Post by Shadow on Aug 28, 2020 14:01:14 GMT -5
I was on quora the other day reading a wonderful response regarding the myth of African historic underachievement and technological underdevelopment, when I stumble upon a slick comment to the answer. Here's a transcript:
Answer: “The inferiorization process was developed by European slavers and colonizers to break Africans.”
Comment: What about Islamic slavers that made Africans the primary source for the later global slave trade? Also, the infeoritization was implicit in the fact it was Europeans sailing to African shores and winning battles with inferior numbers due to superior technology.
Answer: “The Tarzan image is a racist imagining of Africa.”
Comment: Tarzan is just a story of a man raised by Gorillas; the original name of the novel is “Tarzan of the Apes.”
Answer: “The more sophisticated centers of Africa”
Comment: I’m sorry but they were not that impressive; see the meso-american civilizations who did just as much and more while being incomparably more isolated from all the ideas of the ancient Eurasian civilizations.
Answer: “It is to explain away why mighty and advanced Europe took more than 400 years to bring under her rule the whole of Africa”
Comment: Actually it only took Europe 33 years to conquer Africa;
(Post a map of Africa before the Scramble and after the Scramble)
This is the part of the comment that I really want to deal with.
Comment: European colonization did not really start till after 1600 for the most; before that it was mostly just Spain focused in the Americas and the small time Portuguese with a few port along the coast. The Dutch would be the first ones to begin following the Protugese routes and then later the French and British; but again France and Britian were mostly concerned with colonizing the Americas until the Lousiana Purchase and Monroe Doctrone of 1823 made it clear the Americas was being closed to European colonization. When the Europeans were going to invest in colonial ventures other than the Americas it was going to be in much Wealthier India or East Asia.
In the end Europeans colonized the interior of Africa mostly because they had nowhere else left to colonize; it was their last choice since it was so much poorer and had no trade goods of value. Trading for slaves could be done with local african chiefs and rulers much more easily than conquest. European colonization of Africa was also driven by competition, nationalism, and inter-european strategic rivalry.
Answer: “Portuguese explorers ventured along the Gulf of Guinea in the mid-15th.”
Comment: And why did they sail so far in the first place? Looking for trade routes to China and the East Indies; Africa was always a poor place they wished to avoid by comparison. And since the Portugese were more about trade than conquest they had little interest; what they did conquer was mostly just ports for stops on their way to trade with India and China.
Answer: “They relied on their mixed race descendants and African sell-outs to maintain and sustain their limited presence.”
Comment: Hmmm, pretty sure the Afrikaners of South Africa are not mixed race and neither are the British who defeated the Zulu. That said; Europeans did often employ lower quality local recruits. Projecting large armies on the other side of the world in the 1800s was simply not possible with the smaller budgets colonial armies ran on. Thus cheap local soldiers were a cost effective supply.
You cannot even pretend Europeans were ever seriously defeated in their invasions of Africa, except maybe laughing-stock Italy by half Eurasian Ethiopians. A serious European war overseas in the 1800s looks like the Crimean war; where the French deployed over 300,000 troops and the British over 100,000. The Europeans never needed anything but a small fraction of that to subdue Africans. It is like Europeans conquered most of Africa with their pinky in terms of how much effort it took them.
Answer: “Whenever they attempted to get into the African interior, European armies suffered military defeats or were weakened by disease.”
Comment: Honestly you could not name a single example I think of any European army of large size losing before 1700 that shows Europeans didn’t expand into Africa earlier because they were ‘defeated.’ Maybe small expeditions mostly for exploration were lost but that is about it.
Even the Italians in ethiopia had only 18,000-25,000 men against the near 200,000 man army of Menlik II. That isn’t exactly a sign of ‘superiroirty’ from the Ethiopians. Need to fight 200,000 vs 25,000 for an even fight sounds only like inferiority.
Comment: And the battle of Ishandala was the Zulus attacking a lightly defended camp of 1,000 men while the field army actually looking to fight was never engaged. And the Zulus still lost 2 to 3 times more men in that battle. Meanwhile the same/next day at Rorke’s drift 140 British held off 3,000 to 4,000 Zulus and dealt over 800 casualties.
Answer: “1816 Tuckey mission along the Congo River was a total disaster.”
Comment: What does a mission where 3 dozen men died of yellow fever have to do with proving Africans weren’t inferior?
Answer: “The Maxim gun was a real game changer.”
Comment: Except the conquest of the Zulus and over haver of Africa predates the Maxim gun which didn’t begin entering service until 1890. Sure, it made conquering africa easier and more cost effective; which is important since the Europerans were never interested in sending real armies to Africa anyway. Nothing to justify the cost.
Amazon.com: The Partition of Africa: And European Imperialism 1880-1900 (Lancaster Pamphlets) (9780416350500): Mackenzie, John: Books
Answer: “Africans successfully resisted them."
Comment: Except you don’t have an example of that; Europeans dying to disease is not Africans being more successful than others were resisting them.
Answer: “But at this stage Europe did not enjoy the military preponderance she was to establish later. “
Comment: I think you mis understand. That European was able to win with such tiny forces so far away was a sign of their military and technological dominance. It would mostly be medical advances that Europe needed to combat things like Malaria and Fevers in Africa; as you pointed out the first anti-Malaria drug came out in 1850.
The fact Africa was so uncivilized also made it more complicated to conquer; there wasn’t a clear structure the Europeans could take control of and put themselves at the top like in India. Again, Africa was also so much poorer than India and South east Asian nations also there was no incentive by comparison.
Answer: “Kushite Horners”
Comment: Are half Eurasian genetically.
(ethiopian king of Gojjam from mid 1800s)
(Posted an image of an Ethiopian King to showoff his "Caucasian" features)
(Post of an Genetic bar graph)
Answer: “West Africa produced some of the most prosperous kingdoms of the Middle Ages known as the Golden Kingdoms : Ghana, Mali and Songhay.”
Comment: Em, wouldn’t call them prosperous. Quite poor and unadvanced really. If they were actually wealthy they would have drawn trade and conquerors.
Answer: “The Songhai empire extended from the Atlas Mountains”
Comment: Not really, sub-saharans were never going to conquer berbers to any significant extent.
(Post of a map of Songahi)
Answer: “Its kingdoms were some of the most prosperous the world has ever known.”
Comment: Simply impossible; there was no trade goods produced by west Africa that were valued anything like goods from india and China. We can hear all the stories of wealth that have no proof we like but it was not reflected in any kind of grand civilization. Look at what buildings they left behind and you are mostly looking at piles of mud with sticks in them. King whoever can tie his horse to a brick of gold but can’t build anything better than a mud pile.
(Posted an image of Askia the Great's adobe tomb, as an indication of African architectural inferiority)
Answer: “Caravans of Gold”
Comment: The trade routes and Caravans were controlled by the Berbers; which makes the idea the African kingdoms were truly wealthy more suspect. The ones in the most prime position to profit were the middlemen Berbers; not the sub-saharans.
Answer: “Due to advances in native forge technology, smiths in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa were producing steels of a better grade than those of their counterparts in Europe”
Comment: I would love to see actual evidence of this; highly doubt it.
Answer: “A 1508 account of Kongo textiles by Portuguese sea-captain Duarte Pacheco Pereira indicates how much these items were appreciated in Europe: “In the kingdom of the Congo they produce cloth from palm fibers with velvet-like pile of such beauty that better ones are not made in Italy.”
Comment: This is like taking a modern commercial at face value; the Portuguese captain in question has a vested interest in driving up demand and the image of goods he would trade it. The reality was no one wanted good crafted African goods to much degree.
I am hoping that anyone of you can chime in debunking this bullshit, especially regarding the military might of African civilizations during the age of Imperialism. Here's the link to the idiotic comment. It's in the pinned answer.
Source: www.quora.com/profile/Fran%C3%A7oise-Marie-1?q=francoise%20m
Answer: “The inferiorization process was developed by European slavers and colonizers to break Africans.”
Comment: What about Islamic slavers that made Africans the primary source for the later global slave trade? Also, the infeoritization was implicit in the fact it was Europeans sailing to African shores and winning battles with inferior numbers due to superior technology.
Answer: “The Tarzan image is a racist imagining of Africa.”
Comment: Tarzan is just a story of a man raised by Gorillas; the original name of the novel is “Tarzan of the Apes.”
Answer: “The more sophisticated centers of Africa”
Comment: I’m sorry but they were not that impressive; see the meso-american civilizations who did just as much and more while being incomparably more isolated from all the ideas of the ancient Eurasian civilizations.
Answer: “It is to explain away why mighty and advanced Europe took more than 400 years to bring under her rule the whole of Africa”
Comment: Actually it only took Europe 33 years to conquer Africa;
(Post a map of Africa before the Scramble and after the Scramble)
This is the part of the comment that I really want to deal with.
Comment: European colonization did not really start till after 1600 for the most; before that it was mostly just Spain focused in the Americas and the small time Portuguese with a few port along the coast. The Dutch would be the first ones to begin following the Protugese routes and then later the French and British; but again France and Britian were mostly concerned with colonizing the Americas until the Lousiana Purchase and Monroe Doctrone of 1823 made it clear the Americas was being closed to European colonization. When the Europeans were going to invest in colonial ventures other than the Americas it was going to be in much Wealthier India or East Asia.
In the end Europeans colonized the interior of Africa mostly because they had nowhere else left to colonize; it was their last choice since it was so much poorer and had no trade goods of value. Trading for slaves could be done with local african chiefs and rulers much more easily than conquest. European colonization of Africa was also driven by competition, nationalism, and inter-european strategic rivalry.
Answer: “Portuguese explorers ventured along the Gulf of Guinea in the mid-15th.”
Comment: And why did they sail so far in the first place? Looking for trade routes to China and the East Indies; Africa was always a poor place they wished to avoid by comparison. And since the Portugese were more about trade than conquest they had little interest; what they did conquer was mostly just ports for stops on their way to trade with India and China.
Answer: “They relied on their mixed race descendants and African sell-outs to maintain and sustain their limited presence.”
Comment: Hmmm, pretty sure the Afrikaners of South Africa are not mixed race and neither are the British who defeated the Zulu. That said; Europeans did often employ lower quality local recruits. Projecting large armies on the other side of the world in the 1800s was simply not possible with the smaller budgets colonial armies ran on. Thus cheap local soldiers were a cost effective supply.
You cannot even pretend Europeans were ever seriously defeated in their invasions of Africa, except maybe laughing-stock Italy by half Eurasian Ethiopians. A serious European war overseas in the 1800s looks like the Crimean war; where the French deployed over 300,000 troops and the British over 100,000. The Europeans never needed anything but a small fraction of that to subdue Africans. It is like Europeans conquered most of Africa with their pinky in terms of how much effort it took them.
Answer: “Whenever they attempted to get into the African interior, European armies suffered military defeats or were weakened by disease.”
Comment: Honestly you could not name a single example I think of any European army of large size losing before 1700 that shows Europeans didn’t expand into Africa earlier because they were ‘defeated.’ Maybe small expeditions mostly for exploration were lost but that is about it.
Even the Italians in ethiopia had only 18,000-25,000 men against the near 200,000 man army of Menlik II. That isn’t exactly a sign of ‘superiroirty’ from the Ethiopians. Need to fight 200,000 vs 25,000 for an even fight sounds only like inferiority.
Comment: And the battle of Ishandala was the Zulus attacking a lightly defended camp of 1,000 men while the field army actually looking to fight was never engaged. And the Zulus still lost 2 to 3 times more men in that battle. Meanwhile the same/next day at Rorke’s drift 140 British held off 3,000 to 4,000 Zulus and dealt over 800 casualties.
Answer: “1816 Tuckey mission along the Congo River was a total disaster.”
Comment: What does a mission where 3 dozen men died of yellow fever have to do with proving Africans weren’t inferior?
Answer: “The Maxim gun was a real game changer.”
Comment: Except the conquest of the Zulus and over haver of Africa predates the Maxim gun which didn’t begin entering service until 1890. Sure, it made conquering africa easier and more cost effective; which is important since the Europerans were never interested in sending real armies to Africa anyway. Nothing to justify the cost.
Amazon.com: The Partition of Africa: And European Imperialism 1880-1900 (Lancaster Pamphlets) (9780416350500): Mackenzie, John: Books
Answer: “Africans successfully resisted them."
Comment: Except you don’t have an example of that; Europeans dying to disease is not Africans being more successful than others were resisting them.
Answer: “But at this stage Europe did not enjoy the military preponderance she was to establish later. “
Comment: I think you mis understand. That European was able to win with such tiny forces so far away was a sign of their military and technological dominance. It would mostly be medical advances that Europe needed to combat things like Malaria and Fevers in Africa; as you pointed out the first anti-Malaria drug came out in 1850.
The fact Africa was so uncivilized also made it more complicated to conquer; there wasn’t a clear structure the Europeans could take control of and put themselves at the top like in India. Again, Africa was also so much poorer than India and South east Asian nations also there was no incentive by comparison.
Answer: “Kushite Horners”
Comment: Are half Eurasian genetically.
(ethiopian king of Gojjam from mid 1800s)
(Posted an image of an Ethiopian King to showoff his "Caucasian" features)
(Post of an Genetic bar graph)
Answer: “West Africa produced some of the most prosperous kingdoms of the Middle Ages known as the Golden Kingdoms : Ghana, Mali and Songhay.”
Comment: Em, wouldn’t call them prosperous. Quite poor and unadvanced really. If they were actually wealthy they would have drawn trade and conquerors.
Answer: “The Songhai empire extended from the Atlas Mountains”
Comment: Not really, sub-saharans were never going to conquer berbers to any significant extent.
(Post of a map of Songahi)
Answer: “Its kingdoms were some of the most prosperous the world has ever known.”
Comment: Simply impossible; there was no trade goods produced by west Africa that were valued anything like goods from india and China. We can hear all the stories of wealth that have no proof we like but it was not reflected in any kind of grand civilization. Look at what buildings they left behind and you are mostly looking at piles of mud with sticks in them. King whoever can tie his horse to a brick of gold but can’t build anything better than a mud pile.
(Posted an image of Askia the Great's adobe tomb, as an indication of African architectural inferiority)
Answer: “Caravans of Gold”
Comment: The trade routes and Caravans were controlled by the Berbers; which makes the idea the African kingdoms were truly wealthy more suspect. The ones in the most prime position to profit were the middlemen Berbers; not the sub-saharans.
Answer: “Due to advances in native forge technology, smiths in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa were producing steels of a better grade than those of their counterparts in Europe”
Comment: I would love to see actual evidence of this; highly doubt it.
Answer: “A 1508 account of Kongo textiles by Portuguese sea-captain Duarte Pacheco Pereira indicates how much these items were appreciated in Europe: “In the kingdom of the Congo they produce cloth from palm fibers with velvet-like pile of such beauty that better ones are not made in Italy.”
Comment: This is like taking a modern commercial at face value; the Portuguese captain in question has a vested interest in driving up demand and the image of goods he would trade it. The reality was no one wanted good crafted African goods to much degree.
I am hoping that anyone of you can chime in debunking this bullshit, especially regarding the military might of African civilizations during the age of Imperialism. Here's the link to the idiotic comment. It's in the pinned answer.
Source: www.quora.com/profile/Fran%C3%A7oise-Marie-1?q=francoise%20m
