Africans were already present on the European mainland by the time Herodotus —the so called father of history— wrote his monumental work, The Histories.
I commend you for using the term African, and not "black." As long as we get continue to use this binary (Anglican) racial oversimplification, we are consigning ourselves to mental slavery and discrimination. In fact the terms, Kushitic or Nilotic is even better than African or Eithiopian becuase they do not reflect Eurasion influences.
My own ancestral roots run from North America to the British Isles (all parts) with a couple of stray Germans thrown in, so I try to follow closely the DNA research on the population of those islands and how my ancestors fit into those patterns. I was fascinated by the reported results some years ago (since 2000) of a nationwide study that offered regional DNA identifications. This research indicated that there was a small but identifiable African presence in the Isles possibly going back to the trade links between the Isles and the Mediterranean reported by the Greeks. The hypothesis seems to be that the vessels involved in this trade included Africans as crew, merchants, or just travelers and they interacted with the local populations. Certainly, I've noted across history that the work of merchant sailors was hard enough that ships' masters would sign on as crew anybody who looked like they could do the work - they didn't have much time for concerns about race. And the ports of Africa would have welcomed the metals available in the Isles and found a ready market for the goods they could provide in turn.
What first brought it to my attention was learning that crews on US Navy ships during the American Civil War were integrated (not the officers) while the Union Army eventually created units of African Americans with mostly white officers.
Sailing was a relatively egalitarian profession, at least as far as ethnicity and/or race are concerned, and this continued into the early modern period.
The so-called "Portuguese" ships that 'discovered' the indian ocean world were actually staffed by crewmen from multiple European nations plus a handful of African guides, and the occasional envoys and merchants. The sailing crews the Portuguese encountered in Muslim Indian ports were iturn comprised of many peoples, including ethiopians and east africans, and they inturn sailed regularly to the ports of south-east Asia, and made up the crews of the Portuguese ships which reached Japan.
Going back to the ancient times, the armies and navies of the Egyptians king Amose II included both greeks and aithiopians, and these occupied the island of cyprus in the 6th century BC. The same was said for the navy of Carthage in the 5th century BC which occupied the island of Sicily. The same was the case for the armies of the Ptolemies which campaigned across the eastern Mediterranean. and the same was true for the Romans, whose multiethnic army is documented as far north as England, including both north-africans and aithiopians.
I've heard similar arguments regarding muti-ethnic crews in the early-modern Caribbean, and in pirate vessels operating across the Atlantic.
With Abyssinia changing its names to Ethiopia, modern Ethiopia became associated with:
The Queen of Sheba
The first Christian empire in Africa
Ancient “Aethiopians” mentioned by Greeks, Romans, and in the Bible
Meanwhile, Sudan — the actual site of Kush, Meroë, the Black Pharaohs, and powerful queens like Amanirenas — was relegated to colonial language like “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan,” then “Sudan” (which just means ‘land of the Blacks’ in Arabic).
So isnt that, in a postcolonial, cultural sense, a kind of theft? Or at least a misnaming that led to the misplacement of pride, heritage, and narrative.
for one thing, ethiopia is an exonym which the Greeks gave to the people of Kush, it wasn't a term the latter identified with, and its why when Kush collapsed, the Christian kingdoms which succeeded it weren't in a rush to adopt the term, despite its frequent occurrence in the Greek translations of the bible --which they doubtlessly read
On the other hand, the Greeks did transfer the toponym of Ethiopia to Aksum sometime around the 4th/5th century, and the Aksumites were eager to adopt it for propaganda reasons relating to the prominence of Ethiopians in the greek bible (which they also read), and their political alliance with the Byzantines. But the term didn't really stick until relatively recently in the 19th century because Ethiopia was mostly known as Abyssinia (which was itself also an exonym)
For Sudan, if the Christian Nubians had no interest in appropriating the legacy of Kush, the Muslim kingdoms that succeeded them had even less interest in it. the memory of Queen amanirenas had little political use for them (nor was she remembered in Ethiopia either, where the legends are more focused on Queen sheba who had nothing to do with Kush), It can even be argued that the legacy of Egypt itself had little use in contemporary Ottoman egypt until Muhammad Ali decided to break away from his suzerain and assert his independence through quasi-nationalist claims by exploiting the then newly-discovered antiquity of the Egyptian civilization.
so for Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in the 19th century, we have the Turks claiming the legacy of ancient Egypt and the Ethiopians claiming part of the legacy of ancient Kush, while the Sudanic kingdoms like Funj and Darfur were more inclined to claim the more traditional genealogies of other Muslim kingdoms that linked their legendary founders to Yemen or the Hejaz.
Its therefore not unexpected that Ethiopia is now known by that ancient name, while Sudan isnt.
Very interesting. However, sorry for my ignorance, I don’t understand what you mean by "beyond south mediterranean coast". Isn’t all africa beyond it ?
I’m technically referring to the regions beyond the coast of North Africa (which the Greeks would have been familiar with even before the time of Herodotus)
in the same way the Africans im talking about in this essay didn’t travel to deep into mainland Europe at the time, but were present in the coastal regions and on the offshore islands like Cyprus.
I commend you for using the term African, and not "black." As long as we get continue to use this binary (Anglican) racial oversimplification, we are consigning ourselves to mental slavery and discrimination. In fact the terms, Kushitic or Nilotic is even better than African or Eithiopian becuase they do not reflect Eurasion influences.
My own ancestral roots run from North America to the British Isles (all parts) with a couple of stray Germans thrown in, so I try to follow closely the DNA research on the population of those islands and how my ancestors fit into those patterns. I was fascinated by the reported results some years ago (since 2000) of a nationwide study that offered regional DNA identifications. This research indicated that there was a small but identifiable African presence in the Isles possibly going back to the trade links between the Isles and the Mediterranean reported by the Greeks. The hypothesis seems to be that the vessels involved in this trade included Africans as crew, merchants, or just travelers and they interacted with the local populations. Certainly, I've noted across history that the work of merchant sailors was hard enough that ships' masters would sign on as crew anybody who looked like they could do the work - they didn't have much time for concerns about race. And the ports of Africa would have welcomed the metals available in the Isles and found a ready market for the goods they could provide in turn.
What first brought it to my attention was learning that crews on US Navy ships during the American Civil War were integrated (not the officers) while the Union Army eventually created units of African Americans with mostly white officers.
True,
Sailing was a relatively egalitarian profession, at least as far as ethnicity and/or race are concerned, and this continued into the early modern period.
The so-called "Portuguese" ships that 'discovered' the indian ocean world were actually staffed by crewmen from multiple European nations plus a handful of African guides, and the occasional envoys and merchants. The sailing crews the Portuguese encountered in Muslim Indian ports were iturn comprised of many peoples, including ethiopians and east africans, and they inturn sailed regularly to the ports of south-east Asia, and made up the crews of the Portuguese ships which reached Japan.
Going back to the ancient times, the armies and navies of the Egyptians king Amose II included both greeks and aithiopians, and these occupied the island of cyprus in the 6th century BC. The same was said for the navy of Carthage in the 5th century BC which occupied the island of Sicily. The same was the case for the armies of the Ptolemies which campaigned across the eastern Mediterranean. and the same was true for the Romans, whose multiethnic army is documented as far north as England, including both north-africans and aithiopians.
I've heard similar arguments regarding muti-ethnic crews in the early-modern Caribbean, and in pirate vessels operating across the Atlantic.
With Abyssinia changing its names to Ethiopia, modern Ethiopia became associated with:
The Queen of Sheba
The first Christian empire in Africa
Ancient “Aethiopians” mentioned by Greeks, Romans, and in the Bible
Meanwhile, Sudan — the actual site of Kush, Meroë, the Black Pharaohs, and powerful queens like Amanirenas — was relegated to colonial language like “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan,” then “Sudan” (which just means ‘land of the Blacks’ in Arabic).
So isnt that, in a postcolonial, cultural sense, a kind of theft? Or at least a misnaming that led to the misplacement of pride, heritage, and narrative.
not really,
for one thing, ethiopia is an exonym which the Greeks gave to the people of Kush, it wasn't a term the latter identified with, and its why when Kush collapsed, the Christian kingdoms which succeeded it weren't in a rush to adopt the term, despite its frequent occurrence in the Greek translations of the bible --which they doubtlessly read
On the other hand, the Greeks did transfer the toponym of Ethiopia to Aksum sometime around the 4th/5th century, and the Aksumites were eager to adopt it for propaganda reasons relating to the prominence of Ethiopians in the greek bible (which they also read), and their political alliance with the Byzantines. But the term didn't really stick until relatively recently in the 19th century because Ethiopia was mostly known as Abyssinia (which was itself also an exonym)
For Sudan, if the Christian Nubians had no interest in appropriating the legacy of Kush, the Muslim kingdoms that succeeded them had even less interest in it. the memory of Queen amanirenas had little political use for them (nor was she remembered in Ethiopia either, where the legends are more focused on Queen sheba who had nothing to do with Kush), It can even be argued that the legacy of Egypt itself had little use in contemporary Ottoman egypt until Muhammad Ali decided to break away from his suzerain and assert his independence through quasi-nationalist claims by exploiting the then newly-discovered antiquity of the Egyptian civilization.
so for Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in the 19th century, we have the Turks claiming the legacy of ancient Egypt and the Ethiopians claiming part of the legacy of ancient Kush, while the Sudanic kingdoms like Funj and Darfur were more inclined to claim the more traditional genealogies of other Muslim kingdoms that linked their legendary founders to Yemen or the Hejaz.
Its therefore not unexpected that Ethiopia is now known by that ancient name, while Sudan isnt.
Very interesting. However, sorry for my ignorance, I don’t understand what you mean by "beyond south mediterranean coast". Isn’t all africa beyond it ?
I’m technically referring to the regions beyond the coast of North Africa (which the Greeks would have been familiar with even before the time of Herodotus)
in the same way the Africans im talking about in this essay didn’t travel to deep into mainland Europe at the time, but were present in the coastal regions and on the offshore islands like Cyprus.
Ohh i get it, thank you