Africa in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Africa: the history of the countries of the continent The events described took place in African countries
According to the latest research, humanity has been around for three to four million years, and most During this time it developed very slowly. But in the ten-thousand-year period of the 12-3rd millennium, this development accelerated. Starting from the 13th-12th millennium in the advanced countries of that time - in the Nile Valley, in the highlands of Kurdistan and, perhaps, the Sahara - people regularly reaped the "harvest fields" of wild cereals, the grains of which were ground into flour on stone grain graters. In the 9th-5th millennia, bows and arrows, as well as snares and traps, were widely distributed in Africa and Europe. In the 6th millennium, the role of fishing in the life of the tribes of the Nile Valley, the Sahara, Ethiopia, and Kenya is increasing.
Approximately in the 8th-6th millennia in the Middle East, where the "Neolithic revolution" took place from the 10th millennium, a developed organization of tribes already dominated, which then grew into tribal unions - the prototype of primitive states. Gradually, with the spread of the "Neolithic revolution" to new territories, as a result of the settlement of Neolithic tribes or the transition of Mesolithic tribes to productive forms of economy, the organization of tribes and tribal unions (tribal system) spread to most of the ecumene.
In Africa, the territory of the tribal system, apparently, first of all became the regions of the northern part of the mainland, including Egypt and Nubia. According to the discoveries of recent decades, already in the 13th-7th millennia, tribes lived in Egypt and Nubia, who, along with hunting and fishing, were engaged in intensive seasonal gathering, reminiscent of harvesting from farmers (see and). In the 10-7th millennia, this way of farming was more progressive than the primitive economy of wandering hunter-gatherers in the deep regions of Africa, but still backward in comparison with the productive economy of some tribes of Western Asia, where at that time there was a rapid flourishing of agriculture, handicrafts and monumental construction in the form of large fortified settlements, in many ways similar to early cities. with coastal cultures. The oldest monument of monumental construction was the temple of Jericho (Palestine) built at the end of the 10th millennium - a small structure made of wood and clay on a stone foundation. In the 8th millennium, Jericho became a fortress city with 3,000 inhabitants, surrounded by a stone wall with powerful towers and a deep moat. Another fortified city existed from the end of the 8th millennium on the site of the later Ugarit, a seaport in northwestern Syria. Both of these cities traded with the agricultural settlements of South Anatolia, such as Azikli-Guyuk and early Hasilar. where houses were built of unbaked bricks on stone foundations. At the beginning of the 7th millennium, an original and relatively high civilization of Chatal-Guyuk arose in southern Anatolia, which flourished until the first centuries of the 6th millennium. The carriers of this civilization discovered the smelting of copper and lead, they were able to make copper tools and ornaments. At that time, the settlements of settled farmers spread to Jordan, Northern Greece and Kurdistan. At the end of the 7th - beginning of the 6th millennium, the inhabitants of Northern Greece (the settlement of Nea Nicomedia) already grew barley, wheat and peas, made houses, dishes and figurines from clay and stone. In the 6th millennium, agriculture spreads northwest to Herzegovina and the Danube valley and southeast to southern Iran.
The main cultural center of this ancient world moved from Southern Anatolia to Northern Mesopotamia, where the Hassun culture flourished. At the same time, in the vast expanses from the Persian Gulf to the Danube, several more original cultures were formed, the most developed of which (slightly inferior to Hassun) were in Asia Minor and Syria. B. Brentjes, a well-known scientist from the GDR, gives the following description of this era: “The 6th millennium was a period of constant struggle and civil strife in Western Asia. expanded ... For the Near East of the 6th millennium, the presence of many cultures was characteristic, which coexisted, crowded out one another or merged, spread or perished ". At the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th millennium, the original cultures of Iran flourish, but Mesopotamia is increasingly becoming the leading cultural center, where the Ubeida civilization, the predecessor of the Sumero-Akkadian civilization, develops. The beginning of the Ubeid period is considered to be the century between 4400 and 4300 BC.
The influence of the Hassuna and Ubeid cultures, as well as Haji-Mohammed (existed in southern Mesopotamia around 5000) extended far to the north, northeast and south. Hassun products were found during excavations near Adler on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, and the influence of the cultures of Ubeid and Hadji-Mohammed reached South Turkmenistan.
Approximately simultaneously with the Western Asian (or Western Asian-Balkan) in the 9th-7th millennia, another center of agriculture was formed, and later of metallurgy and civilization - Indochinese, in southeast Asia. In the 6th-5th millennia, rice cultivation developed on the plains of Indochina.
Egypt of the 6th-5th millennium also appears before us as an area of settlement of agricultural and pastoral tribes who created original and relatively highly developed Neolithic cultures on the outskirts of the ancient Middle Eastern world. Of these, the Badarian culture was the most developed, and the early Fayum and Merimde cultures (on the western and northwestern outskirts of Egypt, respectively) had the most archaic appearance.
The Fayum people cultivated small plots of land on the shores of Lake Merida, which were flooded during floods, growing spelt, barley and flax here. The harvest was stored in special pits (165 such pits were discovered). Perhaps they also knew about cattle breeding. The bones of a bull, a pig, and a sheep or goat were found in the Fayum settlement, but they were not studied in a timely manner, and then disappeared from the museum. Therefore, it remains unknown whether these bones belong to domestic or wild animals. In addition, bones of an elephant, a hippopotamus, a large antelope, a gazelle, a crocodile, and small animals that were hunting prey were found. In Lake Merida, the Fayumians fished, probably with baskets; large fish were caught with harpoons. An important role was played by hunting waterfowl with bows and arrows. The Fayum people were skillful weavers of baskets and mats, with which they lined their dwellings and grain pits. Scraps of linen fabric and a whorl have been preserved, which indicates the appearance of weaving. Pottery was also known, but Fayum ceramics (pots, bowls, bowls on bases of various shapes) were still rather crude and not always well fired, and at the late stage of the Fayum culture it disappeared altogether. The stone tools of the Fayumians consisted of axes-celts, adzes-chisels, microlithic inserts for sickles (inserted into a wooden frame) and arrowheads. Tesla chisels were of the same shape as in the then Central and West Africa (Lupembe culture), the shape of the arrows of the Neolithic Fayum is characteristic of the ancient Sahara, but not of the Nile Valley. If, at the same time, we take into account the Asian origin of cultivated cereals cultivated by the Fayum people, then we can draw up general idea about the genetic connection of the Fayum Neolithic culture with the cultures of the surrounding world. Additional touches to this picture are made by studies of Fayum jewelry, namely beads made of shells and amazonite. The shells were delivered from the shores of the Red and Mediterranean Seas, and the amazonite, apparently, from the Aegey-Zumma deposit in the north of the Tibesti (Libyan Sahara.). This indicates the scale of intertribal exchange in those distant times, in the middle or second half of the 5th millennium (the main stage of the Fayum culture is dated by radiocarbon 4440 ± 180 and 4145 ± 250).
Perhaps the contemporaries and northern neighbors of the Fayumians were the early inhabitants of the vast Neolithic settlement of Merimde, which, judging by the earliest of the radiocarbon dates, appeared around 4200 AD. Chad, where groups of oval-shaped adobe and clay-covered reed houses formed quarters that united into two "streets". Obviously, in each of the quarters a large family community lived, in each "street" - a phratry, or "half", and in the entire settlement - a tribal or neighbor-tribal community. Its members were engaged in agriculture, sowing barley, spelt and wheat and reaping with wooden sickles with flint inserts. Grain was kept in wicker granaries smeared with clay. There were many livestock in the village: cows, sheep, pigs. In addition, its inhabitants were engaged in hunting. Merimde pottery is much inferior to the Badarian pottery: coarse black pots predominate, although there are also thinner, polished vessels of quite a variety of shapes. There is no doubt that this culture is related to the cultures of Libya and the regions of the Sahara and the Maghreb lying further to the west.
The Badari culture (named after the Badari region in Central Egypt, where necropolises and settlements of this culture were first discovered) was much more widespread and reached more high development than the Neolithic Fayum and Merimde cultures.
Until recently, her actual age was not known. Only in last years thanks to the use of the thermoluminescent method of dating clay shards obtained during excavations of the settlements of the Badarian culture, it became possible to date it to the middle of the 6th - the middle of the 5th millennium. However, some scientists dispute this dating, pointing to the novelty and controversy of the thermoluminescent method. However, if the new dating is correct and the Fayumians and the inhabitants of Merimde were not predecessors, but younger contemporaries of the Badarians, then they can be considered representatives of two tribes that lived on the periphery of ancient Egypt, less rich and developed than the Badarians.
In Upper Egypt, a southern variety of the Badarian culture, the Tasian, was discovered. Apparently, the Badarian traditions continued in various parts of Egypt well into the 4th millennium.
The inhabitants of the Badarian settlement of Hamamia and nearby settlements of the same culture, Mostagedda and Matmara, were engaged in hoe farming, growing spelt and barley, raising cattle and small cattle, fishing and hunting on the banks of the Nile. They were skilled artisans who made a variety of tools, household items, jewelry, amulets. The materials for them were stone, shells, bone, including ivory, wood, leather, clay. One Badarian dish depicts a horizontal loom. Badarian ceramics are especially good, surprisingly thin, polished, handmade, but very diverse in shape and ornament, mostly geometric, as well as steatite beads with beautiful vitreous glaze. The Badarians also made genuine works of art (unknown to the Fayumians and the inhabitants of Merimde); they carved small amulets as well as animal figurines on the handles of spoons. Hunting tools were flint-tipped arrows, wooden boomerangs, fishing tools, shell hooks, and ivory hooks. The Badarians were already familiar with copper metallurgy, from which knives, pins, rings, and beads were made. They lived in solid mud-brick houses, but without doorways; probably, their inhabitants, like some residents of the villages of Central Sudan, climbed into their houses through a special "window".
About the religion of the Badarians, one can tell according to the customs to arrange necropolises to the east of the settlements and put the corpses of not only people, but also animals wrapped in mats into the graves. The deceased was accompanied to the grave by household items, jewelry; in one burial, several hundred steatite beads and copper beads, especially valuable at that time, were found. The dead man was really rich! This indicates the beginning of social inequality.
By the 4th millennium, in addition to the Badarian and Tasian, the Amrat, Gerze and other cultures of Egypt, which were among the relatively advanced, also belong. The Egyptians of that time cultivated barley, wheat, buckwheat, flax, bred domestic animals: cows, sheep, goats, pigs, as well as dogs and, possibly, cats. Flint tools, knives and ceramics of the Egyptians of the 4th - the first half of the 3rd millennium were distinguished by a remarkable variety and thoroughness of decoration.
The Egyptians of that time skillfully processed native copper. They built rectangular houses and even fortresses from unbaked bricks.
The level reached by the culture of Egypt in the proto-dynastic time is evidenced by the finds of highly artistic works of Neolithic handicraft: the finest fabric painted with black and red paint from Gebelein, flint daggers with gold and ivory handles, the tomb of the leader from Hierakonpolis, lined with raw brick and covered with multi-colored frescoes, etc. The images on the fabric and walls of the tomb give two social types: noble, for whom work is done, and workers (rowers, etc.). At that time, primitive and small-sized states, the future nomes, probably already existed in Egypt.
In the 4th - early 3rd millennium, Egypt's ties with the early civilizations of Western Asia were strengthened. Some scholars explain this by the invasion of the Asian conquerors into the Nile Valley, others (which is more plausible) - "an increase in the number of itinerant traders from Asia who visited Egypt" (so writes the famous English archaeologist E. J. Arkell). A number of facts testify to the links of the then Egypt with the population of the gradually drying up Sahara and the upper reaches of the Nile in Sudan. At that time, some cultures Central Asia, Transcaucasia, the Caucasus and South-Eastern Europe occupied approximately the same place on the near periphery of the ancient civilized world, atoms and the culture of Egypt of the 6th-4th millennia. In Central Asia, in the 6th - 5th millennium, the agricultural Jeytun culture of South Turkmenistan flourished, in the 4th millennium - the geok-sur culture in the valley of the river. Tejen, further east in the 6th-4th millennium BC. e. - Hissar culture of southern Tajikistan, etc. In Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the 5th-4th millennia, a number of agricultural and pastoral cultures were spread, the most interesting of which was the Kuro-Araks and the recently discovered Shamu-Tepe culture that preceded it. In Dagestan in the 4th millennium there was a Neolithic Ginchi culture of cattle-breeding and agricultural type.
In the 6th-4th millennium, the formation of the agricultural and cattle-breeding economy in Europe takes place. By the end of the 4th millennium, diverse and complex cultures of a distinctly productive appearance existed throughout Europe. At the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia, the Trypillia culture flourished in Ukraine, which was characterized by the cultivation of wheat, cattle breeding, beautiful painted ceramics, and colored painting of the walls of adobe dwellings. In the 4th millennium in Ukraine there were the most ancient settlements of horse breeders on Earth (Dereivka and others). A very elegant depiction of a horse on a potsherd from Kara-Tepe in Turkmenistan dates back to the 4th millennium.
The sensational discoveries of recent years in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Moldavia and in the south of Ukraine, as well as the generalizing studies of the Soviet archaeologist E.N. Chernykh and other scientists, have revealed the most ancient center of high culture in the southeast of Europe. In the 4th millennium, in the Balkan-Carpathian subregion of Europe, in the river system of the Lower Danube, a brilliant, advanced culture (“almost civilization”) flourished, which was characterized by agriculture, copper and gold metallurgy, various painted ceramics (including some painted with gold), primitive writing. The influence of this ancient center of "pre-civilization" on the neighboring societies of Moldova and Ukraine is beyond doubt. Did he also have connections with the societies of the Aegean, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt? This question is only being posed, there is no answer to it yet.
In the Maghreb and the Sahara, the transition to productive forms of economy was slower than in Egypt, its beginning dates back to the 7th - 5th millennia. At that time (until the end of the 3rd millennium), the climate in this part of Africa was warm and humid. Grassy steppes and subtropical mountain forests now covered the desert spaces, which were endless pastures. The main domestic animal was a cow, the bones of which were found in the sites of Fezzan in the east of the Sahara and in the Tadrart Acacus in the Central Sahara.
In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in the 7th-3rd millennia there were Neolithic cultures that continued the traditions of the older Ibero-Moorish and Capsian Paleolithic cultures. The first of them, also called the Mediterranean Neolithic, occupied mainly the coastal and mountain forests of Morocco and Algeria, the second - the steppes of Algeria and Tunisia. In the forest belt, settlements were richer and more common than in the steppe. In particular, the coastal tribes made excellent pottery. There are some local differences within the Mediterranean Neolithic culture, as well as its links with the Capsian culture of the steppes.
The characteristic features of the latter are bone and stone tools for drilling and piercing, polished stone axes, rather primitive earthenware with a conical bottom, which is also not common. In some places in the steppes of Algeria there was no ceramics at all, but the most common stone tools were arrowheads. The Neolithic Capsians, like their Paleolithic ancestors, lived in caves and grottoes and were mainly hunters and gatherers.
The heyday of this culture belongs to the 4th - the beginning of the 3rd millennium. So, its sites are dated by radiocarbon: De-Mamel, or "Sotsy" (Algeria), - 3600 ± 225, Dez-Ef, or "Eggs" (Ouargla oasis in the north of the Algerian Sahara), - also 3600 ± 225 g ., Hassi-Genfida (Ouargla) - 3480 ± 150 and 2830 ± 90, Jaacha (Tunisia) - 3050 ± 150. At that time, among the Capsians, shepherds already prevailed over hunters.
In the Sahara, the "Neolithic revolution" may be somewhat late compared to the Maghreb. Here, in the 7th millennium, the so-called Saharan-Sudanese "Neolithic culture", related in origin to the Capsian culture, developed. It existed until the 2nd millennium. Its characteristic feature is the oldest ceramics in Africa.
In the Sahara, the Neolithic differed from the more northern regions in the abundance of arrowheads, which indicates the relatively greater importance of hunting. The earthenware of the inhabitants of the Neolithic Sahara of the 4th and 2nd millennia is coarser and more primitive than that of the contemporary inhabitants of the Maghreb and Egypt. In the east of the Sahara, a connection with Egypt is very noticeable, in the west - with the Maghreb. The Neolithic of Eastern Sahara is characterized by an abundance of polished axes - evidence of slash-and-burn agriculture in the local highlands, then covered with forests. In the riverbeds that dried up later, the inhabitants were engaged in fishing and sailed on reed boats of the type that at that time and later were common in the valley of the Nile and its tributaries, on Lake. Chad and the lakes of Ethiopia. The fish were beaten with bone harpoons, reminiscent of those discovered in the valleys of the Nile and Niger. The grain graters and pestles of the Eastern Sahara were even larger. and made more carefully than in the Maghreb. Millet was sown in the river valleys of this region, but cattle breeding combined with hunting and, probably, gathering provided the main means of subsistence. Huge herds of cattle grazed in the expanses of the Sahara, contributing to its transformation into a desert. These herds are depicted on the famous rock frescoes of Tassili-n "Adjer and other highlands. Cows have an udder, therefore, they were milked. Roughly processed stone pillars-steles may have marked the summering places of these shepherds in the 4th - 2nd millennia, distilled herds from the valleys to the mountain pastures and back.In their anthropological type they were Negroid.
Remarkable cultural monuments of these pastoralists are the famous frescoes of Tassili and other regions of the Sahara, which flourished in the 4th millennium. Frescoes were created in secluded mountain shelters, probably playing the role of sanctuaries. In addition to the frescoes, there are the oldest "in" Africa bas-reliefs-petroglyphs and small stone figurines of animals (bulls, rabbits, etc.).
In the 4th - 2nd millennia, in the center and east of the Sahara, there were at least three centers of a relatively high agricultural and pastoral culture: on the Hoggar Highlands, which were abundantly irrigated by rains and its spur Tas-sili-n "Adzher, on no less fertile the Fezzan and Tibesti highlands, as well as in the Nile Valley.The materials of archaeological excavations and especially the rock carvings of the Sahara and Egypt indicate that all three centers of culture had many common features: in the style of images, forms of ceramics, etc. Everywhere - from the Nile to Hogtar - pastoralists-farmers revered heavenly bodies in the images of a solar ram, a bull and a heavenly cow. Along the Nile and along the now dry riverbeds that then flowed across the Sahara, local fishermen sailed on reed boats of similar shapes. We can assume very similar forms of production, life and social organization. But still, from the middle of the 4th millennium, Egypt began to overtake in its development both the Eastern and Central Sahara.
In the first half of the 3rd millennium, the drying of the ancient Sahara intensified, which by that time was no longer a humid wooded country. On low-lying lands, dry steppes began to replace tall-grass park savannahs. However, even in the 3rd-2nd millennia, the Neolithic cultures of the Sahara continued to develop successfully, in particular, they improved art.
In the Sudan, the transition to productive forms of economy took place a millennium later than in Egypt and the eastern Maghreb, but approximately simultaneously with Morocco and the southern regions of the Sahara, and earlier than in areas further south.
In the Middle Sudan, on the northern outskirts of the swamps, in the 7th - 6th millennia, the Khartoum Mesolithic culture of wandering hunters, fishermen and gatherers, who were already familiar with primitive pottery, developed. They hunted a wide variety of animals, large and small, from the elephant and the hippopotamus to the water mongoose and the red cane rat, which were found in the wooded and swampy region, which at that time was the middle Nile valley. Much less often than mammals, the inhabitants of Mesolithic Khartoum hunted reptiles (crocodile, python, etc.) and very rarely - birds. Spears, harpoons and bows with arrows served as hunting weapons, and the shape of some stone arrowheads (geometric microliths) indicates the connection of the Khartoum Mesolithic culture with the Capsian culture of North Africa. Fishing played relatively important role in the life of the early inhabitants of Khartoum, but they did not yet have fishing hooks, they fished, apparently, with baskets, speared and beamed with arrows. At the end of the Mesolithic, the first bone harpoons, as well as stone drills, appeared. Of considerable importance was the gathering of river and land mollusks, seeds of celtis and other plants. Rough dishes were molded from clay in the form of round-bottomed pelvises and bowls, which were decorated with a simple ornament in the form of stripes, giving these vessels a resemblance to baskets. Apparently, the inhabitants of the Mesolithic Khartoum were also engaged in weaving baskets. Personal adornments were rare, but they painted their vessels and probably their own bodies with ocher, extracted from nearby deposits, pieces of which were ground on sandstone graters, very diverse in shape and size. The dead were buried right in the settlement, which may have been just a seasonal camp.
How far to the west the carriers of the Khartoum Mesolithic culture penetrated is indicated by a find in Meuniet, in the northwest of Hoggar, 2,000 km from Khartoum, typical sherds of the late Khartoum Mesolithic. This find is dated by the Radiocarbon 3430.
Over time, around the middle of the 4th millennium, the Khartoum Mesolithic culture was replaced by the Khartoum Neolithic culture, traces of which are found in the vicinity of Khartoum, on the banks of the Blue Nile, in the north of Sudan - up to the IV threshold, in the south - up to the VI threshold, in the east - up to Kasala, and in the west - to the mountains of Ennedi and the locality of Wanyanga in Borku (Eastern Sahara). The main occupations of the inhabitants of the Neolithic. Khartoum - direct descendants of the Mesolithic population of these places - remained hunting, fishing and gathering. The subject of hunting was 22 species of mammals, but mainly large animals: buffaloes, giraffes, hippos, to a lesser extent elephants, rhinos, warthogs, seven species of antelopes, large and small predators, and some rodents. On a much smaller scale, but larger than in the Mesolithic, the Sudanese hunted large reptiles and birds. Wild donkeys and zebras were not killed, probably because religious motives(totemism). Hunting tools were spears with tips of stone and bone, harpoons, bow and arrows, and axes, but now they were smaller and worse processed. Crescent-shaped microliths were made more often than in the Mesolithic. Stone tools, such as celt axes, were already partly polished. Fishing was less practiced than in the Mesolithic, and here, as in hunting, appropriation took on a more selective character; hooked several kinds of fish. The hooks of Neolithic Khartoum, very primitive, made of shells, are the first in Tropical Africa. Gathering of river and land mollusks, ostrich eggs, wild fruits and celtis seeds was of great importance.
At that time, the landscape of the middle Nile valley was a forest avanna with gallery forests along the banks. In these forests, the inhabitants found material for the construction of canoes, which were hollowed out with stone and bone celts and semicircular plow axes, possibly from the trunks of the duleb palm tree. Compared with the Mesolithic, the production of tools, pottery and jewelry has progressed significantly. The dishes decorated with stamped ornaments were then polished by the inhabitants of the Neolithic Sudan with the help of pebbles and fired on fires. The manufacture of numerous personal adornments occupied a significant part of the working time; they were made from semi-precious and other stones, shells, ostrich eggs, animal teeth, etc. Unlike the temporary camp of the Mesolithic inhabitants of Khartoum, the settlements of the Neolithic inhabitants of Sudan were already permanent. One of them - ash-Shaheinab - has been studied especially carefully. However, no traces of dwellings, even pits for supporting pillars, were found here, and no burials were found (perhaps the inhabitants of the Neolithic Shaheinab lived in huts made of reeds and grass, and the dead were thrown into the Nile). An important innovation in comparison with the previous period was the appearance of cattle breeding: the inhabitants of Shaheynab bred small goats or sheep. However, the bones of these animals make up only 2% of all bones found in the settlement; this gives an idea of the share of cattle breeding in the economy of the inhabitants. No traces of agriculture have been found; it appears only in the next period. This is all the more significant because ash-Shaheinab, judging by the radiocarbon analysis (3490 ± 880 and 3110 ± 450), is contemporary with the developed Neolithic culture of el-Omari in Egypt (radiocarbon date 3300 ± 230).
In the last quarter of the 4th millennium, in the middle Nile Valley in northern Sudan, the same Eneolithic cultures (Amrat and Gerzey) existed as in neighboring pre-dynastic Upper Egypt. Their carriers were engaged in primitive agriculture, cattle breeding, hunting and fishing on the banks of the Nile and on neighboring plateaus, covered at that time with savannah vegetation. On the plateaus and in the mountains to the west of the middle Nile valley lived at that time a relatively large pastoral and agricultural population. The southern periphery of this entire cultural zone was located somewhere in the valleys of the White and Blue Nile (burials of "group A" were discovered in the Khartoum region, in particular near the Omdurman bridge) and near ash-Shaheinab. The linguistic affiliation of their speakers is unknown. The farther south, the more Negroid were the carriers of this culture. In al-Shaheinab they are clearly of the Negroid race.
The southern burials are, on the whole, poorer than the northern ones; the Shaheinab artifacts look more primitive than the Farassian ones, and even more so the Egyptian ones. The grave goods of the "proto-dynastic" ash-Shaheinab differ noticeably from those of the burials near the Omdurman bridge, although the distance between them is no more than 50 km; this gives some idea of the size of ethnocultural communities. The characteristic material of the products is clay. Cult figurines were made from it (for example, a clay female figurine) and already quite diverse and well-fired dishes, decorated with embossed ornaments (applied with a comb): bowls of various sizes, boat-shaped pots, spherical vessels. Black notched vessels characteristic of this culture are also found in proto-dynastic Egypt, where they are clearly exported from Nubia. Unfortunately, the contents of these vessels are unknown. For their part, the inhabitants of the proto-dynastic Sudan, like the contemporary Egyptians, received Mepga shells from the shores of the Red Sea, from which they made belts, necklaces and other jewelry. No other information about the trade has been preserved.
In a number of ways, the cultures of the Meso- and Neolithic Sudan occupy a middle position between the cultures of Egypt, the Sahara, and East Africa. Thus, the stone industry of Gebel-Auliyi (near Khartoum) resembles the Nyoro culture in the Mezhozerje, and the ceramics are Nubian and Sahara; stone celts, similar to those of Khartoum, are found in the west up to Tener, north of Lake. Chad, and Tummo, north of the Tibesti mountains. At the same time, the main cultural and historical center, to which the cultures of Northeast Africa gravitated, was Egypt.
According to E.J. Arkella, the Khartoum Neolithic culture was connected with the Egyptian Fayum through the mountainous regions of Ennedi and Tibesti, from where both the Khartoum and the Fayum received greyish-blue amazonite for making beads.
When a class society began to develop in Egypt at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia and a state arose, Lower Nubia turned out to be the southern outskirts of this civilization. Typical settlements of that time were excavated near the village. Dhaka S. Fersom in 1909 -1910 and at Khor-Daud by the Soviet expedition in 1961-1962. The community living here was engaged in dairy cattle breeding and primitive agriculture; they sowed mixed wheat and barley, harvested the fruits of the doom palm and sidder. Pottery reached a significant development. Ivory and flint were processed, from which the main tools were made; metals used were copper and gold. The culture of the population of Nubia and Egypt of this era of archeology is conditionally designated as the culture of the tribes of "group A". Anthropologically, its bearers belonged mainly to the Caucasoid race. At the same time (around the middle of the 3rd millennium, according to radiocarbon analysis), the Negroid inhabitants of the Jebel et-Tomat settlement in Central Sudan were sowing sorghum of the species Sorgnum bicolor.
During the period of the III dynasty of Egypt (around the middle of the 3rd millennium), a general decline in the economy and culture occurs in Nubia, associated, according to a number of scholars, with the invasion of nomadic tribes and the weakening of ties with Egypt; at this time, the drying process of the Sahara intensified sharply.
In East Africa, including Ethiopia and Somalia, the "Neolithic Revolution" apparently took place only in the 3rd millennium, much later than in Sudan. Here at that time, as in the previous period, lived Caucasians or Ethiopians, similar in their physical type to the ancient Nubians. The southern branch of the same group of tribes lived in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. South of them lived the Boskodo-id (Khoisan) hunter-gatherers, akin to the Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania and the Bushmen of South Africa.
The Neolithic cultures of East Africa and Western Sudan seem to have developed fully only during the heyday of the ancient Egyptian civilization and the relatively high Neolithic cultures of the Maghreb and Sahara, and they coexisted for a long time with the remnants of the Mesolithic cultures.
Like the Stillbay and other Paleolithic cultures, the Mesolithic cultures of Africa occupied vast expanses. Thus, the Capsian traditions can be traced from Morocco and Tunisia to Kenya and Western Sudan. The later Magosi culture. first discovered in eastern Uganda, was distributed in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, almost throughout East and Southeast Africa to the river. Orange. It is characterized by microlithic blades and chisels and coarse earthenware, which appears already in the later stages of capsian.
Magosi is represented by a number of local variants; some of them have developed into distinct cultures. This is the Doy culture of Somalia. Its bearers hunted with bows and arrows, kept dogs. The relatively high level of the pre-Mesolithic is emphasized by the presence of pestles and, apparently, primitive pottery. (The well-known English archaeologist D. Clark considers the current hunter-gatherers of Somalia to be direct descendants of the Doyets).
Another local culture is the elmentate of Kenya, whose main center was in the area of Lake. Nakuru. Elmentate is characterized by abundant ceramics - goblets and large earthenware jugs. Such is the Smithfield culture of South Africa, which is characterized by microliths, polished stone tools, bone artifacts, and coarse earthenware.
The successor to all these cultures, the Wilton culture takes its name from the Wilton farm in Natal. Its sites are found as far as Ethiopia and Somalia in the northeast and up to the southern tip of the mainland. Wilton in different places has either a Mesolithic or a distinctly Neolithic appearance. In the north, this is mainly a culture of pastoralists who bred long-horned, humpless bulls of the Bos Africanus type, in the south, a culture of hunter-gatherers, and in some places, primitive farmers, such as, for example, in Zambia and Rhodesia, where several polished stone axes. Apparently, it is more correct to speak of the Wilton complex of cultures, which also includes the Neolithic cultures of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya from the 3rd to the middle of the 1st millennium. At the same time, the first simplest states were formed (see). They arose on the basis of a voluntary union or forced union of tribes.
The Neolithic culture of Ethiopia of the 2nd - middle of the 1st millennium is characterized by the following features: hoe farming, cattle breeding (breeding of cattle and small cattle, cattle and donkeys), rock art, grinding of stone tools, pottery, weaving using vegetable fiber, relative settlement , rapid population growth. At least the first half of the Neolithic period in Ethiopia and Somalia is the era of the coexistence of the appropriating and primitive producing economy, with the dominant role of pastoralism, namely the breeding of Bos africanus.
The most famous monuments of this era - large groups(many hundreds of figures) of rock carvings in Eastern Ethiopia and Somalia and in the Korora cave in Eritrea.
Among the earliest in time are some images in the Porcupine Cave near Dire Dawa, where various wild animals and hunters are painted in red ocher. The style of drawings (the famous French archaeologist A. Breuil singled out over seven different styles here) is naturalistic. Stone tools of the Magosian and Wilton types were found in the cave.
Very ancient images of wild and domestic animals of a naturalistic or semi-naturalistic style have been discovered in the areas of Genda-Biftu, Lago-Oda, Herrer-Kimyet, and others, north of Harer and near Dire-Dawa. Shepherd scenes are found here. Cattle are long-horned, humpless, species Bos africanus. The cows have an udder, so they were milked. Among domestic cows and bulls there are images of African buffaloes, obviously domesticated. No other pets are visible. One of the images suggests that, as in the 9th-19th centuries, African Wilton shepherds rode bulls. The shepherds are dressed in loincloths and short skirts (leather?). One of them has a comb in his hair. The weapons were spears and shields. Bows and arrows, also painted on some frescoes in Genda Biftu, Lago Oda and Saka Sherifa (near Herrer Kimiet), were obviously used by hunters, modern Wilton shepherds
In Herrer Kimiet there are images of people with a circle on their heads, very similar to the rock carvings of the Sahara, in particular the Hoggar region. But in general, the style and objects of images of the rock frescoes of Ethiopia and Somalia reveal an undoubted similarity with the frescoes of the Sahara and Upper Egypt of pre-dynastic times.
The later period includes schematic representations of people and animals in various places in Somalia and the Harer region. At that time, the zebu became the predominant breed of livestock - an undoubted evidence of the ties of Northeast Africa with India. The most schematic representations of cattle in the region of Bur-Eibe (Southern Somalia) seem to indicate a certain peculiarity of the local Wilton culture.
If rock frescoes are found both in Ethiopian and Somali territory, then engraving on rocks is typical for Somalia. It is roughly contemporary with the frescoes. Engraved images of people armed with spears and shields, humpless and humpbacked cows, as well as camels and some other animals were discovered in the area of Bur-Dakhir, El-Goran and others, in the Shebeli valley. In general, they resemble similar images from Oniba in the Nubian desert. In addition to cattle and camels, there may be images of sheep or goats, but they are too sketchy to be identified with certainty. In any case, the ancient Somali Bushmenoids of the Wilton period raised sheep.
In the 60s, several more groups of rock art and Wilton sites were discovered in the area of the city of Harer and in the province of Sidamo, northeast of Lake. Abai. Here, too, the leading branch of the economy was cattle breeding.
In West Africa, the "Neolithic Revolution" took place in a very difficult environment. Here, in ancient times, wet (pluvial) and dry periods alternated. During wet periods, on the site of savannahs, abounding with ungulates and favorable for human activity, dense rainforests (hylaea) spread, almost impassable for people of the Stone Age. They more reliably than the desert expanses of the Sahara blocked the access of the ancient inhabitants of North and East Africa to western part continent.
One of the most famous monuments Neolithic Guinea is the Kakimbon grotto near Conakry, discovered back in colonial times. There were found picks, hoes, adzes, serrated tools and several axes, polished entirely or only along the cutting edge, as well as ornamented ceramics. There are no arrowheads at all, but there are leaf-shaped spearheads. Similar inventory (in particular, axes polished on the blade) was found in three more places near Conakry. Another group of Neolithic sites was discovered in the vicinity of the city of Kindia, about 80 km northeast of the Guinean capital. Feature of the local Neolithic - polished hatchets, picks and chisels, round trapezoidal tips of darts and arrows, stone discs for weighting digging sticks, polished stone bracelets, as well as ornamented ceramics.
Approximately 300 km north of the city of Kindia, near the city of Telimele, on the Futa-Jallon highlands, the Ualia site was discovered, the inventory of which is very similar to the tools from Kakimbon. But unlike the latter, leaf-shaped and triangular arrowheads were found here.
In 1969-1970. Soviet scientist V.V. Solovyov discovered a number of new sites on Fouta Djallon (in central Guinea) with typical polished and chipped axes, as well as picks and disc-shaped cores chipped on both surfaces. At the same time, ceramics are absent from the newly discovered sites. Their dating is very difficult. As the Soviet archaeologist P. I. Boriskovsky notes, in West Africa "the same types of stone products continue to be found, without undergoing particularly significant changes, over a number of epochs - from sango (45-35 thousand years ago. - Yu. K .) until the Late Paleolithic". The same can be said about the monuments of the West African Neolithic. Archaeological studies carried out in Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Upper Volta and other West African countries show the continuity of the forms of microlithic and grinding stone tools, as well as ceramics, starting from the end of the 4th - 2nd millennium BC. e. and up to the first centuries of the new era. Often individual objects made in ancient times are almost indistinguishable from products of the 1st millennium AD. e.
Undoubtedly, this testifies to the amazing stability of ethnic communities and the cultures they created on the territory of Tropical Africa in ancient and ancient times.
INTRODUCTION
“Africa will write its own history, glorious and honorable for the entire continent, from north to south,” said the unforgettable Patrice Lumumba shortly before he was assassinated in 1961. Indeed, now Africa, with its inherent revolutionary enthusiasm, revives the most important historical traditions and restores cultural values. At the same time, it has to constantly overcome the barriers that the colonialists erected and carefully guarded in order to isolate the Africans from the truth. The legacy of imperialism penetrates deeply into the most diverse areas of life. Its ideological impact on the consciousness of the peoples of Tropical Africa was and remains no less important than the economic and social backwardness, poverty, humiliation and dependence on foreign monopolies inherited from colonialism.
Today, however, the peoples of Africa are resolutely tearing off the chains with which they were bound by the colonialists. In the 1950s and early 1960s, most of the peoples of Africa, under the yoke of imperialism, achieved political independence. This was an important milestone on the difficult path of their struggle against imperialism, for national sovereignty and social progress. Gradually they come to understand that their struggle is part of a world revolutionary process in which the main role belongs to the socialist community of states headed by the Soviet Union. The African peoples are making great efforts to consolidate the political independence they have won and to repulse the numerous intrigues of the neo-imperialists. They face such complex tasks as profound social and economic transformations, democratic agrarian reforms, the elimination of the predominance of foreign monopolies, the creation of an independent national economy. However, at the current stage, the task of reviving national culture, partially destroyed or belittled by the colonial powers, and the restoration in the memory of the people of historical traditions and glorious deeds of the past.
The study of the history of African peoples has received a new direction. In order to fight successfully against imperialism, one must not only know about glorious deeds fighters against colonialism, but also to imagine a wonderful history state formations pre-colonial period. Researchers have succeeded almost everywhere in tearing down the veil of romance and mysticism that enveloped it, and now they are striving to identify the most important progressive and revolutionary traditions that are so important for the modern national liberation revolution. Progressive African historiography can only accomplish this difficult task with the support of Marxists and other forces throughout the world fighting against imperialism. They are united by a common desire to overthrow the yoke of the imperialists and neo-colonialists, to eliminate the discrimination they inculcate and, of course, to refute the reactionary bourgeois theories of African history, which are an apology for colonialism.
What fabrications did the capitalists resort to in order to justify the robbery of the colonies! The idea runs through many printed works that before the arrival of the colonial masters, Africans were completely or almost completely deprived of the ability to social progress. This idea was developed in every way and was intensively distributed. Just 30 years ago, a colonial official called Africans "savages who have passed history." There are no number of statements that classify the peoples of Africa as "unhistorical" and even reduce them to the "level of wild animals." The history of Africa was portrayed as a constant ebb and flow from outside "waves of higher civilization", which to a certain extent contributed to the development of the African population, doomed to stagnation. European colonialists attributed to "dynamic, creative, cultural impulses coming from outside" a lasting rational impact, because "ancient African culture is devoid of the Faustian desire inherent in Western civilization for eternal life, research and discovery."
In fact, the history of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa has been reduced to a system of alien cultural strata. For greater persuasiveness, the imperialists were portrayed as "the highest culture-tragers." Continuing to falsify the history of Africa, the apologists of colonialism evaluated the ruthless colonial robbery of Africans as a boon, especially beneficial for their culture and supposedly opened the way for them from stagnation to modern progress. It is quite obvious what political and social functions such theories are called upon to perform: they are designed to mask the true nature and extent of colonial oppression and thereby deprive the anti-colonial and national liberation movement of its anti-imperialist orientation.
Now these false stories about the historical development of Africa are not spread very often. Imperialist propaganda is forced - and not only in historiography and politics - to resort to more sophisticated and flexible forms. The growing power of real socialism and the successes of the national liberation movement force it to put forward theories that correspond to the new tasks of neo-colonialism to a greater extent than the colonial apologetic and racist versions of the old model. However, the imperialists still set the tone. True, bourgeois historiography is subject to various processes of differentiation.
In some capital works, for example, the monographs of R. Korneven, R. Oliver, J. Matthew, P. Duignen, L. A. Gunn, Fr. Ansprenger, and in many special works the history of Africa is considered from a more realistic point of view. Their authors in some cases achieved very important results in empirical research and in the consideration of particular issues, but the assessment of historical sources, the formulation of the problem, and - last but not least - the unscientific conclusions and classification of materials make these scientists be attributed to the ideologists of late capitalism. The theoretical propositions they put forward are no less dangerous than the ideas of the apologists for imperialism. Suffice it to say that some of the latest works in history and sociology attempt to separate the struggle of the progressive forces of the national liberation movement for social progress from the world socialist system and the workers' movement in the highly developed capitalist countries.
Many historical works on narrow topics, for example, on the causes of the backwardness of a particular country, on the formation of "elites", serve to mask neo-colonialist expansion.
Marxists and other progressive elements fighting against imperialism, including those in African nation-states, have declared war on these views. In the outline of the history of Tropical Africa from ancient times, which is the content of this book, the historical and cultural development peoples of the sub-Saharan continent and exposed their inhuman exploitation by colonialism. In this way, the main propositions of the pro-imperialist "science" are refuted.
In the Soviet Union after the October Socialist Revolution, and in the countries of the world socialist system after 1945, a new period of African studies began. Scholars in these countries, as well as Marxists and other progressive scholars throughout the world, and increasingly in African countries themselves, have in recent years published serious works on ancient and new history Africa. This caused a revolution in African studies, which had previously been almost entirely under the influence of the colonialists (especially the historiography of Tropical Africa from ancient times to the division of its territory by the imperialist colonial powers). The monograph "Peoples of Africa", compiled by a team of authors led by D. A. Olderogge I. I. Potekhin (published in the GDR in 1961), laid the foundation for numerous serious studies of individual problems in Soviet African studies. Thanks to this work, the work of Soviet scientists on linguistics and the history of Africa gained international fame. E. Shik (Hungary), I. Hrbek (Czechoslovakia), M. Malovist (Poland) sought to fill in their works known gaps in the presentation common history pre-colonial African peoples. Mention should also be made of the works published in the GDR by the French historian and Marxist economist J. Suret-Canal on the history of West and Central Africa and by the English publicist B. Davidson.
Despite the indisputable successes of African studies in the last 20 years, there is still no comprehensive generalizing work on the history of the peoples of Africa, especially in certain periods before the colonial division of the continent by the imperialists. Years of research have prompted me to make available to a wide range of readers the most important moments in the historical development of the peoples south of the Sahara.
To this day, the problem of periodization of the common history of the peoples of Africa, including in our era, presents particular difficulties. On this question there is no unanimity even among Marxist scholars. The correct approach to it requires that Africans should not be regarded as a passive object of foreign influences, but that, first of all, the internal laws of their community development correlated, of course, with the most important periods of world history and qualitative changes in individual socio-economic social formations. At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind the dialectical unity of the stages of development of world history and the regional characteristics of African countries. It is on the basis of these general criteria that the book highlights the periods of historical development of the peoples of Tropical Africa from ancient times to the imperialist division of Africa in last third 19th century For example, the 16th century, when Western European capitalism made economic and political preparations for conquest campaigns and thus laid the foundation for a new era, was not only an important milestone in world history, but was also a turning point in the life of some peoples of Tropical Africa.
Analysis of the social and historical development of the population of so many regions and the identification of general patterns and tendencies are associated with known difficulties. They are exacerbated by the fact that sub-Saharan countries have achieved varying degrees of progress. In addition, the social development of many African peoples undoubtedly has specific features. Nevertheless, it can be stated with confidence that this development by no means took place outside the natural world-historical process of changing socio-economic formations. irrefutable historical facts prove that the peoples of Africa, both those who lagged behind and those who went ahead, strove and are striving to follow the path of progress. This path is long and difficult, but, as all the experience of history shows, in the final analysis it will also lead the peoples of Tropical Africa to socialism.
In conclusion, some preliminary remarks should be made about the sources and supporting materials available to the Africanist.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that in this area, too, only in the last ten years, virgin soil has been uplifted and the veil that covered the "Black" continent has been somewhat parted. The colonialists considered the archaeological finds to be only an addition to the highly profitable extraction of iron ores and minerals. The ruins of the legendary state of Monomotapa and the most valuable monuments of art of Benin were discovered either by accident or by expeditions acting without any coordination. After the African states achieved independence, the allocations for scientific research became more systematic and purposeful. The results of these studies are extremely important. Thus, thanks to the extremely interesting excavations of Kilwa (Tanzania), the city-states of East Africa appeared in a completely different light. The ruins of the capital of ancient Ghana, Kumbi-Sale (in the south of Mauritania) turned out to be mute witnesses of a long-vanished African civilization. Tens of thousands of beautiful rock paintings and frescoes have been found in the now waterless highlands of the Central Sahara; these highly artistic works of realistic art provide valuable information about the developed culture of Africa. Recent finds make it possible to clarify ideas about the ancient and ancient history African peoples. Because now scientific institutions young nation-states themselves organize archaeological expeditions to excavate the centers of ancient civilizations, we have the right to expect that their work will enrich history with new data.
Many tribes and peoples of Tropical Africa still do not have a written language. Nevertheless, we know in general terms the individual stages of their history. At the courts of rulers and leaders, there was an institution of storytellers who resembled medieval minnesingers. Lists of names of rulers, chronicles, heroic tales, epic poems, which glorified the exploits and deeds of rulers, have come down to us. AT recent times most of them were carefully collected and recorded by African scientists and their assistants. Now they have begun to study the content of these sources, and immediately the limits of their use were revealed. Fiction and truth are closely intertwined in them. The history of a particular tribe or people is reduced to the activities of individual rulers. The chronology also leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, the Africanist can and should work on these oral traditions in order to scientific analysis turn them into reliable sources of African historiography.
In general, it should be noted that there is a certain scarcity of written sources for certain periods and regions. The history of some peoples can sometimes be quite accurately recreated on the basis of both the reports of Arab travelers and the written evidence left by these peoples themselves, but when studying the past of other peoples, one has to be content with a few information, sometimes even indirect. In addition, they usually unreasonably relate to events political life, while economic and social relations are reflected in them very poorly.
The first written evidence of Tropical Africa is contained in the reports of Egyptian military leaders. Further I follow the information received by the Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans during travels, military campaigns and trading expeditions. However, these data, which have come down from the period of antiquity, are very modest and are of a random nature.
Only Arab historians of the period corresponding to the European Middle Ages finally paid due attention to the areas south of the Sahara, which then became widely known thanks to numerous expeditions and travels, as well as. vibrant trade links. The stories of Arab travelers, chroniclers, geographers and historians, and above all the descriptions of the travels of al-Masudi, al-Bakri, al-Idrisi, Ibn Batuta, Lion of Africa, contain valuable information. They have been supplemented since the 16th century. the first records in situ in the states of the western and central zones of Sudan (meaning the entire strip of the Sahel, which stretches from west to east south of the Sahara and does not coincide with the territory of modern Sudan). Serious gaps in our knowledge were later eliminated by Muslim scholars of the major trading centers of the Songhai state - Timbuktu, Gao and Djenne - who still wrote chronicles in Arabic. Information about the history of the peoples of West Africa is contained both in the records that were made in the Hausa city-states in Northern Nigeria, and in the written documents of the initial period of the Fulbe and Tukuler states in the 18th and early XIX in., found and published only recently. Of these, only a small part is written in Arabic.
Several local chroniclers report on the life of East African city-states. They wrote first in Arabic, later in Swahili, and used their own writing system, derived from the Arabic script.
We also draw the most ancient written data from the monuments of the kingdoms of Meroe and Aksum (see Chapter II). In the Middle Ages, their traditions were successfully continued in the annals and church historiography of Ethiopia.
At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Portuguese navigators opened the way around Africa and founded numerous strongholds of colonization, the first detailed reports of Europeans appeared, stories about their travels and historical writings. From this initial period of colonial enterprise came colorful descriptions that vividly depict life in Benin and other coastal areas of West Africa, in ancient state Congo, and most of all - in East and Central Africa. According to Barros, Barbosa, Barreto, Castagnosa, Alkasova and Dapper, they, to their great surprise, saw here highly developed states with large shopping malls where life was in full swing. At first, the Portuguese still quite objectively and busily wrote down their impressions. But when the dreams of the conquerors of fabulous wealth ran into opposition from the population of Africa, their stories - and the further, the more - began to be equipped with slanderous fabrications.
In the 19th century The African continent has become the cherished goal of explorers, travelers and missionaries. From the pen of members of various expeditions, merchants and messengers of the church, who directly or indirectly prepared the capitalist conquests, a lot of notes came out on the geology, geography, economy and climate of African countries (cf. ch. V, 7). They also left us detailed historical and ethnographic sketches of the social development of some African peoples. Although the authors of these works, such as the famous Heinrich Barth in the middle of the 19th century, could not hide the fact that they were acting on behalf or at the initiative of the colonialists, they often strove for genuine scientific research and recognized the historical and cultural achievements of non-European peoples. However, their works were very soon forgotten in Europe, in the last third of the 19th century. the sub-Saharan region was labeled the "Black" continent and denied the capacity for historical progress. In accordance with this point of view, many evidences of culture and oral traditions of African peoples were denied or attributed to the influence of foreign cultural traders. In the end, the racist theories of the apologists of colonialism triumphed and began to hamper any scientific research, including the study of the history and social development of the peoples of Africa.
This obliges all Marxist scholars, together with progressive African historians, to recreate and correctly evaluate, on the basis of fundamental research, the history of the peoples of Africa, falsified by the apologists of imperialism and colonialism.
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History of Africa
Introduction
The oldest archaeological finds that testify to the processing of grain in Africa date back to the thirteenth millennium BC. e. Pastoralism in the Sahara began c. 7500 BC e., but organized Agriculture in the Nile region appeared in the 6th millennium BC. e. In the Sahara, which was then a fertile territory, groups of hunters-fishermen lived, as evidenced by archaeological finds. Many petroglyphs and rock paintings have been discovered throughout the Sahara, dating from 6000 BC to 6000 BC. e. until the 7th century AD. e. The most famous monument of the primitive art of North Africa is the Tassilin-Ajer plateau.
1. Ancient Africa
In the 6-5th millennium BC. in the Nile Valley, agricultural cultures (Tasian culture, Faiyum, Merimde) were formed, based on the civilization of Christian Ethiopia (XII-XVI centuries). These centers of civilization were surrounded by the pastoral tribes of the Libyans, as well as the ancestors of the modern Cushite- and Nilotic-speaking peoples. On the territory of the modern Sahara desert (which was then a savannah favorable for habitation) by the 4th millennium BC. e. a cattle-breeding and agricultural economy is taking shape. From the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e., when the drying of the Sahara begins, the population of the Sahara retreats to the south, pushing the local population of Tropical Africa.
By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. the horse is spreading in the Sahara. On the basis of horse breeding (from the first centuries AD - also camel breeding) and oasis agriculture in the Sahara, an urban civilization was formed (the cities of Telgi, Debris, Garama), and the Libyan letter appeared. On the Mediterranean coast of Africa in the XII-II centuries BC. e. the Phoenician-Carthaginian civilization flourished. In Africa south of the Sahara in the 1st millennium BC. e. iron metallurgy is spreading everywhere. The culture of the Bronze Age did not develop here, and there was a direct transition from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Iron Age cultures spread both west (Nok) and east (northeast Zambia and southwest Tanzania) of Tropical Africa.
The spread of iron contributed to the development of new territories, primarily tropical forests, and became one of the reasons for the settlement of Bantu-speaking peoples throughout most of Tropical and South Africa, pushing the representatives of the Ethiopian and capoid races to the north and south.
2. The emergence of the first states in Africa
According to modern historical science, the first state (south of the Sahara) appeared on the territory of Mali in the 3rd century - it was the state of Ghana. Ancient Ghana traded gold and metals even with the Roman Empire and Byzantium. Perhaps this state arose much earlier, but during the existence of the colonial authorities of England and France there, all information about Ghana disappeared (the colonialists did not want to admit that Ghana is much older than England and France).
Under the influence of Ghana, other states later appeared in West Africa - Mali, Songhai, Kanem, Tekrur, Hausa, Ife, Kano and other states of West Africa. Another hotbed of the emergence of states in Africa is the vicinity of Lake Victoria (the territory of modern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi). The first state appeared there around the 11th century - it was the state of Kitara.
In my opinion, the state of Kitara was created by settlers from the territory of modern Sudan - Nilotic tribes, who were forced out of their territory by Arab settlers. Later, other states appeared there - Buganda, Rwanda, Ankole. Around the same time (according to scientific history) - in the 11th century, the state of Mopomotale appeared in southern Africa, which will disappear at the end of the 17th century (it will be destroyed by wild tribes). I believe that Mopomotale began to exist much earlier, and the inhabitants of this state are the descendants of the most ancient metallurgists of the world, who had connections with the Asuras and Atlanteans.
Around the middle of the 12th century, the first state appeared in the center of Africa - Ndongo (this is a territory in the north of modern Angola). Later, other states appeared in the center of Africa - Congo, Matamba, Mwata and Baluba. Since the 15th century, the colonial states of Europe - Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, France and Germany - began to interfere in the process of statehood development in Africa. If at first they were interested in gold, silver and precious stones, then later slaves became the main commodity (and these countries were engaged in countries that officially rejected the existence of slavery). Slaves were exported by the thousands to the plantations of America. Only much later, at the end of the 19th century, the colonialists began to attract natural resources in Africa. And it is for this reason that vast colonial territories appeared in Africa.
The colonies in Africa interrupted the development of the peoples of Africa and distorted its entire history. Until now, significant archaeological research has not been carried out in Africa (the African countries themselves are poor, and England and France do not need a true history of Africa, just like in Russia, Russia also does not conduct good research on the ancient history of Rus', money is spent on buying castles and yachts in Europe, total corruption deprives science of real research).
3. Africa in the Middle Ages
The centers of civilizations in Tropical Africa spread from north to south (in the eastern part of the continent) and partly from east to west (especially in the western part) as they moved away from the high civilizations of North Africa and the Middle East. Most of the large socio-cultural communities of Tropical Africa had an incomplete set of signs of civilization, so they can more accurately be called proto-civilizations. From the end of the 3rd century A.D. e. in West Africa, in the basins of Senegal and Niger, the Western Sudanese (Ghana) develops, from the VIII-IX centuries - the Central Sudanese (Kanem) civilizations that arose on the basis of trans-Saharan trade with the Mediterranean countries.
After the Arab conquests of North Africa (7th century), the Arabs for a long time became the only intermediaries between Tropical Africa and the rest of the world, including across the Indian Ocean, where the Arab fleet dominated. Under Arab influence, new urban civilizations are emerging in Nubia, Ethiopia, and East Africa. The cultures of Western and Central Sudan merged into a single West African, or Sudanese, zone of civilizations that stretched from Senegal to the modern Republic of Sudan.
In the 2nd millennium, this zone was united politically and economically in the Muslim empires: Mali (XIII-XV century), to which the small political formations of the peoples of the Fulbe, Wolof, Serer, Susu and Songhay (Tekrur, Jolof, Sin, Salum, Kayor, Soco and others), Songhai (mid-15th - late 16th century) and Bornu (late 15th - early 18th century) - Kanem's successor. From the beginning of the 16th century, between Songhai and Bornu, the Hausan city-states (Daura, Zamfara, Kano, Rano, Gobir, Katsina, Zaria, Biram, Kebbi, etc.) were strengthened, to which in the 17th century the role of the main centers of the trans-Saharan trade. South of the Sudanese civilizations in the 1st millennium CE. e. the Ife proto-civilization is taking shape, which became the cradle of the Yoruba and Bini civilization (Benin, Oyo). Its influence was experienced by the Dahomeans, Igbos, Nupe, and others. To the west of it, in the 2nd millennium, the Akano-Ashanti proto-civilization was formed, which flourished in the 17th - early 19th centuries. To the south of the great bend of the Niger, a political center arose founded by the Mosi and other peoples speaking Gur languages (the so-called Mosi-Dagomba-Mamprusi complex) and turned into a Voltian proto-civilization by the middle of the 15th century (the early political formations of Ouagadugu, Yatenga, Gurma , Dagomba, Mamprusi).
In Central Cameroon, the proto-civilization of Bamum and Bamileke arose, in the Congo River basin - the proto-civilization of Vungu (the early political formations of the Congo, Ngola, Loango, Ngoyo, Kakongo), to the south of it (in the 16th century) - the proto-civilization of the southern savannahs (the early political formations of Cuba, Lunda, Luba), in the Great Lakes region - an inter-lake proto-civilization: early political formations of Buganda (XIII century), Kitara (XIII-XV century), Bunyoro (from the XVI century), later - Nkore (XVI century), Rwanda (XVI century), Burundi (XVI century), Karagwe (XVII century), Kiziba (XVII century), Busoga (XVII century), Ukereve (late XIX century), Toro (late XIX century), etc. In East Africa, flourished since the X century Swahili Muslim civilization (city-states of Kilwa, Pate, Mombasa, Lamu, Malindi, Sofala, etc., the Sultanate of Zanzibar), in Southeast Africa - Zimbabwean (Zimbabwe, Monomotapa) proto-civilization (X-XIX century), in Madagascar the process of state formation ended at the beginning of the 19th century with the unification of all early political the name of the island around Imerin, which arose around the 15th century. Most African civilizations and proto-civilizations experienced an upswing in the late 15th-16th centuries.
From the end of the 16th century, with the penetration of Europeans and the development of the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted until the middle of the 19th century, their decline took place. All of North Africa (except Morocco) by the beginning of the 17th century became part of Ottoman Empire. With the final division of Africa between the European powers (1880s), the colonial period began, forcibly introducing Africans to industrial civilization.
4. Colonization of Africa
tasian african colonization slave trade
In ancient times, North Africa was the object of colonization by Europe and Asia Minor. The first attempts by Europeans to subjugate African territories date back to the times of the ancient Greek colonization of the 7th-5th centuries BC, when numerous Greek colonies appeared on the coast of Libya and Egypt. The conquests of Alexander the Great marked the beginning of a rather long period of Hellenization of Egypt. Although the bulk of its inhabitants, the Copts, were never Hellenized, the rulers of this country (including the last queen Cleopatra) adopted the Greek language and culture, which completely dominated Alexandria. The city of Carthage was founded on the territory of modern Tunisia by the Phoenicians and was one of the most important powers of the Mediterranean until the 4th century BC. e.
After the Third Punic War, it was conquered by the Romans and became the center of the province of Africa. In the early Middle Ages, the kingdom of the Vandals was founded on this territory, and later it was part of Byzantium. The invasions of the Roman troops made it possible to consolidate the entire northern coast of Africa under the control of the Romans. Despite the extensive economic and architectural activities of the Romans, the territories underwent weak Romanization, apparently due to excessive aridity and the ongoing activity of the Berber tribes, pushed back, but not conquered by the Romans. Ancient Egyptian civilization also fell under the rule of the Greeks first, and then the Romans. In the context of the decline of the empire, the Berbers, activated by the vandals, finally destroy the centers of European, as well as Christian civilization in North Africa on the eve of the invasion of the Arabs, who brought Islam with them and pushed back the Byzantine Empire, which still controlled Egypt.
By the beginning of the 7th century A.D. e. the activities of the early European states in Africa completely cease, on the contrary, the expansion of the Arabs from Africa takes place in many regions of southern Europe. Attacks of the Spanish and Portuguese troops in the XV-XVI centuries. led to the capture of a number of strongholds in Africa (the Canary Islands, as well as the fortresses of Ceuta, Melilla, Oran, Tunisia, and many others). Italian navigators from Venice and Genoa have also traded extensively with the region since the 13th century. At the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese actually controlled the western coast of Africa and launched an active slave trade. Following them, other Western European powers rush to Africa: the Dutch, the French, and the British.
From the 17th century, Arab trade with Africa south of the Sahara led to the gradual colonization of East Africa, in the Zanzibar region. And although Arab quarters appeared in some cities of West Africa, they did not become colonies, and Morocco's attempt to subjugate the lands of the Sahel ended unsuccessfully. Early European expeditions focused on colonization uninhabited islands, such as Cape Verde and Sao Tome, as well as on the basis of forts on the coast as trading bases. In the second half of the 19th century, especially after the Berlin Conference of 1885, the process of African colonization acquired such a scale that it was called the "race for Africa"; practically the entire continent (except for the remaining independent Ethiopia and Liberia) by 1900 was divided between a number of European powers: Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal retained and somewhat expanded their old colonies.
During the First World War, Germany lost (mostly already in 1914) its African colonies, which after the war came under the administration of other colonial powers under League of Nations mandates. The Russian Empire never claimed to colonize Africa, despite its traditionally strong position in Ethiopia, except for the Sagallo incident in 1889.
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The history of Africa is a history of mysteries.
Modern African states appeared on the political map of Mary mainly after 1959, many of them were colonies of England and France, Portugal. The colonial period left a strong imprint on African historical science. The colonialists considered themselves carriers of civilization in the "wild" African countries. Many ancient historical monuments were destroyed. Therefore, modern African historical science starts from scratch (with the exception of Egypt and Ethiopia). Was it really so that before the advent of the British, Portuguese and French, there were only wild tribes in Africa. (by the way, Western scientists are constantly trying to convince the Russians that history ancient Rus' began with the advent of the Varangians (Normans, Anglo-Saxons from Scandinavia, and before their appearance, the Russians did not have any civilization and state).
Whether this was so, I will briefly describe in this article. I'll start with some obscure facts.
Iron metallurgy appeared in Africa much earlier than in Europe. In Africa, iron was smelted as early as the 1st millennium BC. The ancient states of the East brought iron from Africa and this iron was of much higher quality than in the countries of the Ancient East (Egypt, Palestine, Babylonia and India). Even the Roman Empire brought iron and gold from West Africa (these countries were called the countries of the Gold Coast). And the ancient Egyptians called the countries of Africa the country of Ophir, from where many rare goods were brought.
In Africa, there were many ancient states that are very poorly understood due to the activities of the colonial countries.
And now I will tell you my point of view on the ancient history of Africa (which will fundamentally not coincide with official historical science).
17 million years ago there was no mainland Africa, in place of Africa there were small islands (especially in its eastern part). The largest continent on Earth was Lemuria and its first people inhabited it (they can be called Lemurians or asuras) and they had a very developed civilization.
4 million years ago - at that time the mainland of Lemuria began to sink to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and the mainland of Africa (its eastern part) began to rise above the waters of the World Ocean. Part of the asuras from Lemuria began to move from Lemuria to East Africa. They later became Pygmies, Bushmen, Hottentots, Hadza, Sandawe.
1 million years ago - from the mainland of Lemuria there was one island - Magadascar. The African continent rose even more strongly above sea level.
Approximately 800 thousand years ago, the mainland of Lemuria completely disappeared at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and a large mainland of Atlantis and the Atlantean civilization appeared in the Atlantic. Who was the first to use the natural resources of Africa (iron, non-ferrous metals, gold and silver) is unknown. They could be the descendants of the asuras, but they could also be the Atlanteans. Their civilization also needed a lot of iron, non-ferrous metals and gold. After all, it was the civilization of the Atlanteans that began to lead all of humanity onto the wrong path of development (the path of enrichment, the path of conquest). It was the Atlanteans who invented a new status for subordinate people - slavery. It was at this time that man began to worship a new fetish (god) - money, luxury, gold.
Approximately 79 thousand years ago. the mainland Atlantis suffered the fate of ancient Lemuria - the mainland went under the waters of the Atlantic, only the island of Poseidonis remained from it, where the late Atlanteans lived. Part of the Atlanteans also began to move to Africa. The African mainland has mainly acquired modern look, but the Sahara was still under water.
Around 9500 BC, the island of Poseidonis completely disappeared into the waters of the Atlantic. Part of the descendants of the Atlanteans settled in northern Africa (tribes of the Oran and Sebilko archaeological culture). The rest of the territory was inhabited by tribes of pygmies and Khoisans (these are the descendants of degraded asuras). It is likely that in these times the civilization of African metallurgists in South Africa (the territory of Zambia and Zimbabwe) continued to exist, because iron and gold were required by the new civilizations of the Ancient East (Egypt and Palestine, the Jericho state).
By about 9000 BC, Africa was the same as it is now, only the Sahara was not a desert, humid subtropics and the descendants of the Atlanteans (tribes of the Orange and Sebil culture) lived there. South of the Sahara (at the junction of the northern tribes and the southern tribes of the Pygmies and Khoisans), Negroid peoples begin to take shape.
By about 5700 BC in northern Africa, the a new group peoples - the Saharan peoples (these are the tribes of the Capsian archaeological culture). It is possible that the metallurgy of iron and other metals continued to exist in southern Africa at that time. After all, the new states of the Middle East continued to develop. It is also possible that on the basis of the African metallurgy of the Asuras (not those who degraded, but those who continued to develop in the direction of conquering space - they lived in Tibet, the mainland of Mu) and Atlanteans (who also aspired to space) the first spaceships were built.
By the end of 4000 BC, the Sahara is becoming an increasingly arid region, the Saharan peoples are increasingly moving south of the Sahara, their place is taken by the Libyan tribes (future Berbers). Due to the pressure of the Sahats, the Negroid peoples also begin to move south and begin to push the pygmies of the center of Africa. I think that during this period the metallurgy of southern Africa developed for the late Asuras and late Atlanteans (for space exploration), as well as for the rapidly growing states of the Ancient East (Egypt, the Middle East, Sumer, North India). At this time, small states begin to appear in Europe (Crete, Greece).
By 1100 AD, a new group of peoples had formed in Africa - the Bantu, they first lived on the territory of modern Cameroon and Nigeria, from this territory they began an active movement to southern Africa, displacing and destroying the Pygmies and Khoisans. At the same time, a new people appeared on the northern coast of Africa - the Garamants (these are the former inhabitants of Ancient Greece, ousted from there by the Dorian Greeks). In my opinion, at that time, iron metallurgy in southern Africa began to develop weaker, since the asuras had already been able to conquer space by that time and no longer needed the products of African metallurgists, the Atlanteans may also have begun to take less iron and non-ferrous metals, since in the countries of the Ancient East iron metallurgy was mastered.
By the beginning of our era, the Bantu peoples had already reached the territory of Zambia, where metallurgy by that time had fallen into decay, the civilization of metallurgists had almost disappeared, and the Bantu did not master this craft. At the same time, many new deposits of iron, non-ferrous metals and gold were discovered in East Africa, and metallurgy began to develop there. Perhaps this development was due to the appearance of Garamantes there (after all, they were well versed in the skills of metallurgists). It was from that time that Roman merchants (through the Sahara) began to visit West Africa and buy iron, non-ferrous metals and gold there.
The question of the appearance of the earliest states in Africa (not counting Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and the Mediterranean coast) is the most obscure in the study of African history. There could not be a developed microtallurgy without civilization (without a state). But it is also possible that the metallurgists of southern Africa existed as part of the civilization of the late Asuras and Atlanteans. And after the services of metallurgists became unnecessary for the Asuras and Atlanteans (they had already become space civilizations), the metallurgy of southern Africa ceased to exist, although there was a Mopomotale state there at the end of the 17th century, which disappeared at the end of the 17th century due to the appearance of new tribes there, those who do not know metallurgy (it was the development tribes that destroyed this state).
According to modern historical science, the first state (south of the Sahara) appeared on the territory of Mali in the 3rd century - it was the state of Ghana. Ancient Ghana traded gold and metals even with the Roman Empire and Byzantium. Perhaps this state arose much earlier, but during the existence of the colonial authorities of England and France there, all information about Ghana disappeared (the colonialists did not want to admit that Ghana is much older than England and France). Under the influence of Ghana, other states later appeared in West Africa - Mali, Songhai, Kanem, Tekrur, Hausa, Ife, Kano and other states of West Africa.
Another hotbed of the emergence of states in Africa is the vicinity of Lake Victoria (the territory of modern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi). The first state appeared there around the 11th century - it was the state of Kitara. In my opinion, the state of Kitara was created by settlers from the territory of modern Sudan - Nilotic tribes, who were driven out of their territory by Arab settlers. Later, other states appeared there - Buganda, Rwanda, Ankole.
Around the same time (according to scientific history) - in the 11th century, the state of Mopomotale appeared in southern Africa, which will disappear at the end of the 17th century (it will be destroyed by wild tribes). I believe that Mopomotale began to exist much earlier, and the inhabitants of this state are the descendants of the most ancient metallurgists of the world, who had connections with the Asuras and Atlanteans.
Around the middle of the 12th century, the first state appeared in the center of Africa - Ndongo (this is a territory in the north of modern Angola). Later, other states appeared in the center of Africa - Congo, Matamba, Mwata and Baluba. Since the 15th century, the colonial states of Europe - Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, France and Germany - began to interfere in the process of statehood development in Africa. If at first they were interested in gold, silver and precious stones, then later slaves became the main commodity (and these countries were engaged in countries that officially rejected the existence of slavery). Slaves were exported by the thousands to the plantations of America. Only much later, at the end of the 19th century, the colonialists began to attract natural resources in Africa. And it is for this reason that vast colonial territories appeared in Africa. The colonies in Africa interrupted the development of the peoples of Africa and distorted its entire history. Until now, significant archaeological research has not been carried out in Africa (the African countries themselves are poor, and England and France do not need a true history of Africa, just like in Russia, Russia also does not conduct good research on the ancient history of Rus', money is spent on buying castles and yachts in Europe, total corruption deprives science of real research).
The ancient history of Africa (and Russia) is still fraught with many mysteries.
Saved
PART VI Shaping the Modern World (1750-2000)
Chapter 21. Europe and the world (1750-1900)
21.19. Africa
For more than three hundred years after 1500, direct European control over Africa was limited to a few forts and trading posts, coupled with a small group of settlements in the area of the Cape of Good Hope. A major problem facing the continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa, was its very low population—in 1900, only about 100 million people lived in Africa. This, combined with poor communications and a mass of diseases, meant that the social and economic basis for building developed political structures did not exist here. When, at the end of the 19th century, Europeans began to exert more effective influence on Africa, it quickly destroyed all the structures that existed there. For the first time in world history, Africa, with the exception of the northern regions along the Mediterranean coast, was under the control of external powers.
In West Africa, the influence of the slave trade declined during the 19th century, and gradually other goods, not so much people, began to be sold, especially palm oil. The British controlled the area around the Gambia River, as well as the colony of Sierra Leone (where freed slaves were settled), as well as settlements on the Gold Coast and further east in Lagos. The Portuguese had several islands and the colony of Luanda on the mainland, the French had Saint-Louis in Senegal and Libreville (founded in 1849). In 1822, the United States founded the colony of Liberia in order to send free blacks there, because the Americans did not want them to live in America, in 1847 Liberia became completely independent.
In the early 1970s, the British moved inland from the Gold Coast and attacked the Ashanti kingdom, destroying its capital, Kumasi, and then retreated back to the coast so as not to be bound by any obligations. The dominant power in the region during this period was the Sokoto Caliphate, founded in 1817, a loose alliance of about thirty "states" that were governed by Islamic law and recognized the supremacy of a central ruler in Sokoto. It was the last major slave state in the world. Further east, Egyptian forces advanced south into Sudan, but very soon it was captured by the British (nominally becoming Anglo-Egyptian territory).
In South Africa at the beginning of the 19th century, there were almost constant fighting among the peoples of the Nguni language group, which led to the rise in the Mtetwa tribe of the previously insignificant leader Chaka, who founded the Zulu kingdom. Although he was assassinated in 1828, the kingdom, dominated by war chiefs, survived as a major regional power. Equally important was the creation of the Swazi kingdom to the north and west of the Zulu and the Ndebele kingdom in the southwest of present-day Zimbabwe, where chieftains who had fled north from the Zulus had ruled over the local Shona people since the 1940s.
The main pressure on these kingdoms came from the south - after the British captured the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1806. In 1838, before the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the number of slaves living in this colony reached a peak of over 40,000. Even after the abolition of slavery, black unskilled workers remained only half free, and from 1828 the British introduced strict national segregation in the regions east of the Cape of Good Hope. This proved unbearable for many poor whites, especially for Dutch-born (Afrikaner) farmers. They began moving north to the Orange River region and, by the 1940s, to the Transvaal to escape what they considered "racial equality."
The Afrikaners successfully achieved independence, but their states remained very small: even by 1870, only 45,000 whites still lived in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Further east, the British colony of Natal grew slowly (the Zulus continued to pose a serious threat to it for decades), but in general, in southern Africa, there were no major changes until the discovery in 1867 of huge diamond deposits in the Kimberley. The income from them was enough to finance the self-government of a small white community on the Cape of Good Hope.
In the late 1970s, the British tried to bring the two Boer republics to the north under their control, but failed. In the 1990s, the growing mineral wealth of the Transvaal prompted the British to take more decisive action. They were able to provoke a war - although it took them three years to crush the resistance of the Boers. Ultimately, the Boer republics were incorporated into the white-controlled Union of South Africa, created in 1910.
In East Africa, significant changes occurred at the beginning of the 19th century, after the expulsion of the Portuguese and the establishment of the rule of the Islamic Omani dynasty here. In 1785, Muslim rulers took control of Kilwa, and in 1800, the island of Zanzibar. Now all the ports on the mainland coast were under the rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Trade routes were opened to the hinterland, the main items of trade were ivory and slaves. Approximately 50,000 slaves per year were sent to the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, on the island of Zanzibar itself there were about 100,000 slaves - about half the population. They were mainly engaged in the cultivation of cloves for marketing in Europe.
In the interior of Africa, the states that existed here stubbornly refused external contacts - by 1878 Rwanda allowed only one Arab merchant to settle in the country. Elsewhere, especially in the Great Lakes region, outside influences have been much stronger. The long-standing kingdom of Buganda collapsed, unable to withstand external pressure, the local economy was rapidly transformed under the influence of active trade: cattle were driven about 600 miles to the coast for sale; caravans carrying ivory and slaves went in the same direction, new products were brought to meet them from the coast.
As in the past, the kingdom of Ethiopia remained for the most part free from these influences. From about 1750 to 1850, it could hardly be called an organized political unit - it was ruled by local military leaders. It was reunited only in the early seventies of the XIX century under the reign of Johannes IV. He and his successor Menelik (who ruled until 1913) turned Ethiopia into a serious regional power. The city of Addis Ababa became the new capital, reflecting the continued movement of the center of the state to the south, which had already been going on for 1500 years.
In 1896, Ethiopia was strong enough to repel an Italian attack and won a landslide victory at the Battle of Adua. She, too, became an empire - and Italy recognized her full independence. From 1880 to 1900, Ethiopia tripled in size, gaining control of the Tigre, several regions of Somalia, the Ogaden and Eritrea, where under its control were completely different groups of the population that had previously formed the core of the old kingdom.
The division of Africa among the European powers reflected internal pressure from Europe, and not the action of any factors that existed within Africa itself. Until the 1970s, the coastal forts and trading posts of the European powers merely controlled trade routes to the hinterland of the continent. Only a few regions were officially divided among the colonial countries, and with the exception of the Cape of Good Hope region (which was climatically suitable for European settlement), they all lay along the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, an area of extreme importance for European states. France captured Algeria in 1830, and Tunisia in 1881, the British dominated Egypt (although the French of the year could not come to terms with this until 1904).
The division of sub-Saharan Africa was the result of the common fear among European powers that if one of them did not achieve recognition of their own zones of control, these zones would be captured by rivals. Agreement on a significant part of these sections was achieved at a conference in Berlin in 1885-1886 (the Americans also participated in it and achieved the right to free trade in key areas). The French gained a large part of West Africa, but the British expanded their colonies on the Gold Coast and in Nigeria. South Africa became largely British, as did much of East Africa. Germany received its first large colonies - Cameroon, South-West Africa and East Africa (later Tanganyika). The Portuguese greatly expanded their empire, gaining Angola and Mozambique. The Belgian monarch was given the Congo as his private domain, and it was only in 1908 that it became Belgian proper, after two decades of extremely bad government, plunder of resources, and barbaric treatment of the population. During the reign of the Belgian monarch, about 8 million Africans died in the Congo.
Diplomats, drawing lines on the map, created colonies - but they completely did not take into account the real situation in Africa. People from close national groups were separated, and tribes that were very different from each other were brought together. But in Africa, maps meant little at all, and colonial rule was still being established—a process that included decades of war. From 1871 until the outbreak of the First World War, the French, British, Germans and Portuguese fought only during the colonial wars. Despite this, they still could not fully control their colonies. In 1900, the last major revolt of the Ashanti people in West Africa was suppressed, but only three years earlier the British had to leave a significant part of the interior of Somalia and limit their influence to the coastal strip (this position did not change until 1920). In Morocco, by 1911, the French controlled only the eastern regions and the Atlantic coast, it took them another three years to conquer Fez and the Atlas Mountains. In 1909, the Spanish were defeated when they tried to extend control beyond their coastal enclaves. Although the Italians took Libya from the Turks in 1912, they controlled little more than the coastal strip here.
Even when the conquest and appeasement (“pacification” is the favorite word of the Europeans) was completed, the European powers faced a serious problem: they were both strong and weak at the same time. They were strong because, in the end, they could mobilize a huge military power - but weak because in any of their colonies they usually had only a limited military force and scattered administration.
Map 73. Africa at the beginning of the 20th century
In Nigeria, the British had 4,000 soldiers and the same number of police, but in these formations all but 75 officers were Africans. In Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) - an area the size of Britain, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and the Benelux countries combined - the British had only a poorly equipped battalion of 750 Africans under the command of 19 British officers and 8 NCOs. At the beginning of the 20th century French forces in West Africa (whose population was 16 million people living in an area fourteen times the size of France) consisted of 2,700 French sergeants and officers, 230 translators, 6,000 armed African gardes civiles, 14,000 soldiers of African troops and one battalion manned exclusively by the French .
Gardes civiles - civil guard. (Approx. transl.)
European administration in the colonies was equally small: in 1909, the British in the Ashanti region and the Gold Coast had five officials for half a million local population. With the exception of a few countries such as Algeria, South Africa, Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, European settlement was almost non-existent. In 1914, only ninety-six Europeans (including missionaries) lived in Rwanda. Thus, to govern these colonies, Europeans had to rely on collaborator groups to rule on their behalf at the local level. Sometimes, as in the case of Buganda, local rulers were given almost complete freedom of action. In Northern Nigeria, the structures of the Hausa (Fulani states), with a predominantly urban population, developed bureaucracy, courts, fiscal system, and an educated elite, were simply incorporated into the imperial structures.
At the beginning of the 19th century, as a result of the Fulani (Fulbe) uprising under the leadership of Osman dan Fodio, power in most of the Hausa states passed to the Fulani clan nobility. (Approx. transl.)
Elsewhere the process proved more difficult, and often nobles locals were appointed paid "leaders" to manage artificially created "tribes".