Compare and Contrast State Development in Early Modern West and East Africa

Key Terms
Sunni Ali
Kingdom of Kongo
Songhay
Antonian Movement
Manioc
Middle Passage
Olaudah Equiano
Maroons
Creole Languages
Call-and-response
Queen Nzinga of Ndongo / Big Picture
Sub-Saharan Africa was influenced, like most of the rest of the world, by the establishment of global trading networks during the early modern age. European merchants, lured by the possibility of trading opportunities and profits, increasingly visited the west African coasts.The rise of wealthy port cities and powerful coastal kingdoms reduced, but did not eliminate, the traditional trans-Saharan trade routes. Slavery, both African and Islamic, had been a part of African life for centuries. The burgeoning Atlantic slave trade dwarfed its predecessors, however, and constituted the largest migration in history before the nineteenth century. Not only were millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery, but their home societies were often left in chaos. The integration of African and American society would lay the foundations for the complex African diaspora of the western hemisphere.
Learning Objectives

Compare and contrast state development in early modern west and east Africa.
Identify and discuss important features of early modern central and south African kingdoms.
Compare and contrast the spread of Islam and Christianity across Africa during the early modern period.
Discuss features of social change across Africa during the early modern period.
Explain the foundations and development of the Atlantic slave trade.
Understand the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa.
Explain the features, process, and legacy of the African diaspora.
Explain the development of African-American cultural traditions and the end of the slave trade.

Language Objectives

State the similarities and differences in state development in early modern west and east Africa.
Identify and discuss important features of early modern central and south African kingdoms.
State the similarities and differences in the spread of Islam and Christianity across Africa during the early modern period.
Discuss features of social change across Africa during the early modern period.
Explain the foundations and development of the Atlantic slave trade.
State the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa.
Explain the features, process, and legacy of the African diaspora.
Explain the development of African-American cultural traditions and the end of the slave trade.

Essential Understanding

1.Compare the decline of Songhay with the decline of the Swahili city-states of east Africa.

2.How was the kingdom of Kongo transformed by its contacts with the Portuguese?

3.What were the objectives of Dutch colonists in South Africa? What kind of colony did they establish? Compare these objectives to the Portuguese objectives in colonizing Angola.

4.In what ways did Islam adapt to the customs and traditions of sub-Saharan Africa? Consider Songhay as an example. Where had strict Islam taken root by the end of the seventeenth century?

5.Besides religion, what other changes came to sub-Saharan Africa as a result of increased contact with the outside world?

6.Compare the institution of slavery within traditional African society with slavery as practiced in Europe and the New World.

7.What was the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the societies of west Africa? Consider social, political, and demographic effects.

8.Compare the experience of slaves in the Caribbean, in Brazil, and in North America.

9.What are some of the enduring elements of African-American culture? What elements of a culture can survive the ordeal and disruption of slavery?

10.What factors ultimately led to the abolition of the slave trade and ultimately to the abolition of slavery itself?