Pitt Intro to Africana Studies - AFRCNA 0031 - Midterm Study Guide

South Carolina/Georgia Sea Islands

Gullah (a African/American creole language) is spoken here.

Africanization

the African influence on cross-fertilization of cultures

Triangular Trade

A three way system of trade during 1600-1800s Africa sent slaves to America, America sent Raw Materials to Europe, and Europe sent Guns and Rum to Africa

Maroon

A slave who ran away from his or her master. Often a member of a community of runaway slaves in the West Indies and South America.

Haitian Revolution

First successful slave revolt

Nubia

A civilization to the south of Egypt in the Nile Valley, noted for development of an alphabetic writing system and a major iron working industry by 500 BCE

Racialization of Slavery

how slavery came to be associated with Africans.

Sahel

Belt south of the Sahara where it transitions into savanna across central Africa. It means literally 'coastland' in Arabic.

griot

A West African storyteller

trans-Saharan trade

route across the sahara desert. Major trade route that traded for gold and salt, created caravan routes, economic benefit for controlling dessert, camels played a huge role in the trading. Made empires like Mali very wealthy.

Stono Rebellion

The most serious slave rebellion in the the colonial period which occurred in 1739 in South Carolina. 100 African Americans rose up, got weapons and killed several whites then tried to escape to S. Florida. The uprising was crushed and the participants executed. The main form of rebellion was running away, though there was no where to go.

Middle Passage

A voyage that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and the West Indies

Jamestown

The first permanent English settlement in North America, found in East Virginia in 1634

Public transcript

open, public interactions between dominators and oppressed

Hidden transcript

hidden resistance to dominance, by the oppressed

Cape Coast

Castle in Ghana was the Main British hub of the transatlantic slave trade in West Africa - had the "door of no return" - President Obama visited here.

Timbuktu

Mali trading city that became a center of wealth and learning

1494

When was the Treaty of Tordesillas signed?

When did the First enslaved Africans arrive in the British/English American Colonies (Virginia)

1619

When was Nat Turner's Rebellion?

1831

When was the Haitian Revolution?

1791-1804

Missouri vs. Celia

Celia, a slave girl, killed her master after he tried to rape her. Celia was convicted in this trial of murder and was condemned to death.

Siete Partidas

Spanish law that recognized slavery as legal

Great Dismal Swamp

A heavily forested area on the Virginia-North Carolina border that served as a refuge for fugitive slaves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Plantation Monocrop Agriculture

A system in which one crop was harvested in a very large scale. Depletes the soil of nutrients.

Also, imported many African slaves to areas that were majority white, changed the population balance towards Africans (happened in Barbados)

Creole

Born in the Americas (a term that was used to refer to slaves, but also at times, to whites born in the Americas)

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Portugal and Spain, declaring that newly discovered lands to the west of an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean would belong to Spain and newly discovered lands to the east of the line would belong to Portugal.

Sex ratio

Lot more men than women in the Carribbean - Sugar cane harvesting/processing was very hard work, but the opposite in the Americas.

Mansa Musa

Emperor of the kingdom of Mali in Africa. He made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and established trade routes to the Middle East.

sugar

Came from the juice of the sugar cane.

Led to the first monocrop plantations in the Americas. (Brazil, Caribbean)

Resistance

Slaves resisted their owners by running away, refusing to work, etc.

Kingdom of Ghana

First of the great medieval trading empires of western Africa (7th - 13th century). Located in what is now southeastern Mauritania and part of Mali, it acted as intermediary between Arab and Berber salt traders to the north and gold and ivory producers to the south.

Sundiata

the founder of Mali empire. He crushed his enemies and won control of the gold trade routes

Kingdom of Mali

a huge territorial empire that flourished in west Africa during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its capital was Timbuktu, which became a center of Islamic learning (see Islam). The empire controlled trade routes that stretched from the edge of the Sahara in the north to forests in the south and that carried gold and other luxuries

Africanisms

cultural traits that continued into the New World.

Nat Turner

Slave in Virginia who started a slave rebellion in 1831 believing he was receiving signs from God His rebellion was the largest sign of black resistance to slavery in America and led the state legislature of Virginia to a policy that said no one could question slavery.

Asientos

large contracts for purchase of enslaved persons in Spanish America

Tobacco

Cash crop that made a profit and saved Jamestown. Also was the main cash crop in British American colonies before cotton.

Trans-Atlantic Trade

Trade in enslaved Africans from Africa to Europe and the Americas

The largest forced migration in HUMAN HISTORY.

Harriet Jacobs

Wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Hid in an attic for 7 years to escape her master.

Candomble

African religious ideas and practices in Brazil, particularly among the Yoruba people. Mixed Catholicism and Yoruba religion.

Orishas

The hundreds of various Yoruba deities who are the main objects of ritual attention

Oxala - son of Olorun (High God)

Xango - thunder (war)

Oxossi (green) - the hunt (St. George/St. Michael) (warrior)

Oxum (yellow) - fresh water (goddess of love)

Yemanja (light blue) - salt water (equated to Virgin Mary)

Ogun (blue) - iron (war)

Eshu/Elegba (red/black) - messenger

David Walker

He was a black abolitionist who called for the immediate emancipation of slaves. He wrote the "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World." It called for a bloody end to white supremacy. He believed that the only way to end slavery was for slaves to physically revolt.

Frederick Douglass

(1817-1895) American abolitionist and writer, he escaped slavery and became a leading African American spokesman and writer. He published his biography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

Quilombo

escaped slave settlements (Maroon community) in Brazil.

Code Noir

a set of laws governing the conduct of the slaves during the French colonial period

Kongo cosmology

overarching conceptions of the place of human beings in the general scheme of existence and the forces engaged in the generation of that scheme

Kongo universe: two worlds

world of the living,

world of the dead

separated by a large body of water traditionally called Kalunga

ongo yowa (cross) as a cosmogram

Land of living & dead, separated by Kalunga

Belief in soul as indestructible and moving in a cycle, similar to movement of sun

Each cycle of existence more remote than the last (spiral universe)

zambi Mpungu (God)

Ancestors (bakulu)

Ghosts (min'kuyu)

Local Territorial Spirits (bisimbi)

Spiritual objects/Charms (min'kisi)

Great Zimbabwe

City, now in ruins (in the modern African country of Zimbabwe), whose many stone structures were built between about 1250 and 1450, when it was a trading center and the capital of a large state.

Also, ancestors of the Shona people

Europeans tried to discredit them by saying that Black people can't build with stone

Development of African-American Culture

The Herskovits-Frazier debate - Frazier argued that enslavement had stripped Afro-Americans of their African cultural heritage, rendering African Americans a kind of black slate in their new environment which developed into African-American culture. Herskovits, on the other hand, said that African culture continued to influence African-American culture.

Nathan Hare

Founded the first Black Studies department at San Francisco State University in 1968.

San Francisco State

First Black Studies department in the U.S.

Black students boycotted classes and picketed classroom buildings until the Black Studies Department was established.

Divination

foretelling the future by means of magic

Ifa divination (prominent in Brazil and Africa) - 16 separate nuts that are cast

For each pattern cast the baba-Iawo (father of mysteries) makes a particular mark on a tray covered in wooden dust

Each mark corresponds to an odu (saying) of which there are 256

Each odu relates to a story or myth that points to the answer to the client's problem

Diaspora

A dispersion of people from their homeland

Palmares

Kingdom of runaway slaves with a population of 8000 to 10,000 people; located in Brazil during the 17th century; leadership was Angolan.

Atlantic Islands (off African coast)

became the starting point for the plantation complex. The Portuguese first grew sugar cane here.

Cotton Gin

Changed the main cash crop in the south to cotton, Increased the ability to grow all types of cotton throughout the South.

Cotton became very profitable -> expansion of slavery in the South.

Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa

(1745-1797) African who was sold into slavery and bought his way out-kidnapped as a boy to be sold into slavery. Worked on many ships, but later sold to slave brokers who sent him to the Caribbean-from there a white colonist bought him and he eventually bought his way out of slavery-he went to England to live and published a book about slavery and his experiences-his message was widespread and helped to inspire the abolition of slavery - also wrote the first slave narrative.

Toussaint L'Ouverture

Was an important leader of the Haïtian Revolution and the first leader of a free Haiti; in a long struggle again the institution of slavery, he led the blacks to victory over the whites and free coloreds and secured native control over the colony in 1797, calling himself a dictator.

Cotton

number 1 Cash Crop in the South in the 1800's.

Rice

Africans knew how to grow rice - helped with rice planters in North and South Carolina.

Bahia

State of Brazil with largest proportion of Africans; the Candomble religion is prominent here.

Engenhos

Portuguese for sugar plantation

Mutiny on the Amistad

Slaves on the Amistad killed the captain and cook because the cook said he was going to eat them. When they arrived in Cuba, they took control of the ship, sailed to the United States where they were arrested but later given freedom in the Supreme Court Case U.S. v. The Amistad.

Yoruba

A West African people who formed several kingdoms in what is now Benin and Southern Nigeria.

This people's religion led to the development of Candomble in Brazil.

Syncretism

a blending of beliefs and practices from different religions into one faith

Melville J. Herskovits

Said that African culture continued to influence African-American culture

Kalunga

the watery line between the world of the living and the dead in Kongo cosmology. Imaged as a river or a forest, frequently represented by a mirror

E. Franklin Frazier

Frazier argued that enslavement had stripped Afro-Americans of their African cultural heritage, rendering African Americans a kind of black slate in their new environment which developed into African-American culture.

Kongo American Graves

Objects last used/most often used by deceased are placed on the grave so that they may use them in the world of the dead (ancestors).

Objects are often pierced/broken to release the spirit within to allow it to travel to world of the dead as well.

Used the color white, seashells, bath tile

Louisiana Purchase

territory in western United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million

Differences between enslavement/societies in Caribbean/Brazil and 13 British Colonies

Caribbean/Brazil: had sugar as main cash crop, more males than females due to harsh labor.

13 British Colonies: had tobacco/cotton/rice as main cash crop, more females than males.

How did people became enslaved in Africa?

War captives, debt slavery

as punishment for crimes (Criminals), kidnapping

Gender and Enslavement

Slave women, who were especially attractive, were targeted by their masters.

Also, slave women were often separated from their children (Frederick Douglass)