African Decline

While reading the text A Global History, I found a connection between chapters two and five that intrigued me. Throughout time many different peoples have discovered new lands and the people that inhabit them all over the world. In the book I found how two different cultures, the Dutch and Portuguese, used their power over the indigenous peoples of Africa of two different regions around the mid to late 17th century. In chapter two it gives many different accounts of events, but the one I was able to take into account was that of the Kongolese people. The Portuguese took to the people of the Congo River by using religious matters to gain the upper hand with the Kongo people. After the Kongolese people converted to Christianity and gave the Portuguese slaves, ended up going to war with the Portuguese in 1665. While in chapter five, the Dutch took aim at the Khoikhoi people down in Cape of Good Hope. The chief Klass of the Khoikhoi spent almost fifteen years trying to show some kind of loyalty to the Dutch. However, in return the Dutch ended up turning on the Khoikhoi people, resulting in the downfall of their empire. Although the two cultures are different and the peoples are as well, connection between the two texts can also be made.

The main connection to the stories is that conflicts lead to decline of both of the civilizations. Although the conflicts between the two civilizations were different, conflict with Europeans was the cause of both of the African civilizations. The conflict between the Portuguese and the Kongolese was religious. When the Capuchins missionaries turned the Kongolese against the Portuguese, war broke out in 1665 which made almost a complete collapse of the old kingdom, killing the king and destroying their capital. Unlike the Kongolese, the Khoikhoi encountered betrayal which would lead to their decline. Thinking they had made a great ally with the Dutch, the Khoikhoi felt that they could ask for protection in return from all the favors and good they had given the Dutch. On February 16, 1688 when chief Klass appeared in front of a Dutch committee to report attacks by a another Khoikhoi chief Koopman, the Dutch sent "sharp threats" that kept peace for a few years. This lasted until in 1693, when the Dutch switched sides and supported Koopman and imprisoned Klass. His people soon went into a devastating decline of drought, misfortune, and a smallpox epidemic which made the society disappear.

The first connections that can be made between the two chapters are that they are two tribes that made what they thought were allies in their own ways. Both of the peoples that were of target were new civilizations that the Dutch and the Portuguese had never encountered, who in the end took advantage of what the people were giving to them. In the Cape area, the Africans that inhabited that region were the Khoikhoi people who had emerged from a hunter-gather culture only a few hundred years earlier. "They