Africa in the Early Years of the 19th Century.

In the early part of the 19th century the political situation in the different countries
and regions of Africa was one of varying degrees of independence; and the social
Organisation still varied from the kingdom to the tribal. The following is a brief
summary of the position.
North Africa.
Morocco was ruled by the Filali dynasty (since the mid-7th century). There was
considerable trade with European nations - the French, British, Dutch - in spite of
some high-handed treatment of European emissaries. The possession of Ceuta had
passed from Portugal to Spain, which also still held Melilla.
Algeria was under nominal Turkish suzerainty. Algiers was still the main centre of the
Barbary pirates. Oran had been taken from Spain by the Turks.
Tunisia was ruled by Beys, originally appointed by the Turks, but becoming
hereditary in the 18th century. They paid tribute to the Sultan, but were otherwise
independent. Under pressure from the European powers piracy was abandoned as a
main occupation about 1820.
Tripolitania was virtually independent in the 18th century, but the Turks re-asserted
their authority in 1835 after a civil war. Piracy was still rampant at the beginning of
the 19th century.
Cyrenaica was practically free from Turkish control, and more or less in a state of
anarchy. In the 1840s it became the main base of a Moslem religious reform group,
the Senussi. Their leader, Mohammed Ben Ali as-Senusi, preached a return to the
simplicity of early Islam.
(In Egypt power was seized in the first decade of the 19th century by the Albanian
Mohammed Ali, whose descendants ruled until late in the century.
West Africa.
The Forest and Coastal Lands:-
Nigeria. On the disintegration of the Oyo Empire, Nigeria consisted of a large number
of states and communities, mainly of the Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa peoples. At the
beginning of the 19th century the Hausa states were conquered by the Fulani, a
lighter-skinned people with mixed Negroid and Hamitic features, who had penetrated
into Nigeria and the central Sudan from the west. (They are thought to be descended
from the rulers of' the ancient kingdom of Tekrur, in the Senegal river area, which in
the 10th to 15th centuries sometimes rivalled the empires of Ghana and Mali.) The
Fulani, ardent Moslems, set up emirates in northern Nigeria. Their religious centre
was Sokoto.
Ashanti and Dahomy were the main kingdoms in West Africa, The conquest of the
coastal tribes brought the Ashanti into political rivalry with the British stations an the
coast early in the 19th century. After several armed conflicts an uneasy peace
ensued, with British influence in the coastal area (which they called the Gold Coast)
increasing.
Further west were the ex-slave states of Liberia and Sierra Leone; and on the
"bulge” of West Africa -there were French settlements an the coast of Senegal, which
had started about 1650, and British in Gambia. The British and French had for long
fought for supremacy in “Senegambia”. Guinea and Ivory Coast were inhabited by
mixtures of peoples - Fulani and Mandinka in Guinea, and Mandinka, Mossi and Akan
in Ivory Coast.
The Sudan.
In the central Sudan the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu , which had reached its peak in
the 16th century, fell to the Fulani in about 1808, but was soon reconquered from
them. However, the ruling dynasty, which had reigned for 1000 years, was
extinguished. In the Western Sudan political power had reverted from the "Niger
Moors" to various tribes of the Mandinka (the original founders of ancient Mali).
East and South Africa.
The Swahili area of the East African coast (Kenya and Tanganyika) was controlled by
the Arabs from Oman. In 1832 the Sultan of Oman transferred his court to Zanzibar;
and the Sultans of Zanzibar extended their influence along the coast from Mogadishu
to the Portuguese-controlled territory of Mozambique.
Inland were the kingdoms of Buganda, Rwanda and Burundi, and the Kikuyu, Masai
and Luo tribes. Buganda was one of the most advanced kingdoms in East Africa. The
people lived a peaceful and orderly existence in spacious dwellings - which, in the
absence of suitable stone or clay, were constructed of grass and reeds.
In Zimbabwe the Rozvi kingdom was destroyed and Great Zimbabwe devastated in
1830 by an invasion from the south, caused by the northern movement of the Bantu
Zulu people who had formed a nation in Natal. The Zulus then founded a Matabele
(Zulu) kingdom among the Shona of Zimbabwe.*
Somalia was still divided into many small Somali states. (Ethiopia. During the 18th
and the first half of the 19th century the power of the Kings of Ethiopia dwindled,
and the country was in a continual state of turmoil.)
Angola and the Congo basin were largely controlled by the Portuguese. Both
territories had suffered very severely from the slave trade.
Madagascar. By the end of the 18th century the Hova, the lightest coloured of the
peoples of the island, had established supremacy over most of the island. The French
had intermittently held stations there and exerted considerable influence; but the
Hova Queen Ranavalona, who reigned from 1828 to 1861, pursued a policy of
excluding all Europeans, and foreign commerce almost ceased.
As with the political and social organisation, the way of life in Africa also varied,
basically between the more advanced peoples of the coastlands and the less
advanced in the interior but perhaps the latter had the benefit of a calmer and more
unhurried existence in which the community spirit prospered.
Educationally, Islam played a prominent part in the lands in which it was
predominant - the north, the east coast, and to a lesser extent West Africa. For
many centuries Arabic was the language of business and learning for Moslem
Africans, and the Arabic script their medium of writing; but at some time between
the 16th and 18th centuries Africans began to write their own languages, using the
Arabic letters. Books, at first for religious purposes, appeared in Swahili, Hausa,
Mandinka, Fulani and Yoruba.
Apart from the Christian Nubian kingdoms in the 6th to 13th centuries, Christianity -
until the coming of the Portuguese - played little part in African history (except in
Ethiopia which has been basically Christian since the 4th century, and in Egypt where
there are still a million or more Christians of the Coptic Church). European
missionaries started activities in Africa in about 1500, but Christianity did not
become at all widespread until the later part of the 19th century.
The Africans' love of music continued unabated. Various instruments were played,
but pride of place was taken by the drum. It was used for many different purposes,
including dancing, drama, ceremonies, and sending messages. The royal drums were
often an important symbol of kingship, through which the king communicated with
his ancestors. Some of these drums measured 12 feet across.
* The Zulus later came into conflict with both the British and Dutch in South Africa.
The Dutch had first settled in South Africa in 1652, and the colony had been taken
over by Britain in 1806. During the mid-19th century both the British and the Boers
(the Dutch South Africans) advanced from the original Cape Colony eastwards and
northwards, the Transvaal and Orange Free State being occupied by Boers
dissatisfied with British rule.
Chapter 12. European Exploration 1770-1870.
Exploration of the interior of Africa by Europeans, in search of geographical and other
knowledge of the continent, and not start until- late in the 18th century. Previous
expeditions for any distance into the interior - mainly by the Portuguese in the south
- had been basically in search of trade or of slaves for the slave trade.
The new phase of exploration, starting in the 1770s, was fraught with many
difficulties peculiar to Africa. The tropical climate and diseases of central and west
Africa were a great hazard to the European; the tribes of the interior, seeing in every
European an emissary of the slave trade, were naturally often hostile; and in Moslem
areas the European had to contend with Moslem fanaticism. A high proportion of the
early explorers died or were killed.
Some of the earliest were two Scotsmen - James Bruce, who went through Ethiopia
and the Sudan and traced the course of the Blue Nile in 1770-72; and Mungo Park,
who was drowned on his second attempt (in1805) to find the source of the Niger. In
the south- east the Portuguese de Lacerda died in 1798 near Lake Mwera in northern
Zambia, having reached there from the Zambezi; and in the first decade of the 19th
century two half-caste Portuguese crossed southern Africa from Angola to the
Zambezi.
Between 1820 and 1834 several British expeditions explored northern Nigeria, the
first expedition starting from Tripoli and going to Nigeria via the Kingdom of Kanem-
Bornu. Later expeditions reached northern Nigeria from the west and south. The
leaders were the Naval Commander Hugh Clapperton and - after his death from
dysentery - his ex-servant - Richard Lander, who also died after being wounded in an
affray with Africans. Clapperton was the first European to publish descriptions of the
Hausa states from personal experience.
The first European to reach Timbuktu was the Scotsman Major Laing in 1826. He was
murdered on leaving it. Two years later the Frenchman René Caillié, having learned
to speak Arabic, disguised himself as an Arab and joined a Mandinka caravan
travelling inland from Senegal. He reached Timbuktu, stayed there for two weeks,
and then joined another caravan crossing the Sahara to Morocco - becoming the first
European to return alive from Timbuktu.
The first non-Africans to penetrate far into central Africa were Arabs from Zanzibar,
one of whom crossed the continent to Benguela in Angola in 1848. Then came the
best-known of all explorers of Africa, the Scottish doctor and missionary David
Livingstone. In 24 years (1849-1873) of travels over a third of the continent - from
the south to the equator - he not only vastly increased European knowledge of
central Africa, but by his interest in the Africans and their welfare, his kindness and
gentlemanly behaviour towards them, he was trusted and revered by them wherever
he went. His journeys were unhurried, allowing time for meticulous observation
and often delayed by fever or dysentery - and sometimes by slave traders, against
whom he raised a strong feeling in Europe which greatly contributed to the final
extinction of the trade.
Amongst Livingstone's achievements were the crossing of the Kalahari desert, the
crossing of central Africa in both directions, and the discovery of Victoria Falls and
Lake Nyasa*. In a search for the source of the Nile, starting in 1866, he was out of
contact with Europeans for four years until met at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika by the
Welshman Henry Horton Stanley, journalist and explorers who had been
commissioned by an American newspaper to find him. Still exploring, Livingstone
died of dysentery in 1873. His body and all his instruments and papers were carried
by his faithful African porters 700 miles to Zanzibar.
Meanwhile detailed exploration of the land between Timbuktu and Lake Chad had
been carried out by the German Heinrich Barth in the 1850s; and the British Richard
Burton, John Hanning Speke, Samuel Baker and James Grant, in expeditions in the
north-east in the 1850s and 1860s solved the problem of the sources of the Nile.
In the later part of the century interest in Africa had been so inspired by the example
of Livingstone and other pioneers that it became almost crowded with explorers and
missionaries.
* On his journey along the west coast of Lake Nyasa, Livingstone was appalled at the
activities of the Arab slave traders among the Malawi tribes.