"Wonders of the African World"

I recently watched--and read about--Henry Louise Gates's "Wonders of the African World," a six-part documentary created for public television in the late 1990s.  (Gates is arguably the most prominent African-American scholar in the world.)

The documentary elicited a great deal of criticism, especially from Africans, for Gates's flippant on-camera persona and his tendancy to lecture Africans on such topics as slavery and gender inequality.  The companion volume Gates wrote was much more detailed and nuanced, which suggests that Gates may not have had full control over the TV series.  Certainly complexity is often the enemy of popular historical documentaries.

But what comes through strongly in both the documentary and the book is Gates's focus on great African civilizations--and his often ambivalent reaction to their militaristic or hierarchical aspects. 

As one of his interviewees points out, however, what great civilization has not been ultimately concerned with the exercise of power?  If we are looking for impressive ancestors, how do we define "impressive"?  Should we necessarily conflate impressive with powerful?