WI - Bantu never expanded to Southern Africa

Aside from the Khoisan making up the majority of the region's pre-colonial inhabitants in ATL, what impact would there be if the Bantu never expanded to Southern Africa?
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Portuguese are uninterested in anything south of Kongo or Zanzibar, because there's nobody who trades anything valuable or who can survive enslavement. White and maybe Asian settler make up more of the later population.
 
Aside from the Khoisan making up the majority of the region's pre-colonial inhabitants in ATL, what impact would there be if the Bantu never expanded to Southern Africa?

Well, the problem with WIs like this is it's hard to say what will be there but it is very easy to say what won't. You could craft a situation where the Khoisan through trade are able to adopt some of the farming and metallurgy techniques of the Bantu peoples, but from there it's up to the imagination to decide what happens
 
Well, the problem with WIs like this is it's hard to say what will be there but it is very easy to say what won't. You could craft a situation where the Khoisan through trade are able to adopt some of the farming and metallurgy techniques of the Bantu peoples, but from there it's up to the imagination to decide what happens

Yeah, that would be interesting. I know this may sound implausible but I was also thinking about the possibility of the Nilotic and Cushitic groups such as the Somali, Maasai etc. being able to push through the Bantu living in Eastern Africa and settle in the south.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Aside from the Khoisan making up the majority of the region's pre-colonial inhabitants in ATL, what impact would there be if the Bantu never expanded to Southern Africa?

How much of Southern Africa was occupied by Khoisan peoples before the Bantu peoples moved in? I ask because when the Europeans first arrived at the Cape, the Khoisan did make up the (vast) majority of that region's pre-colonial inhabitants. The Bantu were very scarce there, and only lived further inland and further east (regions the Europeans wouldn't move into until later). So those inland and more eastern regions... were those previously inhabitated by Khoisan peoples, who had already been pushed out and/or massacred by the migrating Bantu? I've never read any material on the pre-Bantu population of those regions, and it seems pretty crucial to the topic.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
You could craft a situation where the Khoisan through trade are able to adopt some of the farming and metallurgy techniques of the Bantu peoples, but from there it's up to the imagination to decide what happens

Now if that happens, I would have to revise my estimate of Portuguese behavior. The Khoisan could become worth trading with, and if they get to population densities increasing their disease resistance, the Portuguese may see them as candidates for slavery on a sustained basis.
 
Well, there probably wouldn't be any Portuguese ethnicity, considering how early the Bantu started moving south. The butterflies from that alone would be impossible to predict.
 
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