Guinea (region)
Guinea is a traditional name for the region of Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the forested tropical regions and ends at the Sahel.
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[edit] History
Historically, this region was one of the first parts of sub-Saharan Africa to trade with Europeans. The extensive trade in ivory, gold, and slaves made the region wealthy, with a number of centralized kingdoms developing in the 18th and 19th centuries. These were much smaller than the large states of the wide open Sahel, but they had far higher population densities and were more centralized and technologically advanced. These kingdoms meant that the region showed more resistance to European incursions than other areas of Africa. For that reason, combined with a disease environment hostile to Europeans, much of Guinea was not colonised by Europeans until the very end of the 19th century.
[edit] Subdivisions
Guinea is often subdivided into "Lower Guinea" and "Upper Guinea". Lower Guinea is one of the most densely populated regions of Africa, covering southern Nigeria, Benin, Togo and stretching into Ghana. It includes the coastal regions as well as the interior. Upper Guinea is far less densely populated and stretches from Côte d'Ivoire to Senegal. Within the Republic of Guinea, Lower and Upper Guinea refer to the coastal plain and the interior of that country, respectively.
European traders in the region subdivided the region based on its main exports. The eastern portion around Benin and Nigeria was named the Slave Coast. What is now Ghana was called the Gold Coast, a name later given to a British colony in the area. West of this was the Ivory Coast, still the name of the nation in that region. Farthest west, the area around modern Liberia and Sierra Leone was referred to as either the Pepper Coast or the Grain Coast.
[edit] Etymology
The etymology of "Guinea" is uncertain. The English term Guinea comes directly from the Portuguese word Guiné, which emerged in the mid-15th century to refer to the lands inhabited by the Guineus, a generic term for the black African peoples below the Senegal River (as opposed to the 'tawny' Zenaga Berbers, above it, whom they called Azenegues or Moors). The term "Guinea" is extensively used in the 1453 chronicle of Gomes Eanes de Zurara,[1] King John II of Portugal took up the title of Senhor da Guiné (Lord of Guinea) from 1483. It is believed the Portuguese borrowed Guineus from the Berber term Ghinawen (sometimes Arabized as Guinauha or Genewah) meaning "the burnt people" (analogous to the Classical Greek Aithiops, "of the burned face").[2] The Berber terms "aginaw" or "Akal n-Iguinawen"[3] mean "black" or "land of the blacks."
A competing theory, first forwarded by Leo Africanus in 1526, claims that 'Guinea' is derived from Djenné, the great interior commercial city on the Upper Niger River.[4] Djenné dominated the gold and salt trade across West Africa, from the 11th C. (fall of Ghana) until the 13th C. (when the Mali invasion disrupted its routes and redirected trade to Timbuktu, hitherto just a small Djenné outpost). It is during the period of Djenné dominance that the term Genewah really comes forward into usage in Arab sources (al-Sudan - Arabic for "blacks" - is used more commonly before). Other theories try to connect "Guinea" to "Ghana", but this is less certain. The Ghana Empire is named after the Medieval trading city of Ghanah mentioned already by 11th C. Arab geographers (e.g. al-Bakri), but it is used distinctly from Genewah by Arab sources (e.g. they would say "Ghanah in the country of Genewah").[5] Conversely, it remains possible that both Ghana and Djenné themselves owe their original city names to the Berber appellation for the blacks that lived there. A possible reconciliation of the theories is that the Berber Ghinawen (blacks) was the source of the Djenné (city), which in turn gave rise to the Arabic Genewah (land dominated by that city), which finally made it into the Portuguese Guiné.[6]
[edit] Countries in Guinea
- Benin
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Equatorial Guinea (formerly Spanish Guinea)
- Ghana (formerly Danish Guinea and Dutch Guinea)
- Guinea (formerly French Guinea)
- Guinea-Bissau (formerly Portuguese Guinea)
- Liberia
- Sierra Leone
- Togo (formerly German Guinea)
- Southern Nigeria
- Western Cameroon (formerly German Guinea)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Zurara titled his 1453 chronicle of the Henrican discoveries as the "conquest of Guinee", (e.g. p.1) and although Zurara starts off using the term "Guinea" loosely to include the Western Sahara coast, he eventually (p.153) corrects himself and notes that the term "Guinea" really applies only the lands of the Guineus, the black people south of the Senegal River.
- ^ Rogado Quintino (1965) "O problema da origem dos termos «Guiné» e «Guinéus»", Boletim Cultural da Guiné portuguesa, vol. 20, no.78, p.117-45.
- ^ "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Guinea: Overview". UNHCR. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,COUNTRYPROF,GIN,456d621e2,4954ce60c,0.html. Retrieved May 1, 2009.
- ^ Leo Africanus (written 1526, pub.1550) The History and Description of Africa: and of the notable things therein p.79)
- ^ W.D. Cooley (1841) The Negroland of the Arabs examined and explainedp.20.
- ^ Cooley (1841) endorses the theory (p.18n) that Djenné, rather than blacks, was the source of the Arabic term Genewah (and thus Portuguese Guiné), but at the same time (p.20n) recognizes that Djenné itself might originally come from the Berber Ghinawen (blacks).
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