World Class Education kean

1. World Class Educationwww.kean.edu

2. AFRICA IN PRAXIS Jay Spaulding jspauldi@kean.edu

3. ONLINE SCRIPT • The script for this presentation is available for consultation and review at: • http://www.kean.edu/~jspauldi/jlspraxisafrica.html

4. THE STUDY OF AFRICA • “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

5. AFRICAN HISTORY IS DIFFICULT • 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

6. TWO LESSONS • Africa is not exotic • Basic concepts and themes are more important than the details

7. PERIODS AND THEMES • 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)

8. AFRICAN ORIGINS • First ancestor (10,000,000 years ago) • Early fossil remains (Toumai, Millennium Man) • Australopithecines • Homo erectus • “Eve” (about 200,000 years ago)

9. PREHISTORY • 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

10. HUMANS VS ANCESTORS? • Kinship • Speech

11. ABOUT LANGUAGE • 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

12. AFRICAN LANGUAGE FAMILIES • Khoisan • Nilo-Saharan • Afrasan • Congo-Kordofanian • Malagasy (came from Asia)

13. AFRICA BUILDS ITSELF • 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”

14. TYPES OF SOCIETY • Band society • Lineage society • Chiefdoms • Early states • Empires (old agrarian) • City states • Nation states

15. HISTORICAL TURNING POINTS • Agriculture (about 15,000 BCE) • The state (began about 5,000 BCE)

16. BAND SOCIETY • Universal before agriculture • Gradually marginalized and suppressed by success of agriculture over the centuries • Extinct after World War II

17. LIFE IN A BAND • 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

18. LINEAGE SOCIETY • 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

19. LIFE IN LINEAGE SOCIETY • 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

20. RISE OF CHIEFDOMS • 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

21. LIFE IN A CHIEFDOM • Hereditary, titled elites appear • Markets and trade become common • Acquisitive organized warfare • Domestic slavery, especially of women and children • Competitive labor-organizing “big men”

22. VISIT A CHIEFDOM • 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.

23. STATE SOCIETY • 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

24. CHRONOLOGY OF STATES • 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)

25. NAMES OF STATES • 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

26. NILE VALLEY • 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)

27. ETHIOPIA • Old kingdoms (1000 – 500 BCE) • Axum (500 BCE – 700 CE) • Zagwe dynasty (700 – 1270 CE) • Solomonic dynasty (1270 – 1974 CE)

28. MEDIEVAL STATES • Sudanic: • Ghana • Mali • Songhai • Kanem • Borno • Takrur • Wadai • Baghirmi • Dar Fur • Not Sudanic: • Zimbabwe

29. EARLY MODERN WEST AFRICA • Oyo • Benin • Asante • Dahomey

30. EARLY MODERN CENTRAL AFRICA • Kongo • Tio • Luango • Luba • Lunda

31. SOUTHERN AFRICA • Zulu

32. CAPITALS • 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

33. EARLY STATES VS EMPIRES • 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

34. NAMES OF EMPIRES? • 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

35. CITY STATES • 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

36. TYPES OF TRADE • 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

37. MERCHANTS IN AFRICA • 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

38. AFRICAN CITY STATES • 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

39. SAHARAN CITY STATES • Sijilmasa • Awdaghost • Tadmekka • Takedda • Walata • Ghat • Murzuq • Awjila • Kufra • Agadez • Bilma • Jalo • Siwa • Jaghbub • (There are others)

40. EAST COAST CITY STATES • Aydhab • Sawakin • Mitsawa • Adulis • Zayla • Berbera • Mogadishu • Barawa • Pate • Lamu • Manda • Malindi • Mombasa • Kilwa • Sofala • (There are others)

41. WEST AFRICAN CITY STATES • Dakar • Rufisque • Goree • Freetown • Cape Coast • Elmina • Lagos • Brass • Bonny • Kalabari • Douala • Luanda

42. NATION STATES • 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

43. AFRICAN NATION STATES • 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

44. NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS • Tripoli constitution by John Locke • Mankessim Constitution • Malagasy (iMerina) codes of law

45. SUMMARY AND TRANSITION • 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

46. WAVES OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE TO 1600 • Hellenistic (300 BCE to 600 CE) • Islamic (600 to 1800) • Early Modern European (1400 to 1600)

47. HELLENISTIC WAVE • 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

48. ISLAMIC WAVE • 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

49. EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN • 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

50. THE SLAVE TRADE ERA • 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