XIVᵉ siècle – XXᵉ siècle
West, Central, and East Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
From the fifteenth century onward, external contacts transformed food production across tropical Africa. Cassava, maize, bananas, Asian yams, Asian rice, and new varieties of cocoyam spread into regions previously dominated by forest or different staple crops. These changes supported the expansion of settlement and population, especially in the wet tropics, although adoption was gradual and regionally uneven. The extract presents agricultural change as a major demographic force affecting areas that had also supplied captives to the Atlantic trade.
Poursuivre l’exploration
Le récit
The wet tropical belt from the West African coast through the Congo basin and toward the East African highlands eventually became one of Africa’s most densely populated zones. Yet much of its current food supply consisted of crops that had been unknown there five hundred years earlier. Cassava became the most commonly used staple from the Ivory Coast to Angola and inland toward the western slopes of the East African highlands, while maize became dominant in Angola and broad parts of East Africa.
The process built upon older African agricultural traditions. Yams and West African rice were suited to forest margins, while bananas and Asian yams reached East Africa early in the Christian era and gradually spread westward. The forest remained difficult to cultivate, however, and the northern Congo basin appears to have remained sparsely occupied by hunters and food-gatherers until relatively late.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought especially rapid changes. Maize became important in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi during the first decades of the twentieth century, while cassava spread more quickly after Africans returning from Brazil introduced techniques for preparing gari. Asian rices increasingly displaced indigenous varieties, and new Pacific cocoyam types supplemented older crops.
XIVᵉ siècle – XXᵉ siècle
West, Central, and East Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
From the fifteenth century onward, external contacts transformed food production across tropical Africa. Cassava, maize, bananas, Asian yams, Asian rice, and new varieties of cocoyam spread into regions previously dominated by forest or different staple crops. These changes supported the expansion of settlement and population, especially in the wet tropics, although adoption was gradual and regionally uneven. The extract presents agricultural change as a major demographic force affecting areas that had also supplied captives to the Atlantic trade.
Poursuivre l’exploration
Le récit
The wet tropical belt from the West African coast through the Congo basin and toward the East African highlands eventually became one of Africa’s most densely populated zones. Yet much of its current food supply consisted of crops that had been unknown there five hundred years earlier. Cassava became the most commonly used staple from the Ivory Coast to Angola and inland toward the western slopes of the East African highlands, while maize became dominant in Angola and broad parts of East Africa.
The process built upon older African agricultural traditions. Yams and West African rice were suited to forest margins, while bananas and Asian yams reached East Africa early in the Christian era and gradually spread westward. The forest remained difficult to cultivate, however, and the northern Congo basin appears to have remained sparsely occupied by hunters and food-gatherers until relatively late.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought especially rapid changes. Maize became important in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi during the first decades of the twentieth century, while cassava spread more quickly after Africans returning from Brazil introduced techniques for preparing gari. Asian rices increasingly displaced indigenous varieties, and new Pacific cocoyam types supplemented older crops.