Short Essay One

When addressing the concept of how European images of Africans evolved over time, it must be appreciated than one can, at most, speak only of general social trends. That is to say, that for every set of arguments and supporting examples put forth, there will be a set of counter arguments and corresponding examples that can be found. Here, the trend under consideration is the evolution of the European image of the African as it occurred in Mediterranean Europe and how this contrasts with the same process as it occurred in Atlantic Europe.

To the European mind, the African has always been representative of “the other”, but this concept of “otherness” played out differently in the Mediterranean and Atlantic European cultures. However, in both of these settings the evolution of the image of the African was closely tied to two factors -the nature of the economic relationship between Africans and the European power in question, and the availability and legitimacy of pathways for cultural assimilation available to Africans living in a given European state.

            Although the presence of Africans in Europe dates to the Roman times, it is the Iberian and Italian spheres that seem to have had the earliest sustained and most developed relationship with Africa. This is not to say that there was no African presence in Northern Europe during the early Middle Ages, but it does suggest that the states of the Mediterranean sphere did have more experience at creating social mechanisms to deal with large numbers of Africans in their societies. There is evidence of a significant presence of Africans in the retinues of Italian nobility from at least the Twelfth Century onward[i]. This shows that, from a very early stage, there was some sort of European awareness of Africans and, presumably, African culture. It is interesting to note that these earliest representations of Africans were associated with the elite strata of society and were meant to serve a political purpose, which may be to reinforce the notion of the universal power of the Hohenstaufen kings[ii]. This sort of cultural interaction can be viewed as a form of propaganda and, as such, represents a social novelty as opposed to a true social trend. Still, it does indicate that there was a European awareness and interest in Africa that dates back to the time of the Crusades.

            Although the earliest records of Africans in Europe are found in the Italian realm, it is the Iberians who pioneered the first widespread commercial relationships with the kingdoms of Africa. While the Italians were seeking trading partners from Asia, the Spanish and the Portuguese were developing trade along the coasts of Africa. It is from this emergence of trading relationships that two distinct ideas about Africans emerged in the Iberian mind. This first idea was that there was a class of African that could be considered to be a kind of nobility, and with whom diplomatic and commercial relationships could be established[iii]. Secondly, was the idea that Africans could be used as a ready source of labor, that is to say African slaves could be put to work in domestic and agricultural settings as well as mines and plantations[iv]. This is in stark contrast to the earlier Italian idea of the African slave as a political or military retainer. Diplomatic, and religious endeavors proved to be difficult, costly and mostly unsuccessful (from the Iberian point of view), and the Iberian focus of political interest eventually shifted to Asia[v] even as commercial contacts with Africa remained strong. Thus, with the eventual extinction of the view of Africans as possessing something akin to cultural parity, the dominant Iberian view came to be one of Africans as slaves or to be more blunt, Africans as inherently inferior.

            During this period, the social landscape of the Iberian Peninsula was not static. As commercial contact with Africa increased, the number of Africans in Spain and Portugal also increased, until large numbers of African slaves became a large part of the “general population”[vi]. One of the interesting things about the Iberian society at this time is that it developed widespread and effective ways to assimilate Africans. By adopting the cultural and religious norms of the host society, Africans were able to become good subjects of the crown and church. It must here be noted that such mechanisms for assimilation cannot in truly be viewed as an acceptance of the African identity since the whole point of assimilation was to make Africans into Europeans, not to accept Africans as African[vii]. Thus the Mediterranean and, more specifically, the Iberian view of Africans can be seen as a kind of evolutionary contest of ideas wherein, when political and diplomatic concerns were at the forefront, deference was paid early on to the culture of Africans. Yet when commercial relationships, specifically the trade in slaves, became the ascendant dynamic between the Iberian world and Africa, deference to African culture was no longer necessary and African identity became a negative thing that the Iberian world sought to assimilate away.

            By the time that the Atlantic powers, most notably England, began their ascent to eventual European dominance, the idea of Africans as a commodity like gold or ivory had been firmly established. Even before this point, English audiences were treated to lurid accounts of Africa as being populated by cannibalistic, deformed, and repellent peoples, which likely served to reinforce the notions that Africans were certainly inferior and possibly not quite human[viii]. Thus, the evolutionary trajectory from African as exotic novelty to African as inferior being was significantly shorter.

            From the start, it seems that English society had little incentive to create paths for assimilation or even to show deference to cultures that English missions to Africa encountered[ix]. It must also be noted that the English economy was very different from the Spanish and Portuguese economies of the time, the former based primarily upon trade (and piracy) and the latter highly agricultural with an additional emphasis on mineral extraction. This difference in the economic base of the states in question was likely influential in determining the labor needs of the respective powers. Simply put, the Spanish needed African slaves for labor, while the English only saw African slaves as one more commodity to be traded[x]. As can be expected in any society that has the luxury to disengage from distasteful economic practices with only a modicum of financial loss, there was a segment of English society that sought to abolish the trade in slaves[xi]. Not surprisingly, such calls for the restriction of the slave trade went largely unheeded as commercial concerns won out.

            Although there are examples of Africans successfully entering into English society, such as the case of Olaudah Equaino, the far more prevalent view was that Africans were “naturally inferior” and that it was neither desirable nor possible for them to assimilate into English society [xii]. This is not to say, however, that the English were opposed to dealing with Africans, and there are many records that illustrate how English pragmatism overcame English prejudice when the situation dictated. For example, Hakluyt proposed creating an outpost on the Straight of Magellan which would be manned by Africans in service to the crown and would exist for the sole purpose of restricting passage for all non-English ships[xiii]. This rather novel use of Africans as pawns in a trade war shows just how morally flexible the English could be in their views of Africans. None of this is to suggest, however, that there were English notions of cultural parity that were in play, instead, this is more accurately viewed as an example of arrogantly naïve English self interest.

The student of history must recognize that the preceding paragraphs are only representative of the initial arc of English sentiment, and that in the years after 1600, when the English would begin to engage in plantation based agriculture on a large scale, their views of African inferiority and non-assimability would create a model of dehumanization and exploitation that would rival the worst of the Iberian New World excesses.

            Like the Mediterranean World, the arc of evolution in the Atlantic world was driven by practical considerations of politics and economy. However, unlike the Mediterranean world, the Atlantic world of 1400-1600, had no widespread history of Africans as royal elites, no need of deep diplomatic relations with African powers, and no overriding economic need for inexpensive and disposable labor. Therefore the Mediterranean world was forced to deal far more directly with questions posed by the presence of Africans than the Atlantic world did. Although neither segment of European society viewed the African identity as desirable or with anything approaching equality, the Mediterranean world, and specifically the Iberian sphere did create methods to assimilate Africans that the Atlantic world did not have.

           

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[i] Kaplan, Paul H. D.. "Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Iconography." Gesta 1, no. 26 (1987): 29.

[ii] Kaplan, 30.

[iii] Elbl, Ivana. "Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521." Journal of World History 2, no. 3 (1992): 197-198.

[iv] Rodney, Walter. "Africa in Europe and the Americas." Cambridge Histories Online no. 4 (2008): 5. The plantations in question here are not the large operations that would become synonymous with New World slavery, but rather smaller sugar plantations in the Mediterranean and along the African coast. The important fact is that this still represents a shift to menial and expendable labor.

[v] Elbl, 204.

[vi] Clayton, Lawrence. "Bartolome' de las Casas and the African Slave Trade." History Compass 7 no. 6 (2009): 2.

[vii] Ivory, Annette. "Juan Latino: The Struggle of Blacks, Jews, and Moors in Golden Age Spain." Hispania 4, no. 62 (1979):214. “…the Spaniards delighted in negating the customs of their Black immigrants…”

[viii] Vaughan, Alden T., Vaughn, Virginia M.. "Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans." The William and Mary Quarterly Third Series, 1, no. 54 (1997):23-24. See also the Vaughans’ relation of an early description of Ethiopians as one legged creatures with a giant foot, 22.

[ix] Vaughan, 25.

[x] Guasco, Michael. ""Free from the tyrannous Spanyard'? Englishmen and Africans in Spain's Atlantic World." Slavery and Abolition 29 no. 1 (2008): 3.

[xi] Guasco, 5.

[xii] Vaughan, 21.

[xiii] Gausco, 1.

Bibliography

Clayton, Lawrence. "Bartolome' de las Casas and the African Slave Trade." History Compass 7 no. 6 (2009):

Elbl, Ivana. "Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521." Journal of World History 2, no. 3 (1992): 165-204. Jstor. [Database online.] 15/07/2010.

Guasco, Michael. ""Free from the tyrannous Spanyard'? Englishmen and Africans in Spain's Atlantic World." Slavery and Abolition 29 no. 1 (2008): 1-22.

Ivory, Annette. "Juan Latino: The Struggle of Blacks, Jews, and Moors in Golden Age Spain." Hispania 4, no. 62 (1979): 613-618. Jstor. [Database online.] 16/07/2010.

Kaplan, Paul H. D.. "Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Iconography." Gesta 1, no. 26 (1987): 29-36. Jstor. [Database online.] 15/07/2010.

Rodney, Walter. "Africa in Europe and the Americas." Cambridge Histories Online no. 4 (2008): 578-622. Cambridge University Press.

Vaughan, Alden T., Vaughn, Virginia M.. "Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans." The William and Mary Quarterly Third Series, 1, no. 54 (1997): 19-44. Jstor. [Database online.] 16/07/2010.