Ancient Africa & African empires timeline

New Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2000 by Agatucci, Cora

14th-15th c.

Great Zimbabwe, impressive stone construction of the Karanga is a center of Bantu peoples that controlled a large part of interior southeast Africa. Ancestors of the Shona, the Karanga formed the Mwene Mutapa Empire, which derived its wealth from large-scale gold mining. At its height in the 15th century, its sphere of influence stretched from the Zambezi River, to the Kalahari, to the Indian Ocean and the Limpopo River.

EAST AFRICAN LITERATURE EMERGES: An early known example of East African literature, dated 1520, is an anonymous history of the city-state of Kilwa Kisiwani, was written in Arabic. Soon after, histories of East African city-states written in Swahili appeared, as well as "message" poems, usually written from a moral/religious viewpoint. Earliest known original Swahili written work is dated 1728: the epic poem Utendi wa Tambuka (Story of Tambuka). Swahili epic verse writers borrowed from the romantic traditions surrounding the Prophet Muhammad, then freely elaborated to meet the tastes of their listeners and readers.

1439

Portugal takes the Azores and increases expeditions along northwest African coast, eventually reaching the Gold Coast (modern Ghana). The Portuguese explorations were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a wish to bring Christianity to what they perceived as pagan peoples, the search for potential allies against Muslim threats, and the hope of finding new and lucrative trade routes and sources of wealth. Wherever the Portuguese-and the English, French, and Dutch who followed them-went, they eventually disrupted ongoing patterns of trade and political life and changed economic and religious systems.

1441

Beginning of European slave trade in Africa with first shipment of African slaves sent directly from Africa to Portugal. The first European nation to acquire a license for slave-trade was Portugal, which in 1444 proceeded to import four thousand enslaved Africans annually into Spain's American colonies. With the complicity and blessings of the Catholic church, the Portuguese dominated the gold, spice and slave trade for almost a century before other European nations became greatly involved.

SLAVERY IN AFRICA: It is true that African societies did have various forms of slavery and dependent labor, especially in nonegalitarian centralized African states, before their interaction with Arabs and Europeans that invaded Africa. Yet some scholars believe indigenous slavery was a relatively marginal aspect of traditional African societies. Many forms of servitude and slavery were extensions of lineage and kinship systems. Slaves and servants were often well-treated and could rise to respected positions in households and communities. African social hierarchies and conditions of servitude were mitigated by complex, extended kinship relationships, based on community, group, clan, and family. Ethnic rivalries and hostilities did exist, but the concept of race was a foreign import. Muslim conquests of North Africa and penetration in the south made slavery a more widely diffused phenomenon, and the slave trade in Africans-especially women and children-developed on a new scale. The adoption of Islamic concepts of slavery made it a legitimate fate for non-believers but an illegal treatment for Muslims. In the forest states of West Africa, such as Benin and Kongo, slavery was an important institution before the European arrival; African rulers enslaved other African groups, rather than their own people, to enhance their wealth, prestige, and control of labor. However, the Atlantic Slave Trade opened up greatly expanded opportunities for large-scale economic trade in human beings-chattel slaveryon an unprecedented scale. Expanding, centralized African states on and near the coast became major suppliers of slaves to the Europeans, who mobilized commerce in slaves relatively quickly by tapping existing routes and supplies (summary adapted from Stearns, Adas, and Schwartz).