Can anyone doubt that we are still living with the consequences of history? Of course, this is true in many ways, but I'm thinking predominantly of the effects of religion--namely, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). Before you click the 'next' button, I'm not here to rant about religion today, but more to wonder on how similar events and circumstances can effect different peoples in so dramatically different ways.
More precisely, I'm interested in how two groups of people, enslaved and mistreated throughout recorded history--namely, Jewish and African peoples--can have had such a different effect on the world. While the differences can be seen in many areas, simple observation has to suggest that, while Africans and their descendants have had a relatively minor effect on the world (outside of their more recently achieved domination in sports and music), the Jewish people have been at the center of events and ideas that have, and continue to, crucially effect the world--I'm speaking, of course, about their creation of a monotheistic religion, it's progenitors, and the conflicts that has spawned throughout the world.
There can be little argument that both groups spent a significant part of their early history enslaved (by the likes of the Egyptians, Romans and many others). However, while Africans continued to be enslaved by various groups until quite recently, the Jews liberated themselves from the Egyptians and then fought the Romans for freedom (something that, unfortunately, led to the creation of Christianity and further prosecution for the Jewish people). So, what interests me is what is the difference between the two groups that led to vastly different responses and outcomes to their persecution.
We can guess from the Torah (old testament) that the Israelites had already developed a sense of community, a loose nationality at the time they were enslaved by the Egyptian pharaohs. They already felt themselves 'a people'. Moses, or which ever person or group he might represent, was able to draw on this sense of community, forging it, through the bonds of religion, into a unified cause. A cause that has held the Jewish people together throughout time and distance in the millennia since.
Africa, to state the obvious, is much larger than Israel. In the early world, this would undoubtedly mean that the peoples and communities likely existed in much smaller, more independent forms. It's quite likely that, because of the vastness of distance, the richness of the nature and relative abundance of food, and the absence of competing neighbours (at a distance they could appreciate) there was little reason for a 'sense of community' or the larger concept of a 'people' to develop quickly. Thus, when the first empires invaded, seizing the people for slaves, there was no sense of a nation about which to form a resistance. Hence, the African people continued to be enslaved with relatively little trouble for thousands of years, accepting this lot with a fatalistic view but otherwise causing little trouble.
An analogy to the African people can likely be found in the indigenous people of North and South America. These people also lived on large continents in similarly nature-oriented communities. Of course, these North American peoples did develop strong loyalties toward their communities, their nations, but one could argue that they quite likely had many more thousands of years over which to develop this before the Europeans invaded. So when the Europeans did finally invade, the indigenous nations fought (and where, of course, slaughtered due to the greater technology of the Europeans).
I believe this idea of the influence of community can further be bourne out by following the plight of African slaves brought to America. Again their was little resistance amid the enslaved peoples as they were largely kept separate, unable to communicate or develop a greater sense of disenfranchised community. Once the civil war ended, however, African-American were more free to form communities through the US, although they were clearly still treated as 2nd or 3rd class citizens. However, from the end of the civil war it took only about a century until the event that lead to the rising of the African-Americans themselves and the granting of greater 'equality'.
Thus it appears, to me at least, that the sense of belonging to 'a people / a nation' has been a significant force in shaping the events of history right up to the modern world. It's amazing to think how the world would be different if the Jewish people had been enslaved before they had developed their own identity, or if the African people had been enslaved after they had developed their identity.
Hmm, I smell some interesting alternative history stories in the making.
No comments:
Post a Comment