Ifeyani Nnaji; Cradle of Humanity - A History of Africa Before Colonialism
The Rise of the Buganda Caliphate
Although Islam had been a powerful force on the East Coast of Africa for many centuries, it was only in the beginning of the 19th century that Islam had made its impact felt in the Great Lakes region. It was the Buganda people who were the first to accept the word of the prophet, and for many decades, Islam spread amongst the elite, with diffusion to the lower social orders a slow process. However, in the 1840s this changed with the rise of the Buganda Sultan Umar Hajji. Having completed the Hajj as a prince, and visited Egypt, the new Sultan envisioned uniting much of the Great Lakes region under the banner of Islam, and upon taking the throne, began building an army to defeat the pagan rulers of the region. In doing this, he utilised links built with the trading cities of the Swahili coast as well as the further Muslim World, building an army which was the greatest that the interior of Africa had ever seen.
Umar’s army was disciplined, comparatively large and motivated by religious zeal. As in the Sahel, the Muslim warriors saw great success against their pagan opponents, bringing the other Lake Kingdoms to heel and often forging alliances with local people, usually cattle herding tribes, many of whom quickly accepted Islam. Promising swift advancement for capable people of any tribe who embraced Islam, Buganda was able to use a combination of military might and local cooperation to establish a great Islamic Empire across the lakes region by 1854. Not only this, but she had also created a new Islamic elite amongst many of the peoples of the Empire. Although his Empire would scarcely outlive himself, Umar Hajji had expanded Islam’s direct influence deep into the heart of Africa. Although no more than 30% of the population of his Empire was Muslim upon his death, the spread of the religion among the social elite ensured that even when his Empire fell to infighting after his death, that he would forever be remember as the “Sword of Islam in the Lakes”, who created an influential and Muslim Central African state. This, perhaps, is explanation of why even to this day he is revered among his Buganda people.
As well as bringing Islam to the Great Lakes region, Umar Hajji brought the region to the attention of other Muslim rulers. He made a great statement of support for the rebels in the Sudan, who were fighting the Christian Ethiopians. He even sent some emissaries as far away as Isfahan and Constantinople, where requests for reciprocal recognitions of greatness fell on deaf ears, though where at least the news of the spread of Islam in distant regions from the world proved to be a pleasant curiosity in light of territorial losses closer to home. However, the expansion of the state also made the Congo more accessible to slave traders, who now had an easier journey than ever to bring slaves captured there to ports in East Africa where they could be shipped across the Indian Ocean. The scale of the slave trade increased throughout the 1860s, to the point where even Britain and France were becoming concerned. However, as Europeans began putting pressure on the slave trade at sea, the supply of slaves dropped after the Buganda Empire fell to infighting after the death of Umar Hajji in 1865.
* * * * * *
The Limits of Ethiopia's Empire
By the 1830s, Ethiopia was perhaps as powerful as it had been during the reign of the great Zara Kwestantinos in the 15th century. Her ascendency over the previously fearsome Somali Sultanates had been confirmed, some level of trade had been established with the outside world and internally there were fewer threats to the Ethiopian Emperor than there had ever been. Indeed, the situation now seemed to promise a period of peace and stability for Ethiopia, but this was not a priority for the Ethiopian Emperor Kwestantinos. He was ambitious, and had a great zeal for fighting his Muslim neighbours. Having previously defeated the Somalis, making them send tribute to him and all but destroying the slave trade in captured Ethiopians, Kwestantinos now turned his attention west to the Sudan, ruled by the Sultan Agban, who had previously fought off an Egyptian invasion of his homeland. Kwenstantinos requested the allegiance of Agban, as well as tribute, though this was brusquely rejected by the Sultan, who replied that any gold would have to be taken from them.
The Ethiopian invasion of the Sudan initially went fairly well, defeating the famous black-horsed cavalry and seizing the capital of Sennar, which was looted in a great orgy of violence. The Ethiopians seemed to be having much more luck than the Egyptians in defeating the Sudanese. With organized resistance to the Ethiopian army largely wiped out by 1836, Kwenstantinos returned to the Ethiopian Highlands to embark on the last great project of his reign, the building of a new capital for his empire at Debre Tabor. However, when Kwenstantinos finally died in 1841, his armies were still occupying Sudan. After Agban had been killed, other self-proclaimed leaders now rose to resist the Ethiopians, engaging in a guerrilla struggle that was draining Ethiopia’s treasury. Initially, the new Ethiopian king Yohannes, was averse to becoming personally embroiled in the conflict, preferring to delegate the fighting to his generals. However, when one guerrilla leader had united the others under his banner and was able to start engaging Ethiopia’s armies in pitched battles, Yohannes made an effort to stop the rebellion in the Sudan once and for all. However, he and his army met their fate at the Battle of Sinjah.
Yohannes’ brother Iyasu now became Emperor, and was convinced that there could be no meaningful victory in Sudan. His priority was to stop the wars which were impoverishing the royal treasuring and focus instead on building internal stability. Within a year of becoming Emperor, he had agreed with the new “Sultan of the Sudan”, Abd-al-Rahman Badawi a peace treaty between equals. This was followed by challenges from the Somali rulers who now refused to pay tribute. Iyasu chose not to undertake action against these, apparently thinking that a war for comparatively little gain was not worth the effort. Instead, Iyasu’s reign would be one of relative peace, which saw agricultural advances as well as a flourishing of Amharic literature and culture. This was a development which now saw the previously proud Oromo peoples adopting more and more Amharic customs, which was now seen as the prestige culture of Ethiopia.
Sheldon Roth; Cradle of Humanity - Africa from the Prehistoric to the Present
The Last Days of Isolation?
1861 was a watershed year in African history. In South Africa, it marked the break between the Netherlands and her distant “Cape Colony”, which had by now began to expand far beyond the original perimeter of the Cape of Good Hope. With a rapidly rising population, the European inhabitants of the southern end of Africa began to put increasing pressure on the native peoples of the region such as the Xhosa and Zulus. Although they did not lack for brave warriors, these people did lack for the organization or technology that the Afrikaners at the Cape possessed. Gradually, their cattle herding territories were taken over to become farmland. Those who did not flee became farm-workers for the Afrikaners, working as menial labourers on land that had once been theirs. In the newly independent “South African Republic”, to be black meant a life of displacement, dispossession and servitude, a reality which was not recognised in the lofty wording of the South African constitution. Indeed, when it came to the politics of this new state, the African inhabitants who still made a majority of the population were largely treated as inconsequential. The Constitution made little reference to them, not imposing any great handicaps but not offering citizenship either, which was offered only to Dutch speakers of European descent.
Elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa however, Europeans were not the important players that they were in the South, largely thanks to the barrier of the tropical diseases that made life for Europeans in the region a very difficult proposition indeed. As the British and French found a rare project for cooperation in the fight against the Slave Trade, the slaving kings in West Africa increasingly geared their exports north toward the Sahel and the great Fulani Sultanate. Although still relatively free of the chattel slavery which could be found in areas of the Americas such as Lusitanian Brazil and Columbia, plantations using slaves now became a feature of the Fulani economy, especially around the important textile towns of Hausaland, which were thirsty for more cotton. Within the cities too, the slave population increased to the point where Kano’s population were mostly slaves by the middle of the century. In East Africa too, the British and French clamped down on the slave trade which exported Africans to much of the rest of the Indian Ocean basin. Slaves from East Africa now rarely went further than the great plantations of Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast, which produced large amounts of spices and tropical goods for export.
Although Christian Missionaries were expressing more of an interest in converting the heathen souls which inhabited much of the continent, it was still Islam which was gaining more ground in the continent. The Fulani Caliphate greatly facilitated the growth of the Islamic religion within its own territory, and had made Islam a prestige religion beyond its own borders, though it was not the only Islamic polity to see growth. The short lived Buganda Empire which ruled the Great Lakes region turned Islam from a curiosity into the dominant religion in the area. Even as its rule receded, the new kingdoms that emerged were all ruled by Muslims, and the region became more connected to Coastal East Africa as a result of its religion, which facilitated trade and to some extent, the movement of people. The semi-nomadic peoples between the lakes and the coast such as the Nyamwezi were also increasingly Islamicised, and often set themselves up as middlemen to compensate for the poor quality of their soil. These great gains for the Islamic faith on the continent made the conversions to Christianity of small numbers of people on the African coastline pale in comparison.
Even without the profound European influence that would come later, Africa was a changing place. Even areas of the interior were now seeing a greater integration into the world economy that was a defining feature of the times. Traditional religions were in some ways, losing ground to the “Great Religions” of the world, though often features of these Animist and Fetishist religions were maintained after official conversions, mirroring the syncretism that was found in places such as South East Asia. However, to many outside of her, Africa remained the “Dark Continent” by virtue of her isolation, a place in which few outsiders travelled deep into, and whose diverse peoples, political systems and landscapes were still unknown to even the most curious men of learning elsewhere. With advances in transportation, medicine and most importantly weaponry, how long this would remain to be the case was no longer certain.
* * * * * *
Author's Notes - The coastlines of Africa are increasingly feeling the impact of Europe, except in West Africa, where a decline in the demand for slaves is forcing a shift in the economy of the region. Islam is still making greater headway in the interior than Christianity, though with quinine and the machine gun on the horizon, this will probably change soon. In South Africa, we have seen a slower colonisation of the Highveld without the Mfecane, and one in which whites have been the bigger culprits than the Zulus in ethnically cleansing the original inhabitants. Ethiopia has also discovered her own limits, but still remains a great challenge for Muslim rulers in the region, though they may soon all find out there is something worse than each other in the world.
