Cosmopolitan Africa Dr. Livingstone Essay - 889 Words

Dr. David Livingstone donated thirty years of his life to the people and wilds of the African interior; in doing so Livingstone inspired such love and affection in the hearts closest to him upon his death, Chuma and Susi embarked on a thousand mile journey to deliver his earthly remains and his final journal to the coast of Africa, where his remains were transported to Britain for burial; even though he portrayed the typical English worldview of the Colonial period: Africans needed English guidance and purpose to be a civilized people. Dr. Livingstone saw the need for trade, Christianity, British control and abolishment of slavery without recognizing the existence of cosmopolitan societies; while Professor Trevor Getz’s book COMOSPOLITAN†¦show more content†¦Professor Getz in his introduction made to astute observations: â€Å"First, Africans were connected to each other and to other parts of the world by trade, the exchange of ideas, and the migration of peoples. S econd, African societies were flexible and complex enough to deal with the influx of new ideas and movement of peoples that these networks necessitated† (Getz, xiv). Getz points out the Asante Empire as being cosmopolitan as its society found places for both local and immigrant Muslims and non-Akan people. Igbo society was cosmopolitan because of the diverse individual experiences and its lack of centralization while permitting native born and immigrants to benefit the overall societal structure economically. Proving many of the African societies were cosmopolitan by merely the exchange of technology, ideas, culture, travel, trade, beliefs, and the various people each individual society encountered and intermingled with. Even though Africans did not possess the deep ocean-going vessels or the sailing prowess of their European counterparts, various ‘tribes’ did travel outside the continent, for example as recorded in the Christian bible relates one such journey con ducted by the Ethiopian Queen Sheba during the time of the Hebrew King Solomon along with the travels of the Swahilis across the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean. One cannot neglect the movement of people in and out of the Nile River Delta roughly