Back Geskiedenis van Afrika Afrikaans अफ्रीका केरौ इतिहास ANP تاريخ إفريقيا Arabic Historia d'África AST Gschicht vo Afrika BAR আফ্রিকার ইতিহাস Bengali/Bangla Història d'Àfrica Catalan Dějiny Afriky Czech Hanes Affrica Welsh Afrikas historie Danish

History of Africa

Archaic humans emerged out of Africa between 0.5 and 1.8 million years ago. This was followed by the emergence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in East Africa around 300,000–250,000 years ago. In the 4th millennium BC written history arose in Ancient Egypt,[1] and later in Nubia's Kush, the Horn of Africa's Dʿmt, and Ifrikiya's Carthage.[2] Between around 3000 BCE and 500 CE, the Bantu expansion swept from north-western Central Africa (modern day Cameroon) across much of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, displacing or absorbing groups such as the Khoisan and Pygmies. The oral word is revered in most African societies, and history has generally been recorded via oral tradition. This has led anthropologists to term them "oral civilisations", contrasted with "literate civilisations" which pride the written word.[a][5]: 142–143  Traditions were crafted utilising various sources from the community, performed, and passed down through generations.

Many kingdoms and empires came and went in all regions of the continent. Most states were created through conquest or the borrowing and assimilation of ideas and institutions, while some developed through internal, largely isolated development.[6] Some African empires and kingdoms include:

Some societies were heterarchical and egalitarian, while others remained organised into chiefdoms.[b][12] The continent has between 1250 and 2100 languages,[13] and at its peak it is estimated that Africa had around 10,000 polities, with most following traditional religions.[14]

From the 7th century CE, Islam spread west amid the Arab conquest of North Africa, and by proselytization to the Horn of Africa, bringing with it a new social system. It later spread southwards to the Swahili coast assisted by Muslim dominance of the Indian Ocean trade, and across the Sahara into the western Sahel and Sudan, catalysed by the Fula jihads of the 18th and 19th centuries. Systems of servitude and slavery were historically widespread and commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient and medieval world.[15] When the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic slave trades began, local slave systems started supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. This reorientated many African economies, and created various diasporas, especially in the Americas.[16][17]

From 1870 to 1914, driven by the great force and hunger of the Second Industrial Revolution, European colonisation of Africa developed rapidly, as the major European powers partitioned the continent in the 1884 Berlin Conference, from one-tenth of the continent being under European imperial control to over nine-tenths in the Scramble for Africa.[18][19] European colonialism had significant impacts on Africa's societies, and colonies were maintained for the purpose of economic exploitation of human and natural resources. Colonial histories were written under the pretence of white supremacism, with Africans considered racially inferior and their viewpoint ignored. Oral sources were deprecated and dismissed by most historians, who claimed that Africa had no history. Pre-colonial Christian states include Ethiopia, Makuria, and Kongo. Widespread conversion to Christianity occurred under European rule in southern West Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa due to efficacious missions, as people syncretised Christianity with their local beliefs.[20]

The rise of nationalism facilitated struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, and, with a weakened Europe after the Second World War, waves of decolonisation took place. This culminated in the 1960 Year of Africa and the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 (the predecessor to the African Union), with countries deciding to keep their colonial borders.[21] Traditional power structures, which had been incorporated into the colonial regimes, remained partly in place in many parts of Africa, and their roles, powers, and influence vary greatly. Political decolonisation was mirrored by a movement to decolonise African historiography by incorporating oral sources into a multidisciplinary approach, culminating in UNESCO publishing the General History of Africa from 1981. Many countries have undergone the triumph and defeat of nationalistic fervour, and continue to face challenges such as internal conflict, neocolonialism, and climate change.

  1. ^ "Recordkeeping and History". Khan Academy. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
  2. ^ "Early African Civilization". Study.com. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
  3. ^ Mouralis, Bernard (2022). "Orality". Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Springer. pp. 537–539. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5_296. ISBN 978-94-024-2066-1.
  4. ^ Ogot, Bethwell Allan (2009). "Rereading the History and Historiography of Epistemic Domination and Resistance in Africa". African Studies Review. 52 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1353/arw.0.0127.
  5. ^ Vansina, Jan (1981). "Oral tradition and its methodology". General History of Africa: Volume 1. UNESCO Publishing.
  6. ^ Southall, Aidan (1974). "State Formation in Africa". Annual Review of Anthropology. 3: 153–165. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.03.100174.001101. JSTOR 2949286.
  7. ^ Campbell, Gwyn (2016). "Malagasy empires (Sakalava and Merina)". The Encyclopedia of Empire. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe056. ISBN 978-1-118-45507-4. Retrieved 2025-01-23.
  8. ^ Hogan, Jack (2016). "Lozi Empire". The Encyclopedia of Empire. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 1–2. doi:10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe053. ISBN 978-1-118-45507-4. Retrieved 2025-01-23.
  9. ^ Maphalle, Kagiso Annette (2017). Succession in woman-to-women marriages under customary law: a study of the Lobedu Kingdom (Thesis). University of Cape Town.
  10. ^ Odhiambo, E. S. Atieno (2004). "The Usages of the past: African historiographies since independence". African Research and Documentation. 96: 3–61. doi:10.1017/S0305862X00014369. ISSN 0305-862X.
  11. ^ Austin, Gareth (2007). "Reciprocal Comparison and African History: Tackling Conceptual Eurocentrism in the Study of Africa's Economic Past". African Studies Review. 50 (3): 1–28. doi:10.1353/arw.2008.0009.
  12. ^ González-Ruibal, Alfredo (2024-11-23). "Traditions of Equality: The Archaeology of Egalitarianism and Egalitarian Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa (First and Second Millennium CE)". Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 32 (1): 6. doi:10.1007/s10816-024-09678-1. ISSN 1573-7764.
  13. ^ Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek (2000-08-03). African Languages: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66629-9.
  14. ^ Meredith, Martin (2011-09-01). The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-85720-389-2.
  15. ^ Stilwell, Sean (2013). "Slavery in African History". Slavery and Slaving in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 38. doi:10.1017/cbo9781139034999.003. ISBN 978-1-139-03499-9. For most Africans between 10000 BCE to 500 CE, the use of slaves was not an optimal political or economic strategy. But in some places, Africans came to see the value of slavery. In the large parts of the continent where Africans lived in relatively decentralized and small-scale communities, some big men used slavery to grab power to get around broader governing ideas about reciprocity and kinship, but were still bound by those ideas to some degree. In other parts of the continent early political centralization and commercialization led to expanded use of slaves as soldiers, officials, and workers.
  16. ^ Lovejoy, Paul E. (2012). Transformations of Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. London: Cambridge University Press.
  17. ^ Sparks, Randy J. (2014). "4. The Process of Enslavement at Annamaboe". Where the Negroes are Masters : An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade. Harvard University Press. pp. 122–161. ISBN 9780674724877.
  18. ^ Chukwu, Lawson; Akpowoghaha, G. N. (2023). "Colonialism in Africa: An Introductory Review". Political Economy of Colonial Relations and Crisis of Contemporary African Diplomacy. pp. 1–11. doi:10.1007/978-981-99-0245-3_1. ISBN 978-981-99-0244-6.
  19. ^ Frankema, Ewout (2018). "An Economic Rationale for the West African Scramble? The Commercial Transition and the Commodity Price Boom of 1835–1885". The Journal for Economic History. 78 (1): 231–267. doi:10.1017/S0022050718000128.
  20. ^ Walls, A (2011). "African Christianity in the History of Religions". Studies in World Christianity. 2 (2). Edinburgh University Press: 183–203. doi:10.3366/swc.1996.2.2.183.
  21. ^ Hargreaves, John D. (1996). Decolonization in Africa (2nd ed.). London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-24917-1. OCLC 33131573.


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