Focus on Africa Lecture Notes

P. 8.  TEST ONE OF FOCUS ON AFRICA

Hunters and gatherers were common around the world and in Africa (Mbuti and San)About 8 000 years BCE the Africans in Egypt began farming.  This led to a sedentary way of life.  Communities grew and became more complex.  Specialists grew (bakers, pottery makers, etc.).   At about the same time the use of iron arose (1000-55 BC in Africa).  More land was reqired.  This led to the Bantu Expansion.  Bantu speaking people left Cameroon and went east and south.   As population grew so did equalities.

Egypt grew in power along the Nile.  Pharaohs grew in power.  Hieroglyphs.

The last dynasty ended with Alexander the Great from Greece, 323 BCE. 

By 751 BCE Kush ruled Egypt.  Kush capital was Napata, then Meroe.  Meroe had iron and hard wood resources that led to wealth.   It traded in ivory, gold, leopard skins, ebony, wood, ostrich feathers and manufactured goods.  It trained elephants for warfare.  Meroe had an alphabetic script.  Eventually, forests disappeared and the society declined.  By 300 AD Meroe disappeared. 

Axum just to the south arose with a port at Adulis.  People from Arabia arrived.  They brought the language Ge’ez with them.  Amhara the language of Ethiopia is from Ge’ez.  Axum traded in ivory, and possibly slaves.  Coinage developed, luxury goods, glass, metals.  In  320-350 AD, king Ezana introduced Christianity to Axum and opened the doors for trade with Europe.  Islam arrived in the 700s and ended the Christian power. 

P.11

Islam spread with trade.  Muslims spread Islam also with the sword (jihad) and taxation.  Muslims did not have to pay taxes.  Syncretism = the blending of Islamic and African faiths.

By 1000 coastal life in the east was cosmopolitan.  Trade with China.  Arabs and Persians intermarried with Africans.  Swahili is the mixture of Arabic and Bantu.  East Africa imported porcelin and fabrics from Asia.  The region exported woods, skins, spices, ivory, iron and gold to India and China.  Trade centred in Zanzibar, Lamu, Kilwa and Pemba.  These became city states, very wealthy between 1100 and 1500.  Lots of luxury there.  Kilwa took control of the gold trade from inner Africa by 1200.  The mosque was made from coral with barrel vaults and domes.  Houses had pit toilets inside, sinks and drainage.  Doors and windows had fitted hardwood.  The finished the house with tiles and plaster. 

Weaving, salt making, carving in ivory and bone, pottery.  

Great Zimbabwe grew in the 1300s.  It traded with China, India, etc.  Population of 18 000.  White South Africans felt they were there longer than the Africans, but the buildings at Zimbabwe proved otherwise.  The building technique was unique, so Europeans thought that the site must originally have been built by other Europeans or people from Canaan.

P 14.

West Africa kingdoms: Ghana and Mali, Songhai, Benin, Zimbabwe, Kanem-Bornu,

Egypt.  Camel was introduced for trade in the 3rd or 4th century.  Trade went as far as Europe and Asia: gold, leather goods, ostrich feathers, ivory, animals skins.

Arab travelers wrote about these kingdoms.  One was called al-Fazari; he was a geographer in the 700s A.D.  He wrote 20 pages about the wealth (gold) of Ghana.  Gold really came from south of Ghana, but the myth lasted 1000 more years.

Ghana capital in 1100 was Kumbi-Saleh.  One major area was Muslim.  The gold that was there dried up by 1051, a time when the Almoravids from N. Africa invaded. 

Mali took over Ghana’s role as a powerful rich kingdom.  God came from Bure and Bambuk (upper Niger) and Begho on the edge of the forest to the south.  European currencies were based on African gold, though they did not know from where it actually came.

Mali began with a confederation let by Keita clan of the Malinke people was Sundjata.  He is said to have used magical powers to defeat the enemy, Sosso of Sumaguru. 

Mansa Musa was the famous leader of Mali.  He converted to Islam.  The advantage was to become part of a huge trading network.  He gave so much gold away on his way to Mecca that Cairo’s currency was devalued for some 12 years after.  THIS CAUGHT THE EYE OF THE EUROPEANS WHO WANTED MORE GOLD.  Both Europeans and Arabs were interested in the gold.

Mali capital: Timbuktu.  Became trading center in 1468.  Sonni Ali (an enemy of Islam) and the Songhai army conquered Mali.  It’s trading capital was at Gao (on the Niger).  He used the horse to advance his territory. 

Sonni Ali’s successor was Askia Muhammad, a devout Muslim.  He put Timbuktu on the map as a place for Muslim scholars to come. 

Ibn Battuta (Berber) (1300s) and Leo Africanus (1500s) provide eyewitness accounts of Africa and other areas in the world.  He saw large amounts of gold change hands in African market places. 

Houses were elegant and colourful patterns were on them.  He met Musa’s brother, in great wealth in his palace.  Quote: “They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people… There is complete security in their country.  Neither the traveler nor the man who stays at home has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence.”

Kongo = kingdom in West central Africa.  Farmers developed skills in iron production; this led to long distance trade that included salt and copper.  Built schrines to the “spirits of the land” along Zaire river.  Mani kabunga were the names of the people who tended the shrines.    Trade between the Atlantic Ocean and Kwango River (tributary of Congo river). 

9^th century: Igbo Ukwu, (Nigeria) city of advanced people (bronze statues sculpted).  Also Ife and Benin like Igbo Ikwu.  By 1400s Benin had divine kingship.  Oba = king.  Manicongo in Congo was a king.  In Benin (Nigeria), central palace.  Palace guilds made metalworking, traded and did other activities.  Shrines adored past kings in bronze.  History carved in ivory tusks, then cast in bronze. 

Sub-Saharan = below Sahara desert.  Benin by 1400 huge walled fortress, wide streets, fine houses, mid 1400s became an empire.  Traded with Europeans: pepper, ivory, gum and cotton cloth.

p. 20  TEST 2 ON FOCUS ON AFRICA

Olaudah Equiano

Middle Passage

Asiento = license to import slaves to the Spanish colonies

Triangular Trade

Abolition

Emancipation

Manumission

Indentured servants

Peca de India

1400s Prince Henry the Navigator (Portugal)

1441 Antam Goncales at Cape Bojador seized 10 slaves.  Birth of slave trade.

Slaves to Portugal, Spain, Italy

First slaves to America came from Europe

1551 60 slave trade markets in Lisbon, 100 000 slaves lived there.

Field vs household slavery

Slaves were prepared by Europeans for plantation work in America

Spaniards first used Native Americans as slaves, didn’t work out.

1518 Spain imports first slaves from Africa.

Charles I of Spain = asiento to Lorenzo de Gomenot.

1560s John Hawkins (Eng) went to Africa, and made big money selling Africans to South American Spaniards.  Queen Eliz I knighted Hawkins and supported his trips.

Africans worked on behalf of the slave traders to get goods from Europe.

Tomba, a leader of the Baga people in Guinea, tried to stop the slave trade. 

Agaja Trudo (king of Dahomey, now Benin) sold slaves to get firearms to protect himself from his neighbours.

Same with Queen Nzinga Nbande, head of Matamba state in Angola.

 p. 24

Preparing for slave shipment: a) get a ship, (many shared the costs to minimize any losses), b) get a captain who could deal with African traders, c) get goods for trade, d) get crew.

Markets between Senegal and Angola, wet season was bad for trade: malaria and other diseases.

Bight of Benin became known as the Slave Coast.

1)Slaves were gotten through wars and sold to Europeans.  This led to violence and retaliation.

Violence led to the purchase of guns and gun powder from the Europeans, who made even more money.

2) Slaves were gotten through kidnapping

3) debt

4) Tribute

5) Judicial process (real or unreal) (criminals)

Goods Africans got for slaves: gunpowder, guns, alcohol, mirrors, jewelry, iron bars, pots, pans, knives, clocks and locks.

Slaves were examined and branded after “inspection” of health.

English slavers preferred Akans (tribe) on the Gold Coast.

French and Spanish preferred the Yorubas from the Bight of Benin.

pp. 27-30

Middle Passage pain. 

Slavers = slave capturers

Decks were 4-5 feet high, some having a half-deck.

Disease required a doctor: dysentery, fevers and smallpox.

        This is what small pox looks like.

Slaves were brought on deck at mid morning for exercise.

Dead were thrown overboard.  Tow meals: 10:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M.

Monitors told them when to eat, and reported those not eating for whippings.

Some were forced by threat of hot coals applied to the lips.

The ship had no emergency provisions. 

Zong’s  (a ship) captain saw disaster with low rations so he had 136 of the 470 slaves thrown overboard.

Coromantees of the Gold Coast were mutinous.

Three to five percent of the slaves died before setting sail, 18 percent died during the Middle Passage.  The mortality rate among the crew was similar onboard.

Slaves were taken to Spanish, British, Frnech, Dutch and Danish colonies.

Estimates range from 12 million to 100 million slaves sent to the Americas. 

Brazil took 38 percent;     British Caribbean, 17%,  French Carribean, 17%, Spanish America, 17%,  North America 6%, Dutch and Danish, 6%.

Slaves were used on sugar, cotton, coffee and tobacco plantations, in mines.  They worked at peak production 16-20 hours a day.  Sugar slaves lasted 8-10 years.

Abolition = desire to end slavery.

Phase 1 Abolition = 1770s to 1808.  Great Britain ended slave trade in British empire.

Sweden abolished it in 1813, Holland and France in 1814 and Spain in 1820.

Phase 2 Abolition 1808 to 1850s  Slavery itself abolished in British empire in 1833, US in 1863, Brazil 1888.

Ottobah Cugoano (christened as John Stewart) (wrote  Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery, 1787) and Olaudah Equiano, later named Gustavus Bassa) (wrote Equiano’s Travels,  1789) were leaders in the British  anti-slavery movement.

Slave revolts:

1791 revolt against the French

1794 Toussain L’Ouverture led the revolt to drive the French out of Haiti.

1800 revolt in Virginia led by Gabriel Prosser.

1822 revolt led by Denmark Vessey in South Carolina.

Chapter 2, Unit 4  The slave trade had a lasting effect.

Dom Alfonso, an African who was called this name by the Portuguese, wanted the slave trade stopped.  He converted to Christianity.  He became king of the Congo in 1526.  He wrote the King of Portugal a letter to get him to stop the slave trade.  He was ignored and his kingdom later destroyed by the slave trade. 

Results of the slave trade:

1.     violence spread among Africans and eventually weakened them.

2.     Europeans colonized Africa.

3.     Healthy young men and women were taken out of African communities as slaves.  This robbed Africa of some creative, productive and inventive people.

4.     The population was depleted.

5.     It was hard to plan for the future in Africa or America.

6.     Imports into Africa from Europe hurt the African economies.

7.     Guns and alcohol, as trade goods, did not help Africans develop.

8.     Africans became seen as goods, like gold, or cotton, not as people.

9.     Sierra Leone and Liberia began as countries where liberated slaves could live.

10.   American plantation owners grew rich on the backs of the slaves.

11.   Some European ports grew because of the slave trade (Liverpool and Nantes).

12.   The money gained from the slave trade had an impact on the Industrial Revolution.

13.   America got a broader culture: new food, language, ideas, religion, views of government, music, folklore, arte, working technology and creativity.

14.   The first enslaved Africans arrived in what is now the USA in 1619 in the Jamestown settlement. 

Compensation?

Visits to the castle at Elmina in Ghana, a former slave trading fortress.