African History

• Impacts of the slave trade?

  • trauma
  • militarization and centralization of power
  • demographic decline
  • people being exported, while textiles, guns and luxury goods are imported
  • loss of economically productive members of economies
• what is chattel slavery?

  people as mere object, commodities to be bought and sold
• clientship?

  voluntarily entering into a relation of dependence.
• how is clientship different from chattel slavery?

  you can leave the relationship

  usually the result of being in a desperate situation
• pawnship?


  people used as collateral on a loan
• example of pawnship?

  usually doing some type of favor to pay off a debt
• impact on african economies of abolition of transatlantic slave trade?

  legitimate commerce

  collapse of some slave based states that could not adjust

  more coercive forms of slavery in Africa itself, that is, even more chattel slavery

  spike in slave trade on East African coasts
• Jihad of the spirit - name 2 important names?

  Nana Asma’u

  Usuman dan Fodio
• Who was Nana?

  An educator and the daughter of Usuman, the Fulani scholar who launched jihad against the emits of Hausaland in the early 1800s and founded the Sokoto Caliphate
• When was the Sokoto Caliphate founded?

  founded following a Jihadi war (1804)
• Was the Sokoto Caliphate the largest state in sub-sharan African pre-colonial era?

  Yes
• Christian Missionaries in the 19th century, name an important name?

  Samuel Crowther
• What were the 3 C’s during Christian Missionary acitivity?

  Christianity

  Civilization

  Commerce
• what was seen as civilization by European missionaries?

  they viewed practices like polygamy, nakedness, witchcraft and other practices as barbarous and had to be suppressed

  Making of “black Englishmen”
• What was the role of legit commerce?

  Trade in goods would prove more appealing than trade in people

  legitimate commerce actually created more slavery in Africa
• who was and wasn’t successful in missionary work and why?

  Young African men were more successful in converting people. Because they were better able to translate Christianity to the customs and beliefs of native peoples
• when did most christian conversions take place?

  During the 20th century after European conquest.
• Why did Christian conversions take place when they did?

  Because of the efforts of African spiritual figures.

  The trauma and dislocation caused by conquest and economic change conditioned people to be more open to new ideas that might anchor them.
• what was the appeal of Christianity to those who did convert?

  a new language of dignity with a new moral universe

  curiosity about new ideas

  access to European education

  mission stations provided protection and a community to vulnerable people
• What were the politics of translation?

  the young Africans who did the work of translating biblical stories into indigenous languages embedded their own political philosophies into the stories

  the publishing of bibles defined tribes” and ethnicities, drawing boundaries around language where there had not been