Unit 1

Posted by BETHANY Reeve at Friday, August 27, 2021 2:11:06 PM

Unit 1 is "What is History?". This is a more interesting question than I had anticipated coming into this
class. History is one of those words that everybody thinks they know, and in our brains, somewhere, we
do know what it means, however, that does not mean that we know how to apply it to an academic
context. In it's most basic definition, history is simply the past. But within the world of academic history,
history refers more to the process of discovering, documenting, interpreting, and exploring all the events
of the past and how they affect the world today. So, while the simple definition is by no means incorrect
(and is usually perfectly sufficient in the everyday world), it is not enough to fully understand what we're
trying to do in a college history course.

I thought that James Louwen's "1493" was a really powerful article, and I would be very interested in
reading the rest of Lies My Teacher Told Me. However, I do wish that he provided more sources and
evidence. Specifically, there was one claim--that Native Americans had sailed to Holland around 60 CE--
that I couldn't find any merit in or any evidence for when I searched after reading it. That made the whole
reading more difficult because I wasn't sure if I was able to trust what he said. Despite this, the general
ideas and concepts that he mentioned, as well as some of the more well known contestations he brought
up, were very interesting and powerful.

Unit 2

Posted by BETHANY Reeve at Friday, August 27, 2021 2:23:05 PM

Unit 2 is "Africa" in History: Representations and Realities. This, I thought, was a great place to start the
course. In order to learn the true and full history of Africa, we first have to be able to put aside all of our
preconcieved ideas and misconceptions about the continent. One of the first instances that comes to
mind when I think of this issue happened a few years ago when I was watching a game show with my
mom. The question was: "Name a country in Africa" and the first contestant said........... Africa. I couldn't
stop thinking about that for days.
There are several misconceptions about Africa, most of which stem from an originally malicious erasure
of African culture, information, and history in popular culture, education, and academics. Achebe's article
was particularly brutal on this topic, explaining how the spread of ill-intended falsities about Africa and the
general negative view of Africa in the West was developed only as a way to justify the slave trade and
European imperialism. Sensational journalism also contributed, using Africa as an "exotic, primitive" place
to capture the attention of Western viewers. And then, the cycle simply doubled onto itself. Those who
never learned any proper African history and culture cannot teach it, so we are now many several
generations deep into a United States that does not know anything about Africa. It is only through modern
academic refocusing onto African cultures/histories and listening to current/past African scholars that we
can begin to correct centuries of damage to the African reputation and contemporary economic/political
sphere.

Unit 3

Posted by BETHANY Reeve at Tuesday, September 14, 2021 11:08:51 PM

Unit 3 is Rethinking Africa's Deep Pasts. This unit focused a lot on not only the actual history of various
regions of Africa, but on the effect that these regions had on world history. Too often, African history is
excluded from broader analyses of "world history," when in reality Africa and African societies played a
huge role in the development of the modern world. The articles, oral epics, videos, essays, and books
from this unit seek to address this issue and make it clear how important it is to incorporate African history
into our studies.
Green's book chapter "Three Measures of Gold" I found particularly gripping yet educational. He mentions
how the great gold-based kingdoms and empires in West Africa were a huge reason that European
exploration of the region began in the first place; the European kingdoms wanted a taste of West Africa's
gold and riches. The Epic of Sunjata demonstrated the power and wealth of West Africa as a
complementary primary source. The Catalan Atlas of 1375 is another very important primary source that
depicts Africa as a place of wealth, trade, empire, and power from a European perspective. The Tree of
Iron documentary and Ron Eglash's works also showed this general pattern, except in reference to the
advanced and innovative iron-working techniques of East Africa and the architure of North Africa, and
how they have had a massive impact on modern manufacturing and computing. Overall, these sources,
and many others that we've looked at so far, are clear demonstrations of the important role that Africa
plays and has played on world history and society.

Unit 6

Posted by BETHANY Reeve at Friday, November 12, 2021 7:52:16 PM

Unit 6 is surrounding European colonialism in Africa and African responses. In particular, we have looked
at the extreme violence used toward African people, and how definitions of violence can be much more
expansive than we originally considered. Of course, physical violence was rampant and destructive, such
as in the British conquest of South Africa, when they chose to "decimate the Xhosa, seize the rest of their
lands, and enslave the starving survivors of the [famine] who threw themselves at the mercy of the
colonizers as a last gambit of survival" (Ochonu). Slavery was popular even in the times after it was
offically outlawed by the European governments, and the European officials did little to stop it. The
reading we've spent the most focus on this unit, the book Abina and the Important Men, demonstrates this
fact and highlights the different forms of violence. Abina was illegally enslaved and tried to bring her case
to court. She experienced systemic violence in the way that the "important men," judges, lawmakers, and
other Europeans in power, refused to hear her out and did not grant her her case. She did not recieve
justice until many, many, many years later, and by then it was far too late. This form of violence (where
people are not treated as equals by those in power and are not granted the same privileges and
opportunities) was extremely common in colonial days, and continues to be extremely common today,
including in America. It matters that we learn about the violence of colonialism not only so that we better
understand African history and perspective, but so we can see the vestiges of it in modern society and
work to eliminate it fully.

Unit 7

Posted by BETHANY Reeve at Saturday, December 4, 2021 9:05:38 PM

Unit 7 is Decolonization and African Independence. This is extremely important to learn about because it,
obviously, sets the stage for modern African society and government. One of the only things that I, and a
lot of other Americans, can picture when it comes to African politics is instability and corruption, and it's
important to be able to understand the source of these issues while also appreciating the history, society,
and culture that was and continues to be affected by it. One of the things that shocked me the most in this
unit was learning just how much of the stories of African independence have been covered up. I learned
about European colonialism in every history class I took in middle school and high school, but the process
of independence was always portrayed as something that the European nations decided to do out of
kindness and their own forward-thinking. Some of the sources from this unit, in particular the Mau Mau
podcast and the Battle of Algiers movie rocked this assumption to my core. In my mind, I had always
known that the Europeans' decisions were more based on economic and political pressure than kindness,
and I knew that there must have been some resistance among the African colonists, but to learn all of this
information about how desperately and successfully African people fought and then how entirely it was
covered up... it was shocking, to say the least.
To say more, it made me continue to question the extent to which we as Americans have been
"brainwashed" by our education system. I was thinking, why would we not learn about this? We love to
teach the American Revolution and the strengths of other revolutions like in Haiti and France. Would
these uprisings in Africa (and other Asian colonies) not continue this message of standing up for yourself,
individualism, and independence that Americans love to vocally support? Similarly, we always learn about
the horrors of European colonialism, would we not brag about all the instance where it was condemned to
failure and violence? Upon reflecting, it is because America still needs to project that we are better than
African countries and ally ourselves with Europe. For our own victory, we will condemn the European
failures of the past, but to admit to them occuring in the more recent century is difficult because then we
must admit our own failures. We can't answer the question of "why wasn't America helping them?" without
decrying our own dearest national values. By purposefully failing to teach the truth about decolonization,
we can still pretend like Europe are the good guys, and pretend like its OK that we are like them.