There is not a Negro from the coast of Africa who does not possess a degree of magnanimity,

which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving.

Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind than when she subjected those

nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the

virtues neither of the countries which they come from nor of those which they go to, and whose

levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the contempt of the

vanquished.

Adam Smith, theory of moral sentiments.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Thank you. to the history of the 20th century. Episode 189,

1999, Africa, Part 1.

Today is the 14th episode in our 1919 world tour, and I want to take this episode to consider the continent of Africa.

We have talked about Africa before, particularly South Africa during the Boer War, King Leopold and the Congo, the German colonies during the Great War,

French intervention in Morocco and Tunisia, and the Italian wars in Ethiopia and Libya.

You might accuse this podcast of only taking an interest in Africa when European soldiers turn up there.

That's a fair observation and fairly

typical of Western histories, although I did try to spend some time discussing the histories and

cultures of each of those places before the Europeans turned up, so you have to give me that

much. But today I want to talk about Africa as a whole and its place in the world in 1919.

To begin with, Africa is a European construct.

The ancient Greeks and Romans divided their Mediterranean-centered world into Europe, Africa, and Asia,

and the Western mind has persisted in dividing up the Earth's largest landmass into these three, more or less arbitrary regions.

...