GLOBAFRICA - Reconnecting Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa and the World prior to European Imperialism

GLOBAFRICA is an ambitious history programme for rethinking Africa’s long term integration into the rest of the World. This multidisciplinary project intends to establish new tools to give a balanced vision of connections between Africa and the other continents

Date de début de projet

01/10/2014

Date de fin du projet

30/04/2018

Objectives

Phenomena such as dynamics of populations, demographic and epidemiological crises as well as increasing social complexity and state or cultural formations, are tackled from the angle of intercontinental exchanges. As such, the project will focus on the relations between oceanic and Saharan interfaces on the one hand, and inland political and social configurations on the other. Up to what point, from which period must we consider the African continent as being integrated into the rest of the world?

Location

France

Description

Examining the intensity and actual forms of exchanges will be conducted on the basis of special detailed cases in the said project. 

  • Analysis of the economic, political and cultural relations between the Swahili Coast and the political formations of Eastern and Southern Africa from the 11th to the 17th centuries.
  • The study of the spreading and impact of the bubonic plague in Sub-Saharan Africa, is taken here as evidence of the continent’s integration into global exchanges before the 15th century.
  • Finally, the third case will need to specify the role of exogenous plants in the arrival of new human settlements in the Great Lakes Region, with new economic, social and cultural organisations, by following cultural diversity and comparing this geochronology with historical and archaeological knowledge.

Partnership

CIRAD (UMR AGAP), CNRS (USR 3336), IMAF Institut des mondes africains (UMR 8171), IMAF/CNRS Institut des mondes africains (UMR 8171)

Team

Dynamics of diversity, societies and environments (DDSE)

Fundings

ANR

Keywords

History, intercontinental exchanges