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This is just a simplified guide. The questions are not central to the discussion in this class, but rather basic starting points.
Prof. Jorge Majfud
A discussion on Modern racism and slavery
Political systems, trade networks, empires, and state formation (Ethiopia, Asante, Sokoto, Zulu, Buganda)
- When and where did the first Modern Humans appear on the planet?
- What are the main theories about the origin of the name “Africa”?
- How did the meanings of “Barbaria” and “barbarian” change from the Roman period to the European colonial era?
- Why were North Africa and figures such as Septimius Severus and St. Augustine important to Roman and Western history?
- How did geography, trade, and political organization contribute to the rise and prosperity of African civilizations before European colonization?
- Why did European maritime expansion begin in the fifteenth century, and how did it transform the political and economic history of Africa?
- Who conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 711 CE, and what does the composition of that army reveal about the diversity of the medieval Islamic world?
- How did European colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, and modern racial theories reshape perceptions of Africa and contribute to the development of modern racism?
- According to the professor, how did social hierarchies in ancient India, European colonialism, and nineteenth-century pseudoscience contribute to the transformation of skin color and cultural differences into supposedly biological racial hierarchies?
- How did the nineteenth-century European invention of the “Aryan race” transform an originally linguistic and cultural concept associated with ancient India into a racial ideology that later influenced white supremacy and Nazi ideology?
Table of contents
What is Africa?
The name Africa wasn’t originally used by locals to describe the entire continent —it was actually popularized by the ancient Roman Empire, and its real origins come down to two main theories.
The most widely accepted story points to the Afri, a prominent Berber tribe living near the ancient city-state of Carthage in modern-day Tunisia. Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre in 814 BC. When, in the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE) the Romans conquered the region and created a new province, they simply named the territory after the people who lived there. Another compelling theory links the word to the ancient Phoenicians, whose language shared roots with the region; in Phoenician, the root ‘afar translates directly to «dust» or «earth,» describing the dry, dusty landscape of the North African coast.
Other names also come from our dominant Western culture. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, Africa was a source of genuine fascination and respect. They used the term Aithiopia (literally meaning «land of burned faces») to describe the region, often associating it with immense wealth, wisdom, and military prowess. African figures even held prominent roles in Greek mythology; Andromeda, for instance, was celebrated as a stunning Ethiopian princess, and several gods and legendary heroes were depicted with deep African ties.
Yet, this admiration had clear limits. While Greeks and Romans certainly respected African societies, their own deep-seated belief in their cultural superiority meant that fascination rarely translated into viewing them as equals.
Barbaria
To the Romans, calling someone a barbarus (a term borrowed from the Greek barbaros) wasn’t originally about being «uncivilized» —it simply meant you were an outsider, someone who didn’t speak Greek or Latin. It was their default label for anyone living beyond the empire’s borders, like the Germanic tribes (the Goths, Franks, Vandals, and Saxons). In fact, when the Romans called the lands across the Rhine and Danube Barbaricum («land of the barbarians»), it wasn’t necessarily a comment on their morals or intelligence; it was just a way of saying, «these people live outside our cultural and political universe.»
Fast forward to the medieval and early modern eras, and European powers dusted off that same linguistic root for a different set of foreigners. In North Africa, the word morphed into «Barbary» (and Barbaria in Latin), derived from the Amazigh-speaking Berber populations. Over time, the term shifted from a broad «anyone outside our borders» label into a specific geographical tag for the North African coast and its people.
If you looked at a European map between the 15th and 18th centuries, you’d routinely see the term Barbaria (or the Barbary Coast) stretched across North Africa —covering what we know today as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
The label came directly from Berber, the European term for the Amazigh, the Indigenous peoples of North Africa. But it also carried echoes of the old Greek word barbaros, used to describe anyone speaking a foreign language. Over time, the name took on a far darker reputation in the European imagination. It became closely linked to the Barbary corsairs —Muslim privateers and naval forces operating from North African ports who frequently raided European shipping routes and coastal towns during the 16th-18th centuries in territories under Ottoman influence.
European cartographers had different labels for other corners of the continent back then, using names like Aethiopia for vast stretches of sub-Saharan Africa and Guinea for parts of the West African coast. By the 19th century, as European powers drew up colonial borders and standardized global geography, Barbaria quietly faded off the map, replaced by the modern nation-states we recognize today.
The Forgotten Africans Beyond Africa
Far from being a quiet backwater, North Africa was an absolute powerhouse of the Roman Empire —a thriving hub of wealth, culture, and political muscle. In fact, in 193 CE, a man named Septimius Severus became the first Roman emperor born in Africa. Whether he can be considered a Black person is debated, not only because of uncertainty about his physical appearance but also because concepts of skin color and race have changed significantly across different historical periods. Hailing from Leptis Magna in modern-day Libya, he went on to found the Severan dynasty. He wasn’t a fluke, either; later emperors like Macrinus and the Gordian dynasty also had deep roots in Roman North Africa.
Major urban centers like Carthage, Alexandria, Hippo, and Leptis Magna weren’t just wealthy trade hubs —they were intellectual heavyweights that helped shape the trajectory of Western civilization.
Take St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), who was born in present-day Algeria. His masterworks, Confessions and The City of God, essentially laid the philosophical groundwork for Western Christian thought for centuries to come. He was in good company, joined by brilliant African thinkers, writers, and theologians like Tertullian, Cyprian, Apuleius, and Plotinus.
While these figures were fully immersed in the broader Roman Mediterranean world —and often identified culturally as Romans— they grew up in a vibrant, multicultural environment shaped by Amazigh (Berber), Punic, Egyptian, and Mediterranean heritage. Their legacies are proof that Africa wasn’t just a participant in the Roman Empire; it was right at the center of its political, religious, and intellectual life.
When we look back at the Roman Empire, it is easy to picture a monolith, but it was actually one of the most diverse melting pots of the ancient world. Spanning across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, Rome didn’t define identity the way we do today. They weren’t focused on modern concepts of race —what mattered to a Roman was whether you held citizenship, spoke the language, followed the law, and pledged loyalty to the state. Just look at Septimius Severus: he rose to become emperor of the entire Roman world, and he was born in North Africa.
That said, we shouldn’t romanticize it. Roman diversity was not a harmonious utopia; it existed right alongside brutal conquest, widespread slavery, and extreme social hierarchies. A Roman might genuinely admire the art, philosophy, or skills of a conquered people while simultaneously treating them as inferior resources to feed the empire’s power. Their prejudices were very real, but they were rooted in culture, religion, and class rather than the biological theories of race that emerged centuries later during the colonial era.
In more recent history, certain political movements tried to rewrite Rome’s story —painting ancient Greece and Rome as exclusively white European civilizations while erasing their deep, inescapable ties to North Africa and the broader Mediterranean. Ultimately, Rome offers a striking lesson: a society can be remarkably multicultural and integrated in some ways, while still being built on conquest, exploitation, and raw power. (Gamon, Denise. “The Roman Roots of Racial Capitalism.” American Academy in Berlin, 20 Aug. 2021.)
For thousands of years, people of African descent have been an active, driving force across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, shaping global politics, culture, military strategy, and science. In the ancient Mediterranean, North Africa wasn’t on the sidelines —it was right at the heart of Greek and Roman power. Before St. Augustine of Hippo, Mark the Evangelist —traditionally regarded as the author of one of the Gospels— is believed to have been born in Libya. According to Christian tradition, Mark brought Christianity to Africa, establishing the Church in the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt.
Long before Christianity spread across much of the globe, the Kingdom of Aksum —in modern-day Ethiopia— made it official. Around 330 CE, King Ezana formally adopted the faith for his empire, largely inspired by Frumentius, a Syrian Christian scholar who became a trusted advisor in the royal court. This shift laid the foundation for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
That influence didn’t fade during the medieval and early modern eras; it expanded. African soldiers fought in Roman legions and later served in European royal armies. African diplomats, nobles, and artists were familiar figures in European courts, while the Moors of the Iberian Peninsula revolutionized European agriculture, medicine, mathematics, and architecture. Far from being isolated to the Mediterranean coast, people of sub-Saharan and North African origin lived, worked, and built communities in major European cities like Rome, Lisbon, and London for centuries.
Crossing the Atlantic, Africans and their descendants became the backbone of modern societies across the Americas. Brought over through the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, their labor built national economies, but their contributions went far beyond physical work. Despite relentless oppression and discrimination, Afro-descendant populations embedded their heritage into the very DNA of the Western Hemisphere —shaping the agriculture, music, religion, language, political movements, and culture of countries from Brazil and the Caribbean to the United States.
In the modern era, the African diaspora continues to drive global culture and progress as leaders, scientists, athletes, artists, and activists. Looking back at this often-overlooked history makes one thing clear: Africa was never an isolated continent waiting to be discovered, but a constant, active architect of world history and human civilization.
A hypothesis of race
The ancient world knew the stranger, but it did not know race. Humanity observed variations in tongue, appearance, and belief, yet organized them around culture, citizenship, and geography. Modern race is not an ancient survival, but a modern invention: a biological prison engineered by empire to convert the fluid accidents of history into an unyielding law of nature.
However, long before European empires systematically mapped the world into rigid racial hierarchies, human societies had already begun weaving mythologies around the body. In ancient India, the association between light skin and power did not emerge from modern doctrines of «white superiority,» but from the gradual, intricate consolidation of social privilege.
During the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE), social architecture crystallized around the varna system —a hierarchy split among priests, warriors, merchants, and laborers. Varna translates literally to color, yet history obscures whether this ancient taxonomy originally denoted physical pigmentation, cultural identity, or symbolic ritual status. By the end of the era, however, what began as fluid social categories had rigidified into an unyielding hierarchy of birth and ritual purity.
Demographic shifts further complicated this narrative. As Indo-European-speaking groups moved into South Asia during the second millennium BCE and intermingled with indigenous populations, patterns of ancestry and geography merged with occupational divides. Generations of endogamy and labor —where outdoor agricultural work deepened skin pigmentation under an unsparing sun— linked darker complexions to manual labor and lighter tones to elite seclusion. Physical traits subtly aligned with social prestige, transforming accidental biology into a marker of inherited power.
For centuries, human skin served as a silent ledger of social distance. In agrarian societies, pale flesh was the domestic uniform of aristocratic privilege, kept immaculate behind shadowed walls, while the sun’s burn branded the working body with the stain of agricultural toil. The Industrial Revolution inverted this semiotic law. When capitalism herded the working masses into the dark, sunless caverns of factories and textile mills, paleness ceased to mirror noble seclusion and became the pallor of industrial confinement. Sun-kissed skin was swiftly reinvented: no longer the mark of the field hand, but an expensive luxury of the elite —proof of travel, open skies, and the economic freedom to escape the machine. Power does not merely exploit the body; it continuously redefines beauty to remain precisely where the working class cannot reach.
When British colonizers arrived in India centuries later, they did not invent its social stratifications. Instead, they weaponized them. European colonial powers superimposed their own pseudoscientific racial theories onto existing indigenous hierarchies, conflating light skin with «civilization» and European lineage. What had existed as an ancient, localized system of ritual purity and aesthetic symbolism was reassessed, reinforced, and globalized through the optic of imperial domination.
Color preference in South Asia is not a mere copy of Western racism; it is a layered historic construction where ancient indigenous hierarchies and modern European imperialism converged to turn human skin into a map of power.
In the nineteenth century, European intellectuals increasingly attempted to transform human differences into a hierarchy of supposedly biological races. What had begun as legitimate linguistic discoveries—the relationship between Sanskrit, Persian, and European languages—was gradually transformed into the myth of an “Aryan race.” Colonial India became an important laboratory for this emerging pseudo-science: European scholars interpreted the caste system as evidence of ancient racial divisions, imagining lighter-skinned “Aryans” ruling darker indigenous peoples.
The irony was profound: India, one of the civilizations Europeans encountered through Sanskrit texts, was simultaneously admired as an ancient source of wisdom and reduced to evidence for European racial fantasies. The concept of Aryan identity was progressively detached from language and turned into a biological category, sometimes reinforcing colonial power and sometimes appropriated by Indian elites seeking an ancient, prestigious identity.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European racial theorists fused the Aryan myth with white supremacy, antisemitism, nationalism, and racial hygiene. German racial ideologues —and eventually the Nazis— appropriated this invented history, transforming the imaginary Aryan into a supposed Germanic master race. What had begun partly with the study of Sanskrit and India’s ancient traditions thus became, through successive distortions, one of the intellectual ingredients of Nazi racial ideology and its catastrophic politics
Early conditions
European Sea Expansion
Long before European contact, West Africa was already thriving, entering a major period of growth following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. Driven by trade with the expanding Islamic world, the region grew exceptionally wealthy —most famously in Ghana, where gold was traded weight-for-weight with essential salt.
Mali later built on this momentum to become West Africa’s first great Islamic empire, reaching its peak under Mansa Musa, whose legendary 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca showcased the region’s immense riches and power to the broader world. While some theories suggest Mali launched Atlantic expeditions long before Columbus, most historians remain skeptical due to a lack of solid physical evidence. The idea stems mainly from accounts of Mansa Musa describing his predecessor —most likely Abubakari II— setting sail into the ocean with a massive fleet, but without concrete archaeological proof, the claim remains a fascinating story rather than accepted history. To test the idea that West Africans reached the Americas long before Columbus—a theory partly inspired by the distinct African-like facial features carved into ancient Olmec heads—a team of five Argentine adventurers built a primitive, rudderless log raft in 1984. Known as Expedición Atlantis, they set sail from the Canary Islands and spent 52 days drifting across the ocean, successfully proving that natural Atlantic currents could carry a basic African vessel directly to American shores.
Due to limited natural resources and the need to support growing populations, many European societies developed traditions of warfare, expansion, and conquest, including the Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Vikings, and later Modern explorers and colonizers.
The 1453 fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans threw traditional trade routes into chaos, forcing Europeans to look to the oceans for new ways to do business. That desperation probably kicked off the Age of Exploration: Columbus sailed west in 1492, Vasco da Gama rounded the tip of Africa in 1499, and the Portuguese set up a dominant trading hub in Guinea between 1461 and 1591. While these voyages opened up a new era of global commerce for Europe, they came at a brutal cost, shattering over a thousand years of West African independence and prosperity.
As West Africa fragmented into rival kingdoms much like feudal Europe, the rise of the European slave trade fundamentally altered the human experience. This era birthed a harsh new brand of racism and institutionalized slavery, alongside an aggressive capitalist worldview that transformed both human beings and nature into tradeable commodities.
Crucially, identity during this time was far more localized —just as people in Europe didn’t view themselves under a unified European banner, those in West Africa saw themselves through the lens of their specific communities and kingdoms, not as a collective African identity.
Before European colonization, Africa was home to sophisticated empires and complex trade networks, with West Africa standing out as the continent’s most economically and politically developed region —which also made it ground zero for the European slave trade after the Portuguese arrived. Powerful states like the Asante, Sokoto Caliphate, Zulu, Buganda, and Ethiopia each developed advanced political systems to manage regional commerce and power, showcasing a deeply interconnected continent long before foreign powers rewrote its trajectory.
When the Maghreb Surpassed Much of Europe
For long stretches of history, the Maghreb was actually far wealthier than much of Europe —a reality clearest during the Roman era and again between the 8th and 13th centuries, during Islam. Under Roman rule, North Africa became an economic powerhouse, supplying the empire with grain, olive oil, and valuable medicinal products —including silphium, a plant used as a contraceptive— while supporting grand, bustling cities such as Carthage.
Beyond its economic muscle, the Maghreb was an intellectual and innovation powerhouse. Its engineers pioneered sophisticated irrigation techniques that transformed regional agriculture, while its thinkers left an indelible mark on world history. Most notably, Augustine of Hippo —one of antiquity’s greatest minds— wrote from North Africa, producing works that would go on to shape the core of Western philosophy and Christian theology for centuries.
Following the Islamic conquests, the region’s prosperity only grew. It transformed into a bustling hub of trade and scholarship, connecting the Mediterranean to sub-Saharan Africa’s booming gold trade. By the time the Almoravid and Almohad empires rose to power, North Africa boasted flourishing cities and sophisticated trade networks at a time when much of Christian Europe was still largely rural, theocratic, and struggling to catch up.
Centuries later, during the Islamic Golden Age, the Maghreb once again became a beacon of science and philosophy. Standing at the center of this intellectual boom was Averroes (Ibn Rushd). Writing from the shared cultural world of North Africa and Al-Andalus, his groundbreaking commentaries on Aristotle didn’t just transform Islamic thought —they sent shockwaves through European philosophy.
The region’s reputation as a center of learning reached new heights in 859 CE with the founding of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco —widely recognized today as one of the world’s oldest continuously operating institutions of higher learning. It was founded and funded by Fatima al-Fihri, a wealthy heiress who poured her inheritance into creating a haven for scholarship. With the backing of royal patrons over the centuries, al-Qarawiyyin grew into a premier hub for theology, medicine, astronomy, and law, drawing brilliant minds from across the Mediterranean and the broader Islamic world.
The Maghreb was also a thriving hub for science. Its scholars advanced medical knowledge, helped spread algebra from Arab and Persian mathematicians and modern Arabic numerals, and built complex devices—like water clocks and astronomical instruments —that would centuries later inspire European scientific breakthroughs.
During this era (roughly the 11th through 13th centuries), the region was home to some of the most advanced academic centers on the planet. Averroes’ works were eagerly translated into Latin and became essential reading for European scholars, helping spark the medieval intellectual revival that paved the way for the Renaissance, Humanism, and modern sciences.
It wasn’t until after the 15th century —when European powers pivoted toward Atlantic trade, colonial conquest, and industrialization much later —that the global economic balance truly shifted.
The Legacy of Al-Andalus (711–1492)
For nearly eight centuries, Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) stood as one of the most vibrant and prosperous corners of medieval Europe. Cities like Córdoba, Toledo, Seville, and Granada flourished as hubs of trade, scholarship, and architecture, driven by a unique cultural mix where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities lived and created side by side.
More than just a regional empire, Al-Andalus acted as a bridge between civilizations. Its thinkers preserved and built upon knowledge from ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, and India, while pioneering their own breakthroughs in medicine, math, astronomy, and philosophy —with intellectual heavyweights like Averroes shaping European thought for generations. At the same time, innovations in irrigation and engineering transformed the countryside into an economic powerhouse.
The influence of Islamic architecture still echoes around the globe today. Signature elements like sweeping arches, grand domes, water mirrors, fountains, intricate tilework, geometric patterns, and open courtyards have left a lasting mark on buildings across Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East. Even today, contemporary architects draw inspiration from these traditional aesthetics, keeping centuries of cultural exchange and innovation alive in modern design.
A discussion of modern racism and slavery. Eurocentric and capitalist slavery. Theories and perceptions of White racial superiority.
When European Explorers Described the Sahel with admiration
Benin City (in present-day Nigeria) was one of the very few towns along the Guinea Coast that European travelers were allowed to visit before the 19th century. In 1601, a Dutch sailor and trader named Pieter de Marees sailed into the Bight of Benin and was deeply impressed by what he saw. He wrote that many of the African cities he visited easily held their ground next to the great cities of Europe—much like how Hernán Cortés wrote in awe about Tenochtitlan when he first entered Mexico in 1520.
The town seemeth to be very great; when you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam; which goeth right out and never crooks. . . It is thought that street is a mile long [this is a Dutch mile, equal to about four English miles] besides the suburbs. At the gate where I entered on horseback, I saw a very high bulwark, very thick of earth, with a very deep broad ditch. . . Without this gate there is a great suburb. When you are in the great street aforesaid, you see many great streets on the sides thereof, which also go right forth. . . The houses in this street stand in good order, one close and even with the other, as the houses in Holland stand. . . Their rooms within are four-square, over them having a roof that is not close[d] in the middle, at which place the rain, wind, and light come in, and therein they lie and eat their meat; they have other places besides, as kitchens and other rooms. . . Voices A Dutch Visitor Describes Benin City The King’s Court is very great, within it having many great four-square plains, which round about them have galleries, wherein there is always watch kept. I was so far within the Court that I passed over four such great plains, and wherever I looked, still I saw gates upon gates to go into other places. . . I went as far as any Netherlander was, which was to the stable where his best horses stood, always passing a great long way. It seems that the King has many soldiers; he has also many gentlemen, who when they come to the court ride upon horses. . . There are also many men slaves seen in the town, that carry water, yams, and palm-wine, which they say is for the King; and many carry grass, which is for their horses; and all of this is carried into the court.
Pieter de Marees, Beschrijvinghe ende historische verhael van het Gout Koninckrijck van Guinea (Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea), Amsterdam, 1602.
Quoted by Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Verso, 2018, p. 83.
Documents
African Civilizations (PBS Documentary)
Benin Empire:
Intro to Walter Rodney
Apendix
Latest on DNA
Bibliography and Sources
- Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. c. 397–400 CE.
- Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. c. 413–426 CE.
- Bowen, Emanuel. «A New and Correct Map of Africa, Drawn from the Most Approved Modern Maps and Charts, and Adjusted by Astronomical Observations.» London, 1748.
- De Marees, Pieter. Beschrijvinghe ende historische verhael van het Gout Koninckrijck van Guinea [Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea]. Amsterdam, 1602.
- Gamon, Denise. «The Roman Roots of Racial Capitalism.» American Academy in Berlin, 20 Aug. 2021.
- Ortelius, Abraham. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Antwerp, 1570.
- Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso, 2018.
- «Africans in Ancient Greek Art.» Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. metmuseum.org/de/essays/africans-in-ancient-greek-art
- «African Civilizations.» PBS Documentary. youtube.com/watch?v=2XS7s9S6q8Q
- «Cheddar Man: Mesolithic Britain’s Blue-Eyed Boy.» Natural History Museum. nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html
- «Scientists Recreate Face of 10,500-Year-Old Woman Using DNA.» Ghent University, 2025. ndtv.com/feature/scientists-recreate-face-of-10-500-year-old-woman-using-dna-8714592
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