This is an abridged model of Episode 1 of our Decolonizing the Curriculum podcast. For the full story, take heed to the audio above.
Take a second and image the continent of Africa earlier than the fifteenth century — precolonial Africa. What photos come to thoughts?
Perhaps you image the Nile River, the sands of the Sahara Desert or possibly wildebeests and lions roaming the Serengeti.
What sounds do you hear? The heartbeat of African drums, maybe? The languages of Yoruba or Fula rolling off the tongues of native audio system?
What about cities? Are there libraries? Centers of immense wealth and studying?
How do you image precolonial Africa?
In an effort to evoke the complexity of Black lives in Florida, the Florida Humanities Broadcasting Hope Grant supplied funding to uncover the under-told tales of African affect — from historical civilizations on the African continent to acts of resistance throughout the Middle Passage transatlantic slave commerce.
Precolonial West Africa
In West Africa, greater than 2,000 miles inland from the coast, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, lies Timbuktu.
The historical metropolis was a serious middle for studying, mentioned Robin Poynor, a retired emeritus professor at the University of Florida’s division of artwork historical past. He has studied African artwork, historical past and tradition for greater than 50 years.
“One of the oldest universities in the world was at Timbuktu,” he mentioned. “Some of the oldest libraries in the world that still exist are in Timbuktu. There are books that are centuries and centuries old, that are stored in libraries in Timbuktu.”
The facilities of studying established in precolonial West Africa had been some of the largest in the world, he added. This goes towards some well-liked notions that individuals in Africa urbanized solely after contact with Arab nations, or later, Europeans.
But when the Europeans first visited the kingdom of Benin and the Congo, they had been bowled over, mentioned Turbado Marabou, a former Alachua County instructor who’s now a storyteller, musician and doctoral scholar targeted on the Black aesthetic. Streets spanned so far as the eye can see and the structure was extremely intricate. It was a society: there have been academics, medical doctors, architects and engineers. African empires additionally established commerce routes and skilled nice wealth courting again to 250 B.C.
The historical African civilization of Djenne — in present-day Mali — is one of few city historical civilizations in human historical past. The metropolis traded fish, grains, copper and metals with the close by cities of Timbuktu and Gao.
Centuries later, Djenne would develop into a serious tradepost in the trans-Saharan gold commerce.
It was this abundance of commerce, particularly gold in the kingdom of Ghana, and later, the Mali Empire, that spurred a brand new chapter in international exploration — each by attracting European explorers to the African continent and by financing legendary excursions by rich African rulers.
Africa and the Age of Discovery
At the flip of the thirteenth century, the kingdom of Ghana was succeeded by the Mali Empire, giving the present-day nation its identify.
Now, its most well-known sultan was Mansa Musa, who took energy in 1312 after his brother, Abu Bakr II, gave up the throne to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean. But in the Middle East, not like in Europe, explorers understood the Earth was spherical, because of the work of Arab geographers.
The particulars of his voyage are nonetheless debated by students. Some historians imagine Abu Bakr II might have landed in the Americas, greater than a century earlier than Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492.
But not like colonial explorations, Wealthy African rulers didn’t probe for conquest,
Turbado Marabou, an artist and educator in Alachua County, mentioned.
“It wasn’t military expansion — it was like Africa Star Trek — we’re not here to exploit you, we’re just here to explore, exchange ideas, exchange culture,” he mentioned.
It is essential to acknowledge the beginnings of the African migration historical past with this exploration, somewhat than with slavery and the transatlantic slave commerce, Amanda Concha-Holmes, an anthropologist and humanities scholar at the University of Florida, mentioned. The first African migrants ought to be conceptualized as rich and extremely superior, somewhat than as enslaved people, she added.
The Age of Discovery was truly a race for European nations to ascertain ties with famously wealthy African empires, mentioned writer Howard French.
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage is taught to youthful college students as only a journey, mentioned Rik Stevenson, a professor of African American research at the University of Florida specializing in resistance throughout the Middle Passage, a leg of the transatlantic slave commerce throughout which hundreds of thousands of Africans had been transported to the Americas.
“We don’t realize that out of about 35,000 voyages, there are about 5,000 ships at the bottom of the ocean,” he mentioned. “We don’t take into account how many people literally died at sea. So those numbers are important.”
Detailed documentation exists from the slave ships.
After the mid-1700s, surgeons had been on the ships. They had been the ones who dictated and documented how folks lived or died at sea becuse of insurance coverage, Stevenson mentioned. Companies bought insurance coverage insurance policies on enslaved individuals’ lives.
“They created a clause called the ‘perils at sea,’” he added. “If a person died because of one of the perils, i.e. insurrection, self murder, then the merchant could collect the insurance.”
The perils at sea clause was employed most notably on the Zong, a slaving vessel from Liverpool.
Captain Luke Collingwood had 440 slaves on board when he took a incorrect flip. He was operating low on meals and water and didn’t assume he may make it to his vacation spot along with his cargo….
“Collingsworth figured… ‘I have 130, 132 Africans that are not marketable,” Stevenson defined. “I can’t sell them; they’re probably not going to make it. I’ll just throw them overboard. If i get back to England and say they were part of the perils at sea, I collect insurance.’”
He went to courtroom, the place the judges realized that isn’t in any respect what occurred. The bloodbath fueled conversations about abolishing slavery in Britain in the 18th and nineteenth centuries.
Stevenson additionally famous the psychosis of the enslaved folks.Of the almost 35,000 voyages that departed from the west coast of Africa, a quantity of completely different ethnic teams had been represented. Most occasions, folks couldn’t even converse to at least one one other. The surgeon’s notes mirrored melancholy, he mentioned.