Resistance, Accommodation, and the Scramble for Africa

For Monday's class, please read G&R, chapters 14 and 15, and Things Fall Apart. Remember that blogposts are due before midnight tonight (Wednesday, 10/28).

Southern Africa and European Settlers

Hope you all have a good long weekend! For Monday's class, please read G&R, Chapter 13. You might want to get started on Things Fall Apart for the following week, too.

This Bud's for You

Midterm Exam

For the midterm, we should have questions from three basic categories:

• General information about Africa and early African societies (from Chapters 1-4)
• African religion, Christianity and Islam (from Chapters 6-8)
• Africa on the eve of colonial conquest, including slavery (Chapter 9-12)

You might consider combining the first two categories in a question regarding Sundiata (Islam, African religion, early empires, West Africa, kinship, etc.)

As a reminder, here are the questions from last year:

• What have been the obstacles to population growth in Africa and the strategies people have adopted to overcome those obstacles?
• Where and why have Christianity and Islam taken hold in Africa?
• Outline slavery and slave trading throughout African history.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

UPDATE: Midterm Exam Questions

• What factors contributed to population growth and decline in pre-colonial Africa?
• Where and how did Islam spread in Africa prior to 1850?
• Map

North and East Africa on the Eve of Colonial Conquest

For Monday's class, please read G&R, chapters 11 and 12 and Abina and the Important Men.

This week we will also consider what should be on the Midterm Exam and create the questions together as a class.

Questions from last year's midterm:

• What have been the obstacles to population growth in Africa and the strategies people have adopted to overcome those obstacles?
• Where and why have Christianity and Islam taken hold in Africa?
• Outline slavery and slave trading throughout African history.

Slavery

For Monday's class, please read G&R, chapters 9 and 10.

Questions to consider while reading these chapters:

• Slavery had existed in Africa as a response to what shortage? 
• What kind of societies in Africa refused to participate in the slave trade and resisted slavery the most?  
• Why did the Portuguese start trading in slaves? 
• Why did the King of Kongo try to back out of the trade and what was the response? 
• Why in 1519 did the Portuguese begin shipping slaves directly to the Americas? 
• What sources are used to determine the numbers of slaves exported from Africa? 
• Why did slave trading boom in the mid 17th century? 
• What percentage of exported slaves went to the Caribbean? Brazil? North America? 
• How could someone become a slave? 
• What were slaves traded for? 
• What percentage of enslaved people died before they even started to work as slaves? 
• How does one estimate the demographic impact of the slave trade on Africa? 
• What were the political consequences of the trade in Africa? 
• What European nation abolished the trade, and what did they do to enforce the ban? 
• Was the transition to legitimate (non-slave) trade entirely beneficial? 
• Why did the Kongo Kingdom embrace Christianity?