Diopian Historiography

Diopian historiography is the name assigned to the revolutionary turn in the writing of African history introduced by the late Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop was born in 1923 in Caytu (near Diourbel) in Senegal, and he spent considerable time learning from the learned men of the Mourides order of Islam. One of these men was a relative of his, Cheikh Mbacke, who was impressed by the brilliance, eagerness to learn, and discipline of the young Cheikh Anta, who asked him many questions and demonstrated very early the type of inquisitiveness that was necessary for superior scholarship. Mbacke believed that the capacity of the young Cheikh Anta to master the wisdom of the elders and the knowledge of the imams indicated a bright destiny for the young man. He encouraged him to study diligently and to apply himself wisely. Thus, Cheikh Anta attended the French school at Diourbel until the 1940s, when he went to the Lycée Faidherbe in St. Louis, on the Island of Sor, where Mbacke was living at the time.

There were many influences on Diop. He was formed in the crucible of the St. Louis of 1940 to 1955. Among the pan-Africanists who visited the city was one of the most powerful black intellectuals of his day, Edward Wilmot Blyden. He found a community of young Senegalese men who were devoted to revolutionary change in their condition. Blyden may have met Babacar Sy, Lamine Gueye, Ngalandou Diouf, Mar Diop, Cekuta Diop, Raoul Lonis, Lamine Senghor, Emile Faure, Adolphe Mathurin, Kojo Tuwalu, and Kouyate Garang. There is no indication that Diop met with Blyden, but the environment of St. Louis at that time makes it possible. Here was the leading pan-Africanist of the continent, who, after having been in Liberia for a long time, had come to the French colonial capital to talk to the young African intellectuals. It is certainly not out of the question that Diop may have met with him in the company of all the other young men of the day. And Diop was almost certainly exposed to the work of Marcus Garvey in St. Louis. A Senegalese named Sar Djim Ndiaye, who knew Diop, gave an interview a few months after Diop's death in 1986 in which he said that he had distributed Garvey information in St. Louis in the 1920s and 1930s, and his friend Sama Lam Sar recalled that the influence of Marcus Garvey was very strong in St. Louis in the period of 1930 to 1940.

Diop's importance resides in his pivotal position as the African intellectual who confronted the most powerful myth the Europeans had created about African history. It is the structure and process of his writing of African history that at once made history and made a new intepretation of Africa. This is the meaning of Diopian historiography. He thrust Africa to the center of its own story and made all other issues subsidiary. This was the first time that Africa had been written in the central position in its own story since the occupation of the European powers. Diop is in a class alone by virtue of his intellectual struggles and victories.

...