Originally posted by
[email protected] 06, 2007 05:07 am
What advanced civilizations? Egpyt? Not really African, more closely related to the maritime Sea Peoples, very little intellectual legacy on the continent. Nubian? Blatant rip-off of Egyptian. Meroe? Stole Roman infrastructure. Axum? A trading state, but no major technological or intellectual advances.
Also from the wiki article:
About 3300 BC, the historical record opens in Africa with the rise of literacy in the Pharaonic-ruled civilisation of Ancient Egypt, which continued, with varying levels of influence over other areas, until 343 BC.[19][20] Prominent civilisations at different times include Carthage, the Kingdom of Aksum, the Nubian kingdoms, the empires of the Sahel (Kanem-Bornu, Ghana, Mali, and Songhai), Great Zimbabwe, and the Kongo.[21][22]
After the Sahara had become a desert it did not present an impenetrable barrier for travellers between north and south. Even prior to the introduction of the camel[23] the use of oxen for desert crossing was common, and trade routes followed oases that were strung across the desert. The camel was first brought to Egypt by the Persians after 525 BC, although large herds did not become common enough in North Africa to establish the trans-Saharan trade until the eighth century AD.[24] The Sanhaja Berbers were the first to exploit this.
Pre-colonial Africa possessed perhaps as many as 10,000 different states and polities[25] characterised by different sorts of political organisation and rule. These included small family groups of hunter-gatherers such as the San people of southern Africa; larger, more structured groups such as the family clan groupings of the Bantu-speaking people of central and southern Africa and heavily-structured clan groups in the Horn of Africa, the Sahelian Kingdoms, and autonomous city-states such as the Swahili coastal trading towns of the East African coast, whose trade network extended as far as China.
In 1418, the fifth expedition by Chinese admiral Zheng He reached Africa's east coast. The two later Zheng He voyages, the last in 1432, also sailed to East Africa. The Chinese travelled at least as far as Malindi in Kenya. In 1482, the Portuguese established the first of many trading stations along the coast of Ghana at Elmina. The chief commodities dealt in were slaves, gold, ivory and spices. The European discovery of the Americas in 1492 was followed by a great development of the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era, had been an overland trade almost exclusively, and never confined to any one continent.[26]
In West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of demand for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the British navy's increasing presence off the West African coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. The largest powers of West Africa: the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire, adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the development of "legitimate commerce" in the form of palm oil, cocoa, timber and gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa's modern export trade. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars.[27]
Read any history book, and you'll hear that Europeans acted as conquerors always act. What's amazing is that: 1) there wasn't very much for them to destroy; 2) the natives (e.g. Dahomey slavers) were very willing to sell out their own people; 3) the Europeans got nailed for what the Arabs had been doing since the 800s; and 4) Africa has managed to avoid almost any major recovery since decolonization (in contrast to Asia and Latin America).
But if you insist on the bullshit that a country is only great when they make their own advances, completely unique from other countries, then congratulations: there is no truly unique culture in the world. Period. Not even the Romans were unique in their system, and especially not the Europeans.
Your complete ignorance astounds me. It really is amazing how you managed to side step the proven fact that European colonization caused pretty much all the problems of Modern Africa (aside from any problems related to te environment, which is no one's fault, not even the Africans). When you have a harsh environment, a huge fucking desert in the middle of the country, and warlords fighting over territories established by European colonists, it's obvious why Africa hadn't recovered as quickly as Asia.
It doesn't matter how much there was for them to destroy. The fact is that the European colonists caused major unrest and conflicts that did not exist prior to their coming over. You truly are completely blind and ignorant to this fact. Maybe if you stopped viewing things through your elitist nonsense you will see that you are fucking wrong. Why won't you accept this?
It also doesn't matter that the African kingdoms traded slaves. Pretty much all the ancient civilizations (and even a few early medieval societies) traded slaves but 1) they were won through conquest, 2) they were not based exclusively on one group of people, and 3) African tribes traded slaves (as well as other things) with each other for the purposes of basically obtaining goods that other kingdoms had. They traded with the Europeans mostly out of the necessity of the trade agreements they had forced upon them by the Europeans.
But some more congratulations are in order. Apparently what we were discussing managed to change from the effects of European colonialism on Africa to what the Arabs did. It doesn't matter what they did. What the Arabs did obviously didn't have such disastrous effects on modern Africa. Stop trying to shift the blame around, you dumb fuck.
In sum: you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
Look, I know just as much history as you. In fact, I know enough to understand this basic fact: there's no such thing as historical proof.