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The problem post independence is that whatever European power had control would use a divide and rule 1st implemented by the English in Ireland over a 1000 years ago and then rolled out all over the world. The issue between ethnic groups in Africa is that all sharing space formed along European borders
chokalateboywonder-
1st implemented by the English in Ireland over a 1000 years ago
I'm no expert on this particular period, but this is a stretch. It was only around this time that England began to exist as a politically unified kingdom. The invasion of Ireland that occurred not long after was initiated by the Normans, who at the time ruled England having invaded from Northern France, and were the descendents of Vikings, and so on...
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The problem post independence is that whatever European power had control would use a divide and rule 1st implemented by the English in Ireland over a 1000 years ago and then rolled out all over the world.
Well, 'divide and rule' is as old as the hills. I can't imagine people didn't do it in prehistoric times. It was one of the foundations of the Roman Empire, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
There's no question that more recent applications, such as in Ireland, North America, and Africa is of more relevance to us today.
SCS
Oliver Schick
No anthropologist with valid field experience advocates the use of the term tribe anymore- it just doesn’t describe any specific form of social/political organisation. It’s profoundly anchored in 19th and 20th Century evolutionist thinking about ‘primitive’ others that were commonly contrasted with the ‘civilised’ west. I would go as far as to say that the use of the term today is in itself racist.It is true that in many indigenous cosmologies around the world (especially in the Amazon for example), humanity is thought to conincide with one’s own social group, and everyone beyond that is a barbarian. I would however say that the kind of racism We are talking about in the context of BLM, the racism that underpins empire and colonialisation, is clearly a fairly modern western invention and unparalleled in the ethnographic record.
Also the ‘tribes’ in Ghana and Nigeria that you know, I would be interested to know how the colonial experience has reconfigured relations between them, especially in Ghana and Nigeria where the British used indirect rule very effectively.