The borders that divided these various peoples were ill defined.. The chief event, though, was the desire of the Kanem to expand their borders and introduce Islam to their neighbors.. By
Trang 1larger during the medieval period Around its shores
numer-ous peoples settled, each practicing a unique way of life Some
were farmers, others herders, and still others fishermen The
borders that divided these various peoples were ill defined
In time tensions emerged, and each community began to
de-velop governmental and economic structures that perhaps
conflicted with those of its neighbors Because of their central
locations as links in east–west and north–south trade routes,
at least two of the Lake Chad peoples achieved dominance
These were the Kanem on the northeast side of the lake and
the Bornu on the southwest
Between roughly 750 and 1600 a complex series of
po-litical events took place that continually reshaped the region
and redefined its borders Some of these events involved the
arrival of Islam Others involved various power struggles
be-tween the peoples who lived in the vicinity of Lake Chad The
chief event, though, was the desire of the Kanem to expand
their borders and introduce Islam to their neighbors To do
this, they had to forge a strong military To fund military
enterprises, the Kanem needed a stable source of wealth To
this end they allied themselves with farming societies such as
the Bornu, rather than with nomadic pastoralists, who were
less reliable as sources of wealth However, the Kanem were
never able to carry out fully their plans for dominating the
region Nearby rival dynasties of kings opposed them, and
Kanem was never able to accumulate the wealth necessary
to achieve dominance In response to numerous crises the
Kanem simply picked up and moved to Bornu in the late 13th
century By the middle of the 14th century and throughout
the 15th, the kingdom of Bornu became yet another
domi-nant empire in western central Africa after having entirely
redefined its borders
The kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, Hausaland, and
Kanem-Bornu dominated from West Africa to the continent’s interior
Throughout southern Africa the Bantu migration continued
until roughly 1000 Bantu, which means “the people,” is a
catchall word that refers to the many peoples who
inhab-ited such regions as Nigeria and Zambia, eventually making
their way to Zimbabwe and South Africa The earliest Bantu
peoples began to spread through Africa in phases beginning
in about the second millennium b.c.e Historians regard the
third phase of the Bantu migration as having begun at the
start of the Common Era and continuing to about 1000, when
the Bantus reached the southernmost parts of Africa
Bantu refers less to an empire or kingdom, however,
than to an ethnic group, united primarily by descent from
a common language group The importance of the ongoing
Bantu migration until well into the medieval period is that
it demonstrates that the formation of nation-states was a
continuing process, with new nations (for example,
Zimba-bwe) formed and borders adjusted in response to the mass movements of peoples, often in response to war and climatic change It should be noted that although the Bantu still exist
as an ethnic group, the term in South Africa is regarded as pejorative because it was the word used by the South African apartheid regime
The AmericAs
by J J gEorgE
The period from 500 to 1500 saw great change throughout the Americas with respect to borders and frontiers Political boundaries in the modern sense of a negotiated contract in-dicating a fixed extent were rarely, if ever, noted; generally speaking, the literature talks about zones, spheres, and areas rather than strict borders and lines drawn from one point to another point Many factors, including population growth and expanding cities, city-states, and empires, led to chang-ing territorial demands that were reflected, in turn, by shiftchang-ing borders and frontiers The situation was somewhat different
in the later years of the period, which saw the rise of dramatic new examples of empire with the Aztec in central Mexico and the Inca in Andean South America With empires came new manners of social, political, and economic organization combined with thoroughness in warfare that again redefined what a border or frontier meant
The term frontier often is reserved in the American
lexi-con for understanding the westward expansion of the United States as a manifest impulse through wide-open, uninhabited territory, even though long-established cultures had been in residence for many hundreds—in some cases, thousands—
of years As used by modern political geographers, fron-tier generally designates a physical margin, fringe, or outer
boundary—more of a zone than a line—dividing peoples or cultures It is also the division between settled and uninhab-ited parts of one nation, state, or culture area The whole of the Americas provided many different examples of cultural patterns, from nomads to hunter-gatherers and from small early agrarian settlements to mammoth empire systems, though populations remained relatively small compared with the total landmass, especially in North America, and often
a substantial frontier existed between contemporaneous cul-tures or peoples Inevitably, however, those culcul-tures came into contact Conflict, warfare, tribute, or diplomacy were then common means of resolving or settling whatever politi-cal objective the parties held, and certainly this meant that thresholds, like borders, were challenged
Border in a modernist sense symbolizes aspects of
nation-hood and identity construction that are linked to state build-ing Factors that ultimately define borders include natural
10 borders and frontiers: The Americas