Resistance in Africa

COLONIZATION AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION HIST 1301 | History Resistance in Africa European explorers also ventured into Africa, starting with the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. The arrival of further Europeans started in the sixteenth century. Because they were easier for imperialist invaders to reach with their sophisticated battleships, coastal regions were more likely to be attacked and posed a special threat. Africans rejected European attempts to usurp their territories and take away their sovereignty, just as Native Americans had done. Africans were first brought into slavery by Europeans in the early 1500s as part of the transatlantic slave trade, which continued until the middle of the nineteenth century. Similar to Arab slave dealers before them, European slave traders usually operated inside Africa's preexisting power structures and bought slaves from competing African tribes, upsetting but initially not challenging African authority over the interior. Many Africans strongly opposed foreign influence, especially those living in the interior. Queen Nzinga led one of the longest resistance movements, leading Ndongo and Matamba. Following her brother's death in 1624, Nzinga assumed the throne as monarch of the kingdom of Ndongo, which is located in modern-day Angola. She assisted in putting a stop to hostilities between the Portuguese and her brother's armed forces while acting as an agent for her brother. She mediated a deal in 1621 that permitted the Portuguese to trade slaves inside Ndongo territory, but fort construction was prohibited. Nzinga was likewise determined that Ndongo would not honour the Portuguese monarch with homage. She consented to become a Roman Catholic and have the Portuguese governor's wife be her godmother in order to reassure the Portuguese that she was negotiating in good faith. But once Nzinga took the throne, Portugal started to break the conditions of the agreement and insisted that the Ndongo nobility submit to the Portuguese monarch as vassals. Sending the soldiers, slaves, and supplies they would have otherwise owed to Nzinga would entail doing this. Nzinga incited slaves to run away from the Portuguese as payback. Portugal waged war against her in 1626. More powerful nobles who sought to gain from trading slaves with Portugal backed the Europeans, while the common people of Ndongo and some of the lower members of the aristocracy backed Nzinga. In Kongo's realm, Nzinga made alliances. Dutch slave dealers, with whom she conducted business, also provided assistance to her. After the Portuguese and Dutch signed a peace pact, Nzinga was unable to drive the Portuguese from Ndongo land and concentrated her efforts on keeping them from entering deeper into the interior of Africa. After Nzinga and Portugal signed a peace pact in 1656, hostilities finally came to an end. The Dutch expeditions were met with resistance by other African groups. The Khoikhoi were hunters and cattle herders who were among the indigenous inhabitants of the area. The Dutch East India Company settled at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 and engaged in commerce with them. Conflict emerged between the settlers and the Khoisan (the collective term for the Khoikhoi and another group, the San), despite the Company's prohibition on the slavery of the Indigenous peoples of the Cape to preserve their desire to engage in the cattle trade. Indigenous hunting and grazing grounds were taken over by Dutch farmers, who used them to raise cattle and cultivate crops. In retaliation, the Khoisan set fire to Dutch farms and took their livestock. After that, the Dutch attacked Khoisan communities in retaliation. The seventeenth century saw this battle persist. Many Khoisan found themselves forced to work as farmhands on Dutch farmsteads as the Dutch pushed farther inland from the Cape, either because they were unable to support themselves after losing their land and cattle or because they were captured by settlers during Dutch raids. The Dutch implemented a system that required Khoisan youngsters to work "apprenticeships" until the age of twenty-five in the second part of the eighteenth century. The Khoisan had been reduced to a condition that was quite similar to slavery, despite the fact that they were not formally slaves. Additionally, the Dutch imported slaves from other parts of Africa to work as slave labour. The Xhosa people were farmers, and the Dutch came into conflict with them as they moved inland. The Xhosa outnumbered the Dutch by a large margin, despite the Dutch having superior weaponry. In addition to fighting the Xhosa in two wars, the Dutch had to deal with an armed insurrection by Khoisan farm labourers between 1799 and 1803, some of whom had sided with the Xhosa. Similar to how the Dutch had done, other European empires got stronger in the early nineteenth century and started to move beyond their coastal trade bases in Africa to get more involved in the continent's affairs. In a series of battles with the Asante Empire and its Dutch allies, the British in 1806, backed the Fante Confederacy, their trade partner in Africa on what is now the Ghanaian coast. The Anglo-Asante Wars (1823–1901) were the result of these clashes. The Asante opposed both the slave trade and Britain's larger pattern of economic imperialism—the act of controlling another country's economy—hoping to usurp Britain as the most powerful country on the western coast. For many years, they were successful in forcing the British to withdraw to their coastal strongholds. Notwithstanding the Asante's early victories, the British and their allies ultimately showed themselves to be more formidable and declared victory in 1900. Before the indigenous people in the area utilised a mix of peaceful resistance and political pressure to obtain independence for the country that is now known as Ghana in 1957, the British ruled a large portion of the African west coast.