Comparing G. W. F. Hegel and Joseph Conrad to Chinua Achebe in Relation to Early African Societies

There are two ways to look at early African societies. One way is to look at these societies as functional, historical societies by their practices, beliefs and culture; the other is by their primitive qualities. However, since about the 1500's-1600's, most Europeans looked at these societies in the latter perspective, birthing a longstanding myth of a savage wasteland of hideous human societies of which many beliefs and theories still continue to haunt global society to this day.

No greater source of this horrible, rotten ideology exists beyond the works of G. W. F. Hegel and Joseph Conrad. Although Hegel never visited Africa proper, he lay down a stunning criticism of the continent upon which all future Western readings eventually followed. "For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit," he wrote. "What we understand by Africa is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here as on the threshold of the World's History."

According to Hegel, "The Negro... exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality - all that we call feeling - if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character.... The undervaluing of humanity among them reaches an incredible degree of intensity. Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper. Among us instinct deters from it... [b]ut [in] the Negro this is not the case; and the devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race."