Multiple Hamitic Theories and Black Egyptians: Negotiating Tensions between Standards of Scholarship and Political Imperatives in UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1964–1998)

Abstract

UNESCO’s eight-volume General History of Africa (GHA) was a politically engaged but scholarly endeavor that aimed to Africanize the writing of African history. It did so partly through an expulsion of historical explanations that hinged on the idea that greatness had been transported into Africa from the outside. This article shows how the GHA developed scholarly standards while at the same time grappling with the political tension inherent in a move away from European colonialist historiography. It was specifically during the editing of the chapter written by Cheikh Anta Diop on the origins of the ancient Egyptians that political imperatives seemed to clash with standards of academic rigor and scholarly methods. This article offers an analysis of reports produced by the GHA during the editing of the series to show how the GHA navigated these tensions and why they chose to include the Diop chapter even if not all historians working on the GHA agreed with it. The article thereby shows how a decolonization of history took place in historiographical practice.