Wonders of the African World

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Companion Volume to the PBS Television Series

Wonders of the African World is an exuberant, visually stunning journey across Africa and through the history of its glorious but forgotten civilizations.

Traveling by camel, by dhow, by Land Cruiser, and on foot, the renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us to twelve countries in search of Africa's magnificent past, the now neglected civilizations that in their day were as grand and sophisticated as any on the face of the earth. From Nubia's ancient empire, which for a time ruled Egypt and centuries before had established the earliest known African city, to the fabled town of Timbuktu, where during the medieval period there thrived a center of scholars that rivaled any in Europe and where books were as prized as gold, to Ethiopia's Christian kingdom, where the Lost Ark of the Covenant is said to reside under perpetual vigil, Gates reveals an Africa little known to Westerners. And as he shows us the achievements that exploiters of the continent have ignored or denied for centuries, he introduces us as well to the fascinating variety of modern-day Africans, many of whom are descended from the great peoples who built Africa's most formidable cultures, including the Asante, the Swahili, the Tuareg, and the Shona.

As Gates's compelling narrative shows, the continent's past continues to be felt in the lives of many Africans today. And in America for the descendants of those brought here as slaves, that past has been a controversial inheritance, passionately embraced by some, fiercely rejected by others. For this reason, Gates's deeply personal account of discovery is charged throughout by a question posed by Countee Cullen in his 1925 poem "Heritage" and perennially asked by African What is Africa to me? Finally, though, it is the wisdom of this book that the legacy of Africa, no less than that of Greece or Rome, belongs to all the world's civilized peoples.

Illustrated with spectacular full-page photographs specially commissioned from the internationally acclaimed Lynn Davis, Wonders of the African World is Africa as we have never known or seen it before.

With 66 photographs by Lynn Davis, 132 illustrations in black-and-white and full color, and 7 full-color maps

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, History, Travel, Race

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Henry Louis Gates, Jr wrote the Wonders of the African World in 1999 to illustrate some of the African civilizations that were “were just as splendid, just as beautiful, just as representative of the ennobled human spirit as any on the face of this world” (Gates 254). I feel like part of Gates’s efforts to write the Wonders of the African World and produce the television series of the same name, which I have seen a great deal of, that the book is a Companion book to introduce African history to non-academic readers. According to the Journalist, Charlie English’s The Storied City about Timbuktu in present-day Mali, Gates in his Wonders of the African World was one of the main popularizers of the idea of great texts of the libraries of Timbuktu. Since 1999, some of the information in the book may have changed slightly and Gates does not cover any civilizations that were in present-day Nigeria in protest of the government of Sani Abacha, who died when the series was being filmed, but I think the book is still an excellent read. Gates, as an African American, is interested in responding to the question of his daughters and the Harlem Renaissance poet, Countee Cullen of “What is Africa to me?” For example, Gates begins all his chapters in his book, by explaining how the African civilizations he is about to cover are part of African American mythology. All of the civilizations he covers in this book play some role in African American mythology, according to Gates, and throughout the book, he interacts with that mythology. I enjoyed reading Gates’s Wonders of the African World in the early 2000s and I enjoyed rereading the book in the recent past.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Great maps and photos, lots of information. I like Mr. Gates' reflections on his own feelings as an African American visiting Africa. I'm ready to read more.

2-18-2011 Just finished watching the 6-hour Public Broadcasting Service series that goes with this book. Good to see all the video footage. Great Zimbabwe may be my favorite spot.

[Chau · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a big fan of Skip Gates, he offers such an orientalized vision of Africa. The narrative that he provides of his journey to these great cities reveals his limited knowledge about the very places that he professes to hold in high esteem. His discussion of the Swahili city-states is particularly narrow, as is his understanding of the significance behind Mwanamotapa's Great Zimbabwe. What I do like about the book is the photography--the images are excellent resources for lectures and are interesting for deconstructing within that context. Despite the problematic text, the images alone are worthy of perusal--nice coffee table book. :P

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MARVELOUS BOOK THAT ACCOMPANIES THE 6-PART PBS TELEVISION SERIES

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born 1950) is Director of African and African American Research at Harvard University, as well as a professor, historian, filmmaker, and ‘public intellectual.’ This book parallels the 6-part 1999 PBS series, ‘Wonders of the African World.’

He explains in the first chapter, “I got the idea for a film series and book about ancient African civilizations and its lost wonders, which I thought of as an African version of ‘The Seven Wonders of the World.’ To compile a list of these wonders, I invited the suggestions of several scholars of African Studies… I collated their responses and arrived at two dozen… I realized that I could encompass most of them in six journeys… I sought in these travels, not so much to answer … questions about what African Americans today bore in common with their African ancestors, but to discover who, indeed, ‘the African people’ were and what, in fact, they had contributed to civilization---especially before the Europeans arrived to enslave many of them, colonize their land, and exploit its natural resources. I knew that any meaningful explanations of what Africa was to me would depend on discovering what Africa was, and is, both to Africans and to all of us.” (Pg. 16)

He observes, “‘Nubia’---the word, and all the majesty and mystery it connotes---has a hold on the contemporary black American cultural imagination like no other word in the African lexicon… Why this passion to self-identify as ‘Nubian’? It is because ‘Nubia’ today … has come to stand for all that has been lost, or stolen, from the historical record of black African contributions to civilization. The identification of the missing pieces hinges on questions extremely controversial for black Americans about the relation between the Nubian kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa and ancient Egypt: What was the ‘ethnic identity’ of the ancient Egyptians?... did culture and civilization flow from the hybrid Mediterranean world, of which Egypt was the supreme example… or rather, did it … flow from black African sources north to the Mediterranean? Arguments … have been raging … in the past two decades, when scholars such as … Cheikh Anta Diop and … Martin Bernal… have declared war on Egyptologists and classicists who have by tradition imagined an Egypt somehow apart from Africa.” (Pg. 29-32)

He explains, “Kerma in ancient Nubia is the earliest urban civilization yet discovered by archaeology within the African continent south of Egypt… [W]hile Kush (or ancient Nubia) did borrow much from Egyptian culture, and was for a long period under Egyptian rule, for most of its long history, Kush was a vast and powerful independent kingdom that rivaled ancient Egypt. For almost a century---between 712 and 664 BC---Kush conquered and ruled Egypt itself.” (Pg. 32) Later, he adds, “Nubian dominion over Egypt lasted less than a century, but left a profound mark on Nubian culture… art, hieroglyphics, and architecture bear distinctive Egyptian influences… For one all too brief but glorious moment, Nubia… had the largest empire in the world---one ruled by black men and women.” (Pg. 48)

He acknowledges, “The second century BC marks the earliest appearance in Meroë of inscriptions in a distinct alphabetic script… But no one has been able to decipher the script, and until a Nubian Rosetta stone appears we are left to conjecture.” (Pg. 54)

He concludes the chapter, “I had seen the evidence myself---the pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th dynasty were black men, who most probably had a hair texture and skin color not all that different from my own, I could not help but wonder what other revelations lay buried beneath … the rubble of a thousand African civilizations yet to be excavated.” (Pg. 63)

He notes, “Ethiopia’s special place in the cultural imagination of African Americans owes much to the importance of Christianity there. Ethiopia is not only the oldest continuous seat of Christianity after the Egyptian church on the Continent, but the second most frequently mentioned African country (after Egypt) in both the Old and New Testaments.” (Pg. 67)

He recounts, “Beta Israel---recognized now as one of the Lost Tribes---were airlifted to Israel in ‘Operation Moses,’ fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy that the Jews of Ethiopia would return to Zion… By the time of the airlift, only a few thousand Beta Israel were left from what once had been an influential segment of Ethiopian society… the Beta Israel came to occupy the lowest rung of Ethiopia’s social ladder. Nevertheless, between the two religions there are striking convergences… But nobody is very clear on how a Jewish people came to Ethiopia in the first place… The fact that the Beta Israel physically resemble their non-Jewish neighbors is often marshaled as evidence that they must have been converted by Jewish travelers...” (Pg. 83)

He records, “From the Bible we know that the Ark [of the Covenant] was… the manifestation of God on earth. The Ark was housed in the temple built by Solomon … but no one knows what happened to it when the temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army in 581 B.C. The Hebrew Bible is mute on that issue… [The Ark] simply ceases to figure in the story of God’s people, almost overnight. The Ethiopians believe they have the answer to the mystery: The Ark was not destroyed in the fire set by the Babylonians, it resides in Ethiopia… If scholars were allowed to examine what is so scrupulously guarded at Axum, it should in theory be possible to determine its authenticity… But it is highly unlikely that the EOC will ever submit their most sacred relic to such scrutiny, as I learned when I asked… the head of the church, if he would consider it. He accused me of being a seeker of fame, and not devout enough!” (Pg. 104) Later, he adds, “Let me make clear that the odds of the Ark being housed … at Axum are overwhelmingly against the Ethiopians. Nevertheless, I am haunted by the claim… The profound faith that the Ethiopians share in the tangible presence of the Ark … is in itself something of a wonder.” (Pg. 107)

He notes, “Even as an adult, I tended to dismiss stories of a magnificent library and university [in Timbuktu] as yet another contribution of the ‘Beethoven is Black’ school of history… But I was wrong… Timbuktu did exist, and still does, nestled in the southernmost tip of sub-Saharan Africa. It was the almost mythical conduit through which Africa, Arabia, and Europe sometimes collided, sometimes fused; and in the late Middle Ages it was the site of black Africa’s most important center of scholarship and learning before the twentieth century, rivaling Europe’s emerging universities.” (Pg. 111) He observes, “The history of Timbuktu and its adjoining kingdoms is an African culture shaped by Arabian influences.” (Pg. 139)

He admits, “While Mali may brag of its advances in the rights of women, it still has the highest rate of female circumcision in the world… Nevertheless, it is an ancient and traditional rite among many West and East African peoples… [and] it is thought to be vital to the identity of the individual being… Despite its role in traditional beliefs, controversy over its barbarity has increased in recent years.” (Pg.
127)

He recounts, “I was eager to see the library at the Ahmed Baba Center, where today approximately 10,000 volumes are housed and catalogued… For 400 years, these Arabic manuscripts… have been zealously guarded and handed down… If translated, they might completely rewrite the history of black Africa… Here… I held in my own hands perhaps the only remains of the black African world’s intellectual achievement. These were the thoughts and knowledge inscribed before the coming of the colonizers…” (Pg. 144-146)

He records, “[I was] wondering if consciousness of the slave past was an explicit part of Zanzibar’s national traditions… It is certainly true that domestic and agricultural slaves in earlier Swahili society did not always suffer the same lot as those who would work on commercial plantations. Still, the number of Africans enslaved is considerable. Scholarly estimates of the total number of slaves shipped across the Sahara Desert between AD 650 and AD 1600 vary from 3.5 million to 4.8 million… there is no justification to minimize the extent of the early slave trade…. All arguments about origins pale when confronted with the flood of slaves that poured into Zanzibar in the nineteenth century.” (Pg. 177, 182)

He continues, “It would take an ocean of holy water to cleanse the sins of slavery from this stunningly beautiful island, but the culture of studied denial of that slaving past means no true reconciliation will occur. When I visited the grand house of Tippu Tip, the legendary slave dealer who was a black African… [and] his great-granddaughter Ummi… I suggested it was at least theoretically possible that an ancestor of hers might have enslaved an ancestor of mine, she responded that, while she regretted the horrors of slavery, she could not have imagined how Tippu Tip would have done otherwise… ‘back then, you could be only two things: a slaver or a slave. He made the better choice.’” (Pg. 189)

He states, “The darkest secret about African slavery… was not the horror that the Europeans visited upon their captives, as unimaginably barbaric and inhuman as that was… the least well known---and for African Americans the most painful---truth concerning … the African slave trade is the role of the black Africans themselves in its origins, its operation, and its perpetuation… for many of my countrymen, the African role in the slave trade of other Africans is both a horrific surprise and the ultimate betrayal, something akin to fratricide and sororicide… Therefore, even though I had known the unpleasant truth all my adult life, it was with the most visceral apprehension that I went to investigate it firsthand during my trip to Ghana and Benin, two of the former capitals of the West African slave trade.” (Pg. 196-197)

He goes on, “The switch from selling gold to selling slaves was also precipitated by the … wars of consolidation and expansion in the seventeenth century… Especially after 1750, the profitability of the trade encouraged the rise of African entrepreneurs who specialized in the slave trade… The effects of the demand for slaves, first by Africans for use as gold-mining and agricultural labor… and then in unprecedented numbers by Europeans, were astonishingly devastating… This … figure---of seven million remaining on the continent of Africa, slaves enslaved by Africans for use in Africa---is as remarkable to me as the number of Africans shipped to the New World.” (Pg. 199-200)

As he toured a castle in Ghana, “The tour guide concluded his lecture with the admission that the captives bought by the European slavers on this coast were sold by African slavers. The stillness in that castle was palpable. For most African-Americans, the slave trade is still understood in terms of a literally black and white opposition… few were prepared to confront the curious ease with which black Africans could sell other black Africans to the white man.” (Pg. 204)

He goes on, “But the European understanding of slavery was quite different from the African. In Africa, slaves would hope to be released from servitude and join a family clan. Even while enslaved they retained some rights… And, of course, in Africa slavery could not give rise to a racism based on skin color…” (Pg. 207) He states that Dr. Akousa Perbi (a historian at the University of Ghana) ‘cautioned me to remember that to Africans slavery was not about ‘race,’ but about power and money… The concept of ‘the African’ was invented by European colonials.” (Pg. 208)

He asks, “Nevertheless, I wonder how many African Americans today would change places with the Africans descended from those we left behind on the Continent? This is the paradox we face, whether we want to admit it or not. When I asked the members of the tour group … whether… knowing what they now knew, if they would elect to prevent their ancestors’ capture and sale to the Europeans, only one said yes… The others, however reluctantly, all said that even knowing the full extent of the agony that awaited they would have allowed their ancestors to board the ships.” (Pg. 215)

He concludes, “In so many ways, ‘Africa,’ as a place, and ‘Africans,’ as a people, were born as a direct outcome of European commercial interests… It is from the lingering consequences of a systematic, legalized deprivation that such a large part of the African American people will be struggling to emerge a century hence. But who can say when black Africa… will escape the effects of its past?... remarkably few African Americans, when given the opportunity over the last two centuries, have embraced the idea of repatriation. For us Africa has tended to be an idealized imagined community. Our ‘Africanness’ … has been forged in a ‘New World.’” (Pg. 229)

This book and TV series will be “must reading/viewing” for anyone interested in African-American and Africana history.

[Hom Sack · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent companion to the six part documentary series of the same name. It is not a coffee table book, even though it is implied by its size and weight, but a scholarly presentation; this in addition to Gates' personal reflections.