EXAMINING THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S 'ARROW OF GOD' (Pages 58-68) by Mr. G. Sampath Kumar in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

The cultural significance of Negritude can best be seen from the background of the usual pattern of cultural nativism which characterises the struggles of every colonised or oppressed people to re-establish and raise the status of their devalued culture. In accordance with this pattern, cultural assertion may take the form of their extolling of the virtues of specific aspects of their indigenous culture, their debunking of some specific aspects of the culture of the colonising or dominant group or both forms. There is a fundamental assumption that the African has had a civilisation which is distinct from all other civilisations and which distinguishes him from all other human beings. Historical disasters overtook this civilisation in the nature of the slave trade and European colonialism; they resulted not only in its partial disintegration but in the distribution of African peoples to new geographical areas. My paper is going to explore various historical events which made Arrow of God returned to the past and to the early interaction between the Ibo and British cultures and how colonial rule has been consolidated and the lives of the villagers are completely circumscribed by it. Keywords: Negritude, Civilization, Re-establish, Extolling, Indigenous culture, Disintegration, Nativism, Colonialism