Worlds Coming Together: Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas

Sub-Saharan Africa Comes Together

During this period, sub-Saharan Africa’s interactions with the rest of the world dramatically changed. While sub-Saharan Africa before 1000 CE had never been a world entirely apart, its integration with Eurasia now strengthened. Interior hinterlands increasingly found themselves touched by the commercial and migratory impulses emanating from transformations in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. (See Map 10.8.)

WEST AFRICA AND THE MANDE-SPEAKING PEOPLES Once trade routes bridged the Sahara Desert (see Chapter 9), the flow of commodities and ideas linked sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Southwest Asia. As the savanna region increasingly connected to developments in Afro-Eurasia, Mande-speaking peoples emerged as the primary agents for integration within and beyond West Africa. Exploiting their expertise in commerce and political organization, the Mande edged out rivals. The Mande homeland was a vast area, 1,000 miles wide, between the bend in the Senegal River to the west and the bend of the Niger River to the east, stretching more than 2,000 miles from the Senegal River in the north to the Bandama River in the south.

By the eleventh century, the Mande-speaking peoples were spreading their cultural, commercial, and political hegemony from the high savanna grasslands southward into the woodlands and tropical rain forests that stretched to the Atlantic Ocean. Those dwelling in the rain forests organized small-scale societies led by local councils, while those in the savanna developed centralized forms of government under sacred kingships. Mande speakers believed that their kings had descended from the gods and that they enjoyed the gods’ blessing.

As the Mande extended their territory to the Atlantic coast, they gained access to tradable items that residents of the interior were eager to have—notably peppers and kola nuts, for which the Mande exchanged iron products and manufactured textiles. Mande-speaking peoples, with their far-flung commercial networks and highly dispersed populations, dominated the trans-Saharan trade in salt from the northern Sahel, gold from the Mande homeland, and enslaved people from across the region. Salt was in demand on both sides of the Sahara. Camel caravans carried gold to the far northern side of the Sahara, where traders exchanged it for various manufactures. Enslaved men and women were shipped to the settled Muslim communities of North Africa and Egypt. By 1300, the Mande-speaking merchants had followed the Senegal River to its outlet on the coast and then pushed their commercial frontiers farther inland and down the coast. Thus, even before European explorers and traders arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, West African peoples had created dynamic networks linking the hinterlands with coastal trading hubs.

THE MALI EMPIRE In the early thirteenth century, the Mali Empire became the Mande successor state to the kingdom of Ghana (see Chapter 9), and it exercised its political sway over a vast area for three centuries. The origins of the Mali Empire and its legendary founder are enshrined in The Epic of Sundiata. Sundiata’s triumph, which occurred in the first half of the thirteenth century, marked the victory of new cavalry forces over traditional foot soldiers. Horses now became prestige objects for the savanna peoples, symbols of state power.

Under the Mali Empire, commerce took off. With Mande trade routes extending to the Atlantic Ocean and spanning the Sahara Desert, West Africa was no longer an isolated periphery of the central Muslim lands. Mansa Musa (r. 1312–1332), perhaps Mali’s most famous sovereign, made a celebrated hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, in 1324–1325. He traveled through Cairo and impressed crowds with the size of his retinue—including soldiers, wives, consorts, and as many as 12,000 enslaved people—and his displays of wealth, especially the rich brocades of Persian silks and many dazzling items made of gold. Mansa Musa’s lengthy three-month stopover in Cairo, one of Islam’s primary cities, astonished the Egyptian elite and awakened much of the world to the reality that Islam had spread far below the Sahara and that a sub-Saharan state could mount such an impressive display of wealth and power.

MAP 10.8 | Sub-Saharan Africa, 1300

The Mali Empire boasted two of West Africa’s largest cities. Jenne was a vital assembly point for caravans laden with salt, gold, and enslaved people preparing for journeys west to the Atlantic coast and north across the Sahara. The city had originated as an urban settlement around 200 BCE; by 1000 CE, most substantial structures were made of brick. Around the city ran an impressive wall over 11 feet thick at its base and extending over a mile in length. More spectacular was the city of Timbuktu; founded around 1100 as a seasonal camp for nomads, it grew in size and importance under the patronage of various Mali kings. By the fourteenth century, it was a thriving commercial and religious center famed for its three large mosques, which are still standing. Timbuktu was also renowned for its intellectual vitality. Here, West African Muslim scholars congregated to debate the tenets of Islam and to ensure that the faithful, even when distant from the Muslim heartland, practiced their religion with no taint of local pagan observances. These clerics acquired treatises on Islam from all over the world for their personal libraries, remnants of which remain to this day.

TRADE BETWEEN EAST AFRICA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN Africa’s eastern and southern regions were also integrated into long-distance trading systems. Because of monsoon winds, East Africa was a logical end point for much of the Indian Ocean trade. Swahili peoples living along that coast became brokers for trade from the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf territories, and the western coast of India. Merchants in the city of Kilwa on the coast of present-day Tanzania brought ivory, enslaved people, gold, and other items from the continent’s interior and shipped them to destinations around the Indian Ocean.

The most valued commodity being traded was gold. Shona-speaking peoples grew rich by mining the ore in the highlands between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers. By the year 1000 CE, the Shona had founded up to fifty small religious and political centers, each one erected from stone to display its power over the peasant villages surrounding it. Around 1100, one of these centers, Great Zimbabwe, stood supreme among the Shona. Built on the fortunes made from gold, its most impressive landmark was a massive elliptical building made of stone fitted so expertly that it needed no grouting. The buildings of Great Zimbabwe probably housed the king and may also have contained smelters for melting down gold.

THE SLAVE TRADE Enslaved Africans were as valuable as African gold in shipments to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean markets. There had been a lively trade in enslaved Africans (mainly from Nubia) into pharaonic Egypt well before the Common Era. After Islam spread into Africa and sailing techniques improved, the slave trade across the Sahara Desert and Indian Ocean boomed. Although the Quran attempted to mitigate the severity of slavery, requiring Muslim owners of enslaved men and women to treat them kindly and praising manumission as an act of piety, the African slave trade nonetheless flourished under Islam.

Africans became enslaved either by being taken as prisoners of war or by being sold into slavery as punishment for committing a crime. Enslaved people might have worked as soldiers, seafarers on dhows, domestic servants, or plantation workers. Still others, mainly women, were domestic servants, and many became concubines of Muslim political figures and businessmen. Yet in this era, enslaved labor on plantations, like that which later became prominent in the Americas, was the exception, not the rule. Enslaved men and women were more prized as additions to family labor or as status symbols for their owners.

The Americas: Worlds Apart

During this period, the Americas were untouched by the connections reverberating across Afro-Eurasia. Other than limited Viking contacts with North America (see Chapter 9), navigators still could not cross the large oceans that separated the Americas from other lands. Yet even here, commercial and expansionist impulses fostered closer contact among the peoples who lived in the Western Hemisphere..

ANDEAN STATES OF SOUTH AMERICA Growth and prosperity in the Andean region gave rise to South America’s first empire. The Chimú Empire developed early in the second millennium in the fertile Moche Valley, bordering the Pacific Ocean. (See Map 10.9.) Ultimately, the Moche people expanded their influence across numerous valleys and ecological zones, from pastoral highlands to rich valley floodplains to the fecund fishing grounds of the Pacific coast. As their geographical reach expanded, so did their wealth.

The Chimú economy succeeded because it was highly commercialized. Agriculture was its base, and complex irrigation systems turned the arid coast into a string of fertile oases capable of feeding an increasingly dispersed population. Cotton became a lucrative export to distant markets along the Andes. Parades of llamas and porters lugged these commodities up and down the steep mountain chains that form the spine of South America. A well-trained bureaucracy oversaw the construction and maintenance of canals, with a hierarchy of provincial administrators watching over commercial hinterlands.

The Chimú Empire’s biggest city was Chan Chan, which had been growing ever larger since its founding around 900 CE. By the time the Chimú Empire was thriving, Chan Chan’s core population had reached 30,000 inhabitants. A sprawling walled metropolis covering nearly 10 square miles, with extensive roads circulating through neighborhoods, Chan Chan boasted ten huge palaces at its center. Protected by thick walls 30 feet high, the opulent residence halls demonstrated the rulers’ power. Within the compound, emperors erected burial complexes for storing their accumulated riches: fine cloth, gold and silver objects, splendid Spondylus shells, and other luxury goods. Around the compound spread neighborhoods for nobles and artisans; farther out stood rows of commoners’ houses. The Chimú regime, centered at Chan Chan, lasted until Inca armies invaded in the 1460s and incorporated the Pacific state into their own immense empire.

MAP 10.9 | Andean States, c. 700–1400 CE

AN INVENTIVE HIGHLAND STATE The Andes also saw their first highland empires during this period. On the shores of Lake Titicaca, the people of Tiahuanaco forged a high-altitude state. Though it was neither as large nor as wealthy as the Chimú Empire, its residents converted the inhospitable highlands to an environment where farmers and herders thrived. There is evidence of long-distance trade with neighbors in semitropical valleys and even signs of highlanders migrating to the lowlands to produce agrarian staples for their kin in the mountains. Dried fish and cotton came from the coast; fruits and vegetables came from lowland valleys. Trade sustained an enormous urban population of up to 115,000 people. Looming over the skyline of Tiahuanaco was an imposing pyramid of massive sandstone blocks. Its advanced engineering system conveyed water to the summit, from which an imitation rainfall coursed down the carefully carved sides—an awesome spectacle of engineering prowess in such an arid region.

TOLTECS IN MESOAMERICA Additional hubs of regional trade developed farther north in the Americas. By 1000 CE, Mesoamerica had seen the rise and fall of several complex societies, including Teotihuacán and the Maya (see Chapter 8). Caravans of porters bound the region together, working the intricate roads that connected the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and the southern lowlands of Central America to the arid regions of modern Texas. (See Map 10.10.) The region’s heartland was the rich valley of central Mexico. The Toltecs filled the political vacuum left by the decline of Teotihuacán and tapped into the commercial network radiating from the rich valley of central Mexico.

MAP 10.10 | Commercial Hubs in Mesoamerica and North America, 1000 CE

The Toltecs grew to dominate the valley of Mexico between 900 and 1100 CE. They were a combination of migrant groups, farmers from the north and refugees from the south fleeing the strife that followed Teotihuacán’s demise. These migrants settled northwest of Teotihuacán as the city waned, making their capital at Tula. They relied on a maize-based economy supplemented by beans and squash, as well as dog, deer, and rabbit meat. Their rulers made sure that enterprising merchants provided them with status goods such as ornamental pottery, rare shells and stones, and precious skins and feathers.

Tula was a commercial hub, political capital, and ceremonial center. While its layout differed from Teotihuacán’s, many features revealed borrowings from other Mesoamerican peoples. Temples consisted of giant pyramids topped by colossal stone soldiers; ball courts where subjects and conquered peoples alike played their ritual sport were found everywhere. The architecture and monumental art reflected the mixed and migratory origins of the Toltecs: a combination of Maya and Teotihuacáno influences. At its height, the Toltec capital teemed with 60,000 people, a huge metropolis by contemporary European standards (if small by Song and Abbasid Islamic standards).

THE CAHOKIANS IN NORTH AMERICA As in South America and Mesoamerica, cities took shape at the hubs of trading networks across North America. The largest was Cahokia, along the Mississippi River near modern-day East St. Louis, Illinois. A city of about 15,000, it approximated the size of London at the time. Farmers and hunters settled in the region around 600 CE, attracted by its rich soil, its woodlands for fuel and game, and its access to the trading artery of the Mississippi. Eventually, fields of maize and other crops fanned out toward the horizon. The hoe replaced the trusty digging stick, and satellite towns erected granaries to hold the increased yields.

By 1000 CE, Cahokia was an established commercial center for regional and long-distance trade. The hinterlands produced staples for Cahokia’s urban consumers, and in return Cahokia’s crafts rode inland on the backs of porters and to distant markets in canoes. Woven fabrics and ceramics from Cahokia were exchanged for mica from the Appalachian Mountains, seashells and sharks’ teeth from the Gulf of Mexico, and copper from the upper Great Lakes. Cahokia became more than an importer and exporter: it served as the principal exchange hub for an entire regional network trading in salt, tools, pottery, woven stuffs, jewelry, and ceremonial goods.

Dominating Cahokia’s urban landscape were enormous mounds (thus the Cahokians’ nickname, “mound people”). These earthen monuments reveal a sophisticated design and careful maintenance: their builders applied layers of sand and clay to prevent the foundations from drying and cracking. It was from these artificial hills that the people paid homage to spiritual forces. Building this kind of infrastructure without draft animals, hydraulic tools, or even wheels was labor-intensive, so the Cahokians recruited neighboring people to help. A palisade around the city protected the metropolis from marauders.

Ultimately, Cahokia’s success led to its downfall. As woodlands fell to the axe and arable soil lost nutrients, timber and food became scarce. In contrast to the sturdy dhows of the Arabian Sea and the bulky junks of the China seas, Cahokia’s river canoes could only carry limited cargoes. Cahokia’s commercial networks thus met their technological and environmental limits. When the creeks that fed its water system could not keep up with demand, engineers changed their course, but to no avail. By 1350, the city was practically empty. But Cahokia represented the growing networks of trade and migration in North America and the ability of North Americans to organize vibrant commercial societies.

Two forces contributed to greater integration in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas from 1000 to 1300 CE: commercial exchange (of salt, gold, ivory, and enslaved people in sub-Saharan Africa and of shells, pottery, textiles, and metals in the Americas) and urbanization (at Jenne, Timbuktu, and Great Zimbabwe in sub-Saharan Africa and at Chan Chan, Tula, and Cahokia in the Americas). By 1300, trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean exchange had brought Africa into full-fledged Afro-Eurasian networks of exchange, and, as we will see in Chapter 12, transatlantic exchange would soon connect the Americas into a truly global network.