The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  2

  VENTURES INTO THE INTERIOR

  In west Africa, meanwhile, one of the great long-term migrations in human history was underway. It was initiated by a group of Bantu-speaking communities living in an upland region between the Nyong River and the Sanaga River in what is now southern Cameroon. The Bantu group there were part of a wider collection of peoples in west Africa that belonged to the Niger-Congo language family. What prompted the migration is unclear. But the location of its origins was found by language experts in the twentieth century engaged in the classification of African languages. They discovered that almost all the inhabitants of the southern half of Africa spoke languages that were closely related. Across a range of some 600 languages, many words and terms were used in common. They included the root ntu meaning ‘human being’ and the prefix ba denoting the plural form. The term ‘Bantu’ – literally meaning ‘people’ – was first coined by a nineteenth-century German philologist, Wilhelm Bleek, to cover the multiplicity of similar languages that European colonisers encountered in southern Africa. But the original homeland of Bantu-speaking peoples was the Cameroon highlands, more than 2,500 miles away.

  The spread of territory occupied by Niger-Congo peoples at the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE ran from the Senegal River in the west to Cameroon in the east. The eastern zone was inhabited by a sub-group known as the Benue-Kwa. Among their descendants are the Yoruba, Igbo and Akan of modern times. Bantu-speakers formed a sub-group of the Benue-Kwa, living on the eastern frontier at the edge of the equatorial rainforest.

  The Benue-Kwa were agriculturalists adapted to a tropical environment. Their staple crop was a variety of yam, an edible tuber indigenous to west Africa. They also tended several tree crops including oil palms that provided cooking oil and palm wine; raffia palms used for making raffia cloth; and kola nuts that later became a mainstay of west African commerce. They were skilled boat-builders, carving from single logs dugout canoes for fishing and river-travel. Woodworkers also specialised in producing figure sculptures and facial masks for display at public festivals. Like other Niger-Congo people, the Benue-Kwa possessed distinctive musical talents. Performances involved polyrhythmic drumming on drums with different pitches – rhythms that would eventually become a familiar part of music-making in the modern world. Another feature of their society was the importance they attached to the veneration of ancestral spirits. Ancestors required respect and remembrance; neglecting them was likely to cause misfortune. The Benue-Kwa also believed that misfortune could be caused by the malicious intentions of living individuals for which they sought remedies from traditional healers.

  Towards the end of the fourth millennium BCE, Bantu-speaking cultivators began to move southwards through the rainforest region, taking their agricultural skills, stone tools, dugout canoes and pottery techniques into areas hitherto occupied by BaTwa hunter-gatherers, an ancient people commonly known in European languages as ‘Pygmies’. Their advance through the rainforest was slow; it amounted to an overall rate of no more than twelve miles each decade. But by about 1000 BCE, Bantu groups using rivers as pathways had penetrated to most parts of the Congo Basin and reached the outer edge of the equatorial forest to the east and to the south.

  Beyond the forest region lay the savanna lands of eastern and southern Africa, the domain of hunter-gatherers, descendants of one of the oldest human lineages on earth. Short in stature, generally less than five feet tall, they possessed a wide range of skills honed over thousands of years of itinerant life in the savanna. They fashioned tools from wood, bone and stone, turned plant fibres into fine cordage and nets, made mats and arrow shafts from reeds, and devised a range of poisons from snakes, insects and plants to bring down prey.

  Most remarkable of all was their tradition of rock art dating back as far as 28,000 years. In eastern Africa, the main rock art form was finger-painted geometric patterns, often circles and parallel lines. In southern Africa, below the Zambezi River, artists belonging to groups that later became known as San pursued a different tradition. At thousands of sites across the region, San artists painted scenes in fine-line brushstrokes of human activity, totemic animals and creatures from an imaginary world. The artists were shamans, leading figures in San society, who reflected in the paintings their memories of trances and hallucinations induced during trance dances. Trance dances, they believed, enabled them to enter a spirit world where they could harness supernatural powers to make rain, cure the sick, relieve social tensions and control the movement of antelope herds. Their rock art images depict trance dancers bending forward, wearing dancing rattles and holding dancing sticks in the company of animals such as eland, giraffe and elephant believed to have supernatural potency.

  The languages spoken by San were ancient. They involved a complex variety of ‘clicks’ and other percussive sounds that once may have formed the basis of a linguistic family stretching from modern Ethiopia to southern Africa before it was filtered out by the evolution of newer languages.

  Since the fourth millennium BCE, the domain of hunter-gatherers in eastern Africa had attracted various groups of African migrants. From the Ethiopian highland region to the north-east came Cushitic-speaking pastoralists bringing livestock and agricultural skills; by the second millennium BCE, they had reached the Serengeti plains in modern Tanzania, their southern limit. From the Nile Valley to the north-west came Nilotic pastoralists cultivating crops like sorghum. But it was the arrival of Bantu migrants from the Congo rainforest region to the west that had the most far-reaching impact. Bantu-speaking communities steadily spread across eastern Africa towards the coast, acquiring cattle and new agricultural techniques along the way. Although hunter-gatherers managed to co-exist with the newcomers, trading with them, they were eventually absorbed by their advance. Today in eastern Africa, only two groups of descendants survive: the Hadzabe and Sandawe of Tanzania.

  The advent of ironworking technology produced a new dynamic in tropical Africa. By the middle of the first millennium BCE, ironworking was well established in the region between the Chad Basin and the Great Lakes of east Africa. It had also spread to areas of west Africa. Iron products were made at Taruga on the Jos plateau of modern Nigeria by members of the ‘Nok culture’, renowned for their terracotta sculptures of human heads. In Jenne-Jeno, an urban settlement on the floodplains of the Middle Niger River, specialist ironworkers produced a high-grade metal akin to steel. Iron-tipped spears and arrows were a boon to hunters; iron tools such as axes and hoes enabled early farmers to clear large areas of woodland for cultivation, making agriculture more productive.

  In east Africa, the practice of ironworking radiated from groups in the Great Lakes region known as Mashariki. Large areas of woodland were felled to provide charcoal for smelting furnaces. The Mashariki Bantu also produced from their smelting sites a new style of earthenware with distinctive decorative markings called Urewe, which was to spread in various forms across eastern and southern Africa.

  The final phase of Bantu expansion into southern Africa in the last part of the first millennium BCE occurred at a faster pace. From the third century BCE onwards, pioneer groups advanced from eastern Africa along several different routes. Equipped with iron tools, they pushed the agricultural frontier southwards, bringing with them cattle and sheep, preferring river valleys and well-wa
tered terrain in which to settle and relying on sorghum and millet as staple foods, as well as fishing, foraging and hunting. By the second century BCE, some groups had reached the Middle Zambezi region. Other groups moved down the Indian Ocean coast, exploiting shellfish and other marine resources along the way, arriving in the Limpopo Valley by the second century CE and pressing on to the lush green hills and valleys of modern Natal a century later. Their advance eventually came to a halt at the Great Kei River, beyond which lay the Cape region where tropical crops such as sorghum could no longer be grown.

  Once agricultural communities had taken root, they began to develop distinct regional identities and cultures. But they nevertheless retained in common many of the social and religious ideas and practices originating from their Niger-Congo forebears that had been passed down the generations over several thousand years of migration. Bantu-speaking peoples still venerated the spirits of their ancestors and believed that misfortune could be attributed to the evil designs of malicious individuals. They also possessed the same talents for drumming and dancing.

  Cereal agriculture formed the economic base of these communities, but cattle acquired increasing economic and social significance. Cattle became the chief form of wealth, conferring on owners status and prestige far above that of cultivators. They were a means of creating patronage and obligation. Many groups rose to power through their ownership and control of cattle herds.

  The impact of Bantu-speaking immigrants on the San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa was profound. Several groups, such as the Khoikhoi of the Middle Zambezi region, adapted to a new way of life as pastoralists, mixing cattle and sheep herding with hunting and gathering. In their search for grazing land, the Khoikhoi began their own expansion southwards, taking their livestock into the steppes of the Kalahari and eventually finding their way to the southern Cape. Some San groups were absorbed into Bantu communities. Other San groups managed to survive as nomadic foragers but were often driven into arid terrain or mountainous regions of little use to farmers.

  Along the Orange River region and in other parts of the Cape, shamans from the Taa-Kwi branch of the San held fast to their ancient traditions of rock painting for another thousand years. It was a period memorable as the last great flowering of the oldest art form in human history.

  3

  A CLASH OF EMPIRES

  Along the coastal plains of north-west Africa, a commercial revolution gathered momentum during the first millennium BCE. For centuries, Berber-speaking peoples occupying the fertile strip of territory from modern Morocco in the west to Tunisia in the east had successfully practised agriculture and stock-keeping. But in the tenth century BCE the arrival of Phoenician merchants from the Levant in search of sources of gold, silver, copper and tin brought a new system of trade. The region also began to acquire a strategic significance. From the string of outposts that the Phoenicians established along the coast to serve as victualling points and refuges from sudden sea storms grew a number of African colonies. One of the colonies, Carthage, became the most powerful city-state in the western Mediterranean, with its own empire stretching over not only a chain of settlements in north-west Africa but across large swathes of southern Europe including parts of Spain, Sardinia and Sicily. Carthage’s might, however, was eventually challenged by the emerging power of Rome. What was at stake was whether the western Mediterranean would be ruled from Africa or from Rome.

  Located on a promontory overlooking the Bay of Tunis, Carthage stood at the gateway to the western Mediterranean, with command over shipping passing through the Strait of Sicily. Its foundation date, according to ancient tradition, was 814 BCE. Within a century it had grown into a thriving entrepôt of some 30,000 residents, with an industrial area outside the city walls engaged in ironworking and the production of pottery and luxury goods. Land in Carthage and in the surrounding area was rented from the local Berber population. As the population grew, the borders of Carthage were gradually expanded into the hinterland. Farming estates were opened up in the fertile Medjerda valley to the west and the Cape Bon peninsula to the east. In the Mediterranean region, Carthage was soon renowned for its output of olives, fruit and wines. An agricultural treatise by the Carthaginian Mago giving advice on trees, fruits, viticulture and animal husbandry was frequently cited by both Greek and Roman authors. Some modern scholars hail it as the agronomic bible of the ancient world.

  By the fifth century BCE, Carthage had emerged as an independent mercantile power with one of the largest navies in the Mediterranean at its disposal. Its ruling elite constantly sought to extend its commercial empire as well as the boundaries of its own territories in Africa. New settlements were established on the coastline to the east of Carthage in an area now known as Tripolitania. Naval expeditions were sent beyond the Mediterranean into the Atlantic.

  In the early fifth century BCE, a Carthaginian commander named Hanno led a large naval expedition through the Pillars of Hercules – the Strait of Gibraltar – with instructions to found colonies along the west coast of Africa. According to a brief account of his voyage, copied from an inscription on a temple wall in Carthage, Hanno reached Soloeis (modern Cape Cantin) and then sailed further down the coast, establishing seven settlements there. Along the way he met a variety of ‘strange’ people. Landing on a wooded island, he related: ‘In daytime, we could see nothing but the forest, but during the night, we noticed many fires alight and heard the sound of flutes, the beating of cymbals and tom-toms, and the shouts of a multitude. We grew afraid and our diviners advised us to leave this island.’

  Wherever the Carthaginians landed, their central objective was trade. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, recorded the system of barter they used in dealing with African tribes:

  The Carthaginians also tell us that they trade with a race of men who live in a part of Libya [Africa] beyond the Pillars of Hercules. On reaching this country, they unload their goods, arrange them tidily along the beach, and then, returning to their boats, raise a smoke. Seeing the smoke, the natives come down to the beach, place on the ground a certain quantity of gold in exchange for the goods, and go off again to a distance. The Carthaginians then come ashore and take a look at the gold; and if they think it represents a fair price for their wares, they collect it and go away; if, on the other hand, it seems too little, they go back aboard and wait, and the natives come and add to the gold until they are satisfied. There is perfect honesty on both sides: the Carthaginians never touch the gold until it equals in value what they have offered for sale, and the natives never touch the goods until the gold has been taken away.

  As well as coastal trade, the Carthaginians explored trans-Sahara routes. Long before the introduction of the camel to north Africa, Berber nomads organised caravans of pack-horses to destinations on the other side of the desert. One route ran southwards from the Carthaginian settlement at Lixus (modern Larache in Morocco) towards the goldfields of Bambuk in the Senegal River valley. Another ran from Tripolitania to the oases of the Fezzan where an enterprising Saharan people known as the Garamantes had managed to build a prosperous urban civilisation in the heart of the desert.

  Using slave labour, the Garamantes constructed a vast network of underground tunnels and shafts – foggara in the Berber language – to mine fossil water lying in reservoirs beneath the limestone layer under the desert sand. Their elaborate irrigation system supported an agricultural industry producing grapes, figs, barley and wheat. In the thousand years that their civilisation in the Fezzan lasted, the Garamantes built major towns, forts and cemeteries and traded wheat, salt and slaves in exchange for pottery, glass, imported wine and olive oil. When the water levels underground fell, their society perished.

  As Rome grew from a small city-state in central Italy into a regional power, the Carthaginians took a pragmatic approach, encouraging trade and signing a series of treaties that set out their separate zones of influence, first in 509 BCE, then in 348 and again in 278. But their ambitions co
llided over the divided island of Sicily, part of which was occupied by Carthaginians. The first Punic war, as it was called – a Latin name used by the Romans to describe the Carthaginians and their language – lasted for twenty-four years. As part of the expeditionary army they sent to Sicily, the Carthaginians deployed nearly a hundred elephants which had been trained at their base in Carthage to launch cavalry charges, intimidate infantry and tear down fortifications – the tanks of the ancient world. In their north African domain, the Carthaginians had ready access to large herds of elephants which populated the coastal plains of modern Tunisia and Morocco and the forests and swamps at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. Known as ‘forest’ elephants, they belonged to a smaller breed than the African savanna species and were easier to control. The use of elephants as war machines had some success. The outcome of the war, however, was finally decided in 241 when the Carthaginian navy suffered a crushing defeat. The Carthaginians sued for peace and were forced to evacuate Sicily.

  The next stage in the long struggle for supremacy between Carthage and Rome in the western Mediterranean began in Spain. When the young Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca embarked on a campaign to extend Carthage’s territory in southern Spain, Rome decided to intervene in support of allies there. Because the Roman navy had gained ascendancy in the western Mediterranean, Hannibal devised a daring plan to attack Rome on its home ground by marching an army 1,500 miles overland, across the Pyrenees, into the unknown lands of France, over the high passes of the Alps and through northern Italy, hoping to catch the Romans by surprise. The expeditionary force he assembled in 218 included a large contingent of infantry and cavalry from north Africa, notably Berber horsemen from Numidia who rode without saddle, bit or bridle. Another key element was an elephant corps numbering thirty-seven. Hannibal expected that Roman forces, unprepared for an elephant attack, would retreat in disarray.