United States History Student Edition

EARLY PORTUGUESE EXPLORATION In order to reach Asia, ships from Portugal had to sail south, all the way around Africa, and then north again and east to Asia.

GEOGRAPHY CONNECTION 1. Patterns and

EUROPE

PORTUGAL

Movement Trace da Gama’s route. Describe where the route began, the oceans it passed through, and where it ended. Thinking What can you conclude from the fact that Bartolomeu Dias’s route closely followed the coast of Africa and Vasco da Gama’s route did not?

0

2,000 miles

Lisbon

Miller Cylindrical projection 0 2,000 km

ASIA

30°N

TROPIC OF CANCER

INDIA

Calicut

AFRICA

ATLANTIC OCEAN

2. Spatial

EQUATOR

0°

N

INDIAN OCEAN

W

E

Mozambique

S

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

Cape of Good Hope

30°S

60°E

90°E

Bartolomeu Dias (1487) Vasco da Gama (1497–1498)

30°W

0°

30°E

West African Empires and Trade GUIDING QUESTION How did the civilizations of West Africa develop? The African peoples with whom the Portuguese traded were the descendants of those who founded and expanded a series of great trading empires that existed for many centuries in West Africa. For thousands of years, Africans traded the important commodities of salt and gold. The salt came from the desert region of the Sahara that lay to the north. It was highly prized by the people of western and southern Africa for preserving meat and for flavoring. Those areas had few natural sources of the mineral. Gold was mined in Africa’s west and south. Gold was highly valued in North Africa, where it was exchanged with Europeans in a busy Mediterranean trade. The earliest empire to arise in the area was Ghana, in the 400s C.E. It was located between the salt mines to the north and the gold fields to

the south. Following the Muslim conquest of North Africa and the Sahara region in the 600s and 700s, Ghana’s wealth from trade grew greatly. Muslim traders from the north were welcomed, and mosques, Muslim places of worship, were built in Ghana. Most Ghanaians, who were farmers and herders working the region’s savannas, or open plains, did not share in the wealth. Ghana’s king grew wealthy from the taxes collected on the trade. By the early 1200s, the kingdom of Ghana had collapsed. Frequent wars with Muslims from the Sahara region and failing farmlands led to the collapse. Competition from new gold fields and other trading peoples also weakened the kingdom. As the power of Ghana faded, to the east, the kingdom of Mali grew and prospered. With control of new gold fields and trade routes, the people of Mali conquered Ghana and expanded their territory. By the mid-1300s, the empire of Mali had spread west to the Atlantic coast. As in Ghana, the ruling class retained most of the wealth from trade. Mali’s farmers paid tribute to the kingdom’s ruler, who maintained a strong army to control trade and his people. Mali’s most famous ruler,

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