Is Africa DOOMED?!?!?!

All of those are North African states, which really belong in a completely separate category from sub-saharan Africa.

And technology transferred at a really really slow pace across the Sahara. The Moroccans practically went conquistador on the Songhai, one of those rich, highly developed, literal Islamic empires which didn't have gunpowder weapons two hundred and fifty years after Europe got them. Battle of Tondibi

Technology transferred pretty quickly actually, the Ghanaian empire was founded in the 800's and developed cities and extensive trade. In about 400 years you see the rise of Mali which is noted for having thousands schools and libraries.
 

katchen

Banned
King of Malta, I AM being careful about how I cite revisionist sources. I said that they were Hindu opinions that MIGHT have some validity and that because of the geographical proximity of South Arabia to India MIGHT show cultural borrowing between Arabia and India. We need to look at revisionist history with a grain of salt BUT WE DO NEED TO LOOK AT IT.
 
Technology transferred pretty quickly actually, the Ghanaian empire was founded in the 800's and developed cities and extensive trade. In about 400 years you see the rise of Mali which is noted for having thousands schools and libraries.

Not to be much picky or anything but aren't those two roughly on the same side of the Sahara?
 
Technology transferred pretty quickly actually, the Ghanaian empire was founded in the 800's and developed cities and extensive trade. In about 400 years you see the rise of Mali which is noted for having thousands schools and libraries.

And yet by 1600, the area still hasn't developed gunpowder technology, almost three hundred years since the Europeans started building weapons with it. The Songhai Empire got its butt handed to it by a puny Moroccan army 4,000 strong marched over the Sahara. North Africa wasn't much, if at all, behind Europe technologically at this time period, which means that two hundred years passed without gunpowder tech jumping the Sahara.

Why it didn't spread I don't know, but being 2-3 centuries behind the weapons tech curve significantly increases the odds of being doomed.

Not to be much picky or anything but aren't those two roughly on the same side of the Sahara?

Ghana and Mali were both sub-saharan African Empires, as was Songhai.
 
King of Malta, I AM being careful about how I cite revisionist sources. I said that they were Hindu opinions that MIGHT have some validity and that because of the geographical proximity of South Arabia to India MIGHT show cultural borrowing between Arabia and India. We need to look at revisionist history with a grain of salt BUT WE DO NEED TO LOOK AT IT.

Except they don't have any validity. It's like citing Gavin Menzie's China Discovering Everything theory or Afrocentric history.
 
Not to be much picky or anything but aren't those two roughly on the same side of the Sahara?

What I was trying to say, was that those kingdoms quickly advanced into states on par with what Europe had within 400 years, due to technological trade across the sahara.

Basileus said:
And yet by 1600, the area still hasn't developed gunpowder technology, almost three hundred years since the Europeans started building weapons with it. The Songhai Empire got its butt handed to it by a puny Moroccan army 4,000 strong marched over the Sahara. North Africa wasn't much, if at all, behind Europe technologically at this time period, which means that two hundred years passed without gunpowder tech jumping the Sahara.

Why it didn't spread I don't know, but being 2-3 centuries behind the weapons tech curve significantly increases the odds of being doomed.

You might have a point there, military technology does seem to have taken a longer period of time to transfer. Although I know that the Portuguese were already selling guns and iron to west african kingdoms like Kongo and Benin in the 1500s. Reading up about the battle I also note that the cannons used by the Moroccans were English and the Pasha in charge of the battle was a Spaniard. These are already signs that even North Africa was falling behind the Europeans, but it does hold true to a lot of battles around the world where Gunpowder was first making an impression, like the Battle of Panipat in 1526 or the Battle of Nagashino in 1575.
 
Plenty of European countries hired mercenaries for their armies, what's the difference?

I just brought it up the spaniard because it's interesting, I think the idea that the cannons were English (according to Wikie that doesn't have inline citations) is more to the point.
 
I just brought it up the spaniard because it's interesting, I think the idea that the cannons were English (according to Wikie that doesn't have inline citations) is more to the point.

Maybe.

Certainly something to note, assuming wiki is right.
 
:rolleyes:

So the PC Inqusition is here.

Do you know how many civilisation develop independent?

Very few, and those which develop independent late like the American one collapsed when the older civilisation met them.

But sure I'm racist because I suggest the best way is simply to import the whole packet of technology, crops and religion, which we know had some success in OTL, instead of just making shit up about a civilisation develop on it own. In fact if you want that, you could start by finding the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley or the Chinese Flood Plains of Africa. I'm going to give you some help, they don't exist there anymore than similar things exist in Europe.

Now come on now, i'am not throwing any charges of racism around what I'am saying is that Rome itself is not the best place to import this whole package from not to East Africa at least. Its the distances involved. As far I know Romans had no contact with East Africa. Why import this package from Rome when areas like Persia, India and even China are closer? Now a Romanized Nubia or even Ethiopia might be better since they would border Roman Egypt . But I still don't see why importing Roman religion will assist them in anyway. Please explain
 
Now come on now, i'am not throwing any charges of racism around what I'am saying is that Rome itself is not the best place to import this whole package from not to East Africa at least. Its the distances involved. As far I know Romans had no contact with East Africa. Why import this package from Rome when areas like Persia, India and even China are closer? Now a Romanized Nubia or even Ethiopia might be better since they would border Roman Egypt . But I still don't see why importing Roman religion will assist them in anyway. Please explain

I'm pretty sure I've read about Roman traders wintering in East Africa.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I think I'll go with the usual "Rome has an unfortunate accident" PoD. Not only do you have two majors based in North Africa (Egypt and Carthage), they'll start expanding trade in Sub-Saharan Africa, by both the Atlantic and Indian ocean.
 
Advanced African Society

My timelines that I play with involve Ethiopia expanding and a Dutch timeline that treats African as equals.

Lately I thought of a POD that the Plagues of Europe instead of killing 1/3 of the population take 90% of Europe and Middle East / North Africa. Ethiopian Koptic influences branch out and expand into the Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. Then when the plagues have passed go back into Egypt and the survivors are mainly the Koptic Christians and they Unite with Ethiopia.

Great Religious turmoil in happening in the Muslim and Northern Christian Europe. The Mongol invasion is to much for Europe and stops at the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees Mountains and European Culture is crammed into Iberia.

The Mongol instead of being defeated by the Muslim Armies in Syria being under populated are destroyed of never show up and Mongol Armies take Constanople and the Arabian Pensula.

The Great Khan then dies and the Empire is broken up just like it was, only with more Little Mongol Realms.

England is still Free and the European Community in Iberia look to Morocco as their population expands.
 
Being strongly cultural deterministic in my view of history, I think Africa's core problem laid in the cultures of the Bantu Peoples that expanded over much of its territory. Think about it: Even with more large domestic mammals and better metallurgy than the Americas and more diseases even than Eurasia, the Bantu-dominated Central and Southern portions of Africa were unable to organize into any large, assimilationist states, as nationalism (or "tribalism" as it is popularly yet erroneously known) was so strong that it crippled trade, communications and progress as a whole.

Have but a look at the Rwandan Genocide, the split of the Luba and Lunda Empires, the endless slave raids in most if not all of Precolonial Bantu Africa or the lack of the ability for, or will to, Bantu states to successfully assimilate conquered or otherwise subjugated peoples and ethnic minorities into their dominant culture.

Contrast this with one of of the most successful, advanced and enduring of all civilizations: China, now home to and overwhelmingly dominated by the largest nation in the history of humanity, the Han. And look at the similarities Bantu Africa has with Post-Classical Europe, with its ever-changing borders, its being the birthplace of two world wars and its love of the nation-state.

Besides non-Bantu Madagascar, the small creole-speaking state of São Tomé and Principé and Western-dominated South Africa or Namibia, the only truly successful country in Bantu Africa is Botswana: I strongly believe that its unique success among Bantu states is due to the fact that this is because the Tswana make up such an overwhelming majority.

The problem in Africa is analogous to, but far more severe than that of, the Balkans: Even when the Balkans were under a good and prosperous state - Tito's Yugoslavia - they ended up destroying it and their quality of life thanks to their inability to put aside their petty differences; and I can see no geographical disadvantages in the Balkans, neither those that were absent during the days of Pax Romana (or the time of the Hittites or the Classical Greeks...) nor those which put the Balkans at a disadvantage to Turkey, which is doing far better today. Now, replace the dozens of nations in the Balkans with the THOUSANDS in Bantu languages-speaking Africa, and it appears obvious why no real progress can be made until Bantu languages-speaking Africans are willing to give up nationalism.
 
Being strongly cultural deterministic in my view of history, I think Africa's core problem laid in the cultures of the Bantu Peoples that expanded over much of its territory. Think about it: Even with more large domestic mammals and better metallurgy than the Americas and more diseases even than Eurasia, the Bantu-dominated Central and Southern portions of Africa were unable to organize into any large, assimilationist states, as nationalism (or "tribalism" as it is popularly yet erroneously known) was so strong that it crippled trade, communications and progress as a whole.

Have but a look at the Rwandan Genocide, the split of the Luba and Lunda Empires, the endless slave raids in most if not all of Precolonial Bantu Africa or the lack of the ability for, or will to, Bantu states to successfully assimilate conquered or otherwise subjugated peoples and ethnic minorities into their dominant culture.

Contrast this with one of of the most successful, advanced and enduring of all civilizations: China, now home to and overwhelmingly dominated by the largest nation in the history of humanity, the Han. And look at the similarities Bantu Africa has with Post-Classical Europe, with its ever-changing borders, its being the birthplace of two world wars and its love of the nation-state.

Besides non-Bantu Madagascar, the small creole-speaking state of São Tomé and Principé and Western-dominated South Africa or Namibia, the only truly successful country in Bantu Africa is Botswana: I strongly believe that its unique success among Bantu states is due to the fact that this is because the Tswana make up such an overwhelming majority.

The problem in Africa is analogous to, but far more severe than that of, the Balkans: Even when the Balkans were under a good and prosperous state - Tito's Yugoslavia - they ended up destroying it and their quality of life thanks to their inability to put aside their petty differences; and I can see no geographical disadvantages in the Balkans, neither those that were absent during the days of Pax Romana (or the time of the Hittites or the Classical Greeks...) nor those which put the Balkans at a disadvantage to Turkey, which is doing far better today. Now, replace the dozens of nations in the Balkans with the THOUSANDS in Bantu languages-speaking Africa, and it appears obvious why no real progress can be made until Bantu languages-speaking Africans are willing to give up nationalism.

This sounds kinda.. oversimplifying if not racist a bit toward those peoples.
"Culturally taught to hate the different ones".:rolleyes:

And stealthy anti-multiculturalism. Ironic pro nationalism of ONE BIG UNITED nation.
 
This sounds kinda.. oversimplifying if not racist a bit toward those peoples.
"Culturally taught to hate the different ones".:rolleyes:

And stealthy anti-multiculturalism. Ironic pro nationalism of ONE BIG UNITED nation.
Please excuse any ambiguity that I may have produced: Racism and race are pseudoscience produced by Europeans in the Early Modern Era to justify their ruthless subjugation of just about everyone they could. Thus, you would be wrong to call me a racist, but I will not go further than that.

"Oversimplifying?" Well, it is but a single post but, then again, very few people call Guns, Germs & Steel racist, including myself, even though geographical determinism is really no more biologically based than cultural determinism. What do you want, a PhD thesis?

And, finally, I am indeed anti-multiculturalism and a moral universalist/absolutist but in a way much more like the concept of the Great Unity and world government than like US nativism.
 
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