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Africa During the Scramble: The Spider in the Web
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
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- Visiting BWBs.
Lovely twists and plenty of interesting options for how things might have gone differently.
Bloody hell, that's an epic chain of events
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I've often thought the Bapedi are who pop culture thinks the Zulu were.
I have beaten this particular drum so much on here. But the Zulus reputation as militaristic and expansionist is only really true under Shaka and Dingane and even then their record is mixed, with them losing a lot more battles than is often assumed. Under Mpande and Cetshwayo, military expansion basically halted entirely, from 1852 to the British invading them in 1879 the Zulus wouldn't fight a single external war at all.
Where as if you want a bantu nation in the area that genuinely was constantly at war with everyone all of the time, you have the Bapedi (and to a lesser extent the Swazi).
I have beaten this particular drum so much on here. But the Zulus reputation as militaristic and expansionist is only really true under Shaka and Dingane and even then their record is mixed, with them losing a lot more battles than is often assumed. Under Mpande and Cetshwayo, military expansion basically halted entirely, from 1852 to the British invading them in 1879 the Zulus wouldn't fight a single external war at all.
Where as if you want a bantu nation in the area that genuinely was constantly at war with everyone all of the time, you have the Bapedi (and to a lesser extent the Swazi).
Random observation Gary, but have you considered covering Leo Africanus in your Africa articles? I know they're mostly set rather later than when he lived, but you did do that one about the Moroccans' Entirely Serious Proposal for an alliance with Elizabeth I.
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Random observation Gary, but have you considered covering Leo Africanus in your Africa articles? I know they're mostly set rather later than when he lived, but you did do that one about the Moroccans' Entirely Serious Proposal for an alliance with Elizabeth I.
At the moment, I'm concentrating on late 19th century Africa. Because that's what I mostly read about and so know the most about.
But I will at some point run out of topics I know anything about in that time period (I have around 20 areas left to cover, of which I have written more than half the articles already) and will want to talk more about earlier African history instead. Kimpa Vita absolutely deserves a full article for one. Mansa Musa and the extend to which his legend has been exaggerated is another. The Adal-Ethiopian War. The Barbary Corsairs.
But there's also bits outside of Africa I want to talk about, some more interviews, some reviews, some genre thoughts, some looks at possible Alternate domesticated animals such as the Eland in Africa, the revolutions and invasions in the lesser Antilles during the cold war, operation red dog and Grenada etc, the history of revolutions in Ireland and what Irelands could have emerged.
Much like yourself I imagine there's no shortage of ideas I want to write, it's just the discipline of doing the research and having other projects take precedence that stop it happening. I could easily throw out outlines for 50 more articles, but that doesn't mean they'll happen.
Leo Africanus I wouldn't rule out, he's certainly an interesting figure, but I don't know what my angle on it would be. Comparison to Samuel Pallache maybe? If I read a good biography on him and see a what if worth exploring, yeah absolutely.