Question One. What Affected The ‘Variety Of Africa’S Historical

Africa, like many other continents, was a very tremendous and a very diverse civilization that is very complicated to introduce due to all its wonderful but also diverse features and beliefs. From the differences between its society and language to its religion and politics, Africa always had the reputation that its empires, cities, and kingdoms never progressed in the developments and achievements for their civilization. Many people believed that the Europeans were actually the cause of Africa’s achievements and advanced developments for their civilizations. However, this is further than the whole truth. Before the arrival of the Europeans between the 15th and 16th century, African kingdoms, empires, and cities had many achievements and accomplishments

In the late 1800’s Europeans took over Africa, took their resources,enslaving the Africans, and changed the course of history. The Europeans took over Africa, which is called The Scramble For Africa, in 1884-1914. The Europeans took over because Africa was rich in raw materials, they wanted power, and they thought their culture was superior. The driving force behind imperialism was need for resources, political competition, and technological advances. One driving force behind imperialism was need for natural resources. Document E uses a bar graph to show imports and exports in 1854, and 1900 between Great Britain and South Saharan Africa. Great Britain made 3 million British pounds in 1854, and 21

The first chapter in Boahen’s book is titled “Eve of Colonial Conquest” and this section gives the readers a background of the colonialism in Africa through a look at the fundamental economic, political, and social changes that occurred just a few decades before colonialism took root. Boahen states that the trade of “natural products” is the most significant economic change in Africa by 1880. Just before the trading of “natural products” slave trades were abolished.

Colonization created the system of slave trade, in order to help build the economic foundations of established colonies. However, doing so leaves the victims of this trade with a legacy of limited potential. For instance, past colonization has influenced disproportionate distributions of income in South Africa; the lowest on the continent. “Colonialism has left South Africa with a legacy of migrant labor, particularly among workers in the gold and diamond mine…” As a result, it guarantees that the majority of the black African population is stricken with poverty in contrast with the history of wealth and

Colonialism is defined in the dictionary as a policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies. African colonization is one example. Africa was oppressed by the European imperial powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Parker, 2007). Unlike in other parts of the world, African colonization was short lived and the colonial period was over by the 1960s (Parker, 2007). The European ‘scramble’ for territory at the end of 19th century is probably the best-known occurrence in the continent’s history. The involved imperial powers were Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, and Spain (Parker, 2007). These countries were competing for

For our final paper, we were to read Sundiate. This was my favorite book to read due to the fact that I have an interest in West African history. From reading this book we should know the historical context, who Songolon Kolonkan and Balla Fasseke are and what roles they play, what details show existence of long distance trade, what the universal religion is, and what we learned about West African history. The book really gave me a broad idea of what life would be like during that time. I can only imagine seeing thousands of traders coming into Mali with their camels and donkeys carrying what they had to trade.

Before imperialism, Due to Nigeria’s available fertile and massive landscape, people became significantly invested in many economic activities including agriculture and industrial trade. As direct systems of economic exploitation continued. Aimed to rob and exploit not only the people but also their economic and environmental resources; westerners pursued and implemented strategies that indirectly diminished the economic power of the African continent. “The economic system was highly regulated, and the colonial policy was aimed at protecting British interests; This policy was perhaps best reflected in agriculture where all activities were directed at subsistence farming” (Ii, Joe Duke.). Through Nigeria's economic exploitation, the consequences of underdevelopment are perpetuated, very frequently producing a host of corresponding societal ills that further impede efforts towards economic reform”(Reuther Jessica, 2016).

The Empire of Ghana was the first trading empire of western Africa. This Empire is located between the Sahara Desert and the rivers of Sénégal and Niger. Otherwise known today as part of Mauritania and part of Mali. It thrived through the years of 700-1200 B.C. They are highly known for their production and trading of gold because they lived on top of a gold mine. They were also known for trading in salt and ivory. Some of Ghana’s achievements was how near and far their trading destinations were. Also their large amounts of gold and other resources. Because of their good amounts of gold it made Ghana have a more powerful and dominate kingdom compared to those around Ghana.

hroughout Africa, geography played a vital role in the development of civilization and the way goods were spread. Remember that a great portion of Northern and Central Africa was desert, characterized by thousands of miles of shifting sand, heat, and a complete lack of water. Trade and cities thrived in this arid and desolate landscape with the help of camels. Camels have the ability to fill their humps with water, they have tough hides, and long eyelashes to keep the sand out, along with long legs to cover a lot of ground. Traders could pack massive amounts of goods and supplies onto each camel. This sort of travel allowed the gold from regions south of the Sahara, or sub-Saharan regions, to move north to the Mediterranean ports, where it

These trade routes also allowed easy transportation for not just goods but troops as well and it helped kingdoms like the Kanem-Bornu Empire and the States in Hausa land. Taxes on the trade and trade routes allowed kingdoms to raise armies vast enough to conquer neighboring lands as well. Trade also had social implication as it created a class system. Like any class system it could be exploited but also gave West Africa a diverse economic system. This directly impacted West Africa because Arabs now could not just interact with the West African people but could also convert them to Islam. Trade helped spread Islam throughout West African kingdoms. With new trade their must be a way to record transaction. The conversion to Islam helped as the west African people could adopt and use Arabic as a way to record transactions as well as interact with other Islamic traders. This newly adopted religion increased literacy rates as the people had to learn how to speak, read, and write Arabic to properly worship and use the Qur’an. Islams also changed these kingdoms in a big way in terms of leadership and control. Many of these kingdoms originally

When the king was not busy enforcing his power among the people, he was spreading it internationally through trade. At its peak, Ghana was chiefly bartering gold, ivory, and slaves for salt from Arabs and horses, cloth, swords, and books from North Africans and Europeans.

The land and climate of West Africa had a big effect on the developing Kingdoms. Ghana was the first of three West African Empire to exist. The land occupied by the Kingdom of Ghana had so much gold that Arab merchants from North Africa carried salt, copper, clothing, tools and dried fruits to Ghana by camel caravans to trade. Due to its hot climate, developing the cities there was difficult because there was no good form of building other than sun-dried mud. By Ghana becoming a trading center, the power of the Kingdom grew. Taxing people on entering and leaving the country was one way the Kingdom got richer. Ghana’s monarch had laws stating that people were not allowed to own any form of gold, except gold dust. So it was really the climate

For 300 years, Africa participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade, providing humans in exchange for other goods. During that 300 years, some twelve million Africans were transported to the Americas. This mass, forced migration had many consequences for Africa, in many aspects of its history. In World History classes—both high school and college— these consequences for Africa are usually omitted, and a more Eurocentric view of the Atlantic Slave Trade dominates. Because of this, many are not aware of the impacts of the slave trade on African societies. This paper aims to remedy this, by presenting the major impacts that Trans-Atlantic Slave trade had on the social and political history of Western Africa. By focusing on Western Africa, this

Colonialism integrated Africa into the international economic division of labor. Rele, F. Abiola; Biodun Jeyifo (2010) contends that “Before colonialism, sub-Saharan Africa was a subsistence economy because some African societies were hunting-gathering economies, other societies had agricultural-based economies and used cattle to soften the land for farming as they did not have farming machinery and they relied on rain for irrigation. Whether hunting-gathering or agricultural economies, in most cases precolonial Africans carried out their agricultural work and production collectively or communally in which ideally all able-bodied adults participated. Depending on location, precolonial Africans engaged in crafts-level (not industrial-level) hand-tool manufacturing, they produced agricultural tools, cloths, iron or copper

underdevelopment in Africa was made possible by positive feedback loops starting with the uneven development in earlier centuries enforced by European constant exploitation of raw materials and human labor from Africa. It traces the root of underdevelopment Africa back to the pre-colonial period. The “natural” path of development from communalism to feudalism and capitalism in Africa was messed up by the European slave trade. The trade in slave was facilitated by African rulers’ greed for luxury goods and European products. The effect of this trade was devastating in that it caused considerable dislocation and disruption in the local economy, caused internal conflict as a result of slave raiding and a huge loss of African labor. (Rodney ignored the Arab slave trade, which caused an equivalent loss of human beings, but