polska: African historiography

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

African historiography is a branch of historiography involving the study of the theories, methods, sources, and interpretations used by scholars to construct histories of Africa. Most African societies recorded their history via oral tradition, resulting in a lack of written records documenting events before European colonialism. African historiography has therefore lent itself to contemporary methods of historiographical study, the utilisation of oral sources, and the incorporation of evidence derived from various auxiliary disciplines, differentiating it from other continental areas of historiography due to its multidisciplinary nature. Oral historians utilised various sources from their…

Evidence: 54 • authority: 72

Anti-African sentiment, Afroscepticism, or Afrophobia is prejudice, discrimination, or racism towards people and cultures of Africa and of the African diaspora. Prejudice against Africans and people of African descent has a long history, dating back to ancient history, although it was especially prominent during the Atlantic slave trade, the trans-Saharan slave trade, the Indian Ocean slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade, and the colonial period. Under the pretence of white supremacism, Africans were often portrayed by Europeans as uncivilised and primitive, with colonial conquest branded civilising missions. Due to the use of oral tradition, and subsequent lack of written histories in most…

Evidence: 48 • authority: 72

Archaic humans emerged out of Africa between 0.5 and 1.8 million years ago. This was followed by the emergence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in East Africa around 300,000–250,000 years ago who spread across the world. The oral word is revered in most African cultures, and history has predominantly been passed down through oral tradition. In the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE Ancient Egypt and Kerma arose in the northeast, while the Tichitt Tradition flourished in West Africa. Between around 3000 BCE and 500 CE, the Bantu expansion swept from north-western Central Africa (modern day Cameroon) across much of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, displacing or absorbing groups such as the Khoisa…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 80

Cattle as Subjects, and a Brief History of Cattle before Southern African Colonialism

Evidence: 36 • authority: 92

Reimagining Identity in Postcolonial East African Literature: A Comparative Analysis of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Abdulrazak Gurnah.. This essay compares how Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Abdulrazak Gurnah, two leading East African writers, represent postcolonial identity and historical trauma through fiction. The comparison is justified by both authors' shared East African context and their divergent responses to colonialism: Ngugi embraces radical language politics, writing in Gikuyu as an act of decolonisation and foregrounding collective cultural reclamation, while Gurnah employs narrative ambiguity, exile experience, and linguistic hybridity to explore individual psychological complexity. These co…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 92

The history of occupational health on the African continent.. Background The history of occupational health on the African continent is important but under-studied. Methods We surveyed key resources related to medical history from the Ancient Egypt through the Ottoman Empire period. For the colonial era, we examined archival records, official reports, and historiographical studies, focusing on key cases from French North Africa, Belgian Congo, Italian East Africa, and British South Africa. To explore occupational health in Africa during the post-colonial period, we supplemented biomedical publications with data from governmental reports and policy documents. Results The history of occupatio…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 80

Introduction: Money, Colonialism and African Societies

Evidence: 36 • authority: 72

Western European colonialism and colonization was the Western European policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over other societies and territories, exterminating the natives and populating it with Europeans, and exploiting the natives and natural resources. For example, colonial policies, such as the type of rule implemented, the nature of investments, and identity of the colonizers, are cited as impacting postcolonial states. Examination of the state-building process, economic development, and cultural norms and mores shows the direct and indirect consequences of colonialism on the postcolonial states. It has been estimated that Britain and France traced almost 5…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 72

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles), including adjacent islands, it covers around 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area. With nearly 1.4 billion of the world's population, Africa's population is the youngest among the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to various factors including geography…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings", from the 14th century AD. Another well-known book is the Garima Gospels, one of the oldest known surviving bibles in the world, written in Ge'ez around 500 AD. A common theme during the colonial period is the slave narrative, often written in English or French for Western audiences. Among the first pieces of African literature to receive significant worldwide critical acclaim was Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, publi…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used varying descriptions for oral literature or folk literature. A broad conceptualization refers to it as literature characterized by oral transmission and the absence of any fixed form. It includes the stories, legends, and history passed through generations in a spoken form.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Word of mouth is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a story about a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and traditions transmitted by word of mouth through successive generations. Storytelling and oral tradition are forms of word of mouth that play important roles in folklore and mythology. Another example of oral communication is oral history—the recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the…