B00454342
AFST/HIST 283A, Introduction to African History
December 16, 2013
1. (a) Africans and Europeans had religious relations. The spread of Christianity was introduced by the Byzantines, specifically in the Horn of Africa and the Nile Valley. They also had political and economic relations. When the European countries and empires, such as the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, interest in Africa increased, they began to impose their rule on Africa. Europeans saw an opportunity for personal benefits in Africa because of its plethora of natural resources. These empires practiced mercantilism. European nations were the mother countries of Africa. The Europeans would use the colony for natural recourses and once these resources were obtained they would produce goods to sell back to the colonies. Another economic relation between the two was slavery. During the Atlantic Slave Trade, Europeans would buy and sell slaves from Africa. This also resulted in sexual relations between Africans and Europeans, resulting in mixed races.
(b) In North and West Africa the Asians and Africans had religious, political, and economic relationships. The trade routes between Asia and North Africa are ancient due to the accessibility through the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb. These trade routes allowed culture, traditions, religion, and ideas to culturally diffuse between the two countries. Religiously, the spread of Islam was mainly due to the expansion of the Muslim political system. Muslims were seen as liberators from the harsh rule of the Byzantines, so the Africans welcomed them. The Muslim government in North Africa allowed religious freedom.
2. (a) African Traditional Religions (ATRs) are pantheistic. The power of a god is manifeste...
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... literate and was educated about the world. These elites formed social organizations, independent churches, and newspapers. Once independence was achieved Africans struggled taking control of the economy because they had no prior training, but politically they had some success. Therefore, African poverty was a result of colonial exploitation by the capitalist west. They became very dependent on trade, specifically imports, many of which came from their previous colonizers. However, colonization and decolonization expanded connections between Africans and the world beyond its borders. After decolonization, Africans increased their mobility out of the continent, furthering the cultural diffusion and Westernization of their customs, traditions, and beliefs. They also have altered the cultures of other peoples by influencing aspects of culture such as music and sports.
The African empires, kingdoms, and cities had many achievements before the arrival of the Europeans. Some of these achievements had influences many other places in the world. Three major achievements were the trading systems, their military forces and strengths of its people, and the wealth and success.
In conclusion, during the 15th and 16th centuries Europeans visited the Atlantic Coast in the African states to observe for gold and silvers. They took advantage of the Africans to get their desires when the Africans acknowledged them to be equal which drove into Africa’s downfall.
African society used bodies of water such as the Nile, the Red Sea, and many more to transport goods across the continent and generate profit. For example, the city of “Aksum reached its height between 325-360. Aksum’s location made it an important international trading center.” After analyzing the map of trade routes in Document 1, it is clear Aksum was strategically built to have ties to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. These two bodies of water give the city the freedom to import and export goods. Additionally, this work of trade did not come without reward. Cities who succeeded in the business became overly wealthy and had surpluses of gold and other riches. A king, Mansa Mansa, who expanded the Mali kingdom to be twice the size of Ghana, was not afraid to show his wealth as he showered other cities in riches out of generosity. In Cairo, Egypt, “there was no person, officer of the court, or holder of any office of the Sultanate who did not receive a sum of gold from him.” This is just one of the many examples of wealth in african cities and empires. What is impressive is the fact that before European trade became an influence, African people had already created a successful and very profitable system of
Africans felt the impact of European exploration through the slave trade, the rise of new nations, and the rise of European power in Africa. Europeans entered into the slave trade taking thousands of native Africans from their homelands. Due to profits gained from slave trade, many new African states were settled including the Asante Kingdom and Oyo Empire. Europeans like the British, French, and Dutch
Prior to the 19th century, the Europeans traded mainly for African slaves. It turns out they were not immune towards certain diseases and therefore had an increasing risk of becoming sick. For years to come this continued, but not much land was conquered. Eventually, conference between only the Europeans was held to divide up the land appropriately, and the scramble for Africa began. The driving forces behind European imperialism in Africa were expanding empires, helping natives, and natural resources.
With Europe in control, “the policies of the governing powers redirected all African trade to the international export market. Thus today, there is little in the way of inter-African trade, and the pattern of economic dependence continues.” Europeans exported most of the resources in Africa cheaply and sold them costly, which benefited them, but many Africans worked overtime and were not treated with care.
The Americans of African and European Ancestry did not have a very good relationship during the Civil war. They were a major cause of the Civil War. But, did they fix or rebuild that relationship after the war from the years 1865 to 1900? My opinion would be no. I do not believe that the Americans of African and European ancestry successfully rebuilt their relationship right after the Civil war. Even though slavery was finally slowly getting abolished, there was still much discrimination against the African Americans. The Jim Crow laws and the black codes discriminated against black people. The Ku Klux Klan in particular discriminated against black people. Even though the United States government tried to put laws into the Constitution to protect black people, the African Americans were discriminated in every aspect of life from housing, working, educating, and even going to public restrooms!
Slavery. Many people today would like to forget that part of America 's past but, for African Americans, it is not so easily forgotten. For African Americans, life in America has been tumultuous to say the least. Since those first few horrendous centuries, African Americans have been making strides towards a better existence. Things are better now because of the countless African Americans who strived and believed that things could be better for their people. Even though African Americans still have a ways to go, African Americans have come a long way over the course of 100 years because the foundation of the NAACP, the Harlem Renaissance, the "I Have A Dream" speech, and the fact that an
Slavery is a legally recognised system in which people are considered the property of another. A slave has few rights and could be bought or sold and made to work for the owner without any choice or pay. The owner controls the slave's life and labour. Slavery is closely associated with racial prejudice, the belief that one race is superior to another.
Imperialism in Africa took root in the late 19th century when European nations divided up the continent for their own benefit. Each nation practiced a certain type of rule over the Africans of which they conquered. For example, the Germans, the Dutch, and the French used the practice of Direct Rule over their colonies in Africa. This system is characterized by the colonizers need for the colonized to become assimilated into their culture. The purpose of this was to make the African people “civilized” and act like Europeans. The governing administrations forced on the native inhabitants by the colonial power were meant to undermine those institutions set in place by the indigenous people. By taking over the community’s government on all levels,
The major theme of Module Three is the rapid expansion of European empires during the 15th and 16th centuries and its eventual impact on the African slave trade. While there were many components that contributed to the exploration and growth of European empires, it ultimately came down to two key forces that continued to stoke the engines of expansion; religious zeal and trade. Certainly there were plenty of non-Christians in the eastern hemisphere and most of the goods that Europeans wanted could be imported from Asia and India. However, the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese and the Japanese were hostel towards Christianity; and the established trade routes out of Asia and India were controlled by Muslims, all of which did not have any interest in European exports.
The United States rests upon a foundation of freedom, where its citizens can enjoy many civil liberties as the result of decades of colonial struggles. However, African Americans did not achieve freedom concurrently with whites, revealing a contradiction within the “nation of liberty”. It has been stated that "For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place." African Americans gained freedom through the changing economic nature of slavery and historical events like the Haitian Revolution policies, whereas whites received freedom
The spread of Islam in Africa had taken course from a number of factors, including external and internal forces. After my analyzing of the spread of Islam in Africa, I have gather three main themes that stuck out during the expansion of Islam: Islam and trade, the conversion conditions of Islam, and the economics/political development involving Islam. These three themes provide great insight on how Islam started to spread through out Africa. Through trade the culture and religion of Islam was spread to many different areas. This correlates to the conversion of different people, which helped spread Islam. By these conversions Islam was able to establish Islamic states, which played a factor in the development of strong economic and political
(a) Africans and Europeans have relations that date all the way back to the origins of humans and human migrations. Scholars have hypothesized that Homo erectus found in Europe about 800,000 years ago originated and migrated from Africa Europeans and Africans also had religious relations; which is evident from the spread of Christianity, introduced by the Byzantines, throughout Africa specifically in North Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Horn of Africa. Aside from religious relations, Africans and Europeans also had economic and political relations as a result of European colonization and conquest of the African regions. Economic relations were a result of Europeans coming into Africa and taking natural resources to benefit from in the production of goods and trade. Another specific example of economic relations between Europeans and Africans is the practice of mercantilism, in which European nations were the mother countries and countries of Africa were the colonies. As the mother country, Europeans, would take natural resources from the colony, African regions, to produce goods, which would then be sold back to the colony. This also attributed to the political relations between Africans and Europeans because the economic desires of the Europeans often led to them controlling the Africans to maximize profit and their own personal benefits; which is directly related to slavery, one of the biggest relations between Africans and Europeans. Slavery and the slave trade in turn created social relations because slaves were considered to be a class of their own. Another social relation that resulted from slavery was the creation a “new race” known as the...
In order to properly understand the effects of colonization, one must look at its history. Most of Africa was relatively isolated from Europe throughout early world history, but this changed during the 17th to the 20th centuries. Colonization efforts reached their peak between the 1870s and 1900 in the “Scramble for Africa” which left the continent resembling a jigsaw puzzle Various European powers managed to colonize Africa including Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. This intense imperialist aggression had three major causes. The primary reason was simply for economic gain. Africa is refuge to vast, unexplored natural resources. European powers saw their opportunity and took it. Another motive was to spread the Christian religion to the non-Christian natives. The last major incentive was to demonstrate power between competing European nations. African societies did try to resist the colonial takeover either through guerilla warfare or direct military engagement. Their efforts were in vain, however, as by the turn of the century, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained not colonized. European powers colonized Africa according to the guidelines established by the Berlin Act (1885). Many of the colonized nations were ruled indirectly through appointed governor...