The irony,
based on what I've read, is Europe didn't actually start gaining a decisive technological advantage over the rest of the world until about the 1700s: the Inca
had the equipment (not to mention terrain) to beat Spanish cavalry
Cavalry wasn't even relevant to the spanish conquests in America. The conquistadores are represented with horses in civ but horses were a luxury for commanders. The americans had the numbers to slow the europenas had they joined together. But they were very divided, hence the numbers were never there even before the diseases ravaged their communities. Or long after the europeans introduced diseases and their effects had long gone over the natives, as with the central and western US. The Aztec and the Inca fell that way, dividied: the spanish found local help. The thing to notice is that it wasn't just the military technology of europeans at the time that was superior, their "social technology" was also superior in this fight: Spain managed to easily rule much of America across an ocean for three centuries, no noteworthy rebellions during all that time. The american natives couldn't keep a coalition (or an empire) together long enough to beat the europeans, even where they had had the numbers. And the europeans were kind of like the romans in the ancient Mediterranean: if you defeated one of their expeditions they'd just send another, and another... I really can't think of an alternative history where the whole american continent doesn't get colonized, only alternatives (suppose no diseases) where it took longer to happen.
The
reason early Portuguese incursion into Africa was limited to coastal trading posts was they tried to take the land by force and were routed every time; it wasn't until the major players like Kongo and Songhai had broken and Europeans could play divide-and-conquer with the petty kingdoms that the Rape of Africa began in earnest—not-so-coincidentally, this is when the plantation economy
really took off.
It may be that Kongo only lasted as long as it did due to portuguese help, rather than the other way around, that the portuguese hastened its collapse. Arguments could be made either way. But its besides your point. Kongo had one city, everything else was impermanent. It couldn't just be conquered because there was nothing to conquer. Unlike the american advanced civilizations, of which there were several that were easily conquered and incorporated into colonial administrations, the africans in austral Africa generally were
nomadic. I don't know why this key point tens to be omitted or unappreciated in most books about the region. It was an adequate way of life for conditions in the region, not some kind of evidence of underdevelopment. It didn't prevent rudimentary but important industries in metalworking and textiles, it didn't prevent social organizations that we can call "kingdoms" (with the qualification that they were very much "feudal"). And it meant that they were quite hard to either conquer or destroy unless massive manpower was used to take over the land. Europe didn't have that manpower, then or even during the 19th century, the "Rape of Africa". Africa the continent is huge, larger than north or south America. It wasn't the natives that stopped european incrustations: it was the land itself. Diseases, distance (fewer good rivers), lack of existing infrastructure (no established empires to conquer). The only way to exploit Africa's resources was to trade with the africans who were already there.
It is worth thinking why, given that Africa was the source of slaves to the Americas, plantations were not developed in Africa, rather than move all those people, with costs and losses on the way, to another continent. it's also worth wondering why these slaves had to be
bought from the african polities rather than just
taken. One answer is that expeditions to take slaves either returned empty-handed (the locals simply moved away, and the invaders couldn't
find them) or didn't return at all decimated by diseases and hunger. It wasn't the strength of african polities that stopped the europeas efforts at conquest, rather the opposite, it was their "weakness": their ability to evade the invaders, forcing them to come to terms in order to get anything useful at all from Africa. Edit: The other other, the relative harshness of the land compared to the americas and difficulty in policing "borders", essential to exercise power.
The slave trade and later the ivory trade slowly had an effect of enabling the creation of stronger polities, more centralized ones. Firearms had to be sold to the africans in order to increase the harvest of ivory, and inevitably were used in local wars also. As it happened with Japan, they made it easier for political consolidation to happen. I don't think anyone can say for certain but my guess is that when western Europe finally turned its attention to dividing Africa generally there were larger, more organized polities there than in the 16th century. In one of history's great cynical ploys, one of the things done shortly after the division of Africa in Berlin was a convention in Brussels (1890) to ban the sale of firearms and ammunition to africans for "humanitarian" reasons - ending the slave trade - just in time to leave them defenseless as the new colonial administrations started to take over the allotted territories.
Here you have some quotes from the treaty.
Article I
The powers declare that the most effective means of counteracting the slave trade in the interior of Africa are the following:
1. Progressive organization of the administrative, judicial, religious, and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations.
2. The gradual establishment in the interior, by the powers to which the territories are subject, of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by slavehunting.
[...]
7.Restriction of the importation of firearms, at least of those of modern pattern, and of ammunition throughout the entire extent of the territory in which the slave-trade is carried on.
[...]
Article VIII
[...]the importation of firearms, and especially of rifles and improved weapons, as well as of powder, ball and cartridges, is, except in the cases and under the conditions provided for in the following Article, prohibited in the territories comprised between the 20th parallel of North latitude and the 22d parallel of South latitude, and extending westward to the Atlantic Ocean and eastward to the Indian Ocean and its dependencies, including the islands adjacent to the coast within 100 nautical miles from the shore.
Note he the emphasis on modern weapons. The slave trade, of course, had been going on for centuries, before those weapons even existed. But it sure as hell would be
inconvenient for the colonial powers to have to fight natives armed with modern weapons... which they just had to occupy, to end slavery your see. As you can see, the Rape of Africa, the effective occupation of its territory, was a
humanitarian intervention.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
