african environment Flashcards
(26 cards)
How did the Atlantic Slave Trade affect violence and economic systems in Senegambia?
It increased violence and shifted the economic system towards the coastal regions, undermining inland economies.
What inequality developed in Senegambia during the Atlantic Slave Trade?
Widening gaps between aristocratic rulers, a growing trading class, and everyday people.
What happened to iron production in West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade?
Internal iron production declined in value, while gold became more important, disadvantaging many West Africans.
How did centralised states exploit decentralised communities?
Centralised states had greater capacity to raid stateless communities lacking political hierarchies.
How did decentralised communities in West Africa defend themselves from slave raiders?
By using ecological strategies — moving into forests, rethinking village construction, and using natural landscapes as defense.
How did ecological knowledge reshape daily life in these communities?
Forests became seen more instrumentally, providing protection and resources for survival and defense.
Why did some West African communities engage in local slavery during this period?
Not to support the Atlantic system, but for survival — trading enslaved people for iron to cultivate rice, build tools, and fortify villages.
What were the key transformations in community relationships due to the slave trade?
Increased dependence on trade for survival tools, deeper exploitation of the environment, and shifts in social organisation.
Who was Lorenzo da Silva Mendonça?
An African from the Kingdom of Kongo who, in 1684, brought a legal case before the Vatican against Atlantic slavery.
What was the purpose of Mendonça’s case in Rome?
To accuse Spain, Portugal, Italy (and even the Vatican) of crimes against humanity for their role in Atlantic slavery.
What phrases did Mendonça use to describe slavery in his case?
He denounced the “tyrannical scale of human beings” and the “diabolical abuse” of slavery as violations of Divine and Human law.
Why is Mendonça’s court case historically significant?
It challenges the dominant narrative that abolition was led by morally superior Europeans; it shows Africans fought for their freedom early and forcefully.
What broader groups did Mendonça’s appeal for liberation include?
Enslaved Africans, oppressed New Christians (converted Jews), and Indigenous Americans.
How does Mendonça’s case reframe the history of abolition?
It shows that abolition was not just a European-driven moral awakening but also driven by oppressed groups demanding justice.
What does the traditional abolition narrative incorrectly suggest about Africans?
That Africans were complicit in their own enslavement and needed Europeans to save them.
What is Judith Carney’s “Black Rice” thesis?
The idea that West African agricultural knowledge, not European technology, was crucial to rice cultivation in the Americas.
Where did African rice-growing expertise originate?
The Senegambia region.
Why were Africans from Senegambia especially valued in American rice plantations?
They brought superior knowledge of rice-growing techniques to places like Carolina and northern Brazil.
What was the demographic impact on Native Americans by the 20th century?
A catastrophic collapse of 90–95% in population, due to disease, environmental destruction, and colonial violence.
According to Kalle Kananoja, what role did Angolan medicinal knowledge play in the 18th-century Atlantic world?
Portuguese officials and European travellers relied heavily on Angolan healing techniques.
How was African medicinal knowledge used in European botany and medicine?
African expertise about plants and healing properties was fundamental to European strategies for survival, trade, and colonial expansion.
What does the Angola case study show about the flow of knowledge in the Atlantic world?
It highlights that Africans were not just passive victims but active contributors to global scientific and medical knowledge.
Historian Check: Ecology, Senegambia, slave trade impacts.
Abdouli Jabang
Historian Check: Lorenzo da Silva Mendonça and early African abolition activism.
Jose Lingna Nafafe
