In this video we turn our attention to the continent of Africa, which is one of the largest
and most diverse continents in the world.
The African continent has a variety of climates and ecosystems.
There's the Mediterranean north; there's desert; savanna grasslands; rainforests; in the south
there's a very temperate climate.
Overall Africa is the most tropical of the continents, tends to have poorer soil and
less productive agriculture than similar regions in other continents, and more disease-carrying
insects and parasites.
These would all come to define what we might call the history of Africa or African history,
but it's important to note that there was no one African history.
There was no one African experience.
There is no common cultural identity that we could identify as African.
Instead, Africa is defined by regions; by cultures; and by interactions with the outside
world.
So in this video we'll be talking about Africa from roughly the period of 500 to 1000 in
the Common Era, and looking at the ways in which Africa was shaped by encounters with
the outside world, and the ways in which Africa would in turn shape other cultures.
So we start by describing the various regions ¬¬– and there are a few regions in Africa
that can kind of be distilled into 5 basic categories.
There's the Mediterranean north, which is largely shaped by interactions and encounters
across the Mediterranean Sea; there is the eastern coast, which is defined by trade and
encounters across the Red Sea; there's the Sahara Desert, in the north-central part of
the continent; there's western Africa, along the Atlantic Ocean; and then there's Sub-Saharan
Africa, which is Africa south of the Sahara Desert.
So we're going to look at some of these regions and talk about how that regional component
– or the regional qualities – would help to define the cultures and civilizations that
emerged within Africa in this roughly 500 year period.
So our story starts with Northeast Africa, and the story of Northeast Africa actually
starts a lot earlier than the year 500 – because it starts with the Kingdom of Egypt.
Egypt was the oldest civilization in the region, and for very long time the most dominant.
Neolithic civilization emerged around 6000 BCE and Egypt was organized into a united
kingdom by 3150 BC.
It would dominate the region of Northeast Africa and the eastern Mediterranean until
it was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians in 525 BCE.
But remember, the Persians allowed conquered territories to maintain their own rulers.
So for the next 200 years or so, there was still an Egypt – Egypt was just ruled by
Persian pharaohs.
In 343, Egypt fell to Alexander the Great and moved into a period known as the Ptolemaic
State.
Egypt became part of Alexander's Empire, where northeastern Africa; the Sinai Peninsula;
and the Levant all connected based on trade out of the Hellenistic city of Alexandria.
Alexandria became an important cosmopolitan center of trade and a place where these cultures
came together.
Egypt was then conquered by Rome in 30 when – excuse me – Octavian defeated his rival
Mark Antony – and Christianity was introduced in the first century CE.
The fracturing of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century – in the Common Era – left
the eastern part of the Empire, including Egypt, under the control of the Byzantine
Empire.
And then in the mid-7th century, Egypt was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, which
was the earliest Islamic caliphate, oftentimes referred to as the patriarchal caliphate,
which defeated the Byzantine Empire and introduced Sunni Islam into Egypt.
Thus Egypt's position – at the center of multiple civilizations and multiple trade
networks –created a powerful and cosmopolitan state in northeastern Africa that was often
at the center of conflict and power struggles.
To the south of Egypt was the territory of Nubia.
Nubia includes modern-day Sudan and South Sudan, and it was a territory that was in
many ways defined – or influenced – by Egypt.
It borrowed many of its characteristics from Egypt itself, but kept its own characteristics
as well.
Nearly as old as Egypt, Nubia developed alongside the great civilization and at points in the
archaeological record the two civilizations are virtually indistinguishable.
They have similar symbols; patterns.
Egypt would conquer parts of Nubia on several occasions, and in the 8th century BCE Nubia
even ruled over parts of Egypt.
They ruled from the city of Meroe, from 800 BCE to 100 CE – and much like Egypt was
influenced by the intersection of multiple cultures.
The decline of Egypt – after the Macedonian conquest – shifted the power of African
power of Northeastern Africa southward into Nubia.
The Nubians developed a new style of agriculture based on rainfall, rather than irrigation,
and so they shifted away from the Nile.
They were able to trade far and wide across the Mediterranean.
They used camel caravans to the Middle East and to West Africa.
The Nubians began to decline around 100 CE, and were conquered by the territory of Aksum
in 350 CE.
This led to Christian dominance in the region until about 1000, and then Islam in 1300.
The next important state of Northeast Africa was Aksum, which is in modern-day Eritrea
and Ethiopia, and it was a powerful state from about 100 to 940 CE – in the Common
Era.
Aksum was based on highly-productive agriculture using the plow – not the hoe, and producing
cereal grains.
A substantial state emerged by 100 CE that was tied to trade.
Much of the wealth of the capital, much of the wealth of Aksum, was based on taxes.
These commerce taxes became an important source of wealth.
And so, the vibrant civilization that emerged in Axum was tied to trade with Romans; Persians;
Arabians; Indians – with a variety of cultures and traditions across the Red Sea and across
the Mediterranean.
In the 1st century CE, Aksum became the principal supplier of African goods like ivory; incense;
gold; slaves; animals; crops.
They became the primary supplier of these goods to Rome.
They would use this to extend their influence within Africa and into the Arabian Peninsula.
Christianity arrived in Axum in the 4th century and King Ezana converted, making it the state
religion of Aksum about the same time that Constantine converted in Rome.
As Aksum expanded to Meroe, in the West, and Mecca, in the East, they spread with them
Christianity
Aksum became increasingly isolated as the Islamic empire spread throughout the Red Sea
and the Nile.
This cut or limited Aksum’s access to trade and the Empire would this would disappear
by the 10th century.
Thus Eastern and Northeastern Africa were largely defined by the complicated interaction
of multiple cultures.
If we shift southward to Sub-Saharan Africa, this region was largely defined by what many
define or what many called Bantu cultures or Bantu expansion.
The term Bantu expansion refers to the migration of a group of people from the same Bantu linguistic
group or family group over the course of millennia.
These people originated in Cameroon and Nigeria in the western part of Africa, and over the
course of millennia spread eastward and southward to populate most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
They reached the southern tip of Africa by 300 – in a way that wasn't necessarily self-conscious
or planned, but was rather just the spreading out of these cultures – excuse me – or
traditions.
The Bantu linguistic groups or the Bantu peoples were able to dominate native populations – like
the Khoisan in the south or the Pygmy in the Congo region – because of numbers and the
advantages that they had from agriculture.
The Bantu people also had immunity to certain diseases that decimated indigenous populations,
and these advantages allowed the Bantu people to conquer or displace the hunter-gatherer
societies that were there before.
But in many ways the Bantu people would absorb some of the traditions of the native populations.
They blended Bantu traditions with existing traditions and created vibrant and thriving
cultures – such as the culture in Kenya, where decision-making was made by kinship
connection based on age; or you have the independent city-states of Mozambique or Tanzania along
the east coast; or the sophisticated trade-based kingdom of Zimbabwe, along the Limpopo River.
So there a variety of Bantu cultures connected by this shared linguistic group, this common
language family, and they would spread throughout southern Africa, South Saharan Africa, creating
a situation in which hundreds of different ethnic groups speak Bantu language and are
considered Bantu people even today.
Continuing our story by moving to the western part of Africa, we move into a region in which
historians still have a number of questions.
The historical record is incomplete.
We do know that populations moved into western Africa around 12,000 BCE, and we know the
experimentation with agriculture and trade with the Mediterranean allowed the populations
in the western part of Africa to grow.
The first city-states emerged in 400 BCE, particularly around rivers and in places that
were rich with natural resources.
The domestication of the camel gave western Africa an advantage because the camel could
cross the Sahara Desert, which brought western Africa into contact with the markets of the
Mediterranean Sea.
Trade in the 7th and 8th centuries allowed for the accumulation of wealth in these Western
African city-states and contributed to the rise of the first great kingdoms of western
Africa.
One example is the kingdom of Ghana, which emerged in the 6th century, founded by the
Soninke people, and over the next several centuries they would consolidate power reaching
their peak around 800 in a golden age that would last for about 300 years.
The Ghana kingdom made a fortune trading gold; kola nuts; and ivory; for salt; spices; and
other items of Mediterranean trade.
They relied on Berber caravans crossing the Sahara Desert, creating a volatile relationship
between the two groups – Ghana and these Berber caravans, these Berber middlemen.
The Berbers, in the end, formed an alliance with the Islamic Almoravid Dynasty of Morocco
and that would eventually weaken Ghana and allow for their conquest.
Around 1204, this weakened Ghana was fractured and eventually annexed by the Mali Empire
–another of the great empires of western Africa.
So it's important to understand when we study the history of Africa and Africa's place in
world history that it was a complicated – it was a complicated continent, and that it was
the result of encounters – not just within Africa, but with other continents and other
civilizations.
Africa had a position at the center of Eurasian trade and so it's important that we keep this
in mind – that Africa was not only part of the Mediterranean world, but part of the
Indian world and trade across the Red Sea allowed for a variety of regional systems,
of regional cultures, to develop and place Africa in a position of importance in global
trade.
Thank you.