WI: African 'Shogunate'

SunDeep

Banned
So, one of the early advantages that African civilisation had was the earliest known discovery and production of carbon steel, developed by the Bantu all the way back in 500 BC. Yet this innovation, which could have a crucial military advantage over anyone else in the world at this time, was never utilised to its full potential. Significant parallels can be drawn between Bantu East Africa and their contemporaries in early Yayoi period Japan at this time- how far could the parallels continue to run in an ATL? Would it be plausible to conceive of the emergence of what would essentially be an African equivalent to the Shogunate, with the Hima or a parallel group filling the niche of the samurai on the top rung of their caste system?
 
So, one of the early advantages that African civilisation had was the earliest known discovery and production of carbon steel, developed by the Bantu all the way back in 500 BC. Yet this innovation, which could have a crucial military advantage over anyone else in the world at this time, was never utilised to its full potential. Significant parallels can be drawn between Bantu East Africa and their contemporaries in early Yayoi period Japan at this time- how far could the parallels continue to run in an ATL? Would it be plausible to conceive of the emergence of what would essentially be an African equivalent to the Shogunate, with the Hima or a parallel group filling the niche of the samurai on the top rung of their caste system?

I don't know enough about such production or about the period itself in African history.

First, why wasn't it developed to its full potential? As you noted, it would have given them an advantage over everyone. Is the technique simple enough that one person could choose to refine it and use it further (a la the developments in "Cato's Cavalry")?

Also, where in East Africa were they? Were they a more centralized state? If not, one possibility to have it utilized to its full potential would be for the idea to migrate up to Abyssinia, which was centralized enough a central authority could have implemented it.
 
Getting a state in which the Monarchy has been made powerless while a Military Prime Minister is the real power is itself not that hard outside of Europe.

Incidentally the Japanese sword production techniques were developed because Japan had low quality ore available and thus they needed to do serious refining of it to make usable weapons.
 

SunDeep

Banned
I don't know enough about such production or about the period itself in African history.

First, why wasn't it developed to its full potential? As you noted, it would have given them an advantage over everyone. Is the technique simple enough that one person could choose to refine it and use it further (a la the developments in "Cato's Cavalry")?

Also, where in East Africa were they? Were they a more centralized state? If not, one possibility to have it utilized to its full potential would be for the idea to migrate up to Abyssinia, which was centralized enough a central authority could have implemented it.

At least as early as 400BC, in Western Tanzania, they were producing medium grade carbon steel in pre-heated forced-draught furnaces- at least five centuries before the Japanese first started doing so. From there, carbon-steel production spread across the majority of East Africa's Great Lakes region over the course of the next couple of centuries. Critically though, significant agricultural cultivation of high-yield crops, required for the formation of larger, organised polities, began in East Africa's Great Lakes region around six centuries later than it did in Japan- one which uniquely utilised bananas and plantains as its staple crops. As such, no major states would emerge in the region IOTL until a millennium later, the 13th century at the earliest- again, six centuries after the emergence of the Japanese Imperial Court.

Clearly, that relative lack of organisation's the main issue, and the key reason why this early advantage wasn't developed to its full potential IOTL. But if an individual had taken that decision to put that advantage in metallurgy to good use early on, crafting carbon-steel armor or weaponry for those who could afford it, then could it have potentially led to the emergence and rise to power of a ruling warrior class (their own equivalent to the Japanese samurai or European knights), creating several feudal fiefdoms (akin to the Japanese or European feudal eras) before a warlord eventually forges them together into a single empire (/'shogunate'), either directly through conquest or indirectly through the formation of a structured hegemony?

Plenty of historical empires were originally formed in this manner, establishing their imperial political structures themselves- with the military advantage of carbon-steel put to good use in such an ATL, would it be plausible for a king or warlord to do the same in TTL's medieval East Africa and form a unified empire prior to the formation of any major states in the region IOTL, provided that extensive large-scale high-yield crop cultivation has already been established for centuries by this stage? And if so, when would be deemed to be a feasible time for such an East African feudal dynasty to be established ITTL? At around the same time as the Kamakura Shogunate in Japan, as the 13th century dawns, seems realistic; perhaps even slightly pessimistic, given that it would be emerging at around the same time that the first major kingdoms began to emerge in East Africa IOTL, indicating that the POD wouldn't significantly accelerate the pace of nation-building in the region. But would having TTL's East African feudal dynasty emerge prior to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire be taking it too far?

(Or, alternatively, you could simply do this by having an ATL where someone introduces bananas or plantains to the African Great Lakes region from South-East Asia six centuries before they began doing so IOTL. Either option would work just fine.)
 
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