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Oshun (pronounced O-shan, also given as Osun) is a supernatural entity recognized as both a spirit and a goddess in the Yoruba religion of West Africa. She presides over fertility, love, and freshwater, is the patroness of the Osun River...

The Nok culture, named after the settlement of the same name, flourished in southern West Africa (modern Nigeria) during the Iron Age from the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Famous for the distinctive terracotta sculptures...

The ancient and medieval Mediterranean might have been a bustling stage of ever-changing empires but, across the inhospitable barrier of the Sahara Desert, West Africans were equally busy building up and toppling down...

Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595 CE) was an Elizabethan mariner, merchant and naval administrator who has the inglorious (if not wholly accurate) record of being England's first slave trader. In the 1560s CE Hawkins trafficked slaves...

The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies...

The transatlantic slave trade (also given as the Atlantic slave trade, circa 1492 to 1860) was the practice of enslaving the citizens of African states and transporting them across the Atlantic Ocean to...

In the study of the ancient world a City is generally defined as a large populated urban center of commerce and administration with a system of laws and, usually, regulated means of sanitation. This is only one definition, however...

Hausaland, sometimes referred to as the Hausa Kingdoms, was a group of small independent city-states in northern central Africa between the Niger River and Lake Chad which flourished from the 15th to 18th century CE. The origins of...

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their...

Olaudah Equiano (l. c. 1745-1797, also known as Gustavus Vassa) was an African of the Igbo village of Essaka, of the Kingdom of Benin (modern Nigeria), who was enslaved around the age of ten, bought his...