Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade, Spring 2006

History 8a
Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade
Spring 2006
Professor Burke
Swarthmore College

This course is a survey of a broad era in African history, from around 1200 AD to 1850 or so, concentrating on the 17th and 18th Centuries. The class is designed for students seeking an introduction to the discipline of history, for students seeking knowledge about the history of West African societies, or for students with an interest in the Atlantic slave trade and its legacies in both Africa and the Americas.

We will have two primary (and often intertwined) areas of interest in the course. The first is a comparative understanding of West African societies in the era before formal European rule and the second is to study the origins and impact of the slave trade on those societies. In pursuit of these questions, we will be forced to ask, “What is slavery? How is it defined?”

The class is built around a mixture of lecture and discussion. The lectures will not restate material from a textbook, but instead will be used to introduce and review background material in order to facilitate discussion of the readings. Attendance is an important part of your final grade, both for its own sake and because you will be tested on material introduced only through the lectures. The readings are concentrated in the middle third of the course, and you will need to devote more time to completing them well during that time, as they will be key to the discussions we will have then.

In addition to attendance and participation in discussion, grades will be based on two short (4-6 page) papers and a final exam. Reading assignments should be completed by the class session where they are listed in the syllabus.

January 16 Overview of course requirements and structure.
Using Electronic Reserve and JSTOR.
Introduction to themes of course.

January 18 Lecture: West Africa: the material and cultural environment

January 20 Lecture: Overview of West African history to 1100 AD
Reading: George Brooks, Landlords and Strangers, pp. 7-48

January 23 Lecture: Societies of the Upper Niger River up to the time of Sunjata
The Sunjata epic, background
Mande nyamakala and the griot

January 25 Discussion: The Sunjata epic
Reading: Bamba Suso et al, Sunjata

January 27 Discussion: Historical sources for precolonial West Africa
Reading: Bamba Suso et al, Sunjata
Reading: Ibn Battuta selection

Jan. 30 Showing of “Keita: The Heritage of the Griot”

Feb. 1 Lecture: Mansa Musa to the Songhay Empire

Feb. 3 Discussion: The rise and fall of empires. What is an empire, anyway?
Reading: John Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire

FIRST PAPER DUE

Feb. 6 Lecture: West African trading networks
Reading: George Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa

Feb. 8 Lecture/Discussion: Kinship
Reading, Sandra Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast, pp. 20-32

Feb. 10 Lecture: The great pivot–Trans-Saharan to Atlantic

Feb. 13 Lecture: Africans in the Atlantic world
Reading: Randy Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar

Feb. 15 Discussion: Africans in the Atlantic world
Reading: Randy Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar

Feb. 17 Discussion: What is slavery?
Reading: Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery

Feb. 20 Lecture/discussion: What was slavery in precolonial Africa?
Reading: Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery

Feb. 22 Discussion: Warfare, slavery and kin networks in West Africa
Reading: Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery

Feb. 24 Discussion: Why did the Atlantic slave trade happen?

Feb. 27 Discussion: The numbers game
David Eltis, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom

March 1 Discussion: Debating the consequences

March 3 No class

SPRING BREAK

March 13 Discussion: The mingled worlds of the slave trade
Reading: Robert Harms, The Diligent

March 15 Discussion: Morality in the era of the slave trade
Reading: Robert Harms, The Diligent

March 17 Discussion: The West African world in the 18th Century
Reading: George Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa

March 20 Discussion: The problem of sources for the 18th & 19th Century
Reading: *Oladauh Equiano, selection from Africa Remembered
Reading: *Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa
Reading: Robin Law, “An Alternative Text to King Agaja of Dahomey’s Letter to King George I”, History in Africa. (JSTOR)

March 22 Discussion: The problem of sources for the 18th & 19th Century
Reading: Anne Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade

March 24 Lecture: Arochukwu and the Igbo

March 27 Lecture: Oyo

March 29 Lecture: Dahomey

SECOND PAPER DUE

March 31 Lecture: Asante

April 3 Lecture: Benin

April 5 Film: “Ceddo”

April 7 Film: “Ceddo”

April 10 Discussion: “Ceddo” and the problem of evaluative argument

April 12 Lecture: Islamic revival in Senegambia and the Niger Valley

April 14 Discussion: The Yaa Tradition of Ogoni
Reading, Sonpie Kpone-Tonwe, “Leadership Training in Precolonial Nigeria”, International Journal of African Historical Studies. (JSTOR)

April 17 Discussion: Yoruba proverbs
Reading: James Bode Agbaje, “Proverbs: A Strategy For Resolving Conflict in Yoruba Society”, Journalof Africa Cultural Studies. (JSTOR)

April 19 Discussion: Kwame Boakye and late precolonial Asante
Reading: T.C. McCaskie, “The Consuming Passions of Kwame Boakye”, Journal of African Cultural Studies. (JSTOR)

April 21 Lecture/Discussion: Architecture and space
In-class presentation: James Morris and Suzanne Blier, Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa

April 24 Lecture: The “era of legitimate commerce” and the end of the slave trade

April 26 Discussion: The problem of teaching precolonial Africa
Reading: Donald Wright, “What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes In Africa?”, History in Africa. (JSTOR)

April 28 Discussion: One more pass on the era of the slave trade and the problem of assigning responsibility.

FINAL EXAM