3.2: Indigenous Worlds- Pre-Colonial Civilizations and Reclaiming Independence

Learning Objectives

1. Describe early human migration.
2. Identify and describe early empires of Africa South of the Sahara and the monuments/cities associated with them.
3. Explain some of the challenges in reconstructing African history.
4. Describe and differentiate protocolonialism and colonialism in Africa South of the Sahara.

 

Africa, the Motherland

Over the last few decades genetic research has been able to piece together the history of our species, the Homo sapiens. Through DNA, fossil records, and artifacts, this research has revealed that humans as a species are very closely related, more so than our closest non-human relatives, the chimpanzees (even though there are a lot more humans in the world). Our human family traces back its ancestry to East Africa, the cradle of our species, where our closest human ancestors are thought to have originated. While the exact place and time is unclear, the earliest fossils of recognizable modern-day humans date to around 250,000 years ago. Humans remained in Africa for thousands of years and developed tools and complex belief systems - suggested by the earliest evidence of ritual human burials found in East Africa, Kenya.^[1] Then, in an expansion of smaller regional migrations, humans began migrating out of Africa some 60,000 years ago. This was the beginning of a treacherous journey of more than 20,000 miles over thousands of years, likely driven by environmental factors like climate and food availability.^[2]

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Titled "The Greatest Walk," this map illustrates the history of human migration out of Africa. "The greatest human migration began 70,000 years ago in Africa. With a mere eye-blink in evolutionary time, our ancestors had reached the last continental corner of the Earth—Tierra del Fuego, at the freezing tip of South America. It was a journey of about 22,000 miles". It continues: "Theories about our species' routing out of Africa abound. Many scientists favor a route following the newly exposed seabeds near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Africa and Arabia. From there, our ancestors spread into the Levant, Europe and Asia before finally reaching land's end in the Americas. The reasons for this explosive diaspora of humans are complex - and the topic of much debate. Many scientists point to a drop in sea levels, creating land bridges for early wanderers to trudge across. This map uses sea floor elevation data to depict this drop in sea level." (Copyright, all rights reserved; from the Out of Eden Walk project by Jeff Blossom of the Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University; used with permission).

 

Transformations: Agriculture, Metal, and Expansion

Agriculture is a great marker of the rise of civilizations. The earliest centers of agricultural innovation, or cultural hearths, rose independently in various parts of the world, first in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago and later along the Nile River valley. Agriculture also started independently in East Africa with the domestication of coffee Arabica, finger millet, sorghum, cattle, and sheep and in West Africa with the domestication of yam, African rice, and the dwarf goat, and pearl millet. West Africa is gradually being identified as a major cradle of ancient civilization, on par with more widely recognized cultural hearths such as Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. The story of African agriculture is often de-Africanized, as it tends to focus on Egypt, commonly associated as “apart from” the remainder of Africa. Yet, agriculture north and south of the Sahara are innovations rooted in Africa, not something merely imported from elsewhere. Scholars now know that early settlers of the upper and lower Nile River were Africans that had come from Eastern Sahara, pushed by climatic changes.^[3]

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): South of the Sahara, West Africa is recognized as one of the world's centers of early agriculture, but early domestications are also evident in east Africa. This map series shows the centers of origins of various notable crops domesticated in Africa South of the Sahara - many of which have become characteristic of cuisines of Trans-Atlantic cultures. These crops include watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), coffee (Coffea arabica and C. canephora), kola (Cola acuminate and C. nitida), rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), shea (Vitellaria paradoxa), cowpea/black eyed pea (Vigna unguiculata), okra (Abelmoschus callei), yams (Dioscorea sp.), various cereals, and leafy greens (CC BY 4.0; Sousa and Raizada (2020) via Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems).

 

Forging iron into tools for agriculture and war marks another important African development. Ironworking was most likely a skill introduced south of the Sahara via trade with North Africa.^[4] The earliest evidence of iron smelting comes from the Jos Plateau in central Nigeria, a place rich with surrounding iron ores where excavated furnaces date as far back as 2,600 years ago and where the Nok Culture flourished. The Nok were perhaps the first to perfect iron-smelting technology south of the Sahara. The wide distribution of ancient furnaces indicate that Iron Age agriculture inspired a profound change in Africa transforming agriculture, landscapes, and hastening one of the most important transformations in Africa: the expansion of the Bantu.

The Bantu were agriculturalists who spoke various dialects of the Bantu language. Their heartland was the savannah and rain forest regions around the Niger River (modern Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon). The Bantu began expanding and dispersing from West Africa sweeping through the central, eastern, and southern parts of the continent – a remarkable event known as the Bantu Migration (2,000 BCE – 1500 CE). The Bantu brought innovative technologies and skills such as cultivating high-yield crops and ironworking everywhere they went. Eventually, the Bantu dominated most of Africa south of the Sahara. Bantu speaking peoples spread settled agriculture, improving food supply, transforming the landscape, and transmitting their knowledge and innovations in Bantu languages. In all, some 500 languages spoken today in Africa south of the Sahara are derived from a Proto-Bantu language.^[5]

 

African Kingdoms and Empires

Prior to European arrival or Islamic influences, thousands of states and kingdoms of varied sizes and structures existed in Africa. Access and control of regional trading routes enabled the rise of great empires, some of which are discussed below.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): A map illustrating approximate distributions of major pre-colonial African civilizations (500 BCE - 1500). It's a useful map for the general reference of locations, but the dates are missing here. In West Africa, we discuss the Ghana (6th to 12th century), Mali (1240 - 1645), and Songhai Empires (1460- c.1591) in succession from one another. In the northeast, the succession of the wealthy Kingdoms of Kush (c. 1069 BCE – 350 CE) and Aksum (300-400 CE). In the southern region, note Great Zimbabwe (c. 1200- c. 1450) (CC BY 3.0; Jeff Israel via Wikimedia Commons).

 

West African Empires

The Ghana Empire (6th to 13th century) was the first major political power in West Africa to create an empire based on military might and wealth gained from regional trade. It eventually collapsed, likely due to civil wars, rebellions of subjugated chiefdoms, and poor harvests. The Mali Empire (1240-1645) conquered what was left, and, like its political predecessors, prospered thanks to trade and its prime location. The Mali Empire became rich from its control of gold-bearing regions. Salt from the Sahara Desert, used for its preservative properties prior to refrigeration, was one of the major desirable goods in ancient West Africa. Transported via camel caravans and by boat along such rivers as the Niger and Senegal, salt found its way to trading centers like Timbuktu. From there, it was either passed further south or exchanged for other goods such as ivory, hides, copper, iron, and grains Internal conflicts and territorial expansion by the Songhai Empire (1460- c.1591) eventually led to the fall of the Mali Empire. Like its predecessors, Songhai grew from its control of the Trans-Saharan trade through centers as Timbuktu and Djenné. It prospered until, ripped apart by civil wars, it was attacked and absorbed into the Moroccan Empire. It was the largest and the last of the great empires that had dominated West Africa for centuries.

The West African empires flourished because of their use and control of established trade routes and the vast amount of goods that were bought and sold. Situated between the rain forests of southern West Africa and the shores of the Sahara Desert, these empires stood at the crossroads of camel caravans bringing valuable commodities to be traded along the Niger River and its tributaries. The Sahara Desert, although a magnificent geographic barrier, has always been permeable. The Trans-Saharan trade created an economic network between Southern parts of Europe, North Africa, and Africa South of the Sahara, interconnecting worlds across the Saharan desert for millennia (its peak at around 1400-1600). These empires gained wealth from their taxation of trade goods, reselling goods at higher prices, and profiting from access to their own natural resources and royal farms.^[6]

 

Timbuktu (Mali): A Center of Commerce, Culture, and Knowledge

"Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, and silver from the country of the white men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu." - African Proverb

Timbuktu is a city at the edge of the Sahara Desert connecting the trans-Saharan caravan routes and the Niger River. Both the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire attained great wealth from their control of Timbuktu, a strategically located center of commerce that flourished in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. The wealth generated by trade, especially of gold and salt, fueled Timbuktu’s rise as a center of culture and knowledge. Mosques of pounded earth and a university brought fame to the city as a center of Islamic learning. Islam diffused to the region from the extensive trading networks with Arab merchants. Both Mali and Songhai Empires established Timbuktu as a cultural and religious center. Islamic learning in Timbuktu included not only theology but traditions, law, grammar, rhetoric, logic, history, geography, astronomy, astrology, and medicine. At its height, it is estimated that Timbuktu’s libraries held hundreds of thousands of manuscripts attracting scholars from as far as Cairo and Cordoba, in present-day Egypt and Spain, respectively. Having survived many conflicts prior to and after colonization, there are continued efforts to recover and maintain its ancient and treasured manuscripts.^[7] Today, Timbuktu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, valued for its earthen architecture and its mosques, libraries, and holy public spaces.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): The Sahara Desert, although a magnificent geographic barrier, has always been permeable.The Trans-Saharan trade created an economic network between Southern parts of Europe, North Africa, and Africa South of the Sahara, interconnecting worlds across the Saharan desert for millennia (its peak at around 1400-1600). This map shows the main trans-Saharan caravan routes circa 1400. Note the connected location of the Ghana and Mali Empires on the map in relation to trade routes, like the western route running from Djenné via Timbuktu to Sijilmassa. Present-day Niger in shown in yellow (Public Domain; TL Miles via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Northeast: Upper Nile and Ethiopian Highlands

Under the influence of ancient Egypt, the upper Nile River experienced the rise and fall of several kingdoms in the vicinities of the Ethiopian Highlands – present day Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Out of these kingdoms, the Kush Kingdom (c. 1069 BCE – 350 CE) was the oldest and most enduring. During the Kushite reign, the kingdom was wealthy from its iron works, gold, ebony, and ivory trades. This wealth drew the attention of the Egyptians and resulted in conflict over Kushite resources. The Kushites eventually became more powerful than Egypt itself, invading Egypt and ruling as pharaohs for more than sixty years before being forced to Meroe, a wealthy metropolis and lasting capital of the Kush. Meroe’s architectural remains in Sudan are a testament of its grandeur. The Kush flourished for almost a thousand years before dissolving and dispersing into other nearby regions after Meroe was sacked by a nearby rival, the wealthy Kingdom of Aksum (or Axum). The Kingdom of Aksum (300-400CE) prospered thanks to agriculture, cattle herding, and control over trade routes of gold and ivory. This kingdom built massive and long-lasting monuments in the ancient city of Axum, Ethiopia. Situated in an ecologically isolated high terrain but close enough to surrounding civilizations to intake advantageous innovations, the Aksum Kingdom achieved several firsts. They were the first civilization south of the Sahara to adopt a coin currency (made of gold and silver) and the first to officially adopt Christianity. The Aksumites also developed the only indigenous African writing system, Ge'ez, from which written forms of contemporary Ethiopian languages have evolved. This literate and wealthy civilization thrived for centuries but went into decline due to increased competition from Muslim Arab traders. Aksum endured Islamic invasions and remains to this day a symbol of African Christianity.^[8]

 

Central/Southern Africa: Great Zimbabwe

The idea that innovations flowed upstream from the Nile River Delta to the rest of Africa is rooted in a false and Eurocentric notion that is contrary to evidence. Take for example Great Zimbabwe, an important archeological site twice the size of New York’s Central Park where the ruins of stone buildings constructed by the Bantu-speaking Shona people memorializes the heights of the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe (c. 1200 - c. 1450). A sophisticated 32-foot stone wall known as the Great Enclosure is a massive structure encircling the capital city. It is by far the largest ancient monument in Africa south of the Sahara. Agriculture, gold, and a trading network that reached the East African coast enabled its rise, but Great Zimbabwe was abandoned by 1450 for unknow reasons, perhaps due to exhausted gold sources. In 1871, a German explorer named Karl Mauch encountered the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and concluded the ruins to be too impressive. That its architecture must have been the works of other civilizations, like the Phoenicians or Israelites, not local Africans.^[9] For all that is known about Great Zimbabwe today, the evidence points to one significant consensus: it is definitively African, a creation from Bantu-speaking peoples south of the Sahara.^[10]

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): [top left, A] Home of the prestigious Koranic Sankore University, Timbuktu, Mali, was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age (CC BY SA 3.0; UNESCO via Wikimedia Commons). [top right, B] The ruins of the ancient city of Aksum are found close to Ethiopia's northern border. They mark the location of the heart of ancient Ethiopia, when the Kingdom of Aksum was the most powerful state between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia. The massive ruins, dating from between the 1st and the 13th century A.D., include monolithic obelisks, giant stelae, royal tombs, and the ruins of ancient castles (CC BY-NC-SA; Iolanda via Flickr). [bottom left, C] The Archaeological Sites of Meroe, a semi-desert landscape between the Nile and Atbara rivers, was the heartland of the Kingdom of Kush, a major power from the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. It was the seat of the rulers who occupied Egypt for close to a century and features, among other vestiges, pyramids, temples and domestic buildings as well as major installations connected to water management (CC BY-SA 2.0; joepyrek via Flickr). [bottom right, D] The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are testimony to the Bantu civilization of the Shona between the 12th and 15th centuries (CC BY 4.0; Simonchihanga via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Herstory: Womxn Leaders in Dahomey and Beyond

In 2018, Black American film director Ryan Coogler released the highly anticipated Marvel film “Black Panther”. One of the highlights of this film was the fierce guard of signature bald women warriors that served as the protectors and counsel of the King. It was not common knowledge at the time of the movie’s release, but most of the characters in the film were a representation of ancient African civilizations. The “Dora Milaje,” a fictional name for the women warriors in the film, was a depiction of the Agojie warriors, historical figures that are also the subject of the movie "The Woman King". The Dahomey Kingdom existed in an interior-coastal expanse of modern-day Benin from 1600-1900s, as an expansionist kingdom that solidified its economic and military power through the slave trade. The name Dahomey was given by the French while fighting the kingdom in the early 1700s in modern-day Benin. Colonists called the all-female military the "Dahomey Amazons" in reference to women warriors in Greek Mythology. The Agojie were known for their ruthlessness and fearlessness in battle.^[11] By 1894 after France seized southern Benin, they disbanded the territory’s women warriors, opened schools, and made no mention of the Agojie’s existence.^[12] Along with written and oral history and Hollywood films, a 100-foot-high golden monument was erected in Benin in 2022 immortalizing Queen Tassi Hangbe, a fearless Dahomey leader.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): This picture is a group portrait of the Dahomey warriors visiting Europe, 1891 (CC BY SA 3.0; Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen via Wikimedia Commons).

The centrality of women in royal, religious, and military functions was not restricted to Dahomey. Feminine value and strengths were very much entrenched in many West African pre-colonial societies where women have been food providers, educators, economic contributors, inheritors of lineages of wealth, and religious, political, and military leaders.^[13] There are various African women who left their mark in history as symbols of resistance to colonization. One infamous example is the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (present-day Angola), Nzinga Mbandi (1581–1663). Following the death of her father, she carried his legacy to resist Portuguese colonization through whatever means necessary – diplomacy, alliances, or war. Having had failed attempts at diplomacy, including her own conversion to Christianity, Nzinga Mbandi made alliances and welcomed fugitives of the slave trade to join her in battle against the Portuguese. A queen who called herself king, Nzinga Mbandi fought for the autonomy of her people for decades until her death. Queen Yaa Asantewa (c. 1840 - 1921) was a Queen of Edweso, a state within the larger Asante Empire (in today’s Ghana). Queen Yaa Asantewa was famed for rallying 20,000 soldiers and leading them in combat to protect the ‘Golden Stool’, a sacred throne made of solid gold that was stolen by a British officer. She fought alongside of her people until the very end, until she was captured and exiled.^[14] Queen Ndaté Mbodj was born in the 1810s and became leader of the Waalo Kingdom in Senegal. The queen is regarded as a Senegambian hero for leading a war of resistance against the French colonization that continued into the 20^th century.^[15]

 

Reconstructing African Precolonial History

There are several noteworthy considerations as we recount history south of the Sahara. First, African history remains perilously peripheral in historical scholarship. For example, only 3 percent of publications in four prestigious history journals from 1997-2020 were about Africa, and out of these, only 10 percent were authored by scholars in Africa.^[16] The African underrepresentation is a partial explanation as to why outsiders telling stories about Africa often get it wrong. Other explanations include the prejudice and racism that has plagued these scarce explanations, well exemplified by the denied indigenous roots of Great Zimbabwe, as described in this section. Another good example is in the world of art, from the sculptures of Ife, a sacred Yoruba city in Nigeria. One thousand years ago, Ife artisans carved the heads of royalty in terracotta and copper in astonishingly symmetrical and detailed sculptures. Despite great admiration and regard for the sculpture art, German ethnologist Leo Frobenius could not accept that they were made by Africans and theorized that the works must had been the works of a “far superior” Greek Civilization. These ideas were pervasive in European “science” of the 20^th Century. As Nigerian archeologist Ekpo Eyo explains, this thinking “…denied the art of Africa a proper place in the history of universal human creative endeavor.”^[17]

Piecing together history depends upon recovering artifacts, tools, and deciphering paintings and carvings as they serve as windows into civilizations from a distant past. Much of the African artifacts, art, and treasures have been destroyed or stolen from Africa under colonial rule. It is estimated that more than half a million objects, as much as 90 percent of all artifacts known to originate in Africa, are held captive in Europe. Leo Frobenius’s personal collection of Ife royalty sculptures, for example, are on display at the ethnological museum in Berlin, Germany. Another notable case is the Benin Bronzes that were stolen in 1892 by British forces. Thousands of these stolen pieces are in European museums. As part of a reckoning brought by the work of activists, the case to repatriate African art became known in 2020. The Smithsonian and many museums have committed to returning stolen items to African governments, but most of it has yet to be returned.^[18] To help the process, Kenyan artisans are creating replicas of Luo traditional head dresses via 3D printing to incentivize the replacement the original stolen pieces currently in European museums. “If Americans and Europeans want to see the originals, they can come to Africa.”^[19]

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): [right] An Ife sculpture immortalizes what is possibly a king (12th-14th century). About one dozen terra-cota and copper Ife sculptures were excavated in Nigeria in 1938. Ife sculptures helped reaffirm the role of indigenous Africa in producing globally recognized fine art. Various artifacts in museums in Europe showcase the personal collection of Leo Frobenius (Public Domain; Kibell Art Museum Collection via Wikimedia Commons). [left] Some of the Benin Bronzes displayed at the British Museum. These artifacts have become the center of the movement for repatriation of African artifacts (CC BY SA; joyofmuseums via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Protocolonization, The Scramble for Africa, and Reclaiming Independence

European Lust: Gold and Slaves

Africa had Europe’s attention for quite some. African gold had been flowing north through Trans-Saharan caravans and fueling Mediterranean economies and financing European growth for centuries. The lavish expenditures of Mali’s most famous ruler, Mansa Musa I (1312-1337CE), spread news about an exotic ruler being the richest man in the world.^[20] Indeed, West Africa was one of the world’s greatest producers of gold. This abundance certainly created a pressing desire to forge connections and access African wealth.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): This is the lower portion of one of the sheets of the Catalan Atlas (1373) showing the Western Sahara. The Atlas Mountains are at the top and the River Niger at the bottom. Mansa Musa, Mali's most famous ruler thought to be the richest man in the world of the time, is shown sitting on a throne and holding a gold coin. The blocks of text are written in Catalan, describing places on the map. The right block describes Mansa Musa, a ruler of great wealth from the gold of his lands (Public Domain; Abraham Cresques via Wikimedia Commons).

 

The Portuguese were restless around African coasts. They started a “voyage of discovery” in 1413 and established some early settlements in west Africa thereafter to bypass the Trans-Saharan caravans’ traders and gain direct access to West African goods: not only gold but also slaves. Portugal was the first of the Europeans to begin buying enslaved Africans. Originally interested in trading for gold and spices, they set up several sugar plantations on the islands of São Tomé, off the western coast of Equatorial Africa. Portugal then brought in slaves to help cultivate the sugar, effectively trialing a plantation economy that would enrich them. The Spanish then began buying slaves to send to the New World in the early 16th century, bringing them first to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. Initially, Europeans raided coastal African villages to secure slaves, but over time, began purchasing slaves from African rulers and traders.

From antiquity and in every corner of the world, slavery had existed. In Africa and other parts of the world, people became enslaved due to war and conquest. Slaves were bought and sold in the continent well before the first purchases of the Portuguese and trade routes existed beyond the Atlantic. However, it is unquestionable that the immense labor demands of the new European colonies in the Americas to produce crops like sugar, tobacco, and cotton initiated an unprecedented trade of enslaved humans. The Trans-Atlantic trade transformed slavery into an immensely profitable business based on human beings as a primary extractive resource – in this extractive economy, slaves were not a bi-product of conflict but a conflict resource. As W.E.B Du Bois described, “instead of man-hunting being an incident of tribal wars, war became the incident of man-hunting.”^[21] The trans-Atlantic trade also reached an unprecedented scale. For the first time in history, an estimated 12 million enslaved Africans were taken across the Atlantic as forced laborers in the Americas.

Surely, European merchants accumulated immense profits from slavery, doubling down on both the large profit margins from selling enslaved Africans at double-triple what they paid and from their sales of manufactured goods to Africans. As for Africa, the transformed nature and scale of the slave trade brought wealth to the West African elites. The Dahomey Kingdom, for example, became an infamous enslaving state and forged its political and economic power by capitalizing on the insatiable European demand and raiding the hinterlands on their behalf.

In explaining African participation in the slave trade, Henry Louis Gates Jr. mentioned the difficulty of having "to confront the curious ease with which black Africans could sell Africans to the white man."^[22] This notion of betrayal demands exploration. First, Africans enslaved their enemies – strangers, people they considered “others,” from outside of their cultural groups and relationships – not their siblings. Secondly, the monolithic notion of Africanness or an “African race” is a Eurocentric construction that bounds African identity to hue, to Blackness. Africans did not share a monolithic identity and surely not one based on skin color. As Hartman explains: "In order to betray your race, you had first to imagine yourself as one."^[23] Thus, to contextualize otherness from an African perspective, one must consider that Africans identified along language, religious, and political affiliations not by the color of their skin.^[24]

King Alonso of the Kongo Kingdom, an amicable Christian partner of Portugal, expressed discontent with how Europeans perceived even African Christians. In a letter to the king, he complained about the indiscriminate way the Portuguese and their “voracious appetite” for slaves was resulting in the enslavement of Kongo’s own people, their own nobility, and their relatives. He condemned it and called for an end to the “corruption and licentiousness” of enslaving from within Kongo. Seemingly unconcerned, the Portuguese king replied along the lines that “Kongo had nothing else to sell.” ^[25] The correspondence suggests the Portuguese crown viewed even Kongo’s nobility, their Christian allies, with a level of African sameness – and as mere merchandise. This notion of an African race rooted in Blackness is a European construction developed in the context of the slave trade. It became an ideological and moral basis for the dehumanization of Africans in Kongo and beyond. Its conception forged racial slavery, a new form of slavery based on new constructions or race based on skin color.

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade brought the devastation of war, conflict, and drained African communities of able-bodied men, creating a gender imbalance and an economic deficit. Enslaved peoples were sold for a mere fraction of their economic worth as lifetime laborers, artisans, and leaders in Africa.^[26] Even more profoundly, the slave trade represented a lasting and disadvantageous economic system in Africa that is based on diverting indigenous resources from indigenous applications and development in an exchange for European goods. The exchange presented a net deficit to the continent. In other words, the slave trade unleashed a form protocolonialism, an earlier expression of an exploitative and violent economic relationship with Europe that would soon consume the continent.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): The map is based on many sources and summarizes the forcible displacement of Africans who were reduced to slavery over a long period. It shows both the Atlantic trade toward the Americas (which was intense for three centuries, and better studied and understood) and the Eastern trade (toward the Maghreb and the Middle East, of much longer duration but less well known). It depicts the way the network of ports was organized, the main capture zones, and the areas of destination. What is omitted in the figure is the volume of enslaved persons traded in these mapped routes. The Trans-Atlantic trade is estimated to have transported 12 million enslaved Africans to the Americas, as many as twenty percent died en route. It is estimated that the lesser-known Eastern routes traded between 8-15 million enslaved Africans (Espace Modial l'Atlas; within permitted use).

 

The Scramble for Africa

By the 19^th Century, the moral and capital imperatives of slavery had been challenged and the slave trade was banned. With the end of the slave trade, European powers turned to possess Africa itself. As the Industrial Revolution was spreading across Europe, colonial empires were seeking to expand their colonial holdings to gain mineral resources and expand agricultural production. As Europeans began exploring the interior of Africa and recognized its resource potential, competition among European empires grew fierce. France, Italy, Britain, Portugal, and Belgium were in an arms race to expand their territories. When Germany entered the race, the colonial empires decided that it was in Europe’s best interest to avoid conflict over the landgrab and clearly demarcate and “partition” the African continent into European colonies.

Without a single African present, and without any input from African leaders, representatives of European nations and the United States attended the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). At this conference, the colonial powers established the procedure for a Western country to formally control African territory and re-shape the map of Africa. Arbitrary political boundaries were superimposed in a continent previously divided into territories held by tribal groups and some larger kingdoms. The cartographic lines, drawn based on the interests of colonial powers, often did not correspond with the cultural, political, and physical geographies of Africa. They severed hundreds of ethnic groups and disrupted political structures and access to resources. These superimposed territorial divisions remain problematic to this day (discussed in Section 3.3).

By the early 20th century, around 90 percent of Africa was directly controlled by Europeans, effectively turning the continent into a European colony. Colonialism broadly refers to the control of a territory by another group and colonial policies varied across Africa. In the far-reaching French colonies, from present-day Madagascar to Morocco, the colonizers emphasized an assimilationist policy, spreading the French culture through language, laws, and education. In the British colonies, like present-day Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria, settlers partnered with local rulers who were made representatives of the British crown. This was known as indirect rule. The Portuguese, however, continued to be primarily interested in resources rather than local politics or culture. Their policy of exploitation in places like Angola and Mozambique ignored local development and the empire kept rigid control over local economies.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has a particularly violent colonial legacy. In a personal undertaking, Leopold II of Belgium declared himself the absolute ruler of the Congo Free State (now the viewed as subjects. He envisioned rooting “civilization” in Central Africa while plundering its wealth, especially from arduous forced rubber extraction. Leopold II is known for a reign of terror marked by a genocide and the mutilation of millions of Congolese people. His rule violently decimated the Congo population from 20 million to 8.5 million, a demographic collapse only second in magnitude to the slave trade.^[27]

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): This series of maps shows how Africa was carved up from the late 19th century to the present day. [top left] This map represents the territorial possessions and early colonial rivalries just before the Berlin Conference (1885). [top right] This second map shows how European powers partitioned nearly all of the continent into colonies after the Berlin Conference and on the eve of World War II (1914). [bottom left] the third illustrates the end of the process with the more or less violent decolonization that has taken place since the late 1950s, drawing the map of present-day African states (Espace Mondial l'Atlas; within permitted use).

 

Reclaiming Independence

Before 1950’s, only Ethiopia, South Africa, and Liberia (and Egypt in North Africa) were independent. Ethiopia was never colonized, having declared itself a long-established and independent Christian nation that successfully defeated the Italians' attempt to colonize it through a well-armed defense. Liberia, which declared independence in 1947, was a state formed by the American Colonization Society as an attempt to return enslaved Africans to Africa. South Africa was granted independence by the British in 1910, but it excluded Black South Africans (discussed in Section 3.4).

Nearly all African nations gained their independence after the United Nations had declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are universally free and equal. The endorsement of the document by European nations pointed to the moral paradox of colonies. From the 1950s and onwards, the push to reclaim independence would sweep Africa with varying degrees of struggle – most colonies achieved independence peacefully while others violently. Overall, the fight for decolonization was influenced by noteworthy forces. First, the system of colonization was based on an imposed European supremacy and human and land theft. Africans simply rejected it, many times facing violent repression for their dissent. Secondly, the world changed after the devastation of two world wars in Europe. African soldiers had fought side by side with European troops in the trenches of wrecked nations, an experience that helped dispel the myth of their self-professed superiority. As those former soldiers returned home, they encountered an intellectual and political landscape of educated Africans who were empowered by Pan-Africanism, or the idea that peoples of African descent should be unified in their common interests. Having experienced European colonization and its brutalities across diverse African identities created a shared determination for independence. Julius Nyerere, a Tanzanian independence leader, promoted Africanness, an experienced difference between Africans and Europeans that bind Africans in a common ground. Patrice Lumumba, another historical figure of the African independence movement, called Africa’s self-determination a basic human right. With India’s reclaim of independence in 1945, and the rise of African nationalism, war-torn European empires could no longer contain the sweeping independence momentum in Africa.^[28]

“Let [the West] today give proof of the principle of equality and friendship between races that its sons have always taught us as we sat at our desks in school, a principle written in capital letters in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” “Africans must be just as free as other citizens of the human family to enjoy the fundamental liberties set forth in this declaration and the rights proclaimed in the United Nations Charter” - Mr. Lumumba in 1959 at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.^[29]

 

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References:

[1] Sample, I. 2021. Archaeologists uncover oldest human burial in Africa. The Guardian. May 5th, 2021.

[2] Kolbert, E. 2018. There is no scientific basis for race - it's a made-up label. National Geographic. March 12, 2018.

[3] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 21-22.

[4] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 151-152.

[5] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 181-184.

[6] Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 36-38.

[7] Horst, F. 2021. Why Timbuktu's true treasure is its libraries. National Geographic. September 30, 2021.

[8] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 205-221.

[9] The Economist. 2021. Unearthing the truth: a Zimbabwean archeologist reimagines the story of a momentous African civilization. December 18, 2021. Accessed August 26, 2022.

[10] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 317-322.

[11] Paquette, D. (2021, September 7). They were the world's only all-female army. their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 3, 2022.

[12] Arnett, E. J. “A Hausa Chronicle.” Journal of the Royal African Society, vol. 9, no. 34, 1910, pp. 161–67. Accessed July 3, 2022.

[13] Green, T. 2019. A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Ruse of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution. University of Chicago Press. pp 341-347.

[14] McCaskie, T. C. “The Life and Afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 77, no. 2, 2007, pp. 151–79. & Pitchon, A. (2022, Sep 20). Female Warriors Who Led African Empires and Armies. History.

[15] Johnson, E. (2019, Apr 5). Ndaté Yalla Mbodj, the last queen of Senegal who fought off the French, Arabs, and Moors. Face 2 Face Africa

[16] See 9.

[17] Garcia, E. (Sep 9, 2021). Nigeria’s ancient royal portraits challenged European biases toward African art. National Geographic History Magazine.

[18] Lucas, J. 2022. The forgotten movement to reclaim Africa's stolen art. The New Yorker. April 14, 2022.

[19] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/kenya-wants-its-stolen-treasures-back-replicas-could-spur-their-return?loggedin=true

[20] Mansa Musa is thought to be the richest man in the history of the world, based on his comparative wealth and the wealth of other rulers in his time. See Mohamud, N. 2019. “Is Mansa Musa the richest man who ever lived?”, BBC.

[21] W.E.B Du Bois in Sorentino, S. (2020). So-Called Indigenous Slavery: West African Historiography and the Limits of Interpretation. Postmodern Culture 30(3), doi:10.1353/pmc.2020.0018.

[22] Gates, J. quoted in Sorentino, M. 2020. “The So Called Indigenous Slavery”: West African histography and the limits of interpretation. Postmodern Culture 30(3).

[23] Saidiya Hartman in Sorentino, M. 2020. “The So Called Indigenous Slavery”: West African histography and the limits of interpretation. Postmodern Culture 30(3).

[24] Sylviane Diouf in Sorentino, M. 2020. “The So Called Indigenous Slavery”: West African histography and the limits of interpretation. Postmodern Culture 30(3).

[25] Reader, John. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp374-375.

[26] Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. pp 41.

[27] Reader, J. 1999. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. pp 151-152. & Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. African Geographies: Dynamics of Place, Culture, and Economies. New Jersey: Wiley. Pp 547-549.

[28] Ofori-Amoah, B. 2020. Africa’s Geography: Dynamics of Place, Cultures, and Economies, pp 50-56.

[29] Malotana, Y. (Dec 10, 2021). Fewer authoritarian regimes on the continent but the fight is not over.

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Attributions:

"African Civilizations" is remixed and adapted from The Ancient Trade of Salt in West Africa, The Mali Empire, The Songhai Empire, Timbuktu, Aksum Kingdom, and Great Zimbabwe by Mark Cartwright and Kingdom of Kush, Meroe, by Joshua Mark n World History Encyclopedia, all licensed as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

"European Lust: Gold & Slaves" is remixed and adapted from The Gold Trade of Ancient and Medieval West Africa by Mark Cartwright, in World History Encyclopedia, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and Pre-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa by Caitlyn Finlayson, CC BY-BC-SA.

"The Scramble for Africa" is adapted from Finalyson, Caitlyn Pre-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa, CC BY-BC-SA.