A Very Modest “History”
Written history is not the stuff of Africa. What we have is oral traditions and some archeological evidence from which we can build up a slight traditional style history of sub-Saharan Africa. Modern African historians normally rely on oral traditions above other methods. The northern coastal regions of Africa were settled and urbanized by people with high cultures that included writing; thus, history. In this case we know a lot about Carthage and Egypt. If we set out south, beyond the desert wastes, we hit a region where virtually nothing was written down, and the climate and building materials are such that physical evidence does not last. In this section we will briefly discuss sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the earliest significant southern (tropical) African civilizations was the kingdom of Kush, in the area of Nubia on the “upper” Nile River.[80] Kush existed in the area where the White and Blue Nile join. Egypt either controlled or heavily influenced the area up to the Nile’s 5th cataract for centuries; however, after the fall of the Egyptian New Kingdom in about 1070 BC, the area of Kush re-asserted itself and built a substantial empire with its capitol at Meroe. The main reason Egypt wanted to control the upper Nile was the gold fields found in this region, and after the reduction of Egypt’s power, the state of Meroe (Kush) traded the precious metal far and wide from 900 BC until its fall in 350 AD. Meroe fell after the nearby kingdom of Axum invaded and overthrew the ailing empire. Once again, trade was the commonality that leads to prosperity. And once again, the Middle Eastern pattern of the rise and fall of empires was repeated all over Africa, albeit on a smaller scale.
Fundamentally, settlements in sub-Saharan Africa were small and usually limited to small scale agriculture, cattle raising, and hunter-gatherer societies. Major trading centers grew up in the north, including Timbuktu in the state of Mali, but none grew to a great size. Perhaps the most famous exception to the lack of substantial buildings was the important trading center at Great Zimbabwe that reached its peak about 1200 AD. This regional center was on the Zimbabwe Plateau, and its major trade was in gold and cattle. The granite stone blocks used for their expertly constructed walls and towers remained impressive decades after Great Zimbabwe disappeared from history.
Islam made inroads in Northern Africa—above the Congo basin—after AD 1000, and they began trading in gold, ivory, and slaves from AD 600 onward. Some northern areas of Africa became totally Muslim, but the southern areas managed to retain their own religious structures. Muslim traders first began trading slaves from Africa to the Muslim world in the Middle East. Muslims were by far the world’s greatest slave traders. European slavers arrived in 1441 (Portuguese). By the time the European slavers arrived African tribes were already familiar with raiding other tribes to capture slaves for outsiders. It was a very lucrative operation for the African tribes and for the Muslim and European entrepreneurs engaging in the practice. By the 1500s, the Ottoman Turks held Northern Africa and the trading routes across the Sahara, thus controlling important trading centers and trade routes.
On the eastern coast of Africa an excellent trade system evolved into the Indian Ocean trade network. This trading area brought in, and disbursed all over Africa, goods from far away China, India, and the Mediterranean world. Areas all along the eastern coast of Africa prospered from this trading arrangement. The Europeans would spoil this trading system in the 1500s when Portuguese explorers looking for a way to the orient interrupted the sea routes used by the network. Soon the Europeans dominated the oceans off eastern Africa and determined what sea trade passed between various regions. In essence, Europeans began taking the trade to Europe and destroyed the lucrative trading system in the Indian Ocean.
The African slave trade went on with Europe and the Americas until banned by England in 1808 in a unilateral act of conscience. It was England’s sea power that allowed the nation to embark on the scheme that challenged much of Europe and the Middle East. In 1815, at the Congress ofVienna, Britain convinced nearly all of Europe to sign off on banning slavery. By the 1820’s, both the British and French were trying to end the slave trade; however, the African tribes and states that made large profits from slavery were resisting this change. After all, the slave trade was extremely profitable for the African businessmen. The British even bombarded the coastal fortresses of the African slave traders who opposed the Euorpean attempt to limit their power. By 1880 the combined efforts of England, Europe, and America ended the African slave trade; however, this in turn caused economic problems in Africa causing a general financial collapse. The African economic problems led European colonial powers into opportunistically absorbing the entire continent into their empires by 1914 in the notorious “Scramble for Africa.” When the European powers completed the scramble only two nations, Liberia and Ethiopia, remained free of colonial control. After World War I the victors redrew the lines of demarcation for African “nations” because Germany lost their colonial empire, most of which was in Africa, and the English and French seized these colonies. These lines of control only displayed European concerns, not African realities.
The colonial collapse after World War II led to African states gaining their freedom rather quickly. Unfortunately, they proved unable to effectively govern themselves. England was careful to develop its colonies so they could handle independence, but most other European nations, such as Belgium, just left, thereby allowing everything to fall apart behind them. The poorly drawn lines of nationhood left over from the Treaty of Versailles resulted in wars and relocation problems killing millions of innocents in Africa. Brutal dictators arose from the chaos, gaining control of wide areas, and brutalizing the population to maintain control. These dictators often obtained the blessing and financial support of the United Nations. The international organization was trying to alleviate suffering but achieved just the opposite. The dictators used the money to buy weapons to maintain their power. The problems of genocide, tribal warfare, religious warfare, disease, poor farming conditions, discrimination between tribes, poor leadership, dictatorships, exhausted economies, and a lack of management skills persist into 2010. The suffering in Africa since the end of colonial rule was, and is, appalling.
Let Us Learn
From Africa, we learn outsiders never have your best interest at heart.
Books and Resources
A Short History of Africa, Oliver and Fage, 1990 Penguin 6th Edition. I really like this book. Easy and excellent reading, especially for a newcomer to African history.