kernals12
Banned
This is an edit of a previous thread I did. So how can we have it that all of Sub Saharan Africa is controlled by nation states instead of being fragmented into tribes and nomads? I hope this would stop colonization.
Ethiopia managed to stay independent.What is meant by "nation state"? Because if you're talking about one nation > one state, if anything that'd be detrimental to the survival of native African polities in the face of European encroachment.
Ethiopia is not a nation state- it has over 80 ethnic groups, with no one group comprising an absolute majority of the population.Ethiopia managed to stay independent.
Nationalism is a European ideology. No way pre-colonial africa espouses this.
Ethiopia is not a nation state- it has over 80 ethnic groups, with no one group comprising an absolute majority of the population.
In West Africa people and the embodied wealth of their labour was placed higher than the land itself. Actually the Portuguese and early Europeans seeking to extract wealth from West Africa ran into this issue repeatedly.
So how did we get India, China, Japan, and Siam?The development of the nation state in Europe was a pretty unique and singular historical phenomenon that required all or most of the following:
1. a strong sense of community and ethnicity in neighboring areas: parts of this do exist in Africa (particularly West Africa), but not in the form of a sweeping, unifying, cultural identity that developed in places like England, Germany, or Japan, rather African ethnic identity is primarily tribal or linguistic. In Europe, this came in the form of common languages and common religion, which existed in large blocs in numerous places on the continent
2. a history of legalism and a respect for the rule of law: Europe got this from the legalistic cultural history of Rome, and there are no analogous African empires IOTL
3. a cultural conception of "the state" as being subservient to "the nation": once again, Europe got this from Rome (and to a lesser extent Greece) and later from the philosophy of the enlightenment
There are other factors that played a part (like a common religion, strong economic institutions, and the luck of geography), but you can see the common trend. Most of these traits were unique to Europe because of the legacy of the Roman Empire. Historically, the empire was pretty unique (having been a republic for 500 years) and the institutions, culture, language, and religion spread by Rome gave Europe a history that was conducive to the development of nation states. Obviously, I don't think that Rome was a nation state, and I don't think that the history of Rome was the only factor leading to the development of the nation state, but without that shared institutional, religious, and cultural history, Africa doesn't have the same impetus for developing the cohesive, unifying identities that make nationalism possible.
So how did we get India, China, Japan, and Siam?
snip
I disagree with the premise that Africa didn’t have nation states. Historian Basil Davidson in The Black Man’s Burden refers to the pre colonial Ashanti empire as one of the first Nation-states to arise. France at the same time period (1600s) was still transitioning from a feudal monarchy. It’s hardly unique to Europe.
@WilliamOfOckham well, just because it originated in Europe does not mean it can't emerge elsewhere. What I meant is that it took quite a lot of factors to come into being, and having all of these reoccur somewhere else (and even earlier, to prevent colonizatoon!) is unlikely. Nationalism is NOT the intuitive, easy concept some take it to be.
Also, European empires creating "nation states" in Africa when they left only aggravated the problem, and in Europe, the ideology has brought two centuries of devastating warfare without ever achieving widespread uniformisation it aspires to. Why should it be Africa's savior, then?
I'd agree that there have been nation-states in Africa (the Zulu being one possible other example), and I don't think it's impossible for other, more powerful nation states to form on the continent. However, since there isn't the same multi-regional, pervasive, and unifying cultural tradition provided by the legacy of Rome, it's impossible for the concept of nation states to *spread* around Africa, like they did in Europe. I don't doubt that nation states can emerge in isolation in different parts of Africa, but without a large shared institutional heritage, nation states would likely remain a novelty in the region unless later introduced by Europe (as happened IOTL).
Ethiopia is not a nation state- it has over 80 ethnic groups, with no one group comprising an absolute majority of the population.
(economically, African colonization wasn't much of a gain for European powers anyway)
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