Trust and Violence in Modern Pre-Colonial African Histories: Leveraging Traveller Diaries and Digital Humanities to Reinterpret the Gunpowder Trade (1400-1900)

This research investigates the impact of the gun and gunpowder trade in pre-colonial Africa, analysing a dataset of over 2000 traveller diaries from 1400 to 1900 using Digital Humanities tools, such as GIS mapping, historical linguistics and network analysis. This research enquires into the complexities of societal trust and violence within these communities and trade networks, looking at the interplay between technology, trade, violence and trust. This has allowed for innovative techniques, outcomes and insights to come to the surface. From using technology to accelerate close-level readings of these journeys, specific topics and themes can be extracted and compared on a much broader level. Importantly, these traveller diaries can be analysed for their content, semantics, spellings and regions. This allows for the research to delve deeper into early conceptions of modern pre-colonial African kingdoms, societies, trade, and networks. Furthermore, it provides a lens through which to understand the impact of European trade on violence and trust levels in African societies, deconstructing the reliability of these accounts through narrative and sentiment analysis. By looking through the European lens, the reliability of these accounts can be deconstructed through narrative and sentiment analysis to pick up on narrative arcs, fictitious fables and epic journeys through “the dark continent”. By situating these intricacies before colonial aspirations, this research amplifies historical silences and offers a glimpse into indigenous perspectives in early encounters. By doing so, these sources allow for historical silences to be amplified through demonstrating the power of digital humanities to illuminate overlooked patterns, both visually (through GIS mapping) and through historical linguistic shifts. This research challenges Eurocentric narratives, contributing to a more inclusive understanding of pre-colonial African trade dynamics. This study underscores the importance of critically engaging with historical sources in the digital age to construct equitable and empathetic narratives.