What was Africa like before colonialism? any documentaries or books you can recommend

ignorethis

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You are so dumb. What the fugg is a nomadic farmer? :deadmanny:

Farmers by nature are not nomadic. The Fulani were herdsmen that walked their herds to different pastures, which is why the Fulani are all across West Africa.

Other West Africans were not nomads. They were stationary you dolt. The stationary people are the ones that built the major kingdoms. The Fulani did not settle into sedentary locations until they began converting to Islam.
Herdsman-nomadic farmer whatever you want to call them. They travel with cattle which they milk for milk and sometimes eat, from one area where they destroyed all resources, to another area where they proceed to destroy all the resources, and rinse and repeat.

Nomadic Farmers.

They still do this til this day in Nigeria, and people seriously wondered do they seriously not understand the concept of private property, or do they really understand and just not give a fukk.
 
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Samori Toure

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These "kingdom" weren't nearly as powerful as you think they were.

Secondly there were hunter-gathers, the some of the fulani are still fukking nomadic, cattle poaching, hunter-gatherers to this day.

And I already concede that I messed up saying hunter gathers in West Africa, but all of Africa, including Central and South (which slaves also came from) hunter-gathering was the majority.

West Africa, dense bush allowed some people to settle down into farm based communities. But all of West Africa isn't dense Bush, a lot of it is humid desert.

So you still had hunter-gatherers In those parts.

The Hausa were eventually led under middle eastern leadership through Islam. And by extension the Yoruba had already been exposed to middle eastern influence.

Not even counting those people. I'm talking about Africans that had never ran into white people, or an idea from white people in there entire existence.


You clearly do not know what a hunter-gatherers are nor do you know about their societies. Hunter-gatherers are like Pygmies and San Khoi people. They don't farm nor do they have herds. They literally only hunt and gather the foods that they need and they hardly ever engage in trade or interact with people outside of their ethnic groups.

The Fulani are not hunter-gatherers. The Fulani were traditionally cattle herding nomads. They have always engaged in trade with the people that they lived around, by usually selling beef for goods. The Fulani have also settled down among people that they traded with; first in places like Mali and Guinea and eventually all the way over into Nigeria and Cameroon.

You clearly don't understand what you are trying to state, but that is obviously not going to stop you from making a fool out of yourself.
 

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You clearly do not know what a hunter-gatherers are nor do you know about their societies. Hunter-gatherers are like Pygmies and San Khoi people. They don't farm nor do they have herds. They literally only hunt and gather the foods that they need and they hardly ever engage in trade or interact with people outside of their ethnic groups.

The Fulani are not hunter-gatherers. The Fulani were traditionally cattle herding nomads. They have always engaged in trade with the people that they lived around, by usually selling beef for goods. The Fulani have also settled down among people that they traded with; first in places like Mali and Guinea and eventually all the way over into Nigeria and Cameroon.

You clearly don't understand what you are trying to state, but that is obviously not going to stop you from making a fool out of yourself.
Have you ever seen a fulani in real life? Do you know anybody that has interacted with a fulani in real life?

Why is it so hard to believe that all of a group of people are not at the same level of societal development. To this day all throughout Nigeria, you have tiers of societal development that tend to trend up with population growth. No different than here in the United States. But here in the United States their might be a 20-30 year development difference between a major city and a small podunk town (internet really made it less).

In modern Nigeria that gap can be 50-100 years because electricity is still a privilege that majority of Nigerians don't have. Having electricity semi-consistently outside of a major city basically means you're rich, you might be part of the elite(hell the elite just started getting electricity consistently).

In precolonial Africa, that gap was 100-200 years of development. There wasn't an easy way to make maps and mass distribute them. Hell most people couldn't write or read yet. Information didn't travel as fast or as efficiently.
 
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Shabazz

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Way back in time? This Tichitt Walata. It was a Mande trading city built out of stone hundreds of years before Jesus was born.

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I didn’t say how far back in time you would have to go to find a majority hunter gatherer west Africa I just said “way back” so why are you linking this like i said west Africans were majority hunter gatherers before Jesus’ birth?:childplease:
 

Samori Toure

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Herdsman-nomadic farmer whatever you want to call them. They travel with cattle which they some milk for milk and sometimes eat, from one area where they destroyed all resources, to another area where they proceed to destroy all the resources, and rinses and repeat.

Nomadic Farmers.

They still do this til this day in Nigeria, and people seriously wondered do they seriously not understand the concept of private property, or do they really understand and just not give a fukk.

There is no such thing as a nomadic farmer. Farming takes sedentary behavior. Nomads are people that move. You can not farm if you are on the move. The Fulani were nomadic herders. Nomads are not the same thing as hunter gatherers.

Second of all the Fulani were never major kingdom builders in West Africa. The Mande, Yoruba, Akan and many other groups were the major kingdom builders. The Fulani settled in among other groups like the Hausa, where in some cases they became Muslim leaders.
 

Samori Toure

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Have you ever seen a fulani in real life? Do you know anybody that has interacted with a fulani in real life?

Why is it so hard to believe that all of a group of people are not at the same level of societal development.

Yes I have. Yes I have.

You don't know what you are writing about, because when people write about major kingdoms in West Africa they do not mean Fulani people. So your whole vantage point is screwed in thinking that the since Fulani did not create major empires in West Africa then no one else did either. That just shows that you are completely unlearned and it also shows that you have no actual knowledge about the other major Kingdoms and ethnic groups in West Africa.
 

MischievousMonkey

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Because their rulership was still dependent on religion, not everybody believed in a religion and they could choose to not follow them, Not pay dues, not deal with them.

People had way more agency in precolonial Africa than these stories portray. The average African wasn't a serf.

The guys you guys often refer to as kings were often just powerful rich men that help provide for whatever their region was, maybe a couple of villages, maybe a compound, they might have had an population/travel hub where they're name and legend was likely to travel. There were thousands of men with that rank at the time of the "King" you guys refer to, and they weren't bowing down to anybody , they were just being the big dog in their area.
Because their rulership was still dependent on religion, not everybody believed in a religion and they could choose to not follow them, Not pay dues, not deal with them.
:dahell: So the "Kings" of France weren't kings? Their whole power was religiously instituted, under the guise God chose them to rule over the population. Moreover, did the question of the Jews and the protestants in France, the Muslims and the Jews in Spain, protestants in Germany... prevent the rulers of these regions from being considered kings and emperors in your eyes?

Again, how does a "rulership being dependent on religion" and "agency of people" disqualify one from being a "King"? You don't show any clear logical connection between these ideas.

What is a King or an Emperor to you? I guess it'll be easier if you straight up say it, because your notion of it seems to depart not only from the African notion of it, but also every notion of a king, including European, I ever encountered in my life.
 

ignorethis

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There is no such thing as a nomadic farmer. Farming takes sedentary behavior. Nomads are people that move. You can not farm if you are on the move. The Fulani were nomadic herders. Nomads are not the same thing as hunter gatherers.

Second of all the Fulani were never major kingdom builders in West Africa. The Mande, Yoruba, Akan and many other groups were the major kingdom builders. The Fulani settled in among other groups like the Hausa, where in some cases they became Muslim leaders.
You can farm land for 2-5 years until your cattle fukks up the farmland because you guys don't control the animals. After that you move to another piece of more viable land and repeat the process.

Some fulanis, are college educated and can speak mandarin, those aren't the average fulanis!

The average fulanis are primitive compared the rest of Nigeria, the same way 500 years ago there were groups and members of the same groups, that were considered primitive compare to you in your more civilized group.
 

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:dahell: So the "Kings" of France weren't kings? Their whole power was religiously instituted, under the guise God chose them to rule over the population. Moreover, did the question of the Jews and the protestants in France, the Muslims and the Jews in Spain, protestants in Germany... prevent the rulers of these regions from being considered kings and emperors in your eyes?

Again, how does a "rulership being dependent on religion" and "agency of people" disqualify one from being a "King"? You don't clearly show any logical connection between these ideas.

What is a King or an Emperor to you? I guess it'll be easier if you straight up say it, because your notion of it seems to depart not only from the African notion of it, but also every notion of a king, including European, I ever encountered in my life.
A chief isn't a king, oga isn't a king,

Yorubas had a title similar to "king" but if you ask the average yoruba in modern day Nigeria to name a yoruba king they cannot. The average yoruba in Nigeria doesn't know anything about yoruba history, or those guys just weren't important in their history.

The same way the average Igbo in Igboland does not care about Igbo history, hell you'll get looked at weird for trying to talk to them about the Kingdom of Nri, they haven't fully grasped the idea of writing down and repeating knowledge.

Being able to read and write effectively is still a privilege in Nigeria.

Point being, you guys are making these guys out to be bigger than what the average African thought of them.
 

Samori Toure

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You can farm land for 2-5 years until your cattle fukks up the farmland because you guys don't control the animals. After that you move to another piece of more viable land and repeat the process.

Some fulanis, are college educated and can speak mandarin, those aren't the average fulanis!

The average fulanis are primitive compare the rest of Nigeria, the same way 500 years ago there were groups and members of the same groups, that were considered primitive compare to you.

The Fulani did't farm anything. Their cattle grazed off of grasslands in the Sahel. The Fulani in turn traded cattle, hides and milk for farm goods of sedentary people that lived in the Sahel. So the Fulani were not farmers. Some eventually took to farming as many became sedentary, but the Fulani were by and large always nomdaic. Regardless of all of that the Fulani were driven into the Nigeria by the Mandingos, which happened as a result of constant warfare by the parties in Senegamiba. In any event I don't know why you are invoking the nomadic Fulani as being representative of all West Africans when that is clearly not true. Your hatred of Fulani sounds like a Nigerian problem to me and while the Fulani were never much among the Mande people; they seem to have become rulers among the Nigerians.
 

MischievousMonkey

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A chief isn't a king, oga isn't a king,

Yorubas had a title similar to "king" but if you ask the average yoruba in modern day Nigeria to name a yoruba king they cannot. The average yoruba in Nigeria doesn't know anything about yoruba history, or those guys just weren't important in their history.

The same way the average Igbo in Igboland does not care about Igbo history, hell you'll get looked at weird for trying to talk to them about the Kingdom of Nri, they haven't fully grasped the idea of writing down and repeating knowledge.

Being able to read and write effectively is still a privilege in Nigeria.

Point being, you guys are making these guys out to be bigger than what the average African thought of them.
You didn't answer any of my questions breh...

I don't really care about what the average modern Yoruba or Igbo thinks. I'm trying to get to know and understand what you think, to see if I can learn from it.

What is a King?
 

ignorethis

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The Fulani did't farm anything. Their cattle grazed off of grasslands in the Sahel. The Fulani in turn traded cattle, hides and milk for farm goods of sedentary people that lived in the Sahel. So the Fulani were not farmers. Some eventually took to farming as many became sedentary, but the Fulani were by and large always nomdaic. Regardless of all of that the Fulani were driven into the Nigeria by the Mandingos, which happened as a result of constant warfare by the parties in Senegamiba. In any event I don't know why you are invoking the nomadic Fulani as being representative of all West Africans when that is clearly not true. Your hatred of Fulani sounds like a Nigerian problem to me and while the Fulani were never much among the Mande people; they seem to have become rulers among the Nigerians.
Why are you talking about the fulani in pass tense like I'm not talking about what some fulani are still doing right now as we are speaking.

"rulers amongst Nigerians? Igbos only figured out Hausas existed when Britain drew a border around us together. How could someone have ruled Nigeria? There were parts of Africa where not knowing the language was a death sentence. How they simultaneously ruled over two people that didn't even know each other existence.
 

ignorethis

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You didn't answer any of my questions breh...

I don't really care about what the average modern Yoruba or Igbo thinks. I'm trying to get to know and understand what you think, to see if I can learn from it.

What is a King?
Royalty, ordained by a higher power, whatever weird shyt Europeans thought made someone a king. But in reality they were just the richest and most politically successful family in the region.

We had chiefs, ogas, obis who were more like big dogs in their area, maybe like a mayor at times. You don't think there was a gap in power between a medieval king and a mayor of a small village?
 
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