History of Africa - Coast and Conquest

Good morning! Another day, and another episode of this delightful History of Africa series with Zeinab Badawi.  I am enjoying this series and I hope you folks are enjoying it too.  I know it is a long series to show in a classroom, so I would choose the top three episodes to show in a class.  This time I am looking at the episode Coast and Conquest and the run time for this episode is 44:44.

Zeinab Badawi visits spectacular historic sites in Africa.  She visits the Swahili Coastal settlements of Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.  Then she talks about how the Arab’s arrival in this area trigged the start of the slave trade in Africa.  The Arabs and their Swahili partners were the first to trade in humans and Zeinab highlights how this slave trade was different from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  She looks into this dark period of African history and how it is looked at by modern Africans.

Outsiders were attracted to Africa in the Seventh Century by its wealth and resources.  The Swahili culture grew up on the Indian Ocean Coastline of Africa.  The East Coast of Africa was accessible from the interior and the Indian Oceans.  The people would have developed strong ties between India and the Arabs.  The Indians were interested in ivory while the Arabs dominated the trade.  Persians also settled on this coastline.  There was also evidence of trading with China.
Zeinab is focusing on the Indian Ocean Trade and the Arabs that came to this area mainly came from Oman.  There were trading ports established in Mogadishu, Lamu, Malindi, and Mombasa.  These trading centers were like stepping stones along the coastline and into Africa.  Eventually, each of the trading centers would grow and dominate the trade in turn.   Zeinab meets up with a professor who talks about how the Africans mixed with the Arabs.

Zeinab arrives in Lamu on a rainy day and explores the Swahili culture.  This culture came about as a result of the mixing between the Arabs and the Africans.  Zeinab talks with an architectural historian.  She asks him how he defines Swahili culture.  This expert talks about how it was influenced by a variety of cultures to emerge as a distinct culture.  They walk through Lamu and discuss the historic building that is found around town.  Zeinab further explores the architecture of the Sawali and the common elements in buildings.  I found this section very interesting because of how much blending and adopting went on with the Sawali culture.

Malindi is next on Zeinab’s agenda and explores the ruins of a small town nearby.  This town was abandoned for unknown reasons and the ruins remain.  Then she tours another historic site Kilwa in Tanzania.  Both these sites proclaim their wealth.  I wish she could have spent more time on these sites and perhaps explored reasons as to why the sites were abandoned.  I would guess that trade declined or something happened that caused them to be abandoned.

Zeinab continues to talk with experts on the Sawali culture.  She meets up with Amira Said Musllem at a café and they talk about the Swahili people.  She speaks in Swahili and the language borrows a lot of words from the Arabic language.  She talks about the arrival of the first Arabs and the people they encountered.  She talks about how the Arab traders married Swahili women and had children.  The Arabs would have had to forgo their culture and adopt Sawali ways.  Only then you could be considered a member of the Swahili community.  How else were the Swahili people influenced?  What else does Zeinab learn about the Swahili people?  Where do Zeinab’s travels continue to take her?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out.

The downside of this series continues to be that these episodes are just too short.  The episodes seem to run on an average of 44 minutes and if they could have been six minutes longer, they would have been 50 minutes long.  Those historic sites were amazing and it was too bad Zeinab could not spend more time on them.  Overall, this would be one episode I would add to my documentary watch list for a history class.  I know I say that all the time with this series, but it is true!