German scholar Franz quoted denying Africans possessed any history or civilization

Evidence

The most minute and the most careful researches have, as yet, failed to discover a history or any knowledge of ancient times among the negro races. They have invented no writing; not even the rude picture-writing of the lowest tribes. They have no gods and no heroes; no epic poem and no legend, not even simple traditions. There never existed among them an organized government; there never ruled a hierarchy or an established church. Might alone is right. They have never known the arts; they are ignorant even of agriculture. The cities of Africa are vast accumulations of huts and hovels; clay walls or thorny hedges surround them, and pools of blood and rows of skulls adorn their best houses. The few evidences of splendour or civilization are all borrowed from Europe; where there is a religion or creed, it is that of the foreigners; all knowledge, all custom, all progress has come to them from abroad. The negro has no history—he makes no history. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 403

Categorization

• DEFINE: This passage exemplifies the 19th-century scholarly fantasy of a ‘historyless’ Africa that the Black radical tradition was forged against — useful to hold up as the negative image of what Robinson will argue.
• XREF: Recalls how colonial ideology asserted ‘the negro has no history’ — a claim contemporary historiography (e.g. Walter Rodney, Cheikh Anta Diop) directly refuted; also echoes the imperial self-justification themes in Things Fall Apart. — connects to: Hegel’s Philosophy of History denied Africans any harmonious humanity — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 674; Hegel denied Africans the universal category of reason and knowledge of God — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 126; Colonial prejudices falsely denied Africans a sense of morality. (+7 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Hegel’s Philosophy of History denied Africans any harmonious humanity — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 674; Hegel denied Africans the universal category of reason and knowledge of God — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 126; Colonial prejudices falsely denied Africans a sense of morality. (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Hegel’s Philosophy of History denied Africans any harmonious humanity #corroborates (0.95) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 674