Early History of Africa

I. Africa

A. Production of the surplus--throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, Europeans argued that Africans were “a people without a history”--or, at least a history that did not involve their dominance by Europeans.


1. West Africans--developed metalworking capabilities around 1000 BCE, about the same time as Eurasia--but independently of Eurasia, because they used significantly different techniques.

2. Agriculture--Sub-Saharan Africa domesticated different plants than Eurasia, because the plants that grow naturally through much of Eurasia will no grow in tropical or sub-tropical climates.


3. Trade--the creation of the surplus gave sub-Saharan Africans the opportunity to develop trade networks on the eastern coast of the continent--and connected them to traders from the Arabian Peninsula, India, and even the Far East.

a. The Slave Trade--from very early times, Africans provided other African people to slave traders. The early slave trade took place with Arab traders, who then transported the enslaved across the Sahara and sold them in slave markets in Middle East and Southern Asia--in relatively small numbers.

b. Early Plantation Slavery--also from early times, African slaves provided the labor on sugar plantations on some Mediterranean islands to cultivate sugar cane. As sugar cane cultivation moved out of the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic Ocean, slave traders and plantation owners thought nothing of transporting African slaves to these new centers of sugar can cultivation.




B. Climatic Differences

1. Eurasia v. Africa--the east-west orientation of the Eurasian land mass meant that people on the continent shared many food-raising techniques; Africa, because of its north-south orientation, did not share this advantage.

2. The Latitudinal Disadvantage--this north-south orientation of the continent means that many of the food crops grown domesticated in the Fertile Crescent did not become known in southern Africa until European contact


3. The Sahara--the northernmost portions of the continent of Africa are orientated toward the Mediterranean Sea, and share the foodstuffs and cultural practices of that region. Separating this fertile region from the rest of the continent is a huge swath of desert--the Sahara. Again, this inhibited the spread of Euro-Asian foodstuffs into regions on the continent where they could have grown


4.Equatorial jungles--another large part of the continent of Africa lies within dense equatorial jungles; while these areas are a rich source of plant foodstuffs for the peoples living within, again, most of these plants are not those first domesticated within the Fertile Crescent.


a. Domesticated animals--Equatorial jungles are also not conducive to raising domesticated animals--particularly cattle, which are a ready source of protein and clothing for those Africans residing just south of the Sahara--when they were able to import them. Again, those Africans living south of the tropic belt were not introduced to cattle until European contact