Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Robbins, Archibald. A Journal Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce, of Hartford, (Con.) James Riley, Master, upon the Western Coast of Africa, August 28th, 1815.... Hartford: Silas Andrus; New-York: Stereotyped by C. Starr, 1818.

Archibald Robbins. A Journal Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce, of Hartford, (Con.) James Riley, Master, upon the Western Coast of Africa, August 28th, 1815.... Hartford: Silas Andrus; New-York: Stereotyped by C. Starr, 1818. pp. 38-39.

Robbins wrote of the same disaster as Riley but from the perspective of an ordinary sailor; his captivity was longer and even more harrowing than Riley’s; here is his theory of “Africa.”

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Although Africa holds the third rank in point of size among the four great continents that constitute our globe, in a moral, political, and commercial point of view, it is decidedly inferior to them all. While the continents of Europe and America have been making rapid progress in civilization, the arts and sciences, Asia may be said to have been, for the most part, stationary, and Africa retrograding. While the arts that conduce to the comfort of man, and the sciences that expand and elevate his mind, have, in the former, been advanced almost to perfection; in many parts of the latter, the same degree of barbarism prevails now, as prevailed at the birth of our Saviour. Indeed, for a considerable time before the Christian aera, the Persians, Medes, and Romans, had large and beautiful settlements upon the Niger, and in different parts of the African continent. But upon the subversion of the Roman empire, in the fifth century, when the northern hive broke loose, and was precipitated upon Europe, the Goths, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and other barbarous tribes, made a war of extermination against civilized man, and of destruction against all the productions of the arts and sciences. The Vandals, always taking the lead in barbarity, passed from Spain into Africa, converted some of the most populous places in this continent to a barren wilderness, held uncontrolled dominion in all the north part of this continent for more than a century, and were at last compelled to surrender a country which they had thus ruined, to the Mahometan Arabs, or Moors, who now, under different names, form the principal part of its population.