African history
Like any art, African art conveys previous values, attitudes, and thoughts. Studying their work reveals their past. African art can help us solve problems that have long puzzled historians. This article by an African historian answers these questions. It encourages pupils to utilize African art to reflect on African history.
Students of African art must evaluate how Western perceptions of “race” and “racial” distinctions have affected the African past. These notions, which contrast the assumed inferiority of blacks with the superiority of whites, emerged in Western society when Europeans justified their slavery and colonialism of Africa. Historians now understand that racial inferiority fueled the assumption that Africans were savage barbarians. Many of the European works they use to recreate the African past, such as narratives by nineteenth-century missionaries and explorers, are tainted by African inferiority complexes.
This awareness has pushed historians to seek out materials less affected by European racial obsession. Alternative sources include African texts (discovered in just a few parts of Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900), oral tradition, the vocabulary and structures of African languages, and archaeological objects. African art is another source. It helps us comprehend African history from the perspective of Africans, not Europeans.
As historians see the folly of Western assumptions about racial inferiority, they seek new methods to compare African and European history. Many historians understand African history by combining differences and similarities. They may think African cultures provide uncommon solutions to global challenges. Basil Davidson thinks that Africans avoided tyranny by limiting kings’ authority and strengthening small-community autonomy. Other historians explain differences not based on race, but on other social causes.
John Iliffe, another British African historian, uses a similar technique. Iliffe says the African environment greatly shapes African civilizations. Iliffe thinks Africans live in an arid, disease-ridden environment. He envisions Africans overcoming these obstacles via agricultural ingenuity and hard labor. Alternative historians disagree with Davidson and Iliffe and seek other elements to explain Africans’ distinctiveness from other human groups. When they look at African art, students must decide if they see unique ideas and values or a common human spirit.
Africa’s history is vast. Arheological and genetic evidence supports the notion that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. The Australopithecines split from their chimpanzee ancestors four to six million years ago. 4.4 million-year-old Australopithecine fossils were found in northern Ethiopia. Australopithecine footprints left by a father and child around 3.5 million years ago in Laetoli, Tanzania, provide additional vivid evidence. Homo habilis, who made stone tools, lived around 2 million years ago. Soon after that, Homo erectus, which got its name because it walked upright, developed more advanced skills, which may have included fire.
Early Homo sapiens existed in Africa 400,000 to 300,000 years ago, but anatomically modern humans didn’t arrive until 140,000 years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens moved quickly over Africa and the rest of the planet, reaching Europe 40,000 years ago and America 15,000 years ago. Modern humans colonized huge areas more successfully than previous hominids and developed language, stone-tool technology, and art.
As they moved around the globe, modern humans adapted to varied circumstances by generating tiny genetic variances that generated distinctions in skin color, hair, body type, and facial characteristics. Cavalli-Sforza thinks that cereal-eating northerners acquired fair skins to absorb vitamin D from sunshine. Other groups, like the fish-eating people of the northern hemisphere and the Africans, didn’t benefit much from having lighter skin, so they got darker skin to protect themselves from the sun.
Early Homo sapiens groups hunted, fished, and gathered wild plants. Climate change appears to have transformed African human existence. As Africa (particularly the Sahara desert and eastern Africa) became wetter, Africans evolved new means of survival. Humans congregated near growing lakes and rivers. Initially, they fished, gathered plant meals along lakeshores, and hunted animals near water. When these civilizations outgrew their food supply, they gradually learned to farm and domesticate animals.
Farming and livestock raising supplied a more abundant and stable food supply and sped up population expansion. These strategies were presumably adopted in reaction to environmental degradation or population increases. Farming and livestock-keeping were accepted hesitantly since they required more effort. These new food production methods expose people to new ailments, particularly animal-borne infections.
Archaeological evidence of early farming and animal domestication is hard to find and analyze, so scientists argue over when food production began and how it began. They argue over whether agricultural and livestock-keeping techniques came from elsewhere (especially the Middle East) or if Africa acquired them independently. Most experts agree that northern Africa had farming and cattle by 7000 B.C. After 3000 BC, when the climate in Africa changed again, making it drier, people who farmed moved south into wetter areas, taking farming and caring for animals with them.
The retreat of agricultural peoples from the harsh Sahara led to the rise of Egypt around 3100 BC to 332 BC. The Ancient Egyptians were Africans. Ancient Egyptian speech belonged to the Afroasiatic language family, which developed in the southeastern Sahara. It comprises ancient Egyptian, Berber, Hausa, Arabic, and Hebrew.
Egypt was populated by farmers who came from locations west of the Nile and created extremely productive agriculture in flood-moistured plains. Egypt’s cultural and material triumphs were based on agriculture. It had a lot of farms, so a lot of its people didn’t have to worry about making food. This freed them up to build big things (like the pyramids) and take part in political, military, and religious activities.
Whether ancient Egypt influenced Africa is debatable. Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal, one of Africa’s most prominent 20th-century intellectuals, believes that ancient Egypt was the origin of African civilization. Others agree that Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa have similar languages, religions, and art. Other researchers find such similarities unpersuasive and highlight distinctions between ancient Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Ancient Egypt was highly centralized, but African civilizations preferred local liberty. These researchers want to regard Sub-Saharan African culture as western, eastern, and southern Africa’s indigenous achievement.
Similar population migrations brought agriculture to western and eastern Africa when African farmers fled drier regions. Nilo-Saharan speakers traveled to East Africa’s Rift Valley and highlands. In what is now eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon, speakers of Niger-Congo languages developed a novel kind of farming that focused on yams and plantains (bananas), which thrive in damp, humid settings. Niger-Congo speakers moved west via Nigeria. Another branch of the Niger-Congo family, the “Bantu” languages, extends into central, eastern, and southern Africa.
Few themes in African history are as controversial as the so-called “Bantu exodus,” although historians formerly thought its tale was simple. They felt the people of the Niger-Cameroon borderlands possessed a “tool kit” of talents, including the capacity to grow forest foods and operate with iron. Metal artisans of the Nok civilization (renowned for its terra-cotta busts) in central Nigeria improved iron-working knowledge between 500 and 300 BC, they claimed. Historiographers think Bantu speakers conquered the southern part of the continent with this “tool kit.”
Today, historians doubt this account. The spread of Bantu languages, which began around 3000 BC, was a lengthy and arduous process. It presumably happened through Bantu-speaking migration and the adoption of Bantu languages (possibly as a commercial lingua franca) by existing groups. The migration itself was more difficult than historians had formerly assumed. They used to think that conquering colonists would move quickly, but now they say that farming communities looking for new land will grow generation by generation.
Scholars say the early Bantu-speaking civilizations didn’t make iron. Bantu groups may have learned ironworking in Rwanda and northeastern Tanzania as early as 800 BC. If this chronology is right (not all archaeologists agree), East African iron-working originated without Egyptian or Eurasian influence. Iron-working helped Bantu-speaking farmers spread over eastern and southern Africa.
Iron tools allowed farmers to chop grain-bearing heads off of millets and sorghums, Sub-Saharan Africa’s most significant grains, before the 20th century. By 400 AD, Bantu-speaking farmers and ironworkers were well-established along the East African coast (where Mediterranean mariners recorded several Bantu terms) and in South Africa.
Perhaps no myth about Africa’s history is more prevalent and inaccurate than the belief that Africans lived in separate “tribes.” This suggests that linkages between cultures, linguistic groups, and geographies are unimportant. It argues that Africans were politically immature since “tribes” were founded on family and genealogy (they might be thought of as very large extended families). Thus, African “tribal” life is ruled not by complex governmental structures but by kinship and affinity.
This “tribal” view of African life implies that violence existed between “tribes” (hence “tribal” combat), but not within tribes.The “tribal” view of Africa’s history makes us miss connections between different parts of the continent, underrate the political sophistication of African civilizations, and ignore struggles between classes, genders, and generations.
Historians have questioned the “tribal” paradigm by studying inter-regional relationships, political institutions, and the multitude of social identities in Africa’s history. Far from living in isolated “tribes,” Africans established structures that preserved political, social, and economic links over broad territories.
Village life, the road, and the market, as well as localized concerns and inter-regional interactions, shaped African identities.This research challenges African art history students. It pushes them to find these features of social life in African art and makes them question the standard ethnic or “tribe” categorization of African art.
The “tribal” paradigm of discrete ethnic groupings could be most applicable in Zaire’s tropical jungle. This enormous, highly forested region is destined to isolate Africa by limiting movement. They were never isolated. Using the Zaire basin’s rivers as roads, they maintained trade and cultural ties over large territories.
Zaire’s people built clever political systems using Bantu culture. The Kuba kingdom produced a governmental system capable of cultural transformation (its institutions changed marital patterns and enhanced agricultural output) and supported a beautiful artistic culture. The “drum of affliction” was an organization that helped people with certain illnesses. It controlled government power and trade in other places.
Southern Africa has similar commercial and political networks. One regional system, headquartered in Mapungubwe, south of the Limpopo River in contemporary South Africa, maintained trade relations between the Indian Ocean coast, where Mapungubwe received glass beads and other Asian imports, and the pastoral villages of the eastern Kalahari Desert. As Mapungubwe’s wealth and power grew after 900 AD, its social elite occupied hilltops and erected towering stone walls to differentiate themselves from the poor people living below.
Great Zimbabwe, in modern-day Zimbabwe, would subsequently develop these ideas. In the early 1200s, Great Zimbabwe rose while Mapungubwe declined. It was a political and trade hub like Mapungubwe. Its monarchs controlled gold exports to modern-day Mozambique and Tanzania. Mapungubwe’s monarchs erected towering monuments to reflect their political and religious dominance. At the shrines where Zimbabweans honored the spirits of their ancestors, spirit mediums spoke out against leaders of the government who threatened the independence of the country.
Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe’s inter-regional networks are linked to other regional networks. A burial site in the Zambezi Valley (southern Zambia) at Ingombe Ilede shows that in the 14th and 15th centuries, people exchanged the region’s gold and copper for Indian Ocean items. This commerce contributed to the emergence of the Luba nations in Zaire’s savannas.
Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe retained East African Coast links. The Swahili emerged around 800 CE along the coast from southern Somalia to Mozambique. Swahili-speaking mariners from northern Kenya set up fishing settlements on islands, inlets, and protected beaches, which became significant trading ports.
As southern Africa’s commerce networks sent their products to the Indian Ocean coast, Swahili communities grew larger and wealthier. They functioned as commercial entrepots, drawing gold and ivory that Arabian merchants traded for cotton textiles, Persian glass beads, and Chinese porcelain. The Swahili towns became the link between eastern and southern Africa and the Mediterranean-to-China Asian trading networks.
In Lamu, Kenya, and Kilwa, Tanzania, an affluent and cosmopolitan culture developed. Its finest achievements were public and domestic architecture using coral stone and mangrove poles. This culture combined local and international elements. While Swahili people gloried in their urbane sophistication and embraced the Islamic faith of their Arab trading partners, they also honored eloquence in their own language, created oral epics, and zealously guarded the independence of their small city-states. Their healing techniques, political organization, and familial ties borrowed substantially from their Bantu roots.
West Africa evolved into an urban, commercially-oriented society, although its largest ports were in the Sahara desert. West African ports attracted North African camel caravans rather than ships and sailors. Arab and African geographers would have seen similarities between Indian Ocean ports and West African desert towns.
In reality, the Arabic term they used for the “Swahili” coast was also used for the “Sahel”—the semi-arid West African region south of the Sahara. These desert-side towns have been reinterpreted by historians. Many historians think that Sahelian towns like Timbuktu arose following 8th-century AD North African commerce with West Africa. Historiographers thought North Africans initiated commerce with West Africans.
An archaeological study at Djenné, Mali, has changed all this. Djenné was located on the Niger, a navigable river rich in fish, and in its “inland delta,” where yearly floods bring moisture and fertile silt to farmlands. By the 3rd century BC, a settlement had grown here, and it grew to be a trading centre. Around 400 AD, Djenné began attracting traders from remote desert and woodland regions. Djenné has changed the way we think about West African history by showing that trade networks for desert, savanna, and forest goods were already in place before Islamic merchants from North Africa started crossing the Sahara.
But West Africans created large commerce networks whose richness convinced Islamic North African merchants to cross the desert, but they also defended their local sovereignty. Sahelian West Africa saw the development of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem-Borno. Each empire was founded on tiny groups of villages that remained autonomous unless the royal cavalry sought payment. The Senegal-to-Cameroon forest and coastal areas created several tiny states, notably Jolof and Waalo in Senegal and Benin in Nigeria. Many civilizations, especially the Igbo of southern Nigeria, resisted governmental centralization.
Politically decentralized civilizations can achieve significant cultural feats. West Africa’s artistic traditions demonstrate this. While Benin celebrates its 15th and 16th century rulers with magnificent brass sculptures, and the Yoruba kingdom of Ife in southwestern Nigeria created a great tradition of naturalistic sculpture in terra-cotta and brass, the politically decentralized Igbo produced the fabrics and bronze artifacts buried with a 9th-century notable at Igbo.
African History cultures promote creative expression and other cultural achievements. Artists praised the aesthetic and ethical qualities of their communities, especially the significance African cultures put on personal success, industriousness, and responsibility. Africa was easy for Europeans to take slaves from because it had many trade routes and a government that wasn’t well run.
Twelve million Africans, from Senegal to Angola, were sent as slaves to the Americas between 1450 and 1880. Millions perished during enslavement in Africa or on the way to the Americas. Most slaves were sent to plantations and mines in the Caribbean and South America; Barbados imported as many as the U.S. When American plantation production grew in the 18th century, almost six million slaves arrived in the Americas.
The fast development of slavery enhanced the prospect of slave insurrection (which was realized when Haitian slaves created the first African-ruled republic in the Americas) and made Europeans more conscious of the inhumanity of the slave trade. Most European governments abolished slave trading in the early 19th century, following Britain’s lead in 1807. After 1800, 3.3 million slaves were transferred to the Americas.
Historians differ on the causes and effects of the slave trade. Few experts dispute Europe’s role. They bought Africans for their American colonies. African historians know that the slave trade needed European and African participation. Europeans were deterred from conquering and capturing Africans by African military prowess and tropical illnesses to which they had no immunity. European slavers depended on African merchants, warriors, and kings to buy slaves at seaports. In his 18th-century autobiography, Olaudah Equiano wrote about how he was taken from his home in southern Nigeria when he was a young child, sold to a series of African masters, and then sold to Europeans.
Why Africans engaged in the slave trade is hotly debated. Historians have suggested that Africans in small-scale political units sought to profit by raiding neighboring societies for slaves, that the lack of centralized political authority prevented internecine conflict, that famine and other disasters drove Africans to enslave themselves and others, and that slavery and slave trading had long existed in much of Africa (though perhaps in less brutal forms). Answering this topic leads us to analyze what is different about Africa and what features Africans share with the rest of humanity. African cultures were divided into rich and poor, male and female, strong and helpless.The powerful regularly exploited the weak, like in other communities.
Less debatable are Africa’s slave trade implications. Some historians say the slave trade caused devastation, depopulation, and political unrest. Others say Africans engaged in this trade since its harm was small. One theory is that the slave trade harmed women since more males were shipped, leaving women to do their work and promoting polygyny. A recent study suggests that while the slave trade did not cause an overall drop in the African population, it stopped the expansion that would have otherwise happened. The slave trade reduced Africa’s population by half in 1850.
The slave trade left Africa underpopulated and moved African labor to the Americas, where it boosted American, not African, economic progress. The slave trade was one stage in Africa’s long-term integration into a European-dominated global economy. As the slave trade faded away after 1807, Africans, instead of abandoning links with Europe, used slaves to produce agricultural commodities for Europe.
Slavery also affected African philosophy and morals. Some historians say the slave trade rendered African nations aggressive, self-absorbed, and indifferent to human life. This problem is crucial, but historians lack oral and written evidence from the slave trade era to address it. African art students must investigate if the slave trade is reflected in art.
Since the 1880s, Africa’s economy has been controlled by Europe. In the late 19th century, Europe grew interested in Africa’s raw commodities and markets. The Congress of Berlin in 1884–1885 set the principles for the European colonization of Africa. All of Africa, save Ethiopia and Liberia, was forcibly annexed within 20 years, despite African resistance. The French and British had the biggest empires in Africa, but the Portuguese, Belgians, and Germans also had colonies there.
African economies were subservient to Europe’s under colonialism. For centuries, Africa was a source of minerals and agricultural goods for European industries. Colonial rulers made few efforts to diversify their economies and promote industry. Modern Africa is nearly totally dependent on foreign manufacturers. Colonial authorities had little desire to offer education or health care to Africans because their economies demanded cheap labor.
Europeans preferred migratory laborers who left their rural homes for short periods to work in mining or plantation districts over permanently urbanized employees. Most local administration in African colonies was provided by African colonial staff and appointees. Colonial rule was not democratic because all public policies were made by Europeans, and Africans had no political rights.
For most Africans (especially women), the colonial period was immensely distressing since they had no chance to learn new types of knowledge or take advantage of the economic opportunity given by colonialism. Instead, they were relegated to menial, poorly paid employment. African discontent was aggravated by the mismatch between colonialism’s universalistic Christian ideals and liberal political concepts, on the one hand, and its discrimination and racism, on the other. During World War II, the British and French pushed their African subjects to contribute military duty and labor to a war effort meant to protect national self-determination. Post-war Africans were denied the rights they and their colonial rulers fought for.
This growing discontent and unfairness led to much of Africa’s independence by the mid-1960s. Western Europe was concerned that its restive African subjects would choose Communism as the Cold War dominated international politics in the late 1940s. Fear was heightened by military revolts (most notably the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya) and powerful, nonviolent nationalist movements.
The Europeans, persuaded that colonialism could only be preserved through unacceptably costly military and economic investment, more interested in post-war reconstruction of their own economies, and increasingly confident that a Western-educated African elite would have little sympathy for Communism, began to concede independence to Africans in the late 1950s, beginning with Ghana in 1957 under its charismatic president, Kwame Nkrumah.
Much of the continent was free of colonial authority by the mid-1960s, but European dominance in southern Africa remained unshaken until the mid-1970s, when Angola and Mozambique ejected the Portuguese, paving the stage for Zimbabwe’s 1980 victory. In the 1990s, South Africa’s apartheid system remained the most repressive and unyielding example of white dominance in Africa.
Nelson Mandela’s election as South African president in 1994 signified the end of Africa’s battle against white power in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, the 21st century would offer Africans continuous economic and political stability, high population increase, rising environmental degradation, and Western governments and financial institutions’ external dominance. Their track record implies they’ll find solutions.
By Professor James Giblin, Department of History, The University of Iowa
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