INTD 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Fante Confederacy, Mankessim, Jeffrey Herbst
3 Oct 2016
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Power and space in precolonial africa- jeffrey herbst. Precolonial polities were not based on control of land. Because states/systems of states are run differently in africa, westerners didn"t understand and claimed that there were non. But african states did: broadcast authority, have firm notions of what consolidation of power meant, developed conventions for relations between states. There were a few areas where territorial competition was the central political issue because there was so much land (and farmers needed rain-fed crops so their land wasn"t worth defending if they could move anyways) Combination of large amounts of open land and rain-fed agriculture meant that in times of conflict, africans generally chose to move rather than fight. Land was insignificant, so no maps were made. Sometimes had unbundled ownership of land and the people on it (new people could settle on land and maintain old governor)
