USA Africa Dialogue Series - Make No Mistake, History Is Crucial For Every Nation

For any nation and people, history matters. It is the repository of past records of what transpired such as social and even science-related problems. These repositories have the solutions. Since history repeats itself on a regular frequency, it is only helpful if we keep track of it. From this history we will find solutions to the problems we face. These are not new problem but recurrent ones. History has these solutions.

Black Technocrat

Besides being a repository of the solutions of the problems of our times, history also has a desirable psychological impact when narrated not by outsiders but the owners of that history. Every nation has made it a point to teach its children that nation or people's history no matter how brief that history might be. The Americans have a comparatively young history but they will not tire repeating it and praising it. Listening to Americans or watching their history-inspired national and local activities, one is left with the impression that America's history is barely older than 200 years.

The American leaders, be they political, economic, scientific, religious or cultural leaders, all understand history matters. It is a platform from which America's greatness was launched. That platform has to be guarded jealously because it is the backbone of the nation. No less than Chairman Mao understood this very significant concept that has transformed a nation as young as America to soar like an eagle in a short time span.

Having liberated China, Chairman Mao made a point of making sure the Chinese people understood their history. In the preceding decades, the Chinese people had become subject of public mockery by people and nations with colonial ambitions in China. The industrial engines of the West required resources to prop up the newly minted capitalist model. Capitalism is just the celebration of the acquisition of cheap raw materials using low-paying labourers or, where moral concerns and restrains are low or non-existent, slaves.

A story goes that says one of the Chinese emperors of later dynasties was given a mechanical clock which made him gaze in wonderment. What he had forgotten was that he was looking at an alien product manufactured on a technology invented by the Chinese and on Chinese soil. China's own foods and technologies adopted by the West following Marco Polo's expeditions had been forgotten by the Chinese themselves by the time the people of Marco Polo's land visited China centuries later. It is either the Chinese had forgotten their own heritage or they were not given credit for these rebranded products of Chinese origins. Read More

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