Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this, our final lesson, four of four on the inquiry, how do we uncover the lived experience of those ruled by Empire in Africa? Our title for today is 'I Will Not Come.

' And this is taken from Nelson Mandela's autobiography.

We'll read the abstract in a moment.

Take a moment to write down the title.

Remember, for today's lesson, you'll need a pen, something to write on, and you also need to make sure that wherever you are you're free of any distractions.

When you've written down that title, we'll move on.

Hi there, it's Me again Mr. Hewitt.

Well done for returning to this inquiry for the final stage where we're going to examine again, how we uncover the lived experiences of those who lived under empire.

Apart from life, a strong constitution and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was the name, Rolihlahla.

Literally meaning pulling the branch of a tree.

But its more colloquial and accurate meaning, would be the troublemaker.

So it begins Mandela's famous autobiography, "The Long Walk To Freedom" in which he catalogues the suffering in Robben Island prison that he faced whilst imprisoned, by the white minority government and apartheid rulers of South Africa.

And his journey to become the leader of South Africa following the collapse of the apartheid regime.

Mandela was born under British colonial rule.

And we use an extract from his autobiography in a moment to understand some of the early experiences of this rule.

It's important that we appreciate as we move into our fourth lesson, that one of the legacies of colonial rule was the white minority governments, which followed it particularly in South Africa.

And at the moral courage and fortitude of men like Mandela, as well as the accounts they tell both of their time in the British colonial South Africa and facing opposition, racism and the aggressive and vicious behaviours of the white minority governments in South Africa.

Our excellent sources for learning about the experiences and legacies of colonialism.

I'll get my head out of the way so that you can see this map of the continent of Africa with South Africa shown at its Southern tip.

South Africa has an interesting and particularly complex relationship with colonialism.

The first whites to settle there were Boers, descendants of people from the Netherlands.

They called themselves Afrikaners and their language Afrikaans.

And they viciously exploited the black people who lived in South Africa.

Following Rhodes, that individual who we looked at in our first lesson, Cecil Rhodes, colonial ambitions in South Africa and the Boers rules the whole region, including the Boers who lived there were brought under British colonial rule.

However, they send in 1931 when the white people in South Africa declared independence from the British empire and created a white minority government, which instituted an apartheid regime, meaning that black and white people forced to live separately and that black people were deliberately mistreated and exploited.

The legacy of empire and decolonization is a challenging one in of itself.

After the second world war in particular, many economies became independent.

These colonies struggled today, both with the damage that was done to them under empire, but also to redefine their identity in the postcolonial period.

Mandela's autobiography is an excellent source for us as historians.

Not only is it a great work and one which includes genuine historical narratives, but also Mandela lived both under British colonial rule, white minority government, and was elected the first black president of South Africa in 1994, after his moral courage brought him through many years of imprisonment on Robben Island, where he had been sent for fighting the apartheid regime, and to become leader of a new free South Africa.

Let's take a look at Mandela's extract and try to uncover a little more about the experience of living under colonialism even at the start of the 20th century.

As a chief, my father was compelled to account to the local Magistrate.

One day one of my father's subjects launched a complaint against him.

The Magistrate accordingly sent a message ordering my father to appear before him.

My father sent back the following reply, 'Andizi, ndisaquala' I will not come.

I am still girding or preparing for battle.

When the Magistrate received my father's response, he charged him with insubordination.

That's when you refuse to do what you're told.

There was no civil inquiry or investigation; that was reserved for white civil servants.

The Magistrate simply deposed, that means took out of power, my father thus ending the Mandela family Chieftainship.

The story Mandela paints here is one of the complete lack of interest and respect from the colonial powers in black and African political structures.

His father is simply deposed with a flick of a pen and for what? Refusing to appear immediately in front of a colonial Magistrate because of a petty local dispute.

Read that source again and consider the two questions on the left.

What can we learn from this source by the experiences of African Chieftains in particular, under colonial rule? And in what ways does the experience of an African Chief help us to understand the experience as a whole? Does it have any limitations, that this was written by or a Chieftan? Pause the video, write down your thoughts, and when you're ready, unpause the video and you can share our answers.

Fantastic, yes, you're quite right.

Colonial rulers didn't respect African political structures.

They would destabilise and debase them, anyways to find or suppress insubordination.

And law did not apply equally as Mandela points out to whites and non-whites, there's no investigation or inquiry.

His father simply deposed.

A Chieftain's experience, you're right.

It's not exactly typical.

This doesn't mean that all Africans had this experience necessarily.

Of course, all Africans were not of royal houses or set to become Chieftains within their local communities.

But we can infer that means, understand, or work out the general character of relations from this source.

That being that the British did not respect the autonomy, political structures, self-determination, or communities, over which they governed.

Lets us turn to the nation of Nigeria, and look beyond the colonial period and its legacies.

Nigeria is of course where our Achebe's novel, "Things Fall Apart" was set.

That which we studied in the previous lesson.

Nigeria today has grown enormously since the end of empire.

Look at the bustling and vibrant city of Lagos.

Abuja is Nigeria's capital but Lagos it's biggest.

By the end of the century, Nigeria is set to have the third largest population in the world.

It's growing and dynamic country, free from the constraints of colonialism, it's experiencing a rapid reprioritization and restructuring of its identity.

But ultimately one which still faces the challenges and legacies of life under colonialism.

Let's take a look at this interpretation from Kwasi Kwarteng, a contemporary historian of British and Ghanaian origin.

Perhaps no other country in the modern world is more a creature of empire than Nigeria.

Even the name Nigeria was a consciously invented one, first appearing in an article of the London Times on the 8th of January, 1897.

Flora Shaw, a journalist and commentator on colonial affairs, suggested the name, which she thought would be a good title for the agglomeration of a pagan and Mohammedan states, which have been brought within the confines of a British protectorate.

Here we get a sense of just how big the challenge of scrubbing the legacy of empire from the identity of a nation can be.

Even Nigeria's name was chosen by imperialists.

And to what end.

Agglomeration means, bringing together.

When flora Shaw refers to pagan, she's dismissively describing the pre-Christian traditional religions of Nigeria.

Those which you saw represented in Achebe's book when the missionaries arrived and dismissed them.

The Mohammedan state is what Shaw refers to as the Muslim population of Nigeria.

One of the experiences of colonialism could have been the reality that people of diverse cultures and backgrounds were forced to live under one colonial government.

And that word confines.

What does that suggest about the reality of colonialism and empire? I'll leave you to think about that for a moment before I share my thoughts with you.

Read the interpretation again and have a go at those three questions.

What can we learn from this interpretation about the experiences of life under empire? Who was this author? And when did they produce this work? And how does this interpretation differ from a primary source one such as Hendrick fit boys from the previous lessons on its utility, how useful it is to a historian.

Pause the slide there, jot down your thoughts, and when you're ready, unpause the slide, and we can share our answers.

Outstanding, you're right.

Nigerians were forced to form a national identity along with those who might've had little in common with them culturally.

And then were even forced to adopt a name from the colonists, that is Nigeria.

The extract was written by a British Ghanaian historian Kwarteng in the postcolonial era.

That means Kwarteng didn't live under empire himself, but he's a historian who's read about the experiences of those who did, and so he's able to cause improved light and narrative and what that may have been like, and what the known term legacies might be.

Interpretations are different from primary sources.

Interpretations allows us to look at the broad wealth of evidence and see what a historian thinks generally about the legacies and implications as well as experiences of life, in this case under empire.

Identity in the postcolonial period is a challenging and complex task for nations such as Nigeria, and other African qualities.

Without the traditional social structures that were undermined or religious organisations that were pushed to the side by missionaries and having been stripped of a great deal of wealth, many African nations have faced civil conflict and struggled to establish themselves stable states in the postcolonial era.

However, this is changing.

African nations are growing and beginning to prosper from independence.

Nigeria will have the third largest population by the end of the 21st century in the world.

And in this growth, they are struggling, but also succeeding, and engaging with the process of redefining identity, in spite of the legacies of colonialism.

Take a look at that population chart.

I mentioned a moment ago, that by the end of the century, Nigeria will be the world's third most populous nation.

It's incredible to think how Africa is growing and succeeding in the postcolonial era.

We're going to return to the big question.

How do we uncover the lived experiences of those under colonialism? But first I want us to complete these questions of comprehension on this part of the lesson that we've just studied.

Pause the slide now, have a go at them, and when you're ready, unpause the slide.

We'll share our answers as well as looking at that big inquiry question.

Fantastic work, you've completed the questions.

Let's take a look at those answers.

Who became president of South Africa in 1994? Well done, it's Nelson Mandela.

You could go further and give a bit of background.

Also saying that he fought white minority rule, finally, as a result of his moral character and a survivor of the imprisonment on Robben Island came to be South Africa's first black president.

Which African nation will have the world's third largest population by the end of the 21st century? Excellent work, it is Nigeria.

You could expand that also and explain how Nigeria like many African nations is growing, and facing the challenge of redefining its identity in the postcolonial era.

One feature of extract A which a historian has to be aware of when using it to uncover the experiences of colonialism.

What if you wrote that it was about a chieftain rather than an ordinary quote on quote African, that's a very good point.

We have to be careful not to generalise about experiences.

However, you could develop this and say, when in reality, based on what we've studied, this experience still helps us to infer the general character.

The story of relations between white colonial rulers and non-white peoples under empire.

What can we uncover from extract A about the experience of living under empire? Well you're quite right, when you said that British colonial powers have no interest understanding of African political structures, and you could go further also explaining how the lack of respect led British colonists to debase, destabilise, and overthrow political structures with no regard for the longterm consequences of this and that this of course was one of the experiences, brought a legacies of empire.

Why do contemporary interpretations from historians, form useful sources for us? Well, if you have that, they give us an overview of broader perspective, that's great, great work.

You can develop that answer further and explain that, interpretations like Kwarteng's allows to capture a range of different thoughts and experiences, things that have been written and make broader judgments about the legacies and experiences under empire.

Back to this final point then, the big question, how do we uncover the lived experience of those ruled by Empire in Africa? Well, we've used multiple different sources, for example, firsthand accounts of people exploited, autobiographies by individuals such as Mandela, communications between different African leaders at the time.

And also records such as the witness testimony taken in the first lesson.

We can even use the work of contemporary stories, such as Kwertang.

These are all mechanisms for undertaking the important and challenging task of uncovering the lived experience of empire.

There are of course, challenges with each of these.

For example, people living under empire may have been ignored or oppressed or unable to read and write.

Equally colonists often selected the narratives that they wanted or changed them when they were transcribing and translating them.

We have to be careful as historians to watch out for this.

Accounts might be atypical, the story of a Chieftains life, for example, which is likely to be well recorded since this person had power, is not the same as the story of a person for example, who lived under this Chieftain, a quote on quote, ordinary African living under empire.

Later, historical works and fiction such as Achebe, are also important to that story.

But we have to be careful to distinguish between for example, a novel and true historical evidence.

Why is this so important? Well we said this at the beginning of inquiry and it's important we return to it now.

A historians role and the duty in fact, is to make sure that the voices of people who are at risk of being forgotten, who've been marginalised and ignored, are recorded and curated carried forward.

But it's not just about this.

It's also about the power that learning about life under empire carries.

For example, if we understand the horrors of empire, we're less likely to repeat similar structures in future.

And if we understand empire, we will understand also it's legacies such as racism.

When we understand this, we're better able to combat it.

And you all by studying this, will become better citizens of the world, no matter your background.

Well done for completing this inquiry.

Keep looking for stories of the lived experience under empire and keep using these to challenge the inequality that you see in society around you today, goodbye.