History

Italy lost an army at Adwa on 1 March 1896. The New York Times found the winners Caucasian by April; Britain, France and Italy divided Ethiopia into spheres of influence by 1906; Italy came back with mustard gas in 1935.

Malagasy envoys reached London in 1837 to end an alliance, and the Foreign Office answered by setting their queen’s conduct against the heir to the British throne. Two centuries on, the encyclopedias still file the two reigns in different grammar.

Two cities still carry the Carrier Corps in their names. The graves are being opened now; the ledger is still being settled.

The rich fool who threw away a treasury in Cairo and came home owing money: that biography was filed by the merchants who profited from the visit and fixed the rates on the loans. The rest of the record shows a treasury that survived succession and an army that annexed Gao while its king was away. The $400 billion prices an empire, not a man.

In 1706 a twenty-year-old prophetess was burned as a witch for teaching that Jesus was born in Kongo and that God wanted the slave wars ended. Everything we know of her survives in the handwriting of the men who pressed for the fire.

Every DE-0 essay begins with the author: a draft, a thesis, or a discussion that sets the path. A first draft can come from either side; the direction cannot. From there the work is a full collaboration with Claude…

Every land grab opens with a word: the people on the land are declared less than people. Scholarship spent the next century testing the word, with the victim in the dock and the accuser writing the questions. The other method was always available: name the speaker, date the wound that followed, and ask what the violence was for.

Sifr is Arabic for zero, and the root of cipher. One word, two European inheritances, and three operations this publication runs against what that word did to Africa’s record. Two to four essays a month, free to read.