Chapter 6: Central and Southern Africa

Chapter 6: Central and Southern Africa

They called themselves Bantu, which means "the people." They spread out from West Africa over 2000 years ago, settling in the

grassy savannas and the steamy rain forests of central and southern Africa. Some traveled to the coasts, where they built trading empires.

But European traders plundered these empires and took many people away as slaves. Nevertheless, the heritage of "the people" continues. Most central and southern Africans today still think of

themselves as Bantu.

Chapter 6, Lesson 1: The Spread of Bantu (pp. 136-139)

Lesson 1: The Spread of BantuTHINKING FOCUS

How did the spread of the Bantu-speaking peoples affect the peoples of east, central and southern Africa?

KEY TERMS• ethnolinguistics• migrate

Proto-Bantu-speaking people of Africa

• Linguistics is the study of languages, and ethnolinguistics is the study of various peoples through their languages. In east, central, and southern Africa, scholars have found four major language families: the Khoisan, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Congo-Kordofanian.

Bantu Languages

• Scholars now believe that proto-Bantu, the root language of all the Bantu languages, was the first language spoken by a people who lived in what is now eastern Nigeria or Cameroon between 500 B.C. and A.D. 200.

Migration• The proto-Bantu-speaking people of Africa

migrated south and east with their herds. • Savannas and grasslands served as grazing

ranges and travel corridors.• Some migrated, or moved to resettle, to the

South, some to the east. For the next 2,000 years, descendants of the original proto-Bantu speakers migrated across east, central, and southern Africa where they settled in diverse lands.

• See the Maps on the next slides

The Great Rift Valley

• This fertile valley, some 4,000 miles long and 20-30 miles wide, was formed in prehistoric times by a crack, or rift, in the earth's crust. Stretching north from Mozambique to Jordan in Asia.

• Along the equator, in the rain forest area of the Congo Basin, a large variety of animals and people inhabited the dense forest.

The Spread of Bantu Culture • Some scholars believe that overcrowding may

have caused proto-Bantu speakers to migrate. • Bantu-speaking people adapted to their new

environment by taking on the lifestyles of the local people.

• Most Bantu languages are spoken in the southern part of Africa, below an imaginary line drawn from Cameroon to Kenya. Today, this language family includes Swahili, Luba, Kongo, Kikuyu, Ruanda, Sotho, Zulu, and Xhosa, and more.

Growing Stronger

• Using iron, they made hoes, spears, axes, and fishhooks that proved to be much stronger and longer-lasting than tools made from stone, wood, or bone.

• Bantu speakers learned how to grow crops that had been brought from Asia, including bananas, new kinds of yams, rice, coconuts, and sugar cane.

Society of the Bantu Speakers

• Most Bantu groups were organized into villages, commonly ruled by a chief and a council of elders. Some were formed into kingdoms.

• Some Bantu speakers lived near the edge of the forest and relied on fishing and hunting. Others lived in farming and herding villages.

Lesson 2: The Rise of Coastal Trading States

THINKING FOCUS• How did East Africa become part of an

international trade network?KEY TERMS• monsoon• city-state

seasonal winds known as monsoons

• Arabs could trade with Africa (remember we talked about this in Unit 2)

• Every year without fail the monsoon blows from the northeast between November and March and from the southwest between April and October. So Arab merchants used these winds, called dhows, to propel their ships from Arabia down the African coast.

Swahili• The people on the mainland spoke Bantu

languages. After several centuries, their culture merged with the Arabian, Persian, and Indonesian traders', producing the Swahili language and culture. "Swahili" is the Arabic word for "people of the shore." Swahili speaking people live throughout east and central Africa.

These are the Monsoons

The Rise of City-States• Inland African groups brought gold and other

precious goods to the Swahili in the coastal cities to trade for foreign goods.

• Many Swahili trading ports became wealthy city-states.

• city-states, or independent states made up of a city and its surrounding territory. The rulers of the city-states grew rich from trade and from taxes they required merchants to pay on the goods that passed through their port.

What they got…

• Inland Africans brought ivory, grain, and sometimes slaves to the coastal cities to trade for foreign knives, farming tools, fabrics, and porcelain.

What it is today!

From Riches to Ruin• By the 1400s, East African port cities were

wealthy communities with mosques, palaces, and stone houses.

• The most prosperous city-state was Kilwa, the southernmost port on the Indian Ocean trade route. By 1100, traders in Kilwa controlled the export of gold and ivory from southern kingdoms. The local rulers and merchants became very wealthy from this trade.

Almost Like Rome!

• Gedi, a trading town built in the 1300s, also had a mosque, a palace, and large houses built of stone. These houses had bathrooms with drains and overhead basins to flush toilets. In addition, the city was obviously well planned. The streets were not only laid out at right angles, but they had drainage gutters as well.

Gedi

These ruins were once the entrance to the sultan's palace. Gedi was a 14th century Afro-Arab town on the Swahili coast.

Then, in 1498, the first Portuguese explorer arrived.

• Vasco da Gama came to town…• In 1505, the Portuguese fleet conquered

many of the city-states and sought to control their trade and plunder their wealth. (CANNONS go Boom!)

• By the late 1500s, Swahili groups had regained control of several ports from the Portuguese.

Lesson 3: The Rise of the Zimbabwe State

THINKING FOCUSDescribe some of the ways the Shonabenefited from their decision to settle on thesite now known as the Zimbabwe Plateau.KEY TERMS• plateau• oral tradition• malaria

The Builders of Great Zimbabwe

On the Zimbabwe Plateau of south-central Africa, Bantu-speaking people called the Shona founded a prosperous kingdom.

Between A.D. 1000 and 1300 they built the walled city of Great Zimbabwe.

The Shona were farmers and cattle raisers.

Great Zimbabwe

• www.suedafrikatour.de/.../great_zimbabwe.htm

• Above is a link to the Pictures and stories of Great Zimbabwe

• plateau, or raised, flat surface of land

Great Zimbabwe

The Ruins

• Scholars have learned a great deal about Zimbabwe's past from the ruins and also from the Shona's rich oral tradition. In the oral tradition, stories are passed down through time by one generation telling them to the next. An oral tradition preserves the history of a people without written records.

Where it is today…

"zimbabwe" means "houses of stone"

• Inside the walls are the remains of buildings where the rulers, priests, and artisans of Great Zimbabwe probably lived.

• Archaeologists have also found evidence of metal working and trade in copper, iron, and gold.

The Gold Mines of Zimbabwe • Originally the Shona made jewelry from the gold

they found in rivers, but they found they could exchange gold for imported goods from coastal traders.

• The Shona became skilled at mining gold underground after the 1100s.

• Through mining and trading gold, the Shona of Zimbabwe created a wealthy kingdom.

• Great Zimbabwe was Zimbabwe's capital and thriving trade center.

What the Gold got them

• The Shona found they could exchange their gold for Chinese silk, Indian glass beads, and fine Persian pottery.

• Archaeologists have found more than 60,000 mine shafts on the Zimbabwe Plateau. They have also discovered that mostly women and children mined these shafts.

The Fun Didn’t Last

• Historians think that decades of drought or poor crops brought about the state's decline.

• The people cleared more forests and repeated the process of wearing out the land.

The Breakup of Zimbabwe• In about 1450, the chiefs of Zimbabwe's gold-

producing provinces declared independence from Great Zimbabwe.

• Civil wars began to break out in 1490. • Portuguese traders engaged in friendly trading,

but the Portuguese sought increased wealth and power by taking control of Monomutapa's markets and gold mines. In 1570, they attacked the empire.

But…

• Portuguese forces had been greatly diminished by malaria. Carried by mosquitoes, this disease causes fever and chills, and often death. The Portuguese lost so many soldiers to malaria that their conquest attempt failed.

Lesson 4: The Kongo Kingdom (pp. 149-153)

THINKING FOCUS How did Kongo change after the arrival of

the Portuguese?KEY TERMS• currency• missionary• plantation

Typical West African Village

The Growth of Kongo

• The people of the Kongo descended from two clans of Bantu-speaking farmers who joined together in the 1300s.

• By the 1400s, the Kongo king, the Mani-Kongo, ruled about two million people from his capital in Mbanza.

AGRICULTURE• Mbanza was a rich farming area and a

prosperous trading center. • Farmers planted millet and sorghum on

the land around Mbanza. They gathered bananas, coconuts, dates, and citrus fruits from the surrounding forests, and they made oil, wine, vinegar, and bread from the fruit and sap of palm trees. In addition, the people hunted game for meat.

TRADE• Kongo traded with people to the north,

east, and west both by land and river. They traded salt from the sea, iron, copper, ivory, and raffia--a fiber made of palm leaves.

• As currency, or money, the Kongo traders used small seashells, called cowries, from the coast.

1482 • The lone Portuguese ship inched along off

the west coast of Africa.• The Africans there had never seen white

men. • It won’t be long now…

Trade, you want what?• But when Kongo people began trading

with the Portuguese, seashells were the last thing the Portuguese wanted as payment for their goods. They wanted gold. The Kongo region had no gold, so Portugal asked the Mani-Kongo for another form of payment--slaves.

From the Book!!!

The Portuguese in Kongo• In 1490, the Portuguese king sent teachers and

missionaries to educate the Mani-Kongo and members of his court. A missionary is someone who goes to a foreign place to teach religion.

• the Mani-Kongo converted to Christianity and even sent his son to a missionary school. Later, his son became king and was baptized with the Christian name of Affonso I.

Some people resented the Portuguese influence

• By the 1500’s Portugal had begun settling the island of São Tomé, 250 miles off the Kongo coast. Most of the settlers were criminals being deported from Portugal. They had little regard for the African people and a great desire to improve their own lives.

Plantations… large farms

• The Portuguese governor of São Tomé discovered that sugar grew well there.

• He knew slave labor would cost the least and thereby leave more money as profit. So the governor turned to nearby Africa to find slaves.

Guess what happened?

OK, just a few…

• At first, Affonso supplied him with slaves, not realizing that the Portuguese had a different notion of slavery than he did. Enslaving war prisoners was an accepted practice in Africa. But Africans did not mistreat their slaves or separate them from their families, and slaves could eventually earn their freedom. The Portuguese, however, treated slaves like beasts of burden, working them so hard that many died. When this occurred, they simply bought more.

Slaves, Guns, and Civil War• The buying and selling of slaves had

become quite a profitable business. And with a new Portuguese colony in South America, called Brazil, the demand for slaves was greater than ever.

• They were willing to do anything to get more slaves

Civil War…

• Slaves were prisoners and the Portuguese would try to bribe anyone or even start civil wars.

• By the 1600’s Civil wars erupted as villages staged raids against each other to capture slaves and sell them to the Portuguese.

The End…• Thus, contact with the Portuguese had a

severe and long-lasting effect on the people of Kongo and all of Africa. The Portuguese destroyed Kongo's trade in goods and replaced it with trade in human beings. Kongo lost many strong and able people to slavery. Finally, civil wars sparked by the Portuguese brought an end to the Kongo kingdom.