Encountering and Reinventing the Africans and the Jews in the Colonial Era, Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract This chapter focuses on the Hamitic hypothesis and its influence on both Europeans and Africans. This theory claims that anything of value found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites, who were allegedly a branch of the Caucasian race. It is shown that by the beginning of the 19th century, Hamitic hypothesis theories were widely accepted as authoritative among missionaries. Native religions were interpreted by Europeans according to similarities with ancient Hebrew rituals, and became the object of the most contradictory European fantasies. It is argued that the question of origin and precedence appears as the epicenter of the problematic of identity and religion of the Africans, as expressed by Europeans.