AHC: Pre Colonial Africa Nation States

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.
 
I think this is really a material concern (the fact that, say, Sudan has been full of nomadic societies really isn't anyone's fault - it's just the most efficient way to live on the land by far) and therefore beyond the realms of alternate history on this forum. Most of the places that could foster settled nation-states - West Africa, Congo, Chad, the Swahili coast - already did, and the places that could but didn't - namely South Africa - didn't because the right crop/animal packages didn't exist there.

I'm not an expert on 18th-19th century colonization and I couldn't tell you why exactly Europeans dominated Africa, but I have a pretty firm feeling that it's not the sort of thing you can change with a single monarch or battle.
 
Nationalism is a European ideology. No way pre-colonial africa espouses this.

Sorry to shoot you down all the time. But I sense what you're aiming at is preventing colonization. Make that your challenge. Put this way, there are possibilities to at least limit colonization to small enclaves. (many of them lie elsewhere: in 19th century Europe, or in greater colonial failures in India, or...) But two even stronger Muslim empires (one in the sahel, one uniting the Swahili coast) lasting longer might raise costs o colonization beyond the politically feasible. (economically, African colonization wasn't much of a gain for European powers anyway)

Also, before colonization ans way worse was the slave trade. Try to prevent that first - but it's even harder.
 
Nationalism is a European ideology. No way pre-colonial africa espouses this.

What? Having developed (in its modern, recognisably-European form) in Europe doesn't mean that it has to stay European, or even that it had to develop in Europe. Japan has been a model nation-state ever since Meiji, and had proto-nationalistic inclinations back to the year dot. Nationalism is just class collaboration along cultural lines, which can develop anywhere there are distinct classes.

Ethiopia is not a nation state- it has over 80 ethnic groups, with no one group comprising an absolute majority of the population.

Ethiopia is pretty clearly an Amharic nation-state. Just having a bunch of ethnic groups doesn't mean the state represents them as national citizens.
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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.

That's just what a state society without generalised private property looks like - Russia was like this too, all the way up until the twentieth century. It's not an insurmountable cultural difference, it's a material one.
 
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.
 

kernals12

Banned
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?
 
So how did we get India, China, Japan, and Siam?

Like I said, I'm not saying "only Rome can give birth to nation states". Rather, the institutional history of Rome enabled the nation state to come about, in its purest and most successful form, in Europe. The Asian nations you gave are very clear outliers from the trend of "Rome --> nation states", however, they share a similar legacy of common institutions, common language, and common religion that I listed above. Although I would argue that China and India are not strictly nation states in the manner that we conceive of today. China is more analogous to an imperial entity, given that there are numerous subordinate ethnic groups which themselves are not independent (comparable to what it was for most of its history). Whereas India is a relic of colonialism, and despite some success at replicating the nationalism that succeeded in Japan and other Asian states, they still face a few serious separatist threats.

But furthermore, even if your thesis that particular institutional conditions are not necessary to the development of nation states is true, what impetus are you proposing for the development of such institutions in Africa? You've said, "I disagree with your criticism," without advancing a proposal of your own. What are you suggesting could change the unfortunate events in Africa that happened IOTL?
 
I'd almost think that a colonial Mali might be able to take on some aspects of a nation state. Abu Bakr II manges to discover OTL Brazil & the wealth generated by trade and natural resources and the increased centralization required to fund colonial expeditions form a natural feedback cycle. Ultimately this results in the emergence of a centralized state in Western Africa.
 
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.


I think this is a good analysis of what makes a nation-state, but again there were definitely West African polities with subservience to the rule of law and unified ethnic identities.
 
@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 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.

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).
 
@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 argue that nation states can, and have emerged in Africa, but it's hard for them to spread due to the lack of a common religious and institutional history.

And secondarily, I'm not saying that colonialism was helpful or justified in any way, partially because Europe forced a cultural conception of nationalism onto Africa in an incongruous manner that exacerbated previously extant tensions. A grassroots form of nationalism, as was seen in places like Japan, Thailand, and Turkey, allowed them to establish military strong states which resisted colonialism, so introducing nationalism to Africa at an earlier stage could improve their chances once Europe comes knocking
 
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).

I would say that expecting anything to spread around Sub-Saharan Africa is sort of a non-starter before the 20th-21st century created pan-Africanism. In the precolonial era, intracontinental African trade and cultural exchange was the exception to the norm. The various centers of high population density like the Kongo, West Africa, East Africa, the Nile valley, etc. tended to be oriented "outwards" rather than toward other African population centers. For example West African polities conducted most external trade with Saharan polities to the north and later over the Atlantic. The distances between these population centers are pretty huge, as recall that Africa is around 2x the size of Russia with unfavorable geographical barriers. This separation means that cultural ideas, technology, and political ideas can easily arise in one region, but getting them to spread to other parts of Africa from that region is not likely. It's possible with the right POD given that we did see historically the development of intracontinental trade routes only a few decades before the Scramble for Africa, but that's also a super late timeframe to establish nation-states.

Within regions however, I think we do see unifying cultural traditions allowing for the spread of nation-states in certain regions, and I think in an ATL one could intensify these traditions. The highlands of East Africa had a legacy of Axum and then Ethiopia, West Africa also has the legacy of Ghana and Mali. In an ATL perhaps the Nubian peoples of Sudan manage to hold on and assimilate invaders to maintain a tradition going back to Kush, however climactic factors may make that implausible. In West Africa, curiously the nation-states that one can describe as such were closer to the coast and relatively disconnected from the upper Niger river valley which had the older history, this is probably because the area didn't have a history of one ethnic group continuously dominating the others. However if instead of the OTL Mali empire you saw a continued Soninke domination of the area, we would probably have a Soninke nation arise there. The legal institutions already arose OTL. I cannot think of a likely mechanism however for nation states to arise in the Swahili coast, the Great Lakes monarchies, or Zimbabwe plateau.

I actually would not describe the Zulu as a nation-state, while the people rapidly developed a common identity and sense of shared community, you still did not see the legal and governmental institutions that I think you saw in true African nation-states, like Ashanti, Ethiopia, and the Fante Confederacy. I would say that the Zulu were very close to becoming a nation-state as their political institutions became increasingly sophisticated in my opinion.

Ethiopia is not a nation state- it has over 80 ethnic groups, with no one group comprising an absolute majority of the population.

The dissolution of ethnic groups isn't a prerequisite to forming a nation-state; it occurs after the establishment of a successful nation-state as well as after the development of a public schooling system. When Italy was unified, the percentage of native Italian speakers was in the single digits IIRC, but it was still an Italian nation because the people accepted a common pan-ethnic Italian identity, even if they didn't even speak the same language! Ethiopia has obviously gone through the first phase, establishment of a nation-state, but it has not yet gone through the second phase (dissolution of subnational identities) because low economic development has hindered educational reform. Ethiopia will probably see a large amount of language death and dissolution of ethnic identities as their recently fast economic growth permits for greater educational access and leads to children only learning Amharic as their first language. But even today if you speak to Tigray, Tigrinya, and Afar people and ask them about their nationality, they describe themselves as Ethiopian. Of course the exception to that are the Ogaden Somalis.
 
There were many nation states in pre-colonial Africa but having them across the entire continent is difficult. It does sort of depend on how strict you want to be on the definition of nation-state.

The most clear examples are Ethiopia, Buganda, the Zulu state, the various Hausu Kingdoms and the Bornu Empire. But there are dozens of others, especially if your willing to include ones that were destroyed before colonialism started.
 
Top