The Negro | Page 6

this mingling the culture of Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.
To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continent to the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early along the Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the southeast, nearer the primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open to Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated at Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wide ramifications.
All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest. They beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually settled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves proudly La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation, speaking one language. They eventually conquered all Africa south of the Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward.
While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out. With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and transmitted Negro ideals.
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with black Africa. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a large caravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones, and slaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched with Hannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the infiltration of Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa and Jugurtha were Negroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the African west coast. Greek and Roman influences came through the desert, and the Byzantine Empire and Persia came into communication with Negroland by way of the valley of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes, added to those of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture in the central and western Sudan, and European and African trade early reached large volume.
Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled the Mohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenth century and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the new religion found an already existent culture and came, not a conqueror, but as an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new impetus and a wave of Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the great kingdoms of Melle, the Songhay, Bornu, and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture was not overthrown, but, like a great wedge, pushed upward and inward from Yoruba, and gave stubborn battle to the newer culture for seven or eight centuries.
Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the heart disease of Africa developed in its most virulent form. There is a modern theory that black men are and always have been naturally slaves. Nothing is further from the truth. In the ancient world Africa was no more a slave hunting ground than Europe or Asia, and both Greece and Rome had much larger numbers of white slaves than of black. It was natural that a stream of black slaves should have poured into Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian conquest and defense lay toward the heart of Africa. Moreover, the Egyptians, themselves of Negro descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes among their highest nobility and even among their Pharaohs. Mohammedan conquerors enslaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but eventually their empire centered in Asia and Africa and their slaves came principally from these countries. Asia submitted to Islam except in the Far East, which was self-protecting. Negro Africa submitted only partially, and the remaining heathen were in small states which could not effectively protect themselves against the Mohammedan slave trade. In this wise the slave trade gradually began to center in Africa, for religious and political rather than for racial reasons.
The typical African culture was the culture of family, town, and small tribe. Hence domestic slavery easily developed a slave trade through war and commerce. Only the integrating force of state building could have stopped this slave trade. Was this failure to develop the great state a racial characteristic? This does not seem a fair conclusion. In four great centers state building began in Africa. In Ethiopia several large states were built up, but they tottered before the onslaughts of Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Byzantium, on the one hand, and finally fell before the turbulent Bantu warriors from the interior. The second attempt at empire building began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes,