Can Christianity spread deeper into Africa in ancient times?
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Nubia (present-day northern Sudan) was Christian for a long time.
If they can hold out against the Muslims coming from Egypt (at least for longer than OTL), Coptic Christianity might spread down the Nile some more.
However, Nubia was Christian for quite awhile OTL and yet we don't have Coptic Uganda.
If they can hold out against the Muslims coming from Egypt (at least for longer than OTL), Coptic Christianity might spread down the Nile some more.
However, Nubia was Christian for quite awhile OTL and yet we don't have Coptic Uganda.
No Islam and Arabo-Islamic take-over of African trade would be needed, but wouldn't be enough.
See, sahelian and sub-saharians stable entities didn't really appear with communications between them and Mediterranean basin before Islam as the Arabo-Islamic economic and cultural continuum needed these relations more than Late Roman.
African slaves importation, mostly (in a ratio that was clearly far more important than in the I/II centuries), when adoption of Islam could represent a protection against slave hunters (a really relative protection, granted).
As Christianism and mass slavery became less able to really co-exist with time going on (and was already declining before Roman adoption of Christianism anyway), you'd need Christian traders and rulers having an interest in deeper relationships with Africa, and African entities having an interest adopting Christianism.
The first is relatively doable, while probably happening later than Arabo-Islamic presence (because of a less important focus, and because Arabo-Islamic intervention actually provoked the appearance of relativly strong african entities) for gold and salt (it may be tricky, as these trades appeared along slavery trade roads, rather than totally on their own).
The second is more problematic : I suppose that a Roman Empire focusing on Red Sea could be enough to provoke the need of Christianisation of African polities, but such focus would ask for a byzantine focus on trade that have to be not only created, but against historical tendencies.
See, sahelian and sub-saharians stable entities didn't really appear with communications between them and Mediterranean basin before Islam as the Arabo-Islamic economic and cultural continuum needed these relations more than Late Roman.
African slaves importation, mostly (in a ratio that was clearly far more important than in the I/II centuries), when adoption of Islam could represent a protection against slave hunters (a really relative protection, granted).
As Christianism and mass slavery became less able to really co-exist with time going on (and was already declining before Roman adoption of Christianism anyway), you'd need Christian traders and rulers having an interest in deeper relationships with Africa, and African entities having an interest adopting Christianism.
The first is relatively doable, while probably happening later than Arabo-Islamic presence (because of a less important focus, and because Arabo-Islamic intervention actually provoked the appearance of relativly strong african entities) for gold and salt (it may be tricky, as these trades appeared along slavery trade roads, rather than totally on their own).
The second is more problematic : I suppose that a Roman Empire focusing on Red Sea could be enough to provoke the need of Christianisation of African polities, but such focus would ask for a byzantine focus on trade that have to be not only created, but against historical tendencies.
Christianity had already started to penetrate the Amazigh tribes living in the Northern Sahara-what is now southern Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Give it enough time and develop the trade routes some more, and it could easily spread south as it did along the Silk Road, hopping from oasis to oasis.
I agree that that would be needed. As to it not being enough, I don't know. Given time, and no external threat, the new religion might spread naturally. There are poor souls down there who haven't had the opportunity to save themselves, let's send them missionaries. And while they are there, they might also report back as to any interesting trade items, even if for the time being we are not seeking for any.
Actually, if we look after the clearly identified Christian Berber tribes and kingdoms, it's clearly limited to former Roman sphere of influence or provinces (the mentions are almost always limited to the coast), while Judaism clearly overshadow them as for importance in the same region.
Mauretanian and Saharian Berbers were probably touched only partially by that, if at all.
Thing is, the SIlk Road was huge, ancient and dynamic. You didn't have an important trade road between Mediterrenean Basin and Sub-Sahelian Africa, let alone something comparable.
Trades roads doesn't randomly pop out : you need an impetus. Slavery was the main one IOTL, but considering its situation in Late Romania, it have to be ruled out.
And without this trade, and the constant raids in the region, you have less knowledge of the aera and its possible ressources.
Another problem is that you need relativly stable polities to provoke a stable trade road : OTL, Arabo-Islamized states (as Ghana or Mali) that entered in relations with the cultural-economical AI continuum (more or less forced by their neighbours, or to prevent being targets of slavers by converting).
Of course, it's not butterflied there, as entites as the "proto-Ghana" began to appear, and city-states/tribal-states of Somalia already existed. But the process would be longer and smaller than IOTL Islamization (and may require Christianisation of Arabia)
Ancient and Early Medieval Christianisation doesn't really work that way.
It's above all things a diplomatic feature : you do have missionaries on the loose, but generally unsucessful if they're not backed by a patron (as Byzantium for Russia), and it may even require pure and simple conquest of pagan tribes or polities to enforce it.
See, it's important for already Christian entities that the right king of Christianity is teached (as in orthodoxy), and critically under their political control : as Christianisation was more or less the era's equivalence of a diplomatic recognition (as in part of UN nowadays), it wasn't to be toyed about.
You then need an impetus for christian entities to enter in relation with sub-sahelian african entities, relations going from alliance to full war.
Problem : without booming trade, these african entities would have trouble to devellop out of nowhere, and would be kind of isolationists if develloping into isolation.
It's not an obstacle (see above) but would be more tricky to manage.
It's partially true.
Partially because a lot of ressources of sub-sahelian africa were known after slavery trade began. Salt and Gold trade, by exemple, were seen as compensation to still have an economic relation without having your villages raided every two or four years.
As we're talking of entities develloping on themselves, they simply might not see a great interest develloping these ressources and their trades at a noticable scale.
Generally true, yes. Save when it works that way. Ethiopia as a kingdom was not Christianised until after 313 A.D., with the conversion of the royal family, of course (in 356 A.D. or thereabouts); but by that time, there already were Christians in the country.
Having some Christian doesn't mean Christianised, and not having the ruler or elite of said entity (assuming there's a polity to speak of, as I mentioned above) means that these Christians are either doomed to be the minority (as in India) or to virtually disappear (as in Arabia).
Furthermore, as Ethiopia had already regular links with Mediterranean Basin, it's out of the scope of current issues.
Up to XIXth century, Christianisation isn't the fact of missionaries, but of politics and diplomacy.
Sure. Now, I'm under the impression that the original poster had asked about the spreading of Christianity, not about wholesale Christianisation.
Sure. I was now not discussing the trade aspect, which I take you are right about, but the notion that missionaries depended upon diplomatic missions and upon policy decisions taken by kings. Again, not with regard the wholesale adoption of the religion but about the spreading of it.
Christianisation in the sense of the conversion of whole kingdoms at the stroke of one king's decision, sure, and it is hard to imagine how it might work otherwise.
But the spreading of Christianity also took place outside this kind of phenomenon. By the time of the establishment of the Sassanid Empire, there were Christians as far afield as Northern India, and they did not depend from Christianity being the state religion of a kingdom. Armenia was Christianised in the sense you mean, by the conversion of its king, in 301, and again there was already an Armenian bishop. And what about the Roman empire itself. By your standard, Christianisation took place even later than 313 (that was an edict of tolerance, not the adoption of Christianity as the empire's religion). Yet that tolerance became necessary because Christianity had already spread throughout the empire.
According to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the East African coast where the Swahili culture would later flourish was already a crossroads of trade between the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The text mentions a few mercantile centers emerging down the coast of "Azania", including the furthest, Rhapta, and all of them are said to be vassals of a South Arabian king who is in turn an ally of Rome.
Another source concerning the trade between Azania and the Roman Empire comes from a Chinese text called A Brief History of the Wei Kingdom, in which there's a claim of a direct route between the Rome and a place called "Zesan" along the coast of East Africa.
Archaeological records do show Roman trade goods along the East African coast as far as Tanzania, and it's often claimed that one of the later medieval Swahili cities there evolved from the Rhapta of Roman times.
If South Arabian influence remains strong in East Africa (and it did in OTL, considering the heavy Arab trade and influence along the Swahili Coast after the rise of Islam), that means Christianity can spread to Azania after it arrives in Yemen. Several of the Byzantine-era kings of Himyar in what is now Yemen were actually Jewish converts, and Aksumite Christianity took influence over the ruling class in the 6th Century after repeated failures by the Byzantines to spread Christianity there.
Another source concerning the trade between Azania and the Roman Empire comes from a Chinese text called A Brief History of the Wei Kingdom, in which there's a claim of a direct route between the Rome and a place called "Zesan" along the coast of East Africa.
Archaeological records do show Roman trade goods along the East African coast as far as Tanzania, and it's often claimed that one of the later medieval Swahili cities there evolved from the Rhapta of Roman times.
If South Arabian influence remains strong in East Africa (and it did in OTL, considering the heavy Arab trade and influence along the Swahili Coast after the rise of Islam), that means Christianity can spread to Azania after it arrives in Yemen. Several of the Byzantine-era kings of Himyar in what is now Yemen were actually Jewish converts, and Aksumite Christianity took influence over the ruling class in the 6th Century after repeated failures by the Byzantines to spread Christianity there.
There wasn't a sufficiently developed state formation in Uganda that early. Nubia had states since the time of Ancient Egypt; Nubians even ruled Egypt at one time. The Great Lakes Area probably needed several more centuries of social development before they became sophisticated enough that a church hierarchy could be supported and the local kings see an advantage in sponsoring an official church and looking to a vibrant Coptic Ethiopia (not burdened with pressure from its Islamic neighbors) to expand the church there.