The African Presence in Santo Domingo

West Africa during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

7 West Africa during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries F or many people, including social scientists, the degree of development of African peoples at the moment of the encounter between Africa and the Americas is surprising. The similarities in behavior make one consider the first the ancestor of the second, but especially the ancestor of the Caribbean. Two major factors at this point are crucial in history: (1) the “discovery” of the continent by Christopher Columbus and the subsequent process of colonization and slavery, and (2) the initiation and development of the slave trade in the fifteenth century. The splendor and contributions to society characteristic of subSaharan or negroid African cultures are barely known. The illiteracy of most of them, among other elements, was long considered by traditional historians as a constraint for study. There is almost no knowledge, for instance ,aboutthemagnificenceofblackAfricanpeoples.Considerthelarge empires, kingdoms, and states, as well as the rise of science, commerce, arts, urbanization, strong military and economic power, that stand out in Th e Afr ican Pr esence in S anto Doming o 8 thestudyoftheMaliEmpire,forinstance.Inordertoovercomethesefalse beliefs, our impressions of Africa need to be rethought, as does the belief that Africa’s material backwardness is due to biological “backwardness.” Fortunately,sponsoredbyUNESCO,eightvolumesarebeingwrittenonthe general history of Africa, which will help unfold the truth about Africa and its magnificent past. By the time of the arrival of Europeans to the African continent, major civilizations had already been developed. Blacks who came to the Americas —according to Herskovits—came primarily from the west coast and surrounding areas (an average of 200 kilometers inland), and shared a similar social development, that is, the same cultural patterns. However, blackslavescamefromdifferentplaces,andtheirreligiouspracticesvaried from black animism to polytheism and Islam.11 Similardifferentiationoccurswhenstudyingthecharacteristicsofthe social structures of these peoples. First in line would be those from tribal societies, organized under the rules of descent, like some located on the western coasts, as opposed to those coming from centralized states, many of which became kingdoms or empires, such as the strip of Sudan. This outstanding development is, for many authors, linked to the expansion of Islam in black Africa, which began in the twelfth century, and whose philosophical-religious platform was open to “Africanization,” as some call the process of accommodation and flexibility of Islam to the African culture. The main impact, however, of Islam on sub-Saharan cultures was the development of the market and its opposition to black slavery. Although trade routes through the Sahara had existed long before, the spread of Islam in Africa increased their magnitude, driving major cities to become real centers of commerce, such as Gao, Kano, Timbuktu, and others. West Africa 9 THE KINGDOMS OF THE SUDAN TheMaliEmpire Among the kingdoms of the southern strip of the Sahara, Mali was by far themostimportant.Afteritsfoundationin1235andthereunificationofthe three main provinces, Do, Kiri, and Bako, under the aegis of King Sunjata Keyta—whoimmediatelybecamemansa(emperor)—beganwhatisknown as the first mandingaor mandé expansion.12 Besidesarchaeologyandoraltradition,sourcesforstudyingthehistory of the Mali Empire come from the documents of the scribe Al-Bakri, and later of the geographer Al-Idvrisi. Knownforitsabundanceofgold,itsmainresourcesandeconomicpower camefromagricultureandlivestock.Thisboomlednotonlytoalargepopulation , but also to villages that reflected the economic growth of the empire. Some sources estimate the population at 40 to 50 million inhabitants.13 Two events highlighted the wealth of the empire, both linked to one of its most eccentric rulers, Mansa Musa I (1307 to 1332), who professed the Islamic religion: (1) his pilgrimage to Mecca; and (2) his claims about possiblyhavingvisitedthelandlaterknownasAmerica,whichnobodyhad everheardabout.Whateverthetruthis,hisimmensepowerisundeniable. MansaMusaIisallegedtohavesaidduringhistriptoCairo,speakingabout thesovereignSunjabaII,whoruledbeforehim:“Hedidnotunderstandthat it was impossible to reach the end of the surrounding sea; he attempted it and perished in the attempt.”14 According to Jeffer and Weiner, the malinkes15 were in America (in the “outer surrounding waters,” that is, the Atlantic) about two hundred years before Christopher Columbus.16 However, no proof of the assertion of Mansa Musa I has ever been found. Th e Afr ican Pr esence in S anto Doming o 10 As for his trip to Mecca, we read: “Mansa Musa had a large entourage, carrying with him 80 packets of powdered gold, 3,800 kgs each, accompanied by 60,000 porters and preceded by 500 slaves, each carrying a stick weighing 3 kgs.”17 After 1375, cartographers began depicting Mansa Musa’s image on maps of Sudan, holding in his hand a gold nugget, a symbol of wealth acknowledged even outside the Sudanese territory. Other empires did not reach this level of opulence. TheSonghayEmpire Founded towards...