Africa Never Used Its Greatest Strength

This video is part two in a series that attempts to tackle the question of why Africans never invaded the world. The first video in the series is linked in the description box below. I think a brief elucidation of the previous video is warranted. In it, I listed four invasions orchestrated by African peoples, directed outside of the continent. Only one of them, the Carthaginians, not being inspired by religion or motivated by retaliation. This was a minor deviation from the intended focus of Africa below the Sahara, in particular, West and Central Africa. I simply wanted to acknowledge that African invasions outside of the continent did indeed happen, albeit with some caveats. Today, we're going to address and hopefully resolve one of the critical weaknesses of my theory. What up, African world? It's Homseymir, and welcome back to another video of African History, Culture, and Worldview. By supporting this channel on Patreon, you're helping in the creation of these videos and contributing to this content. The link to Patreon is in the description box below. To begin, this video, like the first in the series, is opinion-based. My theory is still in its infancy and may be subject to change. Though the theory is based on historical facts, it is certainly possible to draw different conclusions from the same information. Moreover, it's critical to understand that I'm not saying that the historical realities mentioned in this video are unique to Africa. What I hope to convey is that these realities were experienced with greater intensity on the continent. Furthermore, the theory in the first video in the series was intended to provide a working model primarily for West and Central Africa. This second video, however, can apply to all of Africa below the Sahara. You may want to consider taking a look at the first video as a refresher. Ultimately, my theory as a whole contains four ideas. I presented three in the first video, and I'll be presenting the final one in this video. The recapitulation of the previous video's argument entails the following. Africans below the Sahara seldom invaded outside of the continent because of how they conceptualized power, the proliferated availability of non-renewable resources, the lack of religions espousing universal relevance, and finally, African diversity. So why the title of this video? Well, if you recall, in the first video, I mentioned that one of the most glaring weaknesses of the first three arguments was the sweeping generalization issue. Africa is, of course, not a monolith. You can't use one idea to paint the experience of the continent. The seeming ubiquity of the theory's relevance in West and Central Africa may not be conclusive for some. Others may be more charitable. However, even if we were to dismiss the first three theories, the fourth one, I believe, is enough to resolve the nagging generalization issue. Now back to the title of this video. African diversity was the most powerful barrier to any ethnic group adopting a conquer-the-world mentality. If Africans were able to resolve this problem, in my opinion, Africa would have undoubtedly been among the most sustainably powerful continents on the planet. This is the justification for this video's title. The irony is that diversity was Africa's greatest weakness, but also its greatest source of strength. The African diversity issue resolves the sweeping generalization problem because, in nearly every corner of the continent, the density of diversity is intense. The diversity issue is a sort of generalization that's actually true. Continental-wide application of the first three theories would only produce ephemeral success. With the dense amount of diversity per square mile below the Sahara, it would have been incredibly difficult for any one African ethnic group to conquer and pacify all the surrounding ethnic groups for an extended period of time. The overwhelming majority of Africa would have had to deal with the diversity issue. The critical point here is that European, Asian, and Middle Eastern states did not have to overcome the same density of diversity per square mile that African states below the Sahara had to. I'll give some examples to help us understand the gravity of Africa's diversity issue and why it was such a prodigious deterrent toward any development of a conquer-the-world attitude amongst Africans below the Sahara. Consider this. In the 15th century, two Portuguese expeditions into West Africa were forced to abandon their mission altogether because their African interpreters couldn't understand the languages of other Africans just a relatively short distance away. These African interpreters, likely trained in several regional languages, became virtually useless in the same general region. The linguistic diversity of the West African coast came to represent the main challenge. Both Kadimosto in 1456 and Pedro de Sintra in 1461 were forced to abandon their explorations in the Guinea rivers and Sierra Leone because south of the Rio Grande, they encountered speakers of Southern West Atlantic languages, a language group entirely new to them and their interpreters. Another West African region drowned in diversity is Nigeria. It's reported that at minimum 250 different languages are spoken there. Now let's compare Nigeria against European, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. France is a bit smaller than Nigeria, but it doesn't have nearly as much diversity. Mongolia and Saudi Arabia are much bigger than Nigeria, yet they both pale in comparison in regards to linguistic or ethnic diversity. This gives us a general idea of the challenges that ambitious African ethnic groups would have had to face upon adopting expansionist policies. The Yoruba for some time had an expansionist agenda, but even if they had no internal issues, expanding militarily from Western Nigeria all the way into, say, Sudan, would have been severely idealistic at best. Not even the Arabs under a unifying religion could decisively defeat the Nubians in the Sudan region, and that's just one ethnic group the Yoruba would have had to deal with. This is where the other three theories become useful. The question of conquering the world, now that we have some geographic context, was naturally not an African question. This is not just because of how West and Central Africans may have conceptualized power, but in part due to the African diversity barrier. Even if Africans change the definition of the world, confining it to just the African continent, the problem would remain. Despite some weaknesses of the first three theories, I think they can still work together, the African diversity barrier being the glue to them all. In other words, where those three may fail in a given African region, the African diversity issue may save. But again, this is not to say that the Romans, Greeks, Arabs, or Mongolians did not have to deal with diversity. They certainly did. However, I question deeply the density of the diversity encountered compared to any given African ethnic group below the Sahara. Well, I'm all out guys. If you like these videos and want to help in its continued production, consider supporting the home team on patreon.com. The link is in the description box below. Know thyself. Remember your ancestors. Peace.