late 15th c.

 

 

ca. 1500

 Kingdom of Kongo flourished on the Congo River (modern Zaire, now Republic of Congo), a confederation of provinces under the manikongo (the king; "mani" means blacksmith, denoting the early importance and spiritual power of iron working (see glorious example of a Songye-Luba king's stool, symbol of royal power, also of Zaire region).

Benin at height of its power: Yoruban-speaking city-states, like Ife-Ife and Oyo, are ruled by obas (rulers) with court societies supporting celebrated arts. (See a beautiful 18th c. bronze of a Benin Queen Mother--iye oba--and text explaining her royal role.) Benin city (Edo) was founded around the 12th century and had ongoing political and cultural ties with Ife and other urban centers in the area; a second Benin dynasty began in the 16th century. (Learn more and see photo of the modern Oba Erediauwa of Bénin. The power of the Benin empire ended in the late 19th century when British troops destroyed Benin's capital city.) The Edo of Benin and the Akan of Ghana built underground tunnels that connected villages.
After 1550

 

 

 

 

 

1562

 

 Portuguese trade in Africa increasingly attracts rival European traders who, in the 16th century, created competing stations or attempted to capture the existing trade (see a beautiful Dutch-rendered map of Africa from 1663, from the British Library). In western Africa the new trade had profound effects. Earlier trade routes were now reoriented from the Sahara to the seacoast, and as the states of the savanna declined in economic importance, states along the coast increased their wealth and power. Struggles developed among coastal peoples for control over trade routes and access to new European firearms. (African royalty also valued European-imported beads: see lavish beaded leopard throne of a 19th c.Bamenda king of Cameroon.)

Britain begins its slave trade in Africa. Slave Trade increases significantly with development of plantation colonies of the Americas, especially in Brazil. Other countries involved in the European slave trade included Spain (from 1479); North America (from 1619); Holland (from 1625); France (from 1642); Sweden (from 1647); and Denmark (from 1697).

Portuguese establish colony in Angola (see beautiful mask called Mwana pwo that the Chokwe peoples of Angola use in mukanda, their initiation ceremonies).
Late 15th c. to mid- 16th c. Nomadic Kunta Arabs began to preach and spread mystic Sufi Islam throughout the western Sudan. The Fulani, a nomadic pastoral people, moving slowly eastward from Senegal, also gain converts for Islam through mid-16th century. During this period, Islam became a personal religion among many Africans rather than merely a religion of state. In fact, Islam appears to have declined among the ruling classes, and non-Muslim dynasties ruled in old Muslim strongholds until the 18th century, when Islamic reform and revival movements began.
1591 Fall of Songhai Empire: Attracted by its wealth, the armies of al-Mansur of Morocco overran the Songhai capital of Gao. Following the collapse of Songhai, a number of small kingdoms strove to dominate the western Sudan, instigating continual strife and economic decline. During the breakup of the Songhai empire, an intense period of slave activity occurred in west Africa at the hands of Arab Islamic missionaries and European traders.
Late 1500s To the east of Songhai, between the Niger River and Lake Chad, the Hausa city-states and the Kanem-Bornu Empire had been established since the 10th century. After the fall of Songhai, the trans-Saharan trade moved eastward, where centers of flourishing commerce and urban life developed. Islam appears to have been introduced into the Hausa states from 11th to 14th centuries.
1652 Dutch establish colony at Cape of Good Hope, South Africa; and colonizing Boers ("farmers"), or Afrikaners, begin settling large farms at the expense of San and Khoikhoi, non-Bantu speakers of the region.
1700-1717 Asanti (or Ashante) Empire of Akan peoples unified under Osei Tutu on the "Gold Coast"; dominates with control of gold-producing zones and supplying slaves in exchange for firearms (to 1820s).
1720s Rise of Kingdom of Dahomey of Fon (or Aja) peoples, on the "Slave Coast" in the Bight of Benin, based on slaving and firearms (into the 19th c.). The Abomey plateau, an early center of Aja and Yoruba populations, became the capital of the Dahomey monarchy beginning in the 17th century.
18th c Height of Atlantic SlaveTrade: Between the years 1650 and 1900, historians estimate that 28 million Africans were forcibly removed from central and western Africa as slaves. A human catastrophe for Africa, the world African Slave Trade was truly a "Holocaust."
THE HOLOCAUST:
  • Muslim traders exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, to the Middle East, and to North Africa. African slave exports via the Red Sea, trans-Sahara, and East Africa/Indian Ocean to other parts of the world between 1500-1900 totaled at least 5 million Africans sent into bondage.
  • Between 1450 and 1850, at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean (the notorious "Middle Passage") primarily to colonies in North America, South America, and the West Indies.. 80% of these kidnapped Africans (or at least 7 million) were exported during the 18th century, with a mortality rate of probably 10-20% on the ships enroute for the Americas.
  • Unknown numbers (probably at least 4 million) of Africans died in slave wars and forced marches before being shipped. Within central Africa itself, the slave trade precipitated migrations: coastal tribes fled slave-raiding parties and captured slaves were redistributed to different regions in Africa.
  • African slave trade and slave labor transformed the world. In Africa, slave trade stimulated the expansion of powerful West African kingdoms. In the Islamic world, African slave labor on plantations, in seaports, and within families expanded the commerce and trade of the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. In the Americas, slave labor became the key component in trans-Atlantic agriculture and commerce supporting the booming capitalist economy of the 17th and 18th centuries, with the greatest demand in the Americas coming from Brazil and the sugar plantations of the Caribbean.
THE RESISTANCE: Many Africans, like Queen Nzingha of Angola and King Maremba of the Congo, fought valiantly, if vainly, against the European slavers and their African collaborators. Others resisted their captors by creating mutinies or jumping overboard from slave ships during the horrendous "Middle Passage" across the Atlantic Ocean. Enslaved Africans that were destined for the Americas would be subject to a "breaking in" process which often took place in the West Indies. Many resisted having their spirits broken and managed to escape, eventually forming independent communities such as that of the Maroons in the West Indies. Some of these Maroon communities numbered in the 1000s in South American and the Caribbean, , waging guerilla warfare against slave hunters, and brutally executed if caught.
THE DIASPORA: The forced and brutal dispersal of millions of Africans into foreign lands created the Black Diaspora (and see history and maps of the African Diaspora). African slaves and their descendants carried skills and communitarian values, rich cultural traditions, resiliency, and resistance ethos that transformed and enriched the cultures they entered around the world. Thus, as African peoples are globally dispersed, they carried their traditions of cultural creativity and oral arts with them, such as "common musical rhythms, exploration of multicolors…and diverse textures, play on repetition, and call-and-response modes of verbal activity" (Asante and Abarry 111). African folktales, often featuring the tortoise, hare, and spider (e.g., the Anancy stories ), are widespread on the African continent and were carried from Africa to the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States.
1790s Abolitionist movement [to abolish slavery] gains strength in England, and later in the U.S.
1792

 

1804

 Slave uprising in Haiti (called Saint-Domingue by the French) involving 1,000s of slaves; led by Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803); his army eventually numbering 55,000 blacks waged guerrilla and frontal war against the British for years. 

Creation of the Black Republic of Haiti.
Late 18th  to mid-19th c. European political, economic, and scientific interests stimulate a search for new markets and another era of exploration. British explorer James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1770; Scottish explorer Mungo Park explored (1795 and 1805) the course of the Niger River; Scottish missionary David Livingstone explored the Zambezi River and in 1855 named Victoria Falls; British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, traveling downstream, and Sir Samuel White Baker, working upstream, locate the sources of the Nile in 1863. Following the explorers (and sometimes preceding them) were Christian missionaries and European merchants
1795

1815


1818 –1828




1830 –1834

 British seize control of Cape Colony, South Africa, from Dutch

British declare formal control of Cape Colony and increase British immigration in South Africa. Despite government resistance, Boers began to move inland in search of better land and, after 1815, to escape control by the British government.

Shaka, Zulu chief, unifies Nguni peoples and forges an impressive fighting force, launching the mfecane (wars of crushing and wandering) against neighboring black Africans and white Europeans throughout southern Africa.  Shaka was assassinated in 1828, but Zulu power continued to rise.

"Great Trek" of Dutch-descent Boers north to lands across Orange River into Natal, South Africa, occupied by southern Nguni peoples in midst of the mfecane; white Boer republics of Orange Free State and Transvaal established in 1850s.
1839-
1842		 Amistad Revolt (on which the 1997 Steven Spielberg film was based) was"a shipboard uprising off the coast of Cuba that carried itself, inadvertently but fatefully, to the United States--where the Amistad Captives set off an intense legal, political, and popular debate over the slave trade, slavery, race, Africa, and ultimately America itself".
The Amistad Revolt was an important episode in the interlocked histories of . . .
  • West Africa, in 1839 its peoples and states challenged by the dislocations of the Atlantic Slave Trade;
  • Cuba, in 1839 a Spanish colony, one of the world’s largest producers of sugar, and the last major slave society in the West Indies;
  • United States, in 1839 a growing nation on the threshold of becoming a world power but also a divided nation, half slave and half free

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