Changing Identities

During colonial rule in East and Central Africa, the colonial rulers and their associates imposed identities on the indigenous populations. Notably, in this process the rulers and their associates also imposed new identities upon themselves in relationship to the identities they provided their subordinates. In reading the articles for this week, I was particularly struck by the similarities between construction of identities in Africa under the influence of European activity and such construction in North America. The consideration of the words “tribe” and “ethnicity” reminded me of the categorization exercises of Herodotus and Tacitus, and the racial divisions employed by the Hellenic-period Greeks (in, say, the numerous “Alexandrias”) or the later Romans. Divide et imperii, after all, is an old expression.

But “dividing and ruling” is only one aspect of colonial identity-making. There is also conglomeration. Both division and composition are illustrated in the work of Christian missionaries who strive to translate the Bible into local languages. Translation is a specialty of Christians, but Buddhists also have been great translators – and perhaps unsurprisingly, the work of conversion, involving translation, had led to restructuring of identities in other regions. I think particularly of the reformulation of central Asian groups under the influence of Mahayana missionaries in the 7^th century, or the effect of Chinese Buddhist missionaries in Korea in the 10^th. In these cases, as in the operations of the Jesuit Fathers in what is now Canada in the 17^th century, and as in those of missionaries in eastern and central Africa in the 19^th, decisions were made about orthography and the limits of dialect which were artificial, even strictly unnatural. Yet these decisions became binding.

Linking supposed dialectal distinctions to ethnicities or “tribes”, communities which formerly would not have self-identified were created, and in some cases gained some degree of permanency. But again, multiple dialects make uniformity and conformity more difficult to enforce. King James I knew this, and ordered a common, Authorized Version of the Bible which also created an “authorized version” of England forged from the many diverse dialects of English then existing. The process of creating the “King James Version” is strikingly like that of the creation of the Shona language in effect by legislative fiat, as recounted in Herbert Chimhundu's “Early Missionaries and the Ethnolinguistic Factor...”.

Language seems always to have a political component, as a Basque or Flemish Belgian or Quebecois might attest readily. Language is not any absolute guide to culture, but it is indicative. “German” had no “official” form until about the time of the Brothers' Grimm, which coincides fairly closely to the unification of Germany in the second half of the 19^th century, and “German” scholars and politicians had struggled since at least the 1500s to identify just what it meant to be a “German”. This problem seems not to have been resolved by the creation of a German state, so why would one expect such identifications to be any easier in another country similarly diverse? In reading Wildenthall's article on “Race, Gender, and Citizenship” I was struck by the clash between the traditional German sense of “right” (in this case the right to citizenship of every German man, and the conference of that right through marriage to his wife and through paternity to his children) and the concern for racial purity. The right is tied to ancient (or at least mediaeval) law, while the notion of racial purity seems to have been transferred from the distinction drawn between persons speaking the German language (in one of its many versions) and persons speaking other languages.

Distinguishing oneself from others can confer benefits, but can also have a substantial cost. I was almost astonished to learn that the frequently proposed distinction between the French and British colonial models turns out (in Goerg's appraisal, anyway), first of all not to have been that great, and second not to have involved so much physical separation of Europeans from “Natives” as I would have expected. In Guinea and Sierra Leone, at any rate, assimilation seems to have been the norm in both the British and the French colonial approaches. Notably, at the turn of the 19th/20^th centuries the general practice of assimilation was altered by, in the case of the British, an “hygienic” separation of the Europeans into “Hill Stations” on an Indian model, and in that of the French, an economic separation also initiated with concerns over fire safety and hygiene. These separations of “Europeans” from “Natives” had a racial or racist aspect, yet two things are surprising: first, that the British remained mostly “assimilated” rather than segregated, and that the French segregationist laws which seem perhaps more reasonable and “humanistic” on their face yet created a greater segregation than the British policies. This is a reversal of the standard interpretation of the distinction between the British and the French in respect to colonization, and I am now inclined to re-evaluate the materials on the relationship between the British and French, respectively, and the “Native” North Americans.

The general conclusion of the authors of the assigned articles is that the notion of “tribe” and “tribalism” are conveniences of colonial prejudice which sadly have persisted because they remain politically useful. The apparent fixity of “tribal” affiliation, however, is merely apparent. Tribal associations almost inevitably will change through time. They rarely have “objective” contents. But if “tribalism” itself is a mere illusion – however real the results of “tribal”association – how are people to identify themselves so as to receive the benefits (if also the responsibilities) of human community? In my own view, the ultimate answer is an effective global union, with citizenship being membership in the human species. But what to do in the meanwhile?