Hamites

Hamitic is an obsolete ethno-linguistic classification of some ethnic groups within the Afroasiatic (previously termed "Semito-Hamitic") language family.

The term Hamitic originally referred to peoples believed to have been descended from Ham, one of the Sons of Noah). Over history, there have been several separate, but interrelated, interpretations of the term. 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, typically Ham's sons were said to have fathered the peoples of Africa. Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites; Mizraim the Egyptians; Cush the Cushites and Phut the "Libyans".

During the Middle Ages and up until the early 19th century the term Hamitic was used by Europeans to refer indiscriminately to Africans. In the 19th century, a "Hamitic language group" was proposed, uniting various, mainly North-African, languages. A "Hamitic race" was also identified, referring to those Africans whom Europeans considered "advanced", or most similar to themselves and to Semitic peoples.

Today the Hamitic concepts have been widely discredited, and are often referred to as the Hamitic Myth. The term Hamitic itself is sometimes considered pejorative. The Hamitic language group is no longer considered a useful concept, though the phrase Semito-Hamitic is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic group. The notion of a Hamitic race is similarly widely abandoned.

The Hamitic Myth was 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.

Earlier uses of the term

Early interpretations of the Bible led many Western scholars to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the branching off and splitting up of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means 'black' in Hebrew. Noah curses Canaan, Cush's youngest brother, saying that he and his descendants would be a "servant of servants". Hebrew scholars have used this passage to justify the Israelite subjugation of Canaan. These scholars, working around the 6th century AD, introduced the idea that the sons of Ham were marked by dark skin.

In the middle ages, some European Christians picked up on the idea. Again, the depiction of the "sons of Ham" as cursed, "blackened" by their sins, suited the ideological interests of the European elite; especially as the principal enemy of Christendom was Islam, which dominated North Africa. Despite the fact that Islam originated with the Semitic Arabs, European imagery often stressed the blackness of the Islamic Moors and associated them with the 'cursed' sons of Ham. Later, with the emergence of the slave trade, it justified the exploitation of a ready supply of black African labour.

Post-Egyptian use

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 to the West, South, East and North. The traditional Biblical genealogy associated the Egyptians with other descendants of Ham, notably the black-skinned Cushites in Ethiopia.

Non-religious and Darwinian writers also theorised that the Biblical stories contained an element of truth about the ancestry of some black African populations, who may have migrated into Central Africa from the North. These peoples were assumed to be racially superior to other Africans.

Hamitic theory as an ideology within colonialism

As a result of this reevaluation, Hamitic took on a new, more positive connotation for Europeans. During the 19th century Europeans explored more and more of Africa. In their travels, they found many different physical types, and they valued those that appeared most like themselves or had a redeeming cultural characteristic. These types were declared "Hamitic", e.g. the Tutsis of Rwanda (see below).

Soon the Hamitic theory became an important ideological instrument of colonialism, especially in German politics.

The term "Hamitic" is 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 black people. It was the Berlin Egyptologist Karl Friedrich Lepsius (1810-1877), who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system.

As racial theories became increasingly complex and convoluted, the term Hamitic was used in different ways by different writers, and was applied to many different groups Ethiopians, Eritreans, Berbers, Nubians, Somalis and many others.

Racial theory was very hierarchical; Europeans saw these peoples as leaders within Africa, "teaching" lesser peoples the ways of civilization, just as they saw themselves teaching the Hamitic peoples (See: The White Man's Burden).

However, the allegedly Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have 'failed' as rulers, a failing that was sometimes explained by interbreeding with non-Hamites. So, in the mid-20th century the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857-1944) claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The 'Hottentots' (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races (both being termed nowadays as Khoisan peoples). Such theories are now completely outmoded.

Hamitic League of the World

In 1917 George Wells Parker founded the Hamitic League of the World. Its 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 place in the hands of every race man and woman and child the facts which support the League's claim that the Negro Race is the greatest race the world has ever known."

Hamitic theory in Rwanda

In Rwanda, the Hamitic hypothesis was a racialist hypothesis created by John Hanning Speke (Gourevitch 1999) which stated that the "Hamitic" Tutsi people were superior to the "Bantu" Hutus because they were more Caucasian in appearance, and thus destined to rule over the Hutus.

In the movie Hotel Rwanda, a native Rwandan explains to caucasian reporters that people were determined by the Belgian's to be either Hutu or Tutsi in a very subjective way, such as the width of the nose or other physical characteristics. One of the reporters asks two girls if they are Hutu or Tutsi, and they respond that one is Hutu and the other is Tutsi. The reporter notes that they look so much alike that they could be twins.

Although the actual origin of the Tutsis is disputed, if they had once been a ruling-class of invaders, they had long since lost that social position.

This hypothesis was a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide. Because of the wide-spread racism in the area, and the belief among Tutsis that they were superior to the Hutus, the Hutus began to see the Tutsis as an outside invader to their land. One Hutu political activist suggested that the Tutsis be floated down the river to Ethiopia, which Speke claimed was the ancestral home of the Tutsis.

Although this hypothesis is often compared to the ideology of Nazi Germany, it should be noted that in Rwanda, the genocide was conducted against those the hypothesis described as superior, whereas the victims of the Holocaust were seen as the inferiors by the Nazis.

Hamitic theory today

In this way Europeans again justified their own exploitation of the African continent. These ideas were still in wide circulation until the mid 20th century. The Hamitic hypothesis is widely rejected today on a multitude of grounds. Most "scientific" observations of the time were heavily culturally biased and generally returned results that suited European prejudices. Many observations of the time have been corrected since then to reveal a much more complex picture of ethnic groups than was initially thought. Nonetheless, the term Hamitic is still used in some anthropological nomenclature.

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 Africa's language families.

References

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. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)