It is not common practice to graphically depict historical events and present them critically through visual form. Articles or books are more often used to convey historical information. However, “Abina and the Important Men” which was first published in 2011, uses graphic novel techniques to tell part of the history of Africa in the 19th century. The authors try “to find a middle ground between scholarly and popular histories of regular people.” Through graphic history, Getz and Clarke describe the story of an ordinary African woman based only on a transcript of her court case. Moreover, in the second part of the book, this transcript is provided so that the reader can independently evaluate the presented interpretation. Through an individual history, the book offers a look at the largely inaccessible aspects of African history beyond colonization and slavery.
“Abina and the Important Men” follows the difficult life of Abina Mansah, a young woman from the Gold Coast. After being wrongfully enslaved, she manages to escape to Great Britain and bring her master Quamina Eddoo to court. The narration begins in 1871 when slavery is already becoming the subject of controversy. Since the book is based on a transcript of a court hearing, most of the scenes unfold in the courtroom, where the woman tries to convince important people of the significance of her rights. Thus, the book teaches the reader through the graphic part to understand the more complex primary sources that scholars use to interpret history.
More specifically, Abina’s story provides a deeper look at 19th-century slavery and the slave trade. Instead of statistics and general data, which are often presented in the history or perspective of Europeans, the book illustrates the experience of a real person. While other historians consider slavery from the perspective of important people, the authors describe it from the perspective of an ordinary person. This technique allows learning much more about the life of the Colonial Africa of the period, as well as about slavery in general.
First of all, the book tells about how narrow and often wrong were the ideas of Europeans about the culture and people of Africa. For example, this is evident when Quamina Eddoo discusses strategy with her attorney after the first day of the court hearing. They seek to take advantage of Europeans’ ignorance of African customs and practices and “convince them that the girl was purchased as a wife.” Moreover, the judge previously talks about philosophy and the concept of freedom, emphasizing that Abina is not able to understand such ideas. Thus, it can be concluded that the colonialists, especially those who were in the metropolis, did not have any interest in the real life of Africans.
They considered the continent and the people living on it exclusively as a source of economic benefits. Keim notes that “anthropologists have sometimes been called servants of colonialism because they provided the information and categories necessary to organize African peoples.” Abina’s story illustrates the European tendency to view the inhabitants of the continent not as individuals and equal beings, but as a resource. Researchers who were in Africa already in the 19th century found that the social structure of residents, as well as their development, is on an equal level with Europeans. However, as shown in the book, the inhabitants of the metropolis did not have this information.
The authors show the contradiction between the desire to own and profit from colonies and the desire for a civilized equal society. Melton argues that it is economically unprofitable to satisfy Abina’s accusations. However, he also doubts the correctness of such an act from a humanistic point of view. This fact illustrates that “European conceptions of Africa crystallized around the idea of “tribes,” bounded and static.” Melton was in Africa and saw that the same people live there; however, he cannot reject the idea of European superiority.
This circumstance is also difficult for historians who need to reconstruct the history of Africa. “Abina and the Important Men” emphasizes that Europeans had certain beliefs about Africans, which are reflected in the preserved material. For example, Judge Melton, who illustrates the controversy of the British attitude towards slavery, notes the superiority of his people. Historians are forced to study Africa “without the benefit of a large body of written documents, the traditional source material for historians.” Thus, Europeans could provide and publish only those materials which fit their point of view. Whereas the assessment of history from the perspective of Africans is most often not available for research since there is a predominantly oral tradition on the continent.
Moreover, since written documents are the main source of information for historians, the search for truth is even more difficult. The materials were produced either by Europeans or by educated Africans who were literate and thus constituted the elite. Therefore, the history of ordinary people is often not available. The book notes the fact that the transcription of the court hearing is the only document about Abina’s life. After the end of the process, nothing else is known about the woman. Thus, the lack of relevant documents complicates the objective reconstruction of African history.
It is noteworthy that the location of the events described is in Great Britain emphasizes the attitude towards the history of Africa. Abina sought protection in the metropolis because on the continent she has no opportunity to ask for justice. Europeans were convinced that Africa has no history, that it needed to be governed from outside. The colonialists were convinced that they could lead African society to civilization while simultaneously receiving economic benefits. “Abina and the Important Men” as a whole illustrates this belief about the dependent and helpless African people who need the protection and care of Europeans. This attitude destroyed the historical integrity of the continent as a source of research material. The Europeans made colonialism and slavery the only significant milestones in African history, while it is much more extensive.
“Abina and the Important Men” tells the story of an African woman, not an entire people or continent. The book is based on a rare transcription of a 19th-century court hearing. The story illustrates how much the true history of an entire continent can be distorted in the eyes of other cultures. The history of Africa is most often associated with slavery and colonization, while it has ancient and varied roots. However, Europeans focus exclusively on events which matter to their society and interests. Thus, historians do not have access to important documents which could form the basis for the reconstruction of events. “Abina and the Important Men” allows the reader to understand how essential it is to consider information from different points of view. The ideas expressed in the book are important because justice and equality in the modern world are the main values. Thus, what is important is a real, not an ideological view of the events of the past. However, in the case of Africa, the false beliefs of the Europeans made it difficult or even impossible to assess objectively.
Bibliography
Cooper, Frederick. Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Getz, Trevor, and Clarke, Liz. Abina and the Important Men. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Haselby, Sam. “Africa, in Its Fulness.” Aeon. Web.
Keim, Curtis. Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the African Mind. Boulder: Westview Press, 2014.
Laumann, Dennis, and Getz, Trevor. Colonial Africa, 1884-1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.