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“Nordics” and “Hamites”: Joseph Deniker and the Rise (and Fall) of Scientific Racism

• First Online: 27 April 2017

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• Nigel Eltringham 4  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism ((PCSAR))

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The “Hamite” as “Caucasian” civilizers of Central Africa was central to colonial discourse in Rwanda-Urundi in the first half of the twentieth century and the notion of Rwandan Tutsi as “Hamitic invaders” was to return as a component in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The idea of an exogenous, Hamitic aristocracy in East and Central Africa is pronounced in the writings (from 1913) of Charles Seligman (1873–1940) in which “race” infers biogenetic superiority. Seligman drew on the work of the Italian anthropologist Guisseppe Sergi (1841–1936) who, in turn, drew on the work of the French anthropologist Joseph Deniker (1852–1918). Another key racial theory of the early twentieth century implicated in genocide can also be traced to Deniker. In The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the Nazi race theorist Alfred Rosenberg adopted “Nordic” (as Aryan) from Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916), who had, in turn adopted “Nordic Race” from William Z. Ripley’s The Races of Europe (1899). Ripley had adopted “Nordic” from Deniker. In other words, fantasies of both the “Hamite” and the “Aryan” as biogenetically superior races can both be traced to Deniker. And yet, notions of racial (biogenetic) superiority are entirely absent from Deniker who did not associate any intellectual or “cultural” superiority with any of his “races.” Contrary to the idea of a progression from early twentieth-century writings espousing “biogenetic” racial superiority to our contemporary rejection of racial determinism, there was, in reality, a regression from Deniker’s late nineteenth-century position.

A part of this chapter originally appeared in Nigel Eltringham, “‘Invaders who have stolen the country’: The Hamitic Hypothesis, Race and the Rwandan Genocide,” Social Identities 12 (2006): 425–444. See http://www.tandfonline.com .

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Eltringham, N. (2017). “Nordics” and “Hamites”: Joseph Deniker and the Rise (and Fall) of Scientific Racism. In: Morris-Reich, A., Rupnow, D. (eds) Ideas of 'Race' in the History of the Humanities. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49953-6_10

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Home > CUNY Graduate Center > Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects > 4153

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The hamite must die the legacy of colonial ideology in rwanda.

Awa Princess E. Zadi , The Graduate Center, City University of New York Follow

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Liberal Studies

Karen Miller

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African Studies | Arts and Humanities | International and Area Studies | International Relations

Rwanda, Genocide, Colonialism, Ideology, Hamitic Myth, Tutsi, Hutu

April 07, 1994, will forever remain in the history of Rwanda, as it commemorates the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. In 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people, who were overwhelmingly Tutsi, lost their lives at the hand of their neighbors, friends, and families. Although the genocide occurred 26 years ago, there is still much debate surrounding the cause of this tragedy. While some scholars have suggested that the genocide was triggered by contemporary economic and political factors, this thesis is taking a post-colonial approach by bringing into context the colonial history of Rwanda. In the discussion of these colonial roots, one important factor is taken into consideration: a colonial ideology known as the Hamitic hypothesis. This thesis argues that the Hamitic hypothesis or the Hamitic myth, which was exported by European colonizers to Rwanda, planted the seeds for the hatred that led to the massacre of Tutsis in 1994. The effect of the hypothesis was twofold. First, it shaped the institutionalization of ethnic differences through a series of discriminatory reforms and administrative systems that favored Tutsis during the colonial era. Second, the recontextualization and weaponization of the myth after independence resulted in discrimination against Tutsis during the first and second Hutu republics and their subsequent extermination during the genocide.

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Zadi, Awa Princess E., "The Hamite Must Die! The Legacy of Colonial Ideology in Rwanda" (2021). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4153

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Hamitic is an historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic . It was formerly used for grouping the non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages (which for this reason were described as "Hamito-Semitic"), but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense.

In the 19th century, as an application of scientific racism , the " Hamitic race " became a sub-group of the Caucasian race , alongside the Semitic race, grouping the non-Semitic populations native to North Africa , the Horn of Africa and South Arabia , including the Ancient Egyptians. The Hamitic theory suggested that this "Hamite race" was superior to or more advanced than Negroid populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . In its most extreme form, in the writings of C. G. Seligman, it asserted that all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites" who migrated into central Africa as pastoralists, bringing technologies and civilizing skills with them. Theoretical models of Hamitic languages and of Hamitic races were interlinked in the early twentieth century.

Hamitic race

Curse of ham.

The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been descended from the biblical Ham, one of the Sons of Noah . When Ham dishonors his father, Noah pronounces a curse on him, stating that the descendents of his son Canaan will be "servants of servants". Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians , Cush the Cushites, and Phut the Libyans . [ 1 ]

During the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to define Ham as the ancestor of all Africans. The curse was regularly interpreted as having created visible racial characteristics in Ham's offspring, notably black skin. According to Edith Sanders, the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates." [ 2 ] Both Arab and later European and American slave traders used this story to justify African slavery. [ 2 ] [ 3 ]

In fact, the Bible restricts the curse to the offspring of Ham's son Canaan, who occupied the Levant , not to his other sons who are supposed to have populated Africa. According to Edith Sanders, this restriction was increasingly emphasised by 19th century theologians, who rejected the curse as a justification for slavery. [ 2 ]

Hamitic hypothesis

Many versions of this perspective on African history have been proposed, and applied to different parts of the continent. The essays below focus on the development of these ideas regarding the peoples of east and southeast Africa, but "Hamitic hypotheses" operated in West Africa as well (and they changed greatly over time). For examples from Nigeria, see this source: [ 4 ]

In the mid 19th century, the term Hamitic acquired a new meaning as European writers claimed to identify a distinct "Hamitic race" that was superior to " Negroid " populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . The theory arose from early anthropological writers who linked the stories in the Bible of Ham's sons to actual ancient migrations of a supposed Middle-Eastern sub-group of the Caucasian race. [ 2 ] The theory that this group migrated further south was introduced by British explorer John Hanning Speke , in his publications on his search for the source of the Nile. [ 2 ] Speke believed that his explorations uncovered the link between "civilized" North Africa and "barbaric" central Africa. Describing the Ugandan Kingdom of Buganda, he argued its "barbaric civilization" had arisen from a nomadic pastoralist race which migrated from the north and was related to the Hamitic Oromo people of Ethiopia (known as the "Galla" to Speke). [ 2 ] In a section of his book entitled "Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races", Speke wrote:

"It appears impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahuma [Tutsi], that they can be of any other race than the semi-Shem-Hamitic of Ethiopia... Most people appear to regard the Abyssinians as a different race from the Gallas, but, I believe, without foundation. Both alike are Christians of the greatest antiquity.... [They] fought in the Somali country, subjugated that land, were defeated to a certain extent by the Arabs from the opposite continent, and tried their hands south as far as the Jub river, where they also left many of their numbers behind. Again they attacked Omwita (the present Mombas), were repulsed, were lost sight of in the interior of the continent, and, crossing the Nile close to its source, discovered the rich pasture-lands of Unyoro, and founded the great kingdom of Kittara , where they lost their religion, forgot their language, extracted their lower incisors like the natives, changed their national name to Wahuma, and no longer remembered the names of Hubshi or Galla--though even the present reigning kings retain a singular traditional account of their having once been half white and half black, with hair on the white side straight, and on the black side frizzly." [ 5 ]

These ideas provided the basis for asserting that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu . In spite of both groups being Bantu -speaking, the Tutsi were classed as "Hamitic" on grounds of their being deemed to be more Caucasoid in their facial features. Later writers followed Speke in arguing that they had originally migrated as pastoralists and had established themselves as the dominant group, having lost their language as they assimilated to Bantu culture. [ 6 ]

Later scholars expanded on these ideas, the most influential was the Italian race theorist Giuseppe Sergi . In his book The Mediterranean Race (1901) Sergi argued that there was a distinct Hamitic racial group which could be divided into two sub-groups: The northern Hamites, which comprised Berbers , Toubou , Fulani and the Guanches ; the Eastern branch, which comprised Egyptians, Nubians , Ethiopians, Oromo , Somali , and Tutsis . [ 7 ] Some of these groups had "lost their language" and so had to be identified by physical characteristics. In Sergi's theory, the Mediterraneans were the "greatest race in the world", and had expanded north and south from the Horn of Africa , creating superior civilizations. [ 2 ] [ 8 ] Sergi described the original European peoples as "Eurafricans". The ancient Greeks and Italians were born from "Afro-Mediterraneans" who migrated from western Asia and had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the advent of Indo-European languages . [ 8 ]

The Hamitic hypothesis reached its apogee in the work of C. G. Seligman, who argued in his book The Races of Africa (1930) that:

"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence...the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushmen , whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali....The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans' - arriving wave after wave - better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes." [ 2 ] [ 9 ]

Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, but that the wandering Hamitic "pastoral Caucasians" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures. [ 2 ] [ 10 ]

Despite criticism, Seligman's thesis remained unchanged in new editions of his book into the 1960s.

Negro-Hamites

Seligman and other early scholars also believed that invading Hamites from North Africa and the Horn of Africa had mixed with local Negro women in East Africa and parts of Central Africa to produce several hybrid "Negro-Hamitic" populations such as the Tutsi and the Maasai :

"At first the Hamites, or at least their aristocracy, would endeavour to marry Hamitic women, but it cannot have been long before a series of peoples combining Negro and Hamitic blood arose; these, superior to the pure Negro, would be regarded as inferior to the next incoming wave of Hamites and be pushed further inland to play the part of an incoming aristocracy vis-a-vis the Negroes on whom they impinged... The end result of one series of such combinations is to be seen in the Masai [sic], the other in the Baganda, while an even more striking result is offered by the symbiosis of the Bahima of Ankole and the Bahera [sic]." [ 10 ]

While some scholars accepted the idea of Sub-Saharan tribes like the Tutsi and the Maasai being Negro-Hamites, others such as John Walter Gregory emphasized that the putative Hamitic element in these peoples was at best minimal and consequently assigned them to a sub-group within the Negro race (where they had historically been classified). Citing the considerable physical disparity between the ethnic groups traditionally considered Hamites and the aforementioned "Negro-Hamites", Gregory wrote:

"By some authorities the Masai are included in the Hamitic group, but we have only to compare the features of a member of this tribe with those of a Galla ... to realise the predominance of the negro element in the former. The aspect of the pure Hamite differs altogether from those of the Bantu and Negroid races. The... portrait of a Galla presents no correspondence with the conception usually formed of an African native. The forehead is high and square instead of low and receding; the nose is narrow, with the nostrils straight and not transverse; the chin is small and slightly pointed instead of massive and protruding; the hair is long and not woolly; the lips are thinner than those of the negro and not everted; the expression is intellectual, and indicates a type of mind higher than that of the simple negro. Indeed, except for the colour, it could hardly be distinguished from the face of a European. These characteristics prepare us for the fact that the Galla are not African, but immigrants from Asia." [ 11 ]

Rwanda and Burundi

The Hamitic hypothesis affected the policies of European imperial powers in the twentieth century. In Rwanda it was linked to preferential attitudes to the Tutsis over the Hutu. This is believed by some to have been a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The League of Nations Mandate of 1916 appointed Belgium to govern Rwanda after Germany's defeat in World War I ; Philip Gourevitch claims that “the terms Hutu and Tutsi had become clearly defined opposing “ethnic” identities, and the Belgians made this polarization the cornerstone of their colonial policy.” [ 12 ] Belgian officials would set about measuring Rwandans to define traits among the various tribes which resulted in discrepancies they argued justified the Tutsis majority of control throughout the country.

Racial differences were established between the Tutsi and Hutu people, differences which would impose a wholly inflexible ceiling on those designated as Hutu. [ 13 ]

Scholars such as Mahmood Mamdani suggested that the Hutu began to see the Tutsi as an outside invader to their land, as "aliens" and usurpers, and that this led, in the end, to genocide. He states that reforms of local government by the Belgian colonial rulers in the 1920s led to a situation in which the Hutus "were not ruled by their own chiefs but by Tutsi chiefs. The same reforms constructed the Tutsi into a different race: the Hamitic race". [ 14 ] A major contributing force to the animosity between Hutu and Tutsis is derived from Spekes’ “Hamitic hypothesis”. Namely the notion that since the Tutsis were considered the Hamitic race, the Hutu could frame the Tutsis as foreign invaders, as by definition, the Hamitic race is synonymous with a settling identity.". [ 14 ]

Following World War II Belgium’s colonial administration had been placed under United Nations trusteeship, which meant that it was to prepare for the eventual independence of Rwanda as a self-governing nation. Hutu political activists emerged in great numbers and exploited this as an opportunity to rally the masses to unite in their "Hutuness" as this was their chance to finally gain power after decades of oppression. [ 12 ] This philosophy, coupled with other political incidents led to the social revolution of 1959 where ten thousand Tutsis, predominantly those within the political structure, were killed, and thousands more displaced from their homes. What followed was essentially a racial and ethnic hierarchy similar in most respects to that of one year prior; however with the roles simply reversed – Hutu dominated institutions with discrimination in education, the civil service and armed forces. [ 13 ]

This was unique to Rwanda and Burundi . While other ethnic groups outside Rwanda such as the Bahima were also identified as "Hamites", they were not given institutionalised superior status. "Only in Rwanda and Burundi did the Hamitic hypothesis become the basis of a series of institutional changes that fixed the Tutsi as a race in their relationship to the colonial state." [ 14 ]

African-American views

African-American writers were initially ambivalent about the Hamitic hypothesis. Because Sergi's theory proposed that the superior Mediterranean race had originated in Africa, support for the Hamitic hypothesis could be used to challenge claims about the superiority of white Anglo-Saxons of the Nordic race , promoted by writers such as Madison Grant . According to Yaacov Shavit this generated "radical Afrocentric theory, which followed the path of European racial doctrines". Writers who insisted that the Nordics were the purest representatives of the Aryan race encouraged "the transformation of the Hamitic race into the black race, and the resemblance it draws between the different branches of black forms in Asia and Africa." [ 15 ] In response, the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe, publishing an article by George Wells Parker who adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself. [ 16 ] In the same vein, the concept of Hamitic identity was taken up by black pride groups. Parker founded the Hamitic League of the World in 1917 by to "inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind." He insisted that "fifty years ago one would not have dreamed that science would defend the fact that Asia was the home of the black races as well as Africa, yet it has done just that thing." [ 17 ]

These ideas evolved into the concept of the "Asiatic Blackman" in the theories of Timothy Drew and Elijah Muhammad . [ 18 ] Many other authors followed the argument that civilization had originated in Hamitic Ethiopia, a view that became intermingled with biblical imagery. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (1920) considered that Ethiopians were the "mother race". The Nation of Islam asserted that the superior black race originated with the lost Tribe of Shabazz , which originally possessed "fine features and straight hair", but which migrated into central Africa, lost its religion and declined into a barbaric "jungle life". [ 15 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ]

However, writers who were keen to create a Pan-African view of the unity of black African peoples considered the Hamitic hypothesis to be divisive, since it asserted that superior Africans were not Negroid. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that "the term Hamite under which millions of Negroes have been characteristically transferred to the white race by some eager scientists" was a tool to create "false writing on Africa". [ 21 ]

Hamitic language group

These racial theories were developing alongside models of language. The term "Hamitic" was used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881), but in the traditional biblical sense to refer to all languages of Africa spoken by African people deemed "black".

Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft , and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language , the Berber languages , the Cushitic languages , the Beja language , and the Chadic languages . Unlike Müller, Lepsius considered that Hausa and Nama were part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color, mode of subsistence and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments that languages should be grouped together. [ 22 ]

In 1912, Carl Meinhof published Die Sprachen Der Hamiten (The Languages of the Hamites) in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula language , Maasai language , Bari language , Nandi language, Sandawe language and Hadza language to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported into the 1940s. [ 22 ] Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." [ 23 ] However, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture ." Meinhof did this in spite of earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston demonstrating that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages. [ 24 ]

Leo Reinisch (1909) already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, but his suggestion found little resonance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup, and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. However, it was Joseph Greenberg (1950) whose work led to widespread scholarly rejection of "Hamitic" as a category. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories, and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category in particular, Greenberg was actually "returning to a view widely held a half century earlier." He consequently rejoined Meinhof's Nilo-Hamitic languages with their Nilotic siblings. [ 24 ] He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afroasiatic for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification.

Greenberg's model was fully developed in his book The Languages of Africa , in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Hottentot language as a member of the Central Khoisan languages . To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza and Sandawe , though this view remains controversial since some scholars consider these languages to be linguistic isolates . [ 25 ] [ 26 ] Despite this, Greenberg's model remains the basis for modern classifications of languages spoken in Africa in which the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) plays no part. [ 26 ]

• ^ William M. Evans, "From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The Strange Odyssey of the 'Sons of Ham'". American Historical Review 85 (February 1980), 15–43 .
• ^ a b c d e f g h i Edith R. Sanders, "The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective," Journal of African History , 10 (1969), 521-532
• ^ Merriam Webster (editor), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10 Rev Ed edition, (Merriam-Webster: 1998), p.563
• ^ Zachernuk, Philip (1994). "Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerians and the 'Hamitic Hypothesis' c. 1870-1970". Journal of African History 35 (3): 427–55. JSTOR   182643 .  
• ^ J.H. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile , London: Blackwoods, 1863, p.247
• ^ Gourevitch, Philip (September 1999). We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Letters From Rwanda (1 ed.). New York: Picador. pp. 368. 0312243359.  
• ^ Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race , London: W Scott, 1901, p.41
• ^ a b Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy , Routledge, 2002, pp.24-32
• ^ C. G. Seligman, The Races of Africa , London, 1930, p. 96
• ^ a b Peter Rigby, African Images , (Berg Publishers: 1996), p.68
• ^ J. W. Gregory, The Great Rift Valley , (Routledge: 1968), p.356
• ^ a b Phillip Gourevitch, "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families.", New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998, p.54-5
• ^ a b African Rights, "Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance.", London: African Rights, 1995, p.8
• ^ a b c Mahmoud Mamdani, When Victims become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda , Princeton University Press, 2002, p.34-5
• ^ a b Yaacov Shavit, History in Black: African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past , Routledge, 2001, p.26; p.193
• ^ G.W. Parker, "The African Origin of the Grecian Civilization", Journal of Negro History , 1917, pp.334-344. Parker's theories are discussed in Yaacov Shavit, History in Black: African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past , Routledge, 2001, p.41.
• ^ George Wells Parker, Children of the Sun , Omaha, 1918, reprinted Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1978.
• ^ Nathaniel Deutsch, "The Asiatic Black Man": An African American Orientalism?", Journal of Asian American Studies , Vol. 4, N. 3, October 2001, pp. 193-208
• ^ Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity , JHU Press, 2005, p.144
• ^ Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X , Arcade Publishing, 1989, p.46
• ^ W. E. B. Du Bois, quoted in Maghan Keita, Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx , Oxford University Press US, 2000, p.78.
• ^ a b Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification , Stanford University Press, 1991, pp.80-1
• ^ Kevin Shillington, Encyclopedia of African History , CRC Press, 2005, p.797
• ^ a b Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages , (Stanford University Press: 1991), p.109
• ^ Sands, Bonny E. (1998) 'Eastern and Southern African Khoisan: evaluating claims of distant linguistic relationships.' Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 14. Köln: Köppe.
• ^ a b Ruhlen, p.117
• Historical definitions of race
• History of Africa
• Pseudohistory
• Ham (son of Noah)
• White supremacy

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hamitic — HAMÍTIC, Ă, hamitici, ce, adj. Care aparţine vechilor hamiţi. ♢ Limbi hamitice = grup de limbi vorbite în nordul şi estul Africii. – Din fr. hamitique. Trimis de gall, 13.09.2007. Sursa: DEX 98  hamític adj. m., pl. hamítici; f. sg. hamítică …   Dicționar Român

Hamitic — Ham*it ic (h[a^]m*[i^]t [i^]k), a. Pertaining to Ham or his descendants. [1913 Webster] {Hamitic languages}, the group of languages spoken mainly in the Sahara, Egypt, Galla, and Som[^a]li Land, and supposed to be allied to the Semitic. Keith… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Hamitic — [ham it′ik, hə mit′ik] n. an obsolete grouping within the Afroasiatic language family, including the Berber, Cushitic, and Egyptian languages adj. designating or of the Hamites or Hamitic …   English World dictionary

Hamitic — language group that included ancient Egyptian, Berber, Galla, etc.; 1842, from Ham, second son of Noah (Gen. ix:18 19) …   Etymology dictionary

Hamitic — I. adjective Date: 1844 of, relating to, or characteristic of the Hamites or one of the Hamitic languages II. noun Date: 1886 Hamitic languages …   New Collegiate Dictionary

Hamitic — /ha mit ik, heuh /, n. 1. (esp. formerly) the non Semitic branches of the Afroasiatic language family. adj. 2. of or pertaining to the Hamites or Hamitic. [1880 85; HAMITE + IC] * * * …   Universalium

Hamitic — 1. adjective of or pertaining to the Hamites or to the Hamitic languages 2. noun A group of languages spoken in Egypt and neighbouring countries …   Wiktionary

Hamitic — Ham•it•ic [[t]hæˈmɪt ɪk, hə [/t]] n. 1) peo (esp. formerly) the non Semitic branches of the Afroasiatic language family 2) peo of or pertaining to the Hamites or to Hamitic • Etymology: 1880–85 …   From formal English to slang

Hamitic languages — Hamitic Ham*it ic (h[a^]m*[i^]t [i^]k), a. Pertaining to Ham or his descendants. [1913 Webster] {Hamitic languages}, the group of languages spoken mainly in the Sahara, Egypt, Galla, and Som[^a]li Land, and supposed to be allied to the Semitic.… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Hamitic League of the World — was an African American nationalist organization. Its declared aims were:: To inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind and to… …   Wikipedia

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Hamites facts for kids

Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery . The term was originally borrowed from the Book of Genesis , where it is used for the descendants of Ham, son of Noah.

The term was originally used in contrast to the other two proposed divisions of mankind based on the story of Noah: Semites and Japhetites. The appellation Hamitic was applied to the Berber , Cushitic , and Egyptian branches of the Afroasiatic language family, which, together with the Semitic branch, was thus formerly labelled "Hamito-Semitic". However, since the three Hamitic branches have not been shown to form an exclusive ( monophyletic ) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.

Beginning in the 19th century, scholars generally classified the Hamitic race as a subgroup of the Caucasian race , alongside the Aryan race and the Semitic – thus grouping the non-Semitic populations native to North Africa and the Horn of Africa , including the Ancient Egyptians . According to the Hamitic theory , this "Hamitic race" was superior to or more advanced than the " Negroid " populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . In its most extreme form, in the writings of C. G. Seligman, this theory asserted that virtually all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites".

Since the 1960s the Hamitic hypothesis, and Hamitic theory, along with other theories of "race science" , has become discredited in science.

The "Curse of Ham"

Constructing the "hamitic race", development of the hamitic hypothesis, subdivisions and physical traits, "hamiticised negroes", history of the concept.

The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples said to be descended from Ham, one of the Sons of Noah according to the Bible . According to the Book of Genesis , after Noah became drunk and Ham dishonored his father, upon awakening Noah pronounced a curse on Ham's youngest son, Canaan, stating that his offspring would be the "servants of servants". Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians , Cush the Cushites, and Phut the Libyans.

During the Middle Ages, Jews and Christians considered Ham to be the ancestor of all Africans. Noah's curse on Canaan as described in Genesis began to be interpreted by some theologians as having caused visible racial characteristics in all of Ham's offspring, notably black skin. In a passage unrelated to the curse on Canaan, the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud says that Ham and his descendants were cursed with black skin, which modern scholars have interpreted as an etiological myth for skin color. Later, Western and Islamic traders and slave owners used the concept of the "Curse of Ham" to justify the enslaving of Africans.

A significant change in Western views on Africans came about when Napoleon 's 1798 invasion of Egypt drew attention to the impressive achievements of Ancient Egypt , which could hardly be reconciled with the theory of Africans being inferior or cursed. In consequence, some 19th century theologians emphasized that the biblical Noah restricted his curse to the offspring of Ham's youngest son Canaan, while Ham's son Mizraim, the ancestor of the Egyptians, was not cursed.

Following the Age of Enlightenment , many Western scholars were no longer satisfied with the biblical account of the early history of mankind, but started to develop faith-independent theories. These theories were developed in a historical situation where most Western nations were still profiting from the enslavement of Africans. In this context, many of the works published on Egypt after Napoleon's expedition "seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes", thus separating the high civilization of Ancient Egypt from what they wanted to see as an inferior race. Authors such as W. G. Browne, whose Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria was published in 1799, laid the "seeds for the new Hamitic myth that was to emerge in the very near future", insisting that the Egyptians were white.

In the mid-19th century, the term Hamitic acquired a new anthropological meaning, as scholars asserted that they could discern a "Hamitic race" that was distinct from the " Negroid " populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . Richard Lepsius would coin the appellation Hamitic to denote the languages which are now seen as belonging to the Berber , Cushitic and Egyptian branches of the Afroasiatic family.

"Perhaps because slavery was both still legal and profitable in the United States ... there arose an American school of anthropology which attempted to prove scientifically that the Egyptian was a Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro". Through craniometry conducted on thousands of human skulls, Samuel George Morton argued that the differences between the races were too broad to have stemmed from a single common ancestor, but were instead consistent with separate racial origins. In his Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), Morton analyzed over a hundred intact crania gathered from the Nile Valley, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were racially akin to Europeans. His conclusions would establish the foundation for the American School of anthropology, and would also influence proponents of polygenism.

In his influential The Mediterranean Race (1901), the anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi argued that the Mediterranean race had likely originated from a common ancestral stock that evolved in the Sahara region in Africa, and which later spread from there to populate North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the circum-Mediterranean region. According to Sergi, the Hamites themselves constituted a Mediterranean variety, and one situated close to the cradle of the stock. He added that the Mediterranean race "in its external characters is a brown human variety, neither white nor negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or negroid peoples." Sergi explained this taxonomy as inspired by an understanding of "the morphology of the skull as revealing those internal physical characters of human stocks which remain constant through long ages and at far remote spots[...] As a zoologist can recognise the character of an animal species or variety belonging to any region of the globe or any period of time, so also should an anthropologist if he follows the same method of investigating the morphological characters of the skull[...] This method has guided me in my investigations into the present problem and has given me unexpected results which were often afterwards confirmed by archaeology or history."

The Hamitic hypothesis reached its apogee in the work of C. G. Seligman, who argued in his book The Races of Africa (1930) that:

Apart from relatively late Semitic influence... the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushmen , whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali... The incoming Hamites were pastoral Caucasians – arriving wave after wave – better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes."

Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, and that the wandering "pastoral Hamitic" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures. Despite criticism, Seligman kept his thesis unchanged in new editions of his book into the 1960s.

Hamitic hypotheses operated in West Africa as well, and they changed greatly over time.

With the demise of the concept of Hamitic languages, the notion of a definable "Hamite" racial and linguistic entity was heavily criticised. In 1974, writing about the African Great Lakes region, Christopher Ehret described the Hamitic hypothesis as the view that "almost everything more un-'primitive', sophisticated or more elaborate in East Africa [was] brought by culturally and politically dominant Hamites, immigrants from the North into East Africa, who were at least part Caucasoid in physical ancestry". He called this a "monothematic" model, which was "romantic, but unlikely" and "[had] been all but discarded, and rightly so". He further argued that there were a "multiplicity and variety" of contacts and influences passing between various peoples in Africa over time, something that he suggested the "one-directional" Hamitic model obscured.

Sergi outlined the constituent Hamitic physical types, which would form the basis for the work of later writers such as Carleton Coon and C. G. Seligman. In his book The Mediterranean Race (1901), he wrote that there was a distinct Hamitic ancestral stock, which could be divided into two subgroups: the Western Hamites (or Northern Hamites , comprising the Berbers of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara, Tibbu, Fula, and extinct Guanches), and the Eastern Hamites (or Ethiopids , comprising Ancient and Modern Egyptians (but not the Arabs in Egypt), Nubians, Beja , Abyssinians, Galla, Danakil, Somalis, Masai, Bahima and Watusi ).

According to Coon, typical Hamitic physical traits included narrow facial features; an orthognathous visage; light brown to dark brown skin tone; wavy, curly or straight hair; thick to thin lips without eversion; and a dolichocephalic to mesocephalic cranial index.

According to Ashley Montagu "Among both the Northern and Eastern Hamites are to be found some of the most beautiful types of humanity."

In the African Great Lakes region, Europeans based the various migration theories of Hamitic provenance in part on the long-held oral traditions of local populations such as the Tutsi and Hima (Bahima, Wahuma or Mhuma). These groups asserted that their founders were "white" migrants from the north (interpreted as the Horn of Africa and/or North Africa), who subsequently "lost" their original language, culture, and much of their physiognomy as they intermarried with the local Bantus . Explorer J.H. Speke recorded one such account from a Wahuma governor in his book, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile . According to Augustus Henry Keane, the Hima King Mutesa I also claimed Oromo (Galla) ancestors and still reportedly spoke an Oromo idiom, though that language had long since died out elsewhere in the region. The missionary R. W. Felkin, who had met the ruler, remarked that Mutesa "had lost the pure Hamitic features through admixture of Negro blood, but still retained sufficient characteristics to prevent all doubt as to his origin". Thus, Keane would suggest that the original Hamitic migrants to the Great Lakes had "gradually blended with the aborigines in a new and superior nationality of Bantu speech ".

Speke believed that his explorations uncovered the link between "civilized" North Africa and "primitive" central Africa. Describing the Ugandan Kingdom of Buganda, he argued that its "barbaric civilization" had arisen from a nomadic pastoralist race who had migrated from the north and was related to the Hamitic Oromo (Galla) of Ethiopia. In his Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races (1863), Speke would also attempt to outline how the Empire of Kitara in the African Great Lakes region may have been established by a Hamitic founding dynasty. These ideas, under the rubric of science, provided the basis for some Europeans asserting that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu . In spite of both groups being Bantu -speaking, Speke thought that the Tutsi had experienced some "Hamitic" influence, partly based on their facial features being comparatively more narrow than those of the Hutu. Later writers followed Speke in arguing that the Tutsis had originally migrated into the lacustrine region as pastoralists and had established themselves as the dominant group, having lost their language as they assimilated to Bantu culture.

Seligman and other early scholars believed that, in the African Great Lakes and parts of Central Africa, invading Hamites from North Africa and the Horn of Africa had mixed with local "Negro" women to produce several hybrid "Hamiticised Negro" populations. The "Hamiticised Negroes" were divided into three groups according to language and degree of Hamitic influence: the "Negro-Hamites" or "Half-Hamites" (such as the Maasai , Nandi and Turkana), the Nilotes (such as the Shilluk and Nuer), and the Bantus (such as the Hima and Tutsi). Seligman would explain this Hamitic influence through both demic diffusion and cultural transmission:

At first the Hamites, or at least their aristocracy, would endeavour to marry Hamitic women, but it cannot have been long before a series of peoples combining Negro and Hamitic blood arose; these, superior to the pure Negro, would be regarded as inferior to the next incoming wave of Hamites and be pushed further inland to play the part of an incoming aristocracy vis-a-vis the Negroes on whom they impinged... The end result of one series of such combinations is to be seen in the Masai [sic], the other in the Baganda, while an even more striking result is offered by the symbiosis of the Bahima of Ankole and the Bahiru [sic].

In his work The Uganda Protectorate (1902, Harry Johnston claims that the Hamites are "Negroid rather than Negro" and that Negroes learned "all the civilization they possessed |before the coming of the white man" from the Hamites:

The fifth and last amongst these main stocks is the Hamitic, which is Negroid rather than Negro. This is the division of African peoples to which the modern Somali and Gala belong, and of which the basis of the population of ancient Egypt consisted... Rather it would seem as though ancient Egypt traded and communicated directly with what is now Abyssinia and the Land of Punt (Somaliland), and that the Hamitic peoples of these countries facing the Red Sea and Indian Ocean carried a small measure of Egyptian culture into the lands about the Nile Lakes. In this way, and through Uganda as a half-way house, the totally savage Negro received his knowledge of smelting and working iron, all his domestic animals and cultivated plants (except those, of course, subsequently introduced by Arabs from Asia and Portuguese from America), all his musical instruments higher in development than the single bowstring and the resonant hollow log, and, in short, all the civilization he possessed before the coming of the white man"

European colonial powers in Africa were influenced by the Hamitic hypothesis in their policies during the twentieth century. For instance, in Rwanda, German and Belgian officials in the colonial period displayed preferential attitudes toward the Tutsis over the Hutu. Some scholars argued that this bias was a significant factor that contributed to the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus.

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The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective Author(s): Edith R. Sanders Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1969), pp. 521-532 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/179896 . Accessed: 08/05/2014 00:32

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This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Journal of African History, x, 4 (I969), pp. 521-532 521 Printed in Great Britain

THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS; ITS ORIGIN AND FUNCTIONS IN TIME PERSPECTIVE1

BY EDITH R. SANDERS

THE Hamitic hypothesis is well-known to students of Africa . It states that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites , allegedlya branchof the Caucasianrace. Seligmanformulates it as follows:

Apart from relatively late Semitic influence... the civilizationsof Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralistsas are representedat the present day by the Beja and Somali ...The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans'-arriving wave after wave-better armedas well as quickerwitted than the darkagricultural Negroes.2 On closer examinationof the history of the idea, there emerges a pre- vious elaborateHamitic theory, in which the Hamites are believed to be Negroes. It becomes clear then that the hypothesis is symptomaticof the nature of race relations,that it has changed its content if not its nomen- clature through time, and that it has become a problem of epistemology. In the beginning there was the Bible . The word ' Ham ' appearsthere for the first time in Genesis, chapterfive. Noah cursed Ham, his youngest son, and said: Cursed be Canaan ; A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem ; And let Canaanbe his servant. God enlarge Japhet, And let him dwell in the tent of Shem; And let Canaanbe his servant.

Then follows an enumerationof the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japhet, and their sons who were born to them after the flood. The Bible makes no mention of racial differencesamong the ancestors of mankind. It is much later that an idea of race appears with reference to the sons of Noah; it concerns the descendants of Ham. The Babylonian Talmud, a collection of oral traditions of the Jews, appeared in the sixth century A.D.; it states 1 This topic has been explored in detail in E. R. Sanders 'Hamites in Anthropology and History: A Preliminary Study', unpublished manuscript, Columbia University , 1965. 2 C. G. Seligman, Races of Africa (I930), 96. All subsequent editions make the same statement (I957, I966). 34 AHX

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 522 EDITH R. SANDERS that the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black , and depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates.3 Thus, early tradition identified the Hamites with Negroes and endowed them with both certain physiognomical attributes and an undesirable character. This notion persisted in the Middle Ages, when fanciful rabbinical expansions of the Genesis stories were still being made. Ham, some of them said, was supposed to have emasculated Noah, who cursed him thus: 'Now I cannotbeget the fourth son whose childrenI would have orderedto serve you and your brothers!Therefore it must be Canaan,your firstborn,whom they enslave. And since you have disabled me... doing ugly things in blackness of night, Canaan'schildren shall be borne ugly and black! Moreover, because you twisted your head around to see my nakedness, your grandchildren'shair shall be twisted into kinks, and their eyes red; again because your lips jested at my misfortune, theirs shall swell; and because you neglected my nakedness, they shall go naked, and their male members shall be shamefully elongated! Men of this race are called Negroes, their forefatherCanaan commanded them to love theft and fornication,to be banded together in hatredof their masters and never to tell the truth.'4 Scholars who study the Hebrew myths of the Genesis claim that these oral traditions grew out of a need of the Israelites to rationalize their subjugation of Canaan, a historical fact validated by the myth of Noah's curse. Talmudic or Midrashic explanations of the myth of Ham were well known to Jewish writers in the Middle Ages, as seen in this description by Benjamin of Tudela, a twelfth-century merchant and traveller south of Aswan: There is a people... who, like animals, eat of the herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in their fields. They go about naked and have not the intelligence of ordinary men. They cohabit with their sisters and anyone they can find... they are taken as slaves and sold in Egypt and neighbouring countries. These sons of Ham are black slaves.5

Ideas have a way of being accepted when they become useful as a rationali- zation of an economic fact of life. As Graves and Patai put it: 'That Negroes are doomed to serve men of lighter color was a view gratefully borrowed by Christians in the Middle Ages; a severe shortage of cheap manual labor caused by the plague made the reinstitution of slavery attractive'. The notion of the Negro-Hamite was generally accepted by the year 1600. In one of the earliest post-medieval references found, Leo Africanus, the great Arab traveller and one-time protege of Pope Leo X, wrote about Negro Africans as being descended from Ham. His translator, the English- man John Pory, followed the text with his own commentary in which he

3 T. F. Gossett, Race-the History of an Idea in America (I963), 5. 4 R. Graves and R. Patai, Hebrew Myths (1964), i2I. 5 R. Hess. 'Travels of Benjamin of Tudela', J. Afr. Hist. vi, i (1965), I7.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS 523 stressed the punishment suffered by Ham's descendants, thus reinforcing the myth in modern times.6 Some seventeenth-century writers7 acquaint us with notions current in their time by citing European authors, known or unknown today, who wrote, directly or indirectly, about the low position of Negro-Hamites in the world. This was further strengthened by European travellers who went to Africa for reasons of trade8 or curiosity.9 Concurrently, there existed another point of view, in which the term 'Hamite' denoted a sinner of some sort, not necessarily a Negro, although the characteristics of the Hamite were the same negative ones variously attributed to the Negro.10 The idea of a Negro-Hamite was not universally accepted. Some indi- viduals1 believed that the blackness of the Negro was caused by the soil on which he lived together with the extreme heat of the sun. Others doubted that either the climate theory or the efficacy of Noah's curse were respon- sible for the Negro's physiognomy, but reasoned that 'their colour and wool are innate or seminal, from their first beginning.. '12 By and large, however, the Negro was seen as a descendant of Ham, bearing the stigma of Noah's curse. This view was compatible with the various interests extant at that time. On the one hand, it allowed exploita- tion of the Negro for economic gain to remain undisturbed by any Christian doubts as to the moral issues involved. 'A servant of servants shall he be' clearly meant that the Negro was preordained for slavery. Neither indi- vidual nor collective guilt was to be borne for a state of the world created by the Almighty. On the other hand, Christian cosmology could remain at peace, because identifying the Negro as a Hamite-thus as a brother- kept him in the family of man in accordance with the biblical story of the creation of mankind. The eighteenth century saw an efflorescence of scientific inquiry, which directed its efforts to the understanding of man's place in the world. Modern science had developed a century earlier and had attempted to establish order in the universe; the nature of man, however, was not part of scientific investigation, but remained in the province of theology. This state of affairs became unsatisfactory to the later scholars, namely the philosophes of the Enlightenment, who tried to apply scientific methods to the study of man and whose theories as to the origin of the race often came into direct conflict with the Scriptures. The Negro's place in nature was the subject of great debate at that time. One of the crucial issues of this debate was the question of unity in 6 J. Pory, Translation of Leo Africanus, Hakluyt Society, xcII-xciv (London, I896). 7 For instance, the Italian philosopher Campanella and a Mr Mede who was cited by seventeenth-century authors (see below) but whose own writings I was unable to find. 8 Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (1623). 9 Sir Thomas Herbert, Some Years of Travels into Divers Parts of Africa (I677). 10 E. Pagitt, Heresiography or a Description of the Hereticks, printed by W. W. for W. Lee (London, 1646). 11 Herbert, op. cit. 27. 12 Cited by T. Bendyshe, The History of Anthropology : Memoir read before the Anthropological Society of London I (1863-4), 371. 34-2

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 524 EDITH R. SANDERS mankind, or monogenism , as opposed to the separate creation of races or polygenism .13 The concept of the Negro-Hamite was steadily losing ground because theological interpretation of the peopling of the world did not satisfy the men of the Enlightenment. The myth was now kept alive mainly by the clergy, who tried to keep their hold on the laity by discredit- ing the savants as infidels.14 The polygenist theories led to a widespread belief that the Negro was sub- human and at the same time de-emphasized his relationship to the accursed Ham. The monogenist theories attempted to explain Negro physical characteristics by natural rather than mythical causes. The con- servative theologians still clung to the now classic exegesis of the Old Testament and discouraged any attempt at a different interpretation.15At the end of the eighteenth century, many famous men espoused and popular- ized one of two views regarding the Negro. One was that he was the result of 'degeneration' due to various environmental conditions.16 The other and more frequent view was that he was a separate creation, subhuman in character."7 The Western world, which was growing increasingly rich on the insti- tution of slavery, grew increasingly reluctant to look at the Negro slave and see him as a brother under the skin. Some writers18feel that the image of the Negro deteriorated in direct proportion to his value as a commodity, and the proudly rational and scientific white man was impatient to find some definitive proof for the exclusion of the Negro from the family of man and for ultimate denial of common ancestry. The catalyst which made this possible was an historical event, namely Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. Because Napoleon shared the passion for science and antiquities that was the hallmark of the Enlighten- ment, he invited archaeologists and other scientists to join him. The experts who had accompanied him discovered treasures that led them to found the new science of Egyptology and an institute on Egyptian soil. These

13 Some of the outstanding monogenists were Linnaeus, Buffon and Blumenbach. Some outstanding polygenists were Voltaire , Lord Kames and Charles White (an English physician and author of An Account of the Regular Gradations in Man and in Different Animals (London, I799)). 14 Lord Bolingbroke, an English friend of Voltaire, attempted a different interpretation of Genesis which was answered by a book by Robert Clayton, Bishop of Clough, entitled A Vindication of the Histories of Old and New Testament, in I753. 15 For instance, the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith , a professor at Princeton, then called College of New Jersey, an institution founded in I746 to train Presbyterian ministers. He wrote An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion ( Philadelphia , I787). 16 Buffon, cited by L. Eiseley, Darwin's Century (1961), 35-46; and Dr Benjamin Rush (American physician and son-in-law of Benjamin Franklin ), cited by J. Greene, 'The American debate on the Negro's place in nature, 1780-I815', Journal of History of Ideas, xv (1954), are examples of this school of thought. 17 Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version modernized by W. J. Fleming (New York, 1901); and Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man (Edinburgh, 1780), are examples of this group. 18 E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (University of Carolina Press, 1944); P. D. Curtin Image of Africa (New York, I964).

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS 525 discoveries were to revolutionize history's view of the Egyptian and lay the basis for a new Hamitic myth. Napoleon's scientists made the revolutionary discovery that the begin- nings of Western civilization were earlier than the civilizations of the Romans and the Greeks . Mysterious monuments, evidences of the begin- nings of science, art, and well-preserved mummies were uncovered. Attention was drawn to the population that lived among these ancient splendours and was presumably descended from the people who had created them. It was a well-mixed population, such as it is at the present time, with physical types running from light to black and with many physiognomical variations. The French scholars came to the conclusion that the Egyptians were Negroids . Denon, one of Napoleon's original expedition, describes them as such: '...a broad and flat nose, very short, a large flattened mouth... thick lips, etc.'.19 The view that the Egyptians were ' Negroid ' and highly civilized apparently existed before the French expedition to Egypt. Count Volney, a French traveller to the Middle East , spent four years in Egypt and Syria and wrote in a well-known book: How are we astonished... when we reflect that to the race of negroes, at present our slaves, and the objects of our contempt, we owe our arts, sciences, and... when we recollect that, in the midst of these nations, who call themselves the friends of liberty and humanity, the most barbarousof slaveriesis justified; and that it is even a problem whether the understandingsof negroes be of the same species with that of white men!20 In spite of the deserved respect which Volney enjoyed, his opinions on this subject were not accepted. Nevertheless, the Egyptian expedition made it impossible to hide that seeming paradox of a population of Negroids who were, once upon a time, originators of the oldest civilization of the West. The conflicting ideologies which existed in the West made it difficult for the various proponents of these ideologies to deal with the notion as it stood. Such a notion upset the main existing tenets; it could not be internalized by those individuals on both sides of the Atlantic who were convinced of the innate inferiority of the Negro, nor by those who adhered to the biblical explanation of the origin of races. To the latter such an idea was blasphemous, as Noah's curse condemned the Hamites to misery and precluded high original achievement. Egypt became the focus of great interest among the scientists as well as among the lay public. The fruits of this interest were not long in coming. A few short years after the Egyptian expedition, there appeared a large number of publications dealing with Egypt and Egyptians. Many of these works seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes. The arguments which 19 V. Denon. Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (London, 1803). 20 Volney, Travels through Syria and Egypt 1783-1784-1785 (1787), 83.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 526 EDITH R. SANDERS follow brought forth the questions of language, migration, ancient writers, and the existence of mummies.21 The polygenist theories of race postulated that as each race was created separately, so it was endowed with its own language. Because the Coptic language was clearly related to Arabic, it was convenient to draw the conclusion that the nations who spoke related lan- guages must have proceeded from one parental stock. Since the Ethiopians, Nubians and other allied peoples were declared not to be Negro by Euro- pean travellers, the Egyptians could not be said to be of African (Negro) race, as all of these peoples were colonists from Syria or Arabia Felix. Since ancient writers were silent on the subject of the Negroid physiognomy of the Egyptian, it was understood that in effect Egyptians were not Negroid, as such a fact would have startled the ancients into a detailed description. Herodotus himself, ran the argument, described them in comparative not absolute terms. Thus 'black and woolly haired' meant black as compared to the Greeks and woolly haired as compared to the Greeks. Some said that the existence of the mummies itself constituted sufficient proof that these people were non-Negro; to W. G. Browne the '... prescience of that people concerning errors into which posterity might fall, exhibits irrefragable proof of their features and of the colour of their skin...,'22 clearly im- plying, therefore, that the ancient Egyptians knew they could be mistaken for Negroes, and so left their bodies in evidence to refute such an allegation. Browne insisted that the Egyptians were white. Although he himself did not call them 'Hamites', he paved the way for his successors who were to identify the Egyptians as such. Modern times showed their influence on theological writings as well. The new Hamitic concept made its appearance quite early in the nineteenth century, spearheaded by the clergy. If the Negro was a descendant of Ham, and Ham was cursed, how could he be the creator of a great civilization? It follows logically that the theologians had to take another look, both at the Bible and at its explanation of the origin of the races of man. The veracity of the Scriptures obviously could not be denied. New interpreta- tions of the meaning of Scriptures were offered. Egyptians, it was now remembered, were descendants of Mizraim , a son of Ham. Noah had only cursed Canaan-son-of-Ham, so that it was Canaan and his progeny alone who suffered the malediction. Ham, his other sons, and their children were not included in the curse. For example, the Reverend M. Russell took up the issue of the Hamites and the Egyptians: In the sacred writings of the Hebrews it [Egypt] is called Mizraim... the name which is applied to Egypt by the Arabs of the present day. The Copts retain

21 The arguments presented here are those of W. G. Browne, a British traveller to Egypt, who was representative of this type of thinking; he was one of the first to have his ideas published. These ideas contained the seeds of the new Hamitic myth that was to emerge in the very near future. W. G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria (London, I806). 22 W. G. Browne, op. cit. I70-5.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS 527 the native word 'Chemia' which perhaps has some relationto Cham, the son of Noah; or as Plutarchinsinuates, may only denote that darknessof colour which appearsin a rich soil or in the human eye.23 He admits that there is a peculiarity of feature common to all the Copts, but asserts that neither in countenance nor personal form is there any resemblance to the Negro. He and other scholars re-read the Book of Genesis focusing on the genealogy of the three ancestors of mankind, and especially Ham. The histories of the sons of Ham were discussed, particularly those of Cush and Mizraim. The question was raised then whether it was Ham who had been cursed after all, or was it only Canaan?24It was indeed Canaan who was cursed, but the rest of the progeny of Ham went on to prosper. So it came to pass that the Egyptians emerged as Hamites, Caucasoid, uncursed and capable of high civilization. This view became widely accep- ted and it is reflected in the theological literature of that era. A survey of Biblical dictionaries of the period is quite revealing as to the wide accep- tance of the new Hamites. Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, published in 1846 by John Kitto, D.D., F.S.A., has a long article under the name Ham. It is stressed that the curse of Noah is directed only against Canaan. The general opinion is stated that all southern nations derive from Ham. How- ever, the article admits difficulties in tracing the history of the most important Hamitic nations-the Cushites, the Phoenicians and the Egyp- tians-due to their great intermixture with foreign peoples. Thus, the early decades of the nineteenth century greeted a new Hamitic myth, this time with a Caucasoid protagonist. At the same time the scientific bases of the new Hamitic myth were being devised and, allegedly, substantiated. Perhaps because slavery was both still legal and profitable in the United States , and because it was deemed necessary and right to protect it, there arose an American school of anthropology which attempted to prove scientifically that the Egyptian was a Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro. As Mannheim said, each intellectual stand is functionally dependent on the 'differentiated social group reality standing behind it.'25 Such workers as Dr Morton,26 assisted in various ways by Josiah Nott27 and George Gliddon ,28 collected, measured, interpreted and described the human crania. The comparative studies made of these crania led Morton to believe that the Egyptian osteological formation was Caucasian, and that it was a race indigenous to the Nile Valley. He also postulated fixity of 23 M. Russell, View of Ancient and Modern Egypt (New York, I831), 27. 24 It was the same doubt which had been formulated by Lord Bolingbroke o00 years before. But now the doubt was general, and the answer much different from that given by Bishop Clayton. 25 K. Mannheim, Essays in Sociology of Knowledge (I952), 190. 26 Samuel George Morton , American physician and professor of anatomy, author of several books on the human crania, such as Crania Americana and Crania Egyptica (I844). 27 Josiah Clark Nott, an American scientist and collaborator with Gliddon on Types of Mankind (I854). 28 George R. Gliddon, an American vice-consul in Cairo and an admirer of Dr Morton, whom he supplied with Egyptian skulls.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 528 EDITH R. SANDERS species, considering it a primordial organic form, permanent through time. Nott and Gliddon, who acted as Morton's apostles, also bolstered his interpretation by explaining the Negroid admixture of the Egyptians as being a population which descended from numerous Negro slaves kept by Egyptians in ancient days. These theories attempted to include the Egyp- tians in the branch of the Caucasoid race, to explain their accomplishments on the basis of innate racial superiority, and to exclude the Negro from any possibility of achievement by restating his alleged inferiority and his position of 'natural slave'. The conclusions of American scholars found a receptive audience in Europe, where craniology was considered to yield positive and meaningful data, a point of view expressed by two scientists of world renown, the Drs Retzius of Sweden and Broca of France . The intellectual vogue of the day was the stress on 'facts', not abstract theories, in all disciplines. Craniology provided a seemingly concrete 'fact', thus fitting in neatly with the prevailing academic attitudes. Again, there was no complete consensus among anthropologists. The most prominent opponent of the American school of anthropology was James Prichard of England,29 who was not convinced that the Egyptians belonged to the Caucasian race . The science of philology added weight to the new Hamitic theory. This young science was developing at a time when language and race were considered to be inextricably bound together, an approach which lent itself to polygenist theories. Bunsen,30a philologist and an Egyptologist, reported two branches of cognate languages, the Semitic and what he called the Iranian. Khamitic or Egyptian he postulated to be anterior to Semitic and antedeluvian. Here was irrefutable proof, it seemed, that the Hamitic language belonged to the Caucasoid peoples, and it was eagerly adopted by scholars and theologians. The new Hamitic myth was gaining momentum. The late nineteenth century provided two new ideologies which utilized and expanded the concept of the Caucasoid Hamite: colonialism and modem racism . Both shaped the European attitude to Africa and Africans. The travellers found a variety of physical types in Africa, and their ethno- centrism made them value those who looked more like themselves. These were declared to be Hamitic, or of Hamitic descent, and endowed with the myth of superior achievements and considerable beneficial influence on their Negro brothers. John Hanning Speke31 was seminal to the Hamitic hypothesis which we know today. Upon discovery of the kingdom of Buganda with its complex political organization, he attributed its 'barbaric civilization' to a nomadic pastoralist race related to the Hamitic Galla, thus setting the tone for the interpreters to come. The Hamites were designated as early culture-bearers in Africa owing to the natural superiority of intel- lect and character of all Caucasoids. Such a viewpoint had dual merit for European purposes: it maintained the image of the Negro as an inferior

29 J. Prichard, The Natural History of Man (London, I855). 30 C. K. J. Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History (London, 1848-67). 31 J. H. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York, 1964).

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS 529 being, and it pointed to the alleged fact that development could come to him only by mediation of the white race.32It also implied a self-appointed duty of the 'higher' races to civilize the 'lower' ones, a notion which was eventually formulated as 'the white man's burden'. At this point in time the Hamite found himself in an ambiguous position. On the one hand he was considered to be Caucasoid, that is superior. On the other hand he was a native, part of the 'burden', a man to benefit from European civilization. Here the Teutonic theory of race showed its adaptability. Having devised a hierarchy within the Caucasian race, the builders of the theory placed the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon on top of the ladder with the Slavs on the lowest rung. But an even lower position could always be added, and the Hamites filled the space admirably. 'Politics and race theories seemed natural allies';33 they provided a seemingly cogent ideological framework for colonial expansion and exploitation. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the Caucasoid-Hamite solidly established. Science supplanted theology as the alpha and omega of truth. Racial 'scientific' classifications, which had to face the physical diversity of the various 'Hamites', established a separate Hamitic branch of the Caucasian race, closely following the creation of a linguistic entity called a family of Hamitic languages. Linguistic typologies were based on racial types and racial classifications on linguistic definitions. The con- fusion surrounding the 'Hamite' was steadily compounded as the terms of reference became increasingly overlapping and vague. The racial classi- fication of 'Hamites' encompassed a great variety of types from fair- skinned, blonde, blue-eyed ( Berbers ) to black (Ethiopians). Two early racial typologies were devised by Sergi34and Brinton.35 Sergi called certain populations Hamitic chiefly on the basis of their linguistic characteristics. Among these were the inhabitants of the Sahara , the Berbers and even such people 'who have wholly, or partially, lost their language', like the Egyptians, Watusi and Masai. They were divided into the Eastern branch, and the Northern branch. The Eastern branch included the ancient and modern Egyptians (excluding the Arabs), Nubians, Bejas, Abyssinians, Gallas, Danakil, Somali, Masai and Watusi (or Wahuma). The Northern branch included the Berbers, Tebus, Fulbes (Fulani) and the Gaunches of the Canaries.36Brinton denoted Lybians, Egyptians and the East African groups as Hamitic, and remarked that each of these groups is distinguished by physical and linguistic differences.37 He went on to state that 'the physical appearance of the Libyan peoples distinctly marks them as

32 With respect to the role played by such theories in English colonial expansion see E. Sanderson, Africa in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1898); F. D. Lugard, The Rise of our East African Empire (Edinburgh, I898); J. Scott Keltie, Partition of Africa (London, I895); W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 189o-1902 (New York, I935). 33 J. Barzun, Race: A Modern Superstition (New York, I965), 33. 34 G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (New York, 1901). 35 D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples (New York, 1890). 36 Sergi, op. cit. 40-41. 37 Brinton, op. cit. 115.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 530 EDITH R. SANDERS members of the white race, often of uncommonly pure blood. As the race elsewhere, they present the blonde and brunette type, the latter predomin- ant, but the former extremely well marked'. Because Brinton also considered the Iberians to be Hamites, and not Basques, his description of the Libyans seems to imply that the Libyans are a sort of half-way house of the 'Hamitic' race, because they combine elements of the blonde Hamites (of Europe) and the brunette Hamites (of East Africa). This reasoning appears to be no more logical than that of Sergi, who first bases a racial group on its lin- guistic characteristics and then includes in it people who have 'wholly or partially' lost the language! Linguistic classifications were based on geography, racial characteristics and occupation, rather than on rigorous methodology pertaining solely to language. Grammatical gender became the main diagnostic of the so- called Hamitic languages. Although grammatical gender exists in many un- related languages of the world, it was not found in the languages of the 'true' Negro (racial category again). Thus linguistic typologies had racial bases just as racial typologies were based on linguistics.38 Because the Hamites discovered in Africa south of the Sahara were described as pastoralists and the traditional occupation of the Negro was supposedly agriculture, pastoralism and all its attributes became endowed with an aura of superiority of culture, giving the Hamite a third dimension: cultural identity. The historians who began to compile histories of Africa wrote with an often unconscious racial bias, and accepted the dicta of the discoverers of that continent as indisputable proven facts and presented them as historical explanations of the African past.39 Much of anthropology gave its support to the Hamitic myth. Seligman found a cultural substratum of supposedly great influence in Africa.40 In 1930 he published his famous Races of Africa, which went through several editions and which was reprinted in I966 still basically unchanged. He refined the Sergi-devised classifications of Hamitic peoples, adding the category of Nilotes or 'half-Hamites'. Every trace and/or sign of what is usually termed 'civilized' in Africa was attributed to alien, mainly Hamitic, origin. In such a way, iron-working was supposed to have been introduced to the Negroes by pastoral Hamites, along with complex political institu- tions, irrigation and age-grade systems.41 Archaeological findings of any

38 Early work on the Hamitic language family was done by R. N. Cust, A Sketch of African Languages (London, 1883); also Lepsius and Meinhof. 39 See A. R. Atterbury, Islam inAfrica (New York, I899); J. W. Gregory, The Foundation of British East Africa (London, I9oI); K. Johnston, Africa (London, 1884); J. Scott Keltie op. cit.; E. Sanderson, op. cit.; Capt. C. H. Stigand, The Land of Zinj (London, I913); and A. S. White, The Development of Africa (London, I890). 40 'Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ', Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, LIII, 1913. 41 S. Cole, The Prehistory of East Africa (Hammondsworth, 1954); K. Oberg in African Political Systems, M. Fortes and E. Evans-Pritchard (eds.); D. Westermann, The African Today and Tomorrow (Oxford, 1949), are only a few of a long list of examples.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS 53I magnitude were also ascribed to outside influences, and kept the Negro African out of his own culture history.42 In the eyes of the world the Negro stood stripped of any intellectual or artistic genius and of any ability at all which would allow him, now, in the past, or in the future, to be the master of his life and country. The confluence of modern nationalism and the ensuing modern racism evolved from earlier nineteenth-century national romanticism and devel- oped through theories of de Gobineau and adaptations of the Darwinian revolution. It was echoed in all Western nations, culminating finally in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Because that leading exponent of racism became the enemy of most of Europe and of the United States during World War II, German-championed ideology seemed to have lost some of its popularity. The Hamitic myth ceased to be useful with African nations which have been gaining their independence one by one, and the growing African nationalism drew scholarly attention to Africa's past. Many of the scholars were unencumbered by colonial ties; some of them were them- selves African. They began to discover that Africa was not a tabula rasa, but that it had a past, a history which could be reconstructed; that it was a continent which knew empire builders at a time when large areas of Europe stagnated in the Dark Ages; that it knew art and commerce. Some writers started to throw doubts on the Hamitic hypothesis by discovering indigenous Negro achievement of the past,43 while others attempted to explode it.44 Still the myth endures, is occasionally subverted by new terminology (such as 'Southern Cushites',)45 and stubbornly refuses to give way and allow an unbiased look at what can be validly ascer- tained from African culture history. It would be well-nigh impossible to point to an individual and recognize in him a Hamite according to racial, linguistic and cultural characteristics to fit the image that has been presen- ted to us for so long. Such an individual does not exist. The word still exists, endowed with a mythical meaning; it endures through time and history, and, like a chameleon, changes its colour to reflect the changing light. As the word became flesh, it engendered many problems of scholarship. 42 See early writings on Great Zimbabwe: D. B. Maclver, Mediaeval Rhodesia (New York, 1906); W. C. Willoughby, Race Problem in New Africa (Oxford, 1923); E. Naville, 'The Land of Punt and the Hamites', Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute, LVII (I925). 43 G. Caton-Thompson, The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins and Reactions (Oxford, 193I); J. P. Crazzolara, The Lwoo, Missioni Africane ( Italy , 1950); two instances of such discoveries. 44 See for example D. Apter, Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1961), 63; L. Fallers, Bantu Bureaucracy, East African Institute of Social Research (I956), 27-9; J. H. Greenberg, Studies in African Linguistic Classifications (New Haven, I955); I. Wallerstein, Africa, the Politics of Independence (New York, 1961), 12-13; D. McCall, Africa in Time Perspective (Boston, I964), 136-138. 45 E.g. G. P. Murdock, Africa, Its Peoples and Their Culture History (New York, I959).

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 532 EDITH R. SANDERS

SUMMARY The anthropological and historical literature dealing with Africa abounds with references to a people called the 'Hamites'. 'Hamite', as used in these writings, designates an African population supposedly distinguished by its race- Caucasian-and its language family, from the Negro inhabitants of the rest of Africa below the Sahara. There exists a widely held belief in the Western world that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by these Hamites, a people inher- ently superior to the native populations. This belief, often referred to as the Hamitic hypothesis, is a convenient explanation for all the signs of civilization found in Black Africa. It was these Caucasoids, we read, who taught the Negro how to manufacture iron and who were so politically sophisticated that they organized the conquered territories into highly complex states with themselves as the ruling elites. This hypothesis was preceded by another elaborate Hamitic theory. The earlier theory, which gained currency in the sixteenth century, was that the Hamites were black savages, 'natural slaves'-and Negroes. This identification of the Hamite with the Negro, a view which persisted throughout the eighteenth century, served as a rationale for slavery, using Biblical interpre- tations in support of its tenets. The image of the Negro deteriorated in direct proportion to the growth of the importance of slavery, and it became imperative for the white man to exclude the Negro from the brotherhood of races. Napo- leon's expedition to Egypt in I798 became the historical catalyst that provided the Western World with the impetus to turn the Hamite into a Caucasian. The Hamitic concept had as its function the portrayal of the Negro as an inherently inferior being and to rationalize his exploitation. In the final analysis it was possible because its changing aspects were supported by the prevailing intellectual viewpoints of the times.

This content downloaded from 128.95.104.66 on Thu, 8 May 2014 00:32:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamitic

Hamitic is an historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham , paralleling Semitic and Japhetic . It was formerly used for grouping the non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages (which for this reason were described as "Hamito-Semitic"), but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense.

In the 19th century, as an application of scientific racism , the " Hamitic race " became a sub-group of the Caucasian race , alongside the Semitic race , grouping the non-Semitic populations native to North Africa , the Horn of Africa and South Arabia , including the Ancient Egyptians . The Hamitic theory suggested that this "Hamite race" was superior to or more advanced than Negroid populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . In its most extreme form, in the writings of C. G. Seligman , it asserted that all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites" who migrated into central Africa as pastoralists, bringing technologies and civilizing skills with them. Theoretical models of Hamitic languages and of Hamitic races were interlinked in the early twentieth century.

Curse of Ham

The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been descended from the biblical Ham , one of the Sons of Noah . When Ham dishonors his father, Noah pronounces a curse on him, stating that the descendents of his son Canaan will be "servants of servants". Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites , while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians , Cush the Cushites and Phut the Libyans . [ 1 ]

During the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to define Ham as the ancestor of all Africans. The curse was regularly interpreted as having created visible racial characteristics in Ham's offspring, notably black skin. According to Bernard Lewis , the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and are sinful with a degenerate progeny." [ 2 ] Both Arab and later European and American slave traders used this story to justify African slavery. [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

In fact, the Bible restricts the curse to the offspring of Ham's son Canaan, who occupied the Levant , not to his other sons who are supposed to have populated Africa. According to Edith Sanders, this restriction was increasingly emphasised by 19th century theologians, who rejected the curse as a justification for slavery. [ 4 ]

Hamitic hypothesis

In the mid 19th century, the term Hamitic acquired a new meaning as European writers claimed to identify a distinct "Hamitic race" that was superior to " Negroid " populations of Sub-Saharan Africa . The theory arose from early anthropological writers who linked the stories in the Bible of Ham's sons to actual ancient migrations of a supposed Middle-Eastern sub-group of the Caucasian race. [ 4 ] The theory that this group migrated further south was introduced by British explorer John Hanning Speke , in his publications on his search for the source of the Nile. [ 4 ] Speke believed that his explorations uncovered the link between "civilized" North Africa and "barbaric" central Africa. Describing the Ugandan Kingdom of Buganda , he argued its "barbaric civilization" had arisen from a nomadic pastoralist race which migrated from the north and was related to the Hamitic Oromo people of Ethiopia (known as the "Galla" to Speke). [ 4 ] In a section of his book entitled "Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races", Speke wrote:

"It appears impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahuma [Tutsi], that they can be of any other race than the semi-Shem-Hamitic of Ethiopia... Most people appear to regard the Abyssinians as a different race from the Gallas, but, I believe, without foundation. Both alike are Christians of the greatest antiquity.... [They] fought in the Somali country, subjugated that land, were defeated to a certain extent by the Arabs from the opposite continent, and tried their hands south as far as the Jub river, where they also left many of their numbers behind. Again they attacked Omwita (the present Mombas), were repulsed, were lost sight of in the interior of the continent, and, crossing the Nile close to its source, discovered the rich pasture-lands of Unyoro, and founded the great kingdom of Kittara , where they lost their religion, forgot their language, extracted their lower incisors like the natives, changed their national name to Wahuma, and no longer remembered the names of Hubshi or Galla--though even the present reigning kings retain a singular traditional account of their having once been half white and half black, with hair on the white side straight, and on the black side frizzly." [ 5 ]

These ideas provided the basis for asserting that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu . In spite of both groups being Bantu -speaking, the Tutsi were classed as "Hamitic" on grounds of their being deemed to be more Caucasoid in their facial features. Later writers followed Speke in arguing that they had originally migrated as pastoralists and had established themselves as the dominant group, having lost their language as they assimilated to Bantu culture. [ 6 ]

Later scholars expanded on these ideas, the most influential was the Italian race theorist Giuseppe Sergi . In his book The Mediterranean Race (1901) Sergi argued that there was a distinct Hamitic racial group which could be divided into two sub-groups: The northern Hamites, which comprised Berbers , Toubou , Fulani and the Guanches ; the Eastern branch, which comprised Egyptians, Nubians , Ethiopians , Oromo , Somali , and Tutsis . [ 7 ] Some of these groups had "lost their language" and so had to be identified by physical characteristics. In Sergi's theory, the Mediterraneans were the "greatest race in the world", and had expanded north and south from the Horn of Africa , creating superior civilizations. [ 4 ] [ 8 ] Sergi described the original European peoples as "Eurafricans". The ancient Greeks and Italians were born from "Afro-Mediterraneans" who migrated from western Asia and had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the advent of Indo-European languages . [ 8 ]

The Hamitic hypothesis reached its apogee in the work of C. G. Seligman , who argued in his book The Races of Africa (1930) that:

"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence...the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushmen , whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali....The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans' - arriving wave after wave - better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes." [ 4 ] [ 9 ]

Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, but that the wandering Hamitic "pastoral Caucasians" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures. [ 4 ] [ 10 ]

Despite criticism, Seligman's thesis remained unchanged in new editions of his book into the 1960s.

Negro-Hamites

Seligman and other early scholars also believed that invading Hamites from North Africa and the Horn of Africa had mixed with local Negro women in East Africa and parts of Central Africa to produce several hybrid "Negro-Hamitic" populations such as the Tutsi and the Maasai :

"At first the Hamites, or at least their aristocracy, would endeavour to marry Hamitic women, but it cannot have been long before a series of peoples combining Negro and Hamitic blood arose; these, superior to the pure Negro, would be regarded as inferior to the next incoming wave of Hamites and be pushed further inland to play the part of an incoming aristocracy vis-a-vis the Negroes on whom they impinged... The end result of one series of such combinations is to be seen in the Masai [sic], the other in the Baganda, while an even more striking result is offered by the symbiosis of the Bahima of Ankole and the Bahera [sic]." [ 10 ]

While some scholars accepted the idea of Sub-Saharan tribes like the Tutsi and the Maasai being Negro-Hamites, others such as John Walter Gregory emphasized that the putative Hamitic element in these peoples was at best minimal and consequently assigned them to a sub-group within the Negro race (where they had historically been classified). Citing the considerable physical disparity between the ethnic groups traditionally considered Hamites and the aforementioned "Negro-Hamites", Gregory wrote:

"By some authorities the Masai are included in the Hamitic group, but we have only to compare the features of a member of this tribe with those of a Galla ... to realise the predominance of the negro element in the former. The aspect of the pure Hamite differs altogether from those of the Bantu and Negroid races. The... portrait of a Galla presents no correspondence with the conception usually formed of an African native. The forehead is high and square instead of low and receding; the nose is narrow, with the nostrils straight and not transverse; the chin is small and slightly pointed instead of massive and protruding; the hair is long and not woolly; the lips are thinner than those of the negro and not everted; the expression is intellectual, and indicates a type of mind higher than that of the simple negro. Indeed, except for the colour, it could hardly be distinguished from the face of a European. These characteristics prepare us for the fact that the Galla are not African, but immigrants from Asia." [ 11 ]

Rwanda and Burundi

The Hamitic hypothesis affected the policies of European imperial powers in the twentieth century. In Rwanda it was linked to preferential attitudes to the Tutsis over the Hutu. This is believed by some to have been a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The League of Nations Mandate of 1916 appointed Belgium to govern Rwanda after Germany's defeat in World War I ; Philip Gourevitch claims that “the terms Hutu and Tutsi had become clearly defined opposing “ethnic” identities, and the Belgians made this polarization the cornerstone of their colonial policy.” [ 12 ] Belgian officials would set about measuring Rwandans to define traits among the various tribes which resulted in discrepancies they argued justified the Tutsis majority of control throughout the country.

Racial differences were established between the Tutsi and Hutu people, differences which would impose a wholly inflexible ceiling on those designated as Hutu. [ 13 ]

Scholars such as Mahmood Mamdani suggested that the Hutu began to see the Tutsi as an outside invader to their land, as "aliens" and usurpers, and that this led, in the end, to genocide. He states that reforms of local government by the Belgian colonial rulers in the 1920s led to a situation in which the Hutus "were not ruled by their own chiefs but by Tutsi chiefs. The same reforms constructed the Tutsi into a different race: the Hamitic race". [ 14 ] A major contributing force to the animosity between Hutu and Tutsis is derived from Spekes’ “Hamitic hypothesis”. Namely the notion that since the Tutsis were considered the Hamitic race, the Hutu could frame the Tutsis as foreign invaders, as by definition, the Hamitic race is synonymous with a settling identity.". [ 14 ]

Following World War II Belgium’s colonial administration had been placed under United Nations trusteeship, which meant that it was to prepare for the eventual independence of Rwanda as a self-governing nation. Hutu political activists emerged in great numbers and exploited this as an opportunity to rally the masses to unite in their "Hutuness" as this was their chance to finally gain power after decades of oppression. [ 12 ] This philosophy, coupled with other political incidents led to the social revolution of 1959 where ten thousand Tutsis, predominantly those within the political structure, were killed, and thousands more displaced from their homes. What followed was essentially a racial and ethnic hierarchy similar in most respects to that of one year prior; however with the roles simply reversed – Hutu dominated institutions with discrimination in education, the civil service and armed forces. [ 13 ]

This was unique to Rwanda and Burundi . While other ethnic groups outside Rwanda such as the Bahima were also identified as "Hamites", they were not given institutionalised superior status. "Only in Rwanda and Burundi did the Hamitic hypothesis become the basis of a series of institutional changes that fixed the Tutsi as a race in their relationship to the colonial state." [ 14 ]

  African-American views

African-American writers were initially ambivalent about the Hamitic hypothesis. Because Sergi's theory proposed that the superior Mediterranean race had originated in Africa, support for the Hamitic hypothesis could be used to challenge claims about the superiority of white Anglo-Saxons of the Nordic race , promoted by writers such as Madison Grant . According to Yaacov Shavit this generated "radical Afrocentric theory, which followed the path of European racial doctrines". Writers who insisted that the Nordics were the purest representatives of the Aryan race encouraged "the transformation of the Hamitic race into the black race, and the resemblance it draws between the different branches of black forms in Asia and Africa." [ 15 ] In response, the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe, publishing an article by George Wells Parker who adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself. [ 16 ] In the same vein, the concept of Hamitic identity was taken up by black pride groups. Parker founded the Hamitic League of the World in 1917 by to "inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind." He insisted that "fifty years ago one would not have dreamed that science would defend the fact that Asia was the home of the black races as well as Africa, yet it has done just that thing." [ 17 ]

These ideas evolved into the concept of the "Asiatic Blackman" in the theories of Timothy Drew and Elijah Muhammad . [ 18 ] Many other authors followed the argument that civilization had originated in Hamitic Ethiopia, a view that became intermingled with biblical imagery. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (1920) considered that Ethiopians were the "mother race". The Nation of Islam asserted that the superior black race originated with the lost Tribe of Shabazz , which originally possessed "fine features and straight hair", but which migrated into central Africa, lost its religion and declined into a barbaric "jungle life". [ 15 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ]

However, writers who were keen to create a Pan-African view of the unity of black African peoples considered the Hamitic hypothesis to be divisive, since it asserted that superior Africans were not Negroid. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that "the term Hamite under which millions of Negroes have been characteristically transferred to the white race by some eager scientists" was a tool to create "false writing on Africa". [ 21 ]

  Hamitic language group

These racial theories were developing alongside models of language. The term "Hamitic" was used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881), but in the traditional biblical sense to refer to all languages of Africa spoken by African people deemed "black".

Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft , and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language , the Berber languages , the Cushitic languages , the Beja language , and the Chadic languages . Unlike Müller, Lepsius considered that Hausa and Nama were part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color, mode of subsistence and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments that languages should be grouped together. [ 22 ]

In 1912, Carl Meinhof published Die Sprachen Der Hamiten (The Languages of the Hamites) in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula language , Maasai language , Bari language , Nandi language , Sandawe language and Hadza language to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported into the 1940s. [ 22 ] Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." [ 23 ] However, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture ." Meinhof did this in spite of earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston demonstrating that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages. [ 24 ]

Leo Reinisch (1909) already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, but his suggestion found little resonance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup, and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. However, it was Joseph Greenberg (1950) whose work led to widespread scholarly rejection of "Hamitic" as a category. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories, and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category in particular, Greenberg was actually "returning to a view widely held a half century earlier." He consequently rejoined Meinhof's Nilo-Hamitic languages with their Nilotic siblings. [ 24 ] He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afroasiatic for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification.

Greenberg's model was fully developed in his book The Languages of Africa , in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan . Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Hottentot language as a member of the Central Khoisan languages . To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza and Sandawe , though this view remains controversial since some scholars consider these languages to be linguistic isolates . [ 25 ] [ 26 ] Despite this, Greenberg's model remains the basis for modern classifications of languages spoken in Africa in which the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) plays no part. [ 26 ]

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