
On the Kidnapped African Boy Who Became a German Philosopher - lermontov
https://lithub.com/on-the-kidnapped-african-boy-who-became-a-german-philosopher/
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zakum1
Identity runs deep - this is an amazing story - and shows how much we still
need to discover about identity. As a white person, born in Africa, issues of
identity loom large, and (in a way) it is a privilege to be exposed to many
identity struggles play out day-to-day. An example that I have experienced is
how strongly people retain certain African cultural characteristics in other
lands (America, Europe, Asia), even when they are from families that have been
in those countries for hundreds of years, and even when they probably feel
fully assimilated. I don't think we really fully understand how culture passes
down through generations, whether this is through stories, language, biology.
Whatever drives it, it is a beautiful feature of being human.

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executesorder66
> As a white person, born in Africa

As another white African, I feel similarly. I feel very African, and it is
part of who I am. My family has been here for about 400 years, but I still
also feel I have an additional "inherited" European culture. And this mixed
culture is confusing but interesting at the same time.

I lived in the UK for 18 months, and I adapted well there, but I still felt
like an outsider. I'm thinking of moving to Germany for a while to see what
that's like. I'll probably come back though. Home is home.

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pjmlp
As someone that has moved a bit around, one eventually feels outsider
everywhere, even at Home when among those that never traveled abroad.

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nyhc99
Thomas Wolfe was right--You Can't Go Home Again.

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ddebernardy
Odd. His wikipedia page [0] offers a very different ending. Rather than "went
to live in Fort St. Sebastian," it offers:

> According to at least one report, he was taken to a Dutch fortress, Fort San
> Sebastian in Shama, in the 1750s, possibly to prevent him sowing dissent
> among his people. The exact date, place, and manner of his death are
> unknown, though he probably died in about 1759 at the fort in Chama in
> Ghana.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Wilhelm_Amo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Wilhelm_Amo)

The German and French wiki articles have yet other variations of his life's
end and year of death, as do a few other articles on Google's first page
result. Just spitballing here, but digging into the details looks like a low
hanging fruit for someone in need of a thesis topic for a degree in History.

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Moghammed
According to the Dutch wikipedia page, Chama and Fort San Sebastian are the
same place.

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_nalply
If anyone is wondering why he returned to where he was from I suggest to read
the novel «Americanah» by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which tells a story sharing
at least one motif, perhaps. I suppose he felt alienated and was homesick even
after decades of living in Europe.

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ant6n
The German wiki notes that as his mentors and friends died, live got more and
more difficult on a personal and professional level. A marriage proposal ended
in a lot of public racism against him, a campaign that culminated in the
publishing of a series of a mocking poems against him (by another professor).

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sctb
> _(Pushkin began, but never finished, a novel called The Moor of Peter the
> Great.)_

You can read this in _Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander
Pushkin_! It's great, unless you would prefer that it be finished.

