African empires

The rise and fall of the three great West African empires is a tale of conflict, leadership, and pure circumstance. In the savannah these civilizations flourished on trans-saharan trade, environmental benefits, and strong leadership; Islamic influences from North Africa soon thereafter provided a strong cultural influence on these states. With this foundation three empires rose up sequentially in West Africa – the empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. From this same base came the downfall of each empire, sped along by external forces. During the holocene period many groups in West Africa began to master the tools of state formation. Populations rose and cities grew up as better food production and iron making techniques were developed. Iron tools permuted larger food surpluses which in turn increased population cultural complexity. Davidson explains surpluses allowed for division of labor which “encouraged trade, at first local then long-distance, by producing a wide range of goods. All this, together with the growing size of populations, required more complex forms of political organization.”1 Like other civilizations states would form to manage…

Medieval Africa is best known as the period in which African empires thrived throughout the continent and world. These self-sufficient African empires flourished before European and Arabian domination over the continent that still exists today. This is an essential truth to recognize because Africans were in control of their own continent’s wealth. However, in the present day many Africans are unaware of their rich history due to physical, mental, and social conditioning by European and Arabic…

African societies flourished despite having no contact with Europe. They achieved things such as trade by sea, a sufficient judicial system, in many places high levels of education, and forms of art. Africa's abundance in certain resources such as gold and salt made it a key area for trade, allowing the empires to become rich and powerful. Despite being isolated from European countries, the African Empires and civilizations did not suffer from it. They adapted on their own, created their own…

Before his trip, he always had an exuberance for life, and loved spending time together with our children. Now, he barely speaks, and his once kind eyes are cold and distant, as if replaying the horrors he experienced abroad. In order to prevent other families from experiencing this disheartening experiencing this, I urge you, sir, to stop these missions to Africa. From the little my husband has said since his return, the main areas with which he took issues fell into three main areas:…

Accomplishments of African Civilizations For centuries, historians have denied the accomplishment of African Civilizations. To this day the day, the misconceptions planted by racist historians remain present in the media. American media often displays Africa as a place of extreme poverty and lack of culture. In contrary, however, African people had many advances, even before the arrival of Europeans. The advances of the African Kingdoms are shown through their successful trade routes, ordered…

Imperialism is defined as “the policy of extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by establishing economic and political hegemony over other nations.” As Western European powers continued to extend their empires across the world, the idea of a new imperialism would emerge between the period 1880-1914. The principle of new imperialism involved the extension of Western political and economic dominance in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in the late nineteenth and…

nation dominates a weaker one, socially and economically. As once Edward W said: “Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." Here Edward is trying to say that many nations/countries may want to be the superior and alpha one of another, they say it’s for the better rule and to take away control just to put more control. Europe only wanted one thing and it was a competition for…

How far was the American empire similar to the British one? The United States of America in many ways aimed to distance themselves from their former colonial masters. The American Enlightenment had set forth the notion that the American colonists should form an entirely new nation built on the ideals of liberty, the rights of man, republicanism, and so forth. But America exhibited symptoms of imperialism - both hard imperialism and soft imperialism - in their growth and expansion west. Whilst…

In order to rule over the land, Leopold had to deceive the world in believing that he had to look after the African people to stop the self violence that occurred between the tribes. In reality however, Leopold was using the people as forced labor to produce the raw materials he needed like rubber to sell in the global market. He believed that colonies were inferior to the mother nation. According to King Leopold’s Ghost, “Leopold did not care whether the colonial wealth he wanted came from the…

This exhibits dominance because of the imperialists’ motivations to help only themselves, the imbalance in power dynamics, and the loss of the imperialized people’s land and traditional values. Imperialists are motivated to imperialize countries weaker than their own in order to continue building a stronger empire for themselves, leading them often to exploit imperialized countries and negatively affecting the imperialized countries’ progress. In Nectar in a Sieve, the main character, Rukmani,…