Notes on: Civilization - is the West History?

presented by Prof. Niall Ferguson - Channel4 - March 2010

Introduction: when I watched this programme for the first time, I was amazed by the wealth of
information in it. I am very interested in medicine but I don't think I can recall my History lessons
in France telling me about Blaise Diagne and the Hereros. After hearing about them, I don't think I
can allow myself to forget their stories. Last year, the zebras54 website reported on Darwin and
pseudo-science perverting the evolution of the species - I vaguely remember Eugen Fischer and his
pseudo-theories but I never knew the link him and Francis Galton had with Namibia. I also wish,
that my history courses in France would have told me about the Tirailleurs and the French Health
service because nowadays, many of us support the concept of Medecins Sans Frontieres and
Development Aid.
I have been critical of Professor Niall Ferguson in the past for trying to cram in too much in an hour
and joining the dot, even though this programme is not perfect, I would recommend anyone
interested in medicine to look up this programme and watch it again and again.

So when the programme finished, I picked up my notebook, a blue pen and switched to Channel4
+1 and took note as I saw the programme again. What I am presenting here is not a literal transcript
of the programme but a summary of it and I focussed on taking down all the names mentioned in
the programme.

Gandhi, once said that Western Civilization was a contradiction in terms. At the beginning of the
20th C, Western powers were criticized by nationalists and socialists alike because of their colonial
policies. It was in Africa that Western medicine found its breakthrough, and there also where a
pseudo-science developed, the latter led to concentration camps, genocide and Western science
being discredited.

In 1848, France had a revolutionary government. In its African outpost, along the Senegalese coast,
Slavery had been abolished but citizens had not been equal in freedom. The 1848 decree declared
that every French citizen was free. This mean that 2,000 former African slaves were granted French
citizenship and able to vote. The regional assembly in French Africa meat in Saint-Louis. This was
part of a policy of assimilating Africans into French culture. Louis Faidherbe, French governor of
Senegal married a local girl and also set up an army of Africans called Tirailleurs. In 1914, Blaise
Diagnel from the town of Goree, which had been a prominent slave market town, became the first
black African to be elected MP at the French National Assembly - the grandson of a slave had
become a lawmaker for France.

Niall Ferguson points out that these democratic achievements in the French African colonies meant
nothing if they were not accompanied by the right to live. Disease meant that Africans had brief and
unproductive lives and that many places in the inland were inhabitable. For example, 80% of the
British people sent to Africa died - 'Mosquito or Man'.

Nowadays, many of us hold Western Aid as a good force at work: vast sums of money are spent to
improve the healthcare of Africans. Since 1968, the child-mortality rate in Senegal fell by two-
thirds while life-expectancy grew from 40 to 55. Medicine has the power to improve life. The
process of Western Aid began during the colonial era. Ruling lands meant to also conquer disease
such as yellow fever, cholera, dysentery, tetanus... In 1896, researchers founded the first
bacteriological laboratory in Saint-Louis and it is there that the first vaccine against yellow fever
was discovered.

This and the use of the railway meant that colonization could spread inlands. The Tirailleurs were
used as an army and the new conquered people were not offered French citizenship. The medical
infrastructure followed. Professor Niall Ferguson sees this as the origin of Medecins Sans
Frontieres, or 'doctors without borders' who work in conflict zones. Overthrowing power stuctures
of the conquered people also meant abolishing traditional medicine. It was argued that herbs and
prophesy were not effective against disease and therefore witch doctors were banned in 1897 in
French Africa. In 1904, the French African Health Service was created.

The French African Health Service was not immune from criticism. It prioritized the treatment of
Malaria amongst the white population along the coast, rather than the more urgent cases of cholera,
sleeping sickness in rural areas. The situation worsened when there was a plague outbreak in Dakar,
and the solution offered was to burn the homes of the locals and move the people away. This and
the notion of racial segregation caused a rebellion. It looked like scientists were blaming Africans
for making white people ill and also that the Africans were genetically predisposed to illness. What
had happened?

This was the time when the pseudo-science of Eugenics was corrupting medicine in particular and
science in general. It was founded by Francis Galton, a nephew of Charles Darwin. Galton had
traveled around the coast of what now known as Namibia, and was the land of the Herero and the
Nama people. On his return, Galton said that he had seen enough savage races to think about
genetics. Eugenics means a selective way of breeding to produce a stronger species. What resulted
was a racialist theory derived from Darwin's Evolution of the Species which argues that some races
are closer to monkeys - and therefore inferior to the white race - thus enabling biological
determinism or racism. Nowadays, racism is not an acceptable view amongst most people, hundred
years ago it was part of the mainstream. Therefore Galton and his views may not have seemed
shocking to Europeans, and eugenics began to spread amongst the scientific community and justify
policies of racial segregation in the colonies. Some people went further than Galton and the results
were catastrophic for the Hereros, the Namas and even the Tirailleurs were not spared.

At the beginning of the 20th C, Germany was leading the world of science but eugenics found its
way there. Africa became a testing ground for racialist science. In the German colony of South-
West Africa (now Namibia), black-Africans were seen as biologically inferior and segregationist
policies were applied. The colonial towns look like carbon copies of German towns with the similar
architecture and infrastructures but black people were not allowed to ride horse, nor ride bicycles,
nor walk on the footpath, nor visit the library and had to salute the white settlers. The
representatives of the Imperial German government in South-West Africa argued that the nomadic
Herero and Nama were inferior and had to vacate the land for settlers. Samuel Maharero and his
people decided to rise against the settlers and killed the men but spared women and children.
General Adrian Dietrich von Trotha was dispatched to South-West Africa and his message to the
Herero and Nama was that they would be shot on sight. At Hamakari, there was a massacre as von
Trotha deployed shells against the Herero and Nama who had gathered; Maxim guns were used
against civilians including women and children. Trotha vowed to eradicate the Herero people. The
survivors fled into the desert and this was their doom. Herero prisoners were scattered in five
concentration camps on Shark Island, deprived of food, clothing and shelter, they had to work waist
deep in the cold water. Out of 80,000 Hereros, only 15,000 survived. There were 30,000 Namas,
only 11, 000 survived. Professor Niall Ferguson argues that this is the first genocide in history. Or
the systematic destruction of a group of people on grounds of race.

The concentration camps on Shark Island were used to advance the cause of a corrupt medical
science. Corpses when they were not buried in shallow graves, were used for experimentation.
Women prisoners had to clean skulls for those to be shipped in pristine condition to Germany. 778
autopsies were performed under the supervision of Eugen Fischer. Fischer conducted research on
mixed race people (they had mostly a black mother and a white father) and concluded that African
blood was inferior and should not corrupt white blood. One of his later students was the Joseph
Mengele who decades later would conduct experimentations at the concentration camp of
Auschwitz.

The effects of eugenics could also be felt in French-Africa and the Tirailleurs became its victims. In
1910, Charles Mangin had toured Africa to recruit people for the army and in his view, African
bodies designed for battle. His bogus tests implied that because of their under-developed nervous
system, Africans were less susceptible to pain. Seven years later, and France had lost 1,3 million
soldiers in the First World War against Germany. Recruiters turned to Africa to make up the
numbers, but the Africans refused to join the Tirailleurs. Blaise Diagne was asked to negotiate and
he saw a chance to strike a deal with the French government, every person joining the army would
be granted French citizenship, this deal was accepted and African people joined the army. One of
them was called Demta Mloup and he served under the command of Charles Mangin. The
Tirailleurs realised that they were put at the frontline to spare white French's lives. At the Chemin
des Dames battle, there were 40,000 casualties as the German mowed down the frontline with
machine guns.

There were medical breakthrough during the first World War. Skin grafts and wound irrigation
were invented. British soldiers were able to get vaccinated against typhoid. When many African
soldiers died of pneumonia, once again, eugenics raised its ugly head and it was claimed that they
were predisposed to it. Eugen Fischer wanted to see a validation of his theories and published his
work in 1921. It was influential in shaping Hitler's policies and is namechecked in Mein Kampf.
Under Hitler's regime in Germany, doctors practised euthanasia on the mentally-ill, the disabled, the
inferior races and this practise culminated with Dr Mengele at Auschwitz.
By 1945, the belief in Western values and medicine was severely shaken and the effect of eugenic
thinking are still felt today.

Conclusion:
this is an important programme for anyone who has become complacent. We are in danger
nowadays to feel desensetised when we see pictures of famine and illness in Africa, or we think that
comments about mixed-marriages only reflect individual opinions. Sometimes, when we are asked
to donate to alliviate famine and disease, we may become blase and think this is a drop in the ocean
and why can't these people help themselves.
For me, who has a knowledge of the devastating effects of eugenics, this programme was a mine of
information and I realise that I know far too little about African History and about people like
Blaise Diagne, the Tirailleurs, Samuel Maharero and about the tragic fate of the Herero and Nama
people. I would like the mainstream history books to tell classrooms in Europe about them and the
places they lived.

Normally, I would hold back historical essays until I can verify the facts mentioned in it to find
more about context but on this one, I shall risk hasty publication and research the facts afterwards.

If these pages have stirred your emotions as the programme stirred mine, please pass it on to the
internet community so that the information does not get lost.

WE MUST ERRADICATE EUGENIC IDEAS

March 2011.
www.zebras54.co.uk