Financial and political support for exploration grew out of the desire for wealth and national power. Timbuktu, for instance, was believed to be rich in gold. By the s, interest in African exploration had become an international race, much like the Space Race between the U. Explorers like David Livingstone, Henry M.
Stanley , and Heinrich Barth became national heroes, and the stakes were high. A public debate between Richard Burton and John H. Speke over the source of the Nile led to the suspected suicide of Speke, who was later proven correct. They were deeply dependent on the African men they hired and the assistance of African kings and rulers, who were often interested in acquiring new allies and new markets. Explorers' accounts of their travels downplayed the assistance they received from African guides, leaders, and even slave traders.
They also presented themselves as calm, cool, and collected leaders masterfully directing their porters across unknown lands. The reality was that they were often following existing routes and, as Johann Fabian showed, were disoriented by fevers, drugs, and cultural encounters that went against everything they expected to find in so-called savage Africa.
Readers and historians believed explorers' accounts, though, and it was not until recent years that people began to recognize the critical role that Africans and African knowledge played in the exploration of Africa. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
Use precise geolocation data. His military forces met with great resistance in Sokoto, Kano, and many other cities. In these places, many people rallied around Islam as a way of resisting the British.
Remember from Activity Two that most of Northern Nigeria at this time was part of the Sokoto Caliphate, which was formed through a series of jihads in the 19th century. The British were often seen as infidels, and their conquest as possible signs of the end times. Ironically, many British colonizers thought that Africans were the infidels, who needed to be converted to Christianity.
In the end, the military resources and divide and conquer tactics of the British made them out to be the conquerors. The Colony In , Lord Lugard joined the north and south of Nigeria into a single colony for the first time. But the war also helped Great Britain to solidify its control of Nigeria. By the end of the war, Lord Lugard had set in place a system of indirect rule in Nigeria, which allowed for the British to rule through customary authorities and structures.
This system tended to work best in the north, but ran into some problems in the south. The north and south of Nigeria were regions with very different histories, cultures, and religions, as you learned in Activity Two.
What joined them together was a common colonizer. Most of the north had been under Islamic rule through the Sokoto Caliphate, while converts to Islam in the south remained minimal.
Christian missionaries decided to target their efforts on the non-Islamic south rather than the Islamic north. One of the consequences of this strategy was that the people in the north did not have as many opportunities for Western-style education as people in the south, since missionaries did not establish many schools in the north.
This would eventually lead to substantial differences between northern and southern populations in terms of their access to certain kinds of jobs and information, which required a Western-style education. As a colony, Nigeria experienced a good deal of growth in infrastructure and trade.
Roads and railroads were built throughout the country. Communication became more rapid due to the telegraph and postal system. Cash crops such as rubber, peanuts, and palm oil were promoted in rural areas, and were sold and exported.
Also involved in export was the expanding mining industry. In general, a cash economy was becoming increasingly important to Nigeria. And this economic system that was set into place mainly benefited Europe, while exploiting the labor and resources of Nigeria. It is understandable, therefore, that there were significant resistance movements during the colonial period. The Nigerian people could see that the colonial system was not working for their benefit.
They were taxed heavily and unable to move up the ladder to positions of privilege and power that the colonial administrators enjoyed. They also resented the disrespect for local customs shown by British colonizers.
On many occasions, Nigerians resisted the colonial administration. A variety of unions and political associations also formed during the colonial period, as well as a growing group of intellectuals and professionals. The 17 th century also saw the establishment of the fort at James Island , at the estuary of the Gambia river.
Along the Gold Coast, the Dutch presence saw increasing number of castles being established, the most famous being at Cape Corso Cape Coast, built in and expanded in and Sekondi , as well as those already mentioned at Axim and Elmina. The huge expansion of the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17 th century saw the growth of this model of European settlement. European factories at Offra , the port for Allada and at Hueda were fortified. By the middle of the 18 th century, these communities of European settlers had become more important than the informal ones noted above; by this time, members of these informal communities had by and large settled and fully integrated into their host African communities.
Although these communities were protected militarily, they relied very heavily on African intermediaries in their trade. The military captains of these forts also often attended and participated in royal ceremonies of the local African state as often happened in Dahomey, for instance , and also would send gifts for the funeral rites of any deceased person of importance. In practice, this meant that they had to accept and participate in African religious practices, associated with these funerals.
Nevertheless, the communities which grew up around these fortified trading posts were quite different to the informal communities noted above. The military aspect was vital. Although European traders rented the land for their posts, they were as much occupiers as they were tenants. They had armed militias, and often allied with one local ruler or another, which could create problems between them [it is important to remember that by the 18 th century, guns were one of the larges imports from the Atlantic trade to Africa; this had changed a lot from previous centuries, where copper, iron, and cloth had also been important].
They were accustomed to slavery, and brought with them the racial animus which became especially bad in Europe from around onwards. Many of the European officials in these forts had families with African women, and their children who grew up around these forts often became traders, as their dual heritage gave them access to both the worlds of their African and European parents.
Some of these families became important figures in local politics. In this sense there was a continuity from the more informal communities discussed above. However the military presence and the growth of slavery meant that in many important respects these communities had become very different by the 18 th century.
Europeans came to Africa mainly for trade, and this was the almost exclusive cause of their coming. By and large they arrived hoping for a short stay and to become rich. Some then realised the many riches to be found beyond material wealth, and stayed to form families who became part of their host communities. But even then, the commercial aspect was always important. For African rulers, trade brought many opportunities. In the first two centuries, they demanded especially currency materials.
Cloth was one of the largest items imported, from India and Europe; some cargoes of Dutch ships in the early 17 th century consisted almost entirely of cloth, shipped to Senegambia and the Gold Coast.
Cloth was used as money in Senegambia, and also as a currency in parts of Angola and the Gold Coast. Cowries were imported from the Maldives to Benin from as early as This period also saw the import of jewels, and some manufactured goods like mirrors and basins.
But the value of each imported cargo consisted mainly of goods which could be converted into currency. Evidence suggests that the imported metals such as copper and iron were brought in specific dimensions for trade: copper rings or manillas and iron bars of a specified length [especially in Senegambia] which were used then as mediums of exchange. The metals were then melted down by smiths for use in agricultural tools, weapons, and artistic works in the case of Benin, the Benin bronzes [there was a large increase in production of the bronzes in the 16 th century, when copper imports grew; the bronzes had been important from before, but their production expanded then].
One can say by contrast that until the second half of the 17 th century, the trade between Africa and Europe was quite balanced. Until then, while African rulers wanted increased supplies of currency, Europeans did not only focus on the slave trade, as later became the case.
They also wanted to import gold and ivory. When the Dutch invaded Portuguese colonies in Brazil in , the Portuguese colonists formed an army which included many Africans from the Gold Coast and Angola; the Gold Coast contingent demanded particular cloths as part of their payment and apparel, which was sent specially from the Dutch fortress at Elmina.
It was not just the West African textile industry which found markets overseas in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. Basketwork made by Gold Coast communities was highly prized in Holland in the early 17 th century. Ivory carvings made by the Sape peoples of Sierra Leone were found in different parts of Europe, turned into everyday items such as salt cellars and candle holders which were part of the export trade from this part of West Africa [in the 20 th century colonial era, some European art historians assumed these ivories came from Benin; however it has now been established by the American art historian Peter Mark that they came from Sierra Leone].
In sum, the Europeans who settled in Africa did so as part of a commercial enterprise. Their trading presence in West Africa began as one which was more or less between equal trading partners.
As the diplomatic embassies show, each party saw the others as kings and rulers of their lands by divine power.
Each, too, imported money from the other the Europeans importing gold, the Africans importing copper, cowries, cloth, and iron. There was an Atlantic slave trade, but it was not as important as it later became [the Atlantic slave trade remained quite minor in West Africa until the s; it had expanded a lot in Angola after , with a trade to Brazil and the rest of Latin America, but this is in West-Central Africa: it was only in Senegambia that the slave trade was at all important in West Africa until the s, when it began to grow in Allada and Calabar].
However the later 17 th century saw a change, and with that a different pattern in European settlement and trade in West Africa. By this time, the slave trade was dominating, and Europeans were settling in fortified trading positions, and not informally with their African hosts. The economic terms of trade were in general less equal, and that remained the case through the 18 th century. The first half of the 17 th century saw many changes in these patterns, as we are seeing.
These changes were vital in West Africa. They were also part of changes that were taking place around the world, which saw wars and revolutions in places as different as China and Europe, as well as in Africa. This produced climatic difficulties. There were heavy snows in Morocco. When the King of Allada sent ambassadors to Spain in the s, he said that one of the reasons was an attempt to stop the terrible storms which Allada had been experiencing.
Disembarking at cities that were as large, complex, and technologically advanced as Lisbon at the time, the Portuguese actually experienced far less culture shock than we might expect. In fact, they encountered urban centers in West Africa comparable to those back in Europe, governed by elaborate dynasties, organized around apprenticeship-based artistic guilds, and with agricultural systems capable of feeding their large populaces.
Many African cities were even deemed to be larger, more hygienic, and better organized than those of Europe. Additionally, the Portuguese shared many beliefs about magic, the supernatural, and the treatment of illness with the African societies they encountered. Protective amulets in both cultures were considered medicinally valuable, and sickness in general was attributed to witchcraft.
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