AP World History

Unit 6 – States and Societies Of Sub-Saharan Africa and Worlds Apart: The Americas and Oceania. Chapters 19 and 21 – Pages 483-505 and 539-562.

States and Societies of Sub-Saharan Africa and Worlds Apart: The Americas and Oceania – Chapters 19 and 21 – Pages 483-505 and Pages 539-562.

Effects of Early African Migrations

Agriculture and population Growth:

500 B.C.E. – Cultivation of bananas resulted in the expansion of arable land and population increase.

African Political Organization:

Kin-Based societies - Characteristics shared by members of a group may include interests, values, ethnic or social background, and kinship ties.

Though kin-based societies survived in much of sub-Saharan Africa until the mid- 19th century, after the first millennium regional states and kingdoms became increasingly prominent.

By 1000 C.E., African migration slowed and Bantu societies governed themselves mostly through family and kinship groups rather than relying on elaborate bureaucracies.

Male heads of families participated in a village’s ruling council.

The head of the most prominent family served as chief and represented the settlement as it dealt with neighboring settlements.

A group of villages, based on ethnic loyalties, made up a district, but there usually was no head or chief of a district.

Village chiefs resolved district issues.

The terms stateless societies or segmentary societies are often used to refer to this type of social organization.

After 1000 C.E. though, these kin-based societies faced difficult challenges as population growth strained land resources.

The west African kingdoms of Ife and Benin developed as complex city-states during this time.

Ensuing conflicts encouraged Bantu communities to formally organize first their military and then their governments.

Near modern-day Republic of the Congo and Angola, the Kingdom of Kongo emerged as the most tightly centralized Bantu kingdom and as a prosperous trading nation transporting copper, raffia cloth, and nzimbu shells from the Atlantic Ocean.

Its central government was based on a king and officials who administered the nation’s judicial, political, and military affairs while provincial governors supervised district rulers who oversaw the local village rulers.

This organization effectively ruled for nearly four hundred years, until the arrival of the Portuguese slave traders.

Islamic Kingdoms and Empires

Merchants brought Islam to sub-Saharan Africa over land along the camel routes to west Africa and across the sea lanes to east Africa.

Islam would profoundly influence religious, cultural, political, social, and economic development throughout the continent.

Though the Sahara desert had never been an absolute barrier to trade and communication, only a few nomadic peoples and a handful of merchants regularly crossed it.

The introduction of the camel from Asia and the development of a useful saddle in the 7th century B.C.E, along with the conquest of north Africa by the Arabs in the 8th and 9th centuries C.E., encouraged the development of trade across the Sahara.

The kingdom of Ghana developed as a regional state during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.

By the late eighth century when the Muslim merchants arrived, Ghana had developed as a market for copper, ironware, cotton textiles, salt, grain, and carnelian beads.

After the Muslim merchants came trade and traffic across the desert increased dramatically as west Africa became the center for trade in gold, in high demand as a result of surging trade throughout the eastern hemisphere.

Through her capital city, Koumbi-Sahel, Ghana controlled the trade and taxes on gold which her kings procured from the river regions of Gambia, Niger, and Senegal.

Ghana’s kings used that wealth to enrich and strengthen their realms.

Merchants in Ghana also traded ivory and slaves for horses and salt, which was especially important for survival in the tropics.

Ghanaian kings used these taxes to finance large armies to protect their sources of gold, to maintain order throughout the kingdom, and to defend Ghana from nomadic invasions across the Sahara.

By about the 10th century, the kings of Ghana converted to Islam which further improved relations with Muslim desert nomads, and with north African merchants and rulers.

The Ghanaian kings did not impose Islam on their subjects and even maintained some elements from their traditional religious practices.

Those Ghanaians involved in trade frequently adopted Islam as well.

Ghana collapsed under perpetual attack from northern nomadic raiders.

At the same time, the kingdom of Mali emerged, lead by the lion prince, Sundiata, who reigned from 1230 to 1255.

Through acts of legendary bravery, he used his dominant cavalry to secure his kingdom which included ancient Ghana as well as the regions of Niger,  Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone.

Mali benefited immensely from the trans-Saharan trade.

It built a huge capital city at Niana as well as market cities like Timbuktu, GAo, and Jenne.

Sundiata’s nephew, Mansa Musa, ruled Mali at its high point.

His pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324-1325 is legendary in its size and wealth and in its effect on the spread of Islam throughout his realm.

He returned to west Africa an even more devout believer, establishing mosques and schools throughout Mali.

Mali was overrun by the Songhai empire in fifteenth century, but the tradition of centralized government and the impact of Islam would survive.

Just as the sub-Saharan trade helped to build empires in the west, the wealth generated by the Indian Ocean trade financed the coastal city-states and interior kingdoms of east Africa.

The 10th century C.E. that Islamic merchants began regular, sustained interaction with the indigenous Bantu people in eastern African.

These coastal dwellers, at first largely hunters and gatherers, formed the basis of the new Swahili culture.

Swahili, an Arabic word meaning “coasters,” refers to the people who lived along the east African coast from Mogadishu to Sofala.

Over time, the Swahili developed a unique language and culture which mixed Bantu and Arabic traditions.

By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Swahili were regularly trading gold, slaves, ivory, and other exotic goods from the African interior for pottery, glass, and textiles brought to Africa from Persia, India, and China by Muslim maritime merchants.

This trading economy was based in cities lining the east African coast: Mogadishu, Lamu, Malindi, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mozambique, and Sofala.

Each city-state was governed by a powerful king.

The tangible wealth of these cities was substantial as they boasted multiple-storied houses made of these cities.

Travelers like Ibn Battuta remarked on the vast material wealth he saw in the city and on the level of scholarship he appreciated in her people.

Zimbabwe was a central African kingdom which also was influenced by the wealth from east African trade.

The term actually simply refers to the dwelling of a chief.

In the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. there were many of these wooden residences in central east Africa.

Islamic Kingdoms and EmpiresBy the early thirteenth century, a magnificent stone complex was built near Nyanda in modern Zimbabwe, indicating an increasingly wealthy, complex, highly organized society.

The impressive stone enclosures were home to more than 18,000 people by the late fifteenth century as the kingdom’s influence stretched deep into south-central Africa.

From these great structures of towers and palaces, kings controlled and taxed trade between the interior and the coast and organized the flow of gold, slaves, and local products.

As in west Africa, wealthy merchants converted to Islam, though they frequently maintained their indigenous traditions as a means of maintaining their social leadership positions.

The conversion of these cultural elites enhanced their political power as they gained additional legitimacy and recognition from Islamic states in Asia.

African Society and Cultural Development

The diversity of African society by the eleventh century C.E. makes generalities difficult.

There are some social forms and cultural patterns which appear widely, however.

The societies in kingdoms, empires, and city-states like Kongo, Mali, and Kilwa resemble the social structures in the settled, agricultural lands of Eurasia.

In the smaller states and kin-based societies, however, kinship, sex and gender expectations, and age groupings determined social position.

The importance of the extended family and the lack of a concept of land as private property served as foundations of social and economic organization in kin-based societies.

People identified first as a member of a family.

Sex and gender also had a major influence on social roles.

Workers like tanners or blacksmiths were almost always men while women in those families might work as potters.

Heavy labor was considered man’s work and women handled most domestic chores and took primary responsibility for raising children.

Both men and women participated in agriculture.

Public authority was usually a man’s realm although some women did rise to positions of power.

Aristocratic women had influence in public affairs as a result of their family connections.

Women were involved in markets and participated in both local and long-distance trade.

Some African societies even allowed women to participate as soldiers.

Islam did little to alter the lives of African women.

Since the faith spread first to the upper classes, and then slowly to other classes, most African women retained their traditional gender roles, living and working openly and unveiled.

Age grouping as a means of organizing society is a distinctive African tradition which served to establish social ties across lines of family and gender.

Members of age sets or age grades performed tasks appropriate to their development and bonded to form tight circles of friends and political allies which continued throughout a person’s life.

Slave holding and slave trading has been an African tradition since antiquity.

As in most societies, slaves came as prisoners of war, debtors, criminals, and suspected witches.

Most slaves in Africa worked as agricultural and construction laborers or as porters or miners.

Slaves were a form of personal wealth as they enabled a family to increase their agricultural production and hence their wealth.

After the ninth century, the demand for slaves increased, as did the demand for all other African “goods.”

The demand for slaves in Persia, India Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean basin outstripped the supply available from eastern Europe, previously the main source of slaves.

Slave raiding developed to meet this demand as rulers of large-scale states and empires began to attack the less defended smaller kingdoms and kin-based societies.

The Zanj revolt, the most famous slave rebellion in Mesopotamia in the late ninth century,  demonstrates the importance of African slavery as a feature of Muslim society.

Figures estimate as many as ten million Africans may have been sold as slaves to the Islamic world from 750-1500 C.E.

This trade laid the foundation for the much larger Atlantic slave trade to develop after 1500.

Religious beliefs varied among the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.

While most had monotheistic beliefs, those beliefs changed or were altered as the people encountered other religious traditions.

Traditional African religion was practical rather than theological in its focus and it strongly emphasized morality and ethics as essential to maintaining an orderly world.

Most people recognized a divine force, usually male, who was responsible for creating and often sustaining life.

He was generally regarded as omniscient and omnipotent.

Lesser gods, frequently associated with natural features such as rain, wind, and trees, were believed to interact freely with humans bringing good or ill.

Religious rituals, such as prayer, animal sacrifice, and other ceremonies, frequently focused on honoring the deities, spirits, or ancestor’s souls to win their favor.

Diviners were intelligent men and sometimes women who understood their communities and sought to resolve problems through consulting oracles or prescribing medicines.

Christianity and Islam, both foreign religions of salvation, were adapted by some Africans.

Christianity reached Egypt and north Africa during the first century C.E.

Alexandria became an early center of Christian thought and home to such scholars as St. Augustine of Hippo.

Christianity expanded into sub-Saharan Africa after the fourth century with the conversion of the kings of Axum in Ethiopia.

There was resurgence in the thirteenth century and retained its privileged status until 1974.

Ethiopian Christianity retained many basic elements of Christian theology and ritual, but like all foreign religions in Africa, it also included the interests of its African believers.

This syncretism can be in the construction of the Rock Churches at Lalibela, Ethiopia, during the twelfth century C.E.

Likewise, Islam reflected the interests of its local converts.

While ruling elites and merchants in sub-Saharan west and coastal east Africa certainly converted in part for the economic benefits, they also took their new faith quite seriously, building mosques and schools, and going on hajj.

Even the most devoted African converts continued to accommodate their new faith with their traditional culture in terms of dress, gender relations, and ancestor rituals.

Worlds Apart: The Americas and Oceania

States and Empires in Mesoamerica and North America

The Toltecs emerged at the end of the troubled ninth and early tenth centuries as the dominant culture in much of central Mexico.

Their capital city, Tula, grew to support a population of more than 60,000, due to irrigation from the nearby river which allowed the Toltecs to grow crops of beans, maize, peppers, tomatoes, chilies, and cotton.

Their large army helped the Toltecs build a compact regional empire supported by subject people and their tribute.

Trade networks, which extended to the Gulf of Mexico coast, supplied the Toltecs with luxury goods from across Mesoamerica.

The Toltec empire was at its height from 950-1150, but by 1175, they could no longer suppress civil strife between ethnic groups nor could they defend against the nomadic invaders from northwest Mexico.

The Mexica, often referred to as the Aztecs, arrived in central Mexico about the middle of the 13th century.

Known as “disorderly” for kidnapping women and seizing lands already cultivated by other groups, the Mexica seemly constantly on the move, as their neighbors quickly grew tired of their disruptions.

About 1345, the Mexica settled n a marshy region of Lake Texcoco and founded their capital city, Tenochtitlan.

The site, which offered ample water and abundant wildlife, allowed the Mexica to develop an extremely productive system of agriculture based on raised, floating gardens known as chinampas.

Good farmers could produce up to seven crops per year of maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and chilies from their gardens of rich, lake-bottom muck.

By the early 1400s, the Mexica, under the leadership of Itzcoatl and then Moctezuma, began a series of ambitious military campaigns adding portions of southwestern Mexico, then the Gulf Coast regions, and finally the high plateaus of central Mexico to their imperial realm.

Forming an alliance with two other expansionist allies, the Mexica came to dominate most of Mesoamerica.

The motivation for this expansion was tribute:

food crops

textiles

jewelry

obsidian knives

cacao

rubber balls

flowed into the capital for use by the elites.

or as items for trade outside the region which in turn brought luxuries like:

translucent jade

Emeralds

jaguar skins

sea shells

into the hands of Aztec elites.

Surprisingly, there was no elaborate bureaucracy to administer the Aztec realm.

Instead, the Mexica and their allies simply conquered, demanded tribute, and left the managing of local government in local hands.

Further, they had no need for a standing army; instead, they simply assembled forces as needed and their reputation for fierceness kept most subject people in line.

Mexica society was rigidly hierarchical and patriarchal.

The most elite social group were accomplished warriors who enjoyed great material wealth and fulfilled positions of leadership as their council selected the Mexica ruler, discussed public issues, and filled government positions.

A priestly class also ranked among the Mexica elite.

These men received a special education in ritual and calendrical lore and presided over religious ceremonies the Mexica viewed as crucial to continuation of the world.

On occasion members of this group would become Mexica rulers as in the case of Montecuzoma II.

Artisans who worked with gold, silver, cotton textiles, or feathers enjoyed a place of prestige in Mexica society as their work supplied the luxury goods consumed by the elite.

Merchants who specialized in long-distance trade were in a prestigious but precarious spot, as they supplied the much-admired luxury goods and even foreign political and military intelligence, but also were constantly suspected of being greedy and tricky.

Most Mexica were commoners who lived in hamlets farming the chinampas and other lands alloted to their families by the calpulli, organized community groups.

The calpulli, which began as ancestor-based groups, evolved into location-based groups which organized their own affairs and allocated land to individual families.

In addition to their own calpulli-distributed land, the commoners also worked land for the aristocrats and contributed labor to public building projects such as temples, palaces, roads, and irrigation systems.

Commoners were also responsible for producing and delivering tribute to the aristocrats.

Mexica society also had a significant slave population, most of whom were Mexica, either sold by their families out of financial need or as a result of their own criminal behavior.

Most slaves were not foreigners.

Though women played little public role in a society so dominated by warriors and military value, they did play significant roles in their families and in their society as the mothers of warriors.

Almost all Mexica women married, as tradition taught that a woman’s value was first as a mother of warriors and that bearing of children was equivalent to capturing an enemy in battle.

Death in childbirth was celebrated as a death on the battlefield.

Mexica Religion:

Mexica tradition was built on the foundations of earlier Mesoamerican traditions such as speaking Nahutal, adapting the Mayan calendar, and embracing the ball game.

Their gods emerged from the traditional Mesoamerican pantheon and included Tezcatlipoca, the giver and taker of life, and Quetzalcoatl, the supporter of the arts, crafts, and agriculture.

The gods were believed to have shed their blood to provide life-giving moisture for the earth to ensure continued fertility.

Ritualized bloodletting was an integral part of Mexica religious practice.

Human sacrifice was seen as essential to the world’s survival.

When the Mexica warriors adopted Huitzilopochtli as their patron god in the early fourteenth century, the amount of humans sacrificed increased dramatically, as did the Mexica’s military victories.

The blood of the sacrificed criminals, prisoners of war, or people given in tribute was believed to sustain the sun, secure needed moisture, and perpetuate their society.

States and Empires in South America

Since there was no tradition of writing in South America prior to the Spanish arrival, knowledge about those empires comes mostly from archaeological evidence and from information  recorded by Spanish conquerors.

Complex societies had existed there since c. 1000 C.E. secular governments were becoming increasingly powerful, and by the end of the fifteenth century, the Incas built the largest empire South America had ever seen.

After the demise of the Chavin society in the fourth century B.C.E and Moche society in the ninth century C.E., a series of small, regional states emerged in Andean South America.

The kingdom of Chuchito, which dominated the border region between modern Bolivia & Peru, relied on the terraced production of potatoes and the herding of llamas and alpacas for food and trade items necessary to survive in the high Andes.

The kingdom of Chimor  or Chimu emerged on the Peruvian coast in the tenth century.

Using irrigation networks to tap Andean water, the Chimu and its capital Chanchan emerged as a thriving agricultural society built on abundant maize and sweet potatoes.

In the mid-fifteenth century, both the Chuchito and Chimu societies fell under the domination of the Incas who began to expand their realm outside their Lake Titicaca settlements.

By the late fifteenth century, the Inca empire stretched from the Pacific to the limits of the Amazon rainforest and from modern Ecuador to Argentina,  with a population of more than eleven million people.

Cuzco was the administrative, religious, and ceremonial capital of the empire.

Inca royalty, nobility, high priests, and hostages from the conquered people lived in handsome red stone buildings in this city of nearly 300,000.

A road system of nearly 10,000 miles tied Cuzco to the rest of the empire and Inca traditions spread throughout the vast empire which they ruled by shrewd use of their power.

They encouraged obedience of conquered peoples by using them in their armies and by posting them to bureaucratic positions.

   They took hostages from the ruling classes and sent their own loyal subjects to colonize difficult regions and they sometimes forced rebelling peoples to relocate in distant parts of their empire.

Inca bureaucrats kept detailed records using a mnemonic device called quipu to record statistical information such as population, tax rolls and receipts, labor services, and to remember historical information relating to rulers and their deeds.

Inca Society and Religion:

The main classes in Inca society were the rulers, aristocrats, priests, and peasants.

No large merchant class

Incan government did not permit individuals to become independent merchants.

Individual artisans produced goods for local consumption and a few produced specialized goods for the ruling and priestly classes.

Goods were bartered on the local level only.

Inca chief ruler was an absolute and infallible deity descended from the sun

He owned all the land, livestock, and property in his realm during his lifetime and even after death.

The dead rulers, still considered powerful as they were believed to act as intermediaries between the dead and the living.

Were mummified, cared for, and brought out for ceremonial occasions and when the living Inca ruler needed their counsel.

Aristocrats who made up the government bureaucracy wore fine clothes, consumed fine foods, and wore elaborate ear spools as symbols of their authority.

Allocated the land which the commoners cultivated.

Inca priests, who also came from aristocratic families, were responsible for overseeing religious rituals.

Common Inca peasants lived in communities called ayllu,which consisted of several families who lived together sharing land, tools, animals, crops, and work.

Production from these lands went to support the ruling, aristocratic, and priestly classes.

The rest of the surplus went into government held storehouses for distribution during famine and to those incapable of supporting themselves. 

Men supplied tribute through their labor and women supplied tribute in the form of textiles, pottery, and jewelry.

The Societies of Oceania

The peoples of Oceania built flourishing societies of their own, creating trade networks between hunting and gathering societies.

Australia:

Life for the aboriginal peoples of Australia changed little after they learned how to exploit the continent’s varied resources.

Despite knowledge of food cultivated in other lands, they never developed agriculture.

Instead, the relied on their land’s regional bounty and on the exchange of surplus foods as they met other mobile and nomadic people during their seasonal migration.

Trade goods, like pearly oyster shells, have been found more than 1000 miles inland, having passed from one group to another rather than being transported by a single individual.

Stone axe heads, spears, boomerangs, furs, skins, and fibers were commonly traded items from the interior.

Stone clubs, decorative trinkets, exotic plants, and highly prized iron axes indicate that goods entered Australia from New Guinea and the islands of southeast Asia.

Religious traditions among aboriginal people were local and centered on geological features and continuing supplies of plants, animals, and water.

These ideas and practices did not spread much beyond the regions inhabited by individual societies.

Pacific Island Societies:

By 1000 C.E., a surging population prompted social and political development in Pacific island societies.

Because of their proximity, mariners linked island societies in the central and western Pacific regions to develop trade networks for useful and exotic goods as well as foodstuffs like yams.

Further, trade and intermarriage between residents of island groups helped to establish political and social relationships among islanders.

Yet, because of the vast distances in the eastern Pacific Ocean, regular trade networks DID NOT emerge.

Occasional long voyages could have momentous results, as did Polynesian voyages to South America in the 5th century C.E. that introduced the sweet potato to the islands where it quickly became a prominent source of food, especially in New Zealand.

Population growth occurred as islanders built productive agricultural and fishing societies.

The cultivation of yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, and other foods and the development of technologies like Hawaiian fishponds both stimulated and responded to rapid population growth.

Dense population placed tremendous pressure on natural resources and human institutions.

Conflicts like the ones on Easter Island in the early 1500s resulted in eventual disintegration of long-lived societies.

Social classes became more stratified.

Governments became more centralized.

Restrictions on food consumption and on the wearing of particular feathers was part of this stratification of social and political powers.

Gods of war and agriculture were common throughout the Pacific Islands, though individual islands and groups had their own deities as well.

Structures known as marae were built with several terraced floors of rock or coral walls designating the boundaries of a sacred place.

In Tonga and Samoa, temples made of timber with thatched roofs were places of worship, sacrifice, and communication with the gods.

In eastern Polynesia, ceremonies took place on platforms in open-air courtyards.

In Tahiti a step pyramid was constructed for such activities.