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76236-01 - Proseminar: House of Stone: Monomotapa, a Southern African Empire, c. 1400 - c. 1800 (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Ettore Morelli (ettore.morelli@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | In the first years of the 16th century, possibly in 1506, the name Monomotapa was first written on paper in the early Portuguese reports of the coast of South-East Africa. The region, which was known in the Mediterranean since the 11th century as the land of Sufala, whence great amounts of gold came, seemed to be now ruled by a powerful and extensive empire, the wealth of which was reputedly built precisely on the rich gold mines of the interior. During the following century the Portuguese tested the value of these first impression and of much older rumours about the region. They discovered at their own cost that the mwene Mutapa, as the royal title was properly spelled, ruled a diminished dominion, that the interior was contested by multiple strong polities, and that Portuguese exploitation of mining and trade was a difficult if not impossible objective. Yet, the fabled wealth of Monomotapa had seeped into the early European imagination on South-East Africa, becoming a trope in the more or less credulous representations by European savants who had never set foot on Africa. The course aims to reconstruct the history of the kingdom of Mutapa, the historical polity which came to be known as Monomotapa, from its presumed founding in the 15th century to its eventual disappearance in the 19th century. The course will provide a grounding in the history of political institutions in southern Africa, starting from the ancestors of Mutapa: Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. It will also provide focused interventions in the economic, social, and religious developments of the area of modern-day Zimbabwe between the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. Marginally, the course will discuss the more superficial layer of European representations of the region during the same period. In practice, the course will be centred on a collection of edited sources, the Documentos sobre os Portuguese em Moçambique e na África Central, 1497-1840, Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, 1497-1840, in eight volumes (published 1962-1974). Work in class will be strongly source-oriented, highly cooperative, and synergic. In the same vein, those who will choose to write a PSA in this course will have to choose within a list of sources curated starting from the collection of the Documentos mentioned above. The course is designed to eventually work as a small research group. |
| Bibliography | Sources • da Conceição, Antonio, Treatise on the Rivers of Cuama, edited and translated by Malyn Newitt, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009. • Malyn Newitt, ed., Journey Which Father António Gomes Made to the Empire of Manomotapa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021. • da Silva Rego, A., T.W. Baxter, eds., Documentos sobre os Portuguese em Moçambique e na África Central, 1497-1840, Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, 1497-1840, Vol. i-viii, Lisbon, National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and Centro de Estudios Históricos Ultramarinos, 1962-1974. Literature • François-Xavier Fauvelle, Le Rhinocéros d'or. Histoires du Moyen Age africain, Paris, Alma Editeur, 2013 (also available in English, German, and Italian) • W.G.L. Randles, L'empire du Monomotapa du XVe au XIXe siècle, Paris, Mouton & Co, 1975 (also available in English) • S.I.G. Mudenge, A Political History of Munhumutapa, c. 1400-1902, Harare, African Publishing Group, 2011. • Innocent Pikirayi, The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States, Oxford, AltaMira Press, 2001. • Paul Stuart Landau, Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400-1948, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010. |
| Comments | The PS will be given in English. It will include readings and sources in English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese. An English translation of the readings and sources will be provided. The PSA will be written in English only. |
| Admission requirements | Für Studierende des BSF Geschichte im Grundstudium mit abgeschlossenem Einführungskurs Geschichte. Teilnahme an der ersten Sitzung ist obligatorisch. Die Teilnehmer:innenzahl ist auf 25 beschränkt. Bei Überbelegung werden Studierende des BSF Geschichte, die noch kein Proseminar in dem Modul absolviert haben, bevorzugt zugelassen. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Wednesday | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 3 |
Dates
| Modules |
Modul: Basis Frühe Neuzeit (Bachelor's degree subject: History) Modul: Basis Mittelalter (Bachelor's degree subject: History) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Departement Geschichte |