What's up with Southern Africa?

Ian the Admin

Administrator
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If you truly were merely interested in a potential alternate history you would have accepted the information presented to you, or better yet, done some research of your own on the topic, perhaps using the comments in this thread, or the well-informed ones at least, as a launching pad for your analysis.

This isn't an attack directly on your person

Of course it is, which is why you felt the need to say that at all. You just directly accused another poster of having some nefarious motivation, on the grounds of not showing up with what would constitute a perfectly informed opinion in your view. Or, alternatively, of not immediately accepting your self-evident correctness.

but you need to understand this notion that you have of Africa is absolutely false, and that your continued comments regarding Africans are, still, implicitly racist. 'Patronizing' if you prefer a slightly less aggressive term.

Your accusation of racism is ridiculous. On this site accusing someone of racism without backing it up is a serious offense, and your reasoning seems to be that anyone who doesn't have much knowledge of African civilization and therefore comes up with some stereotyped view of it must be a racist.

You're kicked for a week for insults.
 
About Writing: See the Wikipedia page I linked to and my thread on Nsibidi of the Igbo.

That's the Igbo though, not South Africa.

About the Age of Exploration: They could actually more easily establish a prescience in South America: It is closer and they would not have to compete with the much closer by Indonesians, Chinese and Indians for dominance of Australia.

Yeah but trade winds make it easier to go from the African east coast into Asia than from the African West Coast to America.
 
Yeah but trade winds make it easier to go from the African east coast into Asia than from the African West Coast to America.
But keeping Australia would be far harder than keeping eastern South America due to the former being highly competitive from Indonesian and Indian States and China, all of which have large, sophisticated and powerful navies. There is no such problem in the South Atlantic unless the West Africans build a larger naval presence in this scenario than in OTL.
 

Ceranthor

Banned
I think jumpstarting the Bantu migrations and maybe butterflying the tsetse fly out of existence would do wonders in producing larger, more consolidated states in Southern Africa. OTL the Bantus only reached present-day Natal a few hundred years before the Dutch landed at the Cape, which didn't leave them much time to form unified states. If they did, we could see a Shaka Zulu-analogue arising hundreds of years before he did OTL, meaning that the Bantus could unify and possibly produce a more stable iteration of Great Zimbabwe.

I don't think that the Mutapas would have survived any longer than they did historically, being far too reliant on their goldmines and trade links for basic survival. If any of those ran out or got disrupted, the empire as a whole was screwed. As such, a Zulu-analogue closer to the Cape might prove more stable and ultimately more resistant to European attempts at colonization. Furthermore, an earlier settlement of Natal might lead to trade with Arabs and Indians, who would give the Bantus the written script and record-keeping methods they needed to stay afloat. You could have this Bantu nation in decent shape by around 1400, and have them win complete dominance over most of South Africa by around 1500-1600.

This would also make colonization really difficult for the Europeans, who already had plenty of trouble subduing the Zulus, even with modern weapons and tactics. They would likely take a conciliatory tone towards the Bantu emperors, and maybe set up a few enclaves here and there on the coast. The Cape Colony would likely be butterflied away completely, and wholesale colonization of South Africa might fail entirely.
 
I think jumpstarting the Bantu migrations and maybe butterflying the tsetse fly out of existence would do wonders in producing larger, more consolidated states in Southern Africa. OTL the Bantus only reached present-day Natal a few hundred years before the Dutch landed at the Cape, which didn't leave them much time to form unified states. If they did, we could see a Shaka Zulu-analogue arising hundreds of years before he did OTL, meaning that the Bantus could unify and possibly produce a more stable iteration of Great Zimbabwe.

I don't think that the Mutapas would have survived any longer than they did historically, being far too reliant on their goldmines and trade links for basic survival. If any of those ran out or got disrupted, the empire as a whole was screwed. As such, a Zulu-analogue closer to the Cape might prove more stable and ultimately more resistant to European attempts at colonization. Furthermore, an earlier settlement of Natal might lead to trade with Arabs and Indians, who would give the Bantus the written script and record-keeping methods they needed to stay afloat. You could have this Bantu nation in decent shape by around 1400, and have them win complete dominance over most of South Africa by around 1500-1600.

This would also make colonization really difficult for the Europeans, who already had plenty of trouble subduing the Zulus, even with modern weapons and tactics. They would likely take a conciliatory tone towards the Bantu emperors, and maybe set up a few enclaves here and there on the coast. The Cape Colony would likely be butterflied away completely, and wholesale colonization of South Africa might fail entirely.
If you are talking about getting rid of the tsetse fly, I think Central Africa makes far more sense (as it does, even with the tsetse fly): Agriculture could start very early, even during before it did in the Fertile Crescent of OTL. Toddy palms, okra, bitterleaf, raffia, yellow yams, groundnuts, hyacinth beans, water lilies would be superb base crops while termites, honey bees, tilapia, Guineafowl and lungfish would be great livestock. And all of these could grow with the tsetse fly.
 
If you are talking about getting rid of the tsetse fly, I think Central Africa makes far more sense (as it does, even with the tsetse fly): Agriculture could start very early, even during before it did in the Fertile Crescent of OTL. Toddy palms, okra, bitterleaf, raffia, yellow yams, groundnuts, hyacinth beans, water lilies would be superb base crops while termites, honey bees, tilapia, Guineafowl and lungfish would be great livestock. And all of these could grow with the tsetse fly.

The tsetse fly isn't the problem. Sleeping Sickness is. That said, removing the tsetse would lead to the expansion of the Kongo (OTL Angola) kingdom, rather than Great Zimbabwe and/or Mutapa and/or Mapungubwe.

But keeping Australia would be far harder than keeping eastern South America due to the former being highly competitive from Indonesian and Indian States and China, all of which have large, sophisticated and powerful navies. There is no such problem in the South Atlantic unless the West Africans build a larger naval presence in this scenario than in OTL.

That's true. But the reason why I suggested Australia was because it would give incentive for the South Africans to constantly seek better innovations in their shipbuilding than if they went to America. Also, I'm not sure if China would be a big problem, given that at this point they had all but banned having a permanent navy.
 
I know this thread is over a week old, but I found the following post on another forum that really sums up why this discussion is ultimately pointless:

Yes, some people didn't find about the wheel for millenia. I even find that funny, for they had many wheel shaped structures. Whatever. They didn't have rockets, absolute monarchies, gunpowder, ships, and a looong list of developments.
So what? This is not a race. This is the main problem. "Primitive" implies "modern" as a concept. People that are behind, and people that are ahead in the "technology race". Slow nations, fast nations.
Whatever word you use to name it, primitive, technologically behind, what we're talking about is the same: advancement.
It's not PC, it's views of the world. The "technology is running, catch it or die" view of the world was imposed in this time frame. The game is expected to reflect that, you see, the Civ series has a cookie-cooter version of this race, pretty blunt for my taste. But this fetish is what, 300 years old? A dust in the wind. It has been different before and could be different in the future. It's no the be all and end all.
 
I know this thread is over a week old, but I found the following post on another forum that really sums up why this discussion is ultimately pointless:

The "technology is running, catch it or die" idea may be new, but it isn't a "so what?"

The states that have developed more have benefited from that, both as in the benefits of those developments themselves and being able to secure themselves against aggressive, ambitious states (both of which factors have been around since before BC 1700).

Anything in which the fate of peoples and polities is concerned has to take "backwardness" or such into consideration as a problem, not an arbitrary designation.

Its hardly the be all and end all in some ways, but it very much is important in others.
 
I think jumpstarting the Bantu migrations and maybe butterflying the tsetse fly out of existence would do wonders in producing larger, more consolidated states in Southern Africa. OTL the Bantus only reached present-day Natal a few hundred years before the Dutch landed at the Cape, which didn't leave them much time to form unified states. If they did, we could see a Shaka Zulu-analogue arising hundreds of years before he did OTL, meaning that the Bantus could unify and possibly produce a more stable iteration of Great Zimbabwe.

I don't think that the Mutapas would have survived any longer than they did historically, being far too reliant on their goldmines and trade links for basic survival. If any of those ran out or got disrupted, the empire as a whole was screwed. As such, a Zulu-analogue closer to the Cape might prove more stable and ultimately more resistant to European attempts at colonization. Furthermore, an earlier settlement of Natal might lead to trade with Arabs and Indians, who would give the Bantus the written script and record-keeping methods they needed to stay afloat. You could have this Bantu nation in decent shape by around 1400, and have them win complete dominance over most of South Africa by around 1500-1600.

This would also make colonization really difficult for the Europeans, who already had plenty of trouble subduing the Zulus, even with modern weapons and tactics. They would likely take a conciliatory tone towards the Bantu emperors, and maybe set up a few enclaves here and there on the coast. The Cape Colony would likely be butterflied away completely, and wholesale colonization of South Africa might fail entirely.

All you need is for the Kingdom of Zimbabwe to not fall. Maybe get a technological injection from trade, either with the Arabs, Ethiopians or Zheng He. Teff for bread, flax for food and linen, paper and writing for social organization, the dhow and wheelborrough for transportation, crossbows for war.
 
All you need is for the Kingdom of Zimbabwe to not fall. Maybe get a technological injection from trade, either with the Arabs, Ethiopians or Zheng He. Teff for bread, flax for food and linen, paper and writing for social organization, the dhow and wheelborrough for transportation, crossbows for war.


The Kingdom of Zimbabwe fell because of geographical issues, not political ones. Keeping the Kingdom of Zimbabwe requires a geographical POD, making it ASB.
 
All you need is for the Kingdom of Zimbabwe to not fall. Maybe get a technological injection from trade, either with the Arabs, Ethiopians or Zheng He. Teff for bread, flax for food and linen, paper and writing for social organization, the dhow and wheelborrough for transportation, crossbows for war.


The Kingdom of Zimbabwe fell because of geographical issues, not political ones. Keeping the Kingdom of Zimbabwe requires a geographical POD, making it ASB. Having the Kingdom of Mutapa being founded earlier, and having a string of frankly more competent kings and administrators would be better.
 
I'm honestly not quite sure what this thread is about anymore. It seems like most people are posting ideas to create a state in sub-tropical Africa, which for some reason mostly involves the Arabs/Indians/Phoenicians :)rolleyes:) essentially making the area a colony - the old 'blacks did nothing until whites (non-Africans) showed up' trope.

There already were states and complex societies in Southern Africa.

Most of the people bringing northern visitors into the picture are talking specifically about the Mediterranean climate area that corresponds to South Africa's Western Cape Province. The Shona-speaking civilizations to the northeast did not expand into this area for the same reasons why the Incas avoided the Amazon rainforest and the Romans shunned Russia - With the resources and technology available to them at the time, there wasn't much they could do with the land.

As for whether or not the suggestion of outside influence implies racism, it would help to put things in a broader perspective. Ignoring the Vinča proto-writing of the Balkans, which did not evolve into a true script, the idea of written language in Europe was first imported from Egypt. Even earlier than that, it was the Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent that first brought agriculture to Europe. In contrast, agriculture was developed independently by peoples indigenous to Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps in three different locations (the Sahel, West Africa, and Ethiopia).

That the Europeans received outside help doesn't make them inferior, they just didn't have the environmental advantages the Mesopotamians had to get there first. Likewise, it's not that the Khoisan people indigenous to the Cape of Good Hope were incapable of developing agriculture on their own. They either didn't have the right ecological pressures in place, or the wild vegetation of the region didn't have the potential to sustain large populations. Considering that rooibos and a few species of melon are the only somewhat-significant agricultural commodities to come from this region, I'd say the latter is the bigger factor.
 
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