African Peoples' Encounters With Others
Throughout the centuries, peoples born in the area known as sub-
Saharan Africa have interacted on many levels with peoples from
elsewhere. The Library of Congress Africana collections are rich
in primary documents, facsimiles, and secondary sources in a variety
of languages and formats that describe these experiences. Texts,
maps, visual images, artifacts, and recordings document the observations
of non-Africans as they traveled to parts of the continent and
of Africans who encountered them willingly or under coercion.
These materials also describe the resistance and adaptation of
Africans to the cultural and political onslaught of non-Africans.
Diverse resources are available to study the development of commercial
and diplomatic relations; the creation and dissolution of colonial
governments; and the reestablishment of sovereign nations.
This map shows the trip to Mecca made in
A.D. 1324 by the fabulously wealthy king Mansa Musa (reigned,
1312?-37) of the Mali Empire. With the map is an explanation
of some of the symbols it uses. This facsimile of the Catalan
Atlas, probably by Abraham Crèsques (d. 1387), edited
and with commentary by Georges Grosjean, was published as
Mapamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375
(Dietikon-Zurich: Urs Graf; sole distributor in the
United States and Canada: Abaris Books, 1978). (Copyright
© 1978 by Urs Graf, Publisher, GmbH, 1978.
Used by permission of Abaris Books.)
and Map Division)
Some of the earliest writings mentioning African peoples describe
the relations between the peoples of the Horn of Africa and peoples
living in Egypt, on the Arabian peninsula, or in India, where
an active trading network across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
was already well established in ancient times. In West Africa,
kingdoms such as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai engaged in trans- Saharan
trade with North Africa as early as A.D. 300, flourishing particularly
in the Middle Ages. The Library has many accounts of these historic
encounters in the original languages -- Chinese, Arabic, and others
-- of the observers as well as in various translations.
"A New Map of the Coast of Guinea
from Cape Mount to Iacquin" appeared in William Smith's
Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea (not
before 1727), which illustrates the fierce competition among
the Dutch, English, and Portuguese along the west coast
of Africa in areas they called the Grain, the Ivory, the
Gold, and the Slave Coasts. The volume includes diagrams
of the forts they built, landscapes, and pictorial information
that sheds light on the slave trade.
(Rare Book and Special
Travelers to and from Africa, whether they were traders, government
or military officers, or people returning to Africa after the
diaspora, have produced descriptions of their experiences. In
the Manuscript Division, the Naval Historical Foundation collection
and the Peter Force papers contain the records, correspondence,
logbooks, and maritime reports of many American naval and merchant
seamen who sailed the coasts of Africa and described the social,
political, and economic conditions observed. In the same division
are found the papers of other American travelers, such as those
of the abolitionist, diplomat, journalist, and orator Frederick
Douglass (1817?-1895), who traveled to Africa in 1845-47 and 1886-87.
The papers of W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), author, educator,
and historian, describe his travels in Africa and are available
African travelers to the United States and other countries have
described their experiences and views of those areas. Recent examples
include Prince Bamgbola Akinsanya's America!: Candid Impressions
of an African: A Comparison of Two Cultures (1992) and H.
Martin Th. Kayamba's An African in Europe (1948), both
housed in the General Collections.
Some of the writings of Africans captured in slavery reside in
the Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Among
them are first and subsequent editions of the Thoughts and
Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery
and Commerce of the Human Species (1787) by Ottobah Cugoano
(ca. 1745-ca. 1790), said to be from Ghana originally. Nigerian
Olaudah Equiano (ca. 1745-ca. 1802) wrote his autobiographical
Interesting Narrative, which was published in 1789. One
of the earliest African American poets, Phillis Wheatley, born
in the Senegal River valley in about 1753, is known for her Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773),
part of the John Davis Batchelder Collection.
"Isle de Madagascar ou de St.
Laurens" is by the French geographer Nicolas Sanson,
whose L'Affriqve; en plvsieurs cartes novvelles,
et exactes; & en divers traitez de geographie,
et d' histoire (1656), is one of the earliest atlases
in the Library of Congress devoted exclusively to Africa.
Sanson includes extensive descriptions of the continent
and its peoples.
and Map Division)
One of the largest Africana collections in the Library is that
of the American Colonization Society. The finding aid The
American Colonization Society: A Register of Its Records
in the Library of Congress (1979) guides the researcher through
these documents, which number 190,000 pieces. Formed in 1817 and
dissolved in 1964, the society was established to facilitate the
repatriation of African Americans back to Africa, first in Sierra
Leone and then principally in Liberia.
The ACS archives included photographs and postcards (now housed
in the Prints and Photographs Division); correspondence, internal
reports, and other official documents (in the Manuscript Division);
and maps (in the Geography and Map Division). Some of these materials
are available electronically through the Internet as part of the
American Memory project accessible from the Library's Web site.
Materials that complement the American Colonization Society collection
include Daniel Coker's journal of 1821 (housed in the Manuscript
Division), which records daily events at the society's colony
at Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone, where Coker served as its agent.
Consisting of nearly four hundred pamphlets, the Daniel Murray
Pamphlet Collection, housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections
Division, has also been partially digitized and is accessible
on the Internet. Daniel A. P. Murray was a valued Library employee
for many years who spent a lifetime assembling his personal collection
of mostly African American studies materials, which was bequeathed
to the Library after his death in 1926. Among the digitized pamphlets
is The Foulahs of Central Africa, and the African Slave Trade
The early history of African-European government relations is
documented in the work of Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis (1434-1520).
His Supplementum chronicarum (1486) contains
a partial account of the treatise written by Giovanni da Carignano
based on interviews Carignano supposedly conducted with members
of the diplomatic mission sent by King Wadem Ar'ad of Ethiopia
to the papal court in Avignon in A.D. 1306. In several anthologies
and translations in the Library's collections, the correspondence
exchanged between Afonso I, king of the Congo (ca. 1456-ca. 1541)
whose prebaptismal name was Mvemba Nsinga, and Manuel I, king
of Portugal (1469-1521), is available.
In 1884-85, the Berlin Conference brought together delegates
from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy,
Luxumbourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
and Turkey to discuss the competitive interests of each for colonies
in Africa. The map of Africa soon reflected the agreements made
at this conference and ushered in the colonial period of African
history. The establishment of colonial administrations generated
many documents and publications. The African Section has prepared
a series of guides to official publications of these governments
and to those of the subsequent independent nations (see "Selected
Library of Congress Publications on Africa").
In this same period, many Catholic and Protestant missionaries
were sent to the continent to convert and educate the African
peoples and to inculcate Eurocentric culture in them. Microfilmed
archives of some of these societies are held by the Library, for
example, the imc-cbms Missionary
Archives (1977), a collection of about 1,850 microfiches
concerning the International Missionary Council and the Conference
of British Missionary Societies. These archives cover the period
from 1910 to 1945 and are available in the Microform Reading Room.
The resistance of Africans to the cultural and political assault
of the Europeans is also documented in the Library's collections.
The Mombasa Rising against the Portuguese, 1631:
From Sworn Evidence (1980) presents in English translation
the "Diocesis Goanae Processus martyrum de Mombassa," a record
of the court of inquiry held by the diocese of Mombasa to ascertain
whether those who died during the rebellion were martyrs and eligible
for canonization as saints. The testimonies of eyewitnesses give
the historian views of the confrontation between Islam and Christianity
and between African and European political powers. Their accounts
provide an insight into the social and cultural interactions of
peoples living in the Mombasa, Kenya, area of Eastern Africa in
the seventeenth century.
Labeled "King Kobina of Elmina,
Ghana" (ca. 1890s), this photograph is one in a collection
dated 1890-1910. Here the royal court is portrayed in traditional
dress surrounding the king. In the same collection is a
photograph showing some of the same people, but wearing
Western clothing and posed more informally under some trees.
(Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection.
Prints and Photographs
The Library offers researchers a dazzling array of graphic resources
that portray the ways in which Africans were viewed by others
and how Africans saw themselves and other peoples. These materials
include drawings reproduced as etchings and lithographs in books,
newspapers, or periodicals, as individual images such as photographs
and daguerreotypes, or as films and videotapes.
In David Killinray and Andrew Robert's essay, "An Outline History
of Photography in Africa (to c. 1940)," in Photographs as
Sources for African History (1988), it is noted that "In
South Africa, studios were established in the Cape in the late
1840s and 1850s. . . . In Luanda [Angola], a studio opened around
1863. During the 1880s there were at least seven studios in Freetown
[Sierra Leone] run by black photographers, and by this time there
were also studios in Accra and Zanzibar" (p. 10). The Red
Book of West Africa: Historical and Descriptive, Commercial and
Industrial Facts, Figures, & Resources (1920) contains
the photographs of the following photographers: George S. Da Costa
of Nigeria; N. Wlawin Holm who was born in Accra, had a studio
in Lagos, and was the first Nigerian member of the Royal Photographic
Society of Great Britain; and Alphonso and Arthur Lisk-Carew of
Sierra Leone. The volume claimed to be "the first of its kind
ever issued on West Africa, also the most profusely illustrated."
Flags have been used since the
seventeenth century by the Fanti (or Fante) in the coastal
areas of Ghana to identify their military companies, called
Asafo, which serve as political, cultural, and military
advisers. The appliquéd symbols on the flags may
identify a company by name, number, and geographic location,
using imagery illustrating the power and glory of the unit.
This example is found in an exhibit catalog of African textiles,
Daiei Hakubutsukan shozohin ni yoru Afurika
no senshoku (Kyoto, 1991). (Copyright © The
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 1991)
From the 1870s through the 1930s, stereograph companies deposited
more than 250,000 stereograph cards for copyright in the Library
of Congress, of which approximately 2,500 show African scenes.
Arranged geographically in file cabinets, these stereographs show
details of life in various parts of the continent, such as the
court in session in a courtroom filled with officials, audience,
and witnesses pictured in A Native Court in Ujiji, Tanganyika
Territory, Africa (P&P stereo. no. 20767).
Other photographic collections include the Royal Commonwealth
Society's rcs Photograph Collection: Africa (1985-87),
found in the Microform Reading Room, consisting of 208 microfiches
which document the colonization and administration of former British
colonies in Africa. The photograph albums of Frank G. Carpenter
(1855-1924), the American author and journalist who traveled all
around the world during a period of over thirty years, are housed
in the Prints and Photographs Division. Carpenter wrote about
and photographed many African countries -- including Uganda, Rhodesia,
Mozambique, and the Union of South Africa.
Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the
Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress, 1985)
describes two moving pictures apparently filmed on location in
Africa, although the country is not designated for either.
Military Drill of Kikuyu Tribes and Other Native Ceremonies was
deposited for copyright on July 4, 1914, and Paul J. Rainey's
African Hunt on April 22, 1912.
For a number of works, the Library owns both a set of photographs
that was compiled for publication and the published book
itself. Introducing West Africa, issued by the
Great Britain Colonial Office and the Central Office of
Information in several editions from 1944 to 1955, included
a photograph whose original legend read in part, "The
West African has won considerable repute for his skill as
a craftsman. . . . Today wood carving is chief among
West African crafts." Promotional works such as this were
issued by colonial governments to encourage tourism and
settlement in their colonies.
(Prints and Photographs
The Library has the world's largest collection of maps and atlases,
including many of interest to the Africanist. From ancient hand-drawn
charts to the latest satellite surveys, the Geography and Map
Division houses more than 150,000 maps and atlases on Africa,
offering diverse types of information such as political and geographic
divisions, environmental conditions, and ethnological data. For
example, the collection includes the 1477 Bologna edition of Claudius
Ptolemy's Geography, based on Ptolemy's writings of about
A.D. 150 and on what was known from Arab and European writers
up to 1477.
Maps are often found in travel accounts. A map of West Africa
drawn for the benefit of a European traveler at the command of
Muhammad Bello, sultan of Sokoto (d. 1837), was published in 1826
in Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and
Central Africa, in the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824 by Dixon
Denham, Hugh Clapperton, and Walter Oudney, who were travelers
and explorers in that region.
The historic complexity of the encounters between African peoples
and others has produced a multiplicity of materials. The Library's
Africana collections offer researchers a wide selection of resources
reflecting a variety of approaches to documenting these interactions.