A beautiful map of Africa that was not colonized by Europeans.
http://io9.com/a-stunning-alt-history-map-showing-a-completely-uncolon-1658327669
http://io9.com/a-stunning-alt-history-map-showing-a-completely-uncolon-1658327669
Alt-Hist Map of Africa
- Thread starter traveller76
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Beautiful indeed, but (I know, I'm never happy), it's depicting an Africa that eventually adopted an european approach when it came to build nations : as if Africa had to adopt western conception of state or as it was an universal thing.
Past the Islamic states that makes sense there, it's a bit sad that with all this work (and the map is beautiful, no arguing), the author didn't came with something more...well African.
Past the Islamic states that makes sense there, it's a bit sad that with all this work (and the map is beautiful, no arguing), the author didn't came with something more...well African.
Well, if the rest of the world is European-dominated, then modernizing Africans would tend to adopt European state-building models, but then I suspect a backwards Europe is probably part of the backstory. I also find the map a little less than probable in that a lot of the wee states would not survive the existence of well-organized gunpowder-armed neighbors (some of the historical states shown went out of business with no European intervention, after all -Songhai was broken by the Moroccans), and the southwards-migrating Bantu would probably have overrun the Khoi and San people of the cape if the Europeans hadn't been there...in other words, it's an idealized and static picture of Africa as well as one that disregards the possibilities of federations, confederations, loose overlordships, etc.
Still a lovely map.
Bruce
PS - is it just me, or is "Strange Maps" at big think down?
Still a lovely map.
Bruce
PS - is it just me, or is "Strange Maps" at big think down?
I think because Arabo-Islamic carthographers put the South on the upper side.
I don't know about that. The thing is, the Bantus crops didn't fare well in the Mediterranean climate of the Cape, that's why the basically stop expanding when they got to the Fish River. The Khoi and San may have managed to thus hold on to some territory in what is today South Africa's Western and Northern Cape. I would imagine though, they would probably have ended up becoming clients of a Xhosa polity. Even in OTL there was much intermarriage and cross-cultural influence between the two. Xhosa has lots of clicks an influence of the Khoi and the San, and lots of Xhosa have the high cheekbones that are typical of the Khoi San. Nelson Mandela had one of those genetic tests done to determine his original ancestry, and on his mother's side it was shown he had Khoi San ancestry.
We already have a thread here and merging the two might be a sound idea.
@ LSCatilina: What do you mean with "something more African"?
@ LSCatilina: What do you mean with "something more African"?
I also posted this map in January, it's done the rounds before.
I also got a warning from Ian in that thread.
Less based on an european conception of state (or border) even adapted to african ethnicities or entities, and more on africano-centric conceptions of political entities (that are admittedly hard to map, with overlapping loyalties and affiliations).
With few exceptions, it's essentially a clearly delimited border/territory/capital model present there. It doesn't help that the fractal-ish borders aren't based on anything (I get that they were a counter-straight line, but it looks eventually as artificial)
With few exceptions, it's essentially a clearly delimited border/territory/capital model present there. It doesn't help that the fractal-ish borders aren't based on anything (I get that they were a counter-straight line, but it looks eventually as artificial)
Lovely map, but seems a little too utopian - unfortunately, Europe not colinizing Africa wouldn't be a cure all to Africa's issues - a lot of the root issues still would exist. Africa lacks Iron and Coal in large amounts in a convenient joint location, thus industrialization would still be an issue. Things like the slave trade would still exist, given it was the Arabs and local Africans who fueled it both before and after the Europeans participated. Heck, even by the map's standards, there is still pervasive foreign influence, only its Arabic instead of European.
Anyone notice "Jabal al Qilal" in Southern France? What does that come from?
Fraxinet's Islamic piracy base. That ceased to be a thing in the late Xth century, but the map-maker probably tought one more anachronism wouldn't make muc difference.
At this point, I'm not sure it's really relevant to the point of this map. Giving the sheer lack of plausibility (that is NOT, again, the point there), it could be both.
In the "Years of Rice and Salt" Europe becomes Islamic due to arabic/noth african colonizers due to Europes depopulation from the Black Death. But I really couldn't buy into only Europe getting hit that hard
The most initian problem I had with this book was that super-über plague somehow magically avoid Arabo-Islamic world.
I know that the point of the book isn't to provide that a plausible PoD, and to focus on relation between characters, but giving that KSR isn't that good when it comes to that to begin with, non suspension of disbelief doesn't help.
The interesting thing about Africa is its true size, often misrepresented on many maps. It has a billion people spread over an area roughly ten times the size of India. Some interesting pods could be done, imagine a modern Africa with 5 billion people, high speed rail and mega cities that are far bigger than anything China currently has. The environment wouldn't be able to take that many people, but with an early pod and a shifting of the population you could have something interesting.
