Why were Europeans able to colonize the Americas so effectively, and yet they didn't do the same with Africa? Why were native Americans so susceptible to Europeans diseases but Africans apparently weren't?
In short, why is North America white but Africa isn't?
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Because disease wiped out 90% of the amerindians before Euoropeans even met them. The same didn't happen to Africans who had old world immune systems.
Africans weren't completelely disconected from European civilization. There were trade routes through which diseases spread.
America is so white because the people there suffered brutal epidemics and were also genocided by colonists. Meanwhile blacks were put to work under brutal conditions, but colonists didn't want their labourers to die, obviously.
>genocided
t. revisionist historian
You know the massive advantage in disease that Europeans had over Native Americans during the age of exploration? Imagine that in reverse.
For the vast majority of modern history, the continent of Africa was not navigable for Europeans. Throughout the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and most of the 19th, hundreds of Europeans tried to penetrate the "dark continent" to find gold, land, or the source of the Nile. Universally, they would contract deadly foreign diseases and die.
Until the middle 19th century, African colonization was limited to islands, stretches of coastline, and arid spaces like the Cape where infection was not so easily transmissible. This allowed an interesting relationship to develop between Europeans and local rulers, where African leaders provided slaves, natural resources, and most importantly protection in exchange for guns and other European equipment.
The colonization of Africa couldn't begin in earnest until the final three decades of the 19th century, once advances in medicine allowed colonial troops to enter new lands and new technologies like the Maxim gun allowed them to hold it. African conquest now became necessary for the powers of Europe to stay competitive and test their mettle, and the ancient agreements with native African leaders were torn apart or forgotten.
Come on now
Spacious acts of violence during which anywhere from several hundred to less than 10 people died ≠ genocide.
africa had iron
Bullshit. These massacres were carried out with the intention of eradicating Native Americans. That is genocide.
Have you even read them? they are retaliations after Indian attacks or conflicts over resources, not a desire to "wipe them out."
Lack of jungles, America had forest and flatlands.
Africa had jungles and savannah
>The same didn't happen to Africans who had old world immune systems
They did? That's news to me, so things like the plague and smallpox never hit them despite their isolation and lack of domesticated animals
Africa is not isolated, has never been isolated and a number of old world diseases are African derived.
This is specific to Yoruba people and not Africa as a whole but interesting regardless
>In Nigeria at that time, numerous secret societies, such as the "Sopona" cult of the Yoruba people, had power. Sometimes they tried to blackmail people, threatening that if an individual did not pay money, the society would make him become ill and die.
>When a victim refused, a member would infect him with smallpox through applying scrapings of the skin rash of smallpox cases. To keep their powers, the societies resisted public health efforts for vaccination. Sapara joined the cult incognito, at considerable personal risk. When he had learned the secret of their power, he helped the government prepare legislation to ban the cult.
This was up until the early 20th century
>isolation and lack of domesticated animals
there were trade routes going back thousands of years man
do you take history lessons from political cartoons or what
I´d say it´s still going strong
I think europeans where not very ably to go deep into aftica becouse they would often get diseases themselves. I´m not totally shure about this though.
you need at least 6 vaccines to visit Kenya in 2017, and that´s one of the better african countries
As many people have mentioned, disease and environment are hugely important. The massive depopulation of North America meant colonisation was as simple as homesteading empty land, complicated only by the occasional attack of stone age bands. Africa on the other hand was more comparable to the colonisation of meso-america. Colonists were dealing with established local powers and populations that could effectively resist them, and as Cortez did, they had to make alliances and play within the native system instead of just building a european system on terra nullius.
So now we have to ask, what separates native African kingdoms from the Mesoamerican or Andean polities. Well for one thing there's blind luck, which Cortez and Pizarro had a lot of. Their conquests were far from foregone conclusions and if their initial attempts had failed there's no guarantee they could have easily conquered the natives. Obviously the depopulation of America is another thing which made population replacement much easier.
I'm only slightly knowledgeable on the colonisation of Angola but I think it's the most relevant in terms of timeframe, actors involved etc. The timeline from Portugal's contact has some interesting parallels with important differences. First of all, the king of Kongo converted to catholicism very early, which gave him closer contact with other European powers and a moral defence against conquest. Politics between Capuchin clerics, Portuguese colonial officials and merchants helped both Kongo and Matamba defeat outright attempts at conquest. Several Manikongos and rulers of Matamba used politics to stave off conquest, including a short-lived alliance with the Dutch. Basically the Africans had time to adjust to the reality of European powers and strategise accordingly, whereas the Aztecs and Inca were toppled almost immediately by ballsy conquistadors. Some American natives like the Mapuche resisted for longer given the opportunity to adapt.
>As many people have mentioned, disease and environment are hugely important. The massive depopulation of North America meant colonisation was as simple as homesteading empty land, complicated only by the occasional attack of stone age bands. Africa on the other hand was more comparable to the colonisation of meso-america. Colonists were dealing with established local powers and populations that could effectively resist them, and as Cortez did, they had to make alliances and play within the native system instead of just building a european system on terra nullius.
I'll add that the most successful area of colonisation-the Southern tip of the continent- was the most similar to North America, relatively temperate climate-wise, and the native khoi-san had a small population and little to no social organisation beyond small familial units. Like North America it was essentially Terra Nullius and this made it easy to colonise both by whites and the the advancing Bantu-speakers from the North like the Zulu and Xhosa.
Khoi had clans and chieftains
Interesting. Do you guys have any resources on this?
Sub sahara was largely isolated, impossible to make it there by foot, the Nile doesn't go that far down and it took Europe a while until they figured out how to get there through the Atlantic.
Remember that the Kongo people where the first Sub Saharan people that Europe meet, back in 1483.
Simply not true. The Saharan has been crossed by Berbers since time immemorial.
Sub Saharan African-European contact was extremely limited but both had contact with North Africa.
malaria
before europeans could bring machine guns and such they would have had to field many hundreds or even thousands of men to fight against coalitions of local african powers. attrition due to climate and tropical diseases made this impossible.
This is 100% false and can you please stop memeing
I've only read Joseph C. Miller: Kings and Kingsmen and a book whose title I forget by David Birmingham
But Europe did make contact with Kongo in 1483
That's when direct diplomatic contact became a possibility. But there were traders going up and down the Sahara all the time, carrying goods, knowledge and germs from sub-saharan africa to north africa and vice-versa. North africans in turn had contact with europeans so shit could travel from europe to sub-saharan africa.
t. Liquoria 2 player
There is a significant difference between having seven degrees of Kevin Bacon and actual direct contact
>lack of domesticated animals
There are like >10 remnant hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, you realise that, right?
1. The Sahara is at it's largest now. It was a lot smaller a thousand years ago and even smaller 2000 years ago.
2. The nile connects directly to South-Sudan that's well past the Sahel.
Tropical diseases killed of Europeans very easily. Some dutch book I read a couple of years back talks about an average life expectancy of 3 months when posted to the colonies in Western Africa between 1650-1750
This guy gets it
Talking about isolationist groups of people and being depopulated to make way for basically 100% European settlers:
How many aboriginies are there still and is it comparable to native Americans? Regarding the fact that Australian natives were definitely largely isolated from the old world, why didn't Europeans wipe them clean of the map?
>How many aboriginies are there still
fuck all compared to whitey
>and is it comparable to native Americans?
kind of except they didn't have a big population to begin with.
Apart from the reasons given in this thread, Europeans had different intentions for their African colonies than they did for North America. North America began as a haven for the religiously persecuted and those seeking a new start and opportunity. Africa had the sole intention of exploiting resources and cockblocking other colonial powers in the area.
The only real migration to these areas (not including North Africa and South Africa) was to run businesses or be paid to work in these businesses. Setting up white colonies was never truly the goal.
>The nile
It takes more than a single river to to connect an entire continent up to the old world trade networks.
>The Sahara was smaller 1000-2000 years ago
It reached present-like conditions 5500 years ago [1], before cities. So it was similar to how it is now throughout the period of old world trade.
[1] livescience.com
Africa is full of black people that try to enter your civilizations rather than fuck off back to the jungle. Native Americans just did their own thing.
I am a German and we do know a lot about genocides :^)
You aren't talking about one.
>It takes more than a single river to to connect an entire continent up to the old world trade networks.
Does it though? The Romans had no problem shipping all kinds of shit, like giraffes, up and down the river.
"I will give an account of the so-called camelopard, because it was then introduced into Rome by Caesar for the first time and exhibited to all. This animal is like a camel in all respects except that its legs are not all of the same length, the hind legs being the shorter. Beginning from the rump it grows gradually higher, which gives it the appearance of mounting some elevation; and towering high aloft, it supports the rest of its body on its front legs and lifts its neck in turn to an unusual height. Its skin is spotted like a leopard, and for this reason it bears the joint name of both animals."
Dio, Roman History (XLIII.23.1-2
>It reached present-like conditions 5500 years ago [1], before cities. So it was similar to how it is now throughout the period of old world trade.
Present like conditions in climate, not in size. Many desert ruins from around the time of the Roman Empire were once lush farmland, look up the Garamantean civilisation or the city of Timgad.
there are actually more native americans than aboriginies
>come back next day and my thread is on the front page still
Yay
>front page
You have to go back
But did you learn anything from it, the front page isn't important.
I did, quite content. Now back to /gsg/ to do to Africa what should've been done.
>Does it though? The Romans had no problem shipping all kinds of shit, like giraffes, up and down the river.
There's a difference between being able to ship goods down one river and connecting up sub-saharan africa, essentially a continent, with eurasia sufficiently enough for ideas to move swiftly between the two. There were kingdoms in sub-saharan africa after all, but to a lesser extent than in eurasia, which is pretty much what you would expect with it being only mildly connected. Notice in pic related that most of the african kingdoms were in the north of sub-saharan africa, where there would have been more contact with eurasia. There is much less activity to the south, despite most of the arable land being there.
Nice giraffe quote though.
>Present like conditions in climate, not in size. Many desert ruins from around the time of the Roman Empire were once lush farmland, look up the Garamantean civilisation or the city of Timgad.
The Garamanteans lived in the desert. They built an irrigation system from water they had to mine from under the sand. Look up the wikipedia page. It even has a quote from the roman empire which contains the phrase "they lived in the desert".
Timgad on the other hand is right next to the coast, and was active 2,000 years ago, so I don't see what your point is. That's a lot of time for the borders of the desert to shift a very small distance.
>for ideas to move swiftly between the two.
Well we weren't talking about ideas were we? We were talking about diseases.
And a single ship is enough for a disease to spread (Mind you one of the most destructive ones there has ever been but we were about the plague and smallpox earlier
>The Garamanteans
I seem to remember that differently, let me check my books
I mentioned Timgad because I have been there. And the desert has truly claimed it as it's own. There's archeological evidence for agricultural activities for miles around but there haven't been any for 1000 years. Also I have this quote for you.
Some studies have shown that Africa has lost approximately 650 000 km2 of its productive agricultural land over the past 50 years. The propagation of desertification in this area is considerable.[22]
>Well we weren't talking about ideas were we? We were talking about diseases.
My bad, I think after arguing with /pol/ for ages, just seeing a debate involving the sahara triggered my fingers' muscle memory.
Well, time to stop posting for today
No problem, you were friendly and quoted sources so I did not mind.
>The Romans had no problem shipping all kinds of shit, like giraffes, up and down the river.
During a time when the giraffes had a much larger range in Africa. So chances are that even Rome only made it to Ethiopia