Why are certain European languages so often spoken in Africa? (Answer: History)

“A Declaration introducing into international relations certain uniform rules with reference to future occupations on the coast of the African Continent. And deeming it expedient that all these several documents should be combined in one single instrument, they (the Signatory Powers) have collected them into one General Act, composed of the following Articles …”

– “General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa” (26 February 1885) – an agreement among some of the European powers

Many of the contemporary languages of Africa came to the continent from elsewhere …

Many of the contemporary languages of Africa came to the continent from elsewhere. Even the Arabic language arrived from the Middle East, although this was fairly early in (North) African history. Arabic is the dominant language of Muslim North Africa today, as you may know. In fact, Arabic is the most spoken language in Africa today. But many other languages on the African continent arrived from Europe, during the “Scramble for Africa” – which was mostly during the nineteenth century. Thus, the languages of English, French, and Portuguese are among the most spoken languages on this continent. To a lesser degree, Spanish is also spoken in certain parts of Africa, and has a presence there. This would surprise many, because we expect Africans to speak various languages that are native to the continent (such as Swahili – or “Kiswahili,” as it is sometimes called). And, very often, they do speak native African languages. But the European languages also have a strong presence in Africa, which is a legacy of the past colonization there. How did all of this happen, you might be wondering? That is what this post will be undertaking to explain. I have discussed other African colonies from Germany and Italy in another post, and their various effects on the World Wars (more about that here). Thus, I will not attempt to duplicate much of that coverage here. Rather, I will instead focus this post on the bigger colonization by Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal – some of which were very influential, as I will show later on. I will also throw in a number of country names – and, at times, dates. But it is not expected that the reader will remember any of these details. Rather, I just hope that I will convey the feeling of how complicated these geopolitics were, and answer a possible reader’s question about how these European languages came to be in Africa. This came in the context of European colonization elsewhere in the world.

Front view of fort São João Baptista – Portuguese Benin, 1917

Forgotten battlegrounds of the World Wars: Africa, the Middle East, and Italy

“♪ We’re the D-Day Dodgers, out in Italy,

Always on the vino, always on the spree.

Eighth Army skivers and their tanks,

We go to war in ties like swanks.

For we’re the D-Day Dodgers,

In sunny Italy. ♪

♪ We landed at Salerno, a holiday with pay.

Jerry brought his bands out to cheer us on the way,

Showed us the sights and gave us tea,

We all sang songs, the beer was free.

For we’re the D-Day Dodgers,

The lads that D-Day dodged. ♪

♪ Palermo and Cassino were taken in our stride,

We didn’t go to fight there, we just went for the ride.

Anzio and Sangro are just names,

We only went to look for dames,

For we’re the D-Day Dodgers,

In sunny Italy. ♪”

– “D-Day Dodgers” (1944), to the tune of “Lili Marleen” (written in 1915, but not published until 1937) – a tongue-in-cheek Canadian song about the forgotten (and then-ongoing) campaigns in Italy

How the war against Nazi Germany began long before the 1944 invasion of France …

The war against Nazi Germany began long before the 1944 invasion of France. Listening to some popular histories of World War II, you might be tempted to suppose that the war began when the Allies launched their invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. But, in fact, the war began long before the famous battles fought on this great “D-Day.” This post will focus on some of the other aspects of the war against Nazi Germany, giving details on times and places that are often ignored elsewhere. To some degree, I myself have ignored them elsewhere on this blog, because I review various documentaries with more traditional focuses. Thus, I will try to address these deficiencies in this blog post, and tell a story that has sometimes been neglected – including, to some degree, by myself.

British artillery in Kamerun, Africa, 1915 (during the First World War)

Reflections on the proper role of self-education

“Never let your schooling interfere with your education.”

– Possibly a paraphrase of author Grant Allen, although it is often misattributed to Mark Twain

Not all learning is done in a classroom …

One of the saddest things I’ve seen is when people have no curiosity. They may suppose that they’ve learned everything that they need to know, and that they don’t need to learn any more. I don’t think that everyone needs to keep reading textbooks (although I like to do this myself), but I think that people should continue to learn long after they leave school. Fortunately, not all learning is done in a classroom – many life experiences can be educational in some way. You can learn some things in the real world that you would never learn in a classroom. And you can keep reading and keep thinking, and be open to what life has to teach you.

Me when I graduated from Yavapai College, which is now my employer

Some thoughts on Thomas More’s “Utopia”

Note: By writing the work “Utopia,” Thomas More created a new literary genre: utopian and dystopian fiction. This genre is still popular today.

During the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More wrote a satirical book called “Utopia”

In the year 1516, Sir Thomas More published a book in Latin which has since become famous. He titled his book “Utopia,” and this word is now used as a popular word for idyllic and perfect places. But people have long debated about the extent to which More believed that this kind of society could actually exist. That is to say, people debate about whether the work is satirical or not. It is one of the most influential “utopias” ever to appear in fiction, and some attempts at real-life utopias have been modeled on the state that he presents therein. Some would argue that this is the first utopia ever to appear in a work presented as “fiction,” although Plato’s “Republic” offers the first utopia in a work presented as “non-fiction.” Interestingly, there are explicit mentions of Plato’s “Republic” in Thomas More’s “Utopia” – more than one of them, in fact.

Sir Thomas More, the author of “Utopia”

“Utopia” has two possible meanings in Ancient Greek: “happy place” and “no place”

But did Sir Thomas More really believe that this “ideal state” could exist in reality? There are a number of arguments on both sides of this issue. On the one side, for example, a website referenced by Wikipedia quotes More as saying that “Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie.” (see source) “Eutopie” is an interesting spelling to me, because it turns out that the Ancient Greek word εὐτόπος (rendered as “eutopos” or “eutopia”) literally translates to “good place.” But some have wondered whether More actually intended a second meaning for this word, possibly in addition to the other meaning that I have already mentioned. This is because an alternative origin of the word in Ancient Greek would be οὐτόπος (rendered as “outopos” or “outopia”), a word that literally translates to “no place” – possibly implying that this kind of “good place” could not exist in reality.

Illustration for the 1516 first edition of “Utopia”

A review of “Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’” (BBC)

Warning: This blog post contains some disturbing pictures, which I simply cannot omit.

By far the most infamous episode of the twentieth century …

The Holocaust is, by far, the most infamous episode of the twentieth century. It was a crucible for Jewish history, claiming the lives of six million Jews in all. But when you add in the other victims of the Holocaust, the death toll goes up even further to ten million. The other victims include Poles, homosexuals, the Romani people, and anyone else that the Nazis disliked. Both numbers are so large as to seem incomprehensible, but they come from the figures of the Nazis themselves. Indeed, the Nazis seemed almost to be proud of the enormity of these numbers. Anti-Semitism, of course, has roots going back far before the twentieth century, and so do pogroms and other violence against Jews. But the Nazi manifestation of it is the most infamous example of this phenomenon, and it is the most widely-known (and widely-condemned) genocide in history. Sadly, there have been other genocides as well, but it would be beyond the scope of this blog post to attempt to list them here. Suffice it to say that the Holocaust is still an important topic, and that the BBC was right to cover it in this series.

An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp, 1944

There were several Nazi concentration camps, of which Auschwitz was the biggest

The series is usually called “Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution.’” This is because the Nazis chillingly referred to this genocide as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” But this documentary has also been titled “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State.” It is six episodes long, and may be the most in-depth documentary on this tragic episode. You might already know that there were many Nazi concentration camps, of which Auschwitz was the biggest. This series is focused specifically on Auschwitz, mentioning other camps (such as Treblinka) only as context for what happened at Auschwitz. Nonetheless, one could see Auschwitz as the Holocaust in microcosm, even though it was a disproportionately large number of the deaths. In the Nuremberg trials, the longest-reigning commandant of Auschwitz (Rudolf Höss) was accused of murdering three and a half million people. He replied: “No. Only two and one half million—the rest died from disease and starvation.” This confession, along with the callous (and flippant) way in which it was delivered, led to his later execution in 1947 – one of the healing positives of the Nuremberg verdicts. But that’s a subject for another post. Here, let me dive into the story of the Holocaust itself, and how this disturbing episode began.

Blackstone condemned the execution of Algernon Sidney for high treason

“Treason, proditio, in its very name (which is borrowed from the French) imports a betraying, treachery, or breach of faith. It therefore happens only between allies, faith the mirror [footnote] : for treason is indeed a general appellation, made use of by the law, to denote not only offences against the king and government, but also that accumulation of guilt which arises whenever a superior reposes a confidence in a subject or inferior, between whom and himself there subsists a natural, a civil, or even a spiritual relation ; and inferior so abuses that confidence, so forgets the obligations of duty, subjection, and allegiance, as to destroy the life of any such his superior or lord.”

– Sir William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1769), Book 4, Chapter 6

Algernon Sidney

Algernon Sidney was executed some four decades before Sir William Blackstone was born

Algernon Sidney was executed some four decades before Sir William Blackstone was born. Specifically, our subject Algernon Sidney was executed in 1683, and Sir William Blackstone would not be born until 1723. (But I’m getting ahead of myself here.) Blackstone was in his forties when he wrote his “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” This was a four-volume work, which gave a general overview of its chosen subject. Its fourth and final volume was published in the year 1769. This is the volume that I will be quoting from here. (Incidentally, all quotations from Blackstone’s “Commentaries” in this particular blog post will be from Book 4, Chapter 6 – a chapter entitled “Of High Treason.”)

Statue of Sir William Blackstone

Algernon Sidney influenced the U. S. Declaration of Independence

“This book contains all the malice, and revenge, and treason, that mankind can be guilty of: It fixes the sole power in the parliament and the people … The king, it says, is responsible to them, the king is but their trustee; that he had betrayed his trust, he had misgoverned, and now he is to give it up, that they may be all kings themselves. Gentlemen, I must tell you, I think I ought more than ordinarily to press this upon you, because I know, the misfortune of the late unhappy rebellion, and the bringing the late blessed king to the scaffold, was first begun by such kind of principles …”

– Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, in the trial of Algernon Sidney (1683) – explaining the reasons for his decision to have Sidney executed for high treason at that time

Algernon Sidney

Algernon Sidney was executed by the English government in 1683 for writing a book

Algernon Sidney was executed by the English government in 1683 for writing a book. Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys convicted him of high treason for writing these “Discourses Concerning Government.” (See the quotation at the beginning of this blog post, to hear Justice Jeffreys’ account of why he did so.) But others would later sing the praises of this book. One writer would call it “the textbook of the American Revolution.” Some referred to Algernon Sidney as “Sidney the Martyr,” because he paid for that book with his life. And, most prominently, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both fans of this book. Thomas Jefferson said that it was “probably the best elementary book of the principles of government, as founded in natural right, which has ever been published in any language.” (See the citation for this praise later on in this post.) I have not yet read this book, but I might like to do so at some point, after hearing the praise from these two men. In this post, I will examine Sidney’s influence upon John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I will also try to show Sidney’s influence upon the Declaration of Independence.

Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys, who had Algernon Sidney executed for treason