Why did traditional Africa not develop technology ?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
There is that famous story of Mansa Musa and his massive pilgrimage to Mekka... and the cities of Timbuktu and Jenne attracted scholars from various parts of the world.

Is that the one where this king spent 18 tons of gold during his pilgrimage, devaluating gold in the whole Arab world for years ?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
During my vacation, I've taken a little bit of interest for the precolonial European empires such as the English/French/Germans, the Romans and the Swedes. (Mind you, I didn't put enough energy into it to actually buy books )
I am not talking about Alexander's Greece here, but about European Civs.


Argguably save for the Swedes, these empires took most of their 'civilised' traits (technology, weaponry, political structure) from the Greeks or other influential mediterranean powers. Even Rome owes its success to its Greek-influenced political structure.
Besides, they almost systematically got their butt spanked by non-European countries or tribes. Heck, even Rome the golden Capitol was unable to defend itself from nomadic raiders.

Europeans developed their way to the top of the food chain, and had dropped nomadism for a very long time, without any influence from the outside. Ethnic wars were many, yet the Europeans barely developped tech / efficient political structures by themselves.

This would be a good reply, except that it's just plain wrong on a number of counts.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Don't forget most African kingdoms were more isolated from other kingdoms then a contemperary European, Asian, or Middle Eastern Kingdom would have been so they would have had less competetion and thus demand for technological innovations. Plus it would have taken much longer for other people's innovations to reach them as well so that almost insures they would be technologically backwards.

Also evinced by the native peoples of the Americas.

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Is that the one where this king spent 18 tons of gold during his pilgrimage, devaluating gold in the whole Arab world for years ?

yes, the price of gold in egypt didn't recover for 50 years.

but to respond to what albert said, so what? some king made a pilgrimage and spent a lot of money. there wasn't any continuious contact between egypt and west africa, people from west africe didn't travel there, or even to the margreb, the trade was in the hands of arabs and berbers. so there was hardly anyone who saw the arab world from west africa and could take some of its ideas back with them.

[monkspider]

Yep, Albert makes some good points in this one.

[C0ckney]

/me prays that is sarcasm

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


This is not a contradiction : Arabs merchants made some commerce (slaves), and Chinese came once and left definitely. They were no African merchants, soldiers and explorers visiting the rest of the known world, which resulted in an almost inexistant acquisition of knoledge from abroad.

If they received foreign merchants and diplomats, and from them, obtained maps of other areas of the world and conducted regular trade and foreign relations, I cannot see how they were isolated.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by MrFun
If they received foreign merchants and diplomats, and from them, obtained maps of other areas of the world and conducted regular trade and foreign relations, I cannot see how they were isolated.

The Niger Delta Kingdoms were less isolated than, say, Tokugawa's Japan, but trade was still difficult with the Arabs, because of the desert and because of the Berber raiders. Despite the presence of a few Arab scholars in Timbuktu and Jenné, these cities remained pretty much mysterious to the Arabs (and legendary to the Europeans). Quite a few places in Africa weren't isolated, that's for sure, but they weren't connected with the rest of the world as densely as Mediterranean or European powers.

Timbuktu managed to be an important religious center for west and northwest Africa in general, but it doesn't seem to have played any part in science. Worse, I didn't even find anything about a betterment of agriculture, weaponry or writing under the Niger Delta kingdoms. I'm still puzzled as to why.

[Sandman]

Perhaps the African kingdoms were too dependant on trade? Gold from Songhai, ivory from Benin, spices from Mombasa and slaves from everywhere. Even though the West Africans were introduced to firearms by the Portuguese at an early date, they don't seem to have evolved local manufacturing processes to produce indigenous firearms or other items.

Maybe their culture and social structure were so firmly wedded to the idea of trading raw materials for manufactured goods that they were never able to start up a production base for themselves, and instead relied on imports instead. This seems to fly in the face of the isolated Africa theories floating around this thread, however.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MrFun


But those statements seem to contradict the fact that African civilizations had contact through Arabian merchants and caravans that crossed to the other side of the Sahara Desert.

Chinese explorers also had contact with African civilizations in the 1300's and 1400's before the Chinese emperor made the stupid mistake in dismantling his navy.

Before 1500 was the important period. After that they didn't have a chance to catch up.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MrFun


If they received foreign merchants and diplomats, and from them, obtained maps of other areas of the world and conducted regular trade and foreign relations, I cannot see how they were isolated.

a) They were almost completely isolated prior to this
b) The contact was not of the same quality (trading was not of same volume, and links were tenuous at best)

[Az]

1500 is too late.

[Al B. Sure!]

yeah i don't think any african 'primitiveness' (which i think people here are under-estimating african advancements) is due to isolation... like i said, african peoples had plenty of contact with each other and clearly the northern areas of west africa (mali, songhai, hausa, etc.) did have contact with the rest of the world albeit the sahara was a barrier.

and what about east africa? Sure Ethiopia had nearly no contact with the Christian world (aside from Byzantium) until the crusades but it had plenty of contact with the arabs... and down the coast, the somali and swahili all the way down to Mombasa and Zanzibar had plenty of contact with the arab world (the swahili language is even based on arabic).

so african isolation might explain some slight backwardness in possibly Zimbabwe and the Kongo kingdom but the Sudan down to Zanzibar and west africa south til Benin had contact with the middle eastern world for centuries.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by C0ckney
and i agree with az here, ethiopia owes almost nothing to arabs, in fact its isolation (and some timely portuguese aid) is really what kept it alive as a state.

In fact, Axum, first Aethiopian, culture, was founded by south-Arabian emmigrants.

The person who made their alphabet was the same who wrote the Georgian and Armenian one. probably some Orthodox monk.

Not quite.
I remember that Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Masztoc, somewhere in V century, and the Georgian one was based on it I think. When it comes to Aethiopian one, I don't know much about it, perhaps it is based on Syrian one, but I saw it and it didn't look familiar at all. Still, it had nothing to do with Georgian and Armenian one.

Europe has dominated the ME for a thousand years, from Alexander to the rise of the muslims.

But haven't ME dominated Europe? Christianity is a ME religion. The greatest culture of Europe in Middle Ages, Byzantines, owed as much to Syria and Egypt as to Roman tradition.

Africa has a relatively short coastline, despite being the second largest continent. Most of the African nations, if I remember correctly, were some distance inland, and they did most of their trade by camel over the Sahara.

Camels weren't introduced to Africa earlier than in Roman times., that's what I've learned. But tell me, when the sub-saharean cultures started to appear? in fact, I'm ignorant in this subject... Can anyone gimme a history of sub-saharean Africa, outline of it?
generally, I like the thought of the coastline importance...
But shouldn't be Indonesia or Oceania the most developed land in the world, then?

even the mighty Romans couldn't even beat off the Huns

I do not recall any Hun empire on former Roman territories

*cough* *cough* Mongols, Huns, Turks, Avars.

Mongols and Turks weren't all that backwards. Turkey managed to continue Byzantine architecture tradition,
on a scale Byzantines weren't able to deal with since Justinian (of course, thanks to the aboundance of money and local, Greek, architects). Their administration was more efficient
Mongols weren't a completely wild tribe either. Thanks to christian contacts, they had their own alphabet. they had some respect towards science and trade. Anyway, Avar, Hun and to a smaller extent, Mongol empires were pretty short-lasting, and they dominated only in military area, and not even there;
Mongols were repeatedly defeated by Mamluks, who were Turk in fact at the time, Avars weren't such a great empire, and anyway, they were quite easily defeated by Byzantines and later Franks occasionally. Huns received a great defeat from the Romans also.
What I mean to say is that Europe dominated in many ways. Mongols, Huns and Avars never had (at least good) fleet by the way. Europe in XIX century, when Africa was finally divided, dominated over all the rest of the world in any way.

For a very long time Egypt accounted for the majority of the population of the continent of Africa
...

But Egypt has little to do with Africa... It isn't black, it is separated from the rest except for Nile, and I even read that some ancent geographs were counting it into Asia. This suprised me a bit.

[C0ckney]

east african kingdoms (the ones on the coast at any rate) were run by an arab elite, the arabs ran the caravans into the interior, the only way people from the interior got out was by becoming slaves or mercenaries and they didn't come back.

ethopia was incredibily isolationalist, most of its contact with arabs and other muslims was simply fighting wars with them. in fact the fall of the christian kingdoms of nubia in the 15th century can partly be put down to ethopia's refusal to help them, or even to send missionaries to sustain the faith of the people.