3 Comments

I'm really enjoying this series. Two thoughts:

1) The cross Sahara trade in salt, gold and slaves was pretty old. Weren't the Garamintians running it when the Romans took over.

2) Have you read Shadow Empires about the political structures that form outside empires that mirror them in some aspects? For example, the shadow empires in China's west that were bought off by the Chinese emperors. In some ways our modern empires - the West, the USSR, China - had shadow empires in Africa. It's hard not to see parallels between the Romans treating with Germanic tribes or ancient China buying tribal loyalty by providing luxury goods and the modern IMF and other organizations sending food aid, weapons, debt relief and the like to polities in modern Africa. It's a very interesting book.

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Hey thanks! Glad you enjoy the series! Do you mean Garamantes? If so they were in Fezzan( South Libya) and mainly took slaves from modern day Sudan/Chad.

I have not read shadow empires! But it sounds interesting.

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Definitely Garamantes.

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