Nation Building and Reform in Africa 1700-1900 and Summary
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 9, Lesson 9
A discussion of the interactions between African kingdoms and European nations between 1700 and 1900, focusing on the Atlantic slave trade and the resulting economic and political changes in Africa; detailing the eventual decline of the slave trade and the transition to other forms of commerce, as well as the increasing European interest in colonizing the African continent.
As Europeans became more interested in Africa, knowledge about the African continent and its people slowly spread to other parts of the world. Africans initially had minimal contact with Europeans, primarily in coastal areas. However, by the 1700s the Atlantic slave trade offered a new economic outlet opened for those African rulers and merchants who participated in the sale of human beings. The Atlantic trade had a significant economic and political impact on West and Central Africa, but other important developments were also occurring across the continent.
Initially peripheral actors on the African continent, Europeans spread the commercial revolution along the Eastern and Western sides of the African continent. In the centuries leading up to the Atlantic age, the ancient empires Ghana, Mali and Songhay dominated West African history. Before the opening of the Atlantic trade, most polities in West Africa were economically oriented toward the trans-Saharan trading networks with links to the Middle East. It was initially the imports of American tobacco, peanuts, corn, cassava and new kinds of beans that helped drag West Africa into the commercial activities of the Atlantic world. Later, imports of firearms in exchange for enslaved people changed the political tapestry of West Africa and strengthened coastal regions. The Portuguese began the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century, while the Dutch, English, French and Danish became substantially more involved in the 17th century. As sugar and tobacco plantations began to develop in the New World the demand for labor increased. Trading companies, such as the English Royal African Company (RAC), started to build their trading monopolies along the West African coast. Initially focused on the gold trade, the RAC would dominate the English slave trade until its abolishment in 1807.
In the western part of Africa, after the fall of the Songhay empire in 1492, small and medium size kingdoms arose in the regions south of the Niger Bend and upstream along the Niger River. One of these kingdoms, the Mandingo kingdom of Segu, developed in the heartlands of the former Mali Empire. Its power rested on an army of enslaved people. North of Segu, in the Sahel region, the Soninke kingdom of Jaara dominated the area. In this part of West Africa, a mix of class and caste institutions controlled access to political authority and economic activities. To the east of the Niger Bend and north of the rainforest, the Mossi kingdoms, whose rulers used cavalry-based armies, started to arise in the 16th and 17th centuries. Juula merchants traded in the Mossi capital towns and connected the Mossi regions to the trans-Saharan and West African commercial networks. Further west in the Senegambia region, along the Gambia and Senegal Rivers, the Jolof state and the kingdom of Kaabu dominated the area politically and economically. Their leaders became increasingly involved with Portuguese and later Dutch and British merchants.
In the 16th century, three states gained importance due to their strong ties to the Atlantic slave trade: Oyo, Asante, and Dahomey. Another important state in this region, the kingdom of Benin located in present-day Nigeria, although it participated in the slave trade it primarily focused on other forms of trade. During the 15th and 16th century, Benin experienced its most significant expansion. Such growth happened in the 15th century under the warrior kings Ewuare (c. 1440) and Ozolua (c. 1481) and in the 16th century under Esigie (1504), Orhogbua (c. 1550) and Ehengbuda (c. 1578-1608). The first contact with the Portuguese occurred in 1485, when Portuguese traders brought a cargo of guns and coconuts to Benin. Soon after, trade relationships were established between the king of Portugal and the Benin rulers, and commodities were exchanged. Over the ensuing decades ivory, cloth, pepper and other goods were exported to Benin in exchange for damask, silk, manillas and cowries.
While encounters with Europeans influenced the external politics of the Benin kingdom, Benin kings primarily dealt with the Igala kingdom, located to the east of the Niger-Benue confluence in the interior, as an intermediary. Portuguese missionaries brought Christianity to the Benin kingdom, and Oba Esigie’s oldest son and various chiefs converted to Catholicism. Strengthened by their victory over the Igala kingdom and the diplomatic exchanges with the Portuguese, Benin’s imperialist leaders now directed their efforts toward the coast, spreading as far as Lagos and Badagry and waging war against villages and towns along the way.
The 16th and early 17th centuries saw a period of relative stability and peace in the region. But a civil war broke out in the late 17th century. Conflicts over succession devastated the kingdom. Concerned over the sincerity of adoption and spread of Christianity, Pope Innocent XII (1615-1700) sent a Catholic mission to Benin to keep its rulers focused on spreading the faith. The mission determined that earlier efforts at Christianization had failed to take root as the churches had been converted to shrines and priests had returned to practicing African traditional religions.
While the 18th century remained relatively uneventful, increasing European pressure during the 19th century eventually placed the Benin kingdom under British jurisdiction. In 1892, the British signed a treaty with the Oba of Benin that also allowed for the opening of the kingdom to British missionaries and merchants. The Oba ignored the treaty and continued as usual. Sent to Benin in 1897, acting General consul James R. Philipps (1863-1897) tried to persuade the ruler to obey the treaty. Believing that the British planned to invade them, Benin soldiers killed Philipps about 25 miles outside the capital.
Consequently, a British punitive naval expedition arrived to establish British control. British troops occupied Benin City and looted houses, sacred sites, ceremonial buildings and the palaces of high-ranked chiefs and the Oba itself. The Oba and his eight wives fled into exile to Calabar while British officials hanged six chiefs in the Benin City marketplace. The looted artwork, which included a thousand metal plaques and sculptures known as the “Benin Bronzes,” was carried to Britain. This looting triggered one of the most significant controversies in modern time over stolen African art and its repatriation to Africa.
In the rainforest west of the Niger River, the Oyo Empire rose to power dominating many of the Yoruba city-states who had tributary relationships to Oyo. The key to Oyo strength lay in its reliance on a strong cavalry consisting of horses supplied by their northern neighbors. The Oyo conducted many wars against other Yoruba city- states to gain prisoners of war which could be sold to merchants involved in the Atlantic slave trade. As the demand for slaves increased, the Oyo developed into a major slave trading empire trading enslaved people.
Dahomey was another West African state heavily involved in the Atlantic trade. Founded around 1620, Dahomey was initially a small kingdom. By the 1700s, Dahomey exercised an increasing amount of control over the trade with Europeans while at the same time restricting their access to the interior. The Oyo attack of 1730 eventually made Dahomey a tributary to the Oyo Empire for about 80 years. While this changed regional power dynamics, the Kings of Dahomey continued to rule over smaller chiefdoms. In the Dahomey Army all female regiments, known as Amazons, fought alongside their male counterparts.
West of Dahomey lay the Akan kingdoms which emerged in the early 17th century. In the early 18th century, political power shifted to the rising Asante kingdom. A confederation of small inland kingdoms governed from the capital city of Kumasi; Asante became an important commercial hub for West African trading networks. Under the stewardship of Osei Tutu (1680-1718) and his successor Opuko Ware (1718- 1748) the Asante Confederation was transformed into a powerful empire. Starting with Osei Tutu, all Asante rulers took the title of Asantehene and received religious legitimacy through the Golden Stool which was provided by priests during coronation ceremonies.
The empire became known for producing gold and kola nuts, rivaling the cotton textile and indigo trade of the Hausa city-states northeast of Kumasi in the Sahel region of West Africa. The Ashanti kingdom became heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade selling prisoners of war down to the coast. It controlled territories to the north, such as the tributary Dagomba kingdom, and smaller Akan-speaking kingdoms to the south. One of the important imports both Dahomey and Asante made were European firearms which they acquired in exchange for slaves. By the 18th century both kingdoms could call upon about 10,000 soldiers armed with muskets while fielding armies upwards of 80,000 strong.
In the Sahel regions around Lake Chad the powerful, centuries-old kingdom Sultanate of Kanem-Bornu gained increasing influence. This influence reached west to the Hausa kingdoms as well as south and north of Lake Chad. In the second half of the 16th century Mai Idris Aloma (1564–1596), started to import firearms from north Africa and established diplomatic contacts with the Ottoman Empire whose troops had penetrated the Kanem-Bornu empire. The Hausa states had profited from their vicinity to the trans-Saharan trade and the savanna trading networks. Hausa traders travelled as far south to the coasts as well to the Asante areas, trading slaves, kola nuts, gold and ivory. Bornu became a center of Islamic teaching from which Islam spread to the Hausa city states.
In the early 19th century, the same region was shaken by military uprisings and Islamic Revolutions with the goal of reforming existing states that were ruled by nominal Muslims and dual practitioners of traditional African religions and Islam. These revolts were as much about Islamization and the establishment of a strict interpretation of Islam as they were about the quest for political domination and economic control. Some of the major ethnic groups involved in these reform movements were the Fulbe, who were mainly pastoralists but who had a more sedentary and learned elite.
The best-known Islamic reform movements in West Africa were those in the 18th and early 19th century in the highlands of Futa Toro and Futa Jalon located in modern-day Guinea. In the regions of the Hausa states, holy wars in the name of Islam were performed under the leadership of Uthman dan Fodio (1754-1817), his family and followers. Born into a scholarly family, Uthman dan Fodio had become a famous Islamic preacher and scholar who advocated for a purist practice of Islam. The jihad or holy war was directed against the Hausa kings who, despite being Muslims, continued to practice traditional African religions. The jihad resulted in the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1804. An Islamic State based on Sharia Law, the economy of the Sokoto Caliphate was based on agriculture and to a great extent on slave plantations. This made the Caliphate one of the biggest slave states of the time, boasting more slaves than even the United States. As the Islamic state expanded many of the Hausa kings were either killed or fled into exile. The Sokoto Caliphate lasted about one hundred years until its final defeat to European powers in 1903.
In 1807, the British Empire abolished its transatlantic, though slavery itself continued in the British colonies until 1834. The British Navy’s “Anti-Slavery Squadron” began to patrol the West African coast, capture ships with slaves on board, and resettle their human cargos in Sierra Leone. The United States also banned the import of slaves in 1808. The British used its military and economic might to encourage other European powers to sign anti-slave trade treaties. Afterwards, the slave trade rested primarily in the hands of illegal traders who developed tactics to smuggle slaves around British naval patrols. Domestic slavery was not abolished in Britain’s overseas colonies until 1834, in French colonies until 1848, in the United States until 1865, Cuba in 1886, and Brazil until 1888. More than 1.3 million Africans were still transported across the Atlantic between 1807-1888. Intellectual movements including the Enlightenment, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution had an impact on abolitionist thinkers and intellectuals. On the other hand, the demand for slaves in the New World had also started to decline in some regions. Modern machinery and overproduction made the importation of slaves in some of the sugar producing regions less profitable. In addition, Africans and people of African descent often rebelled against their masters making slave-based plantations less profitable and less productive.
As Europeans slowly outlawed the slave trade and slavery, they transitioned to what became known as “legitimate commerce” in African products like groundnuts or palm oil which replaced the trade in slaves, as the African continent also became a destination for the import of cheap products from Europe. As public interest in the interior of Africa increased, more geographical and anthropological studies were performed by European explorers. In addition, European traders backed by their respective governments became interested in controlling the African continent and maximizing profits.
Similarly, to West Africa, the western equatorial rainforest and the savannas to the south in what is today modern- day Angola became involved in the slave trade. As early as the 1500s, the Portuguese had started to circumvent the Kongo Empire in gaining control of the slave trade and had established Luanda as a major port city to which slaves captured in the interior were transported and then shipped across the Atlantic. In the 1600s, the Portuguese also established the coastal town of Benguela from which they secured slaves from the highland territories of the Ovimbundu kingdoms. In the 18th century, the merchants of the Ovimbundu kingdoms traveled as far as the Lunda kingdom but also to the areas of the upper Zambezi River to acquire goods and slaves.
The early 19th century also saw turbulence in southern Africa. The Nguni of the southeast described these as mfecane, the “crashing,” and the Sotho-Tswana referred to them as difaqane, the “scattering.” The mfecane emerged as conflict erupted between the emerging northern Nguni kingdoms over access to natural resources. Famine caused by a drought that lasted from 1802 until 1804 and intensified warfare between 1816-1819 rattled the region. In 1819, a minor chief named Shaka (c.1787-1828) consolidated the various Zulu groups into a single kingdom. He then expanded his borders from Tugela and Pongola into the Drakensberg foothills and started to demand tribute payments from the people between the Tugela and Umzimkulu Rivers. By the mid-1820s, he controlled most of the area of modern day KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Shaka developed a centralized government in which the king wielded absolute control. In the newly conquered regions, petty chiefs answered directly to Shaka. In 1828, Shaka was assassinated by his half-brother Dingane (c. 1795-1840) who made himself king. While it took Shaka ten years to establish the Zulu kingdom, his half-brother took less than a decade to lose it.
In 1795, the British government seized control of South Africa from the Dutch East India Company. One of the consequences of the establishment of British settlements in the region was the annexation of Natal. Thousands of Dutch settlers known as Boers fled Natal for the Zulu dominated lowveld. The Boers killed 3,000 Zulus in several pitched battles before settling south of Tugela, creating the short-lived Republic of Natalia (1839-1843). Tied up by a civil war in which Chief Mpande (1848-1872) usurped his brother Dingane, the Zulu remained too divided to deal with the Boers. In 1879, British military invaded the Zulu kingdom, beginning the Anglo-Zulu war that resulted in a defeat of the Zulu people and the absorption of their area into the Colony of Natal which later became part of the Union of South Africa.
SUMMARY
The period of 1700-1900 provided momentous change for the world. Ground zero for the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution, Europe witnessed a series of revolutions that challenged the old feudal social order. While Britain and France tried to liberalize their political systems, Germany, Italy and Russia struggled to modernize and unify. Across the Atlantic, Spain, France and Britain established massive empires in the Americas. However, as they struggled to exterminate or incorporate indigenous peoples into their empires, they had to deal with increasingly rebellious colonists. Beginning with the American Revolution in the late 1700s, one by one the provinces of English, French and Spanish America threw off their colonial chains. Meanwhile, on the African continent, Central African kingdoms declined as West Africa became embroiled in the Atlantic slave trade. By the late 1800s, a Scramble for Africa left almost the entire continent in the hands of European occupiers. As the world approached the twentieth century, the unresolved issues of colonialism, imperialism and nationalism would set the stages for the outbreak of world war in 1914.