The script for this presentation is available for consultation and review at:
http://www.kean.edu/~jspauldi/jlspraxisafrica.html
“Africana Studies,” the study of Africa by African people at home and in the diaspora is old
“African History,” as an academic discipline, is new
In 1960 in Britain the Journal of African History began
I am a second-generation African historian, trained in the United States
The field is empirically complex There are many moving parts Many names and concepts are derived
from languages unfamiliar to non-Africans
Scholars have not established a basic framework for understanding
No standard periodization
Human Origins and Prehistory (10,000,000 to 5,000 years ago)
Africans build their own history (5,000 years ago to 1885)
Waves of foreign influence to 1600 Slave trade era (1600 to 1800) Nineteenth Century Colonial era (1885 to 1991) Independence and after (1950 to the
present)
First ancestor (10,000,000 years ago) Early fossil remains (Toumai, Millennium
Man) Australopithecines Homo erectus “Eve” (about 200,000 years ago)
Time: 200,000 to 5,000 years ago Haven in South Africa (200,000 to 85,000
years ago) Colonization of world begins (85,000
years ago) Mount Tubo (71,000 years ago) Colonization of world continues
Everybody has one native language A community may be defined by
language Many community names used by
Africanists refer to the speakers of a single language
Languages change over time Languages, like people, come in families
History of Africa similar to elsewhere Sequence of societies invented Each larger in scale than predecessor Greater degrees of social inequality Greater ecological impacts Change driven by population increase Not necessarily a story of “progress”
Band society Lineage society Chiefdoms Early states Empires (old agrarian) City states Nation states
Universal before agriculture Gradually marginalized and suppressed
by success of agriculture over the centuries
Extinct after World War II
30-50 people Band exogamy Bilateral descent Informal government Hunting and gathering Economy of reciprocity Permissive child rearing 2-3 hour work day Good health revealed in large stature
Began with agriculture Larger groups Unilineal kinship replaces bilateral Patrilineal kinship (numerous livestock) Matrilineal kinship (few or no livestock) Few lineage societies survived intact But lineage principles formed the basis of
all subsequent societies
Seniority: gerontocracy in politics, ancestor veneration after death
Harsh child rearing, genital mutilation Reciprocity dominates economics Never peace, but rarely war: armed
balance among factions. No government, but very elaborate codes
of rules to live by. Ancestors enforce rules by imposing
sickness, misfortune upon the deviant
Scarcity created competition and hierarchy in many lineage societies
Political balance and economic reciprocity gave way to centralized, one-man control over redistribution of the community’s surplus wealth
Hereditary, titled elites appear Markets and trade become common Acquisitive organized warfare Domestic slavery, especially of women
and children Competitive labor-organizing “big men”
The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe can take you on a visit to precolonial Igbo society, which exemplifies the chiefdom.
The character of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart personifies the entrepreneurial “big man.” (Achebe translates the actual Igbo term as “strong man” in his subtitle.)
The character of Ezeulu in The Arrow of God personifies the hereditary, titled elite.
State society was born in chiefdoms A chief became a king by ceasing to
redistribute the community’s surplus wealth
What a king gathered he kept as taxes With tax revenue he supported a new
repressive apparatus of soldiers, bureaucrats and police
Many historians LIKE state society, or even equate it with “civilization”
You may or may not agree But the PRAXIS exam will probably favor
the state over other types of society
Pharaonic Egypt (c. 3000 BCE) Nile Valley Sudan, Ethiopia (c.1000 BCE) Sudanic Region, Zimbabwe (medieval) Western and Equatorial Africa (early
modern) Southern Africa (1700s)
Learn to recognize the names of some African kingdoms
Keep them on passive recall Here are a number, arranged by region
and period of origin PRAXIS may spell the names differently,
so be flexible
Egypt (Kemet)
Sudanese Nile Valley:
Kerma (c. 1700 BCE) Kush (700-300 BCE) Meroe (300 BCE – 300 CE)
Medieval Nubia (300-1400 CE): Nobatia Makuria (or Muqurra) Alodia (or `Alwa)
Sinnar (1500-1821)
Old kingdoms (1000 – 500 BCE) Axum (500 BCE – 700 CE) Zagwe dynasty (700 – 1270 CE) Solomonic dynasty (1270 – 1974 CE)
Each kingdom had a capital where the king and court resided
Sometimes the capital was mobile Often it was a permanent city A company town, restricted to
government and its servants
Early states based on one ethnic group Kings had to be culturally comprehensible to
subjects Spoke same language, worshiped same gods Some states expanded to incorporate numerous
ethnic groups, forming old agrarian empires Ethnic diversity freed the emperors from
traditional customary constraints on early kings Emperors simplified and rationalized codes of
law Often created new religions, or adopted
appealing alien ones such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam
When did an early state become an empire?
Often it is debatable Solomonic Ethiopia, Mali and Songhai
were unquestionably empires Feel free to add to the list if you wish
A person who makes his or her living through trade is a merchant
Merchants prefer a different type of society
In olden days, they often created independent self-governing city states
There are two basic ways of making a living through trade.
They are the traveling trade and the hoarding trade Most early merchants depended upon the traveling trade Profit derived from buying something from a place where
it was cheap and moving it to sell in another place where it was expensive
Trade typically involved luxury items of small bulk and high value
In the hoarding trade one buys at a time when something is cheap and resells it later when the price rises
Hoarding trade typically involved food grains. City states usually lacked control over an exploitable
hinterland
In Africa, the merchant vocation was always initially foreign
In time, however, many African people adopted the initially-foreign lifestyle
Other African societies often found merchants controversial, regardless of the traders’ ethnicity
A chain of city-states developed along the East African coast during Hellenistic times and the medieval period
A second group, largely medieval in origin, arose at oases in the Sahara
During the slave trade period some city states appeared on the West African coast
Sijilmasa Awdaghost Tadmekka Takedda Walata Ghat Murzuq
Awjila Kufra Agadez Bilma Jalo Siwa Jaghbub (There are others)
Aydhab Sawakin Mitsawa Adulis Zayla Berbera Mogadishu Barawa
Pate Lamu Manda Malindi Mombasa Kilwa Sofala (There are others)
Modern nation states arose when merchant principles took over whole countries
The hoarding trade joined traveling trade Older ethnicities were gradually
suppressed New national identities were gradually
forged Nation states arose first in Europe and
North Africa As the modern era advanced nationalism
spread widely in Africa and elsewhere The transition into the nation state was
often very violent
Morocco (1500s) Tunisia (precolonial) Egypt (precolonial) Madagascar (1700s) Swaziland (anti-colonial) Lesotho (anti-colonial) Botswana (anti-colonial) Eritrea (1990s) Most other modern African nations are
recent products of European colonialism
Such was the history created by African people for themselves, when left to their own devices
African history resembles everybody else’s history
But, Africa was not always left to itself New historical patterns appear if we
consider outside influences Outside influences came in waves Here is the story up to about 1600
Place: North Africa from Mauretania and Morocco to Egypt and Sudan; Ethiopia; East African coast no farther than Tanzania
Language: Greek Religion: Christianity (Orthodox and
Monophysite) Modern Relevance: Christian Ethiopia,
Coptic Egypt
Place: All of First Wave zone except Ethiopia; the Sahara and Sudanic region; East Africa to include Mozambique
Language: Arabic Religion: Islam Modern Relevance: Islamic North, West
and East Africa
Place: West coast south of Morocco; East coast as far north as northern Kenya; Madagascar
Languages: Portuguese, Dutch Religion: Christianity (Catholic and
Protestant) Modern Relevance: Afro-Portuguese
communities of Angola, Mozambique, West Africa; Afrikaners of South Africa
Slave trade dominated the period from 1600 to 1800
Slavery and the slave trade were not new to the continent at that time
But a new form of trade that began in about 1600 changed older systems
Many African societies held slaves (Some did not)
A trade in slaves within, into and out of Africa was very old
Conspicuous was the importation of European slaves throughout the Middle Ages and on into the early nineteenth century
Before 1600 the slave trade did not dominate any society or trading system
The reason for the importance of the slave trade from 1600 to 1800 lay in the demand for slaves in the plantation colonies of the New World
Conspicuously the sugar islands of the Caribbean
Where millions upon millions of Africans were worked to death.
Estimates of the number of African people exported range from 10 to 100 million; 15 or 20 million seems a good guess at present
Distributed across centuries in a large and populous continent, the loss of population was very small, and had little direct effect.
The slave trade is very important in AMERICAN history, but of secondary or tertiary significance in AFRICAN history.
Brutalized African life Created new elites New kingdoms based on slave trade
(Asante, Dahomey) New diasporas of African slave merchants Whites rarely allowed to leave coast;
Africans themselves monopolized procurement and delivery of slaves
Morocco (Songhai) Portugal (Zimbabwe) Ottoman Empire (Ethiopia) Target: Gold-Producing Empires of Interior Result: Destruction of Empires Result: End of Gold Trade Result: Rise of Independent Merchants Result: Spread of Trade in Arms and Slaves
An unhappy era in African history Effects of “legitimate” trade Crisis in political legitimacy Islamic imperialism
End of slave trades abroad Commercial boom in peanuts, copra,
palm oil, gum Arabic, ivory, other tropical products
Slavery comes home to roost
Two 19th-century Islamic powers annexed large parts of Africa
Spread slavery, violence, Islam Egypt Oman
1820 conquests begin By 1900, empire reaches south to Kenya,
Uganda, Congo West to Benghazi, Dar Fur Ethiopia successfully resists Slaves in army, on plantations, in middle-
class households
1830s Sultan moves capital to Zanzibar Conquers coast from Somalia to the
Zambeizi Expands westward halfway across
continent Rules modern Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda,
Malawi, parts of Mozambique, Zambia, much of Congo-Kinshasa
Rwanda, Burundi successfully resist
Over the eastern third of the continent Islamic imperialism reduced people’s
ability to resist A new wave of imperialism was on the
way at century’s end Colonization by European powers
Much of Africa was colonized by Europe During the century from 1885 to 1995 Consequences were profound Let us look in some detail
1885 to World War I: The “Scramble for Africa”
World War I through World War II: Mature Colonial Systems
1945 to 1995: “Winds of Change” Independence to the Present:
Postcolonial Challenges
Era called the “Scramble” (British) or “Steeplechase” (French) for Africa
What were the preconditions that made conquest possible?
Some were European Others were African
Four Centuries of Intimate Contact with Europe
African elites Committed to Trade African “Infant Industries” Crushed by
Imports Many Regimes Deemed Illegitimate by
their Subjects: Little Patriotism (There were exceptions, e.g. Ethiopia,
Lesotho)
1884-1885 Major capitalist powers convene Set guidelines for seizure and division of
Africa Without provoking war among European
rivals From 1885 to 1914 they did just that Then fought W W I anyway
Division of Africa into strange political units
Learn their names, then and now Learn their cities, then and now (Map study single best PRAXIS review
tactic)
Each colony must be self-supporting Africans pay for everything (including
own conquest) “Pay” means labor Sometimes direct Sometimes indirectly via cash crops
Between the World Wars, African colonies set onto several different paths
In many cases, modern lands continue to follow these paths
Prestige and strategic advantage Little else Impoverished and unviable as nations Avoided atrocity Survival of precolonial culture
Cash crops on family farms Coffee, cotton, peanuts, cocoa New wealth widely distributed Successful modern communities form
Agrobusiness rules Rubber, sisal, bananas, sometimes cotton
and peanuts Social melting pot, death of cultures Colonial language dominates Spectacular tyrannies and atrocities
Precious metals always had priority Demand for cheap labor in gigantic
quantities Obliteration of all other modes of
livelihood Obliteration of culture
Mines, plantations, demand abundant labor
Over wide areas colonial policy obliterates all other modes of livelihood, forcing people to work in mines or on plantations
Pro-natalist (American: “Right-To-Life”) policies accelerate population growth
Ultimate in modern poverty
Neocolonial political elites in power Continuity in economy Continuity in society Close relations with former colonial
power
Corruption Incompetence Unpopularity of authoritarian regimes “Non-Governmental Organizations” Dependency on foreign patrons
Ethnic strife (Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone)
“Failed states” (Somalia, Chad) AIDS Islamic fundamentalism (Nigeria, Sudan,
Somalia, Algeria, Morocco, the Sahara)
I am happy to discuss any issue, and will try to help answer questions
I am best reached via email at: [email protected]
THANK YOU!