Why Did Civilization Lag in Africa?

[Irbis]

A point on the economy. 'Extractive institutions', or what shifting ambigous terms Daaron develops so that Europe and America doesn't have it were placed on Africa by their colonial masters.

How doesn't have them? You can make argument that Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth lagged in development behind West due to exactly the same problem - idiot nobles transforming the economy into extractive one selling grain to Western Europe. When almost everyone non-noble was forced into incredibly harsh serfdom (imagine 12 days of work per week harsh, and that's not a joke), the way to make crops larger was simply to confiscate more and increase the crop area, not trying to produce more from the same field, when everyone is forced into forced lack of education and drunkenness, over two hundred years you have almost zero civilization growth even with gilded palaces of the nobles and Poland being largest consumer of luxury goods in the world.

And then West finally can feed their own populations with increased farming efficiency and colonial shipments and you have a sudden market crash that ruins the economy to such a degree (with a big help of Prussian monetary warfare) the state disappears soon after.

From increased townships and agriculture for taxation purposes, increased monetary markets and as the final kicker, cash crops that was firmly entrenched by 1950 ensured that their economies were tied to selling resources to the world markets while servicing colonial debt. Newly independent countries inherited social stresses that when combined with the failure of a cashcrop economy, either via prices or nature meant that many of these countries found it hard to develop further.

We had no colonial masters, debts, and such. Well, unless you count nobles as internal colonizers and say Cossack uprisings as colonial revolt (and it could be a convincing argument). Anyway, the point is, the internal elites can well do it on their own, without any outside prompts, simply by following capitalist free market impulses leading to maximization of short term gain, even if it's stupid and harmful in long term.

It's intriguing to note that nations that did relatively better like Nigeria and South africia had better trading nexuses than say Ethiopia.Luck of geopolitics I guess ..

Poland had one of the busiest trading ports in the world for 2 centuries, Danzig being so wealthy if was one of the most influential Hanza members and powerful enough to wage civil wars with the rest of largest country in Europe at that time for privileges. Didn't help much.

[Irbis]

Also, since can't edit it in, a painting-caricature from the period that would fit right in the Political Cartoons Thread at the time: Grain is King and Grain is Past. You can easily guess which group is supposed to be who by clothing.

I am not sure you can make point lots of wars leads to scientific development - Poland had that too, and the best we produced was luxury noble based heavy cavalry. I'd say you need to have both offensive, aggressive wars (so you don't have them fought on your territory) and freedom for cities and universities as it was mostly the middle class that fuelled economic and scientific growth, things constricted in Poland by excessive serfdom.

You can probably make the same argument on Africa - mostly defensive wars, extraction economies, lack of middle class. You can't build a healthy state on tiny class of nobles and huge mass of serfs, something modern Europe and USA would be well to remember with the absurd, smothering mass of trickle-down, tax cuts and deregulation propaganda in the airwaves. As if I heard almost the arguments of 400 year old Polish nobles.

[madd0ct0r]

One thing against the same thing happening in Africa is that the 'upper class' was very much smaller, proportionally speaking, than in Europe. To make an example, a small town in Niger of two thousand might have one chief and five or six sub-chiefs below him. The chief and a few imams in the local mosque might be the *only* people in the town who understand Arabic, and can thus communicate with traders passing through the Sahara. The imams would very likely be the only literate persons there. Even in a city the size of Timbuktu in Mali, perhaps (dubiously) as large as a hundred thousand people at its height, would only have had a few dozen literate citizens.

Compare this to medieval Europe where due to the greater population density, you had many more people in the average town/city capable of reading and knowing languages besides the local dialect. It wasn't much better than Africa-- but it was better-- and in the Renaissance those numbers straight-up exploded. In Africa, they never really improved until very, very recently.

Suggesting that very little surplas food was produced (at the base level). this could be 1) poorer genetic options available in local flora. If there was stuff easy to grow and store, people would find it. the other option goes back to the OP and the suggestion that wild animals in Africa were simply tougher for humans to push back. This makes sense, since we exterminated or domesticated the megafauna everywhere else.

[Elheru Aran]

Mad-- sure you quoted the right bit of my post?

[madd0ct0r]

yes - you were talking about urban popualtion and also overall popualtion density - in prehistory, both are dependent on surplus food production. Without that, non-farmers, be they aristocrats or cities cannot form.

[Elheru Aran]

I was talking about literacy and communications but I suppose the same data could apply in some ways to population density. So that works out. It does bear noting that the European population density is far more so than Africa, which is, well, three times the size of Europe. Do any numbers (hard or soft) exist for African population before the colonial period?

[PainRack]

Extractive economies is a crock of Shit theory, where the authors attempted to hamfist unsuccessful economies as extractive and successful ones as institutions.

Here's an easy comparison. Is Australia success due to her extractive economy?it is still based on a commodity markets with large state based largess. Oh no, it's not, because Australia invested in her education,healthcare and other institutions!
Yet, the authors had no qualms labelling Indonesia as an extractive economy despite the fact that Indonesia economy pre n post colonial followed Australia, including a period under American domination. Of course, Their other targets is lack of freer trade,monopolies and corruption/nepotism, which means Indonesia isn't an insitutions based economy but still extractive.

But why then did Ming China fall but the EIC rose?
It's a good logical theory but attempts to ply it along historical lines creates a whole mess of ad hoc explainations....something usual for history but extremely dangerous if one was to apply this for future economic practice

[Irbis]

Extractive economies is a crock of Shit theory, where the authors attempted to hamfist unsuccessful economies as extractive and successful ones as institutions.

Here's an easy comparison. Is Australia success due to her extractive economy?it is still based on a commodity markets with large state based largess. Oh no, it's not, because Australia invested in her education,healthcare and other institutions!

You're making ahistorical argument. Even very advanced, modern economies can be badly damaged by their reliance on extraction of resources - see say Russia or Holland (Dutch Disease is named so for a reason).

Modern Australia or Norway managed to stave it off a bit thanks to lessons learned on aforementioned examples, like freezing the resource money in special funds to bring them in slowly, but still, I heard many Australians complain on things like bad exchange rate or loss of jobs in external sector.

But why then did Ming China fall but the EIC rose?

EIC? You mean East India Company? Because funny that, I remember how they reduced India's massive industry (craftsman) economy to cash crop farming one, to open India to British exports and to allow them to grow opium to flood the Asia with (and cause several opium wars).

End result - huge revolt that ended their rule, median Indian income falling far below poverty line, massive loss of knowledge and know how that probably set India back two centuries, plus dozens of devastating famines.

[PainRack]

Irbis, that's not what the extractive vs inclusive economy debate is referring to. The OP is clearly arguing that n the theory uses stretched definitions to include Australia as inclusive while those which failed as exclusive.

It can work as a model to explain the past. Inclusive politics tending to build inclusive economics which spread the wealth around, but their own acknowledgement that markets can become captured by a few big firms, or how their trends can be so easily distorted while their definitions of inclusive vs extractive keeps being stretched makes it useless as a theory for prediction.

[Welf]

Extractive economies is a crock of Shit theory, where the authors attempted to hamfist unsuccessful economies as extractive and successful ones as institutions.

Here's an easy comparison. Is Australia success due to her extractive economy?it is still based on a commodity markets with large state based largess. Oh no, it's not, because Australia invested in her education,healthcare and other institutions!
Yet, the authors had no qualms labelling Indonesia as an extractive economy despite the fact that Indonesia economy pre n post colonial followed Australia, including a period under American domination. Of course, Their other targets is lack of freer trade,monopolies and corruption/nepotism, which means Indonesia isn't an insitutions based economy but still extractive.

But why then did Ming China fall but the EIC rose?
It's a good logical theory but attempts to ply it along historical lines creates a whole mess of ad hoc explainations....something usual for history but extremely dangerous if one was to apply this for future economic practice

Have you read the book? I can recommend it.

I think you understood the term "extractive" not correctly. They don't use it for the economy but for the political system. Australia with it's resource based economy isn't an extractive society because the wealth is partly redistributed and it's political system i based on a broad consensus. From this point they explain why some countries develop more successful. The people there are more willing to follow laws because they accept the political system, and they are more motivated to create surpluses because they can actually keep them.
For Ming China I would say it failed because the elites were too busy collect all profits which kept a middle class from growing. The EIC is a bad example, because they are the elite that kept the profit. As Irbis said, if you look at the EIC and the countries it controlled it was a net loss.

[Covenant]

Capitalistic fantasy garbage. Civilizations don't rise or fall because you create a middle class that collects wealth. The creation of anything approximating wealth creation and a middle class is a very new concept. It's just fan-wank economics.

I looked through the thread but I didn't find much mention of the fact that not only is much of Africa useless for major foodcrops (Here is a map of the land-use in Africa) but Africa is also orientated up and down rather than side to side. This is one of the big things stated in the "Guns Germs and Steel" hypothesis that would give another strike against the rise of civilization in Africa. Even if they were able to import crops from other areas, like the fertile crescent, they would be unable to exploit them well at such an unfavorable latitude.

Africa has a lot of coastline, but much of it is unpleasant and notoriously stormy. The area up near where civilization stuck, like Egypt, is as close as you really come to an "ideal" spot despite it being surrounded by damned useless desert by and large. Obviously the Nile was the only thing making that civilization remotely functional, and it took a lot of very advanced know-how to exploit it properly. Further south you have disease-ridden jungles around the Congo which nobody was able to do much with. The Bantu people live there but large-scale civilization requires a lot more to work with. The Congo river itself is also incredibly treacherous and has waterfalls blocking sea access. Exploring it was a nightmare. It is notable, however, that even in this godawful spot there was a tremendously successful Kingdom of Kongo created once trade was possible, as a trading network allowed the Kingdom (centralized in the city of Mbanza Kongo) to support an immensely populous city in a region where otherwise you maxed your population at 5 people per square kilometer.

This is, I think, an instructive example of why Africa had a lot of problems. It is rich in resources, but a lot of these resources are simple worthless without an established industrial economy to consume them and allow trade for other valuable resources like food. Food and water are major concerns which are not easily addressed by the landscape of Africa, and Africa has basically none of the most useful crops and animals, and they could not be transplanted along a north/south axis easily, which is basically all the room you have in Africa. We do see the beginnings of civilization advancement in Africa clearly, the Bantu took over from other indigenous people and states arose in many stable areas around the continent. But they got a short stick and would require trading with other nations to make effective use of natural resources to really make use of the vast resources present.

[ralfy]

Guns, Germs, and Steel gives a well-grounded answer to the question.

[Thanas]

Guns, Germs, and Steel gives a well-grounded answer to the question.

Welcome. I see you are new here, so please take care to read the rules and learn a bit about the tradition of the board and the various subfora.

For instance, just saying "so and so is good for that" is not a quality contribution because it is essentially meaningless, if you found it good you might just as well elaborate why and defend that position against eventual criticism.

[madd0ct0r]

Capitalistic fantasy garbage. Civilizations don't rise or fall because you create a middle class that collects wealth. The creation of anything approximating wealth creation and a middle class is a very new concept. It's just fan-wank economics.

I looked through the thread but I didn't find much mention of the fact that not only is much of Africa useless for major foodcrops (Here is a map of the land-use in Africa) .

I see most of Africa is covered in woodland and forest. Any reason why, unlike Europe, those forest areas couldn't be cleared and used by prehistoric farmers?

[Elheru Aran]

I looked through the thread but I didn't find much mention of the fact that not only is much of Africa useless for major foodcrops (Here is a map of the land-use in Africa) .

I see most of Africa is covered in woodland and forest. Any reason why, unlike Europe, those forest areas couldn't be cleared and used by prehistoric farmers?

1. Low level of iron development, so no serious axes. Even today most of Africa doesn't really have decent axes.



This is a 'currency' axe from the 1700's but the form is absolutely typical. You can see that given enough time and stress, the head will easily wedge and crack the wooden haft. They work fine for small branches and chopping firewood, but deforestation? Nope. European style axes with an eye like so


are much more suited to heavy-duty chopping and felling. African blacksmiths of the prehistoric period just aren't going to have enough iron on hand to make anything like a 2.5lb iron axe-head. Much more likely they will make a nice little light axe and then make a couple spear-heads or whatever out of the rest.

2. Low level of community development. A small village of, say, 5 extended families, is not going to be able to muster enough men to put a serious dent into the surrounding forest. Plus what will they do with all that wood? They don't have sawmills, they don't have a tradition of wooden buildings, they don't do much with wood other than posts, firewood, and the occasional sculpture or drum. They don't really have the resources to get together with other villages (see tribal differences mentioned previously as well) to conduct a campaign of sustained deforestation.

3. They didn't grow field crops like wheat or oats. No bread or rice in most of Africa until modern times. Instead they got their carbs and starches from root crops like yams and cassava. These can be planted among the trees. They don't really need cleared fields, just holes. No plows, either-- see lack of draft animals. The camel is the closest thing they had, and that's strictly Northern and Eastern Africa, and used only by traders. They did have cattle, but those were viewed as a financial asset and as meat stock, not draft animals.

[Irbis]

1. Low level of iron development, so no serious axes. Even today most of Africa doesn't really have decent axes.

But that is tied to level of civilization. First metal artifacts made by man are found in Africa - in Egypt. The problem is, rest of Africa lagged considerably behind in adopting both bronze and iron, and it can't be explained just by fiat.

2. Low level of community development. A small village of, say, 5 extended families, is not going to be able to muster enough men to put a serious dent into the surrounding forest.

Sadly, that is not strictly true. These "small villages" are responsible for this sobering chart:



Primitive humans, armed with nothing but bows and stone tools pretty much destroyed big animals everywhere. Everywhere but Africa that is - if you look at number of black bars (extinctions) you will notice it was the lowest in Africa. Ironically, these animals survived in greater numbers because they co-evolved with us and learned to fear us.

Thus, the argument Africa lacked animals for animal husbandry is completely baseless, this continent had far more survivors for civilization to play with than the rest of them combined. It's just others made good use of what they had, compare for example elephants in India and Africa.

3. They didn't grow field crops like wheat or oats. No bread or rice in most of Africa until modern times. Instead they got their carbs and starches from root crops like yams and cassava. These can be planted among the trees.

This might be in fact why you had lower pressure to adapt and improve than everywhere else - Africa provided plentiful food local humans were excellently adapted to. Everywhere else, farming required long, hard work, experiments with animals and plants, irrigation, fighting much more hostile environment. I wouldn't be quick to point at it as main cause, though.

[madd0ct0r]

next you'll be telling me 'they' haven't got fire to clear areas. We should probably define 'they' a bit better in this context.

about the best argument I can think of is that there's much less need for firewood for heating compared to northern Eurasia.
given the use of grazing cattle, you'd expect some pressure to clear fields. and root crops appreciate fine loose soil and no light/rain competition.

[Elheru Aran]

Primitive humans, armed with nothing but bows and stone tools pretty much destroyed big animals everywhere. Everywhere but Africa that is - if you look at number of black bars (extinctions) you will notice it was the lowest in Africa. Ironically, these animals survived in greater numbers because they co-evolved with us and learned to fear us.

Thus, the argument Africa lacked animals for animal husbandry is completely baseless, this continent had far more survivors for civilization to play with than the rest of them combined. It's just others made good use of what they had, compare for example elephants in India and Africa.

I wasn't talking about animals? Sure, they're part of the equation, but I was addressing deforestation, not animal husbandry. Though speaking of which, the majority of the herd animals, which you need to deforest for, were largely in the savanna areas of Africa rather than in the jungles. In the forested areas, meat was procured largely by hunting and with smaller domestic animals such as goats and sheep. The African population adjusted to their environment to a greater degree than the Europeans did; the Europeans made their environment fit them, the Africans vice versa.

Which is another reason why slash-and-burn agriculture didn't really take root either. It does get used in the savanna regions to clear off the grasslands in order to promote new growth and clear land for farming, but in the forests, not so much.

[madd0ct0r]

and yet in the UK huge swathes of hillforest were cleared to make pasture for sheep and goats, a landscape a lot of people are now convinced is natural it's so old.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, the big thing there though is that sheep in Europe were valued as a source of wool, which is essentially unknown in Africa. Milk (goat's or cow's) is also far less utilized due to the climate (no refrigeration=dairy products go off swiftly). It's simply a matter of different environments. In the savanna, they didn't need to clear forest because there's not much forest there to start with; in the wooded regions, they didn't really have the animals to clear the forest for.

Economically as well, the African people had little incentive to consume their animals for food, as they were and are viewed as assets. They happily consume hunted wild animals, but sheep, goat, and cows are only killed and eaten at major festivals or events. Even today meat is a much smaller portion of the typical African diet than it is anywhere else (variations exist, of course).

[Irbis]

I wasn't talking about animals? Sure, they're part of the equation, but I was addressing deforestation, not animal husbandry. Though speaking of which, the majority of the herd animals, which you need to deforest for, were largely in the savanna areas of Africa rather than in the jungles. In the forested areas, meat was procured largely by hunting and with smaller domestic animals such as goats and sheep. The African population adjusted to their environment to a greater degree than the Europeans did; the Europeans made their environment fit them, the Africans vice versa.

Which is another reason why slash-and-burn agriculture didn't really take root either. It does get used in the savanna regions to clear off the grasslands in order to promote new growth and clear land for farming, but in the forests, not so much.

But animals are part of the equation. For example, elephants deforest areas very effectively because they destroy both new tree offshoots (for food) and old ones (cleaning/sharpening tusks, displays of male dominance). Only baobabs manage to grow where elephants live because they are too large to destroy. This, in turn, opens space and creates better habitat for antelopes and equines, who suppress the plants even more.

Agriculture displaces and destroys forests even if you limit it to primitive animal husbandry, simply because humans protect their herds and expand them even where animals wouldn't ordinary expand. If they failed to do so, it means the people didn't even have most primitive forms of animal culture, and stopped on hunter-gatherer level. In fact, forestation might even be the culture's "fault" as they hunted animals keeping growth in check to extinction.

[Elheru Aran]

Well if we're considering animals, there are 2 major predators in Africa that would've quite easily kept domestic animal populations down... lions and leopards. In forested areas, especially, leopards were quite the hazard until recent years. Also in Africa, animal husbandry and crops don't necessarily go together in agriculture as much as they do in Europe where you can have both on the same farm. It's more a case of this person has a small plot of land where they plant their crops on, another person has a small herd of animals, and the twain rarely meet.

Frankly, until the past century or so, there was little to no animal husbandry in the forested areas of Africa, as the term would be understood in Europe. The forests are simply too dense that any open areas have to be dedicated to farming or residing rather than grazing, and they don't really have the capability, desire, or need to clear large-scale areas of land. Could they have if they really buckled down to it? Sure. Did they? No. Suggests they either didn't need to, or couldn't.

This is probably also a function of the low population density-- Africa is so large and the various towns and villages so scattered that they could manage with small plots, without large-scale deforestation.

[ralfy]

Guns, Germs, and Steel gives a well-grounded answer to the question.

Welcome. I see you are new here, so please take care to read the rules and learn a bit about the tradition of the board and the various subfora.

For instance, just saying "so and so is good for that" is not a quality contribution because it is essentially meaningless, if you found it good you might just as well elaborate why and defend that position against eventual criticism.

I cannot add any more because reasons have been given in previous messages. The most notable points for me are the geographical features of the region (i.e., how it allows for the spread of fauna, especially those that support staple crop production) and availability of animals that support food production (such as animals needed for muscle power).

[PainRack]

Extractive economies is a crock of Shit theory, where the authors attempted to hamfist unsuccessful economies as extractive and successful ones as institutions.

Here's an easy comparison. Is Australia success due to her extractive economy?it is still based on a commodity markets with large state based largess. Oh no, it's not, because Australia invested in her education,healthcare and other institutions!
Yet, the authors had no qualms labelling Indonesia as an extractive economy despite the fact that Indonesia economy pre n post colonial followed Australia, including a period under American domination. Of course, Their other targets is lack of freer trade,monopolies and corruption/nepotism, which means Indonesia isn't an insitutions based economy but still extractive.

But why then did Ming China fall but the EIC rose?
It's a good logical theory but attempts to ply it along historical lines creates a whole mess of ad hoc explainations....something usual for history but extremely dangerous if one was to apply this for future economic practice

Have you read the book? I can recommend it.

I think you understood the term "extractive" not correctly. They don't use it for the economy but for the political system. Australia with it's resource based economy isn't an extractive society because the wealth is partly redistributed and it's political system i based on a broad consensus. From this point they explain why some countries develop more successful. The people there are more willing to follow laws because they accept the political system, and they are more motivated to create surpluses because they can actually keep them.
For Ming China I would say it failed because the elites were too busy collect all profits which kept a middle class from growing. The EIC is a bad example, because they are the elite that kept the profit. As Irbis said, if you look at the EIC and the countries it controlled it was a net loss.

I didn't misunderstand it. I knew precisely how they redefined the terms from an economic one to a political one.

What I'm pointing out is that while the broad basis works as an explainatory theory, its not good enough to be used as predictive, given just how many work-arounds are needed.

For one, the Ming Chinese merchant class grew enormously during the end years of Ming China. We do know that the urban residents were increasingly well educated and rich enough to afford their own form of entertainment, leading to the rise of the equivalent of the penny dreadful. Spin-off of the popular novels created during the Ming dynasty, like Journey to the East where the Monkey King wrecked havoc in hell and etc.
However, their political system was definitely not democratic by their definitions. The EIC however, with similar mercentile and exploitive measures rose to power during this period and unified an entire subconinent, leading to the age of Imperialism.


It works..... We can use it to explain a lot of things once we factor in the complexity, but its entirely unpredictive as a theory. Just what are inclusive insitutions? When is an insitution more inclusive than extractive?

Let's bring the topic back to Africia. How would you classify an inclusive insitution for tribal organisations? Egypt was an extractive insitution because of its hiearchial position? Then why was it the leading front of civilisation and economic growth, along with other such insitutions during ancient times?

Was Rome inclusive or extractive? How will you classify it?

[BabelHuber]

What I'm pointing out is that while the broad basis works as an explainatory theory, its not good enough to be used as predictive, given just how many work-arounds are needed.

For one, the Ming Chinese merchant class grew enormously during the end years of Ming China.

It works..... We can use it to explain a lot of things once we factor in the complexity, but its entirely unpredictive as a theory. Just what are inclusive insitutions? When is an insitution more inclusive than extractive?

Let's bring the topic back to Africia. How would you classify an inclusive insitution for tribal organisations? Egypt was an extractive insitution because of its hiearchial position? Then why was it the leading front of civilisation and economic growth, along with other such insitutions during ancient times?

Was Rome inclusive or extractive? How will you classify it?

I read the book last year.

An 'inclusive' society is one where people can take their fate in their own hands and are not tied to the class they live in. An 'extractive' society is one where your parents determine your fate (e.g. when you were born as farmer in the middle ages, you usually stayed farmer) and where a small upper class extracts wealth from the rest of the society. In such a society, it is nearly impossible for a member of the lower classes to become an entrepreneur.

The level of 'inclusiveness' can vary. You can e.g. have a middle age-type society where you have a class of rich merchants in big cities. In this class, a talented individuum can be successfull and innovative. But a farmer cannot.

This society would be more 'inclusive' than a society which mainly consists of nobles and farmers without big cities with rich merchants.

Also, the book explicitly states that growth is possible in an 'extractive' society. But this growth usually stops when creative destruction is involved, because the upper class will fight this change.

An example of teh book is Russia in the 19th century, which was quite extractive. So the upper class saw no need to build railroads - why should the farmer be more mobile after all? The crimean war changed this - Russia was militarily at a disadvantage because troops had to march on foot instead of being driven to the front by trains.

So after the war, Russia also started to build railroads and bought trains. This created growth, but nevertheless the society stayed extractive.

Another example from the book is modern China: This is still a society with lots of 'extractive' elements, but OTOH it got more 'inclusive' since the 1970ies. This made it possible to have growth.

But this growth did not involve creative destruction yet. When the society gets to a point where creative destruction becomes necessary, there are two possibilities:

- The inclusive elements in the society win, so growth can continue.
- The extractive elements win, so the growth stops

Ancient Rome is also cited as an example: After Augustus turned the republic into an empire, the society got more exclusive and hence couldn't progress as much as before, which eventually lead to its downfall.

Compared to Diamond's theory, this theory can at least explain why the industrial revolution started in England, and not in Moldavia or in China. Diamond's one can only explain why it started in Eurasia, but now why it started in England.

I wouldn't say that this theory is the explanation of everything which happend in the last few tousand years, but I think it has some truth in it. At least it can explain why different countries develop differently despite having similar external preconditions.