African empires

Victorian missionaries liked to think they were bringing the beacon of ‘civilisation’ to the ‘savages’ of
Africa, but the truth is that Africans were developing commercial empires and complex urban societies
while Europeans were still running after wildlife with clubs. Many of these civilisations were small and
short-lived, but others were truly great, with influence that reached far beyond Africa and into Asia and
Europe.

Hannibal’s homeland
Established in Tunisia by a mysterious race of seafaring people called the Phoenicians (little is known about their
origins, but they probably hailed from Tyre in modern-day Lebanon), the city-state of Carthage filled the power gap
left by the fading empire of Ancient Egypt. By the 6th century BC, Carthage controlled much of the local sea trade,
their ships sailing to and from the Mediterranean ports laden with cargos of dye, cedar wood and precious metals.
Back on land, scholars were busy inventing the Phoenician alphabet, from which Greek, Hebrew and Latin letters are
all thought to derive. All this came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Romans, who razed Carthage to the ground
(despite the best efforts of the mighty warrior Hannibal, Carthage’s most celebrated son) and enslaved its population
in 146 BC. A host of foreign armies swept across North Africa in the succeeding centuries, but it was the Arabs who
had a lasting impact, introducing Islam around AD 670.
Colonialism
Hot on the heels of the 19th-century explorers came the representatives of European powers, who began the
infamous ‘scramble for Africa’, vying with each other to exploit real or imagined resources for their sovereigns, and
demarcating random and unlikely national borders that still remain to this day. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–85,
most of Africa was split neatly into colonies. France and Britain got the biggest swathes,
with Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Belgium picking up bits and pieces.
Forced labour, heavy taxation, and swift and vengeful violence for any insurrection were all characteristics of the
colonial administrations. African territories were essentially organised to extract cheap cash crops and natural
resources for use by the colonial powers. To facilitate easy administration, tribal differences and rivalries were
exploited to the full, and Africans who refused to assimilate to the culture of their overlords were kept out of the
market economy and the education system. Industrial development and social welfare were rarely high on the
colonialists’ agenda, and the effects of the colonial years, which in some cases only ended a few decades ago,
continue to leave their mark on the continent.