Africa, Uncolonized

A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent

What if the Black Plague had killed
off almost all Europeans?
Then the Reconquista never happens.
Spain and Portugal don't kickstart
Europe's colonization of other
continents. And this is what Africa
might have looked like.
The map upside down, to skew our traditional
Eurocentric point of view shows an Africa
dominated by Islamic states, and native kingdoms
and federations. All have at least some basis in
history, linguistics or ethnography. None of their
borders is concurrent with any of the straight lines
imposed on the continent by European powers,
during the 1884-85 Berlin Conference and in the
subsequent Scramble for Africa. By 1914,
Europeans controlled 90% of Africa's land mass.
Only the Abyssinian Empire (modern-day Ethiopia)
and Liberia (founded in 1847 as a haven for freed
African-American slaves) remained independent.
This map is the result of an entirely different
course of history. The continent depicted here isn't
even called Africa [1] but Alkebu-Lan, supposedly
Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' [2]. That name is
sometimes used by those who reject even the
name 'Africa' as a European imposition. It is therefore an ideal title for this thought experiment by
Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. Essentially, it formulates a cartographic answer to the question: What
would Africa have looked like if Europe hadn't become a colonizing power?
To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in
the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline,
over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between
30 and 60% of Europe's population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach prePlague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more
catastrophic extermination one from which it could not recover?
Cyon borrowed this counterfactual hypothesis from The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), an alternate
history novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book explores how the depopulation of Europe would
have altered world history. Robinson speculates that Europe would have been colonized by
Muslims from the 14th century onwards, and that the 20th century would see a world war between
a sprawling Muslim alliance on the one side, and the Chinese empire and the Indian and native
American federations on the other.
Cyon focuses on Africa or rather, Alkebu-Lan which in his version of events doesn't suffer the
ignominy and injustice of the European slave trade and subsequent colonization. In our timeline,
Europe's domination of Africa obscured the latter continent's rich history and many cultural
achievements. On the map of Cyon's Africa, nations and empires, all native to the continent itself,
[source: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized]

give the lie to the 19th- and 20th-century European presumption that Africa merely was a 'dark
continent' to be enlightened, or a 'blank page' for someone else to write upon.
Basing himself on Unesco's General History of Africa, Cyon built his map around historical
empires, linguistic regions and natural boundaries. His snapshot is taken in 1844 (or 1260 Anno
Hegirae), also the date of a map of tribal and political units in Unesco's multi-volume General
History.
The Arabic is no accident. Absent the European imprint, Islam has left an even more visible mark
on large swathes of North, West and East Africa than it has today. Numerous states carry the
nomenclature Sultnat, Khilfat or Imrat.
Islam of course did not originate in Africa, and some would claim that its dominance of large areas
of Africa, at the expense of pre-existing belief systems, is as much an example of foreign cultural
imperialism as the spread of Western religions and languages is in our day. But that is material for
another thought experiment. This one aims to filter out the European influence.
Neither European nor Arab influence is in evidence in the southern part of Africa although some
toponyms relate directly to states in our timeline: BaTswana is Botswana, for instance.
There is an interesting parallel to the Africa/Alkebu-Lan dichotomy in the toponymic ebb and flow of
Congo and Zare as names for the former Belgian colony at the center of the continent. Congo,
denoting both the stream and the two countries on either of its lower banks [4], derives from 16thand 17th-century Bantu kingdoms such as Esikongo, Manikongo and Kakongo near the mouth of
the river.
The name was taken up by European cartographers and the territory it covered eventually reached
deep inland. But because of its long association with colonialism, and also to fix his own imprint on
the country, Congo's dictator Mobutu in 1971 changed the name of the country and the stream to
Zare. The name-change was part of a campaign for local authenticity which also entailed the
Africanisation of the names of persons and cities [5], and the introduction of the a local alternative
to European formal and businesswear.
Curiously for a campaign trying to rid the country of European influences, the name Zare actually
was a Portuguese corruption of Nzadi o Nzere, a local term meaning 'River that Swallows Rivers.
This particular event is emblematic for the symbolism attached to place names, especially in Africa,
where many either refer to a precolonial past (e.g. Ghana and Benin, named after ancient
kingdoms), represent the vestiges of the colonial era (e.g. Lderitz, in Namibia), or attempt to build
a postcolonial consensus (e.g. Tanzania, a portmanteau name for Tanganyika and Zanzibar).
By taking the colonial trauma out of the equation, this map offers a uniquely a-colonial perspective
on the continent, whether it is called Africa or Alkebu-Lan.

[source: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized]

Strange Maps #688

[1] A name popularized by the Romans. It is of uncertain origin, possibly meaning 'sunny', 'dusty' or
'cave-y'.
[2] The origin and meaning of the toponym are disputed. The Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks' would
be Bilad as-Sudan, which is how the present-day country of Sudan got its name.Other translations
offered for Alkebu-Lan (also rendered as Al-Kebulan or Alkebulan) are 'Garden of Life', 'Cradle of
Life', or simply 'the Motherland'. Although supposedly of ancient origin, the term was popularized
by the academic Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan (b. 1918). The term is not a 20th-century invention,
however. Its first traceable use is in La Iberiada (1813), an epic poem from 1813 by Ramn
Valvidares y Longo. In the index, where the origin of 'Africa' is explained, it reads: Han dado las
naciones este pais diversos nombres, llamndole Ephrikia los Turcos, Alkebulan los Arabes,
Besecath los Indios, y los pueblos del territorio Iphrikia Aphrikia: los Griegos, en fin, le
apellidaron Libia, y despues Africa, cuyo nombre han adoptado los Espaoles, Italianos, Latinos,
Ingleses y algunos otros pueblos de la Europa.
[3] A.k.a. the Plague, a very contagious and highly deadly disease caused by Yersinia pestis. That
bacterium infested the fleas that lived on the rats coming over from Crimea to Europe on Genoese
merchant ships.
[4] In fact, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, capitals of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic
Republic of Congo respectively, are positioned across from each other on the banks of the Congo
River the only example in the world of two national capitals adjacent to each other.
[5] The 'founder-president' himself changed his name from Joseph-Dsir Mobutu to Mobutu Sese
Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga. The capital Lopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, after an
ancient village on the same site.

European colonies in Africa in 'our'

1913. Blue: France, pink: Britain,
light green: Germany, dark green:
Italy, light purple: Spain, dark
purple: Portugal, yellow: Belgium,
white: independent. Lines reflect
current borders.

[source: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/africa-uncolonized]