But I think first understanding that it is deep and that actually there's so much material beyond that would make us more willing in order to dig out some of that material. And also not to project our perceptions based upon those last 300 years of history even further back. And I think also to explore and also to take a risk on material and on stories that look at that deeper history as well. And I think that can be sometimes particularly difficult for us in the UK because I think where Britain is concerned, what I find interesting is that especially beginning with the transatlantic slave trade, that's most actually European history. And when you're thinking about it from an African context, it's really West African history. It's not actually the history for the most part of the entire continent, it concerns the kingdoms and states of West Africa. And then it concerns Europe, for instance, and also part of the Americas too, because at the same time that's going on, you know, there are different things and there are different concerns that are affecting East Africa and different concerns that are affecting South Africa and slightly different concerns that are affecting North Africa. Again, we think of those as being as that history in particular. And it's sort of similar thing with, you know, colonialism. They affect, you know, some places a lot more than others, but we think of them as defining the entire continent, which I think is also so another thing that we need to look at, I think we need to consider the agency of African peoples and also consider the individual experiences of African cultures or at least the regions. If it is difficult and it can be difficult to look obviously at individual peoples or individual countries.
- [37:32]
Matt Elton
That was Luke Pepperer, Motherland 500,000 years of African History, Culture and Identity is out now, now published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.
- [37:52]
Podcast Host
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