Chapter 26

AFRICA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD

  1. African politics and societies in early modern times
  2. The states of west Africa and east Africa
  3. The Songhay empire was the dominant power of west Africa, replacing Mali
  4. Expansion under Songhay emperor Sunni Ali after 1464
  5. Elaborate administrative apparatus, powerful army, and imperial navy
  6. Muslim emperors ruled prosperous land, engaged in trans-Saharan trade
  7. Fall of Songhay to Moroccan army in 1591
  8. Revolts of subject peoples brought the empire down
  9. A series of small, regional kingdoms and city-states emerged
  10. Decline of Swahili city-states in east Africa
  11. Vasco da Gama forced the ruler of Kilwa to pay tribute, 1502
  12. Massive Portuguese naval fleet subdued all the Swahili cities, 1505
  13. Trade disrupted; Swahili declined
  14. The kingdoms of central Africa and south Africa
  15. Kongo, powerful kingdom of central Africa after fourteenth century
  16. Established diplomatic and commercial relations with Portugal, 1482
  17. Kings of Kongo converted to Christianity sixteenth century; King Afonso
  18. Slave raiding in Kongo
  19. Portuguese traded textiles, weapons, and advisors for Kongolese gold, silver, ivory, and slaves
  20. Slave trade undermined authority of kings of Kongo
  21. Deteriorated relations led to war in 1665; Kongo king decapitated
  22. Kingdom of Ndongo (modern Angola) attracted Portuguese slave traders
  23. Queen Nzinga led spirited resistance to Portuguese, 1623-1663
  24. Nzinga able to block Portuguese advances but not expel them entirely
  25. By end of the seventeenth century, Ndondo was the Portuguese colony of Angola
  26. Southern Africa dominated by regional kingdoms, for example, Great Zimbabwe
  27. Europeans in south Africa after the fifteenth century
  28. First Portuguese, then Dutch mariners landed at Cape of Good Hope
  29. Dutch mariners built a trading post at Cape Town, 1652
  30. Increasing Dutch colonists by 1700, drove away native Khoikhoi
  31. South Africa became a prosperous European colony in later centuries
  32. Islam and Christianity in early modern Africa
  33. Islam popular in west Africa states and Swahili city-states of east Africa
  34. Islamic university and 180 religious schools in Timbuktu in Mali
  35. Blended Islam with indigenous beliefs and customs, a syncretic Islam
  36. The Fulani, west African tribe, observed strict form of Islam, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  37. Christianity reached sub-Saharan Africa through Portuguese merchants
  38. Also blended with traditional beliefs
  39. Antonian movement of Kongo, a syncretic cult, addressed to St. Anthony
  40. Charismatic Antonian leader, Dona Beatriz, executed for heresy, 1706
  41. Social change in early modern Africa
  42. Kinship and clans remained unchanged at the local level
  43. American food crops, for example, manioc, maize, peanuts, introduced after the sixteenth century
  44. Population growth in sub-Sahara: 35 million in 1500 to 60 million in 1800
  45. The Atlantic slave trade
  46. Foundations of the slave trade
  47. Slavery common in traditional Africa
  48. Slaves typically war captives, criminals, or outcasts
  49. Most slaves worked as cultivators, some as administrators or soldiers
  50. With all land held in common, slaves were a measure of power and wealth
  51. Slaves often assimilated into their masters' kinship groups, even earned freedom
  52. The Islamic slave trade well established throughout Africa
  53. Ten million slaves may have been shipped out of Africa by Islamic slave trade between eighth and the eighteenth centuries
  54. Europeans used these existing networks and expanded the slave trade
  55. Human cargoes
  56. The early slave trade on the Atlantic started by Portuguese in 1441
  57. By 1460 about five hundred slaves a year shipped to Portugal and Spain
  58. By fifteenth century African slaves shipped to sugar plantations on Atlantic islands
  59. Portuguese planters imported slaves to Brazil, 1530s
  60. Spanish settlers shipped African slaves to the Caribbean, Mexico, Peru, and Central America, 1510s and 1520s
  61. English colonists brought slaves to North America early seventeenth century
  62. Triangular trade: all three legs of voyage profitable
  63. European goods traded for African slaves
  64. Slaves traded in the Caribbean for sugar or molasses
  65. American produce traded in Europe
  66. At every stage the slave trade was brutal
  67. Individuals captured in violent raids
  68. Forced marched to the coast for transport
  69. The dreaded middle passage, where between 25 percent and 50 percent died
  70. The impact of the slave trade in Africa
  71. Volume of the Atlantic slave trade increased dramatically after 1600
  72. At height--end of the eighteenth century--about one hundred thousand shipped per year
  73. Altogether about twelve million brought to Americas, another four million died en route
  74. Profound impact on African societies
  75. Impact uneven: some societies spared, some societies profited
  76. Distorted African sex ratios, since two-thirds of exported slaves were males
  77. Encouraged polygamy and forced women to take on men's duties
  78. Politically disruptive
  79. Introduced firearms; fostered conflict and violence between peoples
  80. Dahomey, on the "slave coast," grew powerful as a slave-raiding state

  III.        The African diaspora

  1. Plantation societies
  2. Cash crops introduced to fertile lands of Caribbean early fifteenth century
  3. First Hispaniola, then Brazil and Mexico
  4. Important cash crops: sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton, coffee
  5. Plantations dependent on slave labor
  6. Plantations racially divided: one hundred or more slaves with a few white supervisors
  7. High death rates in the Caribbean and Brazil; continued importation of slaves
  8. Only about 5 percent of slaves to North America, where slave families more common
  9. Resistance to slavery widespread, though dangerous
  10. Slow work, sabotage, and escape
  11. Slave revolts were rare and were brutally suppressed by plantation owners
  12. 1793: slaves in French colony of Saint-Domingue revolted, abolished slavery, and established the free state of Haiti
  13. The making of African-American cultural traditions
  14. African and Creole languages
  15. Slaves from many tribes; lacked a common language
  16. Developed creole languages, blending several African languages with the language of the slaveholder
  17. African-American religions also combined elements from different cultures
  18. African-American Christianity was a distinctive syncretic practice
  19. African rituals and beliefs: ritual drumming, animal sacrifice, magic, and sorcery
  20. Other African-American cultural traditions: hybrid cuisine, weaving, pottery
  21. The end of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery
  22. New voices and ideas against slavery
  23. American and French revolutions encouraged ideals of freedom and equality
  24. OlaudahEquiano was a freed slave whose autobiography became a best-seller
  25. Slavery became increasingly costly
  26. Slave revolts made slavery expensive and dangerous
  27. Decline of sugar price and rising costs of slaves in the late eighteenth century
  28. Manufacturing industries were more profitable; Africa became a market
  29. End of the slave trade
  30. Most European states abolished the slave trade in the early nineteenth century
  31. British naval squadrons helped to stop the trade
  32. The abolition of slavery followed slowly: 1833 in British colonies, 1848 in French colonies, 1865 in the United States, 1888 in Brazil