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.

The Slave Trade

.
The European colonists in America soon found the need for imported labour to work
on the sugar plantations and in the mines, and later on the tobacco and cotton
plantations. The Spaniards started using Negro slave labour in their West Indian
colonies early in the 16th century; and the Portuguese in the middle of the century
started sending slaves from Africa to Brazil. Other European nations soon joined in
this lucrative trade, and the slave trade became big business.
The trade went on until the 19th century, with Europeans of many countries taking
part in it - notably the British, French, Dutch and Danes as well as the Spaniards and
Portuguese. The British first engaged in the trade as agents providing slaves for the
Spanish colonies in 1562 - over 50 years before slavery itself was introduced into
British North America.
The traders operated from "factories" and forts established along the African coast,
mainly in West Africa, from where they exchanged European goods for gold, ivory
and slaves. By the end of the 18th century there were some 40 of these factories -
which sometimes changed hands as the nations competed with each other in the
trade. Altogether they were exporting perhaps between 70,000 and 80,000 slaves
annually.
The procurement of the slaves was sometimes by raids into the interior, or even
actual wars, but more usually by trading agreements with the local native rulers or
by providing them with military help against their African enemies. As the trade
expanded some African chiefs continued it with reluctance, but found it difficult to
withdraw. Some of the main European commodities supplied in exchange were guns
and gunpowder - and if an African chief stopped getting the guns he would be at the
mercy of more unscrupulous neighbours.
One of the worst features of the trade was the voyage to America. The slaveship
owners, in search of a bigger profit, packed more and more slaves into their vessels
- often on shelves across the holds which allowed no room to stand, or even to
kneel. The voyage lasted anything from three weeks to two months or more,
depending on the weather; and fever and hunger were often suffered in addition to
the appalling living conditions. Large numbers died before arrival.
It has been estimated that the total number of African slaves who reached America
and the West Indies in the course of the trade was about 9 to 10 million. It may well
have been more; and this does not include those who died on the voyage or those
who were killed in Africa in slaving raids or wars. Probably between a half and two
thirds of the total came from West Africa, most of the others from Angola and the
Congo, some from Mozambique.
Apart from the actual loss of manpower, the slave trade inhibited social and
economic progress in the African regions most affected. The trade degraded political
life, and encouraged the continuation of slavery in Africa; and while the European
nations were organising and inventing new means of production these Africans were
depending economically upon a trade which was totally unproductive - and which, by
the loss of the fittest members of the community, curtailed production.
Until late in the 17th century no one in Europe or the colonies seemed to see
anything wrong in the slave trade. Then the lead was taken by the Quakers in
England and North America in protesting against it. But it was another 100 years
before the British parliament, due mainly to the efforts of William Wilberforce, began
to consider abolition of the trade. It took Wilberforce 20 years to get Parliament to
agree; and in 1807 Britain ceased to engage in the trade. Denmark had already done
so. The other European nations followed, some less willingly than others. By 1850
the trade was almost ended. The last slave ship sailed in the 1880s.
Long before this both the British and the Americans (who became independent in
1783) started settlements in Africa for freed slaves the British in Sierra Leone in
1787, the Americans in Liberia ("the land of the free") in 1822. Both ventures, which
were organised by private associations, suffered a number of setbacks some financial
and some through the resentment of the local tribes due to the privileged status
given to the ex-slaves. The British base was Freetown, and British control was
gradually extended inland. Liberia was declared an independent republic in 1847.
Slavery itself was abolished by the European and American nations at various times
during the 19th century - by Britain in all her colonies in 1533, by the United States
in 1865 after the American Civil War, by Brazil (independent of Portugal since 1822)
in 1888. In Brazil the numbers of slaves had been substantially reduced during the
19th century, from nearly 2 million to about 700,000 at the time of abolition.
The subsequent history of the Negroes in the Americas is part of the history of those
countries rather than of Africa. Their contribution to Western music, singing and
dancing has been notable - for instance jazz and Negro spirituals, the latter made
world famous by the great American Negro singer Paul Robeson. And American
Negroes have provided a remarkable number of world champions in boxing and
athletics.
On the political side, one episode before the abolition of the slave trade and slavery,
should be mentioned. This was in the French colony of Saint Domingue in the West
Indies. During the Napoleonic Wars the slaves in Saint Domingue, led by Toussaint
L'Ouverture**, expelled the French and in 1804 established the Negro nation of
Haiti.
In the 19th century, while the Atlantic slave trade was dwindling, another slave trade
grew up in East Africa. The Arabs who ruled in Zanzibar and other places an the east
coast (see previous chapter), raided far into the interior for slaves, in partnership
with the Swahili traders. Some were sold to Arabian dealers, some to the French for
work in the Indian Ocean islands, some even to North America. However, by the
1880s this trade, like the Atlantic trade, had ceased.
* Manpower it includes women. Though the slaves were mainly male, there were
many women.
* Toussaint L'Ouverture, reputed to be the son of an African chief, was brought to
Saint Domingue as a slave and rose to the position of superintendent of other
Negroes on the plantation. He joined in a rebellion in 1791, and later raised and
disciplined a Negro army. He led a further insurrection in 1796. His armies defeated
a French force sent by Napoleon, but Toussaint L'Ouverture was captured and died in
a French prison.

North Africa from the 15th to 19th Centuries.

The 15th and 16th centuries in North Africa were a period of struggles between
dynasties, insurrections, raids, and near anarchy. During this period, too, the
Spaniards and Portuguese obtained a foothold in the ports of the Mediterranean
coast. In 1415 the Portuguese captured Ceuta in Morocco; and the Spaniards took
Oran in Algeria in 1409 and Melilla in Morocco in 1496. In 1578, however, a
Portuguese crusade against the Moors in Morocco ended in disaster, in which the
King of Portugal and the flower of the Portuguese nobility were killed.
It was shortly after this, in 1590, that the Sultan of Morocco, Ahmed al Mansur, sent
an army across the Sahara which led to the destruction of the Songhay Empire (see
chapter 5), and from which great riches were acquired. The reign of Ahmed al
Mansur (1578-1603) is regarded as a "golden age" in Moroccan history.
In the 16th century Spain and Portugal were confronted in the Mediterranean by the
Ottoman Turks, who had taken over the leadership of the Moslem world. After taking
Constantinople in 1453 (and so obliterating the remains of the Byzantine Empire) the
Turks conquered the whole of the Middle East (including Egypt in 1517), advanced
far into south-eastern Europe, and dominated the eastern Mediterranean. From
Egypt they extended their Empire along the North African coast as far as Algiers by
the end of the 16th century, after being opposed for a time by the Spaniards in
Tunisia.
Until early in the 19th century North Africa, except for Morocco, then remained under
Turkish suzerainty. But the Turks did not take much interest in ruling their vassal
states in North Africa, interfering little in the feuds of the native dynasties and tribes
provided that they paid their taxes - and the money to pay the taxes came mainly
from piracy in the Mediterranean. For some 300 years the headquarters of the
notorious pirates of the Barbary (Berber) coast was at Algiers, which survived many
bombardments and blockades by the European trading nations.
Morocco also took part in the piracy, extending it into the Atlantic.
By the 18th century the native rulers in Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica,
though nominally subject to the Sultan of Turkey, were virtually independent.
Chapter 9. Portuguese Exploration and
Colonisation.
Soon after the capture of Ceuta in 1415 the Portuguese, under an organisation set
up by Prince Henry (the Navigator),became the pioneers in European exploration to
the western coasts of Africa and the search for a sea route round Africa to the East.
The trade route to the East through the Mediterranean and overland to the Red Sea
and Indian Ocean had for long been dominated by the Arabs - and was also subject
to interference by the Barbary pirates of the Mediterranean.
In the first half of the 15th century the Portuguese discovered the Atlantic island of
Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. All were uninhabited, and the
Portuguese annexed them. In 1446 they landed and established trading posts in the
Senegal district of West Africa. In the south west they reached the Congo estuary in
1482, and later made settlements in Angola, with access to trade with the Kingdoms
of Kongo and Ndongo. In 1497-98 the Portuguese Vasco da Gama sailed round the
south of Africa and on to India, calling at the East African ports Malindi and Mombasa
on the way.
When da Gama returned to Portugal he described the great wealth of the Swahili
cities; and subsequently the Kings of Portugal sent fleets to capture and loot these
cities. The Swahili trading community was largely ruined, and some of the cities were
abandoned. But some survived, as did the Swahili culture; and at the end of the 17th
century the Portuguese were expelled from the East African ports north of
Mozambique by Arabs from Oman in south eastern Arabia.
Portuguese activity in Benin and Morocco in the 16th century has already been
mentioned (see previous chapters). Also in this century they tried, from settlements
on the Mozambique coast, to gain control of the gold mines of Zimbabwe -
unsuccessfully in the Rozvi Kingdom of southern Zimbabwe, but with more success in
the northern Kingdom of the Mwana Mutapas. In 1573 they persuaded the King to
give them possession of some mines and permission to settle along the Zambezi
river in northern Mozambique. But the settlers wanted more, and gradually increased
their influence over the affairs of the kingdom. In 1628-29, with hired African
soldiers, they defeated the King's forces, and a new treaty made him a puppet of the
Portuguese.
The same thing happened in Angola. At first on friendly terms with the King of
Ndongo*, the settlers' ambitions culminated in a war of conquest. This went on
intermittently from about 1580 to 1670, by when Ndongo was a broker kingdom; but
resistance continued, and Portuguese penetration of the interior was very slow.
The Kingdom of Kongo suffered the same fate. At first an ally of Portugal, Kongo
later became a target for military invasion - about 1665, when the King of Kongo
was captured and killed, and the independence of Kongo was ended.
One of the motives in these Portuguese conquests was the procurement of slaves.
When the Portuguese first landed in West Africa in 1446 they brought back, not only
gold, but a few slaves; and during the rest of the 15th century the trade for slaves in
return for European goods expanded partly to relieve Portugal's limited resources of
manpower.
The sale of slaves was no new custom in Africa (nor in Europe). In Africa there were
“rightless persons" who where subject to sale; and at first these were the people sold
to Portugal, where they became household servants or were trained as craftsmen.
Their lot in Portugal was probably little worse than that of the free, but poor,
Portuguese. A big change in the nature and extent of the slave trade, however, came
after the discovery of America and the beginning of European colonisation there in
the 16th century.
* In Ndongo the King's title was Ngola - which the Portuguese mistook for the name
of the country; hence Angola.

North Africa : The Arabs.

After the birth of Islam early in the 7th century the armies of the Semitic Arabs
quickly conquered the whole of the Middle East, including Egypt in 642. Later in the
century they went on from Egypt to the rest of North Africa, converting the Berbers
as they went. By the end of the century the Arab empire had reached Morocco. The
conversion was generally peaceful, the Berbers readily accepting Islam. About the
only section of the population not converted were Jewish communities (which had
been in North Africa for several centuries) and which were tolerated and treated well
by the Arabs.
The Arab invasions, however, were not unopposed. Byzantine resistance resulted in
the complete and final destruction of Carthage; and further west, in Algeria, there
was considerable Berber opposition. Though the Berbers accepted Islam, there was a
long period of anarchy and warfare.
From Morocco the Arab armies, reinforced with Berbers and led by the Berber Tariq,
moved on to Spain and conquered most of the county between 710 and 720. Apart
from some areas in the north the Moors, as they were called, remained masters of
the Iberian peninsula until late in the 11th century, and were not finally driven out
until the 15th century.* As time went on, and more came to Spain from Africa, the
Moors in Spain became more Berber than Arab.
Meanwhile in Morocco the Berber tribes united in a series of Moorish dynasties, under
the first of which Fez was founded as the capital towards the end of the 8th century.
Fez became - and still is - the great intellectual and religious centre of Morocco.
When the Moors were finally expelled from Spain intellectual refugees gathered in
Fez.
In the Arab world divisions soon appeared. Rival families fought for the Caliphate
(leadership of Islam), and there was a serious split between the Shiites and the
Sunnites. The Shiites held that the head of Islam must be a descendant of Ali and his
wife Fatima (Mohammed's nephew and daughter)**. There was also a third sect, the
Kharijites, who held that the Caliph could be any believer fit for the office. They were
at first numerous in North Africa, but few still remain.
These family and religious rivalries are exemplified by events in Tunisia. At the end
of the 8th century a dynasty was founded by the Aghlabids, who broke away from
the ruling Abbasid Caliphate and extended their control over some of Algeria and
Tripolitania. (The Aghlabids also conquered Sicily, which became another main outlet
for Arab learning into Europe.) At the beginning of the 10th century the Aghlabids
were overthrown by the Shiite Fatimids, who claimed descent from Fatima. (later in
the century the Fatimids conquered Egypt and founded Cairo, from which they ruled
for the next 200 years.)
In the 11th century there was a renewal of Islamic energy in North Africa,
accompanied by a further wave of Arab immigration. And at this time there arose in
the Sahara a sect of fanatical Berber Moslems, the Almoravids. In about 1060 they
founded Marrakesh and conquered Morocco, and then went on to Spain where they
temporarily arrested the Christian re-conquest.
In the middle of the 12th century some even fiercer and more intolerant Berber
Moslems issued from the region of the Atlas mountains in western and central
Morocco - the Almohades. They extinguished the power of the Almoravids, and
extended their empire in North Africa from Morocco as far as Tripolitania. (Cyrenaica
in these times was generally tied to the fortunes of Egypt.) The Almohades also
followed in the footsteps of the Almoravids in Spain, from which they were not
expelled until the middle of the 13th century (leaving the whole Iberian peninsula in
Christian hands except for Granada in the south).
The empire of the Almohades in Africa then declined and gradually broke up.
Separate dynasties were established in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania.
*In the middle of the 8th century the state of Cordoba, in Andalusia in southern
Spain, was founded by Abd al Rahman, son of an Arabian prince and a Berber
princess. In the following centuries Cordoba became the centre of a renaissance in
art, science and literature in which, while Europe was in a state of virtual intellectual
stagnation the,Arabs led the.western world. Cordoba became the leading intellectual
centre of Europe where students came from far and wide to study medicine,
mathematics, science, philosophy and music under Moslem Christian and Jewish
professors.
** The split still exists; but the great majority are Sunnites. The Shiites are strong
only in Persia and southern Iraq.
Chapter 5. The Early Kingdoms of the Western and
Central Sudan.
In early times the peoples of the western and central Sudan were subject to many
outside influences - from the Egyptians, the Kushites, the Carthaginians - but mainly
from the Berbers of the North African coastlands. The links were the trade routes
across the Sahara.
The Berber trade was largely for gold from the district south of the western Sudan, in
exchange for salt and manufactured goods. The greatly increased trade after the
introduction of the camel about A.D. 700 led to the formation of Berber states south
west of the Sahara. This helped to cause a greater degree of co-ordination between
the Negro tribes and the creation of the first large West African kingdom, probably
some time in the 4th century A.D. This was ancient Ghana, formed by the Soninke
people who lived in the grasslands of the western Sudan north of the headwaters of
the Senegal and Niger rivers. (Ancient Ghana was - rather confusingly in present-day
Mali, and a quite different land from modern Ghana.)
The empire of Ghana dominated West Africa for seven centuries, reaching its peak in
the 11th century. Based on the gold trade, the Kings of Ghana were immensely rich,
and powerful. King Tunka Manin, who ruled in the middle of the 11th century, had a
magnificent court in his stone-built capital of Kumbi Saleh, and is said to have been
able to field an army of 200,000 men.
Ghana, however, was unable to withstand Moslem invasions in the second half of the
11th century. The Moslem Arabs had been infiltrating the settlements in the Sahara
oases since the 7th century. Then, in the 1070s, Ghana was attacked by the armies
of the Almoravids of Morocco. Though the Almoravids retired or were driven out,
after destroying Kumbi Saleh, Ghana was permanently weakened. In the course of
the next 150 years it was absorbed and its place as the leading West African power
taken by the Kingdom of Mali.
Mali, of the Mandinka people, was the great empire in West Africa for about two
centuries, from the middle of the 13th to the middle of the 15th. Its territories
extended well beyond those of ancient Ghana. It rose to prominence under Mari-
Djata (the Lion Prince) and was at the height of its power under the Emperor
Kankan Musa early in the 14th century. On the way to a pilgrimage to Mecca,
Kankan Musa exchanged greetings and presents on equal terms with the Mameluke
Sultan of Egypt. (The kings of Mali had embraced Islam - and so became members of
a world civilisation.) Mali was famous for the wealth of its rulers, the peace and order
in its territories, and for its learned men - influenced by Islamic studies in law,
government and business affairs.
These advances made society more complex - and more divided. At the bottom were
those who had lost the right to be treated as free men, either through some serious
offence or by capture in war. They were "rightless persons" or "permanent servants'
and subject to sale, in effect slaves, but it was usually a form of slavery which was
tolerant and allowed them to work in much the same way as other people.
The pre-eminence of Mali was followed by that of the Songhay people of the central
Sudan, with their capital at Gao. The Songhay had her trading connections with the
Berbers for many centuries, and their Kings of Gao had accepted Islam early in the
11th century. At various times they had been subject to Ghana, and then to Mali; but
towards the end of the 14th century they threw off the over-lordship of Mali, and
then their power increased as that of Mali declined. Their prosperity grew as gold
began to come from the forest country south of Gao (modern Ghana).
The main founder of the Songhay Empire of Gao was Sunni (King) Ali, a warrior king
who reigned from about 1464 to 1492. He transformed a small trading kingdom into
a large empire, including in his domains the rich trading centre Timbuktu, which had
been one of the main cities of Mali. In the Songhay times Timbuktu became a
renowned centre of learning, known throughout the Moslem world.
Under Askia Mohammed (c 1493-1528) the empire expanded further, becoming as
extensive as Mali had been at its peak. A source of weakness in the empire, though,
was a conflict of beliefs and interests between the Moslem traders of the towns and
the country people who remained true to their old Songhay religion.**
Late in the 16th century Songhay came into conflict with the Sultan of Morocco, who
in 1590 sent an army across the Sahara to seize the sources of gold. The Moroccans
captured and looted Gao and Timbuktu, sending back much gold - and slaves - but
they failed to win control of the trade routes to the south. Twenty years later the
Moroccan leader in Timbuktu threw off allegiance to the Sultan, and the "Niger
Moors" remained as rulers there for nearly 200 years quarrelling among themselves
and oppressing the Negro tribes. The Songhay Empire was destroyed, and so was
the culture of Timbuktu.
As well as the three great empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhay there were many
other kingdoms in the grasslands of the Sudan. One was Kanem-Bornu, around Lake
Chad; and between Kanem-Bornu and the Songhay - in the central and western part
of present-day northern Nigeria - were the many city states of the Hausa people.
Kanem-Bornu and the Hausa kingdoms were created in about the 10th century, and
like the other empires in the Sudan were dependent for their prosperity on the
Berber trade. Kanem-Bornu reached its zenith at about the same time as Songhay.
The Hausa cities were noted for their leather goods and textiles. The most famous of
them was the walled city of Kano. The Hausa political and social organisation was
much influenced by the penetration of Islam in the 13th-14th centuries.
Another people who succeeded in remaining independent of the great Sudanese
empires were the Mossi, who occupied the basin of the upper Volta, south of the
bend in the Niger river. They are said to have a line of kings who have ruled for a
thousand years.
**Each African people had its own religion. Most of them believed in a single God in
Heaven who made the world, and also in lesser gods and spirits. They also believed
in the power of evil, as the work of witchcraft. The 'witch doctors' were fighters
against evil anti-witchcraft specialists.