Economics and the Decline of Slavery

In the 1700s most slaves had been transported from Africa across the Atlantic on British-owned ships. In Britain a moral crusade against the slave trade was aided by greater literacy and printing, and Britain's parliament passed a law in 1807 against international slave trading.

Denmark also made trading in slaves illegal, and in 1808 the United States joined in, forbidding its citizens to partake in the international slave trade. Sweden followed suit. The Dutch, whose sea captains had also engaged in transporting slaves from Africa, did the same. At the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, participating nations agreed that the slave trade should be abolished as soon as possible. That year the Portuguese outlawed slave trading north of the equator. In 1815, British warships began patrolling off the Atlantic coast of western Africa, performing what was seen as a moral duty, seizing ships suspected of engaging in the slave trade, no matter what flag the suspect ship was flying. In 1817 the French, again, after lapsing on the prohibition of a slave trading in the 1790s, joined the moral crusade. And in 1823, Portugal extended its prohibition on slave trading below the equator.

Plantation owners in the Americas and Africa continued to see slavery as an economic necessity, but in some instances it was economics that was diminishing the slave trade. In the 1700s the sugar industry had been expanding, with slaves doing the hard work in sugar production, but by the early 1800s a greater production and an increased supply without an equal increase in consumption of sugar dropped its market price and took a lot of the profit out of sugar growing. Growers were reneging on their loans. Bankers in Britain lost interest in investing in the sugar industry and in the selling of slaves. Instead they were investing in manufacturing and in the trade of goods related to manufacturing. Investors were becoming more interested in modern manufacturing and related commerce than they were in agriculture. Slavery was not growing with manufacturing. Hiring workers was cheaper than buying and maintaining slaves. Hired workers did not run-away and they did resort to the kind of bloody revolts that had recently occurred in Haiti.

The Ottomans and French in North Africa

Muhammad Ali was an Albanian Muslim, around thirty at the turn of the century, when he fought as an officer in the Ottoman army against Napoleon's army in Egypt. Following the British defeat of the French in Egypt, the Ottoman Sultan, Salim III, left Muhammad Ali in charge of Egypt and made him a pasha - an honorary title for military and civil commanders. Muhammad was an able organizer and soldier, and in 1807, with some assistance from the French, Muhammad Ali Pasha drove the British out of Egypt, wounding their pride.

In 1811, Muhammad Ali Pasha moved against those independent landed warlords in Egypt called Mamelukes, and he systematically exterminated them. Sultan Salim III, meanwhile had been strangled, and Salim's successors summoned Muhammad Ali Pasha to war against the Wahhabi (wahabi) -- a political and religious force across the Red Sea in Arabia. The Ottoman sultan deemed the Wahhabi heretics. They were in power in all of Arabia except Yemen, and by 1818 Muhammad Ali Pasha drove them from Arabia's most significant region for Muslims, the Hejaz.

Muhammad Ali Pasha had built a modern and professional military modeled on European standards. He was interested in modernization and developed a modern civil service, schools and public works. He sent young people from Egypt's elite to study abroad. He tried to advance Egypt's economy, to replace subsistence cultivation with the production of crops that could be sold. He employed European hydraulic engineers to build irrigation works with steam-driven pumps for pumping water in the drier summer months. Under Muhammad Ali Pasha, one million acres would be added to Egypt's farmland. Cotton growing would increase -- the cotton sold mainly to Britain, whose purchases of cotton from Egypt would rise from 50 million pounds in 1800 to 300 million in 1830. The growing of summer rice and corn, along with winter wheat and barley, and sugar, tobacco and indigo also increased. His projects were paid for by revenues from taxing Egypt's illiterate peasants -- ninety percent of Egypt's population -- whom he forced to labor on his projects, whom he conscripted into his army and whom he despised as barbarians. And peasant revolts he crushed with brutality.

In search of slaves for his army to offset losses of men in Arabia, and in search of gold, Muhammad Ali Pasha, in 1820, sent his army, led by his son, Ismail, southward into the Sudan. Ismail fought the Shakiyya people, a people with horses and a warrior tradition but still with weaponry from the Middle Ages. The Shakiyya were slaughtered, their ears sent to Egypt's capital, Cairo, by the basketful in exchange for bounty payments. Moving farther up the Nile, Ismail, in June 1821, conquered the trading center at Shendi -- where slaves had been a major item of commerce.

After Shendi, Ismail conquered Kordofan. But he found only worn out gold mines. The gold and booty that Muhammad had been hoping for would not be forthcoming. Slaves were shipped to Cairo, but only half survived the journey.

Ismail established himself at Shendi and pursued tax collection. Many people scattered, putting distance between themselves and Egypt's tax agents. Others revolted against Ismail, and, in October 1822, Ismail was assassinated. Muhammad Ali's army retaliated, burning, slaughtering and enslaving, leaving villages gutted and depopulated. By 1825, Egyptians were trying to lure people back from the hills, promising them they would not be taxed. -- for three years, at any rate. People returned to their fields. To maintain their good will, Egypt put tight controls on its occupation forces, to prevent abuses by soldiers. And those who had been local rulers they made subordinate rulers -- as conquerors had been doing for ages.

The area that was to be called the Egyptian Sudan returned to peace -- better for revenues through taxation, which began three years after the refugees returned. From Egypt, people were sent to the Sudan to improve irrigation, advance agriculture and improve pest control. New crops were successfully planted: indigo, sugar cane and fruit trees. The city of Khartoum was built as a seat for Egypt's governors. And the harvesting of slaves continued, with annual raids into the hills of Kordofan and against the Dinka and Shilluk.

The French into Algeria

France's most extensive trading with Africa had been its importations of food from the coastal region of Algeria, a wheat-producing area with a population of only around 50,000. The French had bought wheat from Algeria during the French Revolution, and in the 1820s they were still refusing to pay for it. In 1827, a French envoy in Algiers told the governor of Algeria that France still had no intention of honoring its debt to Algeria, and, it is said, the governor struck the envoy with a fly swatter and threatened to end permission for France to continue trading in Algeria. France's monarch, Charles X, in June 1830, sent an invasion force of 36,000 troops to Algeria, claiming that he was responding to the insult to his ambassador. The invasion was also described as a civilizing mission and a mission to abolish slavery and piracy -- a response to Algeria's reputation in France for having attacked the ships of Christian nations during past centuries and for an estimated 25,000 European slaves in Algeria, including women in the harems.

The French force landed twenty-seven kilometers west of Algiers, and soon they raped, looted, and were desecrating Mosques. The commander of the invasion force, General Bugeaud, wrote:

We have burned extensively and destroyed extensively. It may be that I shall be called a barbarian, but as I have the conviction that I have done something useful for my country, I consider myself above the reproaches of the press.

Algiers capitulated on July 5, but the glory of conquest failed to help King Charles. By the end of the month he was fleeing into exile to England.

North Africa after 1830

For strategic reasons, Britain had allied itself with the Ottoman Empire, the British and Ottomans having a common fear of Russia. And with this alliance the British won the right to trade freely in Egypt. Egypt's viceroy, Muhammad Ali Pasha, was obliged to abolish his protective tariffs. His efforts at industrialization, built on protective tariffs, ended. The aging Ali gave up on economic reform, and his interest in educational reform lapsed. The great conqueror became ill in 1848 and retired, passing his rule in Egypt and the Sudan to his son, Ibrahim.

From Egypt's administrative center in the Sudan, Khartoum, across approximately 500 miles (800 kilometers) of desert, was Darfur, which had often been raided for slaves by the Egyptians. Some such slaves were transported across the Red Sea for labor on an expanded pilgrimage site at Mecca, while others were put on ships bound for Constantinople (Istanbul) and Izmir.

West of Darfur was Wadai (Oaddai), a place with a little water and a center of trade in slaves, cattle, horses, corn and honey. There an Islamic movement called the Senussi (also Sanusi or Sanusiya) brotherhood was established, a movement whose founder, Muhammad bin Ali al-Sanusi, was from Algeria. The founder was concerned with Islam's decline in power and influence. In Arabia he had met and had associated with Wahhabi Islamists, and at Mecca he had won the support of prince Mohammad Sherif of Wadai, who had become Sultan of Wadai in 1838.

Around 2000 miles to the northwest, across more desert, the French in Algeria were consolidating their authority. In 1840, 115,000 more French soldiers arrived. France's Minister of War, General Gérard, announced that Algeria was necessary to France as an "outlet for our surplus population" and for selling manufactured products in exchange for agricultural products needed in France. And with the hard times in Europe in the 1840s the trickle of French settlers into Algeria increased.

Bordering Algeria to the west was Morocco. For centuries the Moroccans had succeeded in fighting off foreign rule, including that of the Ottoman Turks, but in the1800s the shift in military might to the favor of Europeans gave the Moroccan sultan a sense of vulnerability. The sultan, Moulay Abderramane, wanted modernization for his realm, and he wanted peace and trade with Europe as a part of that modernization. But the sultan also had opinion in Morocco to consider, and an occasional tribal uprising to suppress. The Muslims of Morocco were supporting their Muslims brothers in Algeria, who were fighting a jihad against the Christian French, and the Sultan could not refrain from at least looking like he was supporting the Muslims of Algeria.

The French drove a resistance leader, Abd al-Qadir, into Morocco, and the sultan gave public support to this Islamic hero. War broke out between France and Morocco in August 1844. The French bombarded Tangier and Essaouira -- the bombardment of Essaouira accompanied by the withdrawal of Moroccan troops and followed by pillaging by the Haha and Chiadma tribes. Near Oujda, the French routed the Moroccan army, led by the Sultan's son. Then, in September, came the Treaty of Tangier. The French were having enough trouble in Algeria and wanted peace with Morocco. They gave Oujda back to the sultan in exchange for agreement of a definite border between Morocco and Algeria. The French demanded no indemnity but demanded that the sultan declare Abd al-Qadir an outlaw.

Sensing the new weakness of Morocco, Spain declared war against Morocco in 1859. The Spanish occupied Tétouan and made peace, and in the settlement they won an expansion of territory in Morocco, including another enclave, at Ifni on the Atlantic coast. It was more of an on-going onion-like peeling away of Moroccan territory by European powers.

Spread of Islam in the Western Sudan

In the 1700s in the western Sudan -- an area of grasslands and woodlands below the Sahara Desert -- Islam had been spreading. Herdsmen resented paying taxes to agricultural kingdoms and they had been converting to Islam, which gave the isolated herdsmen a sense of strength and of belonging to something great. In the highlands of Futa Jalon and Futa Toro, Muslim herdsmen rebelled, took power away from non-Muslim chieftains and began building mosques, establishing Islam law and building feudal-like confederations. And in the early 1800s, Muslim empires arose around Hausaland and Masina.

In Hausaland in 1804, Muslim herdsmen went on jihadsagainst non-Muslim Hausa chiefdoms. The Hausa chiefs and aristocrats had been annoying their peasants and the peasants had been giving them little support. The Hausa chiefs had also been weakened by disunity. One Hausa chief sent his cavalry against the Muslims, but to no avail. The Muslims gained power in the region and built a new capital for themselves at Sokoto.

Among the Muslims at Sokoto an elite ruled with a combination of military and religious authority. Campaigns of expansion were launched, and by 1817, the Muslims had built an empire -- the Sokoto Empire -- more than five hundred miles (800 kilometers) from west to east and as far south as Kontagora. An attempt was made to expand eastward into the Bornu region, a region that had already been under the control of Muslims. Muslims warred against Muslims, and the expansion failed.

Literacy increased under the Muslims. The caliph of the Sokoto Empire from 1817 to 1837 was Muhammad Bello, who wrote tracts on science, law, morality, history and Islamic doctrine. He attempted to rule in accordance with Islamic law: the Sharia. Sokoto became a center where Islamic scholarship flourished. And, with Bello, military campaigns continued -- more than fifty in his twenty years of rule -- campaigns of expansion or campaigns against rebellion. He sought to limit excesses committed by his troops and to limit greed-inspired corruption among officials.

By Muhammad Bello's death in 1837 the Sokoto Empire included an area south and west of Raba and the Adamawa region -- an empire of around ten million people. A Muslim elite was ruling over peasants as had the Hausa aristocracy. Trade flourished, with Kano as a major market center. Slaves were employed in agriculture and as domestics, and in the Adamawa region some landowners had more than a thousand slaves.

West of the Sokoto Empire, the Masina Empire had arisen after conflict in the 1700s between Muslim herdsmen and Masina overlords. By the early 1800s, Masina had its own Muslim overlords. A Muslim named Seku Ahmadu Lobboe was opposed to the mixing of animism and Islam tolerated by these overlords, and, in either 1810 or 1818 (a disputed date), he led a jihad against what were called satanic factions. He overran various chiefdoms, taking power in Jenne and gaining a measure of control over Timbuktu. He led a council of forty that was opposed to the use of alcohol or tobacco and opposed to dancing -- prohibitions not welcomed by many, especially in urban centers.

The Atlantic Coast and Inland

Freetown had been a British colony since 1808. The British navy was using it as a base for their patrols along Africa's coastline, and there freed slaves from British territory in the Caribbean were settled. The first of them -- around 400 -- had arrived in 1787, and they had been expected to support themselves by farming, but many had turned to trade. Since1815, Freetown was a center for slaves rescued from slave ships by the British navy. Hundreds of ships hauling slaves were seized, while some got through, taking slaves to be sold to sugar planters in Cuba and Brazil.

British merchants were pursuing legitimate trade along Africa's Atlantic Coast. From Senegal, the British were acquiring a hardened resin of the Acacia tree, used for dyes in its textile factories. They were acquiring groundnuts from Guinea, gold from Asante and palm oil, the latter harvested on African-owned plantations using slave labor. Palm oil was Africa's foremost export to the Europeans, the oil used by the Europeans for lubricating their machines.

In 1824, forces from Asante overran a British force along the Gold Coast, putting Britain control of the forts in decline there for a few years. In 1827, the British took over administration of the island of Fernando Po (between the Niger River delta and Spanish Guinea) with Spain's approval -- a Spanish attempt to develop the island having failed.

Liberia

In 1820 the United States dispatched four ships to patrol the coast of Africa in cooperation with the British.

In 1822, freed blacks from the United States arrived in western Africa, their voyage paid for by the American Colonization Society. The society's stated purpose was for the freed blacks to start a new life in Africa, safe from discrimination and persecution. The refugees were put ashore at a spot named Liberia -- associated with the word liberty. The new colony suffered from poor administration, and the refugees had to defend themselves from attacks by local people resenting their intrusion.

In 1824, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling undercut efforts at intercepting slave ships, and the U.S. campaign off the coast of Africa ended.

In 1847 Liberia became an independent republic. The Liberians were trading in palm oil, coffee, ivory and camwood (used as a red dye). Some integration with people around Liberia had taken place, with the original migrants from the United States and their descendants dominating the economy and intellectual life of the new country.

The French in Senegal

In the 1700s, Britain and France had been in conflict over the coastal colony of Senegal, with British rule at the town of St. Louis a disturbance to Catholics there. Then in 1814 the Treaty of Paris returned Senegal to the French. Thereafter, the largely mixed-race people of the colony continued to acquire French culture, including liberalism of the Enlightenment tradition. France tried to exploit its colony by encouraging the growth of agricultural products desired in France, but its agricultural program in Senegal failed -- a failure that has been blamed on mismanagement. France monopolized trade into and out of Senegal, and until 1817 slaves were openly shipped from Senegal across the Atlantic.And from Yao traders on Africa's east coast the French were acquiring slaves for their plantations on the islands of Mauritius and Reunion (east of Madagascar). After 1817, when France joined other nations in abolishing international slave trading, slaves were sneaked out of Africa, including attempts to run past the British navy on the Atlantic coast.

France's government cooperated with the British in trying to suppress the slave trade. Slaves taken from a ship off the coast of Angola were given sanctuary on the coastal island of Gorée, formerly the largest slave trading post on the Atlantic, halfway between the mouth of the Senegal River and Gambia. After three years on Gorée, these freed slaves were settled at a French trading station that had been founded in 1843, just south of Spanish Guinea, at a timber exporting point, which, in 1848, was given the name Libreville (French for Freetown).

Blacks, Power and Slavery in the 1850s

Across greater western Africa, slavery remained a major activity. The production of palm oil was rising, and the demand for palm oil was creating wars among Africans around the southern portion of the Niger River. The Oyo empire, weakened by civil wars, became a source of slaves for its neighbors, and slaves from Oyo and Igbo were exported from Bonny and Brass despite patrolling British gunships. The British began extending their power up the Niger River, amid the divided and warring peoples, to eliminated the Ijo middlemen in palm oil trade and to trade directly with the Igbo. And in 1851 the British navy occupied Lagos in an effort to shut down the slave market there.

From the Portuguese controlled west coast of southern Africa, Angola, the exportation of slaves ended around 1850. Inland from the coastal town of Benguela, the Ovimbundu (Umbundu) people lost business with the decline in the slave trade, but they remained successful organizers of trading caravans and a link between the Portuguese on the coast and Chokwe suppliers of goods from farther inland. Their success in trading and their possession of guns gave them economic superiority and prestige over some other tribes in the area. The Portuguese found them friendly -- as good traders are -- and many Ovimbundu readily acquired aspects of western culture, while keeping their religious traditions.

The Chokwe had changed from full-time hunting for game to searching also for ivory and beeswax with which to trade. They had acquired firearms and had used their guns against those they had come across who were not so well armed. The Chokwe strengthened their communities by capturing women, whom they put to work growing food and processing beeswax. The Chokwe moved farther inland to the northeast, where they were able to take advantage of local displeasure with Lunda kings, who were taxing villages heavily and taking as taxes a quota in slaves. The Chokwe absorbed the western portion of the crumbling Lunda empire

Back toward the center-south of Africa in the mid-1800s, those called Bisa became participants in the trading of goods that passed through the Lunda people at Bunkeya and then to the east coast. Lunda chieftains took a cut in the Bisa trader's profits by customs dues, and they obliged the Bisa to pay them tribute. The Bisa were also subjected to raids from the Bemba to their north, who had acquired firearms.

With the newly acquired power that came with guns, a Bemba chieftain created a greater unity among the Bemba and, in 1856, he was able to fend off an attack by the Ngoni, from the south.

In the 1860s, on an extension of the Congo River called the Lubala, around Nyangwe and Kasongo, another trading power with guns arose. This was a federation ruled by Hamed bin Muhammed, commonly known as Tippu Tip, a man of mixed Arab and black African descent. The federation engaged in a variety of activities, including hunting in the forest and raiding surrounding villages. They captured women for concubines and men and women to work their plantations of sugar cane, rice and maize. And they used captives as porters in their trade eastward, through Ujiji and Tabora, to Zanzibar. Tippu Tip did much to destroy the Songye towns of the upper Lualaba River, and he weakened the Luba empire to his south. His empire stretched from the Luba, in the south, northward to where the Congo River turned westward.

The Zulu Empire in the Southeast

In the early 1800s a great social disruption appeared in the southeast of Africa, south of the Limpopo River. This was an area relatively free of disease, an area largely of grassland and sparse forest, good for farming and cattle raising. It was an area, as elsewhere in Africa's southeast, where Bantu people, across the centuries, had come -- tribes with different dialects of a common Bantu language. It was an area that had been sparsely populated by farmers and herdsmen. There had been occasional raiding or fighting over cattle grazing rights, with a warfare that had been recreational and without much bloodshed. Warriors on opposing sides had squared off, shouted insults at each other while their women watched from the sidelines and shouted encouragement. A few prisoners might be taken, followed by negotiations for prisoner returns and reparations payments in cattle. Then in the early 1800s this changed. An increase in population intensified competition for land. Larger groupings emerged for the sake of waging bigger wars, and wars became more intense.

A military leader and ruler emerged among the Zulu who was to remain famous into the twenty-first century among people interested in Africa. His name was Shaka. He was the son of a Zulu chieftain, Senzangahona, and of a woman not recognized as one of the chieftain's legitimate wives. Shaka's mother was driven into exile, and she took her little son, Shaka, with her. When Shaka was fifteen he and his mother were driven away again, and they found shelter in another clan. When Shaka was twenty-three, he was called into service by a chieftain named Dingiswayo, leader of one of the three strong federations that had emerged in Zululand, and Shaka's bravery won Dingiswayo's attention. Dingiswayo adopted Shaka as a son.

Shaka's real father died in 1816, when Shaka was twenty-nine, and Dingiswayo supported Shaka to succeed his father as a chieftain. Shaka employed a half-brother to assassinate the legitimate heir, another half brother.

As chieftain -- under Dingiswayo as overlord -- Shaka reorganized his military, advancing their weaponry from light spears for tossing at one's enemy to heavy stabbing spears for hand-to-hand fighting. And his warriors were trained to fight as a unit rather than as individuals, in a formation similar to Alexander the Great's phalanx, with shields of cowhide to protect against thrown spears.

In 1818, Dingiswayo fought a war against one of the other two federations in Zululand: the Ndwandwe in Zululand's far north. Dingiswayo was routed and killed. Shaka had not participated in the war, and he was now without an overlord. He added what had been Dingiswayo's army to his own, and he led his army against the Ndwandwe. The Ndwandwe force was greater in number, but Shaka's force was better at warfare, and Shaka shattered the Ndwandwe. The Ndwandwe scattered, migrating northward, leaving Shaka as overlord in the whole of Zululand.

In the wake of his great victory, Shaka consolidated his rule, putting to death a recalcitrant chief and his close relatives. All of Zululand was organized. Youth from all of Zululand were to serve in Shaka's army. From around 1821, young women were recruited into guilds for national service. Girls in the hundreds were distributed by "Father Shaka" as wives.

Shaka had created the most powerful African kingdom in the southeast of Africa, and it was a source of pride for the Zulu. But his manner of rule annoyed some of the Zulu, and three of his commanders fled, taking their regiments with them. One of the commanders founded his own kingdom in Gazaland. Other Zulus fleeing Shaka created what was to become known as Swaziland. Zulus fled as far north as Lake Malawi and eastward to Bechuana.

Shaka's raids for cattle and what else he could find sent neighboring non-Zulus fleeing, leaving areas depopulated. These were known as the Time of Troubles. Southwest of Zululand, in mountainous Basutoland, an able leader, Moshoeshoe, used guns, cavalry and diplomacy to fend off the Zulu, and he built up his nation, uniting a diverse people uprooted by war.

It was Shaka's aim, it is said, to rule all Africans, and warfare continued as Shaka expanded his empire. In 1824, two officers in Britain's Royal Navy arrived with a few English adventures at Natal, south of Zululand, hoping to create a settlement. Shaka was curious and befriended them, winning their support for his wars of conquest, Shaka in return recognizing Britain's occupation of land at Natal.

While on a hunt with the British, Shaka learned that his mother lay dying. In grief and in reverence to his mother he ordered several men executed, but his order was carried out chaotically and it is said that more than 7,000 were killed. The Zulu were becoming tired of constant warfare and all the bloodshed, and Shaka appeared to be losing touch with reality. On September 22nd, 1828, Shaka was stabbed to death by various half-bothers, and one them, Dingane (or Dingaan), replaced Shaka as ruler of Zululand.

British, Boers and South Africa

The British had taken Cape Colony from the Dutch East India Company while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, a British squadron of ships landing 6000 men and routing the local Dutch in 1806. The British used the Cape Colony for provisioning its ships involved in tea and other trading with India and points beyond. They won recognition as possessing the colony at the Congress of Vienna at the close of the Napoleonic wars, the British agreeing to pay six million sterling for it and a part of Guiana in South America, which had been owned by the Dutch West India Company.

The Cape Colony consisted of around 26,000 Europeans -- mainly Dutch Boers - 30,000 slaves, 20,000 of mixed race and some Khoikhoi (Hottentots). The British were uncomfortable with the slavery that came with the colony, Britain having outlawed the slave trade but not slavery itself. They tried to establish a rule of law, including law that protected slaves from abuse. They encouraged the Boers to give up their slaves and they taxed them, and the Boers looked upon the British authorities as oppressive.

In June 1820, more than two thousands migrants arrived from Britain -- 1610 men and 659 women.- looking for land to acquire, land that was made available by Boers moving just beyond the colony to escape the British. In the coming few years the new colonists were to communicate their disappointment with farming to people back in Britain, discouraging further migration for the purpose of farming.

Slave Emancipation and The Great Trek

In 1833, Britain's parliament passed the Abolition of Slavery Act, to be applied in all of the lands they controlled, set to take effect in August, 1834. In 1835 the British began emancipating slaves in the West Indies and in the Cape Colony. Boers in Cape Colony disliked it, and in 1836 from 10,000 to 14,000 Boers began what was to be known as their Great Trek, away from British rule and for new lands to occupy. The Xhosa were blocking their movement eastward, and the Boers moved instead in a northern and eastern direction, on horseback and in covered wagons pulled by oxen, taking their slaves with them, and their rifles and their one book -- the Bible. They were libertarian, slave master, militiamen, pioneer and patriarchal Biblical fundamentalist rolled into one. They believed in their own version of ad hoc justice, and they believed that whatever land they could take, by violence if necessary, should be theirs.

The Boers by-passed Basutoland, in the Drakensburg Mountains, and made allies with the Rolong, who welcomed them as allies against the Ndebele (Matabele). The Ndebele were warrior-refugees from Zululand and Shaka's wars, and they had been rapacious in claiming new territory for themselves, but the Boers were too much for them. At the Battle of Vegkop, in October 1836, the Boers overpowered the Ndebele. They fought the Ndebele again in late 1837, defeating them decisively, the Ndebele losing an estimated 3,000 and the Boers losing none. The Ndebele retreated northward, and by around 1840 they settled in Matabeleland, on the Zimbabwe plateau, leaving what became known as the Transvaal to the Boers.

Boers also moved eastward, across the Drakensburg Mountains toward the Zulus and Natal. The Zulus attacked, and in December 1838 the Boers counterattacked, their force of 500 routing the Zulus. The River Ncome was renamed Blood River for having turned red with the blood of Zulus. The Zulu dead has been estimated at 3000. The leader of the Zulus, Dingane (Shaka's successor) lost prestige. Some followers of Dingane moved their support to his brother, Mpande. Mpande collaborated with the Boers and in 1839 defeated a force led by Dingane. In January 1840, Mpande unseated Dingane, who fled to Swaziland, where he was murdered. Zulu resistance to the Boer had ended, and the Zulus evacuated all territory west and south of the Tugela River.

British, Boers and the Xhosa , 1842 to 1856

In 1842, British troops occupied Natal, and the British annexed the port in 1843 and made it a dependency of Cape Colony. A British company started cotton growing near Natal -- the Natal Cotton Company -- and one of the company's directors went to Germany in search of settlers. Economically these were hard times in Europe, and in Lower Saxony he found Germans willing to plant cotton for the company. In 1847 the colonists settled in what was called "New Germany" just outside Port Natal, but their attempt to grow cotton failed. Some of the Germans began supplying vegetables to the growing town of Natal. The Natal Cotton Company disbanded and many of the settlers moved inland, forty miles from the coast, to Pietermaritzburg, a town that had been founded by the Boers in 1838.

Boers, meanwhile, were in conflict with blacks called Griqua, just north of Cape Colony. The British intervened and declared the area a dependency of Cape Colony.

In December 1847, the governor of Cape Colony, Harry Smith, proclaimed the southern bank of the Orange River as the Cape Colony's northern boundary. The number of whites at Cape Colony was nearing 140,000, and by 1850 the colony was suffering from a need of skilled labor: bricklayers, printers, carpenters, dressmakers and gardeners.

In 1852, in what is called the Sand River Convention, the British recognized Boer independence, or right to administer their own affairs, beyond the Cape Colony's border, with the caveat that the Boers end slavery.

The Boers were still fighting what were called Kaffir wars -- Kaffir a word used by the Boers for blacks. And, in 1856, war erupted between the Boers and the able leader, Moshoeshoe, of Basutoland, the Boers having made incursions against Basutoland.

The Boers were also making incursions against the Xhosa and the Thembu, just east of Cape Colony. The Xhosa were suffering from diminishing herds, and in 1856 they responded to the hardship the way that Jews had around the time of Christ and as Plains Indians soon would in North America:the Xhosa adopted an apocalyptic prophesy. A girl, it is said, had a vision while fetching water. Drawing from the prophesy the Xhosa sacrificed all their cattle and refrained from sowing grain. This, they believed, would bring their ancestors back from the dead, would sweep whites and doubters into the sea and leave them free from warfare and loss of land. The Xhosa starved, and they dispersed, looking for food and employment, and Boers increased their expansion against their land.

David Livingstone

A 27-year-old ordained Scottish minister and member of the London Missionary Society, David Livingston, arrived at Cape Colony in 1841. He wished to convert Africans to Christianity, to oppose slavery and to enlist Great Britain in his crusade. In 1843 he married the daughter of a British missionary in Africa, and he spent a few years in Bechuana, learning languages and customs. In June1849, he started a trek northward with his wife and two children, two other explorers and African guides. In 1851 he reached the Zambezi River, and in April 1852 he returned to Capetown and sent his family to England to recover from the rigors of their travel.

Livingston was unpopular at Capetown. He was believed to be too sympathetic with blacks and to have sold them guns, and he returned to his travels unable to buy ammunition for his own weapon. He journeyed northward to the Zambezi again, then to Lake Dilolo in February 1854, and on to Luanda, on the Atlantic Coast at the end of May. He returned to the Zambezi River and in November 1855 found the great waterfalls, Musi-o-Tunya, which he named after Britain's queen, Victoria. On May 20, 1856, he arrived on the east coast, near the mouth of the Zambezi, and he returned to England where he was celebrated as a hero.

Arabs, Blacks and Mixed on the East Coast

The monsoon winds to the southwest, between June and October, made easy sailing for traders from Oman along the eastern coast of Africa, and an easy return voyage in the opposite direction in the monsoons of December to April. Salalah was one of the ports for travel to and from the African coast, and it was Oman that had come to dominate the coast politically.

In 1804, after murdering his father's cousin, Badar bin Seif, Seyyid Said became the Sultan of Oman. He took the title "Seyyid," replacing his former title, "Imam," and his wife took the title "Seyyida. And after consolidating his power in Oman, Seyyid Said moved against members of a clan from Oman, the Mazrui, who lately had been exercising power independently at Mombasa. While Seyyid Said's navy was bombarding Mombasa's Fort Jesus, a British ship docked at Mombasa and threw its support to the Mazrui, hoping that Britain could establish a base at Mombasa and improve its opposition to the slave trade in the region. A contingent from the ship planted the British flag and declared Mombasa an English protectorate, but, in 1826, Said obliged the British to withdraw.

Said was encouraging Arabs in eastern Africa to enlarge their clove plantations on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba -- plantations worked by slave labor. In 1837 he defeated the Mazrui in Mombasa, and, in 1840 he moved the center of his rule to the coastal island of Zanzibar, 150 miles (240 km) to the south.

Zanzibar was a center of trade: slaves and ivory from Africa's interior and spices from the island to the mainland. Said pursued friendly relations with traders in the interior. He exploited rivalries between tribes, encouraging stronger chiefdoms to conquer their weaker neighbors and sell them into slavery. He increased the size of the caravans from the coast, and, as a result of his endeavors, Arabic trading centers developed at Tabora and at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, which served as staging areas for deeper penetration and to Buganda beginning in 1844. Said was growing richer from his trading in ivory and slaves. Then in 1847, to stay on the good side of the British, Seyyid Said agreed to end his trading in slaves. But Seyyid Said continued doing well, becoming the world's foremost exporter of cloves, ivory and gum-copal.

Said encouraged the immigration of bankers from India to Zanzibar, and the Indians were granted religious toleration. Indians became dominant in Said's financial and customs administrations, while Arabs dominated his military. Cultural differences created tensions between the Indians and Arabs, but they tolerated each other enough for peace and the functioning of authority.

Tension also existed between people in Oman and those in Zanzibar. Omani women thought women in Zanzibar uncivilized. Members of the royal family in Oman thought themselves of higher rank than their kin in Africa, and they viewed speaking a language other than Arabic as proof of barbarity. [note]

A comment by Princess Salme, one of the daughters of Sultan Seyyid Said, quoted by Abdul Sheriff in Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar.

The Fall of the Kololo and Survival of the Lozi

The people called Kokolo (Makololo) had been driven away by Shaka in the early 1820s and were on the run, until the 1830s when they moved with their cattle into territory that had belonged to the Lozi, along the upper Zambezi River. They were aggressive and militarily superior to the Lozi, and they conquered the Lozi. And Like other conquerors they kept local political relations in place, becoming overloads, while some of Lozi royalty fled northward. They taxed the Lozi, turned some into agricultural slaves and sold others to slave traders in exchange for more guns. Lozi society became more cattle oriented, and the Kokolo went on regular cattle raids against the Ila people to their east.

The Kololo were less successful at suppressing subversion than the Spartans had been. Lozi royalty sneaked back and in 1864 led an uprising against the oppression, an uprising that annihilated or scattered the Kokolo. Elements of the Kokolo language, Sikololo, and cattle raising remained with the Lozi.

The Ndebele, Shona, Ovimbundu, Prazeros, and Others

The Ndebele, who were driven northward by the Boers, settled on the Zimbabwe plateau in the 1840s. There, with their Zulu-style regiments and fighting methods, they overran peoples called Sotho and Shona -- the latter already weakened by attacks by the Ngoni from north of the Zambezi River. The Ndebele expected tribute (taxes) from those they had overrun, and they raided those who were late in payment.

To the north of the Zimbabwe Plateau, along the Zambezi River in Portuguese East Africa, were the Prazeros and their slave-soldiers. The Prazeros were mainly black but proud of their mixed Portuguese heritage. They were estate owners and overlords, expecting subordinate farmers to support them and their armies. With the decline of the Maravi Empire in the 1700s the Prazeros had gained control over the ivory trade, and in the mid-1800s, well-armed with guns and without powerful state to oppose them, they extended their hunting and raiding 300 miles (480 km) inland from the coast.

Decentralization in Ethiopia

On the east coast, in a land called Ethiopia, Christian emperors, in their stone and mortar palace at Gondar, had been declining in power. They lived by taxing people around Gondar and surrounded themselves with court ceremonies and called themselves King of Kings, but they had little more than nominal power elsewhere in what is called Ethiopia, where warlords ruled.

The warlords received favors from local folk. A visit to a village by a warlord was an occasion for the village people to show their respect, done with a celebration and feasting. And the warlord received gifts -- perhaps oxen for plowing the warlord's land, or sheep, goats, butter, honey or some other goods, usually following the warlords announcement of some need, such as paying for a military campaign, marrying another woman or his loss of personal property.

Gondar was where three caravan routes intersected, all of them to an from Muslim controlled territories, with trade in Gondar controlled largely by Muslim merchants. From the northwest and northeast came textiles and various manufactured goods, including guns. From the south came gold, ivory and slaves. Gondar had a Muslim district and a larger Orthodox Christian district. Roman Catholicism, the religion of a few racially mixed descendants of Portuguese and Ethiopians had been suppressed in the 1600s, and, however many Roman Catholics there now were in Gondar, they practiced their faith in secret.

Living outside the city to the northwest, in small dusty villages, were the Qemants, who worked at growing food and also sold timber and firewood to people in Gondar. Their religion contained elements of the religion of the ancient Hebrews and animism.

Between Gondar and Massawa, a greater power than Gondar had arisen. This was Tegray, under the warlord Dajazmach Webé Hayla Maryam (1799-1867), who had ruled since 1835. Tegray had long controlled the salt trade in the region, and, with greater access to the coast than Gondar, Tegray had acquired a larger stock of firearms. Webé considered himself ruler of the Red Sea coast and was disturbed by the extension of Ottoman power to Massawa. Realizing that his power was not great enough to keep Muslim armies from Massawa, he begged the British for assistance, writing letters to Queen Victoria. But help from Britain was not forthcoming. So he turned to the French for help.

Resources

Top Categories

Product

Company