Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Colonial Adventures => Topic started by: marianas_gamer on November 15, 2014, 12:20:35 AM
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A friend just posted this and I thought that it might be interesting to the membership.
(http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s360/marianas_gamer/Alkebu-lan_1260AH_HiRez_zps66fd8957.jpg) (http://s511.photobucket.com/user/marianas_gamer/media/Alkebu-lan_1260AH_HiRez_zps66fd8957.jpg.html)
It can be found at the artists site
http://www.cyon.se/#!alkebu-lan/ck0q
LB
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this is a very interesting concept.
He elaborates on his sources and proceedings
I would really be curious to know more
however (although this aspect is exempt from the map concept), it always strikes me how the arab influence and expansion, especially the exploitation of east africa, is not regarded as "colonization" in any way, but more as the natural way of things...
very strange...
how about we left that out too?
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I imagine that Zululand would be a lot bigger without the influence of Europeans settlers!
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I imagine that Zululand would be a lot bigger without the influence of Europeans settlers!
Exactly what I thought when I looked at it.
Without Shaka's sucessors' wars with the Voortrekkers, the already greatly expanded Zulu empire carved out by Shaka would surely have covered a greatly deal more of SE Africa than shown by 1844...
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Pretty but as others have observed it rather glosses over the more likely 'alternative reality' of indigenous empires expanding or other external forces supplanting them. Up until the end of the second decade of the 20th C for example, the Ottoman Empire had at least nominal suzerainty over much of North Africa.
I know where the artist is coming from. Look, without that pernicious European colonialism, everyone would have lived in harmony and in states or statelets more or less defined by ethnic groupings! More or less just like it did in Rwanda? There's a point where European guilt comes almost full circle and denies very real human attributes to the people it is feeling guilty about.
I suppose it's well meaning but somewhat patronising and sadly misses a lot of points about human history across the globe, including Africa.
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If you are looking for a good discussion of cartography that can be bent to some fun gaming scenarios, try looking for a copy of Stewart McIntyre's 'The Secret Discovery of Australia'.
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One wonders whether the linguistic /cultural territories described by the artist as "real historical precolonial African nations" would have developed as nation states on the modern "European" model, or emerged and recombined as territories with a variety of governance structures based on alternative migration patterns, disruptive technologies or ideologies, or competition for resources.
With alternative history, sometimes "second order counterfactuals" lead to the same historical outcome, and sometimes they distort the past beyond all recognition. We can "play out" the assumption of the primary counterfactual: that the Black Death kept Europe on the sidelines and left Africa to develop without European colonization, but as others point out, the influence of Arab expansion might well have been enhanced in its absense. And why not the Imperial Chinese as well, whose trade networks with parts of Africa and voyages of exploration date from the late 9th century, with continued contact until 1500?
The imagined areas of this map in southwest Africa with which I am most familiar presuppose the migration patterns of Bantu peoples through the 18th and early 19th centuries played out as they did historically. Without firearms or horses of the Oorlam, it is doubtful whether the Khoekhoegowab speaking Nama would have contained the Herero in central Namibia. Nor would the indigenous San have necessarily be confined to the Kalahari.
What the artist has actually done is to highlight a dominant African linguistic or ethnic identity for geographic territories across the continent, but not as of 1260 as the map purports but rather across nearly six hundred years of subsequent history.
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this is exactly the point.
as an example the Great Zimbabwe complex as well as other central African developed states. These fall mainly before European colonial influence,
The later Bantu states like the already mentioned Zulu empire is a good example for bantu-speaking emerging statedom, that was possibly triggered by european colonialism.
All in all, this is a very complex and interesting aspect of history, and I am not sure that it could be satisfyingly assessed, no matter if one counts arab or dutch colonialism in or not.
A good proxy indicator for extra-african substantial influence would be the trading of goods on a major scale, like slaves or ivory.
I am for instance pretty sure about the slave-thirst of emerging Islamic expansion (to the north as well of course), but would be ignorant to answer how far the hellenistic or roman empire "pulled" in that aspect.
Did we not have forumites who kitbashed fantasy africans from plastic sets? I have always been strongly interested in contrafactual history
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Yeah, a lot of these actually fell of their own accord or due to internal African struggles before any Asiatic contact or significant western contact, like the Songhai for instance. Even the most severe criticism of colonialism would be hard pressed to ascribe the fall of the Songhai empire to western causes.
This seems more like a tribal map, if anything. Which is still illuminative to folks who aren't aware of all the tribal groups in Africa and how they lie.
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What ever happened to " Jack Scruby's "Mafrica"? I think this has a little more color than that.
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sorry...but why is it upside down?
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sorry...but why is it upside down?
seriously?
OK, I'll play
it is a comment on eurocentrism
since the map is about africa without european influence, it does make sense
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Drawn by an Australian.
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Actually there is a disadvantage of a south up map (or any other orientation) and that is when you have to navigate round it (rather than just looking at it) it helps if the map lines are drawn to a magnetic or grid north. I know you can make the adjustments but trust me knowing where north is and being able to orientate the map in that direction really helps.
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the reason for a north-south orientation in cartography is the use of a magnetic compass for course plotting on a map. Everything else is arbitrary. Since the navigation today works with GPS satellites, you can turn the map whichever way you like. Coordinate projections with N-S orientation make sense for the exact same reason. they are an approximation anyway, and otherwise arbitrary as well
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the reason for a north-south orientation in cartography is the use of a magnetic compass for course plotting on a map. Everything else is arbitrary. Since the navigation today works with GPS satellites, you can turn the map whichever way you like. Coordinate projections with N-S orientation make sense for the exact same reason. they are an approximation anyway, and otherwise arbitrary as well
But ... if there was a Southern Hemisphere dominance over these matters would not the Poles be reversed, or rather what we now call the South Pole would just have been North?
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for cartography it is irrelevant which one is up, the note was only about the magnetic field. You could also call them Adam and Eve too
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My understanding of 'decline' in large parts of Africa was not down to warfare, but actually sudden environmental disasters which led to, or were accompanied by, diseases and crop pests.
The Gikuyu were often being raided by the Masai, but their decline came about after both their crops and their cattle were wiped out by various pests and diseases, and this was made worse by drought. From what I understand, an entire region (Kiambu) was effectively emptied, and anywhere between 25-50% of the indigenous population died off.
Unfortunately not too long after this cataclysmic event, Europeans showed up and thought the areas devoid of people hadn't been claimed (of course not like it would have mattered otherwise) and started to set up shop.
I've read of a few instances where tribes were discovered to have had an advanced political system, but they, similar to the Gikuyu, had suffered similar problems, with Europeans arriving to finish the job.
Interestingly on the subject of the Islamic conquests of large chunks of Africa, and the Arab Slave Trade, its estimated that just as many Africans were enslaved and shipped East, as had been enslaved by Europeans and shipped West. However its not difficult to see why the European Slave Trade generates far more interest.
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Brummie your last paragraph actually dovetails nicely with the inverse map topic.
A view becomes the conventional one and accepted as common wisdom despite there being no empirical reason or evidence (or in fact contrary evidence). Challenges to this view may then be deemed heretical and dismissed. However we may be straying from the OP and I will pontificate no more.
Agreed Mr Bezzo. It should all get its fair share of interest and study.