Hamitic is a historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic. It used to be used for grouping the non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic 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but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense.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 scientific racism, the "Hamitic race" was a subgroup of the Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic race, grouping the populations native to North Africa and South Arabia. The Hamitic theory suggested that the Hamite race was superior to or more advanced than Negroid populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Hamitic language group
The term "Hamitic" was used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881), but with regard to all languages of Africa spoken by people deemed "black". 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.
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. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments.
Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg; 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. Joseph Greenberg (1950) strongly confirmed Cohen's rejection of "Hamitic", added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afro-Asiatic for the family; almost all scholars have accepted his classification.
Hamitic race
In 19th century scientific racism, "Hamitic" referred to a race, encompassing the populations native to North Africa and South Arabia.[1]
This Hamitic race was considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, Semites, and the Mediterranean race..[2][3][4]
Hamitic theory
The "Hamitic theory", now also referred to as the "Hamitic myth", was the notion within scientific racism that members of the supposed "Hamitic race" were superior to or more civilized than the negroid (black) populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was introduced by British explorer John Hanning Speke.[5]
This "Hamitic theory" used as a justification for European colonial policy in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the slave trade in earlier times.[dubious – discuss][6][7]
Rwanda
In Rwanda, Speke's Hamitic hypothesis was used to suggest that the supposedly "Hamitic" Tutsi people were "superior" to t Hutus. 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.[8]
While the Hutu majority ruled in Rwanda from independence in 1962 until their ouster in 1994 by a Tutsi rebel group, Tutsis in neighboring Burundi did, in fact, enjoy 400 hundred years of unmitigated minority rule over that country's largely Hutu populace.[9]
This hypothesis is believed by some to be a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide. Scholars such as Mahmood Mamdani suggest that the Hutu began to see the Tutsi as an outside invader to their land, as "aliens" and usurpers, and that this led to genocide.
History
Ham in the Bible
The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been In the Bible, the sons of Ham include peoples who were traditionally enemies of the Jews, notably the Egyptians and the Canaanites. While the Canaanites competed with the Israelites for the same territory, Ham's sons were said to have fathered the peoples of Africa. Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians, Cush the Cushites and Phut the "Libyans".[10]
Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the dispersing of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means "black" in Hebrew, and "Canaan" means "trader", "trafficker", or "lowland".[citation needed] The word "Ham" in Hebrew moreover means "hot" or "multitude", and is thus not necessarily a racial reference.[11] However, using Hebrew to define these names will result in inaccurate translations because Noah and his sons were not, technically speaking, "Hebrew", since, according to Genesis 11:10-26, they lived thousands of years before Abram (later Abraham), who is the father of the Hebrew people.
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."[12] Rabbis discuss what the nature of Ham's offense was, such that his fourth son was cursed. Nevertheless, slave holders, slavery defenders and racial theorists used similar formulations to justify African slavery in the Americas.[13]
Use of Hamite after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt
After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, European interest in that country increased dramatically. With the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the rapid increase in knowledge of Ancient Egyptian civilization, European academics became increasingly interested in the origin of the Egyptians and their connection to other groups nearby.
Non-religious and Darwinian writers theorised that the Biblical stories contained an element of truth about the ancestry of some populations in Africa, who may have migrated into Central Africa from the North. [Seligman, Races of Africa 1930: 19] These peoples were assumed to be racially superior to Black Africans. [Seligman 1930: 158]
Current usage
The term's linguistic use was effectively terminated by Joseph Greenberg (The Languages of Africa) in the 1950s, who introduced the use of geographical rather than racial terms for the various language families spoken in Africa. The Hamitic language group is no longer considered by most scholars to be a useful concept,[14] though the phrase "Hamito-Semitic" is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic linguistic group.
Today, the concepts of scientific racism have been widely discredited, and notions of a "Hamitic race" have been referred to as the Hamitic Myth.[15]
References
- ^ OED: "The Phoenicians or Canaanites, both being Chamite, and not Shemite, nations" James C. Prichard, The natural history of man p. 144 (1842); "The Hamite Race [...] is located in Africa and South Arabia" 1871 Priestly Smith, Anc. Hist. East^ p. 6 (1871).
- ^ Ronald James Harrison, Africa and the Islands, (Wiley: 1965), p.58
- ^ Dorothy Dodge, African Politics in Perspective, (Van Nostrand: 1966), p.11
- ^ Michael Senior, Tropical Lands: a human geography, (Longman: 1979), p.59
- ^ A. H. M. Jones, Elizabeth Monroe, History of Abyssinia, (Kessinger Publishing: 2003), p.25
- ^ Edith R. Sanders, "The Hamitic Hypothesis; It Origin and Functions in Time Perspective," Journal of African History, 10 (1969), 521-23; William M. Evans, "From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: Michael D. Biddis, "Gobineau and the Origins of European Racism," Race, 7 (January 1966), 255-70; Frederickson, Black Image, 71-96.
- ^ Michael D. Biddis, "Gobineau and the Origins of European Racism," Race, 7 (January 1966), 255-70; Frederickson, Black ImTage, 71-96.
- ^ Gourevitch, Philip (1999). We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Letters From Rwanda (1 ed.). New York: Picador. p. 368. 0312243359.
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ignored (help) - ^ Godfrey Mwakikagile, The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, (Nova Science Publishers: 2001), p.88
- ^ 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
- ^ The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: Classic Edition by James Strong (Nelson Reference: 1991)
- ^ Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (Oxford University Press, 1982). pp. 28-117
- ^ Lewis, op. cit.
- ^ Gerhard Brehme, African Studies: Afrika-Studien, (Akademie-Verlag: 1983), p.89
- ^ Peter Rohrbacher, "Die Geschichte des Hamiten-Mythos." (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität Wien; 96 Beiträge zur Afrikanistik; Bd. 71). Wien: Afro-Pub, 2002. ISBN 3-85043-096-0