WI: Europe was Black

Simple scenario as it says in title, African powers take over and rule Europe. Which powers would be most suited for the job and what do you think would be the effects of African rule?

A modern-day glimpse into such a Europe would be Angola's reverse colonisation of Portugal. ;)

Looking forward to your responses! :D
 
An later glaciation era, allowing more temperated "African" powers, with more agricultural ressources, to easily takeover weakened "European" tribal regions?
 
Simple scenario as it says in title, African powers take over and rule Europe. Which powers would be most suited for the job and what do you think would be the effects of African rule?

A modern-day glimpse into such a Europe would be Angola's reverse colonisation of Portugal. ;)

Looking forward to your responses! :D

Your proposal may fit better into Alien Space Bats if you want your hypothetical Europe (or Africa) to resemble in any way their real life/modern counterparts. Any POD that would have Europe ruled by Africa would probably go far enough back to make the cultures on both continents unrecognizable.


That said, if you're going with "allohistorical irony", you should have Idi Amin conquer Scotland. :p
 
The only one possible to succeed is a Carthage and Carthagians weren't black. They'd look more like modern Egyptians in skin color.

A decisive victory in the first Punic War wouldn't have been ASB but it would be close to a lottery win. With that lottery win, the following Punic Wars could have actually resulted in a powerful Carthagian state that would control all of North Africa. From there, they might manage to hold portions of mainland Europe.

But it would never be on par with the colonization of Africa without ASB. It'd just be some territory in Iberia and a few other places.
 

SinghKing

Banned
Along with being the first peoples on earth to develop carbon steel (which they actually were IOTL- with archeological evidence which proves that they made this breakthrough i.r.o 1000BCE), ITTL, the Bantu are also the first peoples on Earth who make the breakthrough of inventing gunpowder (doing so roughly a millennium before the Chinese would have done so IOTL), and swiftly combine the two innovations to create the first gunpowder weapons, cannons and rockets- in an era when their most advanced European contemporaries, the Romans, are still engaged in the development of primitive Ballistae. Would this be a good starting point?
 
Along with being the first peoples on earth to develop carbon steel (which they actually were IOTL- with archeological evidence which proves that they made this breakthrough i.r.o 1000BCE), ITTL, the Bantu are also the first peoples on Earth who make the breakthrough of inventing gunpowder (doing so roughly a millennium before the Chinese would have done so IOTL), and swiftly combine the two innovations to create the first gunpowder weapons, cannons and rockets- in an era when their most advanced European contemporaries, the Romans, are still engaged in the development of primitive Ballistae. Would this be a good starting point?

Go on, please. Also, the Romans were not involved with the developement of the ballista, as it was already used by Alexander's time, with the exception of scorpio and the unlikely carriage ballista *cough* Rome: Total War *cough*
 

Lateknight

Banned
Along with being the first peoples on earth to develop carbon steel (which they actually were IOTL- with archeological evidence which proves that they made this breakthrough i.r.o 1000BCE), ITTL, the Bantu are also the first peoples on Earth who make the breakthrough of inventing gunpowder (doing so roughly a millennium before the Chinese would have done so IOTL), and swiftly combine the two innovations to create the first gunpowder weapons, cannons and rockets- in an era when their most advanced European contemporaries, the Romans, are still engaged in the development of primitive Ballistae. Would this be a good starting point?

Ok how do they get to Europe with those guns because if I remember right the Bantu never had a sea fearing tradition also there not one monolithic group they probably use any new weapons they made fighting each other.
 
Along with being the first peoples on earth to develop carbon steel (which they actually were IOTL- with archeological evidence which proves that they made this breakthrough i.r.o 1000BCE), ITTL, the Bantu are also the first peoples on Earth who make the breakthrough of inventing gunpowder (doing so roughly a millennium before the Chinese would have done so IOTL), and swiftly combine the two innovations to create the first gunpowder weapons, cannons and rockets- in an era when their most advanced European contemporaries, the Romans, are still engaged in the development of primitive Ballistae. Would this be a good starting point?

Wait, the Bantu peoples developed gunpowder first? I'm interested. :confused:

Why didn't they create rockets, guns, or cannons before other societies?
 

Lateknight

Banned
Wait, the Bantu peoples developed gunpowder first? I'm interested. :confused:

Why didn't they create rockets, guns, or cannons before other societies?

No they didn't ITTL means in the timeline he's saying that because they were the first to discover steel they could have been the first to discover gunpowder.
 
No they didn't ITTL means in the timeline he's saying that because they were the first to discover steel they could have been the first to discover gunpowder.

Okay, I misread that earlier post. Were the resources needed to make gunpowder at least as plentiful in sub-Saharan Africa as they were in Europe and Asia?
 
Okay, I misread that earlier post. Were the resources needed to make gunpowder at least as plentiful in sub-Saharan Africa as they were in Europe and Asia?

From a quick google search, it seems like Sub-Saharan Africa had all the ingredients, they were just all quite far apart :/ But then, I guess trade could help.
 
Part 1:

Frankly I think if we go with carbon steel spreading and becoming commonly known in the lands of the Nok and Bantu peoples (so mainly sub-Saharan West Africa) I can see the Bantu speaking peoples have a good run. Assume they take the 500 BCE OTL Congo Nucleus but rather than them dispersing, the entire greater group of them head North and get as far as the Bahr el Ghazal, hastening the final collapse of Meroe and displacing the Meroeites and Noba/Nubians into Egypt.

The remnants who do stay with their new Bantu overlords soon drip-feed tales of a land so rich in material wealth that a leader arises from among the clans of this new land. The Bantu move to take on Egypt. For all their armies and chariots, the crafty clansmen and their steel weapons take on the Pharoahs and decisively crush them in the field. The last pharoah of Egypt is murdered by Bantu outriders in the marshes of the biblical Yam Suph - the sea of reeds.

So the Bantu are in Egypt, far from home and a drip in the ocean compared to their conquered subjects. What do they do next? The same thing that happened with the Nubians. They tell others to come to the rich lands on the northern edge of Africa between the Desert and the Sea. Many Bantu who remained in Sub-Saharan Africa heed their call.

The year is now 200 BCE. Bantu peoples are still streaming north into the rich conquered lands. The Egyptians are brought to the status of a class of subject farmers, whilst the Bantu still count their wealth in cows, though that is already starting to change. The Mediterranean classical world is in shock, the ancient empire of Egypt has fallen in the space of less than 10 years and then been occupied a further 60 by a bunch of scrubby black people with weapons that turn iron and are a thousand times more resilient.

(who needs gunpowder. Carbon Steel vs Copper?vs Bronze? You know who wins + the fluid war tactics of Bantu tribes vs the chariots and standing in rows of the the Egyptians. These barbaroi aren't for turning!)
 
Last edited:
Part 2:

Having clipped the wings of the Ptolemids, the Bantu begin to naturally expand westward along the North African coast, sweeping the weakened Carthaginian remnant under the rug and keeping their sailors and ship-builders. The Bantu peoples reach the Pillars of Hercules, and using their Carthaginian subjects knowledge of the terrain and the lands of Iberia (so recently theirs until Zama in 202) they take the Roman colonies there by surprise. The local Keltoi help by seizing the opportunity to push the Romans into the sea in the North. Date is now approximately 170BC. The Empire of the Bantu is getting large, stretching from the depths of the Sudan to southern shore of Spain, and we see instability creeping in at the edges. A massive migration of sub-Saharan Africans and several generations of their intermixed offspring now holds sway over the entire northern coast of Africa (a more fertile land at this point in history, though that will change if their cattle overgraze the coastal strip). The steel forges of Alexandria work night and day, making weapons and armour for Emperor Dingiswayo the Third.

Rome is panicking, unable to dislodge the Bantu and under renewed attack from the Keltoi in Transalpine Gaul once more. This is still the generation that suffered Cannae, and having seen the lightning speed with which the Bantu conquered Iberia and finding a lack of young men for the army, a reform is proposed by the grizzled Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus. The sarissa, it is hoped, will provide an easily manufacturable weapon to defeat the Bantu menace.

(coming next, Consul Julius Gaius Caesar vs Emperor Dingane! The resolution? No problem)
 
Last edited:
So...while the Greeks/Romans/Arabs/Turks would never manage to cross the Sahara or traverse down the Nile into Eastern Africa...the Bantu manage it on what logistics coming from what direction?

Granted there were the Nubian Pharoahs but didn't they not conquer Lower Egypt?

Though we also have to look at the demographics of the time frame. What you seem to be pushing is the Bantu migration which took an awful amount of years to happen Suddeny push northward all at once?
 

jahenders

Banned
Later point in history, but the Moors were a possibility to conquer. There wouldn't have been enough to "turn Europe black," but they could potentially have conquered a fair bit.
 
So...while the Greeks/Romans/Arabs/Turks would never manage to cross the Sahara or traverse down the Nile into Eastern Africa...the Bantu manage it on what logistics coming from what direction?

Granted there were the Nubian Pharoahs but didn't they not conquer Lower Egypt?

Though we also have to look at the demographics of the time frame. What you seem to be pushing is the Bantu migration which took an awful amount of years to happen Suddeny push northward all at once?

Well I figure they have carbon steel weapons... everyone around them has carbon steel weapons... who doesn't have them? The folk northward. The historical food producing cultures in that area would fall like grain under a scythe :D where in OTL they provided a buffer to stop expansion. I am turning a 500 year process into a sorta 10 years everyone just leaves this place thing though, I do admit. I guess we could slow play it and have them turn up in time to crash the Jesus party.

It's pretty much just for fun though, rather than super serious. Regards the logistics, pastoralists would do alright along the Nile - the Turks had the disadvantage of being pulled in other directions and being in the period of post-berber saharapocalypse thanks to the goat spam. The Greeks and Romans both had no carbon steel and the Arabs had to face off against organised Christian Ethiopia/Axum and so on - they kinda got bogged down in the highlands rather than going along the Behr el Ghazal and into Central Africa.
 
Later point in history, but the Moors were a possibility to conquer. There wouldn't have been enough to "turn Europe black," but they could potentially have conquered a fair bit.

When, exactly? The only expansion I can think of where in Spain, and it was far more about maintaining whatever was possible rather than conquering further.
Not that Moors were black (that's more coming from the distinction of Black and White muslim slaves in XVIth Spain) to begin with (if something, Berber dynasties made a quite large usage of black slaves)
 
Well I figure they have carbon steel weapons... everyone around them has carbon steel weapons... who doesn't have them? The folk northward. The historical food producing cultures in that area would fall like grain under a scythe :D where in OTL they provided a buffer to stop expansion. I am turning a 500 year process into a sorta 10 years everyone just leaves this place thing though, I do admit. I guess we could slow play it and have them turn up in time to crash the Jesus party.

It's pretty much just for fun though, rather than super serious. Regards the logistics, pastoralists would do alright along the Nile - the Turks had the disadvantage of being pulled in other directions and being in the period of post-berber saharapocalypse thanks to the goat spam. The Greeks and Romans both had no carbon steel and the Arabs had to face off against organised Christian Ethiopia/Axum and so on - they kinda got bogged down in the highlands rather than going along the Behr el Ghazal and into Central Africa.

The only rapid paced migration I know of was the Mongols and that was because Geography favored the crap out of them. I don't think so in Africa what with the much more varied geography.

I can see them instead pushing for the Spice Coast of East Africa along the bottom of the Red Sea and the Horn first and then after sometime getting a naval tradition and then spreading northward Into Arabia Felix and Egypt by sea.
 
Top