Yaw, Your history is fine! I note two things: The fate of empires is especially interesting because of the very frequent references Richard Wolff makes to the American Empire as one in decline. What happens when power fades and is lost? The other thing is the use of Starlink by insurgents in the Sahel and its overwhelming effect on the (military) rulers of the countries. I wonder if the borders established by colonial powers will be in place in the next century. African societies may have entirely new borders in the future, with political entities shifting as they have before the 19th Century.
I have only a very basic familiarity with the history of precolonial west africa but I do get the strong impression (and I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong) that complex society in this area prior to colonialism was practically inseparable from the slave trade. Pretty much every state from this era large enough for us to know about its existence was based upon the same model of trading slaves to Arabs across the Sahara or Europeans across the atlantic to buy guns and/or horses to capture more slaves and so on. This is not to say that slavery was not practiced in nearly all societies in all continents in this era but few medieval or early modern european or asian societies had slavery as the primary raison d'etre of the state the way nearly all of the african states described here did.
Through Thomas Sowell I've seen the theories for why african trade was so focused on slaves- the massive distances involved, the climate and lack of livestock severely limiting the productivity of african agriculture leading to a situation where only compact, high value wares could be traded which pretty much limited it to slaves, gold and a few other high value commodities like Ivory. I'm sure there are alternate explanations but whatever the cause the phenomenon seems pretty universal across subsaharran africa's history to me.
This is 100% correct. Every state that we are aware of in the Sahel (Wagadou, Mali, Songhai, Hausa city-states, Kanem-Bornu, Wadai ,Darfur, and Sennar (Sudan)) were all trading slaves to north Africa.
Yaw, Your history is fine! I note two things: The fate of empires is especially interesting because of the very frequent references Richard Wolff makes to the American Empire as one in decline. What happens when power fades and is lost? The other thing is the use of Starlink by insurgents in the Sahel and its overwhelming effect on the (military) rulers of the countries. I wonder if the borders established by colonial powers will be in place in the next century. African societies may have entirely new borders in the future, with political entities shifting as they have before the 19th Century.
Fascinating! Nothing I love more than historical contexts.
I have only a very basic familiarity with the history of precolonial west africa but I do get the strong impression (and I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong) that complex society in this area prior to colonialism was practically inseparable from the slave trade. Pretty much every state from this era large enough for us to know about its existence was based upon the same model of trading slaves to Arabs across the Sahara or Europeans across the atlantic to buy guns and/or horses to capture more slaves and so on. This is not to say that slavery was not practiced in nearly all societies in all continents in this era but few medieval or early modern european or asian societies had slavery as the primary raison d'etre of the state the way nearly all of the african states described here did.
Through Thomas Sowell I've seen the theories for why african trade was so focused on slaves- the massive distances involved, the climate and lack of livestock severely limiting the productivity of african agriculture leading to a situation where only compact, high value wares could be traded which pretty much limited it to slaves, gold and a few other high value commodities like Ivory. I'm sure there are alternate explanations but whatever the cause the phenomenon seems pretty universal across subsaharran africa's history to me.
This is 100% correct. Every state that we are aware of in the Sahel (Wagadou, Mali, Songhai, Hausa city-states, Kanem-Bornu, Wadai ,Darfur, and Sennar (Sudan)) were all trading slaves to north Africa.