Sundiata (and Colonizing Eastern & Southern Africa)

For Monday's class, please read Sundiata and be able to answer the following questions:

• What is the role and status of a griot?
• What if any significant role do women play in the story of Sundiata?
• Where and when do the events of the story take place?
• What roles do religion and magic play in the story?
• How connected or aware of a larger world is the storyteller?
• What is the family structure of the king of Mali?
• How does one kingdom interact with another? 
• What are external and internal threats to peace?
• Overview of social structure can be found in note 37.
• Can you outline the basic story?

For Wednesday's class, we will tackle the first part of Africans, Chapter 6 (pp. 100-126).

Reading Questions:

• What four central themes does the history of southern and eastern Africa share with western Africa?
• How does their history differ and why? (record, values, environment, interactions)
• What role does pastoralism play in the east and south? How does it affect settlement, society, and culture?
• fissiparation? (p. 103)
• What complex changes took place in what is now Zimbabwe? (p. 103f)
• Describe Great Zimbabwe. (pp. 104f. and 121f.)
• How did the kingdom of Munhumutapa interact with the Portuguese? (p. 105)
• Why were cattle less important in Central Africa?
• Describe Luba and the two major political systems it shaped.
• What could people do to keep their rulers in line?
• In the East African savanna, what were the Bantu up to, and where did the Maasai come from?
• What evidence is there for the region being stateless? (p. 109)
• How did cattle give their owners a demographic advantage? (pp. 109 and 118)
• In the Great Lakes region of East Africa states like Bunyoro and Buganda developed later. How did those states operate, and how did they reduce succession problems?
• How does the author say the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu may have evolved? (p. 111)
• What new crops were adopted in eastern and southern Africa, and where did they come from?
• "Human mobility was the essence of this empty world" -- list reasons people might move. (p. 114)
• What precautions were taken against the risk of famine, and what increased mortality in famine years? Who rarely suffered famine? (p. 116)
• What does the Zulu proverb, "the feud is in the testicle," mean? (p. 118)
• Did southern African women have a lower or higher status than western African women? Why? What about the women of Central Africa? (p. 119)
• Why did patriarchal, cattle-owning societies have severe generational tension, and how did they handle it? (p. 120)
• Was slavery more or less common in eastern and southern Africa than in West Africa? (p. 120)
• Why was trade more limited in southern and eastern African than in West Africa? (p. 122)
• How did San and Khoikhoi religion differ from Bantu religion? (pp. 124f.)

For Friday's class, we will look at the Dutch in Southern Africa

Reading Questions for Africans, pp. 126-130:

• When did the first Dutch colonists land in what is now South Africa?
• Who was living at the Cape of Good Hope when the Dutch arrived?
• How did indigenous peoples make their livings and how did they interact?
• What were the Dutch East India Company's plans for the Cape initially?
• Why did the Dutch import slaves and from where?
• What were conditions for slaves in the Dutch colony?
• What was "the Dutch regime's lasting legacy to South Africa"?
• Who were the Trekboers? Why did they think of themselves as Afrikaners?
• When did the British take control of the Cape from the Dutch?

We will move the reading assignment on historical sources in Short, Chapter 3 to next week.