Transcript Africa: 1450-1750 - Hinzman's AP World History & Honors

Africa: 1450-1750
Unit 4 Section 1
First European Contacts
• Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal sowed the seeds of
tremendous change for Africa in the early to mid-1400s
– He and his men cautiously explored farther and farther south along
Africa’s west coast
– Following their conquest of the Moroccan city of Ceuta in 1450, the
Portuguese became intensely curious to discover the origins of the
gold and slaves were brought to North Africa via well established trade
routes from the continent’s sub-Saharan interior
– They also sought to spread Christianity to any lands they might
discover, and counteract the expansion of the rising Ottoman Empire
• These economic, religious, and political motives combined with
European advances in maritime technology during the 15th
century to spur the Portuguese to reach the southern tip of
Africa before the century’s end
– Along the way, they found many West Africans who were experienced
in trade and ready for new contacts that would expand their volume of
exports and imports
Beginnings of the Slave Trade
• In 1482, the African King Caramansa allowed the Portuguese to
open a trading post on what the Europeans would call the Gold
Coast of West Africa,
– Where vast amounts of African gold were soon traded for goods from
Europe, Asia, and other parts of Africa that arrived on Portuguese
ships
• Soon after, monarchs such as the oba of Benin and the
manikongo of Kongo sent delegates to Portugal to gather
information on the homeland of these foreign men
– Satisfied with what they had learned, the traders of Benin continued
to provide the Portuguese with pepper, ivory, and textiles
– They also allow the Portuguese to purchase prisoners of war, who
would be taken as slaves to work on the sugar plantations of the
previously uninhabited island of São Tomé off the African coast
• Africa would soon be forever transformed, and the effects of the
European slave trade would be felt in nearly every corner of the
world
Slave Trade & Other Trade Routes
• The leaders of Benin chose to restrict contact with the
Portuguese by the 1530s,
– But by then the king of Kongo had made Catholicism the official
faith of his lands,
– And begun providing the Portuguese with more and more slaves
• The Kongolese slave trade soon got out of control, however,
with unauthorized traders resorting to kidnapping to meet the
growing demand for slaves
– The King’s plea for help from the Portuguese met with no response;
the Portuguese had already begun to turn their attention to finding
the route with the Indian Ocean trade
• The manikongo faced rebellion, and by the 1540s the center of
the slave trade moved farther south, to what was dubbed the
Slave Coast
• Sudden social, political, and economic changes such as these
would later become the norm for Africa, as the Europeans
continued their exploration – and eventual exploitation – of
the continent
Portuguese Involvement
• Meanwhile, by the end of the 15th century, the Swahili coast
of East Africa featured a number of prosperous Muslimruled trading states
– In 1505, nearly all of them were attacked and plundered by the
Portuguese, who just recently rounded the southern tip of Africa
in their continuing quest for sea route to India
• Only Ethiopia was spared Portuguese aggression in East Africa
– Under attack from the Muslim state of Adal, the Christian queen of Ethiopia
pleaded for Portuguese aid
• The Muslims were held off, but Ethiopian hopes for permanent alliance
with Portugal went unfulfilled as a result of the Ethiopian rulers’ refusal to
affiliate their church with the Pope in Rome, rather than the Patriarchof
Alexandria
• More significantly, by the mid-1500s, Portuguese attention
had shifted to the Indian Ocean trade as well as their
colonial conquests in the New World
– European involvement in Africa would level off temporarily but
as the 17th century unfolded, the seeds of change planted by
Henry the Navigator would begin to burst forth with dramatic
consequences
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Portugal led the way in bringing change to the Americas as
well as to Africa;
– By the late 1500s, the Portuguese had copied the plantation
style sugar production of their Western Atlantic islands, such as
Madeira and São Tomé, in their New World colony of Brazil
• Initially the Portuguese planters relied on Amerindian slaves
to produce their crops,
– But as epidemics of old world diseases ravage the indigenous
American population, African slaves were taken across the
Atlantic in ever-increasing numbers by the Portuguese, Spanish,
British, and other European colonists
– By the 17th century, the European ships of the so-called “Atlantic
system”
• Were transporting large numbers of young African adults (more males
than females) to a life of slavery in the Americas,
• In exchange for European manufactured goods (including guns) and
Indian textiles
• African gold, timber, and other products also found their way into the
expanding global economic network
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• It must be noted that European traders were not the
only ones to profit from these transactions:
– European guidebooks provided detailed information on the
preferred trade items of different areas of Africa’s Atlantic
coast, as African traders were often found to be shrewd
bargainers
• Indeed over the 18th century, the price demanded for a slave on the
Gold Coast more than doubled
• The Africans bargaining advantages resulted in part from
exploitation of the rivalry among several European nations that
establish trading “castles” along the West African coast
• Traders from the Dutch East India Company and other European
concerns found themselves forced to supply the Africans with more
and more guns and gun powder (thus increasing African military
strength in preventing European takeover of African territory) in
order to compete in trade
• The Europeans were also forced to follow African trading rituals
and paid customs duties to African leaders
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• The European fervor for African slaves fueled the
growth of a number of West African kingdoms
– The small kingdom of Whydah,
• An early Gold Coast Center for the slave trade,
• Was overtaken in 1727 by the neighboring kingdom of
Dahomey,
– Which had been able to supply its army (of males and females) with
firearms furnished in exchange for slaves by European traders
– Dahomey was in turn dominated by the inland kingdom
of Oyo in 1730,
• Then was forced to pay tribute to Oyo to remain independent
– For Oyo and the adjacent Kingdom of Asante,
• The Atlantic slave trade was merely one element of a thriving
economy that also included extensive commercial activity
within West Africa and across the Sahara desert
Sources of Slaves
• Contrary to the belief of many in Europe at that time, only
rarely did parents sell their children into slavery
– Instead, prior to the 18th century slaves sold to the Europeans by
West African traders were usually prisoners of war;
– However, historical debate continues over just how frequently
wars were initiated solely for the purpose of capturing slaves for
export
• Current theory holds that most wars in the region were fought over
territory and other political disputes,
• The capture and sale of enemy prisoners was simply a side endeavor
• Later, the Europeans moved farther south and east to the
Bight of Biafra in search of new sources of slaves
– Here there were no large kingdoms,
• Hence few large – scale wars,
– So slave traders turned to kidnapping to maintain their supply,
– Which was supplemented by debtors and convicted criminals
Cape Colony
• For the most part, outright European colonization
of Africa would not take place until well after 1750
• Two exceptions occurred before that time:
• Both the Portuguese and Dutch established African colonies
after 1500
• The Dutch East India Company’s Cape Colony,
– Located at the far southern tip of Africa,
– Played a very minor role in African affairs during this period, as was
the company’s economic activities were oriented almost entirely to
the Indian Ocean trade and focused very little on commercial
ventures within Africa
– Even the Cape colonies slaves were imported primarily from places
outside of Africa such as South Asia and East Indies
Angola Colony
• Angola was a somewhat different story:
– As the African slave trade move steadily south and east
during the 16th century, the Portuguese realized they
could profit from maintaining a permanent settlement
along Africa’s Atlantic coast
• Centered on the ports of Luanda and Benguela, the colony of
Angola soon became the primary supplier of African slaves
for the Americas
– Portuguese settlers in the cities found profitable employment acting
as middlemen, transferring slaves brought by caravan from Africa’s
far interior to ships bound for Brazil
– The ships had brought goods from Europe and the Americas, which
were taken back to the interior for exchanging in huge markets and
fairs for more slaves,
– Thus continuing the internal cycle of commerce that fed into the
larger Atlantic circuit
Angola Colony
• The Portuguese presence on the Angola coast was maintained via
relationships – partnerships, even – with inland African leaders,
– many of whom were loosely allied in an enormous federation of
kingdoms
– Environmental crises in the region actually aided these leaders in
boosting their subject populations and maintaining a steady supply of
young adults for the slave trade
– Severe droughts in Africa’s southern grasslands forced refugees to flee to
less arid areas
• After providing the refugees with food and water,
• African leaders would then assimilate the children and women of reproductive
age (who were also valued as the region’s primary food producers),
• While selling most of the adult males into slavery
• The Angolan leaders were thus able to:
– Consolidate an ever-growing population
• with little threat of rebellion, since few adult males remained
– Stabilize the land
• sometimes by planting new high-yield crops such as maize and cassava from the
Americas;
– Repopulate drought ravaged territory
– Reap substantial profits from the European slave trade
Ending of Slave Trade
• The strong African states that emerge from this
process were able to discourage further encroachment
and territorial takeover by the Europeans,
– who – preoccupied with the Indian Ocean trade and
colonization in the Americas – remained basically content
to trade
• Textiles,
• Metals,
• Weapons for African slaves until the 19th century.
• At that time the combination of humanitarian and
economic pressures would bring an end to the slave
trade and drive the Europeans to formal colonization
of African territory
Africa and Islam
• While the 15 century marked the beginning of significant European
contact with Africa,
– The Islamic world has of course long since developed strong ties with the
continent, beginning in the century after Muhammad’s death
• Muslim beliefs and practices have spread from North Africa to the sub-Saharan
region via overland trade,
• As well as to the Swahili coast of East Africa through the trade ships that plied the
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
• By the time Henry the Navigator’s men were beginning their exploration
of West Africa, Islamic legal and governmental structures – as well as the
Arabic language – had become firmly entrenched in the African trading
cities south of the Sahara and on the southeastern coast
– Indeed, the Islamic world would maintain a much stronger influence than
Europeans over African culture and politics throughout the period of 1450
to 1750
• But while nearly all of North Africa had been engulfed by the Ottoman
Empire by the 16th century,
• The kingdoms and states of sub-Saharan Africa remained independent
from both Middle Easterners and Europeans,
– A result of the regions protected geography and the military skills of its
leaders
Songhai Empire
• One independent kingdom was the Songhai empire,
– Which had succeeded in Mali as the leading center of trans-Saharan trade
• As Songhai grew from its base in the western Sudan, its indigenous
Muslim leaders began to expand northward into the Sahara
– Perhaps fearing an impending territorial rivalry, the kingdom of Morocco sent
the border of their territory, an addition of several thousand men and camels
across the desert in 1590
– Half the men died on the journey, but the remaining 2,000 mounted an attack
on Songhai’s massive military in 1591
• Despite a size advantage of nearly 20 times, the Songhai Army was no match for the
2500 muskets of the Moroccans
– For the next 200 years the Moroccans maintained a tributary dominance over
the people of the western Sudan,
• Demanding slaves and goods from them
• Charging tolls to merchants crossing the territory
• Following this decline of the Songhai Empire, those involved in the transSaharan trade route shifted their operations from western Sudan to the
central Sudan,
– Where the Hausa trading cities began to provide merchants from North Africa
with
• gold and slaves
• in exchange for textiles, weapons, and hardware
Islam and Trade
• The tenets of Islam played a significant role in
many areas of African life, even economics
– While the Atlantic circuit trade brought rum and other
alcoholic beverages to coastal Africa,
– The Muslim merchants of the Hausa trading cities were
forbidden by their religion to use alcohol
• Conversely, Muslims (as well as Christians) of this
period felt free to engage in the trade of slaves –
– In fact, Muslims viewed the enslavement of “pagans”
to be an act of virtue, as it would bring new followers
to their faith
Comparing Slave Networks
• While the slave trade with the Islamic North
played an important role in the economy of the
Sudan,
– What little historical evidence remains, indicates that
the size of the trans-Saharan slave trade was smaller
than that of the trans-Atlantic trade
• From the 17th to 19th centuries, some 1.7 million Africans
were marched across the Sahara
• Or shipped over the Red Sea or Indian Ocean to lives of
slavery in the Middle East and India
• In contrast, between 1550 and 1800 nearly 8,000,000 slaves
crossed the Atlantic to the Americas
Comparing Slave Networks
• Their final destination determined the type of work that
African slaves were forced to do
– Most slaves sent to the Americas ended up performing grueling
physical labor on sugar, tobacco, cotton plantations
– Those who wound up in the Islamic world were debatably more
fortunate, as they were often placed in employment as soldiers
or household servants
• The gender balance was different as well:
– Most African slaves sent to the Americas were men
– The majority of African slaves sent to the Middle East or India
were women,
• Who were forced into service as concubines,
• Or domestic servants,
• Or entertainers
– Many more children were taken to the Islamic world, too –
• including boys who would endure dangerous (often fatal) castrations to
be transformed into eunuchs, because that was considered suitable for
males to be serving as harem guards
Legacy of the
Slave
Trade
th
• By the beginning of the 19 century,
– The slave trade had brought considerable profit to certain African
leaders and merchants (and a great deal more, of course, to Europe,
the Americas, and the Islamic world)
– It also decimated the population of young, healthy adults in some
parts of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the inland territory of the
Slave Coast
– However, the overall population of the region was still substantial,
• The African artisans and traders who persevered in this era of increasing change
were, for the most part, able to maintain the production and sale of textiles and
metal goods,
– Despite the volume of competing products flowing in from Europe and the Islamic world
• Thus, a very generalized examination of the slave trade
might conclude that, within Africa, its impact was far from
devastating
– Indeed, it is rather ironic that it was late 19th century Imperialism,
• Which was initiated after the end of the slave trade, rather than the slave trade
itself, that would bring changes of unimaginable consequence to the continent