HIAF 201 Early African History through the Era of the Slave Trade

SYLLABUS

"Believe those who are seeking truth. Doubt those who find it."
(André Gide)

"If you wish to know who I am,
If you wish me to teach you what I know,
Cease for the while to be what you are
And forget what you know"
(Tierno Bokar, sage of Bandiagara)

Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Week 1 - INTRODUCTION

• August 28 - General introduction to the course
• You will take: the first map quiz (in class)
• DISCUSSION IN CLASS - Discuss (time available): your assumptions about Africa's past
• Reading
  • Paul Bohannan and Philip Curtin, Africa and Africans (4th ed.) (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland Press, 1995), pp. 6-45, 126-64. (TOOLKIT)
• Some recent, reliable, and comprehensive resources for further information --
  • Joseph O. Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, and Environments (Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 1997).
  • John Middleton, ed., The Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 4 vols.
  • Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, eds., Encarta Africana (Redmond WA: Microsoft, 1999). [CD-ROM]
    • Print equivalent: Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York: Civitas/Persius, 1999).

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Backgrounds

Week 2 - GEOGRAPHY AND THE DAWN OF HISTORY

• Sept. 2- The geographical framework of human endeavor in Africa
• Sept. 4- Climate change, evolution, and history
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: “prehistory” and “history”; do lectures and readings agree?; reading to prepare for the map quizzes -- Be prepared to take: second map quiz
    • Question of the week: What is "history" and when did history in Africa begin ?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 1 (pp. 1-13). (TEXT)
    • James L. Newman, The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), chs 1-3 (pp. 1-39). (MAPS PARTICULARLY CLEAR)

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Week 3 - CREATING CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS

• Sept. 9 - Basil Davidson, Africa: A Voyage of Discovery, Program 1 - "Different but Equal". (VHS 1741)
• Sept. 11 - The origins of community and history (ca. 40,000-5000 BCE)
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: Archaeology and history; do lectures and readings agree?; Be prepared to take: third map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: Again: what is “history”, and when did history in Africa begin? What challenges did the first humans confront?
  • Reading
    • Thomas T. Spear, Kenya's Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa (London: Longman, 1981), ch 1 (pp. 1-21). (METHODS/TOOLKIT)

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Week 4 -FARMERS NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE SAHARA

• Sept. 16 - Agriculture, iron, and life in small-scale societies (5000 BCE - 500 CE)
• Sept. 18 - The "classics" - Egypt, Nubia, Meröe, and Aksum (ancient Ethiopia) (5000 BCE - 500 CE)
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: ancient Egypt’s place in Africa; linguistics and history; do lectures and readings agree?; Be prepared to take: fourth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: How was foraging “the good old days”? In what senses did agriculture mean “progress”? In what senses did it not?
    • Does it make more sense to look at ancient Egypt in terms of Africa or ancient Africa in terms of Egypt? Did “race” matter in ancient Africa? What (else) mattered?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, chs 2-3, 5 (pp. 14-48, 62-71).
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, 4 (pp. 40-59), 6 (pp. 89-94 only)
    • Spear, Kenya's Past, ch 2 (pp. 22-45) (part 2). (METHODS/TOOLKIT)
    • RECOMMENDED –
      • Bruce Williams, “Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction,” in Joseph O. Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, and Environments (Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 1997), pp. 465-72.

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Challenges of Classical Africa

Week 5 - AFRICAN CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LIFE

• Sept. 23- VIDEO - Davidson, Africa: A Voyage of Discovery, Program 2 - "Mastering a Continent".
• Sept. 25- African "religious" systems, and history (Prof. Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Department of Religious Studies)
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: is Africa more “religious” than anyplace else?; how do people “use” their religious outlooks in daily life?; Be prepared to take: fifth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week:
  • Reading:
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 5 (pp. 71-77)

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Week 6 - ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES (500-1500 CE)

• Sept. 30 - Commerce, cities, and composite polities in early Africa
• Oct. 2 - Chiefs, priests, and diversity in eastern Africa
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: What new sorts of communities did people invent for themselves as the settlement “frontier” closed?; were these “religious”, “political”, or what?; Be prepared to take: sixth map quiz.
    • Question(s) of the week: Around what local priorities did people of Bantu-speaking background in eastern and central Africa adapt their shared heritage to build diverse communities of their own?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 8 (pp. 115-21)
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 8 (pp. 144-49), ch 9 (pp. 158-77).
    • Susan Keech and Roderick J. McIntosh, “Finding West Africa’s Oldest City,” National Geographic, 162, 3 (Sept. 1982), pp. 396-418. (TOOLKIT IMAGES)
    • Susan Keech McIntosh, “Urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Vogel, ed., Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, pp. 461-72.

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Week 7 - COMPLEXITIES OF CENTRALIZING POWER 9500-1500 CE)

• Oct. 7 - Forest specialists, "Big Men" and lineage elders in Central Africa
• Oct. 9 - Militarization: the adoption of horses and Islam in "sudanic" Africa
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: oral traditions as history. Be prepared to take: seventh map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: Arabic sources, Islam: religion and history; reactions to Muslims, and/or commerce, in eastern and western Africa; how did Africans organize polities in ways unlike our notions of “states”, “empires”, or “kingdoms”?; how do Mande griots understand politics?; how do the lectures present “politics”?
    • Question(s) of the week: What does the Garden of Eden have to do with African history? What would Muslims view history in Africa?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, chs 6-7 (pp. 78-107), ch 10 (pp. 138-46).
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 5 (pp. 77-86), ch 7 (pp. 109-19), ch 8 (pp. 137-44 only).
    • D. T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (London: Longmans, 1965). Or any other scholarly edition. (ORAL TRADITION)

Compare: Nehemia Levtzion, “The Early States of the Western Sudan to 1500,” in J. F. A. Ajayi, and Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa (3rd rev. ed.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 138-43 (or pp. 123-28 in the 2nd ed.); and Ralph A. Austen and Jan Jansen, “History, Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun’s Chronology of Mali Rulers” History in Africa, 23 (1996), pp. 17-28. (TOOLKIT).

Compare further: Dora Jane Hamblin, "Has the Garden of Eden Been Located at Last?" Smithsonian, 18, 2 (1987), pp. 127-35. (TOOLKIT)

• Jan Vansina, “Western Bantu Expansion,” Journal of African History, 25, 2 (1984), pp. 129-45. (TOOLKIT)
• Jan Vansina, "The Peoples of the Forest," in David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin, eds., History of Central Africa (London: Longman, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 75-100 (part 2). (TOOLKIT)
• RECOMMENDED
• John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 1998), pp. 1-31.
• Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, "Patterns of Islamization and Varieties of Religious Experience among Muslims of Africa," pp. 1-10; Peter von Sivers, "Egypt and North Africa," pp. 21-28; Levtzion, "Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan to 1800," pp. 63-73 only; and Ivor Wilks, "The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest," pp. 93-101 only, all in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., The History of Islam in Africa (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2000). (TOOLKIT)
• OPTIONAL VIDEO - Basil Davidson, Africa: A Voyage of Discovery - Program 3, "Caravans of Gold".

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Week 8 - "STATES" AND STRATEGIES IN THE FORESTS (500-1500 CE)

• Oct. 14 - READING HOLIDAY - no class
• Oct. 16 - "States" and strategies in the western African forests
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to review: first mid-term examination.; Be prepared to take: eighth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: How did life in the forest differ from life in the savannas?
  • Reading
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 7 (pp. 119-23).
    • Graham Connah, African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), ch 6 (pp. 121-49) (part 2) (part 3). (TOOLKIT)
    • Review all preceding assignments

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Week 9 - RED SEA AND INDIAN OCEAN CONTACTS (500-1500 CE)

• Oct. 21 - Cattle and wealth in Southern and Southeastern Africa; Africanization of Indian Ocean Trade in Eastern and Southeastern Africa
• Oct. 23 - FIRST MID-TERM EXAMINATION
  • NO DISCUSSION SECTIONS
    • Question(s) of the week: How did people in eastern and southern Africa re-organize their lives around environmental resources, cattle, and commercial contact? What does that have to do with “ethnicity”?
    • Do we understand people along Africa’s Indian Ocean coast better in terms of their local heritages or the foreign religion they adapted? Place Great Zimbabwe in its African context.
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 8 (pp. 107-15), ch 9 (pp.122-31), ch 10 (pp. 146-56), ch 11 (pp. 157-69).
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 6 (pp 94-103), ch 9 (pp. 177-83), ch 10 (pp. 184-93).
    • John Sutton, "The African Lords of the Intercontinental Gold Trade Before the Black Death: Al-Hasan bin Sulaiman of Kilwa and Mansa Musa of Mali," The Antiquaries Journal, 77 (1997), pp. 221-42 (part 2). (TOOLKIT)
    • RECOMMENDED
      • Peter Garlake, The Kingdoms of Africa (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1990), pp. 69-92, (part 2).
    • Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, pp. 32-114.
    • Michael N. Pearson, "The Indian Ocean and the Red Sea," pp. 37-49; Lidwien Kapteijns, "Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," pp. 227-31; and Randall L. Pouwels, "The East African Coast, c. 780 to 1900 c.e.," pp. 251-58 (only), in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in Africa.

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Africa 1500-1800

Week 10 - AFRICA AND THE ATLANTIC ECONOMY

• Oct. 28 - The Atlantic slave trade - an overview from the outside
• Oct. 30- The inside story: strategies of using imports
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: What was the importance of the Atlantic slave trade, to Africa?; Be prepared to take: ninth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: Before 1800 or so, how was Africa different from other parts of the Atlantic world? How did people in Africa experience the same historical processes that were under way in Europe and the Americas after 1500?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 12 (pp. 170-80).
    • Walter Rodney, "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Journal of African History, 7, 3 (1966), pp. 431-44.
    • John D. Fage, "Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History," Journal of African History, 10, 3 (1969), pp. 393-404. (both TOOLKIT)
    • John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1500-1680 (2nd ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), intro, chs 1-3 (pp. 1-71). (Part II) (Part III)
    • OPTIONAL VIDEO - Basil Davidson, Africa: A Voyage of Discovery - Program 4, "Kings and Cities".

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Week 11 - STRUGGLES OVER THE ATLANTIC TRADE IN WESTERN AFRICA

• Nov. 4 - Militarists - "Slaving states" in Western Africa
• Nov. 6 - Merchants - trading diaspora and commercialization
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: “Sudanic empires” revisited; politics and protection or exploitation (collaborators or entrepreneurs)? Be prepared to take: tenth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: What motivated what sorts of people in western Africa to capture others, to keep some of them, and to sell others to Europeans as slaves? Compare the desert trade to Atlantic trade
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 13 (pp. 181-96).
    • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 7 (pp. 123-33).
    • Claude Meillassoux, "The Role of Slavery in the Economic and Social History of Sahelo-Sudanic Africa," in Joseph E. Inikori, ed., Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1981), pp. 74-99. (TOOLKIT)
    • WEBSITE
      • Jerome S. Handler, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record”
    • RECOMMEDED
      • Levtzion, "Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan," in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in Africa, pp. 73-86; and Wilks, "Juula and Expansion of Islam," pp. 101-06.

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Week 12 - ORGANIZING COMMERCE IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHEASTERN AFRICA, 16TH-18TH C.

• Nov. 11 - Slaving frontiers in Central Africa
• Nov. 13 - Ivory and slaves in Southeastern Africa and Madagascar
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: issues raised by Manning; Be prepared to take: eleventh map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: How did people in central/southeastern Africa end up selling slaves to Europeans rather than ivory or other commodities to Indians?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 14 (pp. 197-211).
    • Joseph C. Miller, "The Paradoxes of Impoverishment in the Atlantic Zone," in Birmingham and Martin, eds., History of Central Africa, vol. 1, pp. 118-51 (part 2). (TOOLKIT)
    • Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 1-37.
    • RECOMMENDED
      • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 8 (pp. 149-57).

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Week 13 - THE "EUROPEAN" FACTOR BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

• Nov. 18 - Coastal Societies: "Europeans" in tropical Africa
• Nov. 20 - Foreign settlers in southern Africa
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: culture, race, and identities; Be prepared to review : second mid-term examination; Be prepared to take: twelfth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: In what ways were the people of the coast “European”, and how were they “African”? Did either matter?
  • Reading
    • Shillington, History of Africa, ch 9 (pp. 131-37), ch 15 (pp. 212-25).
    • Manning, Slavery and African Life, pp. 38-85.
    • REVIEW
      • Miller, "Paradoxes of Impoverishment." 118-51 (part 2)(TOOLKIT)
    • RECOMMENDED
      • Newman, Peopling of Africa, ch 10 (pp. 193-201).
      • Pouwels, "East African Coast," in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds., History of Islam in Africa, pp. 258-61

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Week 14 - EXAM

• Nov. 25 - SECOND MID-TERM EXAMINATION
  • NO DISCUSSION SECTIONS (no map quiz)
    • Question(s) of the week: What was the “impact of the slave trade on Africa”? Or, is it better to ask “How did some people in Africa turn engagement with commercial economies on it Africa’s Mediterranean, Red Sea/Indian Ocean, and Atlantic coasts into the tragedy of slaving?
  • Reading
    • Manning, Slavery and African Life, pp. 86-148.

THANKSGIVING BREAK

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Week 15 -REVIEW

• Dec. 2 - Myths, history and historiography in Africa
• Dec. 4 - Final review
  • DISCUSSION SECTIONS -- Be prepared to discuss: the hard questions of African history; preparing for the final examination; Be prepared to take: thirteenth map quiz
    • Question(s) of the week: What are the most important questions of African history – (a) for people in early Africa, and (b) for us?
  • Reading
    • (complete assigned materials for the entire semester)
    • David Newbury, “Historiography,” in John Middleton, ed., The Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 299-305.
    • Joseph C. Miller, “History and the Study of Africa,” in Middleton, ed., Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa, vol. 2, pp. 305-11.
      

FINAL EXAMINATION - 12 December (Friday) - 2:00 PM

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