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The Mali Empire is particularly fascinating. Mansa Musa, who ruled that empire c. 1324, remains by some estimates the richest man who ever lived. His net worth

by _etyf 5y ago

The Mali Empire is particularly fascinating. Mansa Musa, who ruled that empire c. 1324, remains by some estimates the richest man who ever lived. His net worth is estimated by historians at around $400 billion USD. Elon Musk's net worth today is around $280 billion, for comparison. Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves, who were forced to mine gold and made up much of the Empire's military. Slavery in Mali continues to this day with an estimated 200,000 people held in direct servitude to a master [1]. Maybe that's why we don't hear so much about the Mali Empire, or the Ghana Empire for that matter. Personally I think it's history worth knowing, all the moreso if it shatters the myth that any one race is especially prone to the evil of slavery. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mali

prmph 5y ago
> The [Viking's] wealth was built almost entirely by violent plunder of other nations .... Maybe that's why we don't hear so much about the [Vikings]... Oh wait, we continually hear about the glorious "exploits" of the Vikings.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  You've misunderstood. Read the last sentence of my comment again, the bit after the comma.
  - prmph 5y ago
    Well, I showed that a statement you made is not supported by the evidence. As for this supposed "Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves", where's your evidence for that?
    - neartheplain 5y ago
      You ignored the explicit meaning of my comment, rewrote it to mean something entirely different, and now claim to have disproved that version of it. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. >As for this supposed "Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves", where's your evidence for that? Again I'll refer you to my original comment, specfically the "before colonization" section of the Slavery in Mali Wikipedia link. It cites various books and articles written and researched by professional historians.
      - prmph 5y ago
        You said the reason we don't hear about those West African empires is that their wealth was built on the back on slaves. I will provide a detailed rebuttal to this idea. Firstly, it seems highly unlikely that the wealth of the West African empires was primarily from slave use and trading. This is an argument that is made by people who do not actually understand the region and its history. Even the eminent Henry Louis Gates makes a similar error in an article [1], where he says: > the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. The Ashanti could not have been importing gold, since they were rather the source of much of the gold in the region. The wikipedia article on the Ashanti Empire [2] contains this statement: > Before the Ashanti Kingdom had contact with Europeans, it had a flourishing trade with other African states due to the Ashanti gold wealth. More generally, this is what [3] has to say about the economy of the west African empires with respect to gold: > From the seventh to the eleventh century, trans-Saharan trade linked the Mediterranean economies that demanded gold—and could supply salt—to the sub-Saharan economies, where gold was abundant. ...Increased demand for gold in the North Islamic states, which sought the raw metal for minting, prompted scholarly attention to Mali and Ghana, the latter referred to as the “Land of Gold.” For instance, geographer al-Bakri described the eleventh-century court at Kumbi Saleh, where he saw gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords mounted with gold, and dogs’ collars adorned with gold and silver. The Soninke managed to keep the source of their gold (the Bambuk mines, most notably) secret from Muslim traders. Yet gold production and trade were important activities that undoubtedly mobilized hundreds of thousands of African people. Leaders of the ancient kingdom of Ghana accumulated wealth by keeping the core of pure metal, leaving the unworked native gold to be marketed by their people. Since the gold was mined locally, it could not have been bought with the proceeds of slave trading. And since it was an activity of the people (not just the nobility) it is unlikely that vast numbers of people were forced to mine it as slaves. And gold was much more likely to bring in a lot of income than slave trading. Clearly, the source of Mansa Musa's great wealth was gold. This is attested to by the story of gold losing its value in Egypt because he gave so much of it away during his pilgrimage to mecca. So I don't know where you get this idea that the wealth of the west African empires was primarily based on slave trading. Secondly, even if slave trading was widespread, other empires and nations have done worse, and we still hear about their exploits. We hear about the supposed heroism of the Vikings and Columbus and his cohort all the time, even though they committed many, atrocities, including exterminations and genocides. So your thesis fails on both counts. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire 3. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm

by _etyf 5y ago

prmph 5y ago

> The [Viking's] wealth was built almost entirely by violent plunder of other nations .... Maybe that's why we don't hear so much about the [Vikings]... Oh wait, we continually hear about the glorious "exploits" of the Vikings.

neartheplain 5y ago
You've misunderstood. Read the last sentence of my comment again, the bit after the comma.
- prmph 5y ago
  Well, I showed that a statement you made is not supported by the evidence. As for this supposed "Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves", where's your evidence for that?
  - neartheplain 5y ago
    You ignored the explicit meaning of my comment, rewrote it to mean something entirely different, and now claim to have disproved that version of it. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. >As for this supposed "Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves", where's your evidence for that? Again I'll refer you to my original comment, specfically the "before colonization" section of the Slavery in Mali Wikipedia link. It cites various books and articles written and researched by professional historians.
    - prmph 5y ago
      You said the reason we don't hear about those West African empires is that their wealth was built on the back on slaves. I will provide a detailed rebuttal to this idea. Firstly, it seems highly unlikely that the wealth of the West African empires was primarily from slave use and trading. This is an argument that is made by people who do not actually understand the region and its history. Even the eminent Henry Louis Gates makes a similar error in an article [1], where he says: > the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. The Ashanti could not have been importing gold, since they were rather the source of much of the gold in the region. The wikipedia article on the Ashanti Empire [2] contains this statement: > Before the Ashanti Kingdom had contact with Europeans, it had a flourishing trade with other African states due to the Ashanti gold wealth. More generally, this is what [3] has to say about the economy of the west African empires with respect to gold: > From the seventh to the eleventh century, trans-Saharan trade linked the Mediterranean economies that demanded gold—and could supply salt—to the sub-Saharan economies, where gold was abundant. ...Increased demand for gold in the North Islamic states, which sought the raw metal for minting, prompted scholarly attention to Mali and Ghana, the latter referred to as the “Land of Gold.” For instance, geographer al-Bakri described the eleventh-century court at Kumbi Saleh, where he saw gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords mounted with gold, and dogs’ collars adorned with gold and silver. The Soninke managed to keep the source of their gold (the Bambuk mines, most notably) secret from Muslim traders. Yet gold production and trade were important activities that undoubtedly mobilized hundreds of thousands of African people. Leaders of the ancient kingdom of Ghana accumulated wealth by keeping the core of pure metal, leaving the unworked native gold to be marketed by their people. Since the gold was mined locally, it could not have been bought with the proceeds of slave trading. And since it was an activity of the people (not just the nobility) it is unlikely that vast numbers of people were forced to mine it as slaves. And gold was much more likely to bring in a lot of income than slave trading. Clearly, the source of Mansa Musa's great wealth was gold. This is attested to by the story of gold losing its value in Egypt because he gave so much of it away during his pilgrimage to mecca. So I don't know where you get this idea that the wealth of the west African empires was primarily based on slave trading. Secondly, even if slave trading was widespread, other empires and nations have done worse, and we still hear about their exploits. We hear about the supposed heroism of the Vikings and Columbus and his cohort all the time, even though they committed many, atrocities, including exterminations and genocides. So your thesis fails on both counts. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire 3. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm