AHC- Make Africa the world's richest continent

It's not "my" map

The map you provided; I didn't mean to imply you had created. My point still remains, however - it's not very accurate. I would supply some I have found (mostly courtesy of other posters on this site), but they aren't accurate for the time in question, and the one I have for sub-Saharan Africa is of ethnic groups rather than historical nations
 
I would also say that climate/geography is one of the biggest problems for Africa (outside the med) to keep up in development for several reasons:

Agriculture: compared to Europe/East Asia/parts of India/the Nile valley or Mesopotamia there are few regions were a highly intensitive agriculture can be sustained over long periods with limited technology. Some of the more effective ways are (semi)nomadic. That keeps the population density limited and the number of people available for other purposes limited. Nomadic life also seems more prone to tribal organisation instead of a larger stable organisations.

Infrastructure: Sustaining good roads in the tropics is hard, the desert poses its own problems for land travel. Much of Africa is not suited for using waterways either. Rivers like the Congo, the Sambesi or the Upper Nile are not as suited for shipping unlike Asian, Indian, European or American Rivers are, because they are interupted by unshipable parts too often. Furthermore the shipable parts of rivers going into different directions are further apart than elsewhere. Especially compared to Europe early Oceanic trade is also a bit disadvantaged (no closed seas like Med, Baltic, a compact land mass). All of this is not only a problem for trade, the ability to control and sustain larger empires is also hampered. Logically many of the larger African Empires concentrated along the rivers which were shipable (Niger) or along the sea without having a real depth.

A minor climate related problem is also that some important technologies are more difficult to implement in the rainforest (gunpowder, large scale textile production, paper).

Now of course not all of this is true for the entirety of Africa, nor is it the only problem. These limitations can be overcome But one has to deal with them in the case of making large parts of Africa more prosperous, because they can´t be changed by man unlike say cultural problems.
 
Where might we find some of them, preferably with English translations?

To be honest, I don't read most of my primary sources about African polities in English. Most good accounts of the Congo that I know of are in Portuguese, for example, and occasionally in Dutch or French. In other cases, like the Swahili coast or Ethiopia, the local sources are in Amharic or Swahili, with other sources written in Portuguese or Arabic (with some exceptions). There are some monographs in English that cite the original documents, but that's not what you were asking for. The only translated primary source I can think of on the spot is a translation of a letter from the King of Kongo to the King of Portugal concerning the slave trade in the Kingdom of Kongo. I read that at my school library, but I'll try and see if there's a copy on the internet (there probably will be, it's pretty well-known).

By the way Soverihn, there actually were some developed countries in the inner Congo, like the Nzari kingdom.
 
I think Europe got rolling economically roughly around the 1500s once organized religion(s) relaxed their prohibitions on charging interest.

And I remember reading in a book on world religions that Islam prohibits interest but allows venture partnerships, and in practice this has disallowed predatorial lending, and depending on all this locally applies, in some parts of the world may have given Muslim community promising and advantageous circumstances.

Now, you still probably need coal as a dense, compact, transportable energy source. And from there, industrialization can play out in somewhat different forms which is what makes it interesting.

Northwest Europe probably had an unusually high per-capita GDP as far back as the middle ages:
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2013/11/another-look-at-rise-of-west-but-with.html
 
Blonde hair and blue eyes have nothing to do with climate. They're random mutations that have occured separately as far afield as Scandinavia and Oceania (there are blonde Melanesians and Australian aborigines, and blue eyes probably first became widespread among populations around the Black Sea who were, by and large, not blondes).

That gives me a thought: would it be theoretically possible for a new color to pop up somewhere as a mutation, just like it did thousands of years ago?
 
That gives me a thought: would it be theoretically possible for a new color to pop up somewhere as a mutation, just like it did thousands of years ago?

Within a certain bounds, perhaps, but it's hard to see what would go. While most range between blues, greens, and browns, it's not unheard of to have black or grey eyes, and red/pink eyes have substantial disadvantages (even in scenarios where other traits of albinism aren't present; the disease is actually defined by the effects on the eyes, rather than skin pigmentation). So, outside of making an existing color more common, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to do so. Since, AFAIK, melanin is the only major pigment in human eyes, it wouldn't be possible to have more crazy colors appear without some significant changes elsewhere first.
 
If the lack of African development is considered due to slave trade and colonization then there is the case of Abyssinia to be considered.

This state was never subjected to slave trade and always indipendent, but when it was picked up by Mussolini in 1936 it was a dirt poor feudal state governed by an absolute monarch.

So it seems that geographic isolation put a real brake on sub-saharian African development and you need to remove it somehow to achieve some substantial results.

Another question. If sub-Sahara Africa was so populated why there weren't in the Atlantic coast ports and african navies able to contest Portoguese and later European intrusions in their waters?
 
What do navies have to do with population? While I'm not familiar with African naval history at all, there were certainly land forces that dealt with Europeans and Arabs for centuries before colonization was successful.
 
If the lack of African development is considered due to slave trade and colonization then there is the case of Abyssinia to be considered.

This state was never subjected to slave trade and always indipendent, but when it was picked up by Mussolini in 1936 it was a dirt poor feudal state governed by an absolute monarch.

So it seems that geographic isolation put a real brake on sub-saharian African development and you need to remove it somehow to achieve some substantial results.

Another question. If sub-Sahara Africa was so populated why there weren't in the Atlantic coast ports and african navies able to contest Portoguese and later European intrusions in their waters?

Ethiopia was involved in the Arab slave trade, which didn't do it any favors.. Also, Ethiopia was actually doing quite well for itself when Mussolini came, seeing as it was landlocked, did not have many resources to speak of, and was still trying to subjugate its southern regions that it had only recently conquered. Hallie Selassie was even slowly modernizing the country, although I'm not sure how successful that was going. I would not say that Ethiopia was geographically isolated either seeing as it was surrounded by populous Islamic polities in the lowlands.
 
Ethiopia was involved in the Arab slave trade, which didn't do it any favors.. Also, Ethiopia was actually doing quite well for itself when Mussolini came, seeing as it was landlocked, did not have many resources to speak of, and was still trying to subjugate its southern regions that it had only recently conquered. Hallie Selassie was even slowly modernizing the country, although I'm not sure how successful that was going. I would not say that Ethiopia was geographically isolated either seeing as it was surrounded by populous Islamic polities in the lowlands.

The point is that if you leave African countries on their own is not guaranteed that their performance will be stellar.
 

SunDeep

Banned
If the lack of African development is considered due to slave trade and colonization then there is the case of Abyssinia to be considered.

This state was never subjected to slave trade and always indipendent, but when it was picked up by Mussolini in 1936 it was a dirt poor feudal state governed by an absolute monarch.

So it seems that geographic isolation put a real brake on sub-saharian African development and you need to remove it somehow to achieve some substantial results.

Another question. If sub-Sahara Africa was so populated why there weren't in the Atlantic coast ports and african navies able to contest Portoguese and later European intrusions in their waters?

Diplomatic isolation, not geographic isolation. Africa's pretty much in the middle of the world- geographically, it's probably the least isolated continent on earth. And as for the second question- there were plenty of significant African ports in the Atlantic. Most of these were superseded by the trade ports which were established by the Europeans, such as Lagos, Bissau, Luanda, Conakry and Cape Verde, but most of the other port cities in the area, such as Accra, Abidjan, Banjul, Ouidah and many more, were established by the Africans, not the Europeans. And there were a few special cases like the Bidyogo, in present-day Guinea-Bissau, where the local Africans did have pretty powerful navies, navies which were capable of routing and repulsing repeated invasion attempts by the Europeans until well into the 20th century.
 
Diplomatic isolation, not geographic isolation. Africa's pretty much in the middle of the world- geographically, it's probably the least isolated continent on earth. And as for the second question- there were plenty of significant African ports in the Atlantic. Most of these were superseded by the trade ports which were established by the Europeans, such as Lagos, Bissau, Luanda, Conakry and Cape Verde, but most of the other port cities in the area, such as Accra, Abidjan, Banjul, Ouidah and many more, were established by the Africans, not the Europeans. And there were a few special cases like the Bidyogo, in present-day Guinea-Bissau, where the local Africans did have pretty powerful navies, navies which were capable of routing and repulsing repeated invasion attempts by the Europeans until well into the 20th century.

Sahara is a pretty good barrier although is not impassable.

Another variable to be considered is which was the colonizing European nation.

The Belgians in Congo probably were the worse, but the Eritreans colonized by the Italians didn't complain too much for example because they were already under pressure from the Ethiopians and because the Italians built a lot of factories and infrastructures and offer them jobs as colonial troops.
 
One way around African diplomatic isolation is to have a bunch of indigenous states that it's competing with. If Ethiopia/Axum gets really involved with the Swahili city states, Egypt, and starts competing with the other Horn polities for control of the trade routes, then that can naturally lead to ship and weapon innovations which would stem from schools set up to educate people about the sciences.

Or if you somehow get earlier Sahel and west African forest kingdoms and have them trade and compete with each other then that could lead to technological innovations. Such as water works and medicine.

There have been many African civilizations but at times they haven't directly contacted each other. An earlier genesis and contact could have a whole host of butterflies.

Also Africa for sure has historically had a really low population density and a slow population growth rate. It's the reason for the relative lack of African civilizations and why slavery was prevalent in the continent. It was a way to get people when reproductive methods were too slow.
 
Actually before talking about how to make this AHC..

May someone talk about the real history of Africa .. why it failed (or on what time onward that part of region begin to fail).. and so we may discuss any possibilities afterwards

Basically we are just speculating that because it is hot so it is not going to be rich and quite a lot of us do not know too much about its history (except Egypt, Carthage, Boers.. etc)
 
Diplomatic isolation, not geographic isolation. Africa's pretty much in the middle of the world- geographically, it's probably the least isolated continent on earth. And as for the second question- there were plenty of significant African ports in the Atlantic. Most of these were superseded by the trade ports which were established by the Europeans, such as Lagos, Bissau, Luanda, Conakry and Cape Verde, but most of the other port cities in the area, such as Accra, Abidjan, Banjul, Ouidah and many more, were established by the Africans, not the Europeans. And there were a few special cases like the Bidyogo, in present-day Guinea-Bissau, where the local Africans did have pretty powerful navies, navies which were capable of routing and repulsing repeated invasion attempts by the Europeans until well into the 20th century.

It's isolated in a commercial sense. Prior to railroads, a lot of local/regional trade was done by river barge. Hence the importance of the Rhine, Danube, Oder, Dneiper, Seine, Rhone, Po and others. Now look at Africa's rivers. The only major one that makes it way to the Med is the Nile. That is a significant obstacle, to say nothing of the larger issues of crossing the Sahara. Also consider that sailing the Atlantic was considerably more dangerous and therefore expensive than the med and baltic.

Next compare the distance from the Gulf of Guinea, where a lot of rivers empty, to anywhere in Europe. The coastline of Africa goes so far west that it is a fairly long distance relative to other opportunities. The east coast was hurt by there not being a Suez canal. India, and Persia are open but again, it is still a long hike.

Then consider crossing Africa from east to west. Jungles, deserts, and mountains, depending upon where you start. It's hard to develop an ecosystem when you face such obstacles. Contrast that to Europe where the baltic and med offer east west transport while the various rivers offer north south opportunities.

All of these obstacles arent so great as to prevent trade but they do slow/hinder it, which is problematic when trying to meet the AHC.
 
Agriculture: compared to Europe/East Asia/parts of India/the Nile valley or Mesopotamia there are few regions were a highly intensitive agriculture can be sustained over long periods with limited technology. Some of the more effective ways are (semi)nomadic. That keeps the population density limited and the number of people available for other purposes limited. Nomadic life also seems more prone to tribal organisation instead of a larger stable organisations.
Not so: The Aztec chinampas in the Valley of Mexico in Mesoamerica were phenomenally productive (their maize harvests were not surpassed even in the US until 1964 IIRC); in Amazonia, terra preta supported vast orchards more productive than even conventional modern fields in the region (not to mention far more sustainable); and the Papuans of New Guinea, in a land long considered a agricultural backwater, arguably invented agriculture itself, and with it such important developments as crop rotation, polyculture agroforestry and irrigation.
Infrastructure: Sustaining good roads in the tropics is hard, the desert poses its own problems for land travel. Much of Africa is not suited for using waterways either. Rivers like the Congo, the Sambesi or the Upper Nile are not as suited for shipping unlike Asian, Indian, European or American Rivers are, because they are interupted by unshipable parts too often. Furthermore the shipable parts of rivers going into different directions are further apart than elsewhere. Especially compared to Europe early Oceanic trade is also a bit disadvantaged (no closed seas like Med, Baltic, a compact land mass). All of this is not only a problem for trade, the ability to control and sustain larger empires is also hampered. Logically many of the larger African Empires concentrated along the rivers which were shipable (Niger) or along the sea without having a real depth.
The Rift Lakes are calmer than the Mediterranean, the Congo, though indeed having many cataracts, is navigable for most of its length otherwise; portage could suffice.

Note also, the great civilizations of the Central Andes, even with only llama caravans, balsa raft-ships and human porters, got buy perfectly fine, even over extremely long distances: Under the Inka, Qusqu got fresh fish from the ocean daily and a message could travel the length of the empire in as little as three days; the Inka and their excellent roads provide an excellent example of how it's often more the quality of the transportation infrastructure you build and how you organize yourselves, not you're geography you find yourself in, that matters most. Furthermore, the Maya built numerous Sakbej-roads in the rainforest in their hemisphere; what would stop Africans in a similar climate from doing likewise?
A minor climate related problem is also that some important technologies are more difficult to implement in the rainforest (gunpowder, large scale textile production, paper).
What? Neither papermaking nor gunpowder should be confined to temperate zones; in fact, the precursor to paper, barkcloth, has long been made in parts of OTL Uganda, highly tropical.
 
The conditions in Latin America and Africa are not entirely the same, the Americas being more favourable in many ways to develop civilisation, but these are details we don´t need to look too closely to. Your counter-arguments still sort of prove my point.
Not so: The Aztec chinampas in the Valley of Mexico in Mesoamerica were phenomenally productive (their maize harvests were not surpassed even in the US until 1964 IIRC); in Amazonia, terra preta supported vast orchards more productive than even conventional modern fields in the region (not to mention far more sustainable); and the Papuans of New Guinea, in a land long considered a agricultural backwater, arguably invented agriculture itself, and with it such important developments as crop rotation, polyculture agroforestry and irrigation.
I will adress specifically the chinampas, but the problems are the same for the Amazonian area: I never denied that tropic agriculture can produce huge ammounts. But they need a lot more people working year around at it. So due to the huge disruptions (pest) of the previous century by 1500 European countries needed more land to reliably feed its population. But even medieval technologies meant they had less of the people working to feed the population and even those did not everywhere work the entire year in the fields. It seems the Aztecs had started to give up the Chinampas in favour of trade as too work-inefficient even before the European domesticated animals finished them for good. A lot of ways are known today how agriculture in the tropics could be more sustainable than the usual ones. But they are less used as they need several times the workforce.
The Rift Lakes are calmer than the Mediterranean, the Congo, though indeed having many cataracts, is navigable for most of its length otherwise; portage could suffice.
I think you underestimate the challenges land transport has even over the fairly short distances of the interruptions. Look down at the Sakbejs for some numbers about the differences. Simply said trade lines run where interruptions by land transport are not frequent and as short as possible. There are simple routes straight through Europe, like over Rhine and Danube with only a single interruption (of just a few weeks). Even then already Charlemagne connected the river systems by canal, because the land part was a problem for trade, even though that attempt did not work out. Such simple river routes allow for dozens of easy trade routes straight through Europe connecting the various seas at its coasts. And Europe has an incredibly long coast. With the rivers there are few places in Europe which are easy to reach with very simple technology and basically no infrastructure effort. Even if you add the Rift Lakes (which is legitimate since they are usable that way), a smaller part of Africa is reachable that way and it is not as comprehensive a network due to the interruptions and the distances between waterways to widely apart destinations.
Note also, the great civilizations of the Central Andes, even with only llama caravans, balsa raft-ships and human porters, got buy perfectly fine, even over extremely long distances: Under the Inka, Qusqu got fresh fish from the ocean daily and a message could travel the length of the empire in as little as three days; the Inka and their excellent roads provide an excellent example of how it's often more the quality of the transportation infrastructure you build and how you organize yourselves, not you're geography you find yourself in, that matters most. Furthermore, the Maya built numerous Sakbej-roads in the rainforest in their hemisphere; what would stop Africans in a similar climate from doing likewise?
Interesting and could improve African transport a bit, if it could be repeated there. The geological circumstances are not quite the same, but shouldn´t be too different. Of course road travel is until the 20th century the least favourable. It works, but again needs far more workforce: A small Kaag (a medieval river ship) can carry the same amount as 6 carts drawn by 4 horses each, larger ones considerably more.
What? Neither papermaking nor gunpowder should be confined to temperate zones; in fact, the precursor to paper, barkcloth, has long been made in parts of OTL Uganda, highly tropical.
That was really minor to me so I did not express me very well here. They have some problems in their early development and spread throughout tropic Africa they did not face in dry or moderate regions.
For gunpowder the problems are that early weapons are cumbersome, which is in overgrown areas more of a problem than in open regions and it takes some time before they can become useable under wet conditions. For cheap paper the main problem is that it takes some considerable steps before it can be produced without access to a lot of old clothes as ressources. Under tropic conditions it is unlikely that those will be available to the same extent. The difficulties to store it are really only a minor consideration.

In short what I really wanted to say is that the geology and climate of Africa mean that a lot of things which are fairly easy in other regions, some of them even in otherwise comparable regions like South America, can be done with low technology in Africa only by using a lot more people for or by accepting other disadvantages. Especially long range trade was easier than in the interior of Africa just about anywhere else in the world where a meaningful number of people lived.
 
The conditions in Latin America and Africa are not entirely the same, the Americas being more favourable in many ways to develop civilisation, but these are details we don´t need to look too closely to. Your counter-arguments still sort of prove my point.
I will adress specifically the chinampas, but the problems are the same for the Amazonian area: I never denied that tropic agriculture can produce huge ammounts. But they need a lot more people working year around at it. So due to the huge disruptions (pest) of the previous century by 1500 European countries needed more land to reliably feed its population. But even medieval technologies meant they had less of the people working to feed the population and even those did not everywhere work the entire year in the fields. It seems the Aztecs had started to give up the Chinampas in favour of trade as too work-inefficient even before the European domesticated animals finished them for good. A lot of ways are known today how agriculture in the tropics could be more sustainable than the usual ones. But they are less used as they need several times the workforce.
What are your sources for the Aztecs beginning to abandon the Chinampas? Besides, wouldn't the overland trade required to bring food to the cities of the Triple Alliance be too inefficient without some alternative to muscle power? Even the Romans were constrained in their use of water power by the inefficiencies of oxen in transporting milled grain!

And I suggest you read about how little labor was required in Amazonian terra preta agriculture (such as in Charles Mann's 1491).
 
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