Why didn't the scramble for Africa start sooner?
Why didn't the scramble for Africa start sooner?
Jordan Hall
Thomas Baker
Euros couldn't/never cared to effectively govern territory not along the coast before then
Christian Smith
"Jambo! Habari Gani?"
Zachary Hernandez
> Why didn't the scramble for Africa start sooner?
Partially because they couldn't do it before effectivelly, but another major part was that both the UK and France were entirely focused on North America.
It is exactly when the UK and France both abandoned the focus on America(UK because of the US revolution, France because of selling off or losing the territory) that the focus on Africa started.
The Portuguese themselves never really bothered with the inland of anywhere, they did not even care much for the inlands of Brazil either, let alone Africa.
So when it all happened, it happened quite quickly because both the Americas were off limits and Africa was the only place with vacant space for Euro's.
Jack Roberts
Muslim empires blocked the north.
Focused on north america/asia.
Warriors hard to defeat until guns/canon advanced far enough.
Hard to get inland until proper infrastructure laid down, and controlled enough people.
Eli Morris
>Warriors hard to defeat until guns/canon advanced far enough.
How were a bunch of niggers with rock axes and rock spears harder to defeat than the Aztecs? T
Gavin Wilson
North Africans =/= Sub-saharan Africans. North Africa was strongly influenced by Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman culture even before the Arabs conquered it. The greatest early rival to the Roman Republic arose from what is now Tunisia.
Arabs unified the region for the first time since the Roman Empire was whole and effectively walled off Africa from Christians.
Christopher King
The Aztec had actual roads you could drive the cannons on
Asher Rivera
He said Africa not north Africa. Most of Africa was a bunch of niggers in mutthuts with a bunch of rocks as weapons.
Ayden Cruz
Pizarro crossed Panama and Colombia that was in the middle of a jungle and without roads. If the Portuguese had tried to go deeper into Africa they may had pull it off
Cooper Cox
Life rating was too low for colonization.
Caleb Allen
Why should it? They traded with them through the port colonies and got mad money by doing so. Why building up infrastructure and spend a lot of money if the only relevant ressource and precious stones slaves and they sell them already? It was more profitable to ship them to America and work them to death in the silver mines than colonizing them
Jack Fisher
>Why didn't the scramble for Africa start sooner?
Power disparity. The New World was hit by a cataclysm of disease that softened it to being taken over by Europeans.
European powers had an edge over African ones in the early stages of Empire and Colonialism, but not enough of an edge to make taking it all over possible. That would only come with better gun technology.
Also quinine from the new world partially negating malaria and coal powered steamers making better river transport possible.
Ian Gray
The answer is actually diseases. Africa began to be properly civilized once we figured out how to cure malaria and similar.
Nicholas Edwards
Those "niggers" skipped the Bronze Age and went straight for the Iron Age, and has metal spears and swords. Are you so stupid that you think all of Africa was living like the bumfuck San people?
Joseph Long
en.m.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
If you want actual people using rocks and sticks look at the Maori.
Jeremiah Wilson
You do realize that Africa is a huge continent and that a lot of people either missed that development in metallurgy or simply were victims of a lack of availability of material to craft metal weapons in large quantities?
William Morales
For the same reason no multi-continental Eurasian empire has ever bothered to.
When will racists realize the land below the Sahara simply sucked ass until modern technology could make it useful?
Christian Cook
and most of those people lived more inland meaning any would be conqueror had to go through the significantly more advanced coastal cultures to get to them
Luis Hill
That's not universally true, the French during their colonial period never really were that good with the quinine idea until the 1950s, but conquered a whole lot of Africa anyway. They did it by sending in small parties of troops and recruiting local forces as auxiliary troops, so even when casualties were horrifying among the white soldiers that led the expeditions, they were in total terms pretty small. When they didn't do that, like in Madagascar when they sent in principally the metropolitan army, total casualties could become very bad. But then once they had conquered the region they could build hill stations and nice habitations for the Europeans with good care that could be done for them, so the death rate could be reduced to manageable levels, even without quinine.
If you have jstor access (or you can sign up to read three free articles) you can read about it here.
Alexander Flores
Africa is huge. The zulus for example didn't have metallurgy. In fact most of southern Africa could have been conquered unopposed
Ayden Cox
Actually I find it to be surprisingly late. 1870s or so. America and other Latin American countries had been independent for quite a while already.
I read somewhere that it was medical advancements that got them in and that horses died quickly to disease that stopped them.
Angel Williams
They had to research medicine and machine guns first.
Alexander Martinez
Because the OTHER niggers with spears and axes were also attacking you instead of allying with you against a monolithic power center that everyone hated.
Brayden Thomas
I'll give you Southern Africa, but the Zulus really did have iron weapons alongside glorified fire hardered sticks before European colonization.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Just one example, probably the most famous for the Zulu. Bantus brought Iron metallurgy and cattle throughout Central and parts of South Africa, while West Africans appear to have had it earlier. It's why you can find the Khoikhoi, a member of the Khoisan people, herding and using more advanced tools than the related San.
Kevin Anderson
Steam engines, quinine tablets, and continuously firing weapons (bolt action, maxim gun, etc.) were the 3 necessary things to subjugate Africa. It could not have been done before that really.
Brody Kelly
The French didn't use much in the way of quinine.