The Spread of Islam to the South of Mediterranean Africa from the Great Sudan to East Africa
Finally, a great Sahelian empire was established by a group called the Kanem and Kanem-Bornu This empire arose after 1100 and lasted until 1846 even though its power had been greatly reduced by 1700. In short, Kanem was contemporary with the Ghanaian, Mali and Songhai empires. It was located to their east in the vicinity of Lake Chad and extended its influence southwest through northern Nigeria. This area is called central Sudan. Again, the pattern is the same. Economically, the royal regime was supported by trans-Saharan trade and used much the same exchange of commodities. Ideologically, the regime was Muslim and practiced missionary Islam on its borders.
The eastern Sudan extends throughout the twentieth century country of Sudan and northeast into Ethiopia. This area is dominated by the presence of the two main branches of the Nile River (the Blue Nile and the White Nile). Originating in the seventh century C.E., two Christian states called Maqurra and Alwa. They were in touch with Egypt to the north and much of the rest of Sudan. The Mamluk rulers of Egypt repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of both states and gradually weakened them. Eventually, both were forcibly converted to Islam. The Funj sultanate replaced them. It was centered the area between the Blue and White Nile Rivers just upstream from their junction. This is the area in which the modern capital of Sudan is located (Khartoum) and it has remained a center of militant Islamic activism. The Funj state absorbed many Nubian migrants from further downstream on the main Nile and its Arabized character was unique in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Funj state was conquered in 1821 by an Egyptian-Ottoman invasion.
The Arabs of the eastern portion of Arabia (Oman and Yemen) had long conducted trade along the east coast of Africa. They founded a series of seaports which remain some the main cities of East Africa. Examples are Mogadishu (capital of modern Somalia), Kilwa and Mombasa. The Arabs intermarried with the Bantu speaking peoples of the region and they gradually created a hybrid language called Swahili or Kiswahili. It had a Bantu root grammatical structure and many Arabic words. The culture was also a hybrid. The trade conducted with the Arabs provided the economic base for inland kingdoms called Swahili states. There was a rich trade in exchanging products from East Africa (examples are gold, slaves, pearls, etc) with commodities from the Middle East (examples are cloth, porcelain and glassware).
This area is a belt of forested lands lying close to the equator and extending from the western tip of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean (Senegal and Gambia) east to the Bight of Benin (an area called West Africa). It then extends east and south across the great Congo River basin and its tributaries. East of the easternmost tributaries of the Congo (i.e. east of the present province of Katanga), the land dries out as one approaches the cold water coast of southeastern Africa in the Indian Ocean. Most of west Africa is not accessible easily from the sea because the coastal plain is very narrow and is bounded inland by a high escarpment broken in very few places by major rivers. So, the region was quite isolated from sea commerce until the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. Our discussion is organized around three particular areas of some note: Benin in West Africa; Kongo in Central Africa; and Great Zimbabwe in the Eastern part of sub-Saharan Africa.
The forestlands of west Africa extend east-west in a belt between the grasslands of the Sahel Belt (discussed above as 'Sudan') and the Atlantic Ocean. The original forests were very dense and the climate was warm and wet. Soils are thin and easily exhausted. Agriculture before the era of commercial fertilizers and insecticides consisted of seven tier gardens. These were a densely planted set of plants extending vertically from root crops to banana trees. The spaces for these gardens were cleared by slashing and burning the plant cover during the dry season. It was exhausting and time consuming work. The gardens lasted for only seven to ten years on the average and the area had to be left to naturalize for an even longer period in order to restore the fertility of the soil. So, west African society consisted of many small villages widely separated. It was difficult for any one village to maintain dominance over others and hence the west African kingdoms and chiefdoms tended to be small and oligarchic. Women played a central role in tending the gardens and had independent property rights. The entire population was vulnerable to attack from their more centralized neighbors to the north. Their northern neighbors from the Sudan therefore found it feasible to raid the forestlands and capture the people for slavery. This practice had gone on for many centuries before the arrival of the Europeans.
In fact, what the Europeans later did is provide an alternative market for slaves drawn from the west African forestlands to the northern Sahelian states and this substitution explains much of their success. The key difference, however, is that the peoples of the Sahel were also African. They did not regard the peoples of the forestlands of west Africa as an inferior race or even as sub-human as did many of the Europeans of that time. So, the European version of the slave trade turned out to be much, much worse.
The Edo speaking peoples of the area between what is now western Nigeria or Yorubaland and eastern Nigeria or Iboland have lived in that region for millenia. The Edo culture of Benin were most closely related to those Ife which is a Yoruba city to the northwest of Benin. By invitation of Edo leaders, an Ife prince was sent to rule over Benin in about 1300. The leaders formed a group called the uzama. They were hereditary, village chiefs. The ruler was called an Oba. The fourth Oba wrested more control over the Uzama and began some of the ceremonial of an absolute monarch. Only in the fifteenth century did the Oba become a royal autocracy and a regionally important state.
Ewuare, the autocratic king, renamed the state Edo and rebuilt the capital city, Benin City. Ewuare and his successors developed a military kingship and engaged in major wars of expansion. By the seventeenth century, the Oba withdrew into the palace and became more of a religious than a military figure. The succession by primogeniture was discontinued and obas were chosen from the uzama in any branch of the royal family.
Benin is famous for its bronze sculptures and castings. They also did spectacular work in terra cotta.
The kingdom was founded in the 1300's and was located on the boundary between the forestlands and the grasslands of southern Africa. The Kongo kings had built a pyramid structure of taxes and tribute reciprocated by favors to the faithful. The society was dominated by the King. He was supposed to be a kind of spiritual spokesman of the gods or ancestors. By 1600, Kongo had grown to almost half the size of England. It boasted a high state of specialization in weaving, pottery, salt production, fishing and metalworking.
This was an early (900-1500) civilization by the Bantu speaking Shona peoples in the region between the Limpopo and the Zambezi rivers of southeastern Africa. Great Zimbabwe is an immense stone fortress and temple. It probably was an intermediary in the trade between the coastal Swahili speaking cities dominated by the Omani arabs (especially Sofala) and the peoples of the region and of Sudan. The Shona peoples had migrated from the northwest into the region and had brought with them mining techniques and farming innovations as well as ancestor cults. One of the principal commodities in trade was gold and copper ornaments.
The earliest of the Europeans were the Portuguese who, under Henry the Navigator, explored down the the coast of west Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Portuguese goal was to get to the spice islands. Eventually, they succeeded in rounding Cape Horn and explored up the coast of East Africa until they finally made their way to India and Indonesia. Along the way, the Portuguese established a set of fortified ports to re-supply their ships on the long voyage and to provide protection against pirates and privateers (pirates who had a commission from another country). Gradually, the Portuguese converted their supply system into trading posts for gold, other specialty goods and slaves.
The Portuguese were the first but certainly not the last of the Europeans to establish trading posts on the West Coast of Africa. They were quickly followed by Spanish, French, English, Dutch and even Swedes. The Europeans introduced many American crops to the forestlands of West Africa. These crops were to become the basis for the subsistence economy of West Africa to this day. Examples were maize (corn), peanuts, squash, sweet potatoes, cocoa and cassava (manioc). The introduction of these crops led to an enormous expansion of the food supply and, initially, an increase in the population.
Senegambia is the region in the modern states of Senegal and Gambia between the Senegal and Gambia Rivers. The region had long been involved in the trans-Saharan trade (e.g. the empire of Songhai). This trade was largely in gold, salt, cotton goods, hides and copper. However, in the hands of the Europeans, the trade was quickly dominated by slaves exported from Senegambia and sent to Brazil and the Caribbean in the sixteenth century. About a third of all the Africans exported to the new world in the sixteenth century were from the small territory of Senegambia. Over time, the Gambian area became dominated by the British and Portuguese while the Senegal river basin was controlled by the French.
This was the modern area of the State of Ghana. The area was dominated by the Akan peoples (in Ghana itself, these were called the Ashanti). The Ashanti state held off the Europeans and limited the slave trade. Due to the importation of the American crops (which the Europeans had borrowed from the native Americans), the Akan peoples in particular grew in numbers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But, eventually, the Europeans (especially the British) gained the upper hand and more gold came into the region in payment for slaves than was exported.
The Kongo ruler, Affonso I (1506-1543) was a convert to Christianity and welcomed Jesuit missionaries. However, the secular Portuguese who came with them were rapacious and made side deals with provincial governors within the Kongo kingdom for slaves. Eventually, the slave trade undermined the political stability of the state and the 'jaga' wars ensued. The hereditary kings of the Kongo based their power on the military drawn from musket-bearing troops from the Stanley Pool region. For most of the sixteenth century, the kingdom managed to prosper on trade in slaves, gold, sculpture, iron and copper technology and tropical products. The state was culturally rich.
In 1571, the Portuguese decided to make Angola a proprietary colony (the first white colony in Africa). By 1600, thousands of slaves were being exported from Luanda, the capital of Angola (then and now). Despite the spread of Amerindian crops which raised the food supply, the overall effect of Portuguese rule was a disaster for the Mbundu people of the region.
The Dutch East India Company established a colony at Capetown in order to secure their route into the Indian Ocean and also provided a provisioning place (food and water) in 1652. In 1662, it had 392 people. By 1714, that had grown to 3,878. These people were the forebears of the Afrikaners of South Africa.
The area was occupied by the KhoiKhoi people. They were rather primitive nomadic folk who herded cattle and sheep. They were being pushed south at the time of the arrival of the Dutch by Bantu speaking peoples from the north who were technologically superior and much more numerous. Gradually, the Dutch expanded out of the town and colonized the surrounding area often by force of arms. By 1700, the KhoiKhoi had been stripped of almost all of their land. They became hangers on and servants to the Boers. While the KhoiKhoi were treated as a free people who were hired for wages, the need of the Boers for labor resulted in the import of many Africans from the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was the Boers that invented the military form of the 'Commando' who were civilians organized into raiding parties to destroy KhoiKhoi settlements and flocks. Eventually, they were driven in the eighteenth century to the edge of extinction.
The result at the end of the eighteenth century was a mixed society of Boers, KhoiKhoi and African slaves.
The Portuguese arrived on the coast of what is now Mozambique between the Limpopo and the Zambezi in the sixteenth century only to find the Omani Arabs had been there first (in fact, for centuries). The Portuguese viewed the Omanis as just another variety of Arab enemies. They attempted to exterminate them (who they called 'Moors') by use of superior sea power and, for a time, succeeded. The economic goal was to seize control of the Gold trade with the people's inland (mostly Shona). The Shona, however, did not take kindly to the racist attitudes of the Portuguese and a low-level war started that lasted for a long time. The result was widespread economic decline in the interior and a sharp decline in coastal trade between Oman and Africa. After 1660, the Omanis returned to the attack and ousted the Portuguese from everywhere on the coast north of Mozambique. The Omanis shifted their home base to Zanzibar which was a large island off of the east coast of Africa. This domination persisted until 1856 when Zanzibar was captured by the British navy and the Omanis were forced to return home to the Arabian Peninsula.
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