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[–]AnarchySpeach 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

The comic kind of skips a lot of steps.

The biggest is also represented in the pictures shown: The first group is building their own city. The second group, that never advanced in technology because of their location, was moved into the first groups location. Instead of helping them they were exploited, sold, and when it became morally wrong (aka no longer financially viable because of the industrial revolution) the rest of the world left them to fight over the advanced sci-fi alien-level technology we left behind.

To quote a dude from reddit:

1/. Technology

Africa was technologically behind the rest of the world because of the Sahara desert. Critical technology needed to develop other technologies, like writing systems and the wheel for instance, failed to reach sub-Saharan Africa from the Mesopotamian Civilizations. These technologies reached Europe and North Africa through merchants, nomadic travellers among others. Ethiopia is an exception as they had contact with Egypt and other civilizations that had these technologies. But for most of Africa, these technologies simply didn't arrive until Europeans came barging in.

Think about how there isn't any African script (Ethiopia being the exception of course) like there is a Chinese, Latin and Arabic script. Or how ubiquitous it is to see an African woman with a bucket on her head instead of using a carriage.

2/. State Centralization

OK so this needs a wee bit of explaining. Why were Europeans able to conquer whole swathes of African territory with seeming relative ease? Two main reasons. The first we've already covered in technology. Europeans had guns, which are a technology they gained from the Far East and figured out how to manufacture. Africans either didn't have guns or they traded them and couldn't manufacture their own.

The second reason that is also related to the first is lack of centralized states. Europe's main problem was the scarcity of land. Africa's? The scarcity of people. This difference is critical in understanding why Europe was able to conquer Africa. The competition for land in Europe encourage Europeans to form more centralized states with absolute rulers like Kings and Emperors. These rulers could then levy taxies and raise armies. And they did. So with all this fighting they clearly get experience and improve on their tools, strategies and tactics. Meanwhile, they create more robust structures of government that are more efficient at offering other amenities for control like roads. In Africa, however, land is plentiful. There are no incentives for people to pay tax. If I don't like your tax I'll simply move. This happened a lot. See Great Zimbabwe and its successor the Mutapa Kingdom.

I could go on about this point but its already long enough. But to finish off given the prevailing situation; most African leaders felt they controlled peoples and not land. As a result, when Europeans arrived they would ally with them to ascertain control of the people they didn't have control over rather than defend the land they could potentially own. Europeans took advantage of this to some extent, see The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

3/. Ideas

This point is last because I feel its the most recent but I think its as important as the first point. And just like the first point, the Sahara desert is the stumbling block. Ideas can prove pivotal in how a country fairs in history. Ethiopia got spared colonialism for a long time due to its exposure to Christianity and even among African states, the Ndebele simply dominated many tribes due to the ideas - such as military tactics - they retained from the Zulus. It has been theorized 1 that many countries were able to prosper due to ideals of inclusive economic and political structures that were able to spread from France (after the French Revolution of 1789) and England (after the Glorious Revolution) to mainland Europe and Western English-speaking democracies like the U.S. and Australia. These ideas failed to reach Africa in the 17th and 18th Centuries and hence why Africa lacks democratic and truly inclusive economic institutions to this day.

Conclusion These are only some of the reasons as to why Africa got dominated by Eurasian civilizations. It is still important to note that Africa didn't decline; it was developing at a very steady pace just as the rest of the world was in the 14th to 15th Century. It simply continued developing at this pace as Europeans were discovering other parts of the world and continually improving their economies, governments and militaries. By the early 16th Century the difference was insurmountable for most African polities.

To make matters worse... instead of incorporating them into our society we let the delusion of "black culture must involve being poor" thrive, so they don't have any shame in the way they act, and their expectations are set to the lowest possible degree. It's learned helplessness. This can be seen whenever a black infant is adopted by two white parents. Other blacks ostracize them for being successful and talking like there's hope for the future. Black history should be kept as a viable subject to study, learn from, and pass down to generations, as all histories of every ethnicity should be, but anybody pretending that this current black "culture" is a positive to society is lying to themselves.

[–]TheJamesRocket 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This is a very long winded attempt to exonerate Africans for their failure to form anything resembling a coherent civilisation. It reeks of the same kind of environmental determinism that was popularised by Jared Diamond.

All this talk about the invention of the wheel and the written language is missing the point. The cold, hard truth is that on every continent that was inhabited by humans, there arose a system of agriculture and animal domestication... All except on the African continent. These people did not manage to develop that most basic pre-requisite for civilisation. This is rather shocking when you consider that agriculture arose in both North and South America!

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not shocked that red people have more salt than black people. Red people have their mental gifts. Blacks generally do not.