History Textbook West African Senior School Certificate Examination

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History Textbook West African Senior School Certificate Examination History Textbook West African Senior School Certificate Examination This textbook is a free resource which be downloaded here: https://wasscehistorytextbook.com/ Please use the following licence if you want to reuse the content of this book: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0). It means that you can share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt its content (remix, transform, and build upon the material). Under the following terms, you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you want to cite the textbook: Achebe, Nwando, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Joe Alie, Hassoum Ceesay, Toby Green, Vincent Hiribarren, Ben Kye-Ampadu, History Textbook: West African Senior School Certificate Examination (2018), https://wasscehistorytextbook.com/ ISBN issued by the National Library of Gambia: 978-9983-960-20-4 Cover illustration: Students at Aberdeen Primary School on June 22, 2015 in Freetown Sierra Leone. Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. https://flic.kr/p/wtYAdS 1 Contents Why this ebook? ................................................................................. 3 Funders ............................................................................................... 4 Authors ............................................................................................... 5 Introduction ........................................................................................ 7 1 - Historiography and Historical Skills ................................................ 9 2 - Trans-Saharan Trade. Origins, organization and effects in the development of West Africa ............................................................. 33 3 - Islam in West Africa. Introduction, spread and effects ................ 47 4 - European Contact with West Africa ............................................. 66 5 - Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ........................................................... 81 6 - Christian Missionary Activities in West Africa .............................. 96 7 - Scramble for and Partition of West Africa .................................. 112 8 - Colonial Rule in West Africa ....................................................... 121 9 - Problems of Independent West African States .......................... 141 10 - West Africa and International Organizations ........................... 155 11 - Women and Authority in West African History ........................ 163 12 - The Environment in West African History ................................ 178 13 – Conclusion: Future Directions for Students and Teachers ....... 194 2 Why this ebook? This textbook is aimed at West African students taking West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) History Paper 1, “West Africa and the Wider World from Earliest Times to 2000”. This free resource covers all the current syllabus, as well as including two chapters (11. Women, Gender and Political Authority; 12. The Environment in West African History) which - it is hoped - might be later added. The authors hope that this content will allow secondary school students to gain a good overview of West African history as their syllabus defines it, and at the same time contribute to new debates. This textbook has been designed by matching up expertise and relevance of authors, geographical coverage for countries sitting the WASSCE exams, and ability to engage in collective work. Historians based in Ghana, Sierra Leone and The Gambia work here with Nigerian scholars in the diaspora. Together with this team are two colleagues selected for their particular expertise, from King’s College London. For an updating version, see the website hosting the ebook: https://wasscehistorytextbook.com/ 3 Funders This project was funded by a British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant obtained by Dr Toby Green (AH/N004485/1, King’s College London, Money, Slavery and Political Change in Precolonial West Africa). The authors of the present textbook had their first meeting during a writing workshop which took place in Freetown, Sierra Leone in May 2017. The workshop was funded by the African Studies Association United Kingdom (ASAUK) and King’s College London (Arts and Humanities Faculty). The book was launched in Banjul, Gambia on 25 March 2018. 4 Authors Nwando Achebe: (pronounced: Wan-do Ah-chě-bě; [pronunciation key: ě as in pet]), the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History, is an award-winning historian at Michigan State University. She is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History; member of the African Studies Association’s (ASA) Board of Directors, and past co-convenor of ASA’s Women’s Caucus. Achebe received her PhD from UCLA in 2000. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She was also a 2000 Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellow. Her research interests involve the use of oral history in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 was published in 2005 (Heinemann). Achebe’s second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), winner of three book awards—The Aidoo-Snyder Book Award, The Barbara “Penny” Kanner Book Award, and The Gita Chaudhuri Book Award—is a full-length critical biography on the only female warrant chief and king in colonial Nigeria, and arguably British Africa. Achebe has received prestigious grants from Rockefeller Foundation, Wenner-Gren, Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation, World Health Organization, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi is the first trained Social Historian of Medicine from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He lectures in the Department of History and Political Studies of same university. His research interests include social histories of Africa, history of medicine in Africa, Health policy and politics of health in Africa, Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous healing systems and Integration with Biomedicine among others. Joe Alie is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History and African Studies at the University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay College Campus). He holds the BA Hons and MA degrees in Modern History from the University of Sierra Leone and a PhD in African History and Certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the USA). Professor Alie studied Education at Milton Margai Teachers College (now Milton Margai College of Education and Technology) and taught in various schools in Sierra Leone. His published textbooks include: A New History of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Junior Secondary Social Studies/Population Education I-III, and A Concise Guide to Writing College and Research Papers. Hassoum Ceesay is a highly regarded Gambian historian and literary critic. He specializes in Gambian women’s history and has published a widely acclaimed book titled Gambian Women: An Introductory History (Fulladu Publishers, 2007). His second book titled Gambian Women:Notes and Historical Profiles (Fulladu, Publishers) came out in 2011, and has received positive reviews. He was features editor at the Daily Observer newspaper in Banjul and editorial writer from 1999-2006. He has contributed six entries on prominent Gambian women personalities in the Dictionary of African Biography edited by Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. published Oxford University Press. He currently works 5 at the National Centre for Arts and Culture and is also Vice president of the Writers Association of The Gambia. Toby Green is Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College London. Chair of the Fontes Historiae Africanae Committee of the British Academy, and Honorary Treasurer of the African Studies Association of the UK, Green was a recipient of a 2017 Philip Leverhulme Prize in History. Green’s major historical publications are the sole- authored works The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (CUP, 2012); and, as editor or co-editor, Guinea-Bissau: Micro State to ‘Narco-State’ (Hurst/OUP 2016) and Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa (OUP, 2012). He has also published articles in journals including Atlantic Studies, Journal of African History, Journal of Global Slavery, History in Africa, Past and Present, and Slavery and Abolition. Green has worked extensively with colleagues in West Africa and Brazil. He has co- organised conferences with institutions in Brazil, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, and in 2018 is co-organising conferences with institutions in Banjul, Kumasi, and Luanda. He has given lectures at research centres in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, as well as at many universities in the USA. In June 2015 and April 2017 he co-organised with Lucy Duran (SOAS – Music) two workshops funded by the British Academy bringing together historians and musicians from the Greater Senegambia region of West Africa. He has received grants funding various research projects as Principal Investigator from the AHRC, British Academy, British Library, the European Union, and the Leverhulme Trust. Vincent
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