Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
And the one part that isn't narrow (and is connected to the rest of the non-narrow world) is getting more and more desertic every year (Sahel region)
Why was Africa so backward?
- Thread starter ew0054
- Start date
Terrible geography, flora and fauna. No local culture ever gained enough momentum to keep civilization going. Geography may have kept regional cultures from feeding off one another and making additional progress. Without a local civilization base there wasn't sufficient underpinnings to support the imported civilization from north Africa, Europe and the Middle East when connections were distant and difficult to maintain.
thay allso had a lack of domesticatable animals..
all thay had whear bison, rhino, elaphants ect..
the world whould be alot difrent if the mighty armys of africa came acrose the med. in ships landing and rideing armored rhinos and elaphants.
even tho u can tame elaphants u cant domestocate them .
all thay had whear bison, rhino, elaphants ect..
the world whould be alot difrent if the mighty armys of africa came acrose the med. in ships landing and rideing armored rhinos and elaphants.
even tho u can tame elaphants u cant domestocate them .
sydhe
King of Kongs
Elephants can be bred in captivity and really the main reason that they are not considered domesticated is because the male elephants can be dangerous when they are in musht. If they are controlled then (by tying them to a tree until it passes), the males can be used when they are out of musht.
Shaihulud
Deity
Elephants have a gestation period of more than a year. Very hard to domesticate, even societies that regularly made used of elephants for labour prefers to hunt them down in the wild. African elephants also have a reputation of being wild and unmanageable, witness that Circus elephants almost predominantly uses asian elephants for their shows. Cattle was introduced to Africa, they did not have them initially. I think that I agree with those posters who basically said that Afrians did not developed because of the hostile enviroment, lack of contact and therefore the inability to develope the impetus to advance civilised society, due to this factor. The present violence in Africa is due to them having not iron out all their differences in the past. In most modern societies such wars have already been fought and resolved with ancient weapons. Modern weapons are much more deadly and compounded the violence.
sydhe
King of Kongs
Shaihulud said:
They also take a long time to grow compared to horses and cattle. However, they can be bred in captivity and they're pretty tamable, so I suspect the problems are really patience, expense and musht.
Hippopotamuses and Rhinos, unfortunately, can't be domesticated.
Shaihulud
Deity
Imagine Rhino mounted knights... That would be so sweet. Although i wonder why the Africans didn't domesticate the wildebeest, they move in huge herds and breed like mad. Could be a source of meat on the hoof, even if they may not be good for tilling the fields.
Elta
我不会把这种
They like zebras are extremly flighty and easily spooked. (even the slightest smell of blood would make them go nuts.)Shaihulud said:
Rambuchan
The Funky President
Regarding the domestiation and use of animals:
May I guide you to my previous post #43, for some ideas on why many animals were not even thought of as domesticable in the first place? That should certainly be considered alongside any inherent characteristics of these beasts. Not everyone looks at the world in the same way, you know.
-----
Once more, Kill Joy over here notices that no one has even bothered to define "advanced" or "backwards", nor indeed what categories of human and societal development they are talking about.
As a result, this thread reads very poorly as history and anthropology indeed and is telling of this forum's primary reason for being ie. Civ. Jared Diamond's work is once more bestriding the discussion like a colossus, when in fact I am of the belief that his work contains some grave misgivings and simplistic omissions eg. what beliefs people had of their environment for starters.
In fact, much of this thread has connnotations of 19th century European writings on Africa, simply with a 21st century intellectual twist on things. Here we have Diamond replacing Darwin as the great soothsayer. Many of these 19th century writings saw Europeans trying to fit Africans into Darwin's grand Evolutionary scheme of things, yes, as being "backwards" (with a number of definitions). You guys are doing much the same with Diamond's work, using it as an blanket to hide intellectual nudity. It's frankly lazy, dishonest and highly subjective.
I'd like to offer some schools of thought, not necessarily right or agreeable, but worthwhile reading in order to gain an understanding of the development of thinking I speak of above. They are highly relevant to the background of this discussion. I recommend reading up on some of the following (in no particular order):
Primitivism
Romanticism
Claude Levi Strauss
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the noble savage and "amour-propre"
Pablo Picasso
Freud and the subconscious
Exoticism
Orientalism too
and.....
what about some other Social Anthropology???!
May I guide you to my previous post #43, for some ideas on why many animals were not even thought of as domesticable in the first place? That should certainly be considered alongside any inherent characteristics of these beasts. Not everyone looks at the world in the same way, you know.
-----
Once more, Kill Joy over here notices that no one has even bothered to define "advanced" or "backwards", nor indeed what categories of human and societal development they are talking about.
As a result, this thread reads very poorly as history and anthropology indeed and is telling of this forum's primary reason for being ie. Civ. Jared Diamond's work is once more bestriding the discussion like a colossus, when in fact I am of the belief that his work contains some grave misgivings and simplistic omissions eg. what beliefs people had of their environment for starters.
In fact, much of this thread has connnotations of 19th century European writings on Africa, simply with a 21st century intellectual twist on things. Here we have Diamond replacing Darwin as the great soothsayer. Many of these 19th century writings saw Europeans trying to fit Africans into Darwin's grand Evolutionary scheme of things, yes, as being "backwards" (with a number of definitions). You guys are doing much the same with Diamond's work, using it as an blanket to hide intellectual nudity. It's frankly lazy, dishonest and highly subjective.
I'd like to offer some schools of thought, not necessarily right or agreeable, but worthwhile reading in order to gain an understanding of the development of thinking I speak of above. They are highly relevant to the background of this discussion. I recommend reading up on some of the following (in no particular order):
Primitivism
Romanticism
Claude Levi Strauss
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the noble savage and "amour-propre"
Pablo Picasso
Freud and the subconscious
Exoticism
Orientalism too
and.....
what about some other Social Anthropology???!
Ace
Emperor
Just a though, but Africa never really developed Nation-states. After ancient times, the continent remained many small, nomadic tribes of hunter-gathers who continually engage in tribal warfare. And after the colonial period ended and colonial created nation-states became independent, they reverted bad to the tribal warfare. When you are scrambling for your next meal, you don't have time to study the sciences....
Why this constant belief that Africans existed only in small tribes until Europeans got there? What of Mali, Ethiopia, Meroe, and all the rest? Of course the tribe has always been important to most Africans and continues to be so, but this has always been perfectly compatible with nation states.
Ace
Emperor
Since the end of the colonial period, there has been constant "tribal" warfare going on in Africa. And just how does the "tribal" concept fit into Europe and Asia? France, Germany, Greece, China, Italy and most of the other nation-states (but not all) are each one tribe without all the constant "tribal" warfare. Each political entity was/is stable enough to stand without constant civil war between its sub-groups. The only real exception is the Balkans, and look at the troubles they have had there.
Gladi
The ignored thread killer
Rambuchan said:
So how come they did develop agriculture? And even domesticated new cultures?
Rambuchan
The Funky President
Who do you mean by "they"? I'm losing count of the amount of times I've asked you to qualify your statements.
Did you read up on any of those areas and writers I recommended above?
Did you read up on any of those areas and writers I recommended above?
Gladi
The ignored thread killer
Rambuchan said:
How about Bantu?
C~G
Untouchable
- Joined
- May 24, 2006
- Messages
- 4,146
How much exactly you know about the dynasties in China and the history of Europe?Ace said:
Check first the history about the roots of First World War. I remember there was nice post about it in the history forum by Vrylakas, right here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=95423
Partly you are right though. There haven't been tribal warfare recently in many of the countries of Europe. I believe the main reasons have been that they have shared the same religion, there have been enough fertile land for everyone and that the "ethnic cleansing" happened already long ago in history.
You could also see much of the history of late antiquity and the Middle Ages as one of tribal warfare. What, for example, was the Albigensian crusade if not one tribe (French-speaking Catholic northerners) attacking another tribe (Occitan-speaking Cathar southerners)?
Still, I don't see that this is relevant. I didn't say that tribalism is found elsewhere where there are nation states, only that tribalism is not, per se, inconsistent with building a nation state. Certainly I'd agree that the "tribe" is far more important to most African cultures than most European ones. And I'd also agree that this situation can present problems when it comes to nation-building, but it can also offer opportunities. Most of the great African nations and empires formed when one tribe became more powerful and either conquered its neighbours or forced them to accept their overlordship. This meant that a powerful tribe could claim overlordship of a large area surprisingly quickly. As long as they retained their power, the empire functioned and tribute flowed into the imperial coffers. From that perspective, tribalism helps nation-building, because it provides a set of relatively large "building blocks" to make your nation out of (imagine, by contrast, having to create a nation by conquering one village after another, all independently - tribes are larger). But, of course, should the ruling tribe lose power, the lesser tribes would break away relatively quickly. A truly centralised empire was never possible in Africa because of the loyalty everyone felt to their local tribes, and this tendency was in tension with the attempts of various emperors to encourage their own personality cult (the Kanem emperors, for example, were officially so divine that they didn't eat - anyone who caught sight of the food being delivered to the palace risked execution, to prevent the mundane reality becoming known!). When power began to slip from the emperor, it was almost impossible to get it back because the local chiefs would declare independence quickly.
In effect, African empires were federations. We see nothing strange today in having single countries composed of many states; it is not incompatible with nationhood. Many of the problems of modern Africa stem from the fact that the colonial powers failed to recognise the differences between tribes, and lumped different groups together in the same county when there was no "natural" reason to do so. Of course, in pre-colonial times, different tribes often found themselves sharing a country, but that was because there was a powerful central government effectively forcing them to do so. In the absence of this check on the centrifugal tendency of the tribes in post-colonial times, many African countries have effectively fallen apart along tribal lines. Thus it seems to a modern onlooker that tribalism is intrinsically incompatible with nationhood. But I would say that it's not - rather, tribalism is hard to combine with the kind of nationhood that we have seen emerge in much of Africa over the past half-century.
Still, I don't see that this is relevant. I didn't say that tribalism is found elsewhere where there are nation states, only that tribalism is not, per se, inconsistent with building a nation state. Certainly I'd agree that the "tribe" is far more important to most African cultures than most European ones. And I'd also agree that this situation can present problems when it comes to nation-building, but it can also offer opportunities. Most of the great African nations and empires formed when one tribe became more powerful and either conquered its neighbours or forced them to accept their overlordship. This meant that a powerful tribe could claim overlordship of a large area surprisingly quickly. As long as they retained their power, the empire functioned and tribute flowed into the imperial coffers. From that perspective, tribalism helps nation-building, because it provides a set of relatively large "building blocks" to make your nation out of (imagine, by contrast, having to create a nation by conquering one village after another, all independently - tribes are larger). But, of course, should the ruling tribe lose power, the lesser tribes would break away relatively quickly. A truly centralised empire was never possible in Africa because of the loyalty everyone felt to their local tribes, and this tendency was in tension with the attempts of various emperors to encourage their own personality cult (the Kanem emperors, for example, were officially so divine that they didn't eat - anyone who caught sight of the food being delivered to the palace risked execution, to prevent the mundane reality becoming known!). When power began to slip from the emperor, it was almost impossible to get it back because the local chiefs would declare independence quickly.
In effect, African empires were federations. We see nothing strange today in having single countries composed of many states; it is not incompatible with nationhood. Many of the problems of modern Africa stem from the fact that the colonial powers failed to recognise the differences between tribes, and lumped different groups together in the same county when there was no "natural" reason to do so. Of course, in pre-colonial times, different tribes often found themselves sharing a country, but that was because there was a powerful central government effectively forcing them to do so. In the absence of this check on the centrifugal tendency of the tribes in post-colonial times, many African countries have effectively fallen apart along tribal lines. Thus it seems to a modern onlooker that tribalism is intrinsically incompatible with nationhood. But I would say that it's not - rather, tribalism is hard to combine with the kind of nationhood that we have seen emerge in much of Africa over the past half-century.
Verbose
Deity
Hookay...Ace said:
You've narrowed "Africa" down to most of present day South Africa, the desert and rain forest regions.
Your carachterisation does not hold for the several sultanates of the Sudan (Darfur, Kordofan etc.), the kingdom of Ethiopia, the sultanate of Somalia, the Eastern seaboard with the Swahili trading states (reaching inland, where states like Bunyoro, Monbuttu, Waganda, the Azande federation were encountered by Europeans, and liquidated).
It's also off the mark for all of west Africa (with the exception of the deepest rain forest areas perhaps), where the really powerful African states arose, as a combination of Muslim sultanates (the libraries of Timbuctu etc.) and more traditional monarchies (rainmaking kings) states.
And moving down the coast there used to be large and powerful states like Kongo and Angola. Or "Great Zimbabwe" ("Monomotapa"?) in the inland.
Africa was full of more or less well defined political entities. It just pleased Europeans to disregard them. Most of all in west Africa, where the bulk of the slaves were picked up.
That's where the slavers found the right combination of mature agricultural societies with a decent population density, coupled with considerable administrative skill, state power, and of course most important of all, the right kind of political rivalries that could be exploited.
And then the Europeans plum denied the were factors that made slavery a successful venture in west Africa, as it didn't fit the more comforting idea that somehow these people were so dense they could be regarded as "natural slaves".
West Africa = most powerful African states for the longest time = the most "primitive" Africans, the "true Negro race" to 19th c. Europeans. Go figure!
Stolen Rutters
Deity
I don't like the title of this thread...
Europe - Tribes had a long history there. They aren't normally called tribes though. Serbs, Basques, Welch, Scots, Irish, Sicilians... and on and on, have unique cultural and regional identities bound by family and ancestry. The past fifty years of very relative peace can't erase conflict between nations and peoples all across Europe before then.
There were nations everywhere from what I can see, even all throughout Africa. It took the British until deep into the 1900s to destroy the political federation/kingdom they called the Zulu. That was tribe AND a nation it appears. Because they didn't have guns, they didn't really field an army of soldiers against the British in a last ditch effort to protect what was left of their homeland? No guns = backwards? Few nations had a truly industrial economy before the past couple hundred years...
Having an economic and political dominance over all of your neighbors could make you think they were backward. Even most of Europe paled in comparison to England for the vast majority of industrially machined goods in the time of Adam Smith. Most of the world was still more-or-less building things by hand or restricted by guild, when England was, seemingly, automating and industrializing beyond all imagination. Noting the appalling lack of a real industry in France, considered to be the next most powerful nation in the world compared to Britain at the time, Adam Smith, according to the book "The Wealth of Nations" (1776), seemed to project the view that the rest of Europe - nay, the rest of the WORLD - was "backwards" in much the same way this post is talking about Africa. And this was before the rise of the so-called Nation State. See Napoleon (1709s-1810s) bureaucracy and conscription for more into the early beginnings of that development.
Back to the Zulu "tribe". Compared to her neighbors, she was certainly not backward. Able to field a large army for conquest campaigns, dominant for a time in a geographical region, economic hegemony... Next to the British, there was no competition, but next to every one else in the area...?
Eventually, Europe did alot of catching up, North America devloped from seemingly out of nowhere, and now Asia is finally doing the same.
Why was the rest of Europe so backward with all of the same access to technologies as England? Why was Asia so backward with all of those forever-fabled nations of gold and spice? Why was North America so backward but oh so rich in resources? Nobody asks those questions anymore...
Europe - Tribes had a long history there. They aren't normally called tribes though. Serbs, Basques, Welch, Scots, Irish, Sicilians... and on and on, have unique cultural and regional identities bound by family and ancestry. The past fifty years of very relative peace can't erase conflict between nations and peoples all across Europe before then.
There were nations everywhere from what I can see, even all throughout Africa. It took the British until deep into the 1900s to destroy the political federation/kingdom they called the Zulu. That was tribe AND a nation it appears. Because they didn't have guns, they didn't really field an army of soldiers against the British in a last ditch effort to protect what was left of their homeland? No guns = backwards? Few nations had a truly industrial economy before the past couple hundred years...
Having an economic and political dominance over all of your neighbors could make you think they were backward. Even most of Europe paled in comparison to England for the vast majority of industrially machined goods in the time of Adam Smith. Most of the world was still more-or-less building things by hand or restricted by guild, when England was, seemingly, automating and industrializing beyond all imagination. Noting the appalling lack of a real industry in France, considered to be the next most powerful nation in the world compared to Britain at the time, Adam Smith, according to the book "The Wealth of Nations" (1776), seemed to project the view that the rest of Europe - nay, the rest of the WORLD - was "backwards" in much the same way this post is talking about Africa. And this was before the rise of the so-called Nation State. See Napoleon (1709s-1810s) bureaucracy and conscription for more into the early beginnings of that development.
Back to the Zulu "tribe". Compared to her neighbors, she was certainly not backward. Able to field a large army for conquest campaigns, dominant for a time in a geographical region, economic hegemony... Next to the British, there was no competition, but next to every one else in the area...?
Eventually, Europe did alot of catching up, North America devloped from seemingly out of nowhere, and now Asia is finally doing the same.
Why was the rest of Europe so backward with all of the same access to technologies as England? Why was Asia so backward with all of those forever-fabled nations of gold and spice? Why was North America so backward but oh so rich in resources? Nobody asks those questions anymore...
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