African History_Lecture 4_Centralized Power_West Africa

Which language did most West Africans speak?

• Niger-Congo languages

Who were desert peoples in West Africa and which language did they speak?

• Berbers, Moors and Tuareg

• Afroasiatic

What was the difference between North American colonization and West African colonization (pre-European)?

• North America: single moving frontier

• West Africa: Clusters of scattered cultivators with their own frontiers expanding and contracting depending on droughts, witches or enemiese (ex: middle Niger)

Why were population clusters drawn together in the open plains of West African savanna?

• Need for defence

• Low transport costs

What were the building blocks of political development in West Africa and when did they emerge?

• Late first millennium AD microstates formed by Igbo villagers’ (Nigeria) market places surrounded by residential compounds and farmlands, an Edo-speakers’ small and large land enclosures

Where and when did the first substantial polities form in West Africa?

• Second Millennium AD

• Forest-savanna edges (easier to penetrate the forest, ex: Bantu-speaking cultivators met grain farmers speaking Nilo-Saharan on the northeastern edge of the equatorial forest)

What were major impediments to centralization in Western Africa, which diminished demographic growth and forced colonists back into river valleys?

• Chronic Malaria was the biggest killer

• Leprosy in equatorial regions with the arrival of the Europeans in the 19th century

• Mild strain of smallpox

• Tsetse flies causing sleeping sickness

• Famine (ex: Great Famine in Angola every 70 years, killing 1/3 or ½ of the population, Half the population of Timbuktu died due to drought and locusts between 1738-56)

What were solutions to the impediments that affected demographic growth in Africa?

• Birth spacing of three or four years to protect the health of the mother

• Warfare aimed to capture women: ex=Khoisan wars: “Women seem to be principal booty”

• Zulu proverb: “The feud is in the testicle.”

• Yoruba proverb: “Without children you are naked.”

What were obstacles to state formation in Africa?

• Underpopulation

• Availability of empty land incentivized escaping political authority

• 2nd Millennium BC: Stateless populations wanted freedom, used negotiation to solve disputes amongst themselves (ex: Voltaic-speaking regions in Ghana)

• Polygnous marriages: rulers’ sons had succession battles and perpetuated separatism, undermining unity

What was the building-block of enduring, large polities in Western savanna?

• Kafu: group of villages forming a miniature state

What was the dominant state in the Western savanna between the 13th and 15th century?

• Mali Empire

How did the Mali state centralize?

• Villages of craftsmen created dense clusters of kafus in Niger

• Niger Valley had fertile agriculture

How did the Mali state expand to form an empire?

• First phase: Mande-speaking hunters migrated

• Second phase: Traders, craftsmen and cultivators went to Ghana’s goldfields

• Third phase: Horsemen violently established chiefdoms in the Gambia

Why did the Mali Empire collapse?

• Polygynous royal family: Succession battle

• Tuareg nomads took Timbuktu in 1433-4

• Fulbe cattlemen took Western half of the empire

• Songhay Empire sacked Mali’s capital in 1545-6

What was the state that succeeded the Mali empire?

• Songhay empire

What was the Songhay Empire like and when did it reach its prime?

• Nilo-Saharan speakers with a capital in Gao

• Military dynasty that reached its prime during the reign of Sonni Ali Ber between 1464 and 1492 via the slave cultivators and royal kinsmen who made the Niger Valley more productive, indigenous rulers only ruled outside provinces

Why wasn’t the Songhay Empire fully united and why did it collapse?

• Askiya Muhammed Ture’s descendants had succession battles after the death of Sonni Ali in 1492

• Moroccans, Fulbe pastoralists and Tuareg invaded Gao

• Bambara cultivators established their own kafu microstates after the fall of the empire

What was the dominant power from the 6th century in West African central savanna?

• Kanem-Borno State

• Pastoral Nilo-Saharan speakers north of Lake Chad

• Saifawa dynasty specialized in export of slaves from 1075

• Moved to Borno due to internal fighting and declining rainfall

• Aristocracy of mounted warriors conquered surrounding cultivators during the 16th century

• Maintained power because of it protected Islam against stateless peoples and indigenous faiths between 11th and 13th centuries

• Declined in the 18th century

What was Hausaland like in the early second millenium?

• Microstates clustered around ironworking centre and granite rock formations

How did Hausaland unite its microstates into kingdoms? Did this lead to sustainable centralization?

• Arrival of Islamic traders in the mid-14th century

• Unification of microstates into kingdoms with walled capital towns between 15th and 16th centuries

• Powerful war-horses and systematic slave-raiding between 15th and 16th centuries

• Commerce based on agriculture and craft production between 15th and 16th centuries

• New kingdoms were still fighting for supremacy by the the 16th century

How did military innovations support centralization in West Africa?

• Cavalry warfare increased slavery because horses facilitated kidnapping slaves and new horses required payments in slaves

• Savanna states used slaves as administrators because people believed they weren’t ambitious to accumulate wealth or gain more power, therefore ensuring their loyalty

• Slaves were used as agricultural labourers to colonize new land (ex: Kanem)

What is the difference between savanna and grassland?

• Grassland: No trees for vast expanses

• Savanna: Mixed woodland-grassland, scattered individual trees

What was the difference between the West African forest and the grasslands next to it, and the savanna in terms of state formation?

• Forest and Grasslands: Fast state formation

• Savanna: Slow state formation, many people stateless

What was the earliest microstate in the West African forest, southwestern Nigeria?

• Ife

• Small settlements on a small goldfield by 9th and 10th century with an agricultural economy manufacturing and trading glass beads

• Famous for sculptures in terracotta and brass representing kings in their prime

What was the successor of Ife, in southwestern Nigeria? How did it centralize?

• Edo Kingdom of Benin

• Formed from villages and microstates

• Warrior Kings between the 15th and 16th centuries introduced Yoruba innovations

• King Ewuare had a patrimonial bureaucracy with non-hereditary military and administrative chiefs

How and when was the Edo Kingdom of Benin destabilized?

• 17th century

• Non-hereditary military and administrative chiefs overpowered the king and caused infighting

What was Yorubaland?

• Centralized kingdoms and empires in Nigeria

• 15th century: Kingdoms alongside Ife with walled capitals (ex: Owo as an artistic centre rivalling Ife and Benin, Oyo as the most powerful Yoruba state by the 17th century after adopting cavalry warfare)

How did states form in Ghana and Burkina Faso?

• Horsemen created states occupied by indigenous Voltaic-speaking peoples (ex: 14th and 15th century Mamprussi and Dagomba Kingdoms)

• Ghanaian Forest: Akan speaking people trading gold via the Begho trade settlement in the 15th and 16th centuries to buy slaves and clear the forest under “Big Men”

How did states emerge in the equatorial forest?

• Combination of forest, savanna and waterside environments supported dense and stable populations

• Ex: (Southern edge of the equatorial forest) Kuba Kingdom unified chiefdoms under ruler Shyaam, it was unmilitarized and remote from external influences until colonialism

• Ex: (Southern edge of the equatorial forest) Kongo Kingdom unified chiefdoms during the 14th and 15th centuries, had a centralized army and used slaves as agricultural labourers

How did African states use transport for trade?

• Garamantes switched from chariots to camels, allowing for the transportation of goods across the Sahara

• Small dug-out canoes used in upper Niger

What were the market systems of Western Africa like?

• Highly organized in towns or villages

• Levying tolls and using redistribution systems

• Local commerce and regional currencies

• Ex: Sarauta system in Hausaland, imported shells used as currency in the Kongo Kingdom

How important was salt trade for African states?

• Value greater than whole trans-Saharan trade after the gold trade period

• Saharan salt carried by Tuareg and other nomads for gold and grain formed the core of north-south commerce

How did specialized craft production and Trans-Saharan trade affect urbanization in West Africa?

• Urban clusters without political authorities were destroyed

Which communities led desert trade?

• Moors and Tuareg