A.P. World - Chapter 20

Fundamental Processes of Africa

-Almost all of Africa remained independent of outside political control, and most cultural development was autonomous as well. -Although both were part of a developing Atlantic system, Africa differed profoundly from Latin America in these respects during the early modern centuries

Number of Slaves

-Between 1450 and 1850, it is estimated that about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic. With a mortality rate of 10 to 20 percent on the ships, about 10 or 11 million Africans actually arrived in the Americas. In the 16th century, the numbers were small, but they increased to perhaps 16,000 per year in the 17th century. The 18th century was the great age of the Atlantic Slave trade; probably more than 7 million slaves were exported between 1700 and 1800.

American Slave Societies - Hierarchies

-In all American slave societies, a hierarchy of status evolved in which free whites were at the top, slaves were at the bottom, and free people of color had an intermediat eposition

William Wilberforce

British statesman and reformer; leader of abolitionist movement in English parliament that led to end of English slave trade in 1807

Majority of slaves exported in the 16th century by?

Senegambia region

Majority of slaves exported in the 17th century by?

west central Africa

Southern end of Africa

-Little affected by the slave trade in the early modern period -Occupied by non-Bantu hunting peoples, the San, the Khoikhoi, who lived by hunting and sheep herding; and, after contact with the Bantu, by cattle-herding peoples. Peoples practicing farming and using iron tools were living south of the Limpopo River by the 3rd century C.E. Probably Bantu speakers, they spread southward and established their villages and cattle herds in the fertile lands along the eastern coast, where rainfall was favorable to their agricultural and pastoral way of life. The drier western regions toward the Kalahari Desert were left to the Khoikhoi and San. Mixed farming and pastoralism spread throughout the region in a complex process that involved migration, peaceful contacts, and warfare.

Profit from the Slave trade

-Some argue that the profits were so great and constant that they were a major element in the rise of commercial capitalism and, later, the origins of the Industrial Revolution. -Undoubtedly, many people profited from the trade in African slaves. But the slave trade also involved risks and costs, so that in the long run, profitability levels did not remain so high.

Forced Migration Results

-The forced movement of Africans as captive laborers and the creation of slave-based societies in the Americas were major aspects of the formation of the modern world and the growth of the economies of western Europe. -This forced migration was part of the international exchange of foods, diseases, animals, and ideas that marked the era and had a profound influence of the indigenous peoples in various regions -In the large areas of the Americas colonized by Europeans where slavery came to be the predominant form of labor, African cultures became part of a complex mixture, contributing to the creation of new cultural forms.

Portugese relations with Africans

-Trade was the basis of relations, but in the wake of commerce followed political, religious, and social relations. -When the Portuguese reached the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and found the kingdom of Benin, they were impressed both by the power of the ruler and by the magnificence of his court. Other large African states also provoked similar responses. -Missionary efforts were made to convert the rulers of Benin, Kongo, and other African kingdoms. The Portugese contacted the Kongo kingdom south of the Zaire River about 1484. The missionaries achieved a major success in Kongo, where members of the royal family were converted. -Africans found the newcomers strange and at first tried to fit them into their existing concepts of the spiritual and natural world. -The Portuguese tended to look on Africans as savages and pagans but also as capable of civilized behavior and conversion to Christianity.

Northern Savana

Across the continent in the northern savanna at the end of the 18th century, the process of Islamization, which had been important in the days of the Mali and Songhai empires, entered a new and violent stage that not only linked Islamization to the external slave trade and the growth of slavery in Africa but also produced other long-term effects in the region. After the breakup of Songhay in the 16th century, several successor states had developed. Some, such as the Bambara kingdom of Segu, were pagan. Others, such as the Hausa kingdoms in northern Nigeria, were ruled by Muslim royal families and urban aristocracies but continued to contain large numbers of animist subjects, most of whom were rural peasants.

Vodun

African religious ideas and practices among descendants of African slaves in Haiti

Candomble

African religious ideas and practices in Brazil, particularly among the Yoruba people

Obeah

African religious ideas and practices in the English and French Caribbean islands

African Societies

African societies had developed many forms of servitude, which varied from a peasant status to something much more like chattel slavery in which people were considered things. African states usually were non egalitarian, and because in many African societies all land was owned by the state or the ruler, the control of slaves was one of the few ways, if not the only way, in which individuals or lineages could increase their wealth and status. Slaves were used as servants, concubines, soldiers, administrators, and field workers. In some cases, there were whole villages of enslaved dependents who were required to pay tribute to the ruler. In many situations, these forms of servitude were fairly benign and were an extension of lineage and kinship systems. In others, however, they were exploitive economic and social relations that reinforced the hierarchies of various African societies and allowed the nobles, social lineages, and rulers to exercise their power.

Portuguese trade with Africans

Africans acquired goods from the Portuguese, who sometimes provided African rulers with slaves brought from other stretches of the coast. In return, the Portuguese received ivory, pepper, animal skins, and gold.

Portugese Slave Trade

Although for a long time Portugal's main interest was in gold, pepper, and other products, a central element in this pattern was the slave trade. Slavery declined in most of Europe during the middle ages when it was replaced by serfdom In the Mediterranean and in Iberia, where there was an active military frontier between Christians and Muslims, it had remained important. The trans-Saharan slave trade had brought small numbers of Black Africans into the Mediterranean throughout the period The first slaves brought directly to Portugal from Africa arrived in 1441, and after that date slaves became a common trade item. The slave trade was given added impetus when the Portuguese and the Spanish began to develop sugar plantations on the Atlantic Islands of Madeira (Portugal) and the Canaries (Spain) and off the African coast on the Portugese held island of Sao Tome. Sugar production demanded many workers and constant labor under difficult conditions, usually in a tropical or subtropical environment. The plantation system of organization associated with sugar, in which managers were able to direct and control laborers over long periods with little restraint, was later extended to America and then to other crops.

Creole Slaves

American-born descendants of saltwater slaves; result of sexual exploitation of slave women or process of miscegenation

Nguni

Among the Nguni peoples, major changes had taken place. A unification process had begun in some of the northern chiefdoms, and a new military organization had emerged. In 1818 leadership fell to Shaka, a brilliant military tactician, who reformed the loose forces into regiments organized by lineage and age. Iron discipline and new tactics were introduced, including the use of a short stabbing spear to be used at close range. The army was made a permanent institution, and the regiments were housed together in separate villages. The fighting men were allowed to marry only after they had completed their service.

Expansion of Dahomey

As Dahomey expanded, it eliminated the royal families and customs of the areas it conquered and imposed its own traditions. This resulted in the formation of a unified state, which lasted longer than some of its neighbors. Well into the 19th century, Dahomey was a slaving state, and dependence on the trade in human beings had negative effects on the society as a whole. More than 1.8 million slaves were exported from the Bight of Benin between 1640 and 1890.

Muslim Reform Movements

Beginning in the 1770s, Muslim reform movements began to sweep the western Sudan. Religious brotherhoods advocating a purifying Sufi variant of Islam extended their influence throughout the Muslim trade networks in the Senegambia region and the western Sudan. This movement had an intense impact on the Fulani, a pastoral people who were spread across a broad area of western Sudan.

16th century Bantu-speaking peoples

By the 16th century, Bantu-speaking peoples occupied much of the eastern regions of southern Africa. They practiced agriculture and herding; worked iron and copper into tools, weapons, and adornments; and traded with their neighbors. They spoke related languages such as Tswana and Sotho, as well as the Nguni languages. Among the Sotho, villages might have contained as many as 200 people; the Nguni lived in hamlets made up of a few extended families. Men worked as artisans and herders; women did the farming and housework and sometimes organized their labor communally.

Boer

By the 1760s the Dutch, or Boer, farmers had crossed the Orange River in search of new lands. They saw the fertile plains and hills as theirs, and they saw the Africans as intruders and a possible source of labor. Competition and warfare resulted. As the Boers were pushing northward, the southern Bantu were extending their movement to the south.

Effects of Islamization and the Fulani Expansion

By the 1840s, the effects of Islamization and the Fulani expansion ere felt across much of the interior of west Africa. New political unit were created, a reformist Islam that tried to eliminate pagan practices spread, and social and cultural changes took place in the wake of these changes. Literacy became more widely dispersed, and new centers of trade, such as Kano, emerged in this period. Later jihads established other new states along similar lines. All of these changes had long term effects on the region of the western Sudan. These upheavals, moved by religious, political, and economic motives, were affected by the external pressures on Africa. They fed into the ongoing processes of the external slave trade and the development of slavery within African societies. Large numbers of captives resulting from the wars were exported down to the coast for sale to the Europeans, while another stream of slaves crossed the Sahara to north africa. In the western and central Sudan, the level of slave labor rose, especially in the larger towns and along the trade routes. Slave villages, supplying royal courts and merchant activities as well as a plantation system, developed to produce peanuts and other crops. Slave women spun cotton and wove cloth for sale, slave artisans worked in the towns, and slaves served the caravan traders, but most slaves did agricultural labor. By the late 19th century, regions of the savanna contained large slave populations.

The Royal African Company

Chartered in 1660s to establish a monopoly over the slave trade among British merchants; supplied African slaves to colonies in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia European agents for the companies often had to deal directly with local rulers, paying a tax or offering gifts. Various forms of currency were used, such as iron bars, brass rings, and cowrie shells.

Triangular Trade

Commerce linking Africa, the New World colonies, and Europe; slaves carried to America for sugar and tobacco transported to Europe, and European products were sent to the coast of Africa to begin the triangle again.

Organization of Slave Trade

Control of the slave trade or a portion of it generally reflected the political situation in Europe. For one and a half centuries, until about 1630, the Portuguese controlled most of the coastal trade and were the major suppliers of their own colony of Brazil and the Spanish settlements in America. The growth of slave-based plantation colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere led other Europeans to compete with the Portuguese. The Dutch became major competitors when they seized El Mina in 1637. By the 1660s, the English were eager to have their own source of slaves for their growing colonies in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia. The French made similar arrangements in the 1660s, but not until the 18th century did France become a major carrier. Each nation established merchant towns or trade forts from which a steady source of captives could be obtained. For the Europeans stationed on the coast, Africa was also a graveyard because of the tropical diseases they encountered.

Slaves in African societies

Despite great variation in African societies and the fact that slaves sometimes attained positions of command and trust, in most cases slaves were denied choice about their lives and actions. They were placed in dependent of inferior positions, and they were often considered aliens. The enslavement of women was a central feature of African slavery. Domestic slavery and the extension of lineages through the addition of the female members remained important in many places.

Luanda

Early contacts were made with the Mbundu peoples south of Kongo in the 1520s, and a more permanent Portuguese settlement was established there in the 1570s with the foundation of Luanda on the coast. -Became the basis for the portugese colony of Angola. -The Portuguese tried to dominate the existing trading system of the African ports in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. They established an outpost on Mozambique Island and then secured bases at Kilwa, Mombasa, Sofala, and other ports that gave them access to the gold trade from Monomotapa in the interior.

Factories

European trading fortresses and compounds with resident merchants; utilized throughout Portuguese trading empire to assure secure landing places and commerce Allowed the Portuguese to exercise some control with few personnel Most forts were established with the consent of local rulers, who benefited from access to European commodities and sometimes from the military support the Portuguese provided in local wars

Slave Lives

For the slaves themselves, slavery meant the destruction of their villages or their capture in war, separation from friends and family, and then the forced march to an interior trading town or to the slave pens at the coast. Conditions were deadly; perhaps as many as one-third of the captives died along the way or in the slave pens. Eventually the slaves were loaded onto the ships. Cargo sizes varied and could go as high as 700 slaves crowded into the dank, unsanitary conditions of the slave ships, but most cargoes were smaller. Overcrowding was less of a factor in mortality than the length of the voyage of the point of origin in Africa; the Bights of Benin and Biafra were particularly dangerous.

Suriname

Formerly a Dutch plantation colony on the coast of South America; location of runaway slave kingdom in 18th century; able to retain independence despite attempts to crush guerrilla resistance

Portugese Trading

From El Mina, Accra, and other trade forts, routes led directly into gold producing regions of the interior, so that the Portuguese eventually traded with Mande and Soinke merchants from Mali and Songhai. Much of the Portuguese success resulted from their ability to penetrate the existing African trade routes, to which they could also add specialized items. Portugese and African Portuguese mulatto traders struck out into the interior to establish trade and collection points

The Cape Colony

In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope to serve as a provisioning post for ships sailing to Asia. Large farms developed on the fertile lands around this colony. The cape colony depended on slave labor brought from Indonesia and Asia for a while, but it soon enslaved local Africans as well. Expansion of the colony and its labor needs led to a series of wars with the San and Khoikhoi populations, who were pushed father to the north and west. British seized the colony in 1795 and then took it under formal British control in 1815. While the British government helped the settlers to clear out Africans from potential farming lands, government attempts to limit the Boer settlements and their use of African labor were unsuccessful.

Usuman Dan Fodio

In 1804 Usuman dan Fodio, a studious and charismatic Muslim Fulani scholar, began to preach the reformist ideology in the Hausa kingdoms. His movement became a revolution when in 1804, seeing himself as God's instrument, he preached jihad against the Hausa kings, who, he felt, were not following the teachings of Muhammad. A great upheaval followed in which the Fulani took control of most of the Hausa states of northern Nigeria in the western Sudan. A new kingdom, based in the city of Sokoto, developed under Dan Fodio's son and brother. The Fulani expansion was driven not only by religious zeal but by political ambition. The result of this upheaval was the creation of powerful Sokoto state under a caliph, whose authority was established over cities such as Kano and Zaria and whose rulers became emirs of provinces within the Sokoto caliphate.

Why did independent states form and expand?

In many places in Africa, as in Europe, independent states continued to form and expand, perhaps as a result of a population expansion that followed the spread of iron tools and improved agriculture.

Islamic concepts of slavery

In the Sudan states of the savanna, Islamic concepts of slavery had been introduced. Slavery was viewed as a legitimate fate for nonbelievers but was illegal for Muslims. Despite the complaints of legal scholars against the enslavement of Muslims, many of the Sudanic states enslaved their captives, both pagan and Muslim.

Asante Empire

In the area called the Gold Coast by the Europeans, the empire of Asante (Ashanti) rose to prominence in the period of the slave trade. The Asante were members of the Akan people who had settled in and around Kumasi, a region of gold and kola nut production that lay between the coast and the Hausa and Mande trading centers to the north. There were at least 20 small states, based on the matrilineal clans that were common to all the Akan peoples, but those of the Oyoko clan predominated. Their cooperation and their access to firearms after 1650 initiated a period of centralization and expansion. Under the vigorous Osei Tutu, the title asantehene was created to designate the supreme civil and religious leader. With control of the gold-producing zones and a constant supply of prisoners to be sold as slaves for more firearms, Asante maintained its power until the 1820s as the dominant state of the Gold Coast. Although gold continued to be a major item of export, by the end of the 17th century, slaves made up almost two-thirds of Asante's trade.

African Politics

In the period between 1500 and 1750, as the gunpowder empires and expanding international commerce of Europe penetrated sub-Saharan Africa, existing states and societies often were transformed. The many states of central and western Africa were small and fragmented. This led to a situation of instability caused by competition and warfare as states tried to expand at the expense of their neighbors or to consolidate power by incorporating subject provinces. The warrior or soldier emerged in this situation as an important social type in states such as the Kongo kingdom and Dahomey as well as along the Zambezi river. The endless wars promoted the importance of the military and made the sale of captives into the slave trade an extension of the politics of regions of Africa. Although increasing centralization and hierarchy could be seen in the enslaving African societies, a contrary trend of self-sufficiency and anti-authoritarian ideas developed among the peoples who bore the brunt of the slaving attacks.

Nzinga Mvemba

King of Kongo south of Zaire river from 1507 to 1543; converted to Christianity and took title Alfonso I, under Portuguese influence attempted to Christianize all of kingdom Portugal and Kongo exchanged ambassadors and dealt with each other with a certain equality in this early period, but eventually enslavement of his subjects led Nzinga Mvemba to try to end the slave trade and limit Portuguese activities. He was only partially successful because of Portugal's control of Kongo's ability to communicate with the outside world and its dominance over Kongo's trade,

Dahomey

Kingdom developed among Fon or Aja peoples in 17th century; center at Abomey 70 miles from coast; under King Agaja expanded to control coastline and port of Whydah by 1727; accepted western firearms and goods in return for African slaves. -Different response to European presence -Began to emerge as power in the 17th century from its center at Abomey, about 70 miles from the coast. Its kings ruled with the advice of powerful councils, but by the 1720s access to firearms allowed the rulers to create an autocratic and sometimes brutal political regime based on the slave trade. In the 1720s, under King Agaja (1708-1740), the kingdom of Dahomey moved toward the coast, seizing in 1727 the port town of Whydah, which had attracted many European traders. Although Dahomey became to some extent a subject of the powerful neighboring Yoruba state of Oyo, whose cavalry and archers made it strong, Dahomey maintained its autonomy and turned increasingly to the cycle of firearms and slaves. The trade was controlled by the royal court, whose armies, were used to raid for more captives.

Palmares

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

Interior of eastern Africa

Large and small kingdoms were supported by the well-watered and heavily populated region of the great lakes of the interior. Bantu speakers predominated, but many peoples inhabited the region. Linguistic and archeological evidence suggests that pastoralist peoples from the upper Nile valley with a distinctive late Iron Age technology moved southward into what is today western Kenya and Uganda, where they came into contact with Bantu speakers and with the farmers and herders who spoke another group of languages called Cushitic. The Bantu states absorbed the immigrants, even when the newcomers established ruling dynasties. Later Nilotic migrations, of people who spoke languages of the Nilotic group, especially of the Luo peoples, resulted in the construction of related dynasties among the states in the area of the large lakes of east central Africa. At Bunyoro, the Luo eventually established a ruling dynasty among the existing Bantu population. This kingdom exercised considerable power in the 16th and 17th centuries. Other related states formed in the region. In Buganda, near Lake Victoria, a strong monarchy ruled a heterogeneous population and dominated the region in the 16th century. These developments in the interior, as important as they were for the history of the region, were less influenced by the growing contact with the outside world than were other regions of Africa.

Osei Tutu

Member of Oyono clan of Akan peoples in Gold Coast region of Africa; responsible for creating unified Asante Empire in 1701; utilized Western firearms

El Mina

Most important of early Portuguese trading factories in forest zone of africa

Great Trek

Movement of Boer settlers in Cape Colony of southern Africa to escape the influence of British colonial government in 1834; led to settlement of regions north of Orange River and Natal.

Swazi

New African state formed on model of Zulu chiefdom; survived mfecane

Luo

Nilotic people who migrated from upper Nile valley; established dynasty among existing Bantu population in lake region of central eastern Africa; center at Bunyoro

Zanzibar and the offshore islands

On Zanzibar and other offshore islands, and later on the coast itself, Swahili, Indian, and Arabian merchants followed the European model and set up clove-producing plantations using African slave laborers. Some of the plantations were large, and by the 1860s Zanzibar had a slave population of about 100,000. Slavery became a prominent feature of the east African coast, and the slave trade from the interior to these plantations and to the traditional slave markers of the Red Sea continued until the end of the 19th century.

East coast of Africa

On the east coast of Africa, the Swahili trading cities continued their commerce in the Indian Ocean, adjusting to the military presence of the Portuguese and the Ottoman Turks. Trade to the interior continued to bring ivory, gold, and a steady supply of slaves. Many of these slaves were destined for the harems and households of Arabia and the Middle East, but a small number were carried away by the Europeans for their plantation colonies.

Result of the presence of Europeans on the coast?

One result was a shift in the locus of power within Africa. Just as states such as Ghana and Songhai in the savanna took advantage of their position as intermediaries between the gold of the west African forests and the trans-Saharan trade routes, the states closer to the coast or in contact with the Europeans could play a similar role. Those right on the coast tried to monopolize trade with Europeans, but European meddling in their internal affairs and European fears of any coastal power that became too strong blocked the creation of centralized states under the shadow of European forts. Just beyond the coast it was different. With access to European goods, especially firearms, iron, horses, cloth, tobacco, and other goods, western and central African kingdoms began to redirect trade toward the coast and to expand their influence.

Fulani

Pastoral people of western Sudan; adopted purifying Sufi variant of Islam; under Usuman Dan Folio in 1804, launched revolt against Hausa kingdoms; established state centered on Sokoto

Chiefdoms

Politically, chiefdoms of various sizes - many of them small, but a few with as many as 50,000 inhabitants- characterized the southern Bantu people. Chiefs held power with the support of relatives and with the acceptance of the people, but there was great variation in chiefly authority. The Bantu-speaking peoples' pattern of political organization and the splitting off of junior lineages to form new villages created a process of expansion that led to competition for land and the absorption of newly conquered groups. This situation became intense at the end of the 18th century, either because of the pressures and competition for foreign trade through the Portuguese outposts on the east African coast or because the growth of population among the southern Bantu. In any case, the result was farther expansion southward into the path of another people who had arrived in southern Africa.

Large states developing in response to slave trade

Several large states developed in west Africa during the slave trade era. Each represented a response to the realities of the European presence and the process of state formation long under way in Africa. Rulers in these states grew in power and often surrounded themselves with ritual authority and luxurious court life as a way of reinforcing the position that their armies had won.

Shaka's Chiefdom

Shaka's own Zulu chiefdom became the center of this new military and political organization, which began to absorb or destroy its neighbors. Shaka demonstrated talent as a politician, destroying the ruling families of the groups he incorporated into the growing Zulu state. He ruled with an iron hand, destroying his enemies, acquiring their cattle, and crushing any opposition. His policies brought power back to the Zulu, but his erratic and cruel behavior also earned him enemies among his own people. Although he was assassinated in 1828, Shaka's reforms remained in place, and his successors built on the structure he had created. Zulu power was still growing in the 1840s, and the Zulu remained the most impressive military force in black Africa until the end of the century.

Middle Passage

Slave voyage from Africa to the Americas (16th - 18th centuries); generally a traumatic experience for black slaves, although it failed to strip Africans of their culture Taken from their homes, branded, confined, and shackled, the Africans faced not only the dangers of poor hygiene, dysentery, disease, and bad treatment but also the fear of being beaten or worse by the Europeans.

Saltwater Slaves

Slaves transported from Africa; almost invariably black

Lesotho

Southern African state that survived mfecane; not based on Zulu model; less emphasis on military organization, less authoritarian government

Indies piece

Term used within the complex exchange system established by the Spanish for African trade, referred to the value of an adult male slave The Spanish developed a complicated system in which a healthy man was called an Indies piece, and children and women were priced at fractions of that value. Slaves were brought to the coast by a variety of means.

Recipients of Slaves

The dimensions of the trade varied over time, reflecting the economic and political situation in the Americas. From 1530 to 1650, Spanish America and Brazil received the majority of African slaves, but after the English and French began to grow sugar in the Caribbean, the islands of Jamaica, Barbados, and Haiti became important terminals for the slavers. Between 1550 and 1850, Brazil alone received 3.5 to 5 million Africans, or about 42% of all those who reached the New World. The Caribbean islands, dedicated to sugar production, were the other major destination of Africans.

African culture during the slave trade

The growing divine authority of the rulers paralleled the rise of absolutism in Europe. It led to the development of new political forms, some of which had the power to limit the role of the king. In many places, crafts such as bronze casting, woodcarving, and weaving flourished. Guilds of artisans developed in many societies, and their specialization produced crafts executed with great skill. The best artisans labored for the royal court, producing objects designed to honor the ruling family and reinforce the civil and religious authority of the king. Much of the artistic production also had a religious function or contained religious symbolism; African artists made the spiritual world visually apparent. Europeans came to appreciate African arts and skills. In the 16th century, the Portuguese began to employ African artists from Benin, Sierra Leone, and Kongo to work local ivory into ladles, saltcellars, and other decorative objects that combined African and European motifs in beautifully carved designs.

Why the high volume of the slave trade?

The high volume of the slave trade was necessary to the slave because, in most of the slave regimes in the Caribbean and Latin America, slave mortality was high and fertility was low. Thus, over time there was usually a loss of population. The only way to maintain or expand the number of slaves was by importing more from Africa. The one exception to this pattern was the southern United States, where the slave population grew, perhaps because of the temperate climate and the fact that few worked in the most dangerous and unhealthy occupations, such as sugar growing and mining.

Benin

The kingdom of Benin was at the height of its power when the Europeans arrived. It traced its origins to the city of Ife and to the Yoruba peoples that were its neighbors, but it had become a separate and independent kingdom with its own well-developed political and artistic traditions, especially in the casting of bronze. As early as 1516, the ruler, or ova, limited the slave trade from Benin, and for a long time most trade with Europeans was controlled directly by the king and was in pepper, textiles, and ivory rather than slaves. Eventually, European pressure and the goals of the Benin nobility combined to generate a significant slave trade in the 18th century, but Benin never made the slave trade its primary source of revenue or state policy.

Demographic Patterns of Slaves

The majority of the trans-Saharan save trade consisted of women to be used as concubines and domestic servants in north Africa and the middle east, but the Atlantic slave trade concentrated on men. To some extent this was because planters and mine owners in the Americas were seeking workers for heavy labor and were not eager to risk burying children because of the high levels of mortality. African societies that sold captives into slavery often preferred to sell the men and keep the women and children as domestic slaves or to extend existing kin groups. However, far higher proportions of women were imported to the English colonies of Jamaica and Barbados than to Brazil or Cuba.

European contact with Africa

The patterns of contact established by the Portuguese were followed by others. In the 17th century, the Dutch, English, French, and others competed with the Portuguese and displaced them to some extent, but the system of fortified trading stations, the combination of force and diplomacy, alliances with local rulers, and the predominance of commercial relations continued as the principal pattern of European contact with Africa.

Africans in the Americas

The slaves carried across the Atlantic were brought mainly to the plantations and mines of the Americas. Landed estates using large amounts of labor, often coerced, became characteristic of American agriculture, at first in sugar production and later for rice, cotton, and tobacco. The plantation system already used for producing sugar on the Atlantic islands of Spain and Portugal was transferred to the New World. After attempts to use Native American laborers in places such as Brazil and Hispaniola, Africans are brought in. West Africans, coming from societies in which herding, metallurgy, and intensive agriculture were widely practiced, were sought by Europeans for the specialized tasks of making sugar. In the English colonies of Barbados and Virginia, indentured servants from England eventually were replaced by enslaved Africans when new crops, such as sugar, were introduced or when indentured servants became less available. The plantation system of farming with a dependent or enslaved workforce characterized the production of many tropical and semitropical crops in demand in Europe, and thus the plantation became the locus of African and American life. But slaves did many other things as well, from mining to urban occupations as artisans, street vendors, and household servants. In short, there was almost no occupation that slaves did not perform, although most were agricultural laborers.

Asantehene

Title taken by ruler of Asante empire; supreme civil and religious leader; authority symbolized by golden stool An all-Asante council advised the ruler, and an ideology of unity was used to overcome the traditional clan divisions. With this new structure and a series of military reforms, conquest of the are began.

Mfecane

Wars of 19th century in southern Africa' created by Zulu expansion under Shaka; revolutionized political organization of southern Africa As Zulu control expanded, a series of campaigns and forced migrations led to constant fighting as other peoples sought to survive by fleeing, emulating, or joining the Zulu. Groups spun off to the north and south, raiding the Portuguese on the coast, clashing with the Europeans to the south, and fighting with neighboring chiefdoms.