Myriah Pair
Chapter 5 Summary
Mr. Burton
9/26/2014
Africans Engage the West
During this period it covered in this thing call the volume. The volume sandwiched between two giant and frequently-told stories of the African past. Which was the era of the Atlantic slave trade and the coming of the European colonial rule. In fact, it was always argued that during the periods of 1750 and 1875 the African history couldn’t be easily discussed without them acknowledging the ongoing operation and the impact of transoceanic slave trades and the imminence of colonial invasion. It was different reasons that the volume 1 and 3 of the series focus on the themes. Also, in chapter 5 the Africans engage to the west covered in this volume between two giant and frequently-told stories of the African past. The central theme in this story is cosmopolitanism of African societies, and the ways in which their social, economic, and travelers to live together. Al-Jabarti then moved on to explain French politics, and particularly the ethos and structure of revolutionary France. Al-Jabarti noted that his rule was not actually always obeyed in operation.
The volume focuses on the less well-known story of Africans innovations, creativity, and adaptions to change in their local and global environments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However the central theme in this story is the cosmopolitanism of African societies, and the way in which their social, economic, political, and cultural adaptability made possible rich existences and opportunities for locals, migrants, transients, and travelers to live together. The set for locals, migrants, transients, and travelers to live together. The cosmopolitan lifestyles wasn’t always harmonious, entirely equalitarian, or completely ecumenical. It was one factor that explains the abilities of Africans in this period to survive and often thrive in an era `of industrial capitalism, religious change, and intercontinental empires. From the understanding of others the horrors of colonialism, we sometimes adopt a certain disdain for those early nineteenth-century Africans who took a middleman position between Europe and Africa and indeed often exhorted Africans to become more like Europeans. The African intellectuals were in fact often patriots of their own people as well. The precursors to the pan-Africanists and African nationalists who resisted and eventually brought about the downfall of the colonial system.
One important set of cosmopolitan African writes in the early nineteenth century were Egyptian intellectuals, a number of those who travelled to Europe or encountered Europeans with Egypt. The writing were sometimes colored by the ambivalence created by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in the 1798 and Egyptian participation in the Anglo-French conflict on their own soil. Many of the Egyptian thinkers however came out of the conflict with a recognition of the need to modernize in order to resist future invasions, an impetus that culminated in Muhammad Ali’s reforms of the 1820s and the 1830s. They also understood that to make this happen they would need in part to emulate or at least learn from European science, technology and perhaps humanities. The invasion in some cases prompted a deep distrust of Europeans and empowered conservatives who felt that their role was to safeguard Islamic and Egyptian values. One of the loose groups of African intellectuals with whom with Horton interacted was the English-and Akan-speaking community of ‘self-made” men who organized much of the commerce that ran through the ports of Anomabu, cape coast, Elmina, and Saltpond south of the Asante state. Most of the coastal Akan-speaking communities now saw themselves as having a distinct identity, which they called Fante, and saw Asante as a great threat to their independence. These communities gradually chose to