re: History of sub-Saharan Africa

On top of the geography, the civilizations that did arise were incredibly brutal. The methods employed by Shaka Zulu for one would impress even the famously nasty Comanche. You can't find much on today's highly curated internet other than what a great strategist and innovator he was. IIRC Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" has much of the detail that has been cleansed from Google hits.

You can also learn a good bit from the book "African Kaiser" (Amazon link) which details the WWI campaign in German West Africa against the Brits and their allies. The German General, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, used native troops extensively throughout his ranks, and was the first fully integrated army of modern times. There is a lot of insight into the regional cultures in the book, including an episode involving a witch doctor turning an entire tribe against the people that had lifted them out of poverty and subsistence farming.

Lettow-Vorbeck was so respected by his native troops that, upon becoming an independent country after WWII, a delegation was sent to find him in Germany to seek advice on how to govern and set up the government to achieve the same results he and the colonial governor had been getting for the people at the start of WWI.

ChatGPT can provide you with info.

Dan Carlin HH addendum episode 30

Wakanda bitch.

Not to disappoint you but the Kangs never built anything. They were too busy Kanging.

He owned a large number of slaves apparently. He was 250 years ahead of the Atlantic slave trade. In addition he travelled with a large entourage. A real trendsetter.

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I just read a 500 page history of the Congo. And it only went back 150 years.

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Beyond that and the documented history gets into the sordid treatment and enslavement of these poor people since at least the late 1400s.

HEREis a pretty good research dive into the Congo territory's history from Substacker, 'Yaw':

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The Kongo Kingdoms (1390-1914)

“Each day the traders are kidnapping our people- children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family… This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. My Lord, a monstrous greed pushes our subjects, even Christians, to seize members of their own families, and of ours, to do business by selling them as captives.” - King Afonzo of the Medieval Kongo Kingdom to King Joao III of Portugal about the depravity of the slave trade in 1526


The "Kingdom of Congo" (now usually rendered as "Kingdom of Kongo" to maintain distinction from the present-day Congo nations)
The Kongo Kingdoms of Kongo, Luba, and Luanda bordered modern day North Angola, Western Democratic Republic of Congo, and most of Congo-Brazzaville with 60K people in 1390.

The Kongo Kingdoms had laws, traded with Africans and Arabs in ivory, spices, slaves, rubber, manufactured copperware, cloths, and pottery. However, the arrival of the Portuguese in 1482 expanded the slave trade by making a deal with the Kongo Kings. Portugal couldn’t go into the interior of Africa since they died of malaria, so the main Kongo Kingdom, led initially by KIng Joao I of Congo and later his son King Afonso, conducted villages raids, exchanging captives and resources for Portuguese guns and Portuguese Brazil’s food crops. The model of running sugar plantations in Brazil & Sao Tome with black labor was so profitable for Portugal that other Europeans copied them. King Afonso, realized very quickly that Portugal was abusing their contract, but had little power to stop Portugal from controlling the slave trade. Some Kongo Kings loved the slave trade, some Kings wanted to end the trade, some Kings wanted to control the slave trade, and some Kings gave refuge to runaway slaves. Overtime, the Kongo Kings saw themselves as a militarized Christian Kingdom that used Portuguese weapons to capture, enslave, and sell nearby pagan Africans to Europeans.

The Kongo Kingdoms contributed 5.7M of the 12.5M transatlantic slaves (45%). Eventually when Europe ended the transatlantic slave trade Kongo’s main source of export revenue, the Kongo Kingdom collapsed and fragmented into small states, reliant on illegal banditry, rubber, and ivory for export revenue. Then, the land of the Kongo Kingdoms were carved up by France, Portugal and King Leopold of Belgium in the Berlin Conference. Portugal’s territory became Angola, France’s territory became part of Congo-Brazzaville, and King Leopold’s Belgium became the “Congo Free State”. In addition, Omani Arab-East Swahili African slave raiders from Zanzibar, led by Tippu Tib controlled a slave trade & plantations in Eastern Congo.

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Africa lacking rivers that are easily navigable, and coastline that was likewise not easy to erect harbors on

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I've heard that theory before, but then I checked Google Maps. Tons of opportunity and the Greeks didn't need to dock aircraft carriers either.

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Why is there so little history in sub-Saharan Africa?

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I could be wrong, but I believe, much like the American Indians, no sub-Saharan civilization ever developed a written language. That would explain the lack of history.

Because it is a shithole.

Prior to either the Arabs or Whitey arriving they had no written language, no buildings over 2 stories, no large scale building projects.

Everyone else did... South Americans, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans had huge structures, ability to move large amounts of water (aqueducts etc), ships able to travel vast distances.

Sub Saharan people had mud huts that could not sustain a 6" rainfall.