AFRICAN HISTORY: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
africa1:have you ever heard that!!!
The scramble for Africa is, i believe one of the most poorly understood periods in history from what i gather, most people seem to believe that the colonial powers one day sat around a map at the berlin conference, drawing borders around bits they wanted and that was it. But the scramble had already began by the time of the conference of 1884 plus the conference data that any claim must show effective occupation of a region before it was granted to them, this meant in some instances there were literal races between explorers far more intense than destroying lines on a map during the scramble of great powers, like Britain and France nearly went to war. It brought about a revolution in Portugal and I'd argue with the exception of maybe the Zulus and Ethiopians the Africans and their battles against colonialism are often just completely ignored plus the fact that some African countries like Egypt and Ethiopia actually expanded is also often glossed over but to understand the scramble, you really need to go back in time, well maybe you don't but there's some fascinating empires wars and cultural exchanges beforehand the first European colonies in Africa were set up by the Portuguese as bases along their route to India these included madeira in the Atlantic Sofia and Mozambique Luanda in Angola and Mombasa and Zanzibar in east Africa these all proved to be important stopover points for international trade and this was pretty much the standard for colonialism at that time it was far more profitable to set up factories for trade and control sea lanes rather than taking over entire regions as such the Portuguese would also set up colonies in the spice islands Hormuz and Persia and important to this story in Oman the Spanish and Portuguese had agreed to divide the world in two so they had little competition from Europeans in Africa but late in the 16th century the Iberian union united Portugal with Spain and as such the Portuguese entered into Spain's wars against the Dutch and the English the Dutch were quick to move into the colonial game and took mena from the Portuguese they expanded in west Africa established the Dutch slave coast and built forts in Senegal plus for a few decades they even held Portuguese- Luanda while in the south in the middle of the 17th century they entered cape town an important midway point for ship sailing between the oceans the Dutch that settled in this region became the boars however the locals in south Africa that they encountered during this period were not the Zulu they were the quake way these are often grouped together with the San hunter-gatherers but they were a distinct group of people the Zulu on the other hand didn't enter the picture for another few decades as they were Bantu who migrated from the north. there was also the coaster in south
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AFRICAN HISTORY.
- There was also South Africa at that time, and they are closely related to the Bantu there is some debate over when the Khosa arrived but their language shows that they may have been there a lot sooner, as they adopted some of the click sounds from the local San people. Hence Khosa is usually pronounced something like gnosa but i think it's time to explain a bit about the African people and their kingdoms, so this is going to be a gross oversimplification, i'm aware of that, as i'm trying to explain about 200 years of African history, but here goes. - let's start with the Bantu, they originated probably from Cameroon and they migrated south and east, this migration lasted potentially thousands of years so don't think of it like a mass movement of people. they became the dominant group in many countries in central and south Africa over time, but they often lived alongside the original inhabitants so in south Africa and especially in Namibia you still have the San people, plus alongside the Bantu in Congo you have the pygmies plus it was the Bantu who established the kingdom of Congo in central Africa. - And this kingdom in the early 1600s sent an ambassador to meet with the pope in Rome he was Emmanuelle nevunda but after travelling via Brazil and Spain, he died just two days after arriving in Rome, this kingdom also built cities larger than some in Europe and many of their rulers became Christian very early on and adopted European fashions. Congolese men also joined Christian religious orders they had their own coats of arms and the kingdom survived in one form or another until the 19th century, so you had an almost European Christian kingdom in central Africa which had connections with the papacy and a large urban population. - but their country was often torn apart by civil war and strangely during one of these wars in the late 1600s, a prophet emerged this prophet was Kim Pavita and she had visions claiming that Jesus was in fact born in the Congo, so it was sort of like an African version of Mormonism otherwise in central Africa, you had many kingdoms like the kingdoms of Burundi and Rwanda which were established there in the late 1600s from very early on these kingdoms were based on tutti dominance over the Hutus and this power dynamic would still be very important in the 20th century leading to genocides in the respective countries, and the outbreak of the first Congo war in southern Africa. It was also the Bantu specifically the Shona people who built great Zimbabwe in medieval times. - but by the 1600s great Zimbabwe had fallen and power in the region was transferred to metepa in Mozambique, this kingdom of metepa however was eventually weakened due to infighting and Portuguese interference so by the late 17th century they often accepted the vassalage of the Portuguese or even their other new Neighbour the Rosvi empire the Rozvi grew rich on gold and were a formidable power so they were able to fight back numerous Portuguese attempts to take over their gold mines going further north along the coast and the Muslims once ruled over the important trading centers of Zanzibar and Mombasa but their kill was sultanate was already on the decline when the Portuguese arrived and it ultimately collapsed this allowed the Portuguese to take over these trading centers but soon a new power emerged in the region and anyone who has played Victoria 2 will know this power Oman their capital of muscat had been held by the Portuguese but they were driven out of there in the 1600s and the new Yoruba dynasty capitalised on their victory and chased the Portuguese west and took over the east coast of Africa Zanzibar, in particular would become an important trading center for the lucrative Arab slave trade something that played a very important role during the scramble for Africa centuries later. - plus it was from Zanzibar that many Arab slavers would form trading centers deep into the interior of Africa further north still you had more muslim sultanates in Somalia like Ajiran who fought back a couple Portuguese invasions while nearby the adult sultanate in the 1500s tried to conquer their christian neighbors the Ethiopians but the Portuguese came to the aid of the Ethiopians and prevented the takeover from happening the ottomans on the other hand would come to the aid of the muslims starting the ottoman portuguese war which spread from East Africa all the way over to india now in previous centuries the Somalians were pretty intrepid explorers as people like Saeed of Mogadishu made his way over to China in the 1300s by now though they began to fall behind Europeans in terms of maritime technology and trade but the port of berbera continued to be incredibly important well into the 19th century it was said during this time that thousands of camels would arrive at the port bringing ivory cattle hides in their likes ready to be shipped across Arabia and beyond but their failures against Ethiopia meant that Ethiopia would remain an independent christian kingdom trapped behind Muslim lands so many christians believed that this was the homeland of presta john a fictional Christian king of great wealth who would aid the Europeans in their conquest of the islamic empires plus this idea of presta john encouraged many Europeans to explore the region furthermore as a christian kingdom Ethiopia like the Congo had connections with Europe and the papacy for instance they sent ambassadors to the council of Florence in the 1430s and they even tried to form an alliance with the king of Aragon against the muslims before that going even further back their ruler lali baylor built huge stone churches which bear his name in the 12th century as a sort of second jerusalem this came shortly after the muslims reconquered the city of jerusalem so they were present in the middle east during the crusades and ethiopians along with their christian neighbours to the north were sometimes present in the courts of the byzantine empire yet this whole area of east africa as you'd expect had a completely different racial makeup its position on the indian ocean brought in a number of arab merchants who brought islam to the area then within ethiopia they had a number of different ethnicities like the tegrayans and the amharans americ was the language of the empire for the most part but this was a semitic language closer to those in the middle east rather than anything in africa plus in future centuries many of the ethiopian rulers and elites just like many of the europeans would consider the ethiopians to be caucasian for instance a journalist from haiti named benito sylvain met emperor menlick ii in the 19th century and he hoped that he would become an honorary president of their society advancing the course of black people but Menelik refused declaring that he was in fact a Caucasian man but don't think of Caucasians just being white like in the usa today as at that time it included everyone from India to England then in Ethiopia and even the islamic sultanates in the 1500s they were facing a sort of migration crisis as the Oromo people from southern Ethiopia began to migrate north these Oromo people and the ruling America never fully unified into a single entity and conflicts between them continue to this day the Ethiopians weren't even the only Christian kingdom in the region as just to the north of them you had the Medibar who survived for centuries but just to the west of them you had more Islamic kingdoms and empires like Darfur will die and bought new now for Borneo they were in medieval times a far more powerful empire but by this point they had become a bit of a rump state.
By Mariam Ahmed Blgng2 years ago in History
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ITS FASNATING TO KNOW MORE ABOUT AFRICA