[Africa MIDTERM]

Question 1

Jared Diamond

Answer 1

-Wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel

Question 2

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Answer 2

Farming and domesticating animals provide social stability that is lacking in hunter-gatherer societies. Labor specialization enables certain groups to develop weapons.

Major portions of Eurasia had a natural advantage in developing agriculture and domesticating animals because of geography and the presence of plants and animals that could be easily domesticated.

The landmass of Eurasia, laid out on an east-west axis, allowed for the sharing of crops, animals, and ideas. The Americas, stretched out on a north-south axis, traverse various climate zones and geographic boundaries that discourage trade.

The diversity and density of Eurasian populations created an immunity to germs that would later wipe out the more isolated populations of the Americas.

Superior technologies including ocean-going ships, steel and guns

Question 3

Geographic luck

Answer 3

• Where you live will determine how successful your society will be
• European economic, military, technological, and political power came about because of geographical luck, and not because the Europeans were in any way culturally or racially superior to people of other parts of the world

Question 4

Agents of conquest

Answer 4

• Guns, germs, and steel
• Allowed 168 Spanish conquistadors to defeat a large Imperial Inca army
• Set a pattern of European conquest which would continue to the present day

Question 5

Fertile Crescent

Answer 5

• A crescent shaped region of the modern Middle East in which the earliest experiments in plant and animal domestication are believed to have occurred
• Later the location for the earliest known human settlements, villages, cities, and civilizations

Question 6

Papua New Guinea

Answer 6

• Hunter-gatherers
• Underdevelopment had nothing to do with skill
• Did not have many domesticable plants or animals (had pigs- not strong)
• Highlands of New Guinea- crops can’t be stored + plants one by one (terra rods)

Question 7

Hunter-gatherer

Answer 7

• Populations remained small
• Looking for food all the time
• Frequently on the move
• Not productive or predictable

Question 8

Cereal Crops

Answer 8

A seed-bearing grass which can be harvested and domesticated by man (grains)

Question 9

Plant and animal domestication

Answer 9

• Wild plant or animal species bred under human control
• Provide humans steady supply of food/other raw materials
• Domesticated species dependent on human interference

Question 10

Berlin Conference

Answer 10

• 14 European countries met (1844-1845)
• Laid down rules for division of Africa
• Agreed that any European country could claim land in Africa by notifying other nations of its claims and showing it could control the area
• Divided the continent with little thought about how African ethnic or linguistic groups were distributed
• No African ruler was invited to attend these meetings, yet the conference sealed Africa’s fate

Question 11

Otto von Bismarck

Answer 11

-Organized the Berlin Conference

Question 12

Scramble for Africa

Answer 12

European nations competing for taking over Africa

Question 13

Global inequality

Answer 13

• Different resources in different parts of the world

- Unequal

Question 14

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Answer 14

• European slave trading began by Portuguese traders
• Development of sugar plantations in New World- demand for cheap labor
• African slaves- cheap, didn’t know the land
• Millions of slaves entered American colonies

Question 15

Great Zimbabwe

Answer 15

-White settlers refused to believe that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans

Question 16

Mapungubwe

Answer 16

• Highly sophisticated/ advanced people
• Artifacts found- art, pottery, gold
• Evidence of early gold smelting in Africa
• The findings provided evidence contrary to the racist ideology of black inferiority that underpinned apartheid.

Question 17

White Man’s Burden

Answer 17

• Poem by Rudyard Kipling 1899
• It was a “burden” for the Europeans to teach other races to be civilized
• Other races were partially bad but could be completely fixed and needed to be taught/disciplined
• The Europeans’ justification for imperializing Africa

Question 18

What was the impact of slavery upon the African continent? How did it facilitate imperialism?

Answer 18

• Forced migrations + displacement of many Africans
• More/worse inter-tribal warfare
• Depopulation from raids, warfare, and captivities
• Loss of experts, craftsmen, workers
• Impoverishment in large areas
• Destruction + destabilization of societies (socially, politically, economically)

Question 19

What did the map of Africa look like before the Berlin Conference?

Answer 19

• Divided into hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups

- Europeans controlled 10% of land

Question 20

What did the map of Africa look like after the Berlin Conference?

Answer 20

• French
• British
• Belgian
• German
• Spanish
• Italian

Question 21

Why did Europeans go to Africa? Why did they imperialize Africa?

Answer 21

• Wanted to control Africa’s land, its people, and its resources
• Wanted more resources to fuel their industrial production
• Africa- source of raw materials and as a market for industrial products
• Industrial revolution

Question 22

Why and how has African history been denied? What is the significance of Mapungubwe? Why did Europeans in Africa refuse to believe that Great Zimbabwe was of African origin?

Answer 22

• The fact that Bantu speaking peoples of the region had a highly civilized existence hundreds of years before the first Europeans arrived was simply too much for the oppressive government of the day to bear
• Claimed they migrated at the same time
• Used to justify white rule
• Artifacts before white settlements in southern Africa