Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T21:39:10.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The hamitic hyopthesis; its origin and functions in time perspecive1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Edith R. Sanders
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The anthropological and historical literature dealing with Africa abounds with references to a people called the ‘Hamites’. ‘Hamite’, as used in these writings, designates an African population supposedly distinguished by its race— Caucasian—and its language family, from the Negro inhabitants of the rest of Africa below the Sahara.

There exists a widely held belief in the Western world that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by these Hamites, a people inherently superior to the native populations. This belief, often referred to as the Hamitic hypothesis, is a convenient explanation for all the signs of civilization found in Black Africa. It was these Caucasoids, we read, who taught the Negro how to manufacture iron and who were so politically sophisticated that they organized the conquered territories into highly complex states with themselves as the ruling elites. This hypothesis was preceded by another elaborate Hamitic theory. The earlier theory, which gained currency in the sixteenth century, was that the Hamites were black savages, ‘natural slaves’—and Negroes. This identification of the Hamite with the Negro, a view which persisted throughout the eighteenth century, served as a rationale for slavery, using Biblical interpretations in support of its tenets. The image of the Negro deteriorated in direct proportion to the growth of the importance of slavery, and it became imperative for the white man to exclude the Negro from the brotherhood of races. Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798 became the historical catalyst that provided the Western World with the impetus to turn the Hamite into a Caucasian.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1969 , pp. 521 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Seligman, C. G., Races of Africa (1930), 96. All subsequent editions make the same statement (1957, 1966).Google Scholar

3 Gossett, T. F., Race—the History of an Idea in America (1963), 5.Google Scholar

4 Graves, R. and Patai, R., Hebrew Myths (1964), 121.Google Scholar

5 Hess, R.. ‘Travels of Benjamin of Tudela’, J. Afr. Hut. VI, i (1965), 17.Google Scholar

6 Pory, J., Translation of Leo Africanus, Hakluyt Society, XCII–XCIV (London, 1896).Google Scholar

7 For instance, the Italian philosopher Campanella and a Mr Mede who was cited by seventeenth-century authors (see below) but whose own writings I was unable to find.

8 Richard, Jobson, The Golden Trade (1623).Google Scholar

9 SirThomas, Herbert, Some Years of Travels into Divers Parts of Africa (1677).Google Scholar

10 Pagitt, E., Heresiography or a Description of the Hereticks, printed by , W.W. for Lee, W. (London, 1646).Google Scholar

11 Herbert, , op. cit. 27.Google Scholar

12 Cited by Bendyshe, T., The History of Anthropology: Memoir read before the Anthropological Society of London I (1863–1864), 377.Google Scholar

13 Some of the outstanding monogenists were Linnaeus, Buffon and Blumenbach. Some outstanding polygenists were Voltaire, Lord Kames and Charles White an English physician and author of An Account of the Regular Gradations in Man and in Different Animals (London, 1779).Google Scholar

14 Lord Bolingbroke, an English friend of Voltaire, attempted a different interpretation of Genesis which was answered by a book by Robert Clayton, Bishop of Clough, entitled A Vindication of the Histories of Old and New Testament, in 1753.

15 For instance, the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith, a professor at Princeton, then called College of New Jersey, an institution founded in 1746 to train Presbyterian ministers. He wrote An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion (Philadelphia, 1787).Google Scholar

16 Buffon, cited by Eiseley, L., Darwin's Century (1961), 35–46;Google Scholar and Dr Benjamin Rush (American physician and son-in-law of Benjamin Franklin), cited by Greene, J., ‘The American debate on the Negro's place in nature, 1780–1815’, Journal of History of Ideas, xv (1954), are examples of this school of thought.Google Scholar

17 Voltaire, , The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version modernized by Fleming, W. J. (New York, 1901);Google Scholar and Lord, Kames, Sketches of the History of Man (Edinburgh, 1780), are examples of this group.Google Scholar

18 Williams, E., Capitalism and Slavery (University of Carolina Press, 1944);Google ScholarCurtin, P. D.Image of Africa (New York, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Denon, V.. Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (London, 1803).Google Scholar

20 Volney, , Travels through Syria and Egypt 1783–1784–1785 (1787), 83.Google Scholar

21 The arguments presented here are those of W. O. Browne, a British traveller to Egypt, who was representative of this type of thinking; he was one of the first to have his ideas published. These ideas contained the seeds of the new Hamitic myth that was to emerge in the very near future. Browne, W. O., Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria (London, 1806).Google Scholar

22 Browne, W. G., op. cit. 170–5.Google Scholar

23 Russell, M., View of Ancient and Modern Egypt (New York, 1833), 27.Google Scholar

24 It was the same doubt which had been formulated by Lord Bolingbroke 100 years before. But now the doubt was general, and the answer much different from that given by Bishop Clayton.

25 Mannheim, K., Essays in Sociology of Knowledge (1952), 190.Google Scholar

26 Samuel, George Morton, American physician and professor of anatomy, author of several books on the human crania, such as Crania Americana and Crania Egyptica (1844).Google Scholar

27 Josiah, Clark Nott, an American scientist and collaborator with Gliddon on Types of Mankind (1854).Google Scholar

28 George R. Gliddon, an American vice-consul in Cairo and an admirer of Dr Morton, whom he supplied with Egyptian skulls.

29 Prichard, J., The Natural History of Man (London, 1855).Google Scholar

30 Bunsen, C. K. J., Egypt's Place in Universal History (London, 1848–1867).Google Scholar

31 Speke, J. H., Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

32 With respect to the role played by such theories in English colonial expansion see Sanderson, E., Africa in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1898);Google ScholarLugard, F. D., The Rise of our East African Empire (Edinburgh, 1898);Google ScholarScott Keltie, J., Partition of Africa (London, 1895);Google ScholarLanger, W. L., The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890–1902 (New York, 1935).Google Scholar

33 Barzun, J., Race: A Modern Superstition (New York, 1965), 33.Google Scholar

34 Sergi, G., The Mediterranean Race (New York, 1901).Google Scholar

35 Brinton, D. G., Races and Peoples (New York, 1890).Google Scholar

36 Sergi, , op. cit. 40–42.Google Scholar

37 Brinton, , op. cit. 115.Google Scholar

38 Early work on the Hamitic language family was done by Cust, R. N., A Sketch of African Languages (London, 1883); also Lepsius and Meinhof.Google Scholar

39 See Atterbury, A. R., Islam in Africa (NewYork, 1899);Google ScholarGregory, J. W., The Foundation of British East Africa (London, 1901);Google ScholarJohnston, K., Africa (London, 1884);Google ScholarPubMed J. Scott Keltie op. cit.; E. Sanderson, op. cit.; Capt. Stigand, C. H., The Land of Zinj (London, 1913);Google Scholar and White, A. S., The Development of Africa (London, 1890).Google Scholar

40 ‘Some Aspects of the Harnitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, LIII, 1913.Google Scholar

41 Cole, S., The Prehistory of East Africa (Hammondsworth, 1954);Google ScholarOberg, K. in African Political Systems, Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. (eds.); Westerrnann, D., The African Today and Tomorrow (Oxford, 1949), are only a few of a long list of examples.Google Scholar

42 See early writings on Great Zimbabwe: Maclver, D. B., Mediaeval Rhodesia (New York, 1906);Google ScholarWilloughby, W. C., Race Problem in New Africa (Oxford, 1923);Google ScholarNaville, E., ‘The Land of Punt and the Hamites’, Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute, LVII (1925).Google Scholar

43 Caton-Thompson, G., The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins and Reactions (Oxford, 1931);Google ScholarCrazzolara, J. P., The Lwoo, Missioni Africane (Italy, 1950); two instances of such discoveries.Google Scholar

44 See for example Apter, D., Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1961), 63;Google ScholarFallers, L., Bantu Bureaucracy, East African Institute of Social Research (1956), 27–9;Google ScholarGreenberg, J. H., Studies in African Linguistic Classifications (New Haven, 1955);Google ScholarWallerstein, I., Africa, the Politics of Independence (New York, 1961), 12–13;Google ScholarMcCall, D., Africa in Time Perspective (Boston, 1964), 136–138.Google Scholar

45 E.g. Murdock, G. P., Africa, Its Peoples and Their Culture History (New York, 1959).Google Scholar