Black majority state in Europe

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How could you get a state in Europe were the majority of the population is sub - Saharan African?

You might be able to pull this off with Portugal, maybe: amazingly enough, a fair amount of ethnic blending seems to have occurred over there even in OTL, just on a lesser scale than Brazil. I'm not sure how to get to that point, though, barring the ascension of egalitarian SocDems or Communists, though.
 
I don't know about a sub-Saharan majority country in Europe lasting to the modern day without admixture from neighbors or invaders kicking in but let me take a chance at this. Say that after the Kushites had conquered Egypt, Piye is a little more wiser and decide that for some reason, either on his own or influenced by an advisor, that the Assyrian Empire is too strong to take on its own and that therefore expanding Egyptian influence is a no go. Philistine, Phoenician and Judean pleas for Egyptian intervention are ignored and left to be ransacked by the Assyrian armies. Cyprus, being aligned to Assyria, is a no go for the Kushite pharaohs but the island of Crete is available for conquest. It is an attractive spot to conquer, being divided into an assortment of city-states that spend much of their time fighting each other. The island is a popular spot for pirates to hang around and if Kush conquers the island and expels the pirates, it would have control over trade routes to Greece.

The city-states and the pirates surprisingly do a good job at resisting the Kushite invasion which turns the expected short ordeal to become a long invasion. The island is finally after a few years of bloody warfare but it is left in ruin and its population, especially the males have been wiped out. To help repopulate the island (and) defend it from future foreign attack from the Greeks on the mainland, Kush establishes military colonies in the ruins of the destroyed Cretan cities, dividing the land into plots for Kushite veterans to farm and maintain. The Egyptians and Kushites intermarry with what remains of Greek population, forming a new composite mulatto ethnicity that is neither fully Kushite, Egyptian or Greek. The islander's distinct characteristics are well known that Greek historians dub the island of Crete as "Lesser Aethiopia."
 
Depends on what you define as Europe, you could get a situation where Spain or Portugal move a large Black population to the Canaries or Azores for some reason and then have the islands become independent; that's the most realistic way IMO.

A less realistic, though possible situation would be to have a larger Sub-Saharan population concentrated in some part of France, and then have France collapse, leading to a small Black-majority statelet.

The most unlikely would be to have an alternate evolution of Russia leading to a near-microstate forming out of the Georgian SSR in which the Black Abkhazians form a local majority following the collapse of the USSR.
 
You might be able to pull this off with Portugal, maybe: amazingly enough, a fair amount of ethnic blending seems to have occurred over there even in OTL, just on a lesser scale than Brazil.
Wouldn't that lead to a mestizo majority rather than sub-saharian?

A less realistic, though possible situation would be to have a larger Sub-Saharan population concentrated in some part of France, and then have France collapse, leading to a small Black-majority statelet.

The Parisian Banlieues declare independence?

Considering that sub-saharian population of France is more or less equal to 3% (including Antillan black population that are admitedly majoritary in these islands), and that even concentrated in some cities neighbourhoods they're still outnumbered by Maghrebi-issued population (and sometimes by "petits blancs")...
No, even if a sub-urb could be independent (it would last 3 hours, before everyone dismiss it as retarded)., it couldn't work.

Answering the OP : that's incredibly hard.
Relations between Mediterranean basin and Sub-Saharian Africa were virtully absent up to the Arab Conquests, and even there, you didn't have much more than slave trade for migrations.
(Granted, there was African influence on protohistoric eastern Mediterranean basin, but that's an exception)

It would require such relations to appear much earlier than OTL, maybe trough a Carthaginian-wank but even that, eventually, would produce a metissed society.

And for modern situation, except using conspiracy theories such as Eurabia and other racist lunacy, you don't have a real way to maintain black people separated from others, and to prevent an at least partial assimilation.
 
How much of the country has to be actually in Europe?
Didn't Portugal at one stage try to define its African colonies as integral parts of the homeland itself rather than as separate territories?
 

SunDeep

Banned
Easiest way to do this would be by emptying Europe- perhaps an ATL where the Black Death has a higher kill-rate? So far as I can recall, sub-Saharan Africa was the region of Afro-Eurasia (the 'Old World') which was least affected by the plague epidemics IOTL. Essentially, a more realistic take on The Years of Rice and Salt, where the Black Death plague is more severe everywhere it goes, in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa as well, instead of taking a higher death toll exclusively on the European subcontinent. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers last due to its location, with few carriers managing to make it across the Sahara, and also suffers least, with their higher genetic diversity (greater in S-S Africa than in the rest of the world combined) giving the general population a higher degree of resistance to the Black Death than anywhere else. Afterwards, Europe (after North Africa, and along with the Middle East) is a far easier prize to claim...
 
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Answering the OP : that's incredibly hard.
Relations between Mediterranean basin and Sub-Saharian Africa were virtully absent up to the Arab Conquests, and even there, you didn't have much more than slave trade for migrations.
(Granted, there was African influence on protohistoric eastern Mediterranean basin, but that's an exception)

It would require such relations to appear much earlier than OTL, maybe trough a Carthaginian-wank but even that, eventually, would produce a metissed society.

And for modern situation, except using conspiracy theories such as Eurabia and other racist lunacy, you don't have a real way to maintain black people separated from others, and to prevent an at least partial assimilation.

Sadly, American race relations make it seem possible *if* Malta can be populated by Carthaginians and then be part of a Spain, France, or Sicily/Italy till independence is gained.

Say, for instance, a large number of blacks move in, and then the area is conquered by Scily. the area winds up, due to racist policies, being a backwater where that population is kept but where they don't intermingle with whites. After a period of time, war comes and Malta - instead of going to the victor a a spoil from Sicily/Italy - becomes independent. In the meantime, the pplation of sub-Saharan African descent has become large enough that while there is some European immigration to the island, it's not enough to change that.

It would require a unique set of circumstances but an island that small would possibly have a chance.

With anyplace larger, though, you'd need a king as insane as the ruler of Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance *and* some sort of policy that limited how blacks could serve in the military, even after a way was established for lots of African people to go tosomplalce like Portugal.
 
Sadly, American race relations make it seem possible *if* Malta can be populated by Carthaginians and then be part of a Spain, France, or Sicily/Italy till independence is gained.
Assuming that nothing got butterflied there (you'll probably concede that it would a big challenge), such society would end metissed after some generations.

Even Arabo-Muslims society, that were incredibly despising towards Zanj and drained sahelian Africa of their population ended to mix with them eventually.

A large african population in America was possible because of an extensive use of slavery, in proportions never seen in Antiquity or Middle-Ages, that didn't existed in Europe at this time; and a relativly fewer european settlement in first place.
 

Lateknight

Banned
Assuming that nothing got butterflied there (you'll probably concede that it would a big challenge), such society would end metissed after some generations.

Even Arabo-Muslims society, that were incredibly despising towards Zanj and drained sahelian Africa of their population ended to mix with them eventually.

A large african population in America was possible because of an extensive use of slavery, in proportions never seen in Antiquity or Middle-Ages, that didn't existed in Europe at this time; and a relativly fewer european settlement in first place.

Even in a America blacks as population has stabilized at 15-20 percent even in the south they have never been a majority with 1/3 of population.
 
Even in a America blacks as population has stabilized at 15-20 percent even in the south they have never been a majority with 1/3 of population.

Yes, it probably seems more possible as an American because of the separate political units - there have been majority black states. But, as noted, even there as noted such a part of Europe would have likely become metissed - such states only have a few hundred years of history, compared to thousands for a European entity, even one whose size is more comparable to a city than a state.
 

SunDeep

Banned
We also have to consider, what makes someone 'black'? Genetically, there is no real scientific basis for the sub-division of humanity into different races. The human 'race' is supposed to be the equivalent of a dog 'breed', but according to any kennel clubs which use genetic differentiation as a guideline to define what constitutes a separate breed of dog, we'd all be mongrels. Even the most divergent group of humans, the Khomani San, have less than a quarter of the differentiation which would be needed to qualify them as a separate race, if we were to use the same genetic guidelines which we use for dog breeding.

And 'Europe' is an artificial construct as well- geologically speaking, it's less of a continent than Arabia or Madagascar are. It's just a peninsula of Eurasia, and its arbitrary recognised boundaries could easily be re-drawn in an ATL. back in the beginning, we're all sub-Saharan Africans- that's where our species originated, after all. 90% of the European genome (excluding the part historically inherited from the Neanderthals through interbreeding) is already sub-Saharan African, and I'd say that should be considered to constitute the majority of the population...
 
How could you get a state in Europe were the majority of the population is sub - Saharan African?

Pretty impossible I´d think.
Sub-Saharan Africans were only "needed" for the sugar cane and cotton plantations in the Americas given the climate, not for work in Europe.

If I remember correctly that´s why the USA and Brazil were the last two - Western influenced - countries to abolish slavery?
Decades after most of Europe?
 
Decades after most of Europe?
Well, technically some countries abolished slavery since XIVth century (France, Sweden, etc.) but while it was more or less applied during the XVIIth century, it eventually went into slaves being expulsed out of the territory, and to forbid metis union in metropole.

Definitive "universal" abolition in European territories happened either in the XVIIIth or middle of XIXth, not that early of American abolition.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Pretty impossible I´d think.
Sub-Saharan Africans were only "needed" for the sugar cane and cotton plantations in the Americas given the climate, not for work in Europe.

If I remember correctly that´s why the USA and Brazil were the last two - Western influenced - countries to abolish slavery?
Decades after most of Europe?

Why is it that people assume that sub-Saharan Africans can only venture out of Africa in any TL as slaves? I'd still argue that a more realistic version of the POD used in Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt TL, with a more virulent Black Death rather than an increased vulnerability solely among the European population, would have the desired effect. Everywhere in the Old World (and the New World, when contact is made) will suffer more, losing more of their indigenous populations, but due to a number of factors- primarily, geography and genetic variation- sub-Saharan Africa and its population will always suffer least of all. And with their extra losses making it far harder for the Europeans and Arabs to pick up the pieces ITTL, the sub-Saharan Africans- the Sahelian Kingdoms, most likely- could easily expand northwards to fill the deeper, more lasting voids left behind by the Black Death in North Africa and Europe. ITTL, you could easily have a situation where the present-day population is majority sub-Saharan African, not just in a single European nation, but across the entire European peninsula...
 
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Why is it that people assume that sub-Saharan Africans can only venture out of Africa in any TL as slaves? I'd still argue that a more realistic version of the POD used in Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt TL, with a more virulent Black Death rather than an increased vulnerability solely among the European population, would have the desired effect. Everywhere in the Old World (and the New World, when contact is made) will suffer more, losing more of their indigenous populations, but due to a number of factors- primarily, geography and genetic variation- sub-Saharan Africa and its population will always suffer least of all. And with their extra losses making it far harder for the Europeans and Arabs to pick up the pieces ITTL, the sub-Saharan Africans- the Sahelian Kingdoms, most likely- could easily expand northwards to fill the deeper, more lasting voids left behind by the Black Death in North Africa and Europe. ITTL, you could easily have a situation where the present-day population is majority sub-Saharan African, not just in a single European nation, but across the entire European peninsula...


The only problem here is that the Sahara forms a massive barrier to mass migration northwards.

Your more likely to see Eurasian populations recover before you have Sub-Saharan Africans of any significant number enter into the Med.

Africa is huge. I'm not aware of any massive population pressures that would want to make people move northwards.
 

SunDeep

Banned
The only problem here is that the Sahara forms a massive barrier to mass migration northwards.

Your more likely to see Eurasian populations recover before you have Sub-Saharan Africans of any significant number enter into the Med.

Africa is huge. I'm not aware of any massive population pressures that would want to make people move northwards.

Well, everyone came out of Africa in the first place, didn't they? What 'massive population pressures' were there in Africa to motivate the first humans who left the continent? And by this late stage, they'd know full well that there were plenty of things worth moving northwards for. The Sahara was hardly impassable- the trans-Saharan trade was still significant at this time, with the Portuguese still in the process of establishing their first few Gold Coast trading posts. If there were bigger die-backs in Europe and the Arab World, would all of these Saharan trade routes just wither away into oblivion, or would some of the Western and Central African states seize the opportunity to control the profitable trade routes themselves?

And if they did, they'd want to control them from their source, by seizing the trading posts in North Africa. From this point, if they did manage to seize back control of Marrakesh and the rest of the Maghreb region from the crippled North African Arab states, it wouldn't be a massive step to continue that expansion further, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar during TTL's even darker Dark Ages and establishing a foothold on the far less populous Iberian peninsula. And who's to say how much further they could get, especially if they can manage to achieve dominance in the Mediterranean?
 
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Well, everyone came out of Africa in the first place, didn't they? What 'massive population pressures' were there in Africa to motivate the first humans who left the continent? And by this late stage, they'd know full well that there were plenty of things worth moving northwards for. The Sahara was hardly impassable- the trans-Saharan trade was still significant at this time, with the Portuguese still in the process of establishing their first few Gold Coast trading posts. If there were bigger die-backs in Europe and the Arab World, would all of these Saharan trade routes just wither away into oblivion, or would some of the Western and Central African states seize the opportunity to control the profitable trade routes themselves?

And if they did, they'd want to control them from their source, by seizing the trading posts in North Africa. From this point, if they did manage to seize back control of Marrakesh and the rest of the Maghreb region from the crippled North African Arab states, it wouldn't be a massive step to continue that expansion further, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar during TTL's even darker Dark Ages and establishing a foothold on the far less populous Iberian peninsula. And who's to say how much further they could get, especially if they can manage to achieve dominance in the Mediterranean?

For the latter bolded part, I should point out that there were no dark ages. Its a rather poor term to describe the period.

As for the former bolded point, I would say yes. In such a scenario along the lines of "Years of Rice and Salt" all along Eurasia, the traderoutes would wither and die.

Trade requires people, and if there is no people, there is no trade.

As for the first people leaving Africa, I would guess there was little, except that there was land elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

Very few humans actually left Africa to populate the rest of the world. There is a reason that human genetic diversity is so much more diverse in Africa then the rest of the world.

And in all the models detailing human migration out of Africa, none that I'm aware of posit travelling over the Sahara. They most likely crossed into Arabia across the Red Sea and then headed elsewhere, and if another group left, they followed the Nile up before crossing the Sinai.

The Sahara is massive barrier, and it is extremely dangerous. I just don't see mass migration out of Africa through the Sahara. African states stretching control onto the Mediterranean coast I could believe, but mass migration... I don't think so.
 
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