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Untitled "Peoples of Africa" Paper

Fall 2005
Peoples of Africa
1577 words

  Before the onset of European colonization, the continent of Africa had its own thriving trade networks. Africa’s first step into a larger trading system came with the advent of iron smelting and gold mining. Contact with the Islamic world then brought on a trading network stretching far outside the continent, making Africa a global trader. This network was disrupted when the Europeans claimed various areas of Africa as their won, trying to make Africans conform to European ways. The new European trading system changed things for the better for Europe and for the worst for Africa, causing Africa to go from being one of the richest areas in the world to one of the poorest.

  Africa owes much of its past success to the advent of iron smelting and the gold trade. In 1000 B.C.E., states were rising in Africa, and in 300 B.C.E., the process of iron-smelting was discovered.

  “Africa was far more skilled in metallurgy than either Australia or the Americas. Most African societies were fully within the iron age when Europeans first made contact with them. And they continued to make iron and steel for several centuries after contact, in spite of competition from European imports.” (Bohannon 1988:7)

  Iron-smelting allowed for an ease in agriculture that had not been previously available, as Walter Rodney describes:

  “The single most important technological change underlying African agricultural development was the introduction of iron tools, notably the ax and the hoe, replacing wooden and stone tools. It was on the basis of the iron tools that new skills were elaborated in agriculture as well as in other spheres of economic activity.” (Rodney 1982:40)

  Iron had other important uses in Africa. Even in recent times, author Michael Jackson, in his studies among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, met a man who had a “mudbrick iron-roofed house.” (Jackson 1990:66) These new agricultural tools were by far the most important use, as their introduction produced “surpluses of given commodities which could be exchanged for items which they lacked.” (Rodney 1982:43) These surpluses led to growing populations, which in turn led to larger communities and increased trade.

  Although iron definitely played an important part in the growth of trade in Africa, gold played the most important role in the overall history of Africa’s trade. Africa’s gold fields were a great boon to them. Great empires rose due to the gold trade. “During the centuries of Mali’s greatness, extensive mining of gold began in the forest of modern Ghana to supply the trans-Saharan gold trade. The existing social systems expanded and strong states emerged to deal with the sale of gold.” (Rodney 1982:58) The wealth of these great empires is boasted of in epics, such as that of Sundiata: “If you want salt, go to Niani, for Niani is the camping place of the Sahel caravans. If you want gold, go to Niani... if you want fine cloth, go to Niani, for the Mecca road passes by Niani.” (Niane 2003:82) Berbers from the north brought the Africans exotic items from the Mediterranean world for this gold, and Africa’s great kingdoms became fabulously wealthy.

  Contact from the Islamic world brought African into global trading. In 711 C.E., the goal of conquest brought Muslims into North Africa, and the locals soon began to convert (for various reasons, including tax breaks). By the eleventh century, the majority of the people in North African were Muslim. (Hanson 1995:100) Berber traders, who previously had been feuding among themselves, were among the converts. Now that they had common ground to share, the feuding stopped and trade went more smoothly. Islam had spread throughout the Eastern and Western worlds, and thus Muslims had contact and access to a large variety of peoples and their goods. Through Muslim traders, Africans now had access to goods from Asia and Europe, and the rest of the world had access to Africa’s gold.

  Africa’s trade system in this period was focused in the sub-Saharan west and coastal east, which mirrored each other in that traders crossed a “Muslim ocean.” Berbers crossed the Sahara, and Arabs, Persians and Chinese crossed the Indian Ocean to trade with Africans on the “sahil” (Arabic for “shore,” which becomes “sahel” in the west and “swahili” on the east coast), which was an actual shore in the east and the edge of the Sahara in the west, for gold from the interior (Ghana and Zimbabwe). In return, the Africans received salt, fabric, Asian foods such as yams, and other materials from Europe and the and the far east (for example, in Kenya, Chinese china plates were set into gravestones). Through this system, Africans shared their gold with the rest of the world, including Europe, which would eventually want more.

  Europeans’ growing greed soon brought them to Africa, where their colonizing efforts usurped native systems of government and trade. Previously, Europe had had limited contact with Mediterranean Africa and other areas within their easy reach, but in 1498, the Portuguese were the first to sail around the Cape of Good Hope and make it into the Indian Ocean. This was soon followed by their sacking of the island trading city of Kilwa, “[intervening] militarily to secure access to existing trade networks... and [forcing] the Swahili to relinquish control of the export gold trade.” (Hanson 1995:104) This paved the way for further conquering, colonizing and exploitation of Africa by various European nations. Europeans soon saw that controlling Africa’s resources was much easier than trading for Africa’s resources. African territories were picked off one by one by European countries, who marked them up with boundaries which bore “little relation to natural divisions or to indigenous concepts of space.” (MacNulty 1995:43)

  The European way of governing and trading in Africa destroyed the system used by Muslim traders. Europeans shipped by sea, so all the important trade areas shifted to the coast. Areas that had been on the periphery of the great gold trading empires of sub-Saharan west Africa now became centers of trade. Around the areas where cash crops were grown, “economic islands” sprung up. These “islands” “have an important impact on surrounding regions, and by attracting migrant labor they provide linkages to rural areas often far removed from the actual sites of commercial production... thus, although relatively few in number, the major areas of urban concentration and commercial productions play and important role in articulating the overall pattern of African development.” (McNulty 1995:21) “Most of the present-day urban centers and transportation systems were designed with colonial objectives in mind. They were built to facilitate effective colonial administration and efficient economic exploitation.” Roads and railways lead to important ports and resource centers and “afforded little opportunity for internal circulation of goods or people.” (McNulty 1995:43)

  Europeans in Africa “tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs.” (Mudimbe 1988:1) “Traditional African economies are usually called ‘subsistence’ economies. Often, small villages... looked after themselves independently with little reference to the rest of the continent.” (Rodney 1982:43) Europeans forced Africans to produce “cash crops” by tactics such as holding women hostage until men filled their quotas. Africans were brought off of subsistence farming, in which they had everything they needed, and made to grow only one type of crop depending on where they lived and who was governing the area. The crop was then shipped off to Europe, where it was produced into its final product. By the time it got to Africa, it was too expensive for the people to buy. Europeans exploited African workers by paying them measly sums and making them pay taxes. Africans farming cash crops had no time to grow food of their own and so had to buy it with what little money they had left over. In this manner, Europe took one of the richest areas in the world and made it the poorest.

  Today Europeans still exploit Africa, if only more subtly. The effects of European colonizing are still felt today. “Most countries are still overly specialized and dependent upon one or more products.” (McNulty 1995:44) Africa’s thriving trade networks are gone; Africans themselves are limited to producing goods for tourists, who visit African marketplaces to “roam about the handicrafts area where they might bargain for a camel saddle or a bright cotton blanket.” (Stoller 1987:141) Unfortunately, Africa cannot just “go back” to the way it once was. Bohannon says it best:

  “[Africans] may actually be better off than they were before the colonial era, but the contrast between their relative poverty and the wealth elsewhere automatically makes them deprived. Africans, in their pre-colonial life, were not a deprived people. Lives of tremendous dignity and valued rewards can be lived without the trappings of Western civilization, but once the material possibilities are known, a new day has arrived.” (Bohannon 1988:16)

  The exploitation of Africa’s people and resources produced lasting effects which are still obvious in Africa to this day.

  In conclusion, Africa’s state today might have been incredibly different, had it not been for European interference with the local trading system. Africa was once incredibly rich due to their abilities in iron smelting and gold mining; Muslim contact and trade only furthered their wealth and power. It was European contact and greed that interfered with Africa’s growth into what might today be a rival of the Western world. Indeed, the Western world might not be as powerful as it is today had it not been for their exploitation of Africa’s resources and people.

Works Cited

Bohannon, Paul and Philip Curtin. 1988 [1964] The Myth and the Fact. In Africa and Africans. 3rd ed. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. 3-18.

Hanson, John H. 1995. Islam and African Societies. In Africa. 3rd ed. Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O’Meara, eds. Pp. 97-114. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jackson, Michael. 1990. The Man Who Could Turn into an Elephant: Shape-Shifting among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone. In Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Other in African Cultures. Michael Jackson and Ivan Karp, eds. Pp. 59-79. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

McNulty, Michael L. 1995. The Contemporary Map of Africa. In Africa. 3rd ed. Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O’Meara, eds. Pp. 10-45. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness. In The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy & the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Niane, D.T. 2003 [1960] Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Harlow: Longman.

Rodney, Walter. 1982. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.

Stoller, Paul, and Cheryl Olkes. 1989. In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.