GLOBAFRICA PROJECT IFRA

GLOBAFRICA
PRESENTATION FOR CONNECTIONS AND DISCONNECTIONS. University of Warwick /IFRA/ BIEA. March 17, 2015.
Carla Bocchetti
Introduction
[SLIDE 2]
GLOBAFRICA is a 42 month project run from the three IFRES in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Each IFRA branch will be responsible for one research axis, and work in partnership with the principal Africanist laboratories in France, IMAF, LAM and CIRAD.
GLOBAFRICA is a pluridisciplinary, historically-rooted project that seeks to reconceptualise Africa's integration with the rest of the world over the longue durée, working through three main research axes - the first looking at the political and economic organisations of the Great Lakes and Great Zimbabwe; the second addressing the diffusion and effect of the Black Death in Africa; and the third examining the role of exogenous American and Asian plants on political, social and economic organisations in the Great Lakes.
Currently, GLOBAFRICA is still in its early stages, this talk first lays out the broad approach of the project and then goes on to focus on the research aims of each axis.
[SLIDE 3] The novelty of GLOBAFRICA is its 'pluri-disciplinary' approach which integrates the social sciences with the 'hard sciences' researching plant-genetics, microbiology and epidemiology. GLOBAFRICA proposes to use these new tools and approaches to re-balance the perceived connections between Africa and other continents between 11th -17th century - questioning the reified simplification of an isolated Africa, whose external connections are unknown. GLOBAFRICA will pay particular attention to the interactions between the 'interfaces' of Africa (the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Sahara desert) and the political and social configurations of the continent's interior - viewing the coast and Sahara from the interior, not the interior from the coast.
[SLIDE 4] Axis 1 will focus on the political, social and economic relationships between the state formations of the Great Lakes and Great Zimbabwe and the Swahili Coast between the 11th and 17th Centuries.
Axis 2 will address the diffusion and effects of the Bubonic Plague in and from Sub-Saharan Africa, and the extent to which this is evidence of the African continent's integration with global exchanges before the 15th Century.
The final axis will revise the effects of exogenous plants on demographic growth and political, social and economic organisations in the Great Lakes region; integrating this 'géo-chronolgy' with the knowledge of historians and archaeologists.
[SLIDE 5] Bringing these three axes together, GLOBAFRICA seeks to reconceptualise the exchanges between Africa and the rest of the world; which are presented, reductively, as beginning with European trading and colonisation in the 18th and 19th Century – a relatively recent phenomena which marked an imposed integration from the 'exterior'. The new histories of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans make it possible to re-evaluate the historiographical questions of the last 20 years which have privileged two main paradigms - the circulation of political models along the coast, and the networks of economic exchange - both of which place the African continent as backward, with a passive and peripheral role in the face of accelerating international exchange.
Thanks to archaeological research, we know how East Africa and the Sahel were spaces of interchange where objects and texts, grains and plants, ideas and representations circulated extensively. GLOBAFRICA seeks to shift focus towards the interior and rethink the degree of integration and exchange between the interior's political and social configurations and the rest of the world; establishing a body of knowledge on the interior's precolonial history. This in turn challenges the myth of an isolated African interior, depicted in medieval cartography as a vacuum filled with monsters, cyclops and wild beasts; and establishes to what extent these global connections and disconnections were not simply an exogenous imposition by European, Islamic or Indian traders. In this sense the Swahili coast will be reconceptualised as an interface that engaged and negotiated in two directions - not just out to the Indian Ocean world, but also inwards towards the interior states of the Great Lakes and Great Zimbabwe, which themselves had significant control over intercontinental material, cultural and political exchanges.
Having noted these epistemological problems, the rest of the paper will focus on the individual axes - first outlining axes 2 and 3, and then focusing more substantially on axis 1, which involves my own work on transport networks throughout the continent and the globe.
Axis 2
[SLIDE 6] Axis 2 explores the possibility of the first and second plague pandemics spreading through sub-Saharan Africa, between the 6th and 18th centuries - employing a pluri-disciplinary approach to excavate a history of the disease's spread and impact on the continent.
[SLIDE 7] Before 1500, the African continent was connected to the rest of the Old World through a series of active trade routes across the Sahara, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Nile Valley. With significant material, cultural and political exchanges taking place, sub-Saharan Africa cannot have been spared by the medieval plague pandemics that stuck the rest of the world, including Egypt and North Africa. The historiographical silences around the plague south of the Sahara again reproduce the narrative of an isolated Africa, disconnected from global exchanges.
The goal of this axis is to prove or disprove the spread of the plague in sub-Saharan Africa; and to discuss the results as part of an on-going revision of Africa's pre-1900 historiography. If Africa experienced a demographic crisis and fundamental transformations in its socio-political organization in the fourteenth century as a result of the Black Death, our current knowledge of the continent's global connections and disconnections need to be radically revised.
[SLIDE 8] In medical terms the bubonic plague is an infectious disease known as enterobacteria yersinia pestis. There have been 3 major pandemics documented in history, the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, and the Bubonic plague. Despite its many names the bubonic plague has always been one disease - and the defining feature of all plagues has consistently been the buboe; a swelling of the lymph nodes that becomes prominent on the neck, armpits, elbows and groin.
[SLIDE 9] Axis 2 will focus on the Second Pandemic, the Black Death. In contrast with the extensive historiography of the plague in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa is invisible in models discussing the spread and impact of the Black Death on the European continent. Whilst the Black Death is often presented as an important factor in the birth of the 'Modern World', little scholarship has focused on Africa south of the Sahara.
[SLIDE 10] Could the Black Death have also spread to sub-Saharan Africa? Was sub-Saharan Africa also deeply transformed in the 6th and 14th centuries? Was the Sahara really an obstacle to the spread of the plague?
[SLIDE 11] How do we build a case, from the known to the unknown? What are the traces left by the medieval plague in the European Records? Could the plague have left similar traces in Africa as in Europe?
Plague was a violent, catastrophic event; and had a direct impact on settlements and demographics. To question the spread of the Black Death we need to use both established and emergent archives.
The archaeological record indicates the local abandonment of settlements and regional patterns of urban desertion.
The genetic record similarly offers a potentially rich archive, with genetic evidence of the plague possibly coming from skeletal remains. Ancient DNA of the disease, Yersinia pestis, can be retrieved from dental pulp, and other techniques are also emerging that change the way we think about the history of the disease. Mass burial sites could well be plague pits, and cemeteries and mortuary practices in medieval and post-medieval sub-Saharan Africa could potentially be rich archives of the disease.
Documentary evidence, mainly from Arabic sources, is a more conventional archive, but suffers from limitations. There is almost no documentary material for the second half of the 14th century. Ibn Khaldun,
[SLIDE 12] writing in Muqaddimah
In the middle of the eight [fourteenth] century, civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. […] Cities and buildings were laid waste, […] settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed…
[SLIDE 13] The Bagauda Song, from Kano in Nigeria, similarly recounts "Four months Sheshe was on his throne: There was a plague and the people were dropping dead."
[SLIDE 14] Perhaps the richest archive on the plague in the continent comes from the iconography of Medieval sub-Saharan Africa. These have to face criticisms, but one aspect of the disease however seems indisputably stable: the buboe, the lump that covered the bodies of plague victims is described by scholars in every pandemic.
The context of most of the statuettes known as 'Djenne terracottas' is unknown, but some have been excavated at Jenne-Jeno, in the Niger River Valley, a settlement that was abandoned in the 14th century. Were they used in therapeutic rituals? Could some of them provide clues of the spread of the plague? The prominence of buboes would indicate, at this stage a speculative yes.
[SLIDE 15] Investigating the histories of numerous plague pandemics offers an opportunity to reconceptualise Africa's historical global connections. Challenging notions about deep change in Africa in the 14th century, beyond Bantu migration, the bubonic plague allows us to ask the question again, how did Africa become 'modern'? Though at an initial stage, the history of the plague may catalyze a revolution in the historiography of Medieval and early modern Africa.
Axis 3
[SLIDE 16] Moving from plagues to plants, Axis 3 in turn seeks to understand the dissemination of exogenous crops in the Great Lakes region, and to define their role in the advent of demographic growth, new economic, social and cultural organisations and a diversification of political systems.
[SLIDE 17] Recognising the historical value of biodiversity and ecology, Axis 3 focusses on farming moving from annual crops to seasonal or perennial harvests, and the "cultural–farming spaces". Axis 3 seeks to recreate the historical relationships and connections of these spaces through an interdisciplinary approach, apprehending history through the geo-chronological dissemination of plants.
[SLIDE 18] During the colonial encounters of the 19th century, agronomic scientific missions revealed two facts. First, there were large populations and high-density settlements in the Highlands and on the banks of the Great Lakes. And second that these landscapes could be described as "American" or "Asian" due to the wide range of exogenous plant: including maize, banana, legumes, peas, tubers, cassava and yams. The presence of this huge range of crops, suggest exchanges with border regions to the East, the Congo Basin to the West, and to the North and South, which could have played a part in political formation of states in the Great Lakes region.
[SLIDE 19] The suggestive first observations of colonial agronomic scientific missions however were not followed up - probably because they went against the premise of an Africa isolated from the modern world. Instead internal Bantu or Nilotic migrations were seen as the endogenous, and exclusive, catalysts of demographic, social and political change. Supported by the existence of endogeneous political constructions, such as the Monarchies of the Great Lakes, and linguistic and glotto-chronological studies which constructed an exhaustive, and contained, map of Bantu languages, these arguments implicitly heightened racial theories about a disconnected continent.
[SLIDE 20] The relationship between landscapes, domestic plant diversity and high population densities has been previously suggested by many studies, but nevertheless, interdisciplinary exercises are still uncommon. GLOBAFRICA seeks to construct a more complete history, through expanding research into rural, demographic and cultural history - and integrating these studies with 'scientific' studies of plant genetics.
What do each of these components have to offer historiographically? Rural histories allow us to localise cultural-farming spaces, and interrogate similarities and divergences; and through a comparative linguistic framework, document regionally and locally diverse farming systems, calendars and diets. Identifying the drivers of change in agriculture, rural histories afford a better understanding of the central kingdoms and the societies of the Great Lakes by transcending a periodisation that mimics political chronologies.
Local and regional understandings of demographic history have similarly challenged earlier debates about the relationship between population and political systems, with supposedly 'stateless' societies now recognised as being as populous as 'kingdoms'. During the pre-colonial period population densities were far higher than those measured at the beginning of the 20th century, and the subsequent population depression has led to the hypothesis of a dual population-density movement: with on the one hand, a polarisation of populations in the Highlands; and on the other, an archipelago of population islets on the Lowlands changing to lineage, or segmental-based political structures.
The contribution of cultural history to this axis is its promotion of synthesis, reconstructing broader population histories, from regional spaces and regional monographs. Progress however appears to be divided, often dependent upon the analytical scales (local, national, regional, continental). Indeed cultural histories have already provided a general framework for the complexity of the Great Lakes, moving beyond the mechanics of migration, and highlighting the importance of a series of humid periods (15th-16th centuries) which were rather favorable to farm surpluses, and subsequent dry periods, which favored new economic and political constructions.
[SLIDE 21] When, at what pace and through what geographical axes, have these "from-the-bottom" and long-lasting connections emerged? To what extent did the dissemination of exogenous plants coincide with or constitute the emergence of new populations?
Axis III examines new Asian and American plant cultures, which have changed – or accompanied changes in - the political-economy and culture as well as the demography of these spaces.
The dissemination of plants can be considered as both biological objects linked to environments; and as social objects, revealing of contacts and exchanges, especially if plants are considered within collections, which are themselves inscribed in particular ecologies and linked to cultural spheres.
Integrating new geo-chronological data with historical and archaeological analysis creates opportunities for new hypotheses and new models of complex growth, which in the very least will refine political chronology and take into consideration peripheral spaces.
[SLIDE 22] Promoting new perspectives, of exogenous plants representing biological invasions, and global connections existing between the Great Lakes region and the rest of the world, plants thus also become important historical markers.
Axis I
[SLIDE 23] We now go back to axis I, which is where I am focusing my own work.
[SLIDE 24] This axis focuses on the coasts of Africa and the interior areas adjacent to them, from the south of modern day Somalia down to the north of modern day South Africa. This region saw the surfacing, and then spreading, of Swahili culture, an Islamic society from the coast that saw itself as urbane, established between the networks of the Indian Ocean and the African Continent. However, this axis aims to go beyond this view, if not surpass it entirely, by attempting to recalibrate the study of this coastal society and the societies of the interior. In order to change the approach to East African societies, there must be a dual outlook: both from the coast and from the interior. This research area will be divided into two fields of study.
[SLIDE 25] The first sub-section is concerned with the connections between the Swahili world and the interior societies during the 16th and 17th centuries. The history of this part of Eastern Africa is generally still perceived through a dichotomous approach of "coast"/"hinterland", with the "hinterland" not only relegated to the shadows but also largely dependent on the dynamics of the coast for its development. In this way, the initiative and power, both symbolic and economic, seems to be found exclusively with the people on the coast, as a result of their connection to trade flows and cultural flows with the Indian Ocean.
This project aims to reverse this perspective in order to re-evaluate the balance between the coast and the inner regions. As a first step, it will assess the existence of transport networks between the interior and the coastline. A body of evidence, principally the Portuguese archives suggests the existence of several interior networks from the 16th and 17th centuries, used by groups such as the Kamba or the Oromo, from places such as Mombasa, the Lamu Archipelago region, and southern Somalia. Inquiries in this direction must be continued, particularly regarding modern day Tanzania, and in liaison with rare archaeological excavations found along these routes.
Beyond these areas, the uncovering of these communication routes, known or suspected, appears essential in studying the movements to and from the African Great Lakes, whether of men, plants or products. Through transport networks were also travelling books and knowledge, science and technology. Maps have played an important part in the way the interior has been imagined and approached. Arabic and Chinese maps had much better understandings of the African interior than Early Modern European maps. It is European preconceptions however that became dominant in the Modern Era: with Africa imagined as another, abstract America where people went in search of gold, paradise and immortality.
Secondly, as already mentioned, this research topic allows us to rethink the interior's interaction with Swahili society, and in this way go beyond the narrative of "Indian Ocean-centred" and "Islam-centred" outside influences. In this way, Axis I looks to study the specific dynamics to these societies "in the dark", and their capacity to confront their Swahili partners, who were not in a dominant position as it is usually seen.
[SLIDE 26] Even though Great Zimbabwe has captured the interest of antiquarians, anthropologists and historians for more than a century, to the point of fuelling all types of speculation, new evidence has appeared in the last few years that forces us to reconsider the links between the rest of Southern Africa and the Swahili coast. The sites of Tsodolo Hills in Zambia, Mosu 1 in Botswana, and especially Mapungubwe in South Africa, have given us several pieces of evidence that show the scale of trade between the coast, itself connected to the four corners of the Indian Ocean, and several thousand kilometres into the interior of Africa: metal objects, Indonesian pearls, Persian and Chinese ceramics etc. But a pearl, even thousands of them, has never constituted an explanation: how does one evaluate, beyond solely an economic viewpoint, the political, social and cultural consequences of these exchanges? Evidence shows that goods exchanged with the coast, gold and ivory in particular, were marginal goods, and that the accumulation of wealth and concentration of power came mainly from agriculture. Furthermore, the establishment of trade, which Arab and Portuguese sources have helped us rediscover, tends to make us think of the interior having control over coastal groups, whether Swahili or Portuguese. The latter had to pay an initial tribute to the Zimbabwean royalty to set up on the coast, and a second, larger tribute to gain access to the plateau. Foreign traders did set themselves up on the plateau – but these "masters of the port" were also subject to approval by the rulers of the plateau. Our objective will therefore be to simultaneously reconsider the development of Great Zimbabwe and Kilwa from the beginning of the 14th Century by reconstructing the intermediaries between the two states, while broadening the study to domains such as the formation of political systems, the process of social and spatial distinctions, and religious conversion.
[SLIDE 27] To sum up, in the three axes, GLOBAFRICA uses not only an intersection of traditional archival work with the related disciplines of archaeology, ethno-linguistics, ethno-botany and anthropology, but also engages in a dialogue with 'hard sciences' such as plant-genetics, epidemiology and microbiology. The contribution of 'hard' science in the second and third axes allows us to produce novel interpretative understandings through a 'pluri-disciplinary' approach.
[SLIDE 28] Through this approach we also seek to demonstrate that commercial connections, which too often frames the literature on global history, where not necessarily the generators of political or cultural change. The explanation of the social development of Mapungubwe from the 11th Century that is based on the evidence of prestige goods from the Indian Ocean trade is a simplification, if not a falsification. Thus, even if these different dimensions of connectivity complement each other - commercial penetration could be for example a vector through which epidemics spread - it is clear that they are not necessarily interdependent. Indeed, their very disarticulation, can be meaningful. In the case of axis 3 for example, the lack of correlation between the penetration of American plants in the Great Lakes region and the presence of known Swahili-merchant networks, allows a re-interrogation of the channels of integration between the interior and the Swahili coast. The ambition of GLOBAFRICA is therefore also theoretical: it aims to create tools to interrogate the different connections we have listed, for producing a model of historical connections that is relevant for Africa, but that is also exportable to other contexts.
[SLIDE 29] Finally to conclude, at this initial stage, GLOBAFRICA speaks to a need to reconceptualise global history. Its investigations into the nature and intensity of exchanges between the interior of Africa and its intercontinental interfaces should be accompanied by a re-interrogation of African 'mondialisation': a 'mondialisation' that currently seems to neither fit the proposed model of World History - which, in the search for our modernity, is often incapable of perceiving phenomena and chronologies which don't encompass Europe - or the model of the 'first mondialisation' centring on the Americas - which, despite the intention of bypassing Eurocentric narratives, considers Iberian colonialism as the starting point of globalisation. The notion of a Medieval Age or Modern Era need abandoning if we are to afford a proper place in the historiography for Africa between the 11th and 17th Centuries. We want to propose new chronological demarcations, and to build a new re-balanced vision of exchanges, far from a simplistic vision of isolated Africa. GLOBAFRICA will provide the structure for a new archive, in order to better understand the relations between Africa and the rest of the world, especially to reconceptualise the prevailing Euro-, Islamo- and Indo-centric discourses of "decline", "abandonment", "invasion" or endogenous "migration": and engage with the dynamism of environmental and epidemiological change – and exchanges, material and intellectual. The African interior was not immobile, passive or disconnected from global history - instead GLOBAFRICA seeks to re-construct these long-established intercontinental connections.


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