During their initial migration across most of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, which took place between . The indigenous population of the territory comprised dispersed agricultural and pastoral communities belonging to the two major indigenous population groups in southern Africa. The Bantu expansion is a hypothesis about the history of the major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group,[3][4] which spread from an original nucleus around Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa. cit. Just for the sake of background, the former, the Bantu people, form the vast majority of the African population and are typically described as Negroid, or Congoid, their origins being in the region of the Congo and the Niger Delta. The military government solicited the aid of the United States, and a heavy-handed US response included a massive bombing during 1973, killing some 300,000 people. Tensions and violence increased after the Rwandan Genocide as 1.5 million Hutu refugees fled Rwanda. A lot less easy to explain is the national derangement that gripped one half of Cambodia, causing it to react with such violence towards the other. The Khmer Rouge, or the Red Khmer, was a movement born out of the struggle against French colonization. When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. They expanded and took the land which is exactly what they will do to Somalia soon if Somalis don't put a stop to it. The death toll attributed to the Holodomor runs to between 7 million and 10 million, which dwarves anything we have looked at so far. A prime example is the Southern African Kingdom of Mapungubwe. This paper outlines four stages of the Bantu expansion: first, the initial push through the equatorial forest from the northern to the southern woodlands; second, the occupation of the southern woodland belt from coast to coast; third, the colonization of the Tanzania, Kenya and southern Somali coastline and of the northern sector of the lake region; fourth, the colonization south-wards, north-westwards and north-eastwards from this extended nucleus. Fearing similar Allied manipulation of traditional Armenian hostility, the Turkish Armenian population found itself the subject of an extermination policy. Archaeological evidence from the separate works of Jean Hurault (1979, 1986 & 1988) and Rigobert Tuech (2000) in the region reveals that this region has been inhabited by the same culture for 5 millennia, from 3000 B.C to date. In 1884, it was agreed among European powers that all expansion into Africa would be by treaty with local, indigenous authority. The definition of genocide is fluid enough for it to be very easily claimed, and no less easily rejected. However, mtDNA genetic research from Cabinda suggests that only haplogroups that originated in West Africa are found there today, and the distinctive L0 of the pre-Bantu population is missing, suggesting that there was a complete population replacement. There are no noticeable differences between the two communities as they both use the same Bantu languages together with French, and mainly observe Christianity. The majority of sub-Saharan Africans speak one or more Bantu languages and modern African states are heavily affected by their Bantu-migrant predecessors. This was an Iron Age Colonization; therefore it Cannot have been earlier in time than the spread of the Iron Age in Indonesia around the first century A.D. Discernible developments in the interior, c. 15001840. They subsequently rebelled, attracting a violent response from the Germans. A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions. Vaguely the idea was to purify the races under German control, and create thus a race-worthy of European domination. 22 January 2009. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Until the 1980s, International academic interest in the issue was limited by Soviet censorship, so at the time that it was occurring, very few people were aware of it. of the Congo rainforest at its periphery, for instance along the coasts of South Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo (11, 16, 19).A second event at 2,500 B.P. A few still live by foraging often supplemented by working for neighbouring farmers in the arid regions around the Kalahari desert, while a larger number of Nama continue their traditional subsistence by raising livestock in Namibia and adjacent South Africa. In both these stages the Bantu expansion seems to have coincided fairly closely with the spread of the Iron Age; and, if the spread of the Iron Age through the area north of the southern woodlands can now be traced in something like the detail which we already have for Zambia and Rhodesia, the mystery of the Bantu expansion will have been largely unravelled. In terms of sheer numbers, it is probably the Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-33, that racked up the greatest score. ), A survey of the ethnography of Africa: and the former racial and tribal migrations of that continent, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Speculations on the economic prehistory of Africa, Berceaux agricoles primaires sur le continent africain, Africa: Its Peoples and their Culture History, Studies in African Linguistic Classification, Some developments in the pre-history of the Bantu languages. Needless to say, the matter is most keenly felt in the Ukraine, and on 13 January 2010, a Ukrainian court found Joseph Stalin, among numerous other Soviet officials of the period, posthumously guilty of genocide. Other academic opinion tends to point to a typically dogmatic refusal on the part of the British government to acknowledge a failed policy. The impact of the Bantu Expansion has stood the test of time it continues to influence the demographics, language, and culture of the continent today. In 1966, Roland Oliver published an article presenting these correlations as a reasonable hypothesis.[17]. He was thus able to interweave his own warped ideology with the mood of a nation. Although early models posited that the early speakers were both iron-using and agricultural, definitive archaeological evidence that they used iron does not appear until as late as 400BC, though they were agricultural. Even to date, records are patchy and inconsistent, and much of what is known is through anecdotal reporting and oral history. The story begins with a popular African tale. The continent's best-known language dispersal is no doubt the so-called 'Bantu Expansion'. Between 1.5 and 3 million Cambodians died, or were killed by the regime. It was of limited practical use to them, bearing in mind that it almost entirely comprised desert, but it was essential in the cut and thrust of competition, in particular with the British, in the race for European global expansion. Sutton, J. E. G. However, I've been told by numerous South Africans that the Khoisan have peacefully lived by Nguni peoples for thousands of years and that it is a division tactic. The Banyamulenge people settled there throughout history - before and during colonial rule and during Hutu rule in Rwanda. . It is reprinted here with the agreement of the R.S.A.Google Scholar, 2 Johnston, H. H., A survey of the ethnography of Africa: and the former racial and tribal migrations of that continent, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XLIII (1913), 3912.Google Scholar, 3 Wrigley, C. C., Speculations on the economic prehistory of Africa, Journal of African History, I (1960), 201.Google Scholar, 4 McBurney, C. B. M., The Stone Age of Northern Africa (1960), 234.Google Scholar. Doctors, teachers, monks, journalists, the wealthy, artists, anyone with an education and ethnic or religious minorities were all singled out for arbitrary execution. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. Of course not. It must be remembered that the rise of Nazi Germany can be attributed to the terms of the peace imposed on imperial Germany in the aftermath of WWI. for this article. The Bantu Expansion was probably the biggest example of genocide 4in human history. Possibly caused by population growth, or by conflict, a migration set off in two streams one East across central Africa, and the other South following the Congo river system. "[26] In some places, genetic evidence suggests that Bantu language expansion was largely a result of substantial population replacement. An example of this was the Arab Revolt of the same period, which was facilitated and supported by TE Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. Prior to the arrival of Bantus in Southeast Africa, Cushitic-speaking peoples had migrated into the region from the Ethiopian Highlands and other more northerly areas. Its a MYTH. But the Zulu race itself was not innocent of genocide. [1] Postulated millennia-long series of migrations. Click the account icon in the top right to: Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. hasContentIssue true, Copyright Cambridge University Press 1966. The primary evidence for this expansion is linguistic a great many of the languages which are spoken across sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, suggesting the common cultural origin of their original speakers. Also known as the Bantu conquest of Africa - 2,000 Years of Bantu supremacy, racism, conquest, genocide, rape, war, cannibalism and colonisation. The regime was toppled in January 1979, and Pol Pot died in April 1998, on the eve of his being handed over to international justice. The latter, the Khoisan, are the original, and much more ancient race displaced by the Bantu, and relegated in many instances to the arid desert reaches of the west of the sub-continent. If you would like to reproduce it please get in touch via this form. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. These were, and are the Bantu and the Koi-koi, or Khoisan. Early critics argued this phenomenon was a result of language spread rather than the migration of Bantu-speaking people, but genetic evidence has proved otherwise. The Bantu languages, a closely-knit family of 440 to 680 languages (depending on how one distinguishes between a language and a dialect), are spoken across the southern third of the African continent, from the boundary between modern day Nigeria and Cameroon in the west, to southern Somali in the east, and as far south as the Cape. The land rights, of course, were freely utilized, while the protection often simply meant bondage. Bantu people were in far greater numbers and pretty much absorbed most of these groups. The definition of genocide is fluid enough for it to be very easily claimed, and no less easily rejected. [19] Many Batwa groups speak Bantu languages; however, a considerable portion of their vocabulary is not Bantu in origin.