Evening star., 1961-06-04
By ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE

future-in a crucial arena of
glObal conflict.
By ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
Written for the Associated Press
Copywright 1861. by the Associated Press
The problems arising from the
impact of modern life on Africa
are much in our minds today. Our
attention is being held, and our
anxiety is being kept at a stretch,
by disturbing news from South At
rica, the RhodeSias, and the Congo
among other African countries.
These names that spring first to
mind are reminders that the At
rlca that is causing this concern is
not the whole of the African con-
tlnent. 1t is, above all, Africa
south OF the Sahara; for it is here
that the impact of modern life has
come suddenly and has therefore
come as a shock.
North Africa has been having
plenty of troubles of its own. The
two words Suez and Algeria are
enough to remind us of that. But
there is all the difference in the
world between North AfricaS and
the rest of Africa's historical re-
lationS with other continents.
North Africa is in the heart of the
civilized world, and has had the
experience of active intercourse
with its neighbors since before the
dawn of history.
Civilization is almost as old in
Egypt as it is in Iraq. Recently
olScoVered rock paintings in the
Sahara have brought to light the
existence Of creative pre-civiliza-
tional culture there in the age
before aridity set in. And, through
out It's subsequent history up to
date, North Africa has been in in
innate contact with Europe and
ASIA. Its coast presents inviting
harbors, and the Nile offers a
waterway, leading inland, that is
continuously navigable up to the
first cataract.
Insulated by Fote
BY contrast. nature has done her
worst to inSulate the rest of Africa
from the civilized world. BY turn
ing the Sahara from a parkland
into desert, she sealed off the
northern approaches to central
and southern Africa overland. BY
making the central African rivers
1au over the eScarpment of a pla-
teau at relatively short distances
from the coast, nature has made
tneSe rivers useless for serving as
channels for penetrating the in
terror from the sea. For these
Photographed reasons, the OPEN
ing up of Africa by civilization was
retarded. 1t came later than the
openlng-up of the Americas and
even Australia and New Zealand.
The Phoenicians did circumnav-
lgate Africa, and subsequently, the
Arabs and the Chinese explored
ltS east coast as far as points
soutn OF the equator But the Fif-
teenth-century Portuguese VOYAGES
OF discovery were the first that led
10 any large-Scale permanent oc-
cupation of the coasts of Africa
south OF the Sahara by pioneers of
civilization. And the first impact
made by civilization on the interior
was a shocking one.
1t was the impact of the slave
trade for supplying forced labor
TO the European plantations in
the new world. The slave trade
ravaged the interior of Africa for
three centuries; and the price of
lts suppression was the Nine
teenth-century occupation of this
part OF the continent by competing
european powers. This political
partition of Africa was carried out
swiftly in the 1880s and COS.
In Africa south of the Sahara.
between the Italian conquest of
Ethiopia in 1856 and the Second
World War, Liberia was the sole
surviving independent state, and
Liberia was not a state of native
African origin. Its founders and
rulers were people of African race
whose earlier ancestors had
crossed the Atlantic as slaves and
whose later ancestors had re-
crossed it as Freedmen settlers.
Disturbing Experience
d. This brief sketch of African
history is enough to make it evi-
dent that the impact of modern
life in Africa south of the Sahara
has been a disturbing experience.
The impact has come late, it has
come suddenly, and it has taken
forms that were bound to arouse
resentment. Its first form was
slavery; its second was colonial
ism; and the reverse process of
de-colonization,' which has set
in at such high speed since the
end of the Second World War, is
q victory for justice and for liber-
alton but is not a solution of the
African problem.
1t is. indeed, a problem in itself,
because liberation from European
rule cannot bring with it an escape
from modern life and a return to
the state of cultural stagnation in
which most of Africa south of the
Sahara was living before modern
life broke in upon it. The impact
of modern life upon Africa has
been tardy; but, now that the
impact has been made, it is no
more possible for Africa than for
any part of the non-western world
to escape from the influence of
our world-encompassing Western
civilization.
In Africa, as everywhere else,
modern life has come to stay,
whatever may be the political re-
gime under which this or that
African country may be living. In
Africa south of the Sahara, this
continuing impact of modern life
= 81 l.