Reference no: EM133191289 , Length: Wrod Count: 1600 words

Assignment: Pre-colonial Africa, WT 2020- Social Science Essay

Prompts for Paper

Write an analytical essay of 1300 to 1600 words (about 5 to 7 pages, adjudged by word count, and not including notes and works cited/bibliography) on one of the two following topics. The question you will need to take a position on is in boldface so it is easy to pick out. Be sure to have a clear and coherent thesis statement addressing the bolded question, and present a clearly organized case with in-text citations or notes for everything that's not directly from lecture. There are no perfectly right or wrong answers, only well-supported or poorly-supported ones. Yes, you may question our premises, so long as you demonstrate your knowledge. The prompts do overlap.

I. The reasons why states come together (or don't) and hold together (or don't) have been important to our course so far, especially as they intersect with wealth via trade networks. Considering the various polities we've seen and read about, would you agree with the idea that excessive wealth via trade networks was essential to the maintenance of all large states in sub-Saharan Africa, either directly or indirectly? If so, show how strategies to fight segmentation ultimately track back to that wealth, or how its loss was crippling; if not, identify other forces (or sources of wealth) by which a state could cohere. You must use at least four reasonably-spaced examples (which makes Songhay available), and Ethiopia must be among them. Yes, areas with trade wealth but not large kingdoms or empires exist, and it needn't be ‘all yes' or ‘all no.'. Be sure to use observations from the readings of the travelers that suggest a link between material wealth and state power. This question is harder than it may appear; summaries won't do. Keep in mind that the Swahili city-states and the Akan states each represent one ‘example.'

II. We have introduced several new wrinkles to the question of cultural change-especially the adoption and adaptation of the "world religions" of Islam and Christianity-for the era before the early 16th century. Commodity trade had a complicated relationship with religious expansion, especially as concern socioeconomic class and geography within areas, but some trends may be visible. Do you agree that the position and/or dependency of an African state or society within a trade network determined the adoption (or non- adoption) of a world religion between about 800 (300 if Aksum) and 1500? You may reach back into our first few weeks and mention the early Sudanic kingdoms, but you must use evidence from at least three separate cases to support your response, and at least one of those must involve a lack of religious spread. If you're stumped on what we covered, we can help brainstorm examples (this applies to prompt 1 as well).