Chapter 26
Africa and the Atlantic World
THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE
Sub-Saharan Africa, was influenced, like most of the rest of the world, by the
establishment of global trading networks during the early modern age. European merchants,
lured by the possibility for trading opportunities, increasingly visited the west African coasts.
The rise of wealthy port cities and powerful coastal kingdoms reduced, but did not eliminate, the
traditional trans-Saharan trade routes. Slavery, both African and Islamic, had been a part of
African life for centuries and even thousands of years. The burgeoning Atlantic slave trade
would dwarf its predecessors and constitute the largest migration in history before the nineteenth
century. Not only were millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery, but their home
societies were often left in chaos. The integration of African and American society would lay the
foundations for the complex African diaspora of the western hemisphere.
OVERVIEW
African Politics and Society in Early Modern Times
Increased trade would eventually bring about a transformation of African political
patterns. The Songhay empire, carrying on in the imperial tradition of Mali, would reach its peak
during the fifteenth century under the leadership of Sunni Ali. Songhay rulers, like their Mali
predecessors, were Islamic. Under their patronage Timbuktu became a major center of Islamic
learning. Changing economic times, especially the rising prominence of Atlantic trade, pushed
for the rise of small regional states and away from the larger imperial states of the past. On the
other side of Africa the Swahili city-states fell to the gunboat diplomacy of the Portuguese.
Central Africa witnessed the rise of regional kingdoms that were also unable to escape
Portuguese interference. The king of Kongo, Afonso I, converted to Christianity and encouraged
his subjects to do the same. This close tie to Portugal, however, would not allow Kongo to escape
Portuguese slave raiders or invasion. Further to the south the remarkable Queen Nzinga fought
a forty year battle in the seventeenth century to keep the Portuguese from conquering Ndongo.
Unfortunately, her successors would not prove as successful, and Angola would become the first
European colony in sub-Saharan Africa. In the far south the Dutch established Cape Town in
1652 and began to dominate the Khoikhoi people.
As is usually the case, religious and social pressures went hand in hand with the political
changes brought by the invading Europeans. In this case the animistic African beliefs were
challenged by Islam and later Christianity. Not surprisingly, both religions became popular in
syncretic versions as the older beliefs were infused into the new concepts. The Fulani,
representative of many who were concerned about the purity of Islam in the face of the syncretic
varieties, mounted military campaigns to establish a strict form of Islam. An interesting syncretic
version of Christianity appeared in Kongo in the early 1700s. Dona Beatriz proposed that Jesus
Christ was a black African man and that Kongo was the real holy land. In the end she was
burned at the stake by the Christian Kongo king. Trade brought new food crops to Africa, the
most important being the American manioc. The increased food supply led to steady population
growth even considering the millions forced out of Africa because of slavery. In the three
centuries after 1500 the population of sub-Saharan Africa rose from 34 to 60 million.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Slavery, unfortunately, has played a consistent role in the human experience for
thousands of years, and the African societies have suffered disproportionately. Two factors, law
and society, have combined to make African slavery unique. Since private property was not
recognized in Africa, the ownership of slaves rather than land stood as a measure of personal
wealth. Slaves could also be brought into the kinship group and receive freedom and recognition
in the clan within a generation. During the centuries before the arrival of the Europeans, around
ten million Africans passed into the Islamic world as part of the trans-Saharan slave trade. The
Europeans, led originally by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, tied into existing slave
networks and dramatically exacerbated the problem. Slaves played a central role in the
triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Firearms were the most popular item
that the Europeans exchanged for slaves. The middle passage is, of course, an event of legendary
inhumanity that cost the lives of around a quarter of all African slaves shipped across the
Atlantic. Over 55,000 slaves a year were exported to the Americas during the eighteenth century,
the high point of the slave trade. It has been estimated that twelve million Africans arrived in the
western hemisphere died another four million during the middle passage. While some African
societies, such as the Asante, Dahomey, and Oyo, may have benefited financially from the slave
trade, most regions suffered horribly. Many areas were left with a disproportionately high
percentage of women because the young men had been sold into slavery. Other areas were torn
by warfare caused by the tensions from the slave trade.
The African Diaspora
As slaves were exported throughout the Americas, the foundation was laid for the
establishment of the African disaspora. In the Americas most slaves served on large plantations
that produced cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, or cotton. The nature of the slave
communities varied dramatically from one region to another. An astonishingly high mortality
rate on Caribbean and South American plantations resulted in a constant turnover in slaves and
very little family structure. The five percent of slaves who were exported to North America had a
greater chance to form families but still led a harsh and Spartan existence. Slave resistance was
common, although a large organized slave revolt remained a rare but greatly feared event. SaintDomingue was the only place where a slave revolt actually led to the abolition of slavery.
Attempts by slaves to preserve languages or cultural traditions from their homelands became
more and more difficult. The result would be the integration of concepts as the creation of a true
African-American cultural tradition. This integration can be seen clearly in the rise of syncretic
religions such as voodoo in Haiti. Pressures for the abolition of the slave trade would come
through the words and writings of ex-slaves such as Olaudah Equiano as well as the economic
reality of the decreasing benefits of slavery. The United States and most European nations
abolished the slave trade in the first half of the nineteenth century. The abolition of slavery itself
would follow within a few decades, although it tenaciously hung on in some parts of the world
well into the twentieth century. Even today it has been estimated that around two hundred
million people still live in some form of servitude.
1. Political upheaval. In the Kongo, for example, the Portuguese undermined the authority of the king
and even assassinated uncooperative rulers.
2. Outright conquest and settlement. Kongo, Ndongo, and South Africa became European
settlements that had Africans as the servant class. The Swahili states were seized and forced to pay
tribute.
3. Intertribal warfare. Portuguese slave traders encouraged African slavers to make raids on their
neighbors and resit their own rulers. Coastal Dahomey profited from the slave trade, while inland
peoples suffered.
4. Economic exploitation. Indigenous economies were corrupted by the trade, exchanging slaves for
manufactured goods such as guns, and rum.
5. Social disruption. Sixteen million, able bodied young Africans were enslaved between 1600 and
1800, two thirds of tem men. This disruption seriously impacted village and family life especially in
West Africa.
TEXTUAL QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1.
Discuss the political and economic conditions of Africa in Early modern times.
Compare and contrast political organization of west Africa and east Africa.
2.
3.
4.
How were these economies tied into to global trading networks?
How were the political and economic organization of west and south Africa
different?
What were the similarities prior to intense European activity?
5.
How did Islam and Christianity influence sub-Saharan Africa in early modern times?
6.
What were the indigenous belief systems and how were they impacted by these new
religious empires?
7.
How great a role did syncretism play?
8.
The most momentous process that linked Africa to the larger Atlantic world was the
slave trade. Why did Europe look to Africa as a source of labor for the massive
plantations?
9.
How did this trade begin?
10. How long did it last?
11. What nations were most heavily invested in this trade?
12. What were the conditions of slavery?
13. Describe and discuss the process of slavery from capture, through the middle
passage, and work conditions for slaves. How different were these variables
throughout the Atlantic world?
What was the impact of slavery on Africa?
14. How did it disturb the social, political and economic conditions? What have been the
long term effects of slavery?
15. What is the African diaspora?
16. How did African people fit into the various new cultures to which they had been
forcibly removed? Discuss changes in language, religious and cultural traditions.
REVIEW QUESTIONS:
1.
Compare the decline of Songhay with the decline of the Swahili states of East Africa.
2.
How was the Kingdom of Kongo transformed by its contacts with the Portuguese?
3.
In what ways did Islam adapt to the customs and traditions of sub-Saharan Africa?
4.
Consider Songhay as an example. Where had strict Islam taken root by the end of
the 17th century?
5.
What were the objectives of Dutch colonists in South Africa?
6.
What kind of colony did they establish? Compare these objectives to the Portuguese
objectives in colonizing Angola?
7.
Besides religion, what other changes came to sub-Saharan Africa as a result of
increased contact with the outside world?
8.
Compare the institution of slavery within tradition African society with slavery as
practiced in Europe and the New World?
9.
What was the impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade on the societies of West
Africa? Consider social, political, and demographic effects.
10. Compare the experience of slavesin the Caribbean, in Brazil, and in North America?
11. What are some of the enduring elements of African-American culture? What
elements of a culture can survive the ordeal and disruption of slavery?
12. What factors ultimately lead to the abolition of the slave trade and ultimately to the
abolition of slavery itself?