Why was Africa so backward?

[ew0054]

Why even before the whole slavery and imperialism thing were the African nations so behindt he rest of the world? It doesn't make sense to me being that their climate is much more bearable than most of the other climates (no harsh winters), I would think they could have had less in their way of advancing technologically.

 

[Elta]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs_and_Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel

 

[Evie]

That's a large part of the explanation.

Of course, the statement itself is a bit misleading. There were lots of relatively advanced civilizations in Africa - civilizations that were decently comparable with contemporary Mediterannean world ones. The Sahelian empires (Mali, Songhay) ; Ethiopia ; the Swahili City-States on the east coast all come to mind.

For all that they were advanced, though, they were vulnerable, and their vulnerability - mostly, in all cases, a vulnerability to the sea - came back to haunt them.

For the Sahel, their greatest strength was their control of the Saharan trade routes. They were inland (and at times, outright landlocked) kingdoms, and once the Saharan trade routes became unimportant with exploration down the coast of Africa, they went from controling strategic trade routes (and benefiting from it) to being in the middle of nowhere. Combine that with the spread of the Sahara (also hit Ethiopia) and you get a nasty recipe to take down a civilization. The Swahili, on the other hand, was very much focused on the sea ; but as an ensemble of City States, they had little by way of a standing navy. The portuguesse had a field day with piracy, breaking the Swahili shipping lanes apart.

Just stuff to keep in mind.

 

[Princeps]

For a long time, African civilizations were isolated. Camels were introduced to Africa only during the rise of Rome and even then, only the most experienced traders could travel to the sub-sharan africa.

Consiquently, contact between mediterranean civilizations and Africa remained low. Isolation alone was a major cause, I believe.

Also, farming in Africa is much more difficult than in the damp and stable enviroirment of europe. Most of europe and middle east doesn't have harsh winters either.

 

[Rambuchan]

That's a large part of the explanation.

Of course, the statement itself is a bit misleading. There were lots of relatively advanced civilizations in Africa - civilizations that were decently comparable with contemporary Mediterannean world ones. The Sahelian empires (Mali, Songhay) ; Ethiopia ; the Swahili City-States on the east coast all come to mind.

For all that they were advanced, though, they were vulnerable, and their vulnerability - mostly, in all cases, a vulnerability to the sea - came back to haunt them.

For the Sahel, their greatest strength was their control of the Saharan trade routes. They were inland (and at times, outright landlocked) kingdoms, and once the Saharan trade routes became unimportant with exploration down the coast of Africa, they went from controling strategic trade routes (and benefiting from it) to being in the middle of nowhere. Combine that with the spread of the Sahara (also hit Ethiopia) and you get a nasty recipe to take down a civilization. The Swahili, on the other hand, was very much focused on the sea ; but as an ensemble of City States, they had little by way of a standing navy. The portuguesse had a field day with piracy, breaking the Swahili shipping lanes apart.

Just stuff to keep in mind.

Yes, well said Oda. The key word in your post being "vulnerability" and you've also rightly pointed out the manner in which their strategic advantages became undone over time. That was a massive blow, from which many have not yet recovered.

This easy vulnerability, and its drastic, long lasting consequences, often lead to the misunderstanding that "Africa was so backward". It shouldn't be underestimated what key economic players the African powers mentioned by Oda were in the Middle Ages. For some weird reason, perhaps because of posting on a civ board, I always find the story of Mansa Musa's generosity in Cairo during his Hajj to be the most telling example of this (but there are far better accounts of Africa's economic clout at the time). Anyway, look him up in Wiki and see what it has to say.

For a long time, African civilizations were isolated. Camels were introduced to Africa only during the rise of Rome and even then, only the most experienced traders could travel to the sub-sharan africa.

Consiquently, contact between mediterranean civilizations and Africa remained low. Isolation alone was a major cause, I believe.

Isolated? Hardly.

If you're on about the Ancient times, then perhaps you're forgetting the menace and commercial acumen of Carthage, the diplomatic and trading hand in the Middle East played by the Axiumite Kingdom, the Christian allure of Egypt and north east Africa from early Anno Domini well into the Middle Ages, not to mention the Egyptians themselves! Isolated like how exactly?

As for trade with Europe, between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, to not put too finer point on it, the Mediterranean and Europe simply wasn't worth trading with in any significant way. Isolation from European trade in the Middle Ages would have been about as crippling as missing out on trade from Africa today. OK, slight exaggeration but you get the point. There was no big reason to prioritise trade with Europe, nor was it missed much.

The Swahili traders of the East Coast of Africa, for example, were not sloppy with their role as agents of Arabian and Asian trade. And neither were Asians sloppy with reaping the benefits of trade with wealthy Africans. India's monolithic middle aged cotton industry saw Africans as major trading partners. The wealth of Mali, Ethiopia etc was not to be missed out on. This Indian commercial interest in Africa and the Arabian trading agents, added yet more prosperity to the East Coast. Not to mention breaking down "isolation". I'm not so sure what commerce was flowing in from further east in Asia. But Africa ~ at least Northern, Saharan, West and East Coasts, was certainly not isolated, whether in Ancient times or Medieval.

 

[Princeps]

Isolated? Hardly.

Isolated enough for the techonolgies, culture and such to spread in enough large scales.

 

[Rambuchan]

Which technologies and culture are you referring to? And when?

 

[Gladi]

Which technologies and culture are you referring to? And when?

Bright day
Pottery wheel, plant and animal domestication? As was alread said in post 2. I am not very fond of Mr. Diamond but some of his idea do have a merit. And Axum, Kush, Egypt, Numidia and Carthago are all Afro-Asiatic cultures. Afaik the oldest purely african culture is Nok, and that is 2nd century CE!

 

[jonatas]

I wouldn't say the Mediterranean (by that I mean the entire Med) wasn't worth trading with. It was the trade route par excellence. Granted some of the civilizations in this area after the fall of Rome weren't exactly the greatest when compared to Ancient Egypt or Rome for example (Latin-Iberian-Goths, Vandal-Berbers etc), but the Med was most definitely a significant nexus of trade and commerce which Arabs and Berbers would control at least as far as North Africa and Iberia were concerned, and interconnect them with China, India and Persia in global commerce.

 

[Uiler]

Bright day
Pottery wheel, plant and animal domestication? As was alread said in post 2. I am not very fond of Mr. Diamond but some of his idea do have a merit. And Axum, Kush, Egypt, Numidia and Carthago are all Afro-Asiatic cultures. Afaik the oldest purely african culture is Nok, and that is 2nd century CE!

I guess what we're really talking about then is sub-Sahara Africa.

 

[Shaihulud]

I can understand about the past backwardness in reference to Jared Diamond's idea, but they really should be doing better in the latter half of the 20th century with all the monetary aid and whatnot. Some African countries do posseses incredible mineral resources that should be theoretically a plus in the modern age, but did not prove so.

 

[Rambuchan]

I wouldn't say the Mediterranean (by that I mean the entire Med) wasn't worth trading with. It was the trade route par excellence. Granted some of the civilizations in this area after the fall of Rome weren't exactly the greatest when compared to Ancient Egypt or Rome for example (Latin-Iberian-Goths, Vandal-Berbers etc), but the Med was most definitely a significant nexus of trade and commerce which Arabs and Berbers would control at least as far as North Africa and Iberia were concerned, and interconnect them with China, India and Persia in global commerce.

OK. Let's try again then. More precisely and succinctly: Europe wasn't, whereas the Med still was. And Africa wasn't isolated either way.

More ramblingly: The administrative hub of that trade route par excellence shifted from Europe, Rome basically, over east and to the southern coast* (Iberia becoming an exception here). The Med remained lucrative, but the wider trading networks maintained by Rome, up into Europe proper, were gone**. Of course this was because of those Arabs and Berbers linking the Med into the wider Ummah, stretching out to Asia, as my bold highlights in your post.

Still rambingly: Sadly for the Latin-Iberian-Goths, Vandal-Berbers, that meant their lands were no longer seen as such important trade Meccas anymore (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). Those people and lands lost their connection to that wider trade route par excellence, a connection they enjoyed when Rome was "The Top Med Dawg". That Dawg changed and the emphasis on trading with those lands did as a result. Result for Africans? Don't look to Europe for the De Nero (ok, so my resistance is weak today).

*That's the African coast funnily enough.
** Remember that the Arab economy was underpinned by Gold, not Silver. There was less Gold floating about in society and under the ground in Europe than in there was in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. That wasn't the case with Silver at the time of "the Dawg switch over" period.

I can understand about the past backwardness in reference to Jared Diamond's idea, but they really should be doing better in the latter half of the 20th century with all the monetary aid and whatnot. Some African countries do posseses incredible mineral resources that should be theoretically a plus in the modern age, but did not prove so.

Oh, so you're saying there are holes in Diamond's great work?

I guess what we're really talking about then is sub-Sahara Africa.

Shifting the goal posts now are we?

 

[jonatas]

Well ok, but for me the Med is a geographical area which is both Southern European, North African and Near Eastern. I think I was objecting to characertizing it as merely European or not African. All these regions share certain similiarites, culture and history, in spite of being on different continents and having obvious differences. Also what I want to say is that the Latin-Iberians and Berbers (both under Muslim influence, and Berbers being North African) did reintegrate into global trade and have wealthy kingdoms based on trade routes, and that the routes used by the Romans didn't exactly disappear but were taken over by the Arabs You're right about the gold from Sub-Saharan Africa moving into North Africa, Europe and Asia, this was a major trade route.

But I think Uiler is right, part of the confusion is with labeling regions. It would probably make more sense to distiguish between the Med, which really is a region of its own, and sub-Saharan Africa.

 

[Gladi]

Shifting the goal posts now are we?

Are we? Or are you? Okay, Africa- Pygmies, Bushmen, Khoisan, these are hardly hubs of commerce, hardly ever were. All of what you listed were groups not limited to Africa, indeed sharing ver few things with the subsaharan africa. And weren't those Swahili under Omani?

 

[Rambuchan]

I guess we need a definition of what is meant by "Africa" in the OP, then don't we?

 

[ChrTh]

Typically when we discussed "African" history in class, the mediterranean cultures are usually not discussed because, well, they're mediterranean cultures and their history is largely dominated by its connections to the euro-mediterranean and middle eastern civilizations. So that's what I took as the OP's intent.

 

[Rambuchan]

I came from a basic geographical definition, altogether different.

 

[Gladi]

I guess we need a definition of what is meant by "Africa" in the OP, then don't we?

Or we can go "okay there were some developed nations in Africa, but why those primitive were so primitive?"

 

[jonatas]

Typically when we discussed "African" history in class, the mediterranean cultures are usually not discussed because, well, they're mediterranean cultures and their history is largely dominated by its connections to the euro-mediterranean and middle eastern civilizations. So that's what I took as the OP's intent.

I don't think it's fair to say that North Africa was dominated by Europe, in Ancient history it's rather the other way around. I would say that the Middle East had a strong legacy there though, but then again so did areas like Nubia on Egypt etc.

 

[Rambuchan]

Or we can go "okay there were some developed nations in Africa, but why those primitive were so primitive?"

We can indeed. But, imho, that horse has been flogged past death. I find an undue prevelance of this side of the coin being debated, it gets boring and misleading. So I wouldn't be taking part in that one, sorry. I'll stick to pointing out the misconceptions instead.