AHC: Entire African Continent controlled by single European Power

[Arkenfolm]

Here's mine.

Make the Mali empire control all of Africa by 1300. Mali meets the Bantu to the South and the Somali to the East. The Mali empire quickly defeats the ill-prepared Somali and Bantu and turns their population into slaves and scatter their population throughout Africa. The Mali cleanse whoever can't be sold into slavery and they start inhabiting Somalia and OTL South Africa.

They have a surplus of slaves, which they sell to the colonial empires of Europe. Europe institutes chattel slavery for the Bantu and Somali.

Runaway Somali and Bantu slaves, respectively, form runaway slave villages away from their masters in territories where slavery is illegal and they build "New Somalias" and "New Bantulands". They both speak a pidgin of English that's heavily influenced by their mother tongues. Both cultures are influenced by Christianity. Both cultures form a religion where they're prophesied to go back to their homelands when Jesus returns to earth.

Their prayers are answered. In 1850, the British, under the command of the half Spanish, half English captain Andrew De Jesus, goes on a quest to conquer "The Sick Man of the Mediterranean.", AKA the Mali Empire. The Christianized Somalis and Bantu see this as a sign that Jesus returned and they fight for the British Empire to get their lands back.

The Somalis and Bantu go through the continent liberating the Mali Bantu and the Mali Somali slaves. The slaves then join their Somali and Bantu brethren throughout the country, conquering everything they see, with help of the British Empire.

The Christianized Somalis set up their own country in the old Somaliland, kicking out the Malis. The Christianized Somalis then align themselves with the remaining Christian Ethiopians left in East Africa. They form a Christian superstate, much to the chagrin of the Muslim Somalis. The Bantu set up a Christian state in Southern Africa. Both states are loyal to the British, who helped the Bantu and Somalis revive their states.

The Mali empire, however, is is subjugated by the UK. Etho-Somaliland then goes on to quickly conquer the Southern Mediterranean, which was once controlled by the dead Mali empire and the dying Ottoman empire. Southern Africa is conquered all the way up to the African Great Lakes by the Mali empire.

How does this empire somehow manage to avoid fragmenting? When your empire runs on a system of extreme feudalism with effectively no centralisation, anyone in power has the tools to start their own empire when they choose to (and did, repeatedly, in West African history). And how does this empire manage to actually be able to communicate with parts at the extremities of it? Logistically impossible.

ASB to the max, no matter what date you set, no matter if the Malinese get a string of godlike ruler after the next, it's impossible.

 

[Tripledot]

Ha, and I thought Portugal already accomplished this via Treaty of Tordesillas.

By which I mean, anything more than nominal control seems impossible.

 

[fluttersky]

This TL seems to get pretty close to OP's goal: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...america-and-southern-africa-the-redux.335722/

PoD is a Portuguese discovery of the Americas in 1452. The timeline is currently updating very infrequently, but the latest situation is that the Spanish Empire (which has its capital in Lisbon and primarily speaks Portuguese) controls almost all of the Americas plus all important bits of the African coastline. Here's a world map (slightly outdated since Spain has conquered Egypt since the time the map was made): View attachment 262917


Generally speaking, I think that a Spanish Empire that takes on the role of the OTL British Empire is the most likely candidate for a European country able to hold all of Africa.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

How does this empire somehow manage to avoid fragmenting? When your empire runs on a system of extreme feudalism with effectively no centralisation, anyone in power has the tools to start their own empire when they choose to (and did, repeatedly, in West African history). And how does this empire manage to actually be able to communicate with parts at the extremities of it? Logistically impossible.

ASB to the max, no matter what date you set, no matter if the Malinese get a string of godlike ruler after the next, it's impossible.

Simple. They do what the whites did to the Native Americans. Killed the adults upon contact and raise the conquered people's children as their own.

 

[Ryan]

What about by 1350?

you do realize just how big Africa is right?

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

you do realize just how big Africa is right?

And the Russians and Mongols conquered territory that was much bigger than Africa. It's doable.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

BTW, your map is missing Alaska and Hawaii.

 

[Ryan]

And the Russians and Mongols conquered territory that was much bigger than Africa. It's doable.

no they didn't. Africa is 30 million km2, the Russian empire was only 23m and the Mongol empire was 33m.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

It could be possible. Remember, the Mali empire had the richest ruler ever known to man.

 

[frustrated progressive]

It could be possible. Remember, the Mali empire had the richest ruler ever known to man.

Croesus?

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Your goal, is too have the entire African continent claimed, controlled, and colonized by a single European power.

Castile unites with Portugal, ignores the New World, conquers Morocco, and colonizes the entire coast of Africa around to Zanzibar.

Aragon becomes the premier Christian naval power of the Mediterranean after Venice has an accident, holding Corsica, Sardinia, Siclly, and Naples. To suppress Moslem piracy, Aragon conquers Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Darna. Turkey converts to proto-Wahhabism/neo-Almohadism, with severe persecution of Christian subjects. Aragon liberates Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus from Turkey, then Morea, and the Aegean Islands. A "Crusade" into Anatolia to succor the Greeks of Ionia ends in defeat, but lots of refugees escape Turkish massacre, so it's a partial success. Turkish/Mameluke oppression of the Christians of Egypt prompt another Crusade, with more success (Turkey is blowing up, with invasions and rebellions elsewhere). Aragon liberates Egypt, which becomes a satellite kingdom. (A pragmatic Pope has authorized the creation of Uniate-style churches in the former Ottoman territories, even relaxing theological standards for the moment. And with the Turks going all Wahhabi/Almohadi, most eastern Christians change their minds about the tiara versus the turban.)

Aragon embarks on a strenuous program of forced conversion or removal of Moslems all across North Africa, while Castile does the same in Morocco. The Moslems of Egypt are demoralized by the crushing defeat of the Mamluks by Aragon, and most were already unhappy with the previous Wahhabish/Almohadish regime, which among other things burned out the Al-Azhar school and vandalized many of the most beautiful mosques.

Aragon and Castile now collaborate in cleansing the Red Sea and Somali coast of Moslem pirates; they ally with Ethiopia, which takes control of Eritrea and campaigns in Sudan. Aragonese/Egyptian forces push up the Nile.

150 years pass. Circa 1700, there is a union of crowns between Castile and Aragon, which becomes permanent. Espana later holds a protectorate over Ethiopia. In the 1800s, Espanian colonists and explorers occupy the interior of all Africa.

 

[My Daichingtala]

Castile unites with Portugal, ignores the New World, conquers Morocco, and colonizes the entire coast of Africa around to Zanzibar.

Coastal African kingdoms aren't empty shells Europeans can push aside with ease. The Portuguese tried conquest in the 1440s and 1450s; they failed to defeat African war canoes and poison arrows, and had to sign commercial treaties with the rulers. The addition of Castile will not change much; the numerical disparity is still too great (coastal West Africa was densely populated even then).

The main areas of European technological superiority during the initial years of contact - guns, ships, and forts - had limited effectiveness in West Africa. You need a large army to make up for guns' slow rate of fire, for one, and Africans will always have the numerical superiority. And since muskets were generally inaccurate, they were most effective when two massed armies met in the open; but West Africans often advanced in dispersed order precisely to make missile weapons less effective and maximize the skill of each soldier (since coastal West Africa is uninhabitable for horses, they could afford to do this without worrying about cavalry). Another very important element is poisoned arrows, which were widely used in West Africa and terrified the Portuguese, since they could pierce metal armor and, unlike normal arrows or bullets, even minor wounds could be lethal. These arrows ousted the Portuguese from the Senegal-Gambia region in the mid-fifteenth century.

As for ships, most major West African capitals were located inland. Unlike in Southeast Asia, ships could have only a limited effect. And as the Portuguese learned in the fifteenth century, African war canoes packed with archers and lancers were too small and fast to be easily attacked. Not even European trace italienne forts were insurmountable; in 1727 Dahomey easily captured all European forts in Whydah by taking advantage of the direction of the wind to set fire on them, while in 1743 Dahomey captured a strong Portuguese fort with a moat and 30 guns by undermining a bastion.

This is not taking into account the disease-infested rainforest terrain extremely hostile to Europeans.

 

[Tripledot]

This is not taking into account the disease-infested rainforest terrain extremely hostile to Europeans.

Yeah, until the invention of quinine, Europeans aren't going to make significant inroads into tropical Africa.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Simple. They do what the whites did to the Native Americans. Killed the adults upon contact and raise the conquered people's children as their own.

How much did that actually happen on any noticable scale? Especially when Native Americans directly killed by whites is a fraction of the amount who died indirectly due to European contact. Since the Malinese have no disease that kills other Africans, mass deaths can't happen. Although it kinda works the other way around--the rainforest and areas nearby are lethal to the Malinese way of life thanks to sleeping sickness that kills Malinese horses, cattle, etc. which they rely on for basically everything from the basis of their economy, to the basis of their food sources, to the basis of their logistics/military strength.

It could be possible. Remember, the Mali empire had the richest ruler ever known to man.

So his propaganda said and the tall tales told of his hajj to Mecca. Yes, he crashed world gold prices for a short period of time, but the Spanish crashed world silver prices because of feeding indigenous peoples into the mines at Potosi and elsewhere. You'd think Charles V or Philip II would have had better luck if being the wealthiest man in the world counted that much.

And all the money in the world is no good when you have the insurmountable problems of logistics, disease, and strategy as your foes. Mansa Musa can't really "screw the rules, I have money" in anything but his own propaganda.

 

[Avrorrange]

And the Russians and Mongols conquered territory that was much bigger than Africa. It's doable.

The Russians and Mongols conquered territory that are more hospitable than many parts of Africa.There are all sorts of parasites and tropical diseases in Africa.The Mongols didn't have much success when they tried to conquer lands near the Equator for this reason.

 

[Deleted member 93645]

France and Germany are at war in 1884, so the European great powers we unable to come to an agreement about Africa. Britain's navy allows them to take 90% of Africa except the pre-1880s colonies.

In WWI or WWII, Portugal and France are occupied, so Britain occupies their colonies to 'protect' them, buying them later. Liberia and Ethiopia remain independent, but British businessmen control their economies.

Therefore the UK controls all of Africa by the 1940s.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Coastal African kingdoms aren't empty shells Europeans can push aside with ease. The Portuguese tried conquest in the 1440s and 1450s; they failed to defeat African war canoes and poison arrows, and had to sign commercial treaties with the rulers. The addition of Castile will not change much; the numerical disparity is still too great (coastal West Africa was densely populated even then).

Who wrote anything about Castile conquering the African interior?

Castile gains loose control of the African coast, and excludes all other Europeans. The Espanish conquest of Africa comes much later (post-1800), after various technological improvements make it possible.

 

[My Daichingtala]

Who wrote anything about Castile conquering the African interior?

I specifically said "coastal African kingdoms."

The Bissagos/Bijagos Islanders proved that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and probably later, Europeans were incapable of defeating African fleets off the African coastline. Mind you, the Bijagos had no support whatsoever from the interior when they humiliated the Portuguese in 1535 (the Bijagos were what Vikings were to early medieval Europe, polytheist raiders with powerful navies, albeit more centralized than the Vikings), nor when the Portuguese tried to conquer the Bijagos again in 1607 and lost again. It was not until the 18th century that their raids ceased - not because of Europeans, but because of Muslim Fulani troops from the interior. The Bijagos weren't alone in Africa in having powerful fleets. In the seventeenth century the kingdom of Warri in the Niger Delta had tens of thousands of troops in hundreds of canoes and dominated the Delta solely through naval supremacy. Warri only came under British rule in 1884, despite its capital being less than 60 kilometers from the sea in the middle of a well-watered Delta. If the Spaniards tried to conquer coastal kingdoms with significant inland territories... well, you can imagine the consequences.

And so far I am talking only about instances where Europeans were defeated by "traditional" African weaponry. Once Africans begin to adopt European arms, Europeans have very little advantage even on the coastline. In 1685, for example, the English attacked Casamance (now southern Senegal) with artillery ships but were chased away by musketeer ambushes.

So please do explain how the Spaniards manage what Europeans could not until the 19th century, namely, controlling the entirety of the African coastline even in a "loose" way.