- Joined
- Aug 8, 2020
I hate to nitpick (especially since you seem to be a lot better educated on the topic than I) but from my understanding Mali's main thing was the cattle trade (Mansa Munsa is often cited as the richest man in history for this reason but that's kinda a dubious claim IMO).I'm talking black Africa.
Egypt was brown(ish), had access to the sea and trade, had geography resistant to raids and the best river in the world to raise crops. Egyptians were well-fed, had modernish surgery in time where Greeks were praying to gods to cure them and stone toilets. That worked until they got conquered by antideluvian Muslims first and then Macedonians, both which drained the shit out of Egypt.
Mali was Nubian during their glory days and their biggest addition to Mediterranean culture was elite light cavalry. Other than that they stagnated.
Carthaginians came from the Middle East and had the 'pleasure' to discover that Romans had much more manpower than they could handle.
Ethiopia/Sudan had gold and trade with Egypt. While wealthy, they farted around without much advancement.
Zulu had a shot at making an empire but like the Sikhs they had the 'pleasure' to meet the British Empire at their worst.
Tutsi had a shot at making a stable, one-ethnicity Rwanda but Hutu spoke French and the French UN soldiers liked them more so they had more PR than Tutsi and Tutsi got slaughtered while UN was lalala-not-listening.
Igbo had a shot at making a tech enclave with Biafra but the rest of Nigeria was more interested in making money off oil, Europe and USA also liked cheap oil more than possible Igbo competitors so they lalalad while Nigerian army starved Biafra to submission.
Africa has lousy geography: tropical diseases and wildlife - elephants and malaria made large scale farming impossible there until recently + equatorial temperatures coupled with problems in securing water meant no chance to work hard in such heat + untouched ore resources which doomed it to be a small-population continent unable to fight on equal terms with European powers attracted to all that mineral wealth.
And Carthage was more of a trade empire really. Kinda like the Dutch when they had an empire. But it's hard to get any good info on them that's not coming from the people who genocided them so their history is likely very distorted. But yeah, the leadership was of Phoenician origin if I'm not mistaken.