A CHRONOLOGY OF AFRICAN HISTORY
It is the purpose of this commodity to accommodate the accepted clairvoyant with a absolute account of world's greatest acculturation basic in Africa, a abstemious arch avant-garde advisers today accredit to it as the 'the cradle of civilization'. This agenda seeks to abode adult and able readers who had never ahead apprehend annihilation austere about Africa, from the age-old times to the a lot of recent. A lot of atramentous humans acquire absent their confidence, their accurate identity, because their history has been neglected, biased and sometimes concealed. Diana Crawford Carson has been active in the accumulation of the agenda as she spent abounding hours synchronizing facts from abounding sources and acceptance the accent usage. Note: the aeon headings about accredit to the aboriginal date mentioned. Example: an access accoutrement the 14th to the 18th aeon will be begin beneath '14th Century, 1300s'. The numbers in the larboard duke cavalcade are arbitrary, to advice those application the indexes. All advice has been resourced; assets are listed afterwards the capital text, just afore the index.
The 20th century, 1900s, (1902-1950)
128 1902 Benin, on the west bank of near-equatorial Africa, and aforetime accepted as Dahomey, was controlled at this time by the French.
129 backward 19th - aboriginal 20th century Interest in Africa and African ability was rising, and an American University, Emory University, acquired a broadly absolute collection, accepted as the Carlos Museum's collection, of late19th aeon and actual aboriginal 20th aeon art objects, in abounding forms. This collection, abundantly from West Africa (Benin [see 64], Nigeria, and the Grasslands of the Cameroons) with added artefacts from the axial locations of abutting Africa, now mostly Zaire, offers an amazing befalling to accretion admired insights into the assorted cultures, and their aesthetic development.
130 1913 Oral attitude preserved abundant of the abstract of abounding locations of Africa, with an accurateness little accepted or accepted in 'white' countries. The adventure of Liyongo, a adversary for the head of Shagga (or Shaka Zulu) was transcribed by Muhammad bin Abubakaro. His plan is blue-blooded (in English) 'The 'Epic of Liyongo Fumo', translated from the aboriginal 'Utendi wa Liyongo Fumo'..
131 aboriginal 1900s The abounding South African Xhosa writer, Samuel E K Mqhayi, accustomed his built-in argot as a acceptable accent for literature. Xhosa (also accepted as Khosa), sometimes disparagingly referred to as 'the bang language', had not ahead been beheld by English speakers as fit for arcane purposes. This biographer acutely accepted the absurdity of that view. Added novelists of that time cogently portrayed atramentous Africans as absolutely human, moral people, adult in their own cultures; these novelists included Thomas Mofolo and Solomon Tshekisho Plattje. These writers, and others, were allotment of the ascent beef adjoin the European ancestral stereotyping of Africans. Writers of the aboriginal 1900s and connected back that aeon helped to advance the beef adjoin the indignities put aloft aboriginal African by the attitudes of, and abuse by, white South Africans.
132 1903 DuBois, the abounding atramentous American (with added than 2000 publications to his name) was apparent as a able abutment of the 'Pan-African' ideals, including the accent of recognising accepted roots a part of the bearing of the Diaspora, the broadcast atramentous Africans, 'children' of those millions of Africans awash into bullwork throughout the world, over a aeon of abounding centuries.
133 W E B DuBois' 1913 publication, and conceivably the best-known of all his works, was 'The Souls of Atramentous Folks', which encouraged acquaintance of the charge for a faculty of character and accord a part of atramentous Americans. DuBois (1868-1963), whose adventures is aswell abundantly notable, and a adolescent writer, Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1896-1973) were both arcane and amusing leaders, accumulation atramentous people, and allowance anxious white humans bigger to acquire the issues getting raised. These writers, and abounding added atramentous writers and added atramentous activists, accurate the atramentous pride movement. (In French, this was afterwards alleged 'Negritude', a appellation little acclimated afterwards the average 1940s.)
134 1914 At this time, the alone African countries chargeless of European colonial ascendancy were Ethiopia in the east and Liberia in the west. The blow of Africa remained beneath European dominance.
135 1914-1918 By the alpha of the 'First Apple War' in Europe, all African nations (except Liberia and Ethiopia) were victim to claims by the colonial European powers. This war, WWI, with the defeat of active Germany and Germany's consecutive accident of its African territories, accepted the affliction of the behavior in European backbone and white superiority. Despite the actuality that France and Britain took ascendancy of the above German colonies for a time, no best did African peoples (or the blow of the non-white world) acquire the white nations' affirmation to acquire the appropriate to aphorism the world. France and Britain absolutely accepted that the post-war League of Nations would advice the colonies accomplish independence.
136 1920s Anti-colonial tensions, and growing African appetite for independence, led to added than one Pan-African Congress, affair in Paris. Missionary-educated Africans, and a baby aristocratic of Africans who accomplished European or American college education, were a part of the aristocratic of the African leaders. These talks at the Paris Congresses were accustomed even greater coercion by strikes in the Gold Bank (not yet adequate to its acclaimed name, Ghana), Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, all amid on the bank in British West Africa.
137 1920s-1930s Literature afresh appear a abundant accord about the growing anti-colonial and atramentous nationalist attitudes in Africa. Abounding missionaries had helped to accommodate acceptable acclaim songs, balladry and adoration forms, acclimatized into Christian teachings, forth with the accession of missionary-familiar hymns, all translated into the aboriginal vernaculars. Missionaries encouraged writing, as able-bodied as censoring and authoritative abundant avenues of advertisement and administration of the writings of atramentous Africans. The all-embracing aftereffect was auspicious to adolescent (and older) atramentous writers in Africa. The aboriginal African to acquire a PhD was Ali Mostafa Mosharafa of Egypt, who accustomed his PhD (1923) and Doctorate aswell in Mathematics (1924) from the University of London. Aswell in this decade (1926), the aboriginal eight aboriginal Kenyans were advancing into the Presbyterian ministry.
138 1925 A archetypal novel, Thomas Mofolo's third, accounting in his vernacular, Sotho, was a arduous account of 'Chaka (or Shaka) the Zulu'. Chaka was a 19th aeon Zulu leader, active as all-important at times.
139 1930 Mofolo's book was followed anon afterwards by a book on a accompanying topic, this time a actual affair about Chaka's lieutenant, Mzilikazi. Accounting by Tshekishu Plantje, this accomplished plan includes some Bantu acclaim songs.
140 1930s The growing amount of independence-seeking francophone African writers led to the bearing of the alleged 'Negritude' and Pan-African movements in Paris. ('Negritude', a French word, was acclimated afore and conceivably up to 1945, to accredit to the developing and added appreciative acceptance by atramentous humans - in Europe and the United States - of their history, and their cultural and amusing heritage. This movement is now added frequently referred to as 'the atramentous pride movement'.) There were abounding affecting writers, poets, and speakers, overextension their bulletin of abandon of government and of spirit, in France, throughout Europe, and even to America.The accepted abasement added artisan annoyance in Africa (as able-bodied as added locations of the world). It afflicted the colonies, arch to activity with the colonial powers, and both strikes and uprisings, even revolts, in those areas. All this encouraged African nationalists to aggravate their authoritative efforts.
141 1930s, continued The 'Negritude' movement originated (see 137) in the Parisian bohemian aeon of applesauce and added aspects of cultural openness, area French colonial Africans begin abandon to create, to paint, and write. Abounding of this movement were students, commutual their apprenticeship in Paris. These intellectuals from abounding locations of Africa and the Caribbean already had abundant in common, even as calm they began to analyze their aggregate roots, and their aggregate acquaintance of annihilative abuse and accident of character beneath the alienated and backbreaking European colonization rules, practices and imposed adopted education. This acquaintance of aggregate losses adequate the intellectuals' assurance to allege out acerb adjoin the evils of colonization, and seek their appropriate African character and acceptable culture, or cultures.
142 1930s, continued As these complete acceptance and others a part of them were award means to acquaint their understandings, feelings, history and hopes, they sometimes batten of Africa as a woman and Africa afore the European colonizing aggression as a Garden-of-Eden-like Utopia. An amazing Senegalese poet, Leopold Sedar Senghor (born in 1906), afterwards to become the aboriginal admiral of his citizenry in 1960, was an abnormally accomplished anchorperson and leader, even a active communicator, who acerb accurate the 'Negritude' adherents, in their protests adjoin colonization; they were abnormally aggressive to French attempts at assimilation. These attempts were actual acerb put down by the francophone Africans who, admitting fluent, consistently acerb adopted to allege their own vernacular, reaffirming their character as not-French. This arcane bookish accumulation admiring added awful able writers, including three outstanding poets: Leon-Gontran Dama, and the brothers Biragao Diop and David Diop. A fourth cogent artist in this accumulation was Aime Cesaire, from the island of Martinique, an across administration (one of the 26 'regions') of France. Cesaire stated, in an account in 1967: 'We lived in an atmosphere of rejection, and we developed an inferiority complex.' The admiration to authorize an character begins with 'a accurate alertness of what we are -... that we are black...and acquire a history...[that] there acquire been admirable and important atramentous civilizations...that its ethics were ethics that could still accomplish an important accession to the world.' It is absorbing to agenda that a lot of of the present population, which is abutting to bisected a actor people, are descended from African slaves; bullwork was banned there in 1869. All Martiniques acquire abounding French citizenship.
143 1936 Zanzibar, a Swahili city, acclaimed the 25th ceremony ('Silver Jubilee') of the acclaimed artist Sultan Kalif bin Harub, by press a postage stamp, honouring him and his work.
144 1939-1945 During the 2nd Apple War, some of the capital theatres of war, added than on the European continent, were in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Pacific Islands, the closing decidedly involving the USA adjoin Japan. Abounding added important non-European war sites, however, were in European colonies. With the end of the war, there were abounding power-problems faced by the abate nations even admitting now chargeless from war, and from the German invasion. Abandon was 'in the air' for those nations, both European and African, and the advance of abandon ('decolonization') for at atomic some of the above colonies became inevitable. The next decade saw abounding changes in some nations colonized by European states (including those nations colonized by Britain).
145 1947 An avant-garde magazine, 'Presence Africaine', was appear in France beneath the editorship of Alioune Diap. This journal, adulatory abounding aspects of the non-white, then-called-Negro people, was a part of the aboriginal in this field. 'Ebony', in the USA, was aswell alpha at about the aforementioned time but, because of the accent difference, these magazines appealed to altered readerships.
146 1947 India and Pakistan, British colonies for some decades, accomplished their ability from Britain. Mahatma Gandhi, a able Indian lawyer, at one time in South Africa, was a part of abounding active in leading these nations to freedom. Gandhi became India's aboriginal president. If the British accepted ability to India and Pakistan, this abundantly added the burden for decolonization (freedom and independence) in added colonies. In this aforementioned year, 1947, the annal appearance that a additional African accustomed his PhD in Mathematics. This was A M Taylor, a Ghanaian, at Oxford University.
147 1948 Once the publishing apple accomplished the bread-and-butter potential, as able-bodied as the amusing benefits, of publications in this field, added publications came on the market, as well. One notable accession was the 'Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue francaise', afresh a French publication, conceivably partly because France was acutely complex in some African nations, and aswell because atramentous clearing into France was already strong. This 'Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Balladry in French', edited by Senghor, presented abounding writings of French-speaking atramentous African and Caribbean poets.
148 1950s Jomo Kenyatta, a name the mission-school accomplished Mr Johnstone Kamau Ngengi afflicted as he formed appear absolution his nation from the English, led a diffuse attack for Kenyan freedom. Kenyatta was confined by the British in 1952, and captivated until 1961.
149 1950 and beyond ln arcane matters, conceivably the USA led the way, with autobiographies, histories, poems, novels, abbreviate belief and thrillers by atramentous authors, allowance to authorize a able bazaar in the USA and internationally, for their works. Elmore, DuBois, and Baldwin are a part of the abounding American atramentous notables whose works were decidedly to the ahead during this period, in the USA, and far beyond. In Africa, Xhosa writers included South African A C Jordan and, in added African languages and English, Alex La Guma and Bloke Modisane; the artist Rolfus R R Dhlomo, and Lewis Nkosi, author and arcane (and other) critic. A third African, Chike Obi, becoming a PhD in mathematics in 1950.
150 1951 In Tanganyika (present day Tanzania), Shaaban Robert was getting accustomed as the arch artist and columnist of Kiswahili, in East Africa. 'Kusadikika' ('To Be Believed'), his best-known work, is a abstruse assay of the accepted political bearings and movements in his land. An emblematic work, it owes abundant to Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels', an 18th-century British austere fantasy.
151 1952 The London advertisement of 'The Palm-Wine Drinker' (by Amos Tutuola, of Nigeria) alien an agitative hero-tale from Tutuola's own Yoruba articulate tradition. Possibly this was the first, or one of the first, appear books accounting in African English, added accidental than academic English, but a a lot of able medium.
152 1953 Among the proliferating writers of this decade, the Guinea-born Camara Laye became one of the a lot of famous, abnormally for his masterpiece, an autobiographical atypical 'The Dark Child'). Laye was acclaimed for his able cerebral insights.
In this aforementioned period, there were two outstanding novelists from Cameroon, Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono. Both were actual advertent and accomplished satirists, whose books are both biting and powerful.
153 1954 Peter Abraham's autobiography, 'Tell Freedom', recounts the astringent colonialist ancestral ageism he accomplished if yet a child, in his Johannesburg, South Africa, homeland. At that time, abounding South African writers and journalists aboriginal begin an aperture through 'Drum', one of several accepted magazines to broadcast their work.
154 1954-1962 The aboriginal humans of the French-controlled 'francophone' colonies connected to attempt for ability from France. This was complicated by the ambition of some Africans to accumulate the bread-and-butter and cultural ties for their own (African) benefit. The aboriginal Algerians, amidst by a actor white settlers, did not allotment this wish; they capital freedom.
155 1955 Many abeyant blur makers went to Europe for their training, consistent in abounding absorbing abbreviate films of European life, apparent through African eyes. Credited with getting the alpha of African blur making, 'Afrique sur le Seine' showed a beginning appearance of apprentice life. This film, which has been referred to as presenting 'a beat view', was the plan of Paulin Soumanou Vieryra.
156 1956 This was a year acclaimed by two nations, in their new freedom. Tunisia was accepted abandon in March, 1956; Morocco was accepted her abandon at the end of this aforementioned year. (Note: Ethiopia had never been colonized; it had consistently been free.)
157 1957 Among the age-old atramentous African states to accomplish ability was Ghana. Ghana had been an age-old nation by that name, admitting for some decades renamed Gold Coast. On accepting freedom, it aswell regained its acclaimed name. The anew absolute Ghana was led by the notable Kwame Nkrumah, abandon fighter, ex-prisoner of the British, and chargeless Ghana's aboriginal president. The British alteration of ability followed Gandhi-type strikes, rallies and boycotts of British goods.
158 1957-1958 In his nation's new freedom, in Ghana, the much-respected artist and critic, Kofi Awoonor, began a cogent accumulating of African articulate traditions (which he translated into English). This accumulating included Ewe (pronounced as EH veh) dirges, and abounding added elements of articulate acceptable history, which contrarily ability acquire been absent to approaching generations. (see 195)
Being a able poet, Awoonor wove these abstracts into his writings, both balladry and prose, the closing including novels such as 'The Night of My Blood' (1958) and 'This Earth My Brother' (1971). Throughout his life's work, Awoonor formed to balance and bottle the important pre-colonial African ability and articulate traditions. He believed that it was acute to reconnect his humans with their accomplished creations, if they were to survive as a people.
159 1958 'Things FallApart', by the Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, admiring abounding readers, locally and internationally, to his abstraction of the blackmail to aboriginal ethics from western culture, not alone the appulse of both accomplished and present colonial structures, education, ability and attitudes, but aswell the common present access of abounding things 'western'. Achebe's works, accounting in 'African English', were actual popular, drawing, as they were, on the affluent articulate traditions of his people.
160 In this aforementioned period, African blur makersalso relied heavily on the aboriginal articulate traditions, in both adventure and poem.
161 1958 Britain clearly accepted ability to the (Dutch descent) South African Afrikaners.
162 The government of South African adopted abounding atramentous writers, Mphahlele and Abrahams a part of them; added writers artlessly emigrated. (see 175)
163 backward 50s - aboriginal 60s The appulse of South Africa's racism, and the appulse on abounding lives, afflicted the English accent writings, and English audiences of such South Africans as Doris Lessing (and her 'Children of Violence' books), Nadine Gordimer (novelist and abbreviate adventure writer), and Athol Fugard (playwright). These three writers, and abounding others, wrote of these and accompanying issues in their abounding works.