Essay Example on African Diaspora As slaves worked in the New World

African Diaspora As slaves worked in the New World their culture mixed with Europeans as the slaves resisted their chains They created a hybrid culture that would leave a mark on the Americas after the slave trade was over Bantu People After migrating throughout Africa the Bantu people settled down and made kin based tribes These tribes were great for small scale but ass these tribes gained power into city states and kingdoms they switched their government type Equiano Olaudah He was a slave that bought his freedom After he was free he denounced slavery as evil and spread the word around the British Isles He published a book that told of him being captured from Benin at 10 years old then working in Pennsylvania Virginia and helping his master during the Seven Years War before he bought his freedom Kingdom of Kongo The Congo River or Zaire River was one of the most politically active areas After 1000 C E the small family based societies came together to form small states after 1200 C E these small city states formed into a bigger force The most notable was the Kingdom of Kongo The Kingdom of Kongo was involved with the trade of copper raffia cloth and nzimbu shells During the 14th century the KIngdom of Kongo it made up most of modern day Republic of the Congo and Angola For the government you had kings and officials 

They oversaw the military justice and financial problems Underneath the main officials were provinces that had governors to look after them and underneath the governors were chiefs of villages Mansa Musa Sundiata s nephew He ruled the Mali empire from 1312 1337 which was the high point of the empire He made his pilgrimage to Mecca with a huge caravan and spread gold along the way Once he got back he took the religion more seriously and built mosques He also built schools for Islam and even brought in descendants of Muhammad himself Middle Passage After they were captured a slave was apart of a forced march that went to the coast They then lived in a holding pen until a ship came by to transport them away The Middle Passage refers to the trans Atlantic ship that they were forced into when going to the Americas It was crowded it smelled and some even starved to death because they didn t want to be a slave The ship crew were cruel to the slaves they forced open the mouths of those who didn t want to eat and threw the sick individuals overboard to not waste supplies At the start of African enslavement 50 of the slaves didn t survive the voyage but as the ships got more investment money the mortality rate dropped to 5 In total 25 of slaves didn t make the journey to the Americas Songhay Empire In the 15th century the Songhay empire took the role as the dominant empire from the Mali The Songhay rulers built the city state from the trading city Gao in the 18th century In the 15th century they rejected the authority of the Mali and 1464 the Songhay ruler Sunni Ali conquered his neighbors and made the Songhay empire He took control of Timbuktu and Jenne both of which were trading cities Sunni Ali created a hierarchy within his army and an imperial navy to control the Niger River All of the emperors were muslim in the empire They built mosques and schools to teach the Quran Sundiata Called the lion prince Sundiata ruled from 1230 to 1255 

He built the empire during the first half of the thirteenth century He created this empire through his reputation of courage and alliances between other local rulers The empire slos supported neighboring kingdoms like Gahna so that they wouldn t go to war They also had an army with mostly a cavalry force Swahili People Swahili means coasters They conquered the East coast of Africa from Mogadishu to Kilwa They spoke a Bantu language that was also called Swahili Swahili society caught the eye of merchants because they were a coastal society and they had gold slaves ivory and exotic local items The islamic merchants game thrm glass pottery and textiles The local chiefs became wealthy and made city states over large areas They switched the town structure from dried mud and wood they were made of stone and had coral buildings The elites were dressed in silk and cotton Zanj Revolt The Zanj revolt provides us with a record of how slaves were treated during the Islamic slave trade Zanj means black slaves from the Swahili coast They worked in Southern Mesopotamia A slave named Ali bin Muhammad got about 15 000 slaves together to revolt against the masters in 869 C E They took over Basra and created their own state it was later captured by the Abbasid rulers 1 Both The Swahili and the West Empires started as small kin based tribes and became empires but the West became an empire mostly because of conquering and good relations whereas the Swahili became an empire from trading goods and basically becoming a very large city 2 During the Early Modern period in Africa the Europeans brought over goods like textiles and American food and other things this propelled trade in Africa With these new foods it made Africa s population rise as there was a surplus of food available