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I don't think the above commenter wrote that all of precolonial Africa had a single culture, only that precolonial cultures evidently did not have cultures with

I don't think the above commenter wrote that all of precolonial Africa had a single culture, only that precolonial cultures evidently did not have cultures with long standing businesses - at least as we understand businesses them today.

crooked-v 7y ago
That's still attributing a single negative cultural trait to an entire continent, and using it to shallowly dismiss the effects of centuries of one-sided exploitation, enslavement, massacres, genocides, mass limb removal, debt slavery, literal slavery, etc etc. with "but what if it was their own fault?".
- dextralt 7y ago
  you mean the same things we did to each other throughout our entire history and yet somehow our civilization had advanced past the stone age? yeah, it is their own fault, lmao.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Is not having long lasting business entities really a negative cultural trait? While it's neat that there are businesses that have survived for over a millennia, it's more of a curiosity than evidence of superiority of a culture.
vidarh 7y ago
There's no evidence of this, in large part because the African empires for the most part were wiped out under colonial rule, not just subjugated. Often with extreme prejudice, such as when the British destroyed and burned Benin City to the ground, destroyed large parts of its walls, which were once a single fortification threading through the city measuring four times the length of the Great Wall of China, looted it's art, which then for a long time was "explained away" because the bronze sculptures were a lot more advanced than Europeans liked to think Africans were capable of, ignoring the descriptions of Benin City from those who'd been there. The result was that for a long time the idea of what pre-colonial Africa was like was based on ignoring the things the colonial powers had stolen (the Benin Bronzes were sometimes assumed to have been brought by Portuguese traders, for example; a more comfortable idea than Africans making bronze statues), and looking at the aftermath of colonial destruction as evidence of lack of large structures and cities.

crooked-v 7y ago

That's still attributing a single negative cultural trait to an entire continent, and using it to shallowly dismiss the effects of centuries of one-sided exploitation, enslavement, massacres, genocides, mass limb removal, debt slavery, literal slavery, etc etc. with "but what if it was their own fault?".

dextralt 7y ago
you mean the same things we did to each other throughout our entire history and yet somehow our civilization had advanced past the stone age? yeah, it is their own fault, lmao.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Is not having long lasting business entities really a negative cultural trait? While it's neat that there are businesses that have survived for over a millennia, it's more of a curiosity than evidence of superiority of a culture.

vidarh 7y ago

There's no evidence of this, in large part because the African empires for the most part were wiped out under colonial rule, not just subjugated. Often with extreme prejudice, such as when the British destroyed and burned Benin City to the ground, destroyed large parts of its walls, which were once a single fortification threading through the city measuring four times the length of the Great Wall of China, looted it's art, which then for a long time was "explained away" because the bronze sculptures were a lot more advanced than Europeans liked to think Africans were capable of, ignoring the descriptions of Benin City from those who'd been there. The result was that for a long time the idea of what pre-colonial Africa was like was based on ignoring the things the colonial powers had stolen (the Benin Bronzes were sometimes assumed to have been brought by Portuguese traders, for example; a more comfortable idea than Africans making bronze statues), and looking at the aftermath of colonial destruction as evidence of lack of large structures and cities.