AP African American Studies - Unit 1 Vocabulary

Flashcards for key vocabulary terms from Unit 1: Origins of the African Diaspora

African American Studies

Combines interdisciplinary approach with scholarly inquiry to analyze history, culture, and contributions of people of African descent.

Black Campus Movement (1965-1972)

Black students led protests demanding opportunities to study Black history and support for Black students/faculty.

Birthplace of humanity

Africa is the birthplace of humanity and ancestral home of African Americans

Interdisciplinary approach

Analysis dispels notions of Africa as undocumented, affirming it as diverse and globally connected.

misleading notions

Perceptions of Africa have shifted over time, ranging from misleading notions of a primitive continent with no history to recognition of Africa as the homeland of powerful societies and leaders that made enduring contributions to humanity.

Geographically diverse

Africa is the second-largest continent with desert, semiarid, savanna, rainforest, and Mediterranean climate zones.

Climate zones

The five primary climate zones in the African continent: desert (e.g., the Sahara), semiarid (e.g., the Sahel), savanna grasslands, tropical rainforests, and the Mediterranean zone.

Sahara

The desert climate zone in Africa.

Sahel

The semiarid climate zone in Africa.

savanna grasslands

One of the five primary climate zones in Africa, it supported the expansion of agriculture and domestication of animals.

Niger River

One of the five major rivers in Africa

Congo River

One of the five major rivers in Africa

Nile River

One of the five major rivers in Africa

Domestication

Fertile land supported this expansion of agriculture and animals in Africa.

Nomadic

In desert and semiarid areas, herders were often this, moving in search of food and water, and some traded salt.

kola trees and yams

In the tropical rainforests, people grew these and traded gold.

Population Growth

Technological and agricultural innovations contributed to this of West and Central African peoples

Bantu Expansion

Series of migrations throughout the continent, from 1500 BCE to 500 CE, triggered by population growth.

Bantu linguistic family

Contains hundreds of languages spoken throughout West, Central, and Southern Africa (e.g., Xhosa, Swahili, Kikongo, Zulu).

African ethnolinguistic diversity

Africa is the ancestral home of thousands of ethnic groups and languages.

Complex Societies

Several of the world’s earliest complex, large-scale societies arose in Africa during the ancient era.

Nubia

Also known as Kush/Cush, emerged along the Nile River around 3000 BCE and was the source of Egypt’s gold and luxury trade items.

25th dynasty of Black Pharaohs

Established by Nubia around 750 BCE after defeating Egypt; ruled Egypt for a century.

Aksumite Empire

Emerged in eastern Africa around 100 BCE. The Red Sea connected the empire to major maritime trade networks.

Maritime trade

The Red Sea connected the Aksumite Empire to major networks from the Mediterranean and the Roman Empire to India.

Ge'ez

Aksum developed its own currency and script (this).

Nok

One of the earliest iron-working societies of West Africa, emerged around 500 BCE.

Terracotta sculptures

The Nok society are best known for these, pottery, and stone instruments, which are the most ancient extant evidence of a complex, settled society in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most ancient complex society in sub-Saharan Africa

The figures from the Nok society's terracotta sculptures are this, providing evidence of a complex, settled society.

First Christian African society

Aksum became this under the leadership of King Ezana.

Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Ge’ez, the Aksumite Empire's script, is still used as the main liturgical language of this.

Countered racist stereotypes

African American writers emphasized the significance of ancient African societies in sacred and secular texts to this, portraying Africans and their descendants as societies without government or culture.

Sudanic empires

Also known as the Sahelian empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, emerged and flourished from the 7th to the 16th century.

Ghana Empire

Flourished from the 7th–13th century and known for their gold mines and strategic location at the nexus of multiple trade routes.

Mali Empire

Flourished from the 13th–17th century. In the 14th century, the Empire was ruled by Mansa Musa.

Songhai Empire

Flourished from the 15th–16th century. Following Portuguese exploration, trade routes shifted from trans-Saharan to Atlantic trade, diminishing its wealth.

Gold mines

Ancient Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were renowned for these and strategic location at the nexus of multiple trade routes.

Nexus of trade routes

Ancient Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were renowned for their gold mines and strategic location at this, connecting trade from the Sahara to sub-Saharan Africa.

Trans-Saharan Commerce

This brought North African traders, scholars, and administrators who introduced Islam to the region and facilitated its spread throughout West Africa.

Islam

Trans-Saharan commerce brought North African traders, scholars, and administrators who introduced this to the region and facilitated its spread throughout West Africa.

Trade route shift

Following Portuguese exploration along the western coast of Africa, this happened from trans-Saharan to Atlantic trade, diminishing Songhai’s wealth.

Trade, learning, cultural exchange

Mali’s wealth and power created opportunities for the empire to expand its reach to other societies within Africa and across the Mediterranean for this.

North African horses

Mali’s wealth and access to trans-Saharan trade routes enabled its leaders to crossbreed these and purchase steel weapons.

Purchased steel weapons

Mali’s wealth and access to trans-Saharan trade routes enabled its leaders to crossbreed powerful North African horses and do this.

Hajj in 1324

Mali’s wealth and Mansa Musa’s religious pilgrimage to Mecca in this year attracted the interest of merchants and cartographers across the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe.

Mali’s book trade and universities

West African empires housed centers of learning in their trading cities, like this flourished in Timbuktu.

Timbuktu

In Mali, a book trade, university, and learning community flourished in this, which drew astronomers, mathematicians, architects, and jurists.

Griots

Prestigious historians, storytellers, and musicians who maintained and shared a community's history, traditions, and cultural practices.

Syncretic religious practice

The adoption by leaders of some African societies to Islam or to Christianity often resulted in their subjects blending aspects of these introduced faiths with indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies.

Islam in Mali and Songhai

The adoption by leaders of some African societies to this often resulted in their subjects blending aspects of these introduced faiths with indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies.

Christianity in Kongo

The adoption by leaders of some African societies to this often resulted in their subjects blending aspects of these introduced faiths with indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies.

Indigenous spiritual beliefs

Africans who blended these with Christianity and Islam brought their syncretic religious and cultural practices from Africa to the Americas.

Cosmologies

Africans who blended indigenous spiritual practices with Christianity and Islam brought their syncretic religious and cultural practices from Africa to the Americas.

African America ancestors

About one-quarter of these descends from Christian societies in Africa and one-quarter descends from Muslim societies in Africa.

Veneration of the ancestors

The wisdom of past ancestors was considered to be very significant and it was customary to ask ancestors for guidance when making big decisions.

Divination

Asking a priest or a spiritual leader to try to predict the future through supernatural means.

Kingdom of Zimbabwe

This and its capital city, Great Zimbabwe, flourished in Southern Africa from the 12th to the 15th century and was linked to trade on the Swahili Coast.

Great Zimbabwe

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe and its capital city, this, flourished in Southern Africa from the 12th to the 15th century and known for its large stone architecture.

Swahili Coast

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe was linked to trade on this, and its inhabitants, the Shona people, became wealthy from its gold, ivory, and cattle resources.

Shona People

The inhabitants of the Great Zimbabwe, became wealthy from its gold, ivory, and cattle resources.

gold, ivory & cattle resources

The inhabitants of the Great Zimbabwe, became wealthy from these.

Large Stone Architecture

Great Zimbabwe is best known for this, which offered military defense and served as a hub for long-distance trade.

G.Z.’s Great Enclosure

A large stone architecture site that was a site for religious and administrative activities and the conical tower likely served as a granary.

G.Z.’s conical tower

A large stone architecture site that likely served as a granary.

Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese traders

The coastal location of the Swahili Coast city-states linked Africa’s interior to these trading communities.

Portuguese invasion (16th cent)

The strength of the Swahili Coast trading states garnered the attention of these, who invaded major city-states and established settlements in the 16th century to control Indian Ocean trade.

Portuguese sea voyagers

Europeans, still in the stagnation of the Middle Ages, had been hearing stories of West African riches for decades following Mansa Musa’s famous Hajj in 1324. The Portuguese, using Arab and Chinese technology, emerged as the first of these from Western Europe.

Trading partners

The Portuguese soon realized that in order to gain wealth in Africa, they needed another strategy and they would need to try diplomacy and find African kingdoms to be these.

Increase wealth by bypassing trans-Saharan trade

African Kingdoms in turn realized an opportunity to do this by getting better deals from the Portuguese.

Wolof Empire

In modern Senegal, was the first Kingdom to sustain a complex relationship with Portugal.

Knighted

The Wolof sent ambassadors to Portugal, who were well received and sometimes were this.

Akan People

Portugal's most significant moment came when they first met these of modern Ghana, which was one of the sources of gold for Mansa Musa’s empire.

Elmina

The place the Portuguese called this (the mine) which is in modern Ghana, and was Portugal's first major entrance into the African gold trade.

Gold Trade

Portugal's most significant moment came when they first met the Akan people of modern Ghana, which was one of the sources of this for Mansa Musa’s empire.

Kingdom of Benin

Ubini is the correct term, “Benin’ is a Portuguese language mispronunciation, and was the region's most powerful empire. At first, the Portuguese were attracted to the ivory trade in the region, but they soon discovered that Benin was willing to trade captives from their wars.

São Tomé sugar production

In 1485, Portugal made the uninhabited African island of São Tomé an official colony, where they developed a new system for this. The wealth of this new idea would go on to make the modern world.

"Racialized" slavery

In São Tomé, for the first time, there existed violent labor camps based on this for the purpose of producing agricultural cash crops for export to foreign markets.

Kingdom of Kongo

The people and empires of the Wolof, the Akan, and Benin, were not so shocked when Portuguese traders arrived on their shores, bearing fancy textiles, copper, and brass ingots. In a similar fashion to the conversion of Mali to Islam through trade a few centuries before, in 1491, King Nzinga a Nkuwu (João I) and his son Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I) voluntarily converted this powerful West Central African entity to Roman Catholicism.

Roman Catholicism

In 1491, King Nzinga a Nkuwu (João I) and his son Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I) voluntarily converted the powerful West Central African Kingdom of Kongo to this.

Kongo’s converts to Christianity

The Portuguese first met leaders of the vast Kongo empire in 1482 and negotiated treaties to gain access to ivory, salt, copper, textiles, and human captives.

Kongo’s increased wealth

Like Mali and Islam, the Kingdom of Kongo’s conversion to Christianity strengthened its trade relationship with Portugal, leading to this.

African Catholicism

As a result of the nobility’s voluntary conversion, this distinct form of religious practice emerged that incorporated elements of Christianity and local aesthetic and cultural traditions.

Portugal demands enslaved

As a result of the Kingdom of Kongo’s conversion to Christianity and subsequent political ties with Portugal, the king of Portugal demanded access to the trade of these people in exchange for military Assistance.

Kongo unable to limit slave trade

This resulted when Kongo’s nobles participated in the slave trade, and trade quickly grew out of control.

Kongo/Cent. W. Afr: largest source of enslaved people

Kongo, along with the greater region of West Central Africa, became this in the history of the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas.

West African Christians before America

About a quarter of enslaved Africans directly transported to what became the United States hailed from West Central Africa. Many of these people were this.

African origins of naming children after saints

In Kongo, the practice of naming children after saints or according to the day of the week on which they were born (“day names”) was common before the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.

Extended kinship ties

Many early West and Central African societies were comprised of family groups held together by these social norms relating to relatives.

Kinship and political alliances

Many early West and Central African societies were comprised of family groups held together by extended kinship ties and this often formed the basis for political alliances.

Women's roles in West Africa

Many of these people played roles in West and Central African societies, including spiritual leaders, political advisors, market traders, educators, and agriculturalists.

Ndongo-Matamba

In the early 17th century, when people from Ndongo became the first large group of enslaved Africans to arrive in the American colonies, Queen Njinga became queen of this region (present-day Angola).

led armies into battle

Both Queen Idia and Queen Njinga did this.

Ivory mask of Queen Idia

This became an iconic symbol of Black women’s leadership throughout the diaspora in 1977 when it was adopted as the symbol for FESTAC (Second Festival of Black Arts and Culture).

FESTAC

Queen Idia’s ivory mask became an iconic symbol of Black women’s leadership throughout the diaspora in 1977 when it was adopted as the symbol for this (Second Festival of Black Arts and Culture).

Female rulers of Matamba

Queen Njinga’s reign solidified her legacy as a skilled political and military leader throughout the African diaspora and the strength of her example led to nearly 100 more years of these.