The Dark Continent by Ivy Asmani

Through a Google search, the Dark Continent can be understood on a surface level among many things as term—coined by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley—used to describe Africa as mysterious and dark, or perhaps the description of Africa’s innate ‘evil’ and ‘darkness’, or (unrelated) the most dangerous place in the manga series Hunter x Hunter. All of which you have probably heard about. However, these surface level views (except maybe the Hunter x Hunter one) are damaging as they fail to acknowledge the deeper ramifications this phrase had and still does.

There’s one thing to clear first. The common understanding of the ‘Dark Continent’ as you know it is that it was a term used by the Europeans because they didn’t know much about Africa until the 19^th century. However, as an article from Thought Co perfectly puts it, this view is ‘misleading and disingenuous’ and was used to ‘justify colonialism and anti-Blackness'. Whether or not these conclusions are a stretch is an argument for another day, but we do know that knowledge of Africa by the Europeans dates back to the early 15^th Century, through the Portuguese explorer Prince Henry the Explorer. To avoid going down a rabbit hole, to sum it up, the Europeans had sufficient knowledge of Africa for the phrase ‘the Dark Continent’ to be ‘misleading and disingenuous’. Henry Morton Stanley himself, the one who popularized the phrase, had read over 130 books about Africa before he left on his mission in which the account ‘Through the Dark Africa’ details. Masking Africa as a deep, dark unknown (firstly) got beneficiaries to sponsor grand exploration trips, but to also morally legitimize exploration and colonization of Africa.

 

Racism lies at the heart of this phrase. ‘Dark’ in its own right has connotations of evil, the absence of light. Inherently wicked and wrong, needing to be brought back to the light; which the White missionaries thought they needed to do, even if they didn’t want to. Enter Manichean Dualism, the idea that the world is separated between light and dark, good and evil. In the colonial context, this duality in the world was between the colonizer and the colonized. Guess who was the ‘light’ (hint: not the colonized). The colonizers barely saw the people they were colonizing as humans, instead, as evil dark monsters that needed to be saved, and they were the only ones enlightened enough to do it. This view was unfortunately not a niche one, in fact, some people believed in it so passionately that they were inspired to write entire literary works about it (The White Man’s Burden, Rudyard Kipling).  This view was so popular that it was used as a strategy to justify colonialism—after all, they were just trying to ‘civilize’ those ‘people’ just as they were ‘called to do’. Who could argue with that?

Thus, the genesis of the White Saviour Complex, through the belief in the Dark Continent ideology, both the ‘unknown, uncivilized’ standpoint and the ‘evil,’ one. It solidified a separation between White and Black, a dangerous severing within the human race. The thing you might be wondering is, why? Why was it so easy for people to fall victim to this propaganda? Why were people pushing this narrative so adamantly? One thing about humans—if a narrative benefits them economically, psychologically, etc. no matter how false it is, they will push it. If Africa was the ‘Dark Continent’, then the white man had every right to go and explore, see what it was like, and make it their own. What could possibly go wrong? If Africa was the ‘Dark Continent’, the white man had a solemn duty, as an enlightened individual to infiltrate the evil, wicked land and bring the light into the darkness. It was what they had to do.  In retrospect, it may seem naive and gullible that people believed those lies with little questioning. However, you have retrospect. Back then, the public really didn’t know too much about Africa. All they knew was the narrative that was pushed to them.  And perhaps it was easier to believe that there was no way that anyone would ever perform the kind of injustices present during colonialism. Perhaps it was easier for the explorers, the missionaries to tell themselves that they were just doing what they were called to. That it was in their nature to want to explore things that they didn’t know about.

Think about it—imagine you see on the news that big shot scientists have discovered a planet with life, like ours. They speak in scientific terms you can’t even spell, but you’re intrigued and follow as they make plans to discover the planet. You don’t really understand what they’re doing, but you believe the scientists when they say the inhabitants of the planet are dangerous and uncivilized and need our superior intelligence to save them from their inherent evil. Even if you doubt it a little, what do you know?  

I think that the prosperity of the ‘Dark Continent’ is because of the lack of knowledge the public had, not the people who pushed the phrase in the first place. Because people were left in the dark (no pun intended) about what was really going on, the people perpetuating this phrase were able to mask their true intentions and what they were doing by the guise of ‘Saviour ship’ and ‘exploration'. Even today, the implications of the ‘Dark Continent’ are still in play. Even in this technological age, where information about everything is readily available, people still view Africa as a homogeneous entity, as a place where everything and everyone is the same. Now the ‘darkness’ of Africa lies in its portrayal in the media—dark stories of poverty, war, violence, political instability and famine. These genres have basically become synonymous with the continent of Africa. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it, the problem with stereotypes is not that they’re not true, but that they only show a single story. Africa is more than just its struggles. Africa is more than just its shortcomings. And most importantly, Africa is more than just what the Western world chooses to define it as.

I hope after reading this, you can understand why the perpetuation of ‘the Dark Continent' has left deep wounds in Africa and the understanding of it. Maybe after this, the next time you search up Africa and you see a million articles about sickness and violence, you’ll understand why, and remember that those a million articles choose to only showcase one perspective. Or maybe you won’t, and you’ll wholly trust the media and the Western world. After all, when have they ever been wrong?