Early Africa and the Slave Trades

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Welcome to Early Africa and the Slave Trades. This course is an introduction to the history of the peoples of Africa from earliest days up to the nineteenth century. We will investigate how African peoples tamed the frontier, innovated agriculture, forged iron, professed dynamic faiths, built legendary cities, sold goods in distant ports, and founded powerful kingdoms. In the midst of these accomplishments, Europeans figure merely as visitors to the African continent. We will also consider the lives and labors of slaves and slave-owners in Africa. As African communities raided for and traded in slaves with one another, they also sold them to foreign merchants along the coasts, supplying a global slave trade. As purveyors, purchasers or captives themselves the peoples of Africa played a critical role in a global slave trade – devastating societies, expanding empires and creating a Diaspora of tens of millions scattered across the world bound by common heritage. These are some of the themes we will identify, discuss and debate in this course. We will make use of a variety of texts, such as historical documents, classic academic works, as well as African art, film and fiction.