History UsefulNotes / Africa

If you are curious about African-Americans, they are the American-born descendants of Africans brought over to the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates as slaves in the Atlantic slave trade, particularly West and Central Africans. They are not to be confused with Africans from the continent itself, though African-Americans did establish a country in West Africa, Liberia, with that country having its own unique ethnic group, Americo-Liberians, as a result, and they also founded Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Most Caribbeans and Afro-Latinos are also descended from Africans brought to the New World by Europeans in the same slave trade, with UsefulNotes/TheCaribbean having many aspects of West African culture in general as a result.

If you are curious about African-Americans, they are the American-born descendants of Africans brought over to the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates as slaves in the Atlantic slave trade, particularly West Africans. They are not to be confused with Africans from the continent itself, though African-Americans did establish a country in West Africa, Liberia, with that country having its own unique ethnic group, Americo-Liberians, as a result, and they also founded Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Most Caribs are also descended from West Africans brought to the islands by Europeans in the same slave trade, with UsefulNotes/TheCaribbean having many aspects of West African culture in general as a result.

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE, alongside its sister civilization Nubia to the south. Empires like Egypt and Carthage played significant roles in the historical development of the Middle East and the greater Mediterranean, influencing religion, politics, science, and culture. As did the various Berber and Arab sultanates that emerged after the rise of Islam. Meanwhile, South of the Sahara, cultures like the Nok and Djenne-Djenno were flourishing, and groups like the Bantu were expanding into Eastern and Southern Africa, bringing iron-working and agriculture with them. During the next few millennia, these cultures would develop into a dense tapestry of kingdoms, confederations, and empires of similar complexity to those found in Europe and Asia. These included the likes of Aksum (one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, only to be cut off from the rest of the Christian world by the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (an immensely wealthy trading power, that developed the fabled Timbuktu into a center of culture and learning), the city-states of the Swahili Coast, the Benin Empire, the Ashanti, the Kingdom of Kongo, and Great Zimbabwe.

These civilizations grew wealthy by harnessing Africa's plentiful natural resources, shipping immense amounts of gold, iron, salt, timber, ivory, and [[BreadEggsMilkSquick enslaved people]], to buyers in the Islamic World, Asia, and Europe. However, thanks to the geographical boundary created by the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans only directly interacted with the North African cultures who acted as middlemen in the profitable trade. As such, the exploits and achievements of Sub-Saharan African civilizations tend to be ignored in most Western accounts of history, leading to the misconception that pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa was some [[DarkestAfrica primordial timeless wilderness where primitive bands of tribal people lived without any semblance of civilization]]. Ignorance of this history has been further enforced by the fact that most pre-colonial Sub-Saharan African societies did not utilize writing, so when their societies were disrupted by colonialism, many of their histories, usually maintained via oral transmission, were permanently lost or distorted.

During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its tremendous natural wealth -- and abundance of people -- back home. Already in the market for slaves for their plantations in the New World, the European powers saw Sub-Saharan Africa as the ideal place to find them. They justified this tactic by inventing the notion of scientific racism, which claimed that humanity was divided into four or so distinct races and that black Africans were the worst of the lot. Thus was born the Atlantic Slave Trade, which, over roughly 300 years, ferried millions of captured Africans away from their homes and onto slave plantations in the Americas, and had tremendous political, economic, and demographic consequences for both Africa and the New World. For starters, the societal disruption caused by the slave trade and the introduction of firearms led to the gradual collapse of many powerful African states, leaving much of the continent ripe for the taking. At first, with the noted exception of the Dutch Cape Colony, Europeans were only interested in trade with the existing African powers, and maintaining the slave trade. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the focus shifted to obtaining control of the continent's immense resources, and slowly but surely Africa came under the control of the European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], but the colonization of Liberia occurred in the 1820s and the country gained independence in 1847, 37 years before the Berlin Conference of 1884 (when the European powers officially divided up Africa amongst themselves). Moreover, the colony of Liberia was established less on the initiative of the United States government itself (who was mainly focused on UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and later [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar postbellum]] [[UsefulNotes/TheGildedAge Reconstruction]] during the Scramble), but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE, alongside its sister civilization Nubia to the south. Empires like Egypt and Carthage played significant roles in the historical development of the Middle East and the greater Mediterranean, influencing religion, politics, science, and culture. As did the various Berber and Arab sultanates that emerged after the rise of Islam. Meanwhile, South of the Sahara, cultures like the Nok and Djenne-Djenno were flourishing, and groups like the Bantu were expanding into Eastern and Southern Africa, bringing iron-working and agriculture with them. During the next few millennia, these cultures would develop into a dense tapestry of kingdoms, confederations, and empires of similar complexity to those found in Europe and Asia. These included the likes of Aksum (one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, only to be cut off from the rest of the Christian world by the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (an immensely wealthy trading power, that developed the fabled Timbuktu into a center of culture and learning), the city-states of the Swahili Coast, the Benin Empire, the Ashanti, the Kingdom of Kongo, and Great Zimbabwe. These civilizations grew wealthy by harnessing Africa's plentiful natural resources, shipping immense amounts of gold, iron, salt, timber, ivory, and [[BreadEggsMilkSquick enslaved people]], to buyers in the Islamic World, Asia, and Europe. However, thanks to the geographical boundary created by the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans only really directly interacted with the North African cultures who acted as middlemen in the profitable trade. As such, the exploits and achievements of Sub-Saharan African civilizations tend to be ignored in most Western accounts of history, leading to the misconception that pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa was some primordial timeless wilderness where primitive bands of tribal people lived without any semblance of civilization. Ignorance of this history has been further enforced by the fact that most pre-colonial Sub-Saharan African societies did not utilize writing, so when their societies were disrupted by colonialism, many of their histories, usually maintained via oral transmission, were permanently lost or distorted.

The second largest continent in the world after {{UsefulNotes/Asia}} in both geographic size and population, Africa covers one-fifth of the Earth's land surface and contains 54 countries[[note]]56 if you include the separatist states of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic/Western Sahara and Somaliland, from Morocco and Somalia respectively. While 46 nations recognize the Western Sahara, the arguably more legitimate Somaliland has absolutely no recognition from anybody at all[[/note]], 8 dependencies, two thousand languages and upwards of a billion people. Its primary cultural divide is between the largely Arabic-speaking Muslim states north of the Sahara plus the country of Sudan (known collectively as North Africa), which have more in common with the UsefulNotes/ArabWorld than the rest of the continent, and "Black Africa" or sub-Saharan Africa further south. There are ''a lot'' of other divisions, though, including the differences between Southern Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa[[note]]Southern Africa is more Westernized than the rest of the continent, has more British, Dutch and German influences than the rest of Africa (which is more French and Portuguese influenced), is more temperate than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, has the largest number of Asians, coloureds (people of mixed Asian, African and European descent, mostly native to western South Africa) and whites in Africa, and is more developed and stable than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa along with having the world's largest platinum supply, though it still has its own problems, especially HIV/AIDS, income inequality and poverty[[/note]] and the transition zones just south of the Sahara: the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel Sahel]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_(region) Sudan]] (which confusingly does not include the country of Sudan, where the people are for the most part culturally Arab but look "African" to outsiders).[[note]]This makes sense if you know Arabic; "Sudan" in Arabic means "Land of the Blacks", but historically this was purely a comment on skin color rather than identifying some "race" of people distinguished from Arabs. As there have always been dark-skinned Arabs--particularly in UsefulNotes/{{Yemen}} (which is strongly linked to the Horn of Africa)--the "Blacks" in question could also be Arab.[[/note]] Africa is sometimes also merged with UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} as Afro-Eurasia.

Before the 4th millennium BCE, Africa was a very lush and green continent, a situation that remains today in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the north, however, there was a gradual desertification caused by an abrupt climate shift, which transformed the area into a sandy wasteland, barring some areas in the far north, where fertile valleys are barricaded from the desert by the Atlas Mountains, well as the banks of the Nile river. The Sahara geographically, culturally, and racially separated Africans since ancient times, with North Africa being primarily inhabited by the olive-skinned Egyptians and Berbers, while black-skinned Sub-Saharan Africans predominate areas to the south of the Great Desert. As a result of continual climate change and environmental neglect, desertification is still a phenomenon that can be observed in Africa today, thus pushing the Sahara further and further south.

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (an immensely wealthy trading power whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and Great Zimbabwe. Ignorance of this history has been further enforced by the fact that most pre-colonial African societies did not utilize writing, and so when their societies were disrupted by colonialism, many of their histories, usually maintained via oral transmission, were lost. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its tremendous natural wealth -- and abundance of people -- back home. Already in the market for slaves for their plantations in the New World, the European powers saw Sub-Saharan Africa as the ideal place to find them and justified it by claiming that Africans were members of an 'inferior race of savages' and therefore it was morally acceptable to enslave them. Thus was born the Atlantic Slave Trade, which, over the course of roughly 300 years, ferried millions of captured Africans away from their homes and onto slave plantations in the Americas, and had tremendous political, economic, and demographic consequences for both Africa and the New World. Initially, with the noted exception of the Dutch Cape Colony, Europeans were only interested in trade with the existing African powers, and maintaining the slave trade. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the focus shifted to obtaining control of the continent's immense resources, and slowly but surely Africa came under the control of the European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], but the colonization of Liberia occurred in the 1820s and the country gained independence in 1847, 37 years before the Berlin Conference of 1884 (when the European powers officially divided up Africa amongst themselves). Moreover, the colony of Liberia was established less on the initiative of the United States government itself (who was mainly focused on UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and later [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar postbellum]] [[UsefulNotes/TheGildedAge Reconstruction]] during the Scramble), but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Following UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, calls for the decolonization of imperial colonies echoed throughout the world, and Africa was no exception. It took decades of negotiations, political bickering, and bloody independence wars, but one by one, the colonies gradually achieved de jure independence. Unfortunately, these independence movements were complicated by the fact that many of the colonies were drawn up from arbitrary borders without regard to the people who lived there. Africans, contrary to popular perception, are not a homogeneous people and are just as varied in ethnicity, culture, language, and religion as anyone else in the world, if not more so. But as a result of this misconception, ethnic and religious groups who varied greatly from each other, and in some cases were even outright enemies, were often forced to share a country, which led to inevitable conflict. This is before mentioning the European power's overexploitation of African resources, pervasive neglect of the state of affairs in the colonies thanks to years of racism, and their insistence on maintaining political and economic dominance over the continent even decades after independence, a form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism neocolonialism]]. Thus were created tropes of Africa being [[{{Bulungi}} a hot, dusty hellhole where people live in straw huts]], [[FunnyForeigner speak uncouth, dumb-sounding languages]], [[WhiteMansBurden are perpetually in need of assistance from mighty rich whites]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny are ruled by corrupt dictators]], and [[InvadingRefugees whose only contribution to the world is a mass of refugees who cross the Mediterranean yearly in search of a better life in utopian, civilized European countries]].

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (a major trade power whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and Great Zimbabwe. Ignorance of this history has been further enforced by the fact that most pre-colonial African societies did not utilize writing. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its tremendous natural wealth -- and abundance of people -- back home. Already in the market for slaves for their plantations in the New World, the European powers saw Sub-Saharan Africa as the ideal place to find them and justified it by claiming that Africans were members of an 'inferior race of savages' and therefore it was morally acceptable to enslave them. Thus was born the Atlantic Slave Trade, which, over the course of roughly 300 years, ferried millions of captured Africans away from their homes and onto slave plantations in the Americas, and had tremendous political, economic, and demographic consequences for both Africa and the New World. Initially, with the noted exception of the Dutch Cape Colony, Europeans were only interested in trade with the existing African powers, and maintaining the slave trade. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the focus shifted to obtaining control of the continent's immense resources, and slowly but surely Africa came under the control of the European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], but the colonization of Liberia occurred in the 1820s and the country gained independence in 1847, 37 years before the Berlin Conference of 1884 (when the European powers officially divided up Africa amongst themselves). Moreover, the colony of Liberia was established less on the initiative of the United States government itself (who was mainly focused on UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and later [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar postbellum]] [[UsefulNotes/TheGildedAge Reconstruction]] during the Scramble), but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (who was one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and the Great Zimbabwe. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its natural wealth -- and people -- back home. Aside from the Dutch Cape Colony, whose Dutch colonization began in the mid-17th century, Europeans were initially only interested in trade with the existing African powers, as well as capturing and purchasing African slaves for their plantations and colonies in the New World. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the continent was slowly but surely conquered by European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], but the colonization of Liberia occurred in the 1820s and the country gained independence in 1847, 37 years before the Berlin Conference of 1884 (when the European powers officially divided up Africa amongst themselves). Moreover, the colony of Liberia was established less on the initiative of the United States government itself (who was mainly focused on UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and later [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar postbellum]] [[UsefulNotes/TheGildedAge Reconstruction]] during the Scramble), but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Following UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, calls for decolonization of imperial colonies echoed throughout the world, and Africa was no exception. It took decades of negotiations, political bickering, and bloody independence wars, but one by one, the Europeans let their African colonies to be free. Unfortunately, these independence movements were erred by the fact that many of the colonies were drawn up from arbitrary borders without regard to the people who live there. Africans, contrary to popular perception, are not a homogeneous people, and are just as much varied in ethnicity, culture, language, and religion as anyone else in the world. This is before mentioning the European overexploitation of African resources, pervasive neglect of the state of affairs in the colonies thanks to years of racism, and their insistence to remain politically and economically active in the region years after independence, a form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism neocolonialism]]. Thus were created tropes of Africa being [[{{Bulungi}} a hot, dusty hellhole where people live in straw huts]], [[FunnyForeigner speak uncouth, dumb-sounding languages]], [[WhiteMansBurden are perpetually in need of assistance from mighty rich whites]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny are ruled by corrupt dictators]], and [[InvadingRefugees whose only contribution to the world is a mass of refugees who cross the Mediterranean yearly in search of a better life in utopian, civilized European countries]].

* UsefulNotes/{{Nollywood}}

[[caption-width-right:237: We'll accept any fresh water you donate to us.]]

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (who was one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and the Great Zimbabwe. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its natural wealth -- and people -- back home. Aside from the Dutch Cape Colony, whose Dutch colonization began in the mid-17th century, Europeans were initially only interested in trade with the existing African powers, as well as capturing and purchasing African slaves for their plantations and colonies in the New World. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the continent was slowly but surely conquered by European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], and even then, the colony of Liberia was established less on the part of the United States government itself, but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (who was one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and the Great Zimbabwe. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its natural wealth -- and people -- back home. Aside from the Dutch Cape Colony, whose Dutch colonization began in the mid-17th century, Europeans were initially only interested in trade with the existing African powers, as well as capturing and purchasing African slaves for their plantations and colonies in the New World. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the continent was slowly but surely conquered by European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans -- while Ethiopia was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

* BlackAndNerdy
* BlackIsBiggerInBed
* BlackBossLady
* BlackGalOnWhiteGuyDrama

* AmoralAfrikaner

* AngryBlackManStereotype

* SassyBlackWoman
* ScaryBlackMan

* SoulBrotha

->'''Capital & Largest City''': Bujumbura