backward, from the residue of conquest. “It is likely that a people vanquished
shoulde follow the customes and letters also of their conquerors,” he argues,
“likely that the Romans, when they first subdued those prouinces (as con-
querours vsually doe) vtterly spoiled and tooke away all their letters and mem-
orie, and established their owne letters in the stead thereof, to the end that the
fame and honour of the Roman people might there onely be continued,” and
likely therefore that “Africans in times past had their owne proper and pecu-
liar letters” (Africanus, 166 ). For Africanus, this is the way of conquest, one
culture displacing the other, even to the present day. “And who knoweth not,”
he adds, “that the very same attempt was practised by the Goths vpon the
stately buildings of the Romans, and by the Arabians against the monuments
of the Persians. The very same thing likewise we daily see put in practice by
the Turks” (Africanus, 166 – 67 ). From its start, the history of Africa, as
Africanus tells it, is a continuum of cultural transformation, the “originall” of
the Africans, north and south, impossible to isolate from the influence of
“outsiders.”
True too even for those “outsiders” whose insinuation has, it seems (per-
haps like Aaron’s or Eleazar’s), gone too far. Africanus is particularly attentive
to, if not suspicious of, the legacy of the Arabians, whom he distinguishes
carefully from other Africans but who seem nonetheless to be everywhere in
Africa’s past and present, conquering, trading, coercing, collecting tribute,
spreading Islam, and chronicling Africa’s history.^23 Ironically, despite this sub-
tle bias, one of the few anecdotes that he offers of himself involves a compli-
cated encounter with Arabians who both con and defend him: stealing his
horse and clothes, and leaving him to face unpleasantly cold weather “starke
naked,” they ultimately turn him loose “vnto the wide world and to fortune,”
while taking a Jew in his company captive in his stead (Africanus, 171 – 72 ).^24
In framing Africanus’s history, Pory lists Arabians among Africa’s historical
peoples, and Africanus himself, do what he might to disentangle the Arab
presence from Africa, necessarily acknowledges the long-standing connection.
Arabians and Africans were so intermixed in Barbary early on, he explains,
that “these two nations at length conioined themselues in one” (Africanus,
135 ). The result is that even in the present era these populations must “blaze
their petigree” to make it clear: “For no man there is [in Barbary], be he neuer
so base, which will not to his owne name, adde the name of his nation; as for
example, Arabian, Barbarian, or such like” (Africanus, 135 ). The “name” of
“nation” apparently cannot speak for itself, even in the current moment where
the legacies of the past prevail.
Cultural Traffic 145