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History of the Americas

The history of the Americas begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia during the height of an ice age. These groups are generally believed to have been isolated from the people of the "Old World" until the coming of Europeans in the 10th century from Iceland led by Leif Erikson, and in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus.

The ancestors of today's American Indigenous peoples were the Paleo-Indians; they were hunter-gatherers who migrated into North America. The most popular theory asserts that migrants came to the Americas via Beringia, the land mass now covered by the ocean waters of the Bering Strait. Small lithic stage peoples followed megafauna like bison, mammoth (now extinct), and caribou, thus gaining the modern nickname "big-game hunters." Groups of people may also have traveled into North America on shelf or sheet ice along the northern Pacific coast.

Sedentary societies developed primarily in two regions: Mesoamerica and the Andean civilizations. Mesoamerican cultures include Zapotec, Toltec, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Mixtec, Totonac, Teotihuacan, Huastec people, Purépecha, Izapa and Mazatec. Andean cultures include Inca, Caral-Supe, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chimor, Moche, Muisca, Chavin, Paracas, and Nazca.

After the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spanish and later Portuguese, English, French and Dutch colonial expeditions arrived in the New World, conquering and settling the discovered lands, which led to a transformation of the cultural and physical landscape in the Americas. Spain colonized most of the Americas from present-day Southwestern United States, Florida and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America. Portugal settled in what is mostly present-day Brazil while England established colonies on the Eastern coast of the United States, as well as the North Pacific coast and in most of Canada. France settled in Quebec and other parts of Eastern Canada and claimed an area in what is today the central United States. The Netherlands settled New Netherland (administrative centre New Amsterdam – now New York), some Caribbean islands and parts of Northern South America.

European colonization of the Americas led to the rise of new cultures, civilizations and eventually states, which resulted from the fusion of Native American, European, and African traditions, peoples and institutions. The transformation of American cultures through colonization is evident in architecture, religion, gastronomy, the arts and particularly languages, the most widespread being Spanish (376 million speakers), English (348 million) and Portuguese (201 million). The colonial period lasted approximately three centuries, from the early 16th to the early 19th centuries, when Brazil and the larger Hispanic American nations declared independence. The United States obtained independence from Great Britain much earlier, in 1776, while Canada formed a federal dominion in 1867 and received legal independence in 1931. Others remained attached to their European parent state until the end of the 19th century, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico which were linked to Spain until 1898. Smaller territories such as Guyana obtained independence in the mid-20th century, while certain Caribbean islands and French Guiana remain part of a European power to this day.

Migration into the continents
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000 – 17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of a hundred meters following the last ice age.

Archaeologists contend that the Paleo-Indian migration out of Beringia (eastern Alaska), ranges from 40,000 to around 16,500 years ago. This time range is a hot source of debate. The few agreements achieved to date are the origin from Central Asia, with widespread habitation of the Americas during the end of the last glacial period, or more specifically what is known as the late glacial maximum, around 16,000 – 13,000 years before present.

The American Journal of Human Genetics released an article in 2007 stating "Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all Indigenous American haplogroups, including Haplogroup X (mtDNA), were part of a single founding population." Amerindian groups in the Bering Strait region exhibit perhaps the strongest DNA or mitochondrial DNA relations to Siberian peoples. The genetic diversity of Amerindian indigenous groups increase with distance from the assumed entry point into the Americas. Certain genetic diversity patterns from West to East suggest, particularly in South America, that migration proceeded first down the west coast, and then proceeded eastward. Geneticists have variously estimated that peoples of Asia and the Americas were part of the same population from 42,000 to 21,000 years ago.

New studies shed light on the founding population of indigenous Americans, suggesting that their ancestry traced to both east Asian and western Eurasians who migrated to North America directly from Siberia. A 2013 study in the journal Nature reported that DNA found in the 24,000-year-old remains of a young boy in Mal'ta Siberia suggest that up to one-third of the indigenous Americans may have ancestry that can be traced back to western Eurasians, who may have "had a more north-easterly distribution 24,000 years ago than commonly thought" Professor Kelly Graf said that "Our findings are significant at two levels. First, it shows that Upper Paleolithic Siberians came from a cosmopolitan population of early modern humans that spread out of Africa to Europe and Central and South Asia. Second, Paleoindian skeletons with phenotypic traits atypical of modern-day Native Americans can be explained as having a direct historical connection to Upper Paleolithic Siberia." A route through Beringia is seen as more likely than the Solutrean hypothesis.

On October 3, 2014, the Oregon cave where the oldest DNA evidence of human habitation in North America was found was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The DNA, radiocarbon dated to 14,300 years ago, was found in fossilized human coprolites uncovered in the Paisley Five Mile Point Caves in south central Oregon.

Lithic stage (before 8000 BCE)

The Lithic stage or Paleo-Indian period, is the earliest classification term referring to the first stage of human habitation in the Americas, covering the Late Pleistocene epoch. The time period derives its name from the appearance of "Lithic flaked" stone tools. Stone tools, particularly projectile points and scrapers, are the primary evidence of the earliest well known human activity in the Americas. Lithic reduction stone tools are used by archaeologists and anthropologists to classify cultural periods.

Archaic stage (8000–1000 BCE)
Several thousand years after the first migrations, the first complex civilizations arose as hunter-gatherers settled into semi-agricultural communities. Identifiable sedentary settlements began to emerge in the so-called Middle Archaic period around 6000 BCE. Particular archaeological cultures can be identified and easily classified throughout the Archaic period.

In the late Archaic, on the north-central coastal region of Peru, a complex civilization arose which has been termed the Norte Chico civilization, also known as Caral-Supe. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization originated independently and indigenously in the ancient world, flourishing between the 30th and 18th centuries BC. It pre-dated the Mesoamerican Olmec civilization by nearly two millennia. It was contemporaneous with the Egypt following the unification of its kingdom under Narmer and the emergence of the first Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Monumental architecture, including earthwork platform mounds and sunken plazas have been identified as part of the civilization. Archaeological evidence points to the use of textile technology and the worship of common god symbols. Government, possibly in the form of theocracy, is assumed to have been required to manage the region. However, numerous questions remain about its organization. In archaeological nomenclature, the culture was pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic period. It appears to have lacked ceramics and art.

Ongoing scholarly debate persists over the extent to which the flourishing of Norte Chico resulted from its abundant maritime food resources, and the relationship that these resources would suggest between coastal and inland sites. The role of seafood in the Norte Chico diet has been a subject of scholarly debate. In 1973, examining the Aspero region of Norte Chico, Michael E. Moseley contended that a maritime subsistence (seafood) economy had been the basis of society and its early flourishing. This theory, later termed "maritime foundation of Andean Civilization" was at odds with the general scholarly consensus that civilization arose as a result of intensive grain-based agriculture, as had been the case in the emergence of civilizations in northeast Africa (Egypt) and southwest Asia (Mesopotamia).

While earlier research pointed to edible domestic plants such as squash, beans, lucuma, guava, pacay, and camote at Caral, publications by Haas and colleagues have added avocado, achira, and maize (Zea Mays) to the list of foods consumed in the region. In 2013, Haas and colleagues reported that maize was a primary component of the diet throughout the period of 3000 to 1800 BC. Cotton was another widespread crop in Norte Chico, essential to the production of fishing nets and textiles. Jonathan Haas noted a mutual dependency, whereby "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their protein and the fishermen needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish."

In the 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, journalist Charles C. Mann surveyed the literature at the time, reporting a date "sometime before 3200 BC, and possibly before 3500 BC" as the beginning date for the formation of Norte Chico. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BC, at Huaricanga in the (inland) Fortaleza area. The Norte Chico civilization began to decline around 1800 BC as more powerful centers appeared to the south and north along its coast, and to the east within the Andes Mountains.

Mesoamerica, the Woodland Period, and Mississippian culture (2000 BCE – 500 CE)
After the decline of the Norte Chico civilization, numerous complex civilizations and centralized polities developed in the Western Hemisphere: The Chavin, Nazca, Moche, Huari, Quitus, Cañaris, Chimu, Pachacamac, Tiahuanaco, Aymara and Inca in the Andes; the Muisca, Tairona, Miskito, Huetar, and Talamanca in the Intermediate Area; the Taínos in the Caribbean; and the Olmecs, Maya, Toltecs, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Aztecs, Purepecha and Nicoya in Mesoamerica.

The Olmec civilization was the first Mesoamerican civilization, beginning around 1600–1400 BC and ending around 400 BC. Mesoamerica is considered one of the six sites around the globe in which civilization developed independently and indigenously. This civilization is considered the mother culture of the Mesoamerican civilizations. The Mesoamerican calendar, numeral system, writing, and much of the Mesoamerican pantheon seem to have begun with the Olmec.

Some elements of agriculture seem to have been practiced in Mesoamerica quite early. The domestication of maize is thought to have begun around 7,500 to 12,000 years ago. The earliest record of lowland maize cultivation dates to around 5100 BC. Agriculture continued to be mixed with a hunting-gathering-fishing lifestyle until quite late compared to other regions, but by 2700 BC, Mesoamericans were relying on maize, and living mostly in villages. Temple mounds and classes started to appear. By 1300/ 1200 BC, small centres coalesced into the Olmec civilization, which seems to have been a set of city-states, united in religious and commercial concerns. The Olmec cities had ceremonial complexes with earth/clay pyramids, palaces, stone monuments, aqueducts and walled plazas. The first of these centers was at San Lorenzo (until 900 bc). La Venta was the last great Olmec centre. Olmec artisans sculpted jade and clay figurines of Jaguars and humans. Their iconic giant heads – believed to be of Olmec rulers – stood in every major city.

The Olmec civilization ended in 400 BC, with the defacing and destruction of San Lorenzo and La Venta, two of the major cities. It nevertheless spawned many other states, most notably the Mayan civilization, whose first cities began appearing around 700–600 BC. Olmec influences continued to appear in many later Mesoamerican civilizations.

Cities of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas were as large and organized as the largest in the Old World, with an estimated population of 200,000 to 350,000 in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. The market established in the city was said to have been the largest ever seen by the conquistadors when they arrived. The capital of the Cahokians, Cahokia, located near modern East St. Louis, Illinois, may have reached a population of over 20,000. At its peak, between the 12th and 13th centuries, Cahokia may have been the most populous city in North America. Monk's Mound, the major ceremonial center of Cahokia, remains the largest earthen construction of the prehistoric New World.

These civilizations developed agriculture as well, breeding maize (corn) from having ears 2–5 cm in length to perhaps 10–15 cm in length. Potatoes, tomatoes, beans (greens), pumpkins, avocados, and chocolate are now the most popular of the pre-Columbian agricultural products. The civilizations did not develop extensive livestock as there were few suitable species, although alpacas and llamas were domesticated for use as beasts of burden and sources of wool and meat in the Andes. By the 15th century, maize was being farmed in the Mississippi River Valley after introduction from Mexico. The course of further agricultural development was greatly altered by the arrival of Europeans.

Cahokia
Cahokia was a major regional chiefdom, with trade and tributary chiefdoms located in a range of areas from bordering the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

 * Haudenosaune

The Iroquois League of Nations or "People of the Long House", based in present-day upstate and western New York, had a confederacy model from the mid-15th century. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the development of the later United States government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies.

Leadership was restricted to a group of 50 sachem chiefs, each representing one clan within a tribe; the Oneida and Mohawk people had nine seats each; the Onondagas held fourteen; the Cayuga had ten seats; and the Seneca had eight. Representation was not based on population numbers, as the Seneca tribe greatly outnumbered the others. When a sachem chief died, his successor was chosen by the senior woman of his tribe in consultation with other female members of the clan; property and hereditary leadership were passed matrilineally. Decisions were not made through voting but through consensus decision making, with each sachem chief holding theoretical veto power. The Onondaga were the "firekeepers", responsible for raising topics to be discussed. They occupied one side of a three-sided fire (the Mohawk and Seneca sat on one side of the fire, the Oneida and Cayuga sat on the third side.)

Long-distance trading did not prevent warfare and displacement among the indigenous peoples, and their oral histories tell of numerous migrations to the historic territories where Europeans encountered them. The Iroquois invaded and attacked tribes in the Ohio River area of present-day Kentucky and claimed the hunting grounds. Historians have placed these events as occurring as early as the 13th century, or in the 17th century Beaver Wars.

Through warfare, the Iroquois drove several tribes to migrate west to what became known as their historically traditional lands west of the Mississippi River. Tribes originating in the Ohio Valley who moved west included the Osage, Kaw, Ponca and Omaha people. By the mid-17th century, they had resettled in their historical lands in present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Osage warred with Caddo-speaking Native Americans, displacing them in turn by the mid-18th century and dominating their new historical territories.

Oasisamerica

 * Pueblo people

The Pueblo people of what is now occupied by the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico, living conditions were that of large stone apartment like adobe structures. They live in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and possibly surrounding areas.

Aridoamerica

 * Chichimeca

Chichimeca was the name that the Mexica (Aztecs) generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian". The name was adopted with a pejorative tone by the Spaniards when referring especially to the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples of northern Mexico.

Mesoamerica
The Olmec civilization emerged around 1200 BCE in Mesoamerica and ended around 400 BCE. Olmec art and concepts influenced surrounding cultures after their downfall. This civilization was thought to be the first in America to develop a writing system. After the Olmecs abandoned their cities for unknown reasons, the Maya, Zapotec and Teotihuacan arose.
 * Olmec

The Purepecha civilization emerged around 1000 CE in Mesoamerica. They flourished from 1100 CE to 1530 CE. They continue to live on in the state of Michoacán. Fierce warriors, they were never conquered and in their glory years, successfully sealed off huge areas from Aztec domination.
 * Purepecha

 * Maya

Maya history spans 3,000 years. The Classic Maya may have collapsed due to changing climate in the end of the 10th century.

The Toltec were a nomadic people, dating from the 10th–12th century, whose language was also spoken by the Aztecs.
 * Toltec

Teotihuacan (4th century BCE – 7/8th century CE) was both a city, and an empire of the same name, which, at its zenith between 150 and the 5th century, covered most of Mesoamerica.
 * Teotihuacan

The Aztec having started to build their empire around 14th century found their civilization abruptly ended by the Spanish conquistadors. They lived in Mesoamerica, and surrounding lands. Their capital city Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities of all time.
 * Aztec

South America

The Valdivia culture is one of the oldest settled cultures recorded in the Americas. It emerged from the earlier Las Vegas culture and thrived along the coast of Santa Elena peninsula in Santa Elena Province of Ecuador between 3500 BCE and 1500 BCE.
 * Valdivia culture

One of the oldest known civilization of the Americas was established in the Norte Chico region of modern Peru. Complex society emerged in the group of coastal valleys, between 3000 and 1800 BCE. The Quipu, a distinctive recording device among Andean civilizations, apparently dates from the era of Norte Chico's prominence.
 * Norte Chico

The Chavín established a trade network and developed agriculture by as early as (or late compared to the Old World) 900 BCE according to some estimates and archaeological finds. Artifacts were found at a site called Chavín in modern Peru at an elevation of 3,177 meters. Chavín civilization spanned from 900 BCE to 300 BCE.
 * Chavín

Upano Valley

The Upano Valley sites in present-day eastern Ecuador predate all known complex Amazonian societies, spanning from approximately 500 BCE to 300-600 CE.

 * Inca

Holding their capital at the great city of Cusco, the Inca civilization dominated the Andes region from 1438 to 1533. Known as Tawantinsuyu, or "the land of the four regions", in Quechua, the Inca culture was highly distinct and developed. Cities were built with precise, unmatched stonework, constructed over many levels of mountain terrain. Terrace farming was a useful form of agriculture. There is evidence of excellent metalwork and even successful trepanation of the skull in Inca civilization.

European colonization

Around 1000, the Vikings established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland, now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. Speculations exist about other Old World discoveries of the New World, but none of these are generally or completely accepted by most scholars.

Spain sponsored a major exploration led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492; it quickly led to extensive European colonization of the Americas. The Europeans brought Old World diseases which are thought to have caused catastrophic epidemics and a huge decrease of the native population. Columbus came at a time in which many technical developments in sailing techniques and communication made it possible to report his voyages easily and to spread word of them throughout Europe. It was also a time of growing religious, imperial and economic rivalries that led to a competition for the establishment of colonies.

Colonial period
15th to 19th century colonies in the New World:
 * Spanish colonization of the Americas (1492)
 * Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535–1821)
 * Viceroyalty of Peru (1542–1824)
 * Spanish Main
 * Spanish West Indies
 * Captaincy General of Guatemala
 * British America / Thirteen Colonies (1584/1607 – 1776/20th century)
 * French Saint-Domingue (1659–1804)
 * Danish West Indies
 * New Netherland
 * New France
 * Captaincy General of Venezuela
 * Portuguese colonization of the Americas (1499–1822)
 * Colonial Brazil (1500–1815)

Decolonization
The formation of sovereign states in the New World began with the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776. The American Revolutionary War lasted through the period of the Siege of Yorktown—its last major campaign—in the early autumn of 1781, with peace being achieved in 1783. In 1804, after the French of Napoleon Bonaparte were defeated during the Haitian Revolution under the black leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines declare the colony of Saint-Domingue independence of the Haitian Declaration of Independence as he renamed the country Ayiti meaning (Land of Mountains), Haiti became the world's first black-led republic in the New World, the first Caribbean state as well as the first Latin American country and the second oldest independent nation in the Western Hemisphere after the United States to win independence from Britain in 1783.

The Spanish colonies won their independence in the first quarter of the 19th century, in the Spanish American wars of independence. Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, among others, led their independence struggle. Although Bolivar attempted to keep the Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America politically allied, they rapidly became independent of one another as well, and several further wars were fought, such as the Paraguayan War and the War of the Pacific. (See Latin American integration.) In the Portuguese colony Dom Pedro I (also Pedro IV of Portugal), son of the Portuguese king Dom João VI, proclaimed the country's independence in 1822 and became Brazil's first Emperor. This was peacefully accepted by the crown in Portugal, upon compensation.

Effects of slavery
Slavery has had a significant role in the economic development of the New World after the colonization of the Americas by the Europeans. The cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane harvested by slaves became important exports for the United States and the Caribbean countries.

North America

As a part of the British Empire, Canada immediately entered World War I when it broke out in 1914. Canada bore the brunt of several major battles during the early stages of the war, including the use of poison gas attacks at Ypres. Losses became grave, and the government eventually brought in conscription, despite the fact this was against the wishes of the majority of French Canadians. In the ensuing Conscription Crisis of 1917, riots broke out on the streets of Montreal. In neighboring Newfoundland, the new dominion suffered a devastating loss on July 1, 1916, the First day on the Somme.

The United States stayed out of the conflict until 1917, when it joined the Entente powers. The United States was then able to play a crucial role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that shaped interwar Europe. Mexico was not part of the war, as the country was embroiled in the Mexican Revolution at the time.

The 1920s brought an age of great prosperity in the United States, and to a lesser degree Canada. But the Wall Street Crash of 1929 combined with drought ushered in a period of economic hardship in the United States and Canada. From 1936 to 1949, there was a popular uprising against the anti-Catholic Mexican government of the time, set off specifically by the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917.

Once again, Canada found itself at war before its neighbors, with numerically modest but significant contributions overseas such as the Battle of Hong Kong and the Battle of Britain. The entry of the United States into the war helped to tip the balance in favour of the allies. Two Mexican tankers, transporting oil to the United States, were attacked and sunk by the Germans in the Gulf of Mexico waters, in 1942. The incident happened in spite of Mexico's neutrality at that time. This led Mexico to enter the conflict with a declaration of war on the Axis nations. The destruction of Europe wrought by the war vaulted all North American countries to more important roles in world affairs, especially the United States, which emerged as a "superpower".

The early Cold War era saw the United States as the most powerful nation in a Western coalition of which Mexico and Canada were also a part. In Canada, Quebec was transformed by the Quiet Revolution and the emergence of Quebec nationalism. Mexico experienced an era of huge economic growth after World War II, a heavy industrialization process and a growth of its middle class, a period known in Mexican history as "El Milagro Mexicano" (the Mexican miracle). The Caribbean saw the beginnings of decolonization, while on the largest island the Cuban Revolution introduced Cold War rivalries into Latin America.

The civil rights movement in the U.S. ended Jim Crow and empowered black voters in the 1960s, which allowed black citizens to move into high government offices for the first time since Reconstruction. However, the dominant New Deal coalition collapsed in the mid 1960s in disputes over race and the Vietnam War, and the conservative movement began its rise to power, as the once dominant liberalism weakened and collapsed. Canada during this era was dominated by the leadership of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. In 1982, at the end of his tenure, Canada enshrined a new constitution.

Canada's Brian Mulroney not only ran on a similar platform but also favored closer trade ties with the United States. This led to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in January 1989. Mexican presidents Miguel de la Madrid, in the early 1980s and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the late 1980s, started implementing liberal economic strategies that were seen as a good move. However, Mexico experienced a strong economic recession in 1982 and the Mexican peso suffered a devaluation. In the United States president Ronald Reagan attempted to move the United States back towards a hard anti-communist line in foreign affairs, in what his supporters saw as an attempt to assert moral leadership (compared to the Soviet Union) in the world community. Domestically, Reagan attempted to bring in a package of privatization and regulation to stimulate the economy.

The end of the Cold War and the beginning of the era of sustained economic expansion coincided during the 1990s. On January 1, 1994, Canada, Mexico and the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, creating the world's largest free trade area. In 2000, Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI candidate to win the Mexican presidency in over 70 years. The optimism of the 1990s was shattered by the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the United States, which prompted military intervention in Afghanistan, which also involved Canada. Canada did not support the United States' later move to invade Iraq, however.

In the U.S. the Reagan Era of conservative national policies, deregulation and tax cuts took control with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. By 2010, political scientists were debating whether the election of Barack Obama in 2008 represented an end of the Reagan Era, or was only a reaction against the bubble economy of the 2000s (decade), which burst in 2008 and became the Late-2000s recession with prolonged unemployment.

Central America

Despite the failure of a lasting political union, the concept of Central American reunification, though lacking enthusiasm from the leaders of the individual countries, rises from time to time. In 1856–1857 the region successfully established a military coalition to repel an invasion by United States adventurer William Walker. Today, all five nations fly flags that retain the old federal motif of two outer blue bands bounding an inner white stripe. (Costa Rica, traditionally the least committed of the five to regional integration, modified its flag significantly in 1848 by darkening the blue and adding a double-wide inner red band, in honor of the French tricolor).

In 1907, a Central American Court of Justice was created. On December 13, 1960, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua established the Central American Common Market ("CACM"). Costa Rica, because of its relative economic prosperity and political stability, chose not to participate in the CACM. The goals for the CACM were to create greater political unification and success of import substitution industrialization policies. The project was an immediate economic success, but was abandoned after the 1969 "Football War" between El Salvador and Honduras. A Central American Parliament has operated, as a purely advisory body, since 1991. Costa Rica has repeatedly declined invitations to join the regional parliament, which seats deputies from the four other former members of the Union, as well as from Panama and the Dominican Republic.

South America
In the 1960s and 1970s, the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay were overthrown or displaced by U.S.-aligned military dictatorships. These dictatorships detained tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of whom were tortured and/or killed (on inter-state collaboration, see Operation Condor). Economically, they began a transition to neoliberal economic policies. They placed their own actions within the United States Cold War doctrine of "National Security" against internal subversion. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Peru suffered from an internal conflict (see Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and Shining Path). Revolutionary movements and right-wing military dictatorships have been common, but starting in the 1980s a wave of democratization came through the continent, and democratic rule is widespread now. Allegations of corruption remain common, and several nations have seen crises which have forced the resignation of their presidents, although normal civilian succession has continued.

International indebtedness became a notable problem, as most recently illustrated by Argentina's default in the early 21st century. In recent years, South American governments have drifted to the left, with socialist leaders being elected in Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and a leftist president in Argentina and Uruguay. Despite the move to the left, South America is still largely capitalist. With the founding of the Union of South American Nations, South America has started down the road of economic integration, with plans for political integration in the European Union style.

Caribbean
Throughout the 20th century, several island countries, such as Jamaica and Barbados gained independence from British rule. As a result, many of the English-speaking states and territories shifted their economies to tourism and offshore bank industries.

During the Cold War, the Caribbean has faced a series of military interventions from the United States, such as the Banana Wars and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: History of the Americas


text:
History of Africa

Archaic humans emerged out of Africa between 0.5 and 1.8 million years ago. This was followed by the emergence of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) in East Africa around 300,000–250,000 years ago. The earliest known recorded history arose in Ancient Egypt, and later in Nubia, the Horn of Africa, the Maghreb and Ifrikiya, and the western Sahel. Following the desertification of the Sahara, North and East African history became entwined with the Middle East and Southern Europe while the Bantu expansion swept from modern day Cameroon (Northwestern Central Africa) across much of the sub-Saharan continent in waves between around 1000 BC and 1 AD, creating a linguistic commonality across much of the central, eastern, and southern continent.

Africa was home to many kingdoms and empires in all regions of the continent, with the revolution of history commonplace. Many states were created through conquest and insecurity, whilst others developed through the borrowing and assimilation of ideas and institutions, and some through internal, largely isolated development, stimulated by population growth and economic development. Many empires achieved hegemony in their respective regions, such as Ghana, Kanem, Mali, Songhai, and Sokoto in West Africa; Ancient Egypt, Kush, Carthage, the Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Ayyubids, and Mamluks in North Africa; Aksum, Ethiopia, Adal, Kitara, Kilwa, and Imerina in East Africa; Kongo, Luba, and Lunda in Central Africa; and Mapungubwe, Zimbabwe, Mutapa, Rozvi, Maravi, Mthwakazi, and Zulu in Southern Africa. In Sub-Saharan African societies, history was generally recorded orally, serving a different function to the academic discipline of history, meaning general histories of Africa are rare. Academic disciplines such as the study of oral traditions, historical linguistics, archaeology, and genetics have been vital in compiling written histories of Africa.

Some societies maintained an egalitarian way of life without hierarchy, such as the Jola or Hadza peoples, whilst others did not organise and centralise further into complex societies, such as the Boorana and the chiefdoms of Sierra Leone, and are rarely discussed in political history. At its peak it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups having distinct languages and customs, with most following African traditional religions.

From the 7th century AD, Islam spread west from Arabia via conquest and proselytization to North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and later southwards to the Swahili coast, then from the Maghreb traversing the Sahara into West Africa, catalysed by the Fulani Jihad in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Systems of servitude and slavery were historically widespread and commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient, medieval, and early modern world. When the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic slave trades began, many of the pre-existing local slave systems started supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. The Atlantic slave trade was narrowly the most exploited of these, and over a shorter period between 1450 and 1900 transported upwards of 12 million enslaved people overseas.

From 1870 to 1914, driven by the great force and voracity of the Second Industrial Revolution, European colonisation of Africa developed rapidly from one-tenth of the continent being under European imperial control to over nine-tenths in the Scramble for Africa, with the major European powers partitioning the continent in the 1884 Berlin Conference. European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies and the suppression of communal autonomy disrupted local customary practices and caused the irreversible transformation of Africa's socioeconomic systems. Whilst Christianity has a long history in north and east Africa, there were few Christian states preceding the colonial period, other than Ethiopia and Kongo. Widespread conversion occurred in southern West Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa under European rule due to efficacious missions, with peoples syncretising Christianity with their local beliefs. Following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, and a weakened Europe after the Second World War, waves of decolonisation took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa and the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 (the predecessor to the African Union), with countries deciding to keep their colonial borders. Traditional power structures remain partly in place in many parts of Africa, and their roles, powers, and influence vary greatly between countries, especially regarding governance.

Prehistory
The first known hominids evolved in Africa. According to paleontology, the early hominids' skull anatomy was similar to that of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, great apes that also evolved in Africa, but the hominids had adopted a bipedal locomotion which freed their hands. This gave them a crucial advantage, enabling them to live in both forested areas and on the open savanna at a time when Africa was drying up and the savanna was encroaching on forested areas. This would have occurred 10 to 5 million years ago, but these claims are controversial because biologists and genetics have humans appearing around the last 70 thousand to 200 thousand years.

The fossil record shows Homo sapiens (also known as "modern humans" or "anatomically modern humans") living in Africa by about 350,000–260,000 years ago. The earliest known Homo sapiens fossils include the Jebel Irhoud remains from Morocco (c. 315,000 years ago), the Florisbad Skull from South Africa (c. 259,000 years ago), and the Omo remains from Ethiopia (c. 233,000 years ago). Scientists have suggested that Homo sapiens may have arisen between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago through a merging of populations in East Africa and South Africa.

Evidence of a variety of behaviors indicative of Behavioral modernity date to the African Middle Stone Age, associated with early Homo sapiens and their emergence. Abstract imagery, widened subsistence strategies, and other "modern" behaviors have been discovered from that period in Africa, especially South, North, and East Africa.

The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multiple dating techniques, the site was confirmed to be around 77,000 and 100–75,000 years old. Ostrich egg shell containers engraved with geometric designs dating to 60,000 years ago were found at Diepkloof, South Africa. Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might be as much as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a number of beads dating from significantly prior to 50,000 years ago, and shell beads dating to about 75,000 years ago have been found at Blombos Cave, South Africa.

Around 65–50,000 years ago, the species' expansion out of Africa launched the colonization of the planet by modern human beings. By 10,000 BC, Homo sapiens had spread to most corners of Afro-Eurasia. Their dispersals are traced by linguistic, cultural and genetic evidence. Eurasian back-migrations, specifically West-Eurasian backflow, started in the early Holocene or already earlier in the Paleolithic period, sometimes between 30 and 15,000 years ago, followed by pre-Neolithic and Neolithic migration waves from the Middle East, mostly affecting Northern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and wider regions of the Sahel zone and East Africa.

Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan, which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old".

Around 16,000 BC, from the Red Sea Hills to the northern Ethiopian Highlands, nuts, grasses and tubers were being collected for food. By 13,000 to 11,000 BC, people began collecting wild grains. This spread to Western Asia, which domesticated its wild grains, wheat and barley. Between 10,000 and 8000 BC, Northeast Africa was cultivating wheat and barley and raising sheep and cattle from Southwest Asia.

A wet climatic phase in Africa turned the Ethiopian Highlands into a mountain forest. Omotic speakers domesticated enset around 6500–5500 BC. Around 7000 BC, the settlers of the Ethiopian highlands domesticated donkeys, and by 4000 BC domesticated donkeys had spread to Southwest Asia. Cushitic speakers, partially turning away from cattle herding, domesticated teff and finger millet between 5500 and 3500 BC.

During the 11th millennium BP, pottery was independently invented in Africa, with the earliest pottery there dating to about 9,400 BC from central Mali. It soon spread throughout the southern Sahara and Sahel. In the steppes and savannahs of the Sahara and Sahel in Northern West Africa, the Nilo-Saharan speakers and Mandé peoples started to collect and domesticate wild millet, African rice and sorghum between 8000 and 6000 BC. Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected and domesticated. The people started capturing wild cattle and holding them in circular thorn hedges, resulting in domestication.

They also started making pottery and built stone settlements (e.g., Tichitt, Oualata). Fishing, using bone-tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed from the increased rains. Mande peoples have been credited with the independent development of agriculture about 4000–3000 BC.

Evidence of the early smelting of metals – lead, copper, and bronze –  dates from the fourth millennium BC.

Egyptians smelted copper during the predynastic period, and bronze came into use after 3,000 BC at the latest in Egypt and Nubia. Nubia became a major source of copper as well as of gold. The use of gold and silver in Egypt dates back to the predynastic period.

In the Aïr Mountains of present-day Niger people smelted copper independently of developments in the Nile valley between 3,000 and 2,500 BC. They used a process unique to the region, suggesting that the technology was not brought in from outside; it became more mature by about 1,500 BC.

By the 1st millennium BC iron working had reached Northwestern Africa, Egypt, and Nubia. Zangato and Holl document evidence of iron-smelting in the Central African Republic and Cameroon that may date back to 3,000 to 2,500 BC. Assyrians using iron weapons pushed Nubians out of Egypt in 670 BC, after which the use of iron became widespread in the Nile valley.

The theory that iron spread to Sub-Saharan Africa via the Nubian city of Meroe is no longer widely accepted, and some researchers believe that sub-Saharan Africans invented iron metallurgy independently. Metalworking in West Africa has been dated as early as 2,500 BC at Egaro west of the Termit in Niger, and iron working was practiced there by 1,500 BC. Iron smelting has been dated to 2,000 BC in southeast Nigeria. Central Africa provides possible evidence of iron working as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Iron smelting developed in the area between Lake Chad and the African Great Lakes between 1,000 and 600 BC, and in West Africa around 2,000 BC, long before the technology reached Egypt. Before 500 BC, the Nok culture in the Jos Plateau was already smelting iron. Archaeological sites containing iron-smelting furnaces and slag have been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria in Igboland: dating to 2,000 BC at the site of Lejja (Eze-Uzomaka 2009) and to 750 BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009). The site of Gbabiri (in the Central African Republic) has also yielded evidence of iron metallurgy, from a reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop; with earliest dates of 896–773 BC and 907–796 BC respectively.

North-East Africa
The ancient history of North Africa is inextricably linked to that of the Ancient Near East and Europe. This is particularly true of the various cultures and dynasties of Ancient Egypt and of Nubia. From around 3500 BC, a coalition of Horus-worshipping nomes in the western Nile Delta conquered the Andjety-worshipping nomes of the east to form Lower Egypt, whilst Set-worshipping nomes in the south coalesced to form Upper Egypt. Egypt was first united when Narmer of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt, giving rise to the 1st and 2nd dynasties of Egypt whose efforts presumably consisted of conquest and consolidation, with unification completed by the 3rd dynasty to form the Old Kingdom of Egypt in 2686 BC. The Kingdom of Kerma emerged around this time to become the dominant force in Nubia, controlling an area as large as Egypt between the 1st and 4th cataracts of the Nile, with Egyptian records speaking of its rich and populous agricultural regions. The height of the Old Kingdom came under the 4th dynasty who constructed numerous great pyramids, however under the 6th dynasty of Egypt power began to decentralise to the nomarchs, culminating in anarchy exacerbated by drought and famine in 2200 BC, and the onset of the First Intermediate Period in which numerous nomarchs ruled simultaneously. Throughout this time, power bases were built and destroyed in Memphis, and in Heracleopolis, when Mentuhotep II of Thebes and the 11th dynasty conquered all of Egypt to form the Middle Kingdom in 2055 BC. The 12th dynasty oversaw advancements in irrigation and economic expansion in the Faiyum Oasis, as well as expansion into Lower Nubia at the expense of Kerma. In 1700 BC, Egypt fractured in two, ushering in the Second Intermediate Period.

The Hyksos, a militaristic people from Palestine, capitalised on this fragmentation and conquered Lower Egypt, establishing the 15th dynasty of Egypt, whilst Kerma coordinated invasions deep into Egypt to reach its greatest extent, looting royal statues and monuments. A rival power base developed in Thebes with Ahmose I of the 18th dynasty eventually expelling the Hyksos from Egypt, forming the New Kingdom in 1550 BC. Utilising the military technology the Hyksos had brought, they conducted numerous campaigns to conquer the Levant from the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, and Mitanni, and extinguish Kerma, incorporating Nubia into the empire, sending the Egyptian empire into its golden age. Internal struggles, drought and famine, and invasions by a confederation of seafaring peoples, contributed to the New Kingdom's collapse in 1069 BC, ushering in the Third Intermediate Period which saw Egypt fractured into many pieces amid widespread turmoil. Egypt's disintegration liberated the more Egyptianized Kingdom of Kush in Nubia, and later in the 8th century BC the Kushite king Kashta would expand his power and influence by manoeuvring his daughter into a position of power in Upper Egypt, paving the way for his successor Piye to conquer Lower Egypt and form the Kushite Empire. The Kushites assimilated further into Egyptian society by reaffirming Ancient Egyptian religious traditions, and culture, while introducing some unique aspects of Kushite culture and overseeing a revival in pyramid-building. After a century of rule they were forcibly driven out of Egypt by the Assyrians as reprisal for the Kushites agitating peoples within the Assyrian Empire in an attempt to gain a foothold in the region. The Assyrians installed a puppet dynasty which later gained independence and once more unified Egypt, with Upper Egypt becoming a rich agricultural region whose produce Lower Egypt then sold and traded.

In 525 BC Egypt was conquered by the expansive Achaemenids, however later regained independence in 404 BC until 343 BC when it was re-annexed by the Achaemenid Empire. Persian rule in Egypt ended with the defeat of the Achaemenids by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, marking the beginning of Hellenistic rule by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. The Hellenistic rulers, seeking legitimacy from their Egyptian subjects, gradually Egyptianized and participated in Egyptian religious life. Following the Syrian Wars with the Seleucid Empire, the Ptolemaic Kingdom lost its holdings in outside Africa, but expanded its territory by conquering Cyrenaica from its respective tribes, and subjugated Kush. Beginning in the mid second century BC, dynastic strife and a series of foreign wars weakened the kingdom, and it became increasingly reliant on the Roman Republic. Under Cleopatra VII, who sought to restore Ptolemaic power, Egypt became entangled in a Roman civil war, which ultimately led to its conquest by Rome in 30 BC. The Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman Empire freed the Levantine city state of Palmyra who conquered Egypt, however their rule lasted only a few years before Egypt was reintegrated into the Roman Empire. In the midst of this, Kush regained total independence from Egypt, and they would persist as a major regional power until, having been weakened from internal rebellion amid worsening climatic conditions, invasions by both the Aksumites and the Noba caused their disintegration into Makuria, Alodia, and Nobatia in the 5th century AD, whilst the Romans managed to hold on to Egypt for the rest of the ancient period.

Horn of Africa
In the Horn of Africa there was the Land of Punt, a kingdom on the Red Sea, likely located in modern-day Eritrea or northern Somaliland. The Ancient Egyptians initially traded via middle-men with Punt until in 2350 BC when they established direct relations. They would become close trading partners for over a millennium, with Punt exchanging gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals. Towards the end of the ancient period, northern Ethiopia and Eritrea bore the Kingdom of D'mt beginning in 980 BC, whose people developed irrigation schemes, used ploughs, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons. In modern-day Somalia and Djibouti there was the Macrobian Kingdom, with archaeological discoveries indicating the possibility of other unknown sophisticated civilisations at this time. After D'mt's fall in the 5th century BC the Ethiopian Plateau came to be ruled by numerous smaller unknown kingdoms who experienced strong south Arabian influence, until the growth and expansion of Aksum in the 1st century BC. Along the Horn's coast there were many ancient Somali city-states which thrived off of the wider Red Sea trade and transported their cargo via beden, exporting myrrh, frankincense, spices, gum, incense, and ivory, with freedom from Roman interference causing Indians to give the cities a lucrative monopoly on cinnamon from ancient India.

The Kingdom of Aksum grew from a principality into a major power on the trade route between Rome and India through conquering its unfortunately unknown neighbours, gaining a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade in the region. Aksum's rise had them rule over much of the regions from the Lake Tana to the valley of the Nile, and they further conquered parts of the ailing Kingdom of Kush, led campaigns against the Noba and Beja peoples, and expanded into South Arabia. This led the Persian prophet Mani to consider Aksum as one of the four great powers of the 3rd century alongside Persia, Rome, and China. In the 4th century AD Aksum's king converted to Christianity and Aksum's population, who had followed syncretic mixes of local beliefs, slowly followed. In the early 6th century AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes later described his visit to the city of Aksum, mentioning rows of throne monuments, some made out of "excellent white marble" and "entirely...hewn out of a single block of stone", with large inscriptions attributed to various kings, likely serving as victory monuments documenting the wars waged. The turn of the 6th century saw Aksum balanced against the Himyarite Kingdom in southwestern Arabia, as part of the wider Byzantine-Sassanian conflict. In 518, Aksum invaded Himyar citing the persecution of the Christian community by the Jewish Himyarite king. Following the capture of Najran, the Aksumites implanted a puppet on the Himyarite throne, however a coup d'etat in 522 brought Dhu Nuwas to power who again began persecuting Christians, causing the Aksumites to invade again in 525, and with Byzantine aid conquer the kingdom, incorporating it as a vassal state after some minor internal conflict.

North-West Africa
Further north-west, the Maghreb and Ifriqiya were mostly cut off from the cradle of civilisation in Egypt by the Libyan desert, exacerbated by Egyptian boats being tailored to the Nile and not coping well in the open Mediterranean Sea. This caused its societies to develop contiguous to those of Southern Europe, until Phoenician settlements came to dominate the most lucrative trading locations in the Gulf of Tunis, initially searching for sources of metal. Phoenician settlements subsequently grew into Ancient Carthage after gaining independence from Phoenicia in the 6th century BC, and they would build an extensive empire, countering Greek influence in the Mediterranean, as well as a strict mercantile network reaching as far as west Asia and northern Europe, distributing an array of commodities from all over the ancient world along with locally produced goods, all secured by one of the largest and most powerful navies in the ancient Mediterranean. Carthage's political institutions received rare praise from both Greeks and Romans, with its constitution and aristocratic council providing stability, although criticism focused on how birth and wealth were paramount for election. In 264 BC the First Punic War began when Carthage came into conflict with the expansionary Roman Republic on the island of Sicily, leading to what has been described as the greatest naval war of antiquity, causing heavy casualties on both sides, but ending in Carthage's eventual defeat and loss of Sicily. The Second Punic War broke out when the Romans opportunistically took Sardinia and Corsica whilst the Carthaginians were putting down a ferocious Libyan revolt, with Carthage initially experiencing considerable success following Hannibal's infamous crossing of the alps into northern Italy. In a 14 year long campaign Hannibal's forces conquered much of mainland Italy, only being recalled after the Romans conducted a bold naval invasion of the Carthaginian homeland and then defeated him in climactic battle in 202 BC. Carthage was forced to give up their fleet, and the subsequent collapse of their empire would produce two further polities in the Maghreb; Numidia, a polity made up of two Numidian tribal federations which further centralised following the Massylii conquest of the Masaesyli, which assisted the Romans in the Second Punic War; Mauretania, a Mauri tribal kingdom, home of the legendary King Atlas; and various tribes such as Garamantes, Musulamii, and Bavares. The Third Punic War would result in Carthage's total defeat in 146 BC and the Romans established the province of Africa, with Numidia assuming control of many of Carthage's African ports. Towards the end of the 2nd century BC Mauretania fought alongside Numidia's Jugurtha in the Jugurthine War against the Romans after he had usurped the Numidian throne from a Roman ally. Together they inflicted heavy casualties that quaked the Roman Senate, with the war only ending inconclusively when Mauretania's Bocchus I sold out the Jugurtha to the Romans. At the turn of the millennium they both would face the same fate as Carthage and be conquered by the Romans who established Mauretania and Numidia as provinces of their empire, whilst Musulamii, led by Tacfarinas, and Garamantes were eventually defeated in war in the 1st century AD however weren't conquered. In the 5th century AD the Vandals conquered north Africa precipitating the fall of Rome. Swathes of indigenous peoples would regain self-governance in the Mauro-Roman Kingdom and its numerous successor polities in the Maghreb, namely the kingdoms of Ouarsenis, Aurès, and Altava. The Vandals ruled Ifriqiya for a century until Byzantine reconquest in the early 6th century AD. The Byzantines and the Berber kingdoms fought minor inconsequential conflicts, such as in the case of Garmul, however largely coexisted. Further inland to the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa were the Sanhaja in modern-day Algeria, a broad grouping of three groupings of tribal confederations, one of which is the Masmuda grouping in modern-day Morocco, along with the nomadic Zenata; their composite tribes would later go onto shape much of North African history.

West Africa
In the western Sahel the rise of settled communities occurred largely as a result of the domestication of millet and of sorghum. Archaeology points to sizable urban populations in West Africa beginning in the 4th millennium BC, which had crucially developed iron metallurgy by 1200 BC, in both smelting and forging for tools and weapons. Extensive east-west belts of deserts, grasslands, and forests from north to south were crucial in the moulding of their respective societies and meant that prior to the accession of trans-Saharan trade routes, symbiotic trade relations developed in response to the opportunities afforded by north–south diversity in ecosystems, trading meats, copper, iron, salt, and gold. Various civilisations prospered in this period. From 4000 BC, the Tichitt culture in modern-day Mauritania and Mali was the oldest known complexly organised society in West Africa, with a four tiered hierarchical social structure. Other civilisations include the Kintampo culture from 2500 BC in modern-day Ghana, the Nok culture from 1500 BC in modern-day Nigeria, the Daima culture around Lake Chad from 550 BC, Djenné-Djenno from 250 BC in modern-day Mali, and the Serer civilisation in modern-day Senegal which built the Senegambian stone circles from the 3rd century BC. There is also detailed record of Igodomigodo, a small kingdom founded presumably in 40 BC which would later go on to form the Benin Empire. Towards the end of the 3rd century AD, a wet period in the Sahel created areas for human habitation and exploitation which had not been habitable for the best part of a millennium, with the Kingdom of Wagadu, the local name of the Ghana Empire, rising out of the Tichitt culture, growing wealthy following the introduction of the camel to the western Sahel, revolutionising the trans-Saharan trade which linked their capital and Aoudaghost with Tahert and Sijilmasa in North Africa. Soninke traditions likely contain content from prehistory, mentioning multiple previous foundings of Wagadu, and holds that the final founding of Wagadu occurred after their first king killed Bida, a serpent deity, who was guarding a well, although accounts differ, with some stating he did a deal with Bida to sacrifice one maiden a year in exchange for assurance regarding plenty of rainfall and gold supply. Wagadu's core traversed modern-day southern Mauritania and western Mali, and Soninke tradition portrays early Ghana as warlike, with horse-mounted warriors key to increasing its territory and population, although details of their expansion are extremely scarce. Wagadu made its profits from maintaining a monopoly on gold heading north and salt heading south, relying on the Soninke Wangara due to not controlling the gold fields themselves, located in the forest regions. It is probable that Wagadu's dominance on trade allowed for the gradual consolidation of many smaller polities into a confederated state, whose composites stood in varying relations to the core, from fully administered to nominal tribute-paying parity. Based on large tumuli scattered across West Africa dating to this period, it has been stipulated that relative to Wagadu there were further simultaneous and preceding kingdoms which have unfortunately been lost to time.

Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa
In Central Africa the Sao civilisation flourished for over a millennium beginning in the 6th century BC. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of present-day Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have left clear traces of their presence in the territory of northern Cameroon. Today several peoples, particularly the Sara, claim to have descended from the Sao. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron, with finds including bronze sculptures, terracotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewellery, highly decorated pottery, and spears. Nearby, around Lake Ejagham in south-west Cameroon, the Ekoi civilisation rose circa 2nd century AD, and are most notable for constructing the Ikom monoliths.

The Bantu expansion constituted a major series of migrations of Bantu peoples from central Africa to eastern and southern Africa and was substantial in the settling of the continent. Commencing in the 2nd millennium BC, the Bantu began to migrate from Cameroon to the Congo Basin, laying the foundations for the cultures preceding the Kingdom of Kongo, and eastward to the Great Lakes region, forming the Urewe culture, which would lay the foundations for the Empire of Kitara, later producing the kingdoms of Buganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. In the 7th century AD, Bantu spread to the Upemba Depression, forming the Upemba culture, which would later bear the Luba Empire and Lunda. The Bantu then spread further from the Great Lakes to southern and east Africa over the 1st millennium BC. One early movement headed south to the upper Zambezi basin in the 2nd century BC. The Bantu then pushed westward to the savannahs of present-day Angola and eastward into Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in the 1st century AD, forming the Gokomere culture in the 5th century AD, the predecessor to Leopard's Kopje, which would later evolve into the kingdoms of Mapungubwe and Zimbabwe. The second thrust from the Great Lakes was eastward, also in the 1st century AD, expanding to Kenya, Tanzania, and the Swahili coast.

Prior to this migration, the northern part of the Swahili coast was home to the elusive Azania, most likely a Southern Cushitic polity, extending southwards to modern-day Tanzania. The Bantu populations crowded out Azania, with Rhapta being its last stronghold by the 1st century AD, and formed various city states constituting the Swahili civilisation, trading via the Indian Ocean trade. Madagascar was possibly first settled by Austronesians from 350 BC-550 AD, termed the Vazimba in Malagasy oral traditions, although there is considerable academic debate. The eastern Bantu group would eventually meet with the southern migrants from the Great Lakes in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and both groups continued southward, with eastern groups continuing to Mozambique and reaching Maputo in the 2nd century AD. Further to the south, settlements of Bantu peoples who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen were well established south of the Limpopo River by the 4th century AD, displacing and absorbing the original Khoisan. To their west in the Tsodilo hills of Botswana there were the San, a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer people who are thought to have descended from the first inhabitants of Southern Africa 100,000 years BP, making them one of the oldest cultures on Earth.

North Africa
The turn of the 7th century saw much of North Africa controlled by the Byzantine Empire. Christianity was the state religion of the empire, and Semitic and Coptic subjects in Roman Egypt faced persecution due to their 'heretical' Miaphysite churches, paying a heavy tax. The Exarchate of Africa covered much of Ifriqiya and the eastern Maghreb, surrounded by numerous Berber kingdoms that followed Christianity heavily syncretised with traditional Berber religion. The interior was dominated by various groupings of tribal confederations, namely the nomadic Zenata, the Masmuda of Sanhaja in modern-day Morocco, and the other two Sanhaja in the Sahara in modern-day Algeria, who all mainly followed traditional Berber religion. In 618 the Sassanids conquered Egypt during the Byzantine-Sasanian War, however the province was reconquered three years later. The early 7th century saw the inception of Islam and the beginning of the Muslim conquests intent on converting peoples to Islam. The nascent Rashidun Caliphate won a series of crucial victories and expanded rapidly, forcing the Byzantines to evacuate Syria. With Byzantine regional presence shattered, the Muslim armies quickly conquered Egypt by 642, generally facing little resistance by subjects odious of Byzantine rule. Their attention would then turn west to the Maghreb where the Exarchate of Africa had declared independence from Constantinople under Gregory the Patrician. The Muslims readily annexed Ifriqiya and in 647 defeated and killed Gregory and his army decisively in battle. Not wishing to annex the territory, they accepted the proposal of annual tribute from the populations of the Maghreb. After a brief civil war, the Rashidun were supplanted by the Umayyad dynasty in 661 and the capital of the Muslim empire moved from Medina to Damascus. With intentions to expand further in all directions, the Muslims returned to the Maghreb to find the Byzantines had reinforced the Exarchate and allied with the Kingdom of Altava under Kusaila, who was approached prior to battle and convinced to convert to Islam. Initially having become neutral, Kusaila objected to integration into the empire and in 683 destroyed the poorly supplied Arab army and took the newly-found Kairouan, causing an epiphany among the Berber that this conflict was not just against the Byzantine's. The Arabs returned and in 690 defeated Kusaila and Altava, and, after a set-back, expelled the Byzantines from North Africa. To the west, Kahina of the Kingdom of the Aurès declared opposition to the Arab invasion and repelled their armies, securing her position as the uncontested ruler of the Maghreb for five years. The Arabs received reinforcements and in 701 Kahina was killed and the kingdom defeated. They completed their conquest of the rest of the Maghreb, with large swathes of Berbers embracing Islam, and the combined Arab and Berber armies would use this territory as a springboard into Iberia to expand the Muslim empire further.

Mass amounts of Berber and Coptic people willingly converted to Islam, and under the Umayyads followers of Abrahamic or monotheistic religions comprising the Dhimmi class were permitted to practice their religion and exempted from military service in exchange for a tax, which was improperly extended to include converts. Followers of traditional Berber religion, which were mostly those of tribal confederations in the interior, were violently oppressed and often given the ultimatum to convert to Islam or face death or enslavement. Converted natives were permitted to participate in the governing of the Muslim empire in order to quell the enormous administrative problems owing to the Arabs' lack of experience governing and rapid expansion. Unorthodox sects such as the Kharijite, Ibadi, Isma'ili, Nukkarite and Sufrite found fertile soil among many Berbers dissatisfied with the oppressive Umayyad regime, with religion being utilised as a political tool to foster organisation. In the 740s the Berber Revolt rocked the caliphate and the Berbers took control over the Maghreb, whilst revolts in Ifriqiya were suppressed. The Abbasid dynasty came to power via revolution in 750 and attempted to reconfigure the caliphate to be multi-ethnic rather than Arab exclusive, however this wasn't enough to prevent gradual disintegration on its peripheries. Various short-lived native dynasties would form states such as the Barghawata in west modern-day Morocco hailing from the Masmuda, the Ifranid dynasty in modern-day Algeria, and the Midrarid dynasty in Sijilmasa, both hailing from the Zenata. The Idrisid dynasty, descending from Muhammad, would come to rule most of modern-day Morocco with the support of the Masmuda, whilst the growing Ibadi movement among the Zenata culminated in the Rustamid Imamate, an Ibadi theocracy centred on Tahert, modern-day Algeria. At the turn of the 9th century the Abbasids' sphere of influence would degrade further with the Aghlabids controlling Ifriqiya under only nominal Abbasid rule and in 868 when the Tulunids wrestled the independence of Egypt for four decades before again coming under Abbasid control. Late in the 9th century, a revolt by East African slaves in the Abbasid's homeland of Iraq diverted its resources away from its other territories, devastating important ports in the Persian Gulf, and was eventually put down after decades of violence, resulting in between 300,000 and 2,500,000 dead. This gradual bubbling of disintegration of the caliphate boiled over when the Fatimid dynasty rose out of the Bavares tribal confederation and in 909 conquered the Aghlabids to gain control over all of Ifriqiya. Holding the ambition to rule the Muslim world proclaiming Isma'ilism, they established a caliphate rivalling the Abbasids, who followed Sunni Islam. The nascent caliphate quickly conquered the ailing Rustamid Imamate and fought a proxy war against the remnants of the Umayyad dynasty centred in Cordoba, resulting the eastern Maghreb coming under the control of the vassalized Zirid dynasty, who hailed from the Sanhaja. In 969 the Fatimids finally conquered Egypt against a weakened Abbasid Caliphate after decades of attempts, moving their capital to Cairo and deferring Ifriqiya to the Zirids. From there they conquered up to modern-day Syria and Hejaz, securing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Fatimids became absorbed by the eastern realms of their empire, and in 972, after encouragement from faqirs, the Zirids changed their allegiance to recognise the Abbasid Caliphate. In retaliation the Fatimids commissioned an invasion by nomadic Arab tribes to punish them, leading to their disintegration with the Khurasanid dynasty and Arab tribes ruling Ifriqiya, to be later displaced by the Norman Kingdom of Africa. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries the Fatimids would lose the Maghreb to the Hammadids in modern-day Algeria and the Maghrawa in modern-day Morocco, both from Zenata. In 1053 the Saharan Sanhaja, spurred on by puritanical Sunni Islam, conquered Sijilmasa and captured Aoudaghost from the Ghana Empire to control the affluent trans-Saharan trade routes in the Western Sahara, forming the Almoravid empire before conquering Maghrawa and intervening in the reconquest of Iberia by the Christian powers on the side of the endangered Muslim taifas, which were produced from the fall of the remnant Umayyad Caliphate in Cordoba. The Almoravids incorporated the taifas into their empire, enjoying initial success, until a devastating ambush crippled their military leadership, and throughout the 12th century they gradually lost territory to the Christians. To the east, the Fatimids saw their empire start to collapse in 1061, beginning with the loss of the holy cities to the Sharifate of Mecca and exacerbated by rebellion in Cairo. The Seljuk Turks, who saw themselves as the guardian of the Abbasid Caliphate, capitalised and conquered much of their territories in the east, however the Fatimids repelled them from encroaching on Egypt. Amid the Christians' First Crusade against the Seljuks, the Fatimids opportunistically took back Jerusalem, but then lost it again to the Christians in decisive defeat. The Fatimids' authority collapsed due to intense internal struggle in political rivalries and religious divisions, amid Christian invasions of Egypt, creating a power vacuum in North Africa. The Zengid dynasty, nominally under Seljuk suzerainty, invaded on the pretext of defending Egypt from the Christians, and usurped the position of vizier in the caliphate. Following the assassination of the previous holder, the position of vizier passed onto Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (commonly referred to as Saladin). After a joint Zengid-Fatimid effort repelled the Christians and after he had put down a revolt from the Fatimid army, Saladin eventually deposed the Fatimid caliph in 1171 and established the Ayyubid dynasty in its place, choosing to recognise the Abbasid Caliphate. From there the Ayyubids captured Cyrenaica, and went on a prolific campaign to conquer Arabia from the Zengids and the Yemeni Hamdanids, Palestine from the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Syria and Upper Mesopotamia from other Seljuk successor states. To the west, there was a new domestic threat to Almoravid rule; a religious movement headed by Ibn Tumart from the Masmuda tribal grouping, who was considered by his followers to be the true Mahdi. Initially fighting a guerilla war from the Atlas Mountains, they descended from the mountains in 1130 but were crushed in battle, with Ibn Tumart dying shortly after. The movement consolidated under the leadership of self-proclaimed caliph Abd al-Mu'min and, after gaining the support of the Zenata, swept through the Maghreb, conquering the Hammadids, the Hilalian Arab tribes, and the Norman Kingdom of Africa, before gradually conquering the Almoravid remnant in Al-Andalus, proclaiming the Almohad Caliphate and extending their rule from the western Sahara and Iberia to Ifriqiya by the turn of the 13th century. Later, the Christians capitalised on internal conflict within the Almohads in 1225 and conquered Iberia by 1228, with the Emirate of Granada assuming control in the south. Following this, the embattled Almohads faced invasions from an Almoravid remnant in the Balearics and gradually lost territory to the Marinids in modern-day Morocco, the Zayyanids in modern-day Algeria, both of Zenata, and the Hafsids of Masmuda in modern-day Tunisia, before finally being extinguished in 1269. Meanwhile, after defeating the Christians' Fifth Crusade in 1221, internal divisions involving Saladin's descendants appeared within the Ayyubid dynasty, crippling the empire's unity. In 1248, the Christians began the Seventh Crusade with intent to conquer Egypt, but were decisively defeated by the embattled Ayyubids who had relied on Mamluk generals in the face of Mongol expansion. The Ayyubid sultan attempted to alienate the victorious Mamluks, who revolted, killing him and seizing power in Egypt, with rule given to a military caste of Mamluks headed by the Bahri dynasty, whilst the remaining Ayyubid empire was destroyed in the Mongol invasions of the Levant. Following the Mongol Siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mamluks re-established the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo, and over the next few decades conquered the Crusader states and, assisted by civil war in the Mongol Empire, defeated the Mongols, before consolidating their rule over the Levant and Syria. To the west, the three dynasties vied for supremacy and control of the trans-Saharan trade. Following the collapse of the Abbasids, the Hafsids were briefly recognised as caliphs by the sharifs of Mecca and the Mamluks. Throughout the 14th century, the Marinids intermittently occupied the Zayyanids several times, and devastated the Hafsids in 1347 and 1357. The Marinids then succumbed to internal division, exacerbated by plague and financial crisis, culminating in the rise of the Wattasid dynasty from Zenata in 1472, with the Hafsids becoming the dominant power. Throughout the 15th century, the Spanish colonised the Canary Isles in the first example of modern settler colonialism, causing the genocide of the native Berber population in the process. To the east, the turn of the 15th century saw the Mamluks oppose the expansionist Ottomans and Timurids in the Middle East, with plague and famine eroding Mamlukian authority, until internal conflict was reconciled. The following decades saw the Mamluks reach their greatest extent with efficacious economic reforms, however the threat of the growing Ottomans and Portuguese trading practices in the Indian Ocean posed great challenges to the empire at the turn of the 16th century.

Nubia
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Horn of Africa
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Swahili coast, Madagascar, and the Comoro Islands
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Northern Great Lakes
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The western Sahel and Sudan
There remains ample room for research on Ghana/Wagadu's expansion and reign, including on the vassals under Ghana, and such details evade our view, however the turn of 6th century saw Ghana continue their dominance. To the west, the Takrur kingdom acceded in the 6th century along the Senegal River, dominating the region, however seeing periods under Ghanaian suzerainty. In the 7th century the Gao Empire of the Songhai people rose in the east to rival Ghana, and had at least seven kingdoms accepting their suzerainty. Gao grew rich through the trans-Saharan trade route linking their capital and Tadmekka with Kairouan in North Africa through commanding the trade of salt, which was used as their currency, and controlled a salt mine north in the Sahara via cavalry. An early written record of Ghana came at the end of the 8th century, mentioning "Ghāna, the land of gold". In 826 a Soninke clan conquered Takrur, installing the Manna dynasty. To the east in northern modern-day Nigeria, Hausa tradition holds that Bayajidda came to Daura in the 9th century, and his descendants founded the kingdoms of Daura, Kano, Rano, Katsina, Gobir, Zazzau, and Biram in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, with his bastard descendants founding various others. By the 10th century, the wet period that birthed Ghana was faltering. With the gradual advance of the Sahel at the expense of the Sudan, desert consumed grassland, and epicentres for trade shifted south towards the Niger river, and east from Aoudaghost to Oualata following the shifting of gold source southeast from Bambouk to Bure, strengthening Ghana's vassals while weakening its core. Gao's king converted to Sunni Islam in the early 10th century, having been nominally Muslim prior. At the turn of the 11th century, Ghana expanded north to encompass the Sanhaja trading city of Aoudaghost. In 1054, after having united the Saharan Sanhaja prior to their conquest of the Maghreb, the Almoravid Sanhaja sacked and captured Aoudaghost, at the time a royal seat for Ghana. During this, some of Ghana's vassals achieved independence such as Mema, Sosso, and Diarra/Diafunu, with the last two being especially powerful. Takrur thrived at this time, controlling the gold of Galam, and had close relations with the Almoravids. The Almoravids retained influence over Ghana's court for the next few decades, possibly supporting Muslim candidates for the throne, with Ghana converting to Islam in 1076. Oral sources hold that, intent on invading Ghana, which was elsewhere stated to have had a 200,000-man force, the Almoravid army found the king respectful of Islam, and he willingly adopted Islam with the exchange of gold for an Imam relocating to Ghana. Meanwhile, Mossi traditions hold that a princess left Dagbon in the forest region to the south to found Ouagadougou, with her children founding the kingdoms of Tenkodogo, Fada N'Gourma, and Zondoma. Circa 1170, internal conflict within the Ouagadougou dynasty induced the founding of Yatenga to the north, which later conquered Zondoma. After regaining full independence as the Almoravids lost influence in Aoudaghost, Ghana resurged, reasserting suzerainty over their former vassals throughout the 12th century. This was not to reverse the climatic and economic progression however, and at the turn of the 13th century, Sosso, having come under the rule of a general and former slave following dispute within the Diarisso dynasty, united the region and conquered a weakened Ghana from its south, occupying Wagadu and propelling Soninke migration. According to some traditions, Wagadu's fall is caused when a nobleman attempts to save a maiden from sacrifice and kills Bida before escaping the population's ire on horseback, annulling Wagadu and Bida's prior assurance and unleashing a curse causing drought and famine, sometimes causing gold to be discovered in Bure. The Soninke generation that survived the drought were called "a jara nununa" ("it has been hard for them"). The tradition of Gassire's lute is an account of a prince of Wagadu who gives up his ambition to become king, and instead becomes a diari amid the empire's fall. After the death of his father, Sosso's Soumaoro Kante forced Wagadu to accept their suzerainty, and he conquered Diarra, Gajaaga, vassalized Takrur, and subdued the Mandinka clans of Manden, who were early adopters of Islam, to the south where the goldfield of Bure was located. In accordance with the traditional Epic of Sundiata, Sundiata Keita, a prince of local origin but in exile, held a position in the former Ghanaian vassal of Mema and returned to Manden aided by the king of Mema to relieve his people of the tyrannical Sosso king. Sundiata allied and pacified the Madinka clans, and defeated Soumaoro Kante in battle in 1235, and conquered Kante's ally Diarra, proclaiming the Kouroukan Fouga of the nascent Mali Empire. Allied kingdoms, including Mema and Wagadu, retained leadership of their province, whilst conquered leaders were assigned a farin subordinate to the mansa (king/emperor), with provinces retaining a great deal of autonomy. At the same time as Sundiata's campaigns in the north subjugating ancient Ghana's former vassals, the Malian military campaigned to the west in Bambouk and against the Fula in the highlands of Fouta Djallon. Sundiata saw to equip the army with horses purchased from the western kingdom of Kita, however the Wolof king arrested Mandinka caravan traders, inflaming conflict which culminated in the conquest of the Wolof and Serer, who had resisted Islamisation during the Almoravid period. This extended the empire to the Atlantic coast in modern-day Senegal, with the Malian general continuing to campaign in the west in Casamance and against the Bainuk and Jola kings in the highlands of Kaabu, forming various subordinate kingdoms. Sundiata passed in 1255 and his son conquered Gajaaga and Takrur, and brought the key Saharan trading centres under his rule. The cessation of his reign culminated in a destructive civil war, only reconciled with a militaristic coup, after which Gao was conquered and the Tuareg subdued, cementing Mali's dominance over the trans-Saharan trade. In 1312 Mansa Musa came to power in Mali after his predecessor had set out on an Atlantic voyage. Musa supposedly spent much of his early campaign preparing for his infamous hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. Between 1324 and 1325 his entourage of 60,000 men, including 12,000 slaves, and hundreds of camels, all carrying around 18 tonnes of gold in total, travelled 2700 miles, giving gifts to the poor along the way, and fostered good relations with the Mamluk sultan, garnering widespread attention in the Muslim world. On Musa's return, his general reasserted dominance over Gao and he commissioned a large construction program, building mosques and madrasas, with Timbuktu becoming a centre for trade and Islamic scholarship, however Musa features comparatively less than his predecessors in the Mandinka oral traditions than in modern histories. Despite Mali's fame being attributed to its riches in gold, Mali's prosperous economy was based on arable and pastoral farming, as well as crafts, and they traded commonly with the Akan, Dyula, and with Benin, Ife, and Nri in the forest regions. To the east, the Kano king converted to Islam in 1349 after da'wah (invitation) from some Soninke Wangara, and later absorbed Rano.

Amid a Malian mansa's successful attempt to coerce the empire back into financial shape after the lacklustre premiership of his predecessor, Mali's northwestern-most province broke away to form the Jolof Empire and the Serer kingdoms. Wolof tradition holds that the empire was founded by the wise Ndiadiane Ndiaye, and it later absorbed neighbouring kingdoms to form a confederacy of the Wolof kingdoms of Jolof, Cayor, Baol, and Waalo, and the Serer kingdoms of Sine and Saloum. In Mali after the death of Musa II in 1387, vicious conflict ensued within the Keita dynasty. In the 1390s Yatenga sacked and raided the southern trading city of Macina in Mali. The internal conflict weakened Mali's central authority. This provided an opportunity for the previously subdued Tuareg tribal confederations in the Sahara to rebel. Over the next few decades they captured the main trading cities of Timbuktu, Oualata, Nema, and possibly Gao, with some tribes forming the northeastern Sultanate of Agadez, and with them all usurping Mali's dominance over the trans-Saharan trade. In the 15th century, the Portuguese, following the development of the caravel, set up trading posts along the Atlantic coast, with Mali establishing formal commercial relations, and the Spanish soon following. In the early 15th century Diarra escaped Malian rule. Previously under Malian suzerainty and under pressure from the expansionist Jolof Empire, a Fula chief migrated to Futa Toro, founding Futa Kingui in the lands of Diarra circa 1450. Yatenga capitalised on Mali's decline and conquered Macina, and the old province of Wagadu. Meanwhile Gao, ruled by the Sonni dynasty, expanded, conquering Mema from Mali, in a struggle over the crumbling empire.

Within the Niger bend and the forest region
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The central Sahel
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The Congo basin
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Southern Great Lakes and the Zambezi basin
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South of the Zambezi basin
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Colonial period (1870–1951)
Between 1878 and 1898, European states partitioned and conquered most of Africa. For 400 years, European nations had mainly limited their involvement to trading stations on the African coast, with few daring to venture inland. The Industrial Revolution in Europe produced several technological innovations which assisted them in overcoming this 400-year pattern. One was the development of repeating rifles, which were easier and quicker to load than muskets. Artillery was being used increasingly. In 1885, Hiram S. Maxim developed the maxim gun, the model of the modern-day machine gun. European states kept these weapons largely among themselves by refusing to sell these weapons to African leaders.

African germs took numerous European lives and deterred permanent settlements. Diseases such as yellow fever, sleeping sickness, yaws, and leprosy made Africa a very inhospitable place for Europeans. The deadliest disease was malaria, endemic throughout Tropical Africa. In 1854, the discovery of quinine and other medical innovations helped to make conquest and colonization in Africa possible.

There were strong motives for conquest of Africa. Raw materials were needed for European factories. Prestige and imperial rivalries were at play. Acquiring African colonies would show rivals that a nation was powerful and significant. These contextual factors forged the Scramble for Africa.

In the 1880s the European powers had carved up almost all of Africa (only Ethiopia and Liberia were independent). The Europeans were captivated by the philosophies of eugenics and Social Darwinism, and some attempted to justify all this by branding it civilising missions. Imperialism ruled until after World War II when forces of African nationalism grew stronger. In the 1950s and 1960s the colonial holdings became independent states. The process was usually peaceful but there were several long bitter bloody civil wars, as in Algeria, Kenya, and elsewhere. Across Africa the powerful new force of nationalism drew upon the advanced militaristic skills that natives learned during the world wars serving in the British, French, and other armies. It led to organizations that were not controlled by or endorsed by either the colonial powers nor the traditional local power structures that had collaborated with the colonial powers. Nationalistic organizations began to challenge both the traditional and the new colonial structures, and finally displaced them. Leaders of nationalist movements took control when the European authorities evacuated; many ruled for decades or until they died. These structures involved political, educational, religious, and other social organizations. In recent decades, many African countries have undergone the triumph and defeat of nationalistic fervour, changing in the process the loci of the centralizing state power and patrimonial state.

1951 – present

The wave of decolonization of Africa started with Libya in 1951, although Liberia, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. Many countries followed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in 1960 with the Year of Africa, which saw 17 African nations declare independence, including a large part of French West Africa. Most of the remaining countries gained independence throughout the 1960s, although some colonizers (Portugal in particular) were reluctant to relinquish sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence which lasted for a decade or more. The last African countries to gain formal independence were Guinea-Bissau (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Angola (1975) from Portugal; Djibouti from France in 1977; Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980; and Namibia from South Africa in 1990. Eritrea later split off from Ethiopia in 1993. The nascent countries decided to keep their colonial borders in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) conference of 1964 due to fears of civil wars and regional instability, and placed emphasis on Pan-Africanism, with the OAU later developing into the African Union. During the 1990s and early 2000s there were the First and Second Congo Wars, often termed the African World Wars.

Colonial historiography
The academic discipline of history arrived with the arrival of Europeans from the 16th century and the conquest and colonisation of Africa and involved the study of Africa and its history by European academics and historians. Prior to colonisation in the 19th century, most African societies chose to use oral tradition to record their history, including in cases where they had developed or had access to a writing script, meaning there was little written history, and the domination of European powers across the continent meant African history was written from an entirely European perspective under the pretence of Western superiority. This lack of written history, unfamiliar mediums, and concealment behind a multitude of dialects and languages led to a perception by Europeans that Africa and its people had no recorded history and little desire to create it. The historical works of the time were predominantly written by scholars of the various European powers and were confined to individual nations, leading to disparities in style, quality, language and content between the many African nations.

Postcolonial historiography
Post-colonialist historiography studies the relationship between European colonialism and domination in Africa and the construction of African history and representation. It has roots in Orientalism, the construction of cultures from the Asian, Arabian and North African world in a patronizing manner stemming from a sense of Western superiority, first theorized by Edward Said. A general perception of Western superiority throughout European academics and historians prominent during the height of colonialism led to the defining traits of colonial historical works, which post-colonialists have sought to analyse and criticize. Examples of general histories of Africa include The Cambridge History of Africa (1975–1986) and the General History of Africa published by UNESCO (1981–2024).

Contemporary historiography
Acknowledgement and acceptance of African nations and peoples as individuals free of European domination has allowed African history to be approached from new perspectives and with new methods. Africa has lacked a defined means of communication or academic body due to its variety of cultures and communities, and the plurality and diversity of its many peoples means a historiographical approach that confines itself to the development and activity of a singular people or nation incapable of capturing the comprehensive history of African nations without a vast quantity of historical works. There have also been strides made in the study of oral traditions. This quantity and diversity of history that has yet to be documented is better suited to the contemporary historiographical movements that incorporate the social sciences: anthropology, sociology, geography and other fields that closer examine the human element of History rather than constrain it to political history.

Atlases

 * Ajayi, A.J.F. and Michael Crowder. Historical Atlas of Africa (1985); 300 color maps.
 * Fage, J.D. Atlas of African History (1978)
 * Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P. The New Atlas of African History (1991).
 * Kwamena-Poh, Michael, et al. African history in Maps (Longman, 1982).
 * McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of African History (2nd ed. 1996). excerpt

Historiography

 * Fage, John D. "The development of African historiography." General history of Africa 1 (1981): 25–42. online
 * Lonsdale, John. "States and social processes in Africa: a historiographical survey." African studies review 24.2–3 (1981): 139–226. online
 * Philips, John Edward, ed. Writing African History (2005)
 * Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire." History of Education 34.4 (2005): 441–454. online
 * Zimmerman, Andrew. "Africa in Imperial and Transnational History: multi-sited historiography and the necessity of theory." Journal of African History 54.3 (2013): 331–340. online
 * Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire." History of Education 34.4 (2005): 441–454. online
 * Zimmerman, Andrew. "Africa in Imperial and Transnational History: multi-sited historiography and the necessity of theory." Journal of African History 54.3 (2013): 331–340. online

title: History of Africa