posted
xyyman and MOM were getting really sloppy with their nonsense about the Spanish and also Canary Islanders. I chided them, and wikied "Atlantic slave trade" because I knew that the Canary Islands were one of the first populations to be enslaved.
In the process I ran across this little gem:
Upon discovering new lands through their naval explorations, European colonisers soon began to migrate to and settle in lands outside their native continent. Off the coast of Africa, European migrants, under the directions of the Kingdom of Castile, invaded and colonised the Canary Islands during the 15th century, where they converted much of the land to the production of wine and sugar. Along with this, they also captured native Canary Islanders, the Guanches, to use as slaves both on the Islands and across the Christian Mediterranean.
As historian John Thornton remarked, "the actual motivation for European expansion and for navigational breakthroughs was little more than to exploit the opportunity for immediate profits made by raiding and the seizure or purchase of trade commodities". Using the Canary Islands as a naval base, European, at the time primarily Portuguese traders, began to move their activities down the western coast of Africa, performing raids in which slaves would be captured to be later sold in the Mediterranean. Although initially successful in this venture, "it was not long before African naval forces were alerted to the new dangers, and the Portuguese [raiding] ships began to meet strong and effective resistance", with the crews of several of them being killed by African sailors, whose boats were better equipped at traversing the west African coasts and river systems.
By 1494, the Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling the Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa... without engaging in hostilities". "Peaceful trade became the rule all along the African coast", although there were some rare exceptions when acts of aggression led to violence. For instance Portuguese traders attempted to conquer the Bissagos Islands in 1535. In 1571 Portugal, supported by the Kingdom of Kongo, took control of the south-western region of Angola in order to secure its threatened economic interest in the area. Although Kongo later joined a coalition in 1591 to force the Portuguese out, Portugal had secured a foothold on the continent that it continued to occupy until the 20th century. Despite these incidences of occasional violence between African and European forces, many African states ensured that any trade went on in their own terms, for instance, imposing custom duties on foreign ships. In 1525, the Kongolese king, Afonso I, seized a French vessel and its crew for illegally trading on his coast.Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Mike you know you make sense. But it isn't just Africans. How is it that little old Britain or Little Old Portugal or Little Old Spain was able to dominate the entire globe. Makes no sense.
But here it is 2016 and that is what has come to pass.
Most folks don't realize how small all of Western Europe compared to everywhere else.
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I think a lot of it is people wanted to be part of what the Europeans were selling even if it was to their own demise ultimately. But yes fundamentally it is the divide and conquer strategy at play. Unfortunately most people didn't have a concept of a monolithic racial identity prior to the arrival of Europeans to band together around. So Africans to this day don't see themselves as "black people" or "african people" and unify around that identity, whereas Europeans have been unifying under the "white" banner for a few hundred years now.
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You guys are underestimating the advances in military technologies and industrialization such as the repeating rifles and the Gatling gun, it was more than a matter of bad treaties, much of the world simply fell behind,even the great dragon that covered much of the globe with her commercial fleets during the Ming dynasty was bought down and humiliated.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I think a lot of it is people wanted to be part of what the Europeans were selling even if it was to their own demise ultimately. But yes fundamentally it is the divide and conquer strategy at play. Unfortunately most people didn't have a concept of a monolithic racial identity prior to the arrival of Europeans to band together around. So Africans to this day don't see themselves as "black people" or "african people" and unify around that identity, whereas Europeans have been unifying under the "white" banner for a few hundred years now.
That's not quite true while there are obvious problems Pan Africanism the concept have grown since 1897 but with a continent the size of the moon, it would be no easy task, even the E.U which would be a dot in the middle of Africa have it's issues, but if you guys get to know Africans away from the continent like I have then all that divisions melts away.
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posted
any more on these West African naval forces ??
-------------------- Keldal Posts: 2818 | From: new york | Registered: Apr 2014
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
I bumped some up for you
This tthread's title is pure lies. No Portuguese fleet involved. Just solitary or no more than a couple of slaving boats at a time.
Let's not forget the Euros were no united force. African powers played Euros against each other and at El Mina for one collected rent from two or more Euro nations at the ssme time pitting them to kill each other over actual tenancy.
Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Originally posted by alTakruri:
What follows is a mostly, though not completely, accurate essay. Bracketed words and hi-liting are my editing. Otherwise it appears as originally presented on www.netnoir.com in 1997.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE The First Slav[ing] Expeditions to [West] Africa by Anthony A. Lee
Kidnapping [people] from the African coast was part of European practice even before Portuguese ships had explored the coast of the continent or discovered a new route to India. One of the first expeditions to the Senegal River, led by the Portuguese in 1444, brutally seized the black residents of several off-shore islands near the river and carried them off to be sold as slaves. Other expeditions from Europe about this time did more or less the same.
But it was not long before African armies became aware of the new dangers, and Portuguese ships began to meet their match. For example, in 1446, two years later, a ship commanded by Nuno Tristão attempted to land in the Senegal region. It was attacked by African fighters in canoes, and the crew of the ship was wiped out. And in 1447, a Danish raider commanding a Portuguese ship was killed, along with most of his crew, when local African boats attacked.
Of course, this fact of history makes the Atlantic slave trade a bit more problematic, from a moral perspective. It is not simply a question of black and white. Slavery was well known in [many] African societies, as much as it was a fact of life everywhere else in the world during those times.
As soon as Diogo Gomes' diplomatic expedition to West Africa had succeeded, the export of slaves began to number in the thousands. During the bloody course, perhaps 10 or 15 million Africans had been delivered as slaves to the New World, and perhaps just as many more had died in the process. These [people] were captured in Africa by Africans, shipped to the African coast by Africans, and only then sold to European traders in trade ships to begin the dreaded Middle Passage to America. African kings and rulers were active and willing participants in the slave trade, which made them rich[er], and which could not have existed without their full cooperation and support.
Indeed, when African kingdoms decided to stop trading in slaves -- for their own reasons -- there was no way for European nations to force them to continue. The earliest example of this is the Kingdom of Benin on the West African coast (in what is now Nigeria) In the 1520's this state began to restrict the sale of slaves, finally cutting it off entirely by about 1550. This was probably not done for moral reasons, however. Records from this period show that the kingdom was becoming wealthi[er] from the export of cloth and pepper. Although it is only a guess, we can imagine that slaves were needed within Benin itself to produce these valuable products which could bring more wealth to the king than the sale of human beings.
As uncomfortable as this aspect of black history may be, it at least explodes the myth of a "dark," helpless and ignorant African continent that was always at the mercy of European greed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more we learn about African history, going back even to the middle ages, the more we learn that Africans were full and active participants in the world -- on both sides of the Atlantic.
Depots, like El Mina, were leased from the ruling African power.
Often enough it was rented simultaneously to opposing European interests who then had no choice but to fight each other for actual possession and use as the African power broker refused to designate either claimant as the sole beneficiary.
Do you know what happened between the time a slaving vessel sought docking permission and disembarked for American shores? Have you any idea how long it took?
Slave trading was big profitable business for both the Euro buyers and the African sellers. The apologies issued by two of the biggest African profit reapers give lie to any assertion that Euros overpowered them to supply slaves or that lançados or other Afropeans numerically dominated the African end of the trade.
Even a book as old as Basil Davidson's Black Mother reveals the facts of the African power brokers of the slave trade. There were even some enslaved Africans who made it out of western hemisphere slavery only to repatriate back to Africa and then themselves procure people to enslave and sell to whites.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Thornton is quoting Lee whom I've reposted and which you can read to ascertain vessel type and don't act like you didn't know this stuff was posted 9 years ago where you took part in the discussion.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Clyde - this seems to confirm your theory that West Africans regularly sailed across the Atlantic.
So I'm thinking that you will be looking into the work of John Thornton and others of that interest.
Interesting how the Albinos work, isn't it?
Initially we were told that the Egyptians didn't like open water, therefore they never crossed the Mediterranean: so they could not have influenced Greece or Crete.
Then it was that West Africans didn't like open water, therefore they never crossed the Atlantic, therefore those ancient Blacks in the Americas came from somewhere else.
What's that saying about the "Struggle Continues"?
Read the Quote from Thornton below-- i.e. African vessels were not designed for the high seas. They were long canoes, low in the water designed for rivers and coastal areas.
Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007
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The West Africans in the basis of their armies fighting the colonial Western Europeans looks better then the Mughal Empire of India and even the Qing Chinese. The West Africans had medieval weapons like swords, spears, bows and arrows when they were fighting modern colonial armies equipped with gunpowder guns, cannons and gun boat fleet.
The Mughol Empire and the Ottoman Empire were among the first countries in the world along with the Western Europeans to equipped their armies with gunpowder weapons during the early Renaissance era. the Moghul Empire army, guns, and cannons were as good as the British colonial army and weapons who later conquered India a subcontinene with many many times the land masss and population of Great Britain. Some expert stated the Mughal Empire cannon were better then the British cannon. the only weakness of the Mughal Empire was they didnt have a great navy.
The Mughal had the army to defeat defeat the British army in India and keep India free from colonization. The Mughal instead of focusing on defeating the British fell for the Britsh divide and conquer strategy by weakening themself by fighting the Hindu Kingdoms of Southern India. The smart British conquered the Indian Kingdoms and the Moghul Empire one by one.
The British even defeated and conquered the Qing Empire of China who had a modern gunpowder army equipped with guns, cannons and gunboats. Remember the Chinese were the one who invented gunpowder, guns, cannons, mortars, missiles lol. The smart Brits weakened China with Indian opium, triad crimes and revolts. I think the Moghuls of India and the Qing Empires of China with their modern armies were greater losers in the colonial era then the West Africans with their Medieval weapons. The Moghuls and the Qings had poor political, diplomatic and military strategies facing the British. they were outsmarted by the Brits.
quote:Mahapadma Nanda was styled master of terrible army.
The Magadhan kingdom over which destiny placed Mahapadma as the king was a very prosperous and fertile tract of land watered by the life giving streams of the Ganges and its tributaries, the Son, Gandak, etc.
MAHAPADMA NANDA A MAN
quote: Alexander heard the glory of Nanda Empire : The Magadha Empire was on the east of the empire of Porus.
The king of the Magadha Empire was Dhana Nanda. He was the son of Mahapadma Nanda and last ruler of Nanda Dynasty.
The Magadha army under Nanda Empire was vast.
he return from river Beas : After reaching the river Beas,
the army of Alexander refused to proceed further in spite of his appeals.
Then Alexander decided to return.
Seems thats Theres Some Ting Tings That The Story About dem Dalit Kings, dat dey took out when Alexander faced Tha Dalit Kingdom??
Alexanders Army refused to proceed??
Yo Indian Man and Indian Woman, maybe yuh should look pon this and find Find whats Missing Pon de story, Bahahah
EDIT:
Posts: 9651 | From: Reace and Love City. | Registered: Oct 2005
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
WARFARE: SIJILMASA, 1274. The forces of Abu Yusuf Yaqub, Marinid sultan of Morocco (right, on white horse), employing artillery and gunpowder during the siege of Sijilmasa, 1274. Wood engraving, French, late 19th century.
Full Credit: Rue des Archives / Granger, NYC — All rights reserved.
License for Classroom Use: GRANGER ACADEMIC
Moroccans were among the first to deploy firearms to the woe of Gao and the Songhai empire.
Travellers in the Sahel Savannah region wrote of indigenee shot manufacture and guns either reverse engineered or made locally. This was before Europe sliced up Africa in the late 1800's early 1900's.
Unfortunately, they proved inadequate both numerically and technologically.
A number of very fortuitous events occurred that enabled the East India Company to take complete control of India. Summary:
Entering as traders When the East India Company came to India in the early 1600s, India was ruled by the Mughals. They were a land-based culture (originating from Uzbekistan and later getting foothold in Afghanistan) and unlike some of the ancient Indian rulers, didn't appreciate the importance of the seas or a navy. Like the Dothrakis of Game of Thrones, they had immense superiority over land, but feared the oceans.
Thus, the benevolent Mughal Emperor Jahangir had no issues providing trading ports in Indian coast to the East India Company (world's first major corporation). He had little appreciation for why these strange Europeans were building stuff in deserted beaches. Within the next 150 years, European companies were all over the Indian coast, busy trading and accumulating profits, growing navies.
Both Jahangir and his son Shah Jahan were busy with other stuff - like building the Taj Mahal and enjoying the fruits of one of the richest empires on earth. The peace they provided to the subcontinent and the rousing economic growth dramatically aided the East India Company.
Enter Aurangzeb In the middle 1600s, India was taken over by last of the mighty Mughals - Aurangzeb. He was a brutal guy who was predominantly interested in Islam more than anything else. When an English pirate attacked ships from Mecca, he got brutal and closed all the East India Company bases - Child's War. Soon the company asked for pardon and left to get back to their bases.
The company realized that they have to wait for Aurangzeb to leave as he was too powerful for them. He had consolidated most of India by then.
End of Mughals -- Confusion sets as India disintegrates Aurangzeb's imposition of Islam had left India very discontent and there were rebellions everywhere. Temples were destroyed and Sharia laws were imposed. Hindus wanted to get rid of the Islamic rule quickly.
In 1707, a big breakthrough came in the form of Aurangzeb's death. Although his son Bahadur Shah was a better man, he was dead within 5 years of taking the throne. There were 5 emperors in the 10 years after Aurangzeb's death - each betrayed by those closest to him. This made the empire fragile. This was the time for the Hindus to hit back. One of the key empires that emerged from the 17th century was the Marathas, based in Western India.
Within a short span of 2 decades after Aurangzeb's death, the Marathas would overrun all of India. This was a period of big confusion as the Marathas had little time to set up bases and many of the local rulers were still loyal to the Mughals. The switch of allegiance was not swift and there was a lot of hard arm-fighting. This was the period when European companies - French and English for the most part - were starting to flex their arms. The Marathas mostly ignored them and tried to grab whatever they could in the short span of time. The excessive ambition of Marathas would eventually destroy them.
East India Company Flexes Muscles It was in this interregnum period of middle 1700s that the East India company started flexing their muscles. As they saw the fledgling Hindu Marathas battling what was remaining of the Mughal territory, the Company found a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Between 1757-1761 extraordinary events happened that would change the future of the company.
1757 Battle of Plassey - Nature plays havoc The Company had got a new leader - Sir Robert Clive who quickly rose through the ranks. He knew India and he was quite strong. His opportunity to strike would come. The Nawab of now the independent province of Bengal - Siraj ud-Daulah - would provide the British an excuse through the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta incident. The British messengers of that time completely blew this incident out of proportion and rallied the British Crown's help for the company.
The Nawab was facing huge challenges. He feared an attack from the Afghan Durrani empire and the Maratha Hindu empire and thinly spread his army on all sides. It was a sort of free-for-all. Internally, he was facing challenges from Hindu & Sikh merchants who wanted to continue trade, along with ambitious Muslims who wanted power. The Company deftly made deals with a whole bunch of conspirators and found a strange coalition of Hindus and Muslims ready to betray their king.
Even with all that the Nawab was too powerful for a mere company. But nature and stupidity intervened. The Nawab made a blunder of postponing the battle when he had the upper hand (saddened by the death of a close friend). On that afternoon of June 23, Monsoon intervened and rains poured. The Company carefully covered their gunpowder with tarpaulin sheets, but the Nawab didn't. The Battle of Plassey
That evening, the Nawab woke up with wet muskets - betrayed both by his own army and by nature. Cannons backfired, causing panic among the war elephants running amok. With a very small army, Robert Clive won. He now had access to one of the richest provinces in India. This was still not enough as another fortune was waiting to happen.
Battle of Panipat (1761) At around the same time, the Marathas made another blunder. They got over-ambitious and went up to Punjab, putting them in a conflict with the Afghan empire. In one of the greatest battles in human history (involving nearly half a million men), the Marathas lost. 14th January 1761 was one of the bloodiest days in human history (only rivalled by the US bombing on Japan in the summer of 1945).
The Marathas were very brave warriors and well disciplined, but didn't have expert knowledge of siege warfare that the Afghans had carefully cultivated. Abdali had the numeric advantage and had a very quick moving force (a gift of the Mongols). Marathas also had wrongly chosen a commander who didn't understand this kind of warfare.
Little Ice Age Strikes One of the least appreciated aspects of colonialism around the world is the impact of the Little Ice Age. This decimated native populations around the world. In the last couple of decades, we have started to understand more of this effect. It substantially changed the rainfall patterns - pushing native Americans more south in North America, pushing Europeans out as migrants and weakening empires around the world.
See the drastic fall in temperature from after 1200 AD. When temperature changes, rainfall patterns change. That is the time India fell under sultanates. Later, in the 1500s the temperature started picking up and India reached its peak under the Mughals. Then it fell to its lowest just at the end of the Mughal dyansty.
When the temperature fell, monsoons went crazy. Here are the drought patterns that now correlated with the graph above. When Mughals were at their heights, droughts were also quite low. Look at the 1720s now. Of course, the causal link runs both ways - poor governances leads to worse droughts and worse droughts weakened the government.
Of course, Climate Change is not the only reason. But it played a critical part in the evolution of history.
East India Company expands The biggest power in India was thus defeated due to over-expansion and the company had control over Bengal. All in a span of 4 years. India was now completely changing. In the next 4 decades, the company would run over the rest of India without facing too much resistance. From that chance victory (green region on the right), here is how the company expanded.
Conclusion East India Company's take over of India was the result of a perfect storm of events. India's Mughal empire's lack of appreciation for oceans and navies letting the company establish dozens of posts and accumulate profits. Auragzeb's persecution of Hindus, leading to the weakening of Mughal empire. Maratha's excessive ambition to quickly take over all of India without giving themselves time to settle & rule. The Makara Sankranti of 1761 practically ended their power in Panipat. Nawab of Bengal's betrayal by people close to him, letting the Company their first taste of victory. Wet muskets. Ignoring to cover the gunpowder with tarpaulin on a stormy night before the battle (of Plassey).
Posts: 5374 | From: sepedat/sirius | Registered: Jul 2012
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Persian Musketeer in time of Abbas I by Habib-Allah Mashadi after Falsafi
Mughal musketeer
Gunpowder Empires From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about empires. For the novel, see Gunpowder Empire.
Ottoman Army artillerymen 1788. The Gunpowder Empires is a term used to describe the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. Each of these three empires had considerable military success using the newly developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, in the course of their empires
The Hodgson-McNeill concept[edit]
Mughal Army artillerymen during the reign of Akbar. The phrase was coined by Marshall G.S. Hodgson and his colleague William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago. Hodgson used the phrase in the title of Book 5 ("The Second Flowering: The Empires of Gunpowder Times") of his highly influential three-volume work, The Venture of Islam (1974).[2] Hodgson saw gunpowder weapons as the key to the "military patronage states of the Later Middle Period" which replaced the unstable, geographically limited confederations of Turkic clans that prevailed in post-Mongol times. Hodgson defined a "military patronage state" as one having three characteristics:
first, a legitimization of independent dynastic law; second, the conception of the whole state as a single military force; third, the attempt to explain all economic and high cultural resources as appanages of the chief military families.[3]
Such states grew "out of Mongol notions of greatness," but "[s]uch notions could fully mature and create stable bureaucratic empires only after gunpowder weapons and their specialized technology attained a primary place in military life."[4]
McNeill argued that whenever such states “were able to monopolize the new artillery, central authorities were able to unite larger territories into new, or newly consolidated, empires.” [5] Monopolization was key. Although Europe pioneered the development of the new artillery in the fifteenth century, no state monopolized it. Gun-casting know-how had been concentrated in the Low Countries near the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine rivers. France and the Habsburgs divided those territories among themselves resulting in an arms standoff.[6] By contrast, such monopolies allowed states to create militarized empires in the Near East, Russia and India, and “in a considerably modified fashion” in China and Japan.[7]
Recent views on the concept[edit] More recently, the Hodgson-McNeill Gunpowder-Empire hypothesis has been called into disfavor as a neither "adequate [n]or accurate" explanation, although the term remains in use.[8] Reasons other than (or in addition to) military technology have been offered for the nearly simultaneous rise of three centralized military empires in contiguous areas dominated by decentralized Turkic tribes. One explanation, called "Confessionalization" by historians of fifteenth century Europe, invokes examination of how the relation of church and state "mediated through confessional statements and church ordinances" lead to the origins of absolutist polities. Douglas Streusand uses the Safavids as an example:
The Safavids from the beginning imposed a new religious identity on their general population; they did not seek to develop a national or linguistic identity, but their policy had that effect.[9]
One problem of the Hodgson-McNeill theory is that the acquisition of firearms does not seem to have preceded the initial acquisition of territory constituting the imperial critical mass of any of the three early modern Islamic empires. except in the case of the Mughal empire. Moreover, it seems that the commitment to military autocratic rule pre-dated the acquisition of gunpowder weapons in all three cases. Nor does it seem to be the case that the acquisition of gunpowder weapons and their integration into the military was influenced by considerations of whichever variety of Islam the particular empire promoted.[10] Whether or not gunpowder was inherently linked to the existence of any of these three empires, it cannot be questioned that each of the three acquired artillery and firearms early in their history and made such weapons an integral part of their military tactics.
Gunpowder weapons in the three empires[edit] Ottoman Empire[edit] The first of the three empires to acquire gunpowder weapons was the Ottoman. Its decision was inevitable given that it faced Byzantine, Balkan and Hungarian fortresses and enemies already possessing such weapons. The adoption of the weapons by the Ottomans was so rapid that they "preceded both their European and Middle Eastern adversaries in establishing centralized and permanent troops specialized in the manufacturing and handling of firearms. "[11] But it was their use of artillery that shocked their adversaries and impelled the other two Islamic empires to accelerate their weapons program. The Ottomans had artillery at least by the reign of Bayazid I and used them in the sieges of Constantinople in 1399 and 1402. They finally proved their worth as siege engines in the successful siege of Salonica in 1430.[12] The Ottomans employed European founders to cast their cannons and by the siege of Constantinople in 1453, they had large enough cannons to batter the walls of the city to the surprise of the defenders. [13]
The bronze Dardanelles cannon, used by the Ottoman Turks in the siege of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottoman military's regularized use of firearms proceeded ahead of the pace of their European counterparts. The Janissaries had been an infantry bodyguard using bows and arrows. During the rule of Sultan Mehmed II they were drilled with firearms and became "perhaps the first standing infantry force equipped with firearms in the world."[12] The combination of artillery and Janissary firepower proved decisive at the Varna in 1444 against a force of Crusaders, the Başkent in 1473 against the Aq Qoyunlu,[14] and Mohács in 1526 against Hungary. But the battle which convinced the Safavids and the Mughals of the efficacy of gunpowder was Chaldiran.
Persian Musketeer in time of Abbas I by Habib-Allah Mashadi after Falsafi (Berlin Museum of Islamic Art). At Chaldiran the Ottomans met the Safavids in battle for the first time. Sultan Selim I moved east with his field artillery in 1514 to confront what he perceived as a Shia threat instigated by Shah Ismail in favor of Salem's rivals. Ismail staked his reputation as a divinely-favored ruler on an open cavalry charge against a fixed Ottoman position. The Ottomans deployed their cannons between the carts that carried them, which also provided cover for the armed Janissaries. The result of the charge was devastating losses to the Safavid cavalry. The defeat was so thorough that the Ottoman forces were able to move on and briefly occupy the Safavid capital. Only the limited campaign radius of the Ottoman army prevented it from holding Tabriz and ending the Safavid rule.[15]
Safavid Empire[edit] Although the Chaldiran defeat brought an end to Ismail's territorial expansion program, the shah nonetheless took immediate steps to protect against the real threat from the Ottoman sultanate by arming his troops with gunpowder weapons. Within two years of Chaldiran Ismail had a corps of musketeers (tofangchi) numbering 8,000 and by 1521 possibly 20,000.[16] After Abbas the Great reformed the army (around 1598), the Safavid forces had an artillery corp of 12,000 and 500 cannons as well as 12,000 musketeers.[17]
The Safavids first put their gunpowder arms to good use against the Uzbeks, who had invaded eastern Persia during the civil war that followed the death of Ismail I. The young shah Tahmasp I headed an army to relieve Herat and encountered the Uzbeks on September 24, 1528 at Jam, where the Safavids decisively beat the Uzbeks. The shah's army deployed cannons (swivel guns on wagons) in the center protected by wagons with cavalry on both flanks. Mughal emperor Babur described the formation at Jam as "in the Anatolian fashion."[18] The several thousand gun-bearing infantry also massed in the center as did the Janissaries of the Ottoman army. Although the Uzbek cavalry engaged and turned the Safavid army on both flanks, the Safavid center held (because not directly engaged by the Uzbeks). Rallying under Tahmasp's personal leadership the infantry of the center engaged and scattered the Uzbek center and secured the field.[19]
Mughal Empire[edit]
Mughal matchlock rifle. By the time he was invited by Lodi governor of Lahore Daulat Khan to support his rebellion against Lodi Sultan Ibrahim Khan, Babur was familiar with gunpowder firearms and field artillery and a method for deploying them. Babur had employed Ottoman expert Ustad Ali Quli, who showed Babur the standard Ottoman formation—artillery and firearm-equipped infantry protected by wagons in the center and the mounted archers on both wings. Babur used this formation at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Afghan and Rajput forces loyal to the Delhi sultanate, though superior in numbers but without the gunpowder weapons, were defeated. The decisive victory of the Timurid forces is one reason opponents rarely met Mughal princes in pitched battle over the course of the empire's history
A Mongol bomb thrown against a charging Japanese samurai during the Mongol invasions of Japan after founding the Yuan Dynasty, 1281.
In the year 1780 the British began to annex the territories of the Sultanate of Mysore, during the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The British battalion was defeated during the Battle of Guntur, by the forces of Hyder Ali, who effectively utilized Mysorean rockets and Rocket artillery against the closely massed British forces.
Posts: 5374 | From: sepedat/sirius | Registered: Jul 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Moroccans were among the first to deploy firearms to the woe of Gao and the Songhai empire.
Travellers in the Sahel Savannah region wrote of indigenee shot manufacture and guns either reverse engineered or made locally. This was before Europe sliced up Africa in the late 1800's early 1900's.
Unfortunately, they proved inadequate both numerically and technologically.
I found early pages in ES archives showing that the European type firearms matchlocks were based on North Africa and Middle Eastern/Indian designs and not Chinese ones, because chinese ones didn't work properly but now you have given additional source.
Where did you find that? How did you find it?
Posts: 1558 | From: US | Registered: Sep 2015
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Heads up, I did an edit on the post you quoted. Scroll up and check it.
Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
There is a page on Egyptsearch where it says that the Mamluks came up with their own firearms independent of the Chinese, and they used it against the Mongols, and the Mongols did not have any equivalent to such weapons.
A user named The_Explorer? said and postulated that those guns used in the battle of Ayn jalut by the Mamluks had an African origin, and that the Yoruba had discovered gun powder, and that potassium nitrate was discovered in the crusades battles.
Is this true?
Posts: 1558 | From: US | Registered: Sep 2015
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posted
Zulu army with medieval era weapons facing the modern British army with semi automatic weapons in 19 cent CE South Africa. Thats was the weapons of half of the majority of the African Kingdoms during the Slave Trade and Colonial era.
The Zulu army didnt stand a chance against the modern British army.
Congolese soldiers
Mena: A few African Kingdoms like the Akan, Dahomey, Benin, Sokoto, Abyssinia had gun powder weapons during the middle of the Slave Trade era.
Persian Musketeer in time of Abbas I by Habib-Allah Mashadi after Falsafi
Mughal musketeer
Gunpowder Empires From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about empires. For the novel, see Gunpowder Empire.
Ottoman Army artillerymen 1788. The Gunpowder Empires is a term used to describe the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. Each of these three empires had considerable military success using the newly developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, in the course of their empires
The Hodgson-McNeill concept[edit]
Mughal Army artillerymen during the reign of Akbar. The phrase was coined by Marshall G.S. Hodgson and his colleague William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago. Hodgson used the phrase in the title of Book 5 ("The Second Flowering: The Empires of Gunpowder Times") of his highly influential three-volume work, The Venture of Islam (1974).[2] Hodgson saw gunpowder weapons as the key to the "military patronage states of the Later Middle Period" which replaced the unstable, geographically limited confederations of Turkic clans that prevailed in post-Mongol times. Hodgson defined a "military patronage state" as one having three characteristics:
first, a legitimization of independent dynastic law; second, the conception of the whole state as a single military force; third, the attempt to explain all economic and high cultural resources as appanages of the chief military families.[3]
Such states grew "out of Mongol notions of greatness," but "[s]uch notions could fully mature and create stable bureaucratic empires only after gunpowder weapons and their specialized technology attained a primary place in military life."[4]
McNeill argued that whenever such states “were able to monopolize the new artillery, central authorities were able to unite larger territories into new, or newly consolidated, empires.” [5] Monopolization was key. Although Europe pioneered the development of the new artillery in the fifteenth century, no state monopolized it. Gun-casting know-how had been concentrated in the Low Countries near the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine rivers. France and the Habsburgs divided those territories among themselves resulting in an arms standoff.[6] By contrast, such monopolies allowed states to create militarized empires in the Near East, Russia and India, and “in a considerably modified fashion” in China and Japan.[7]
Recent views on the concept[edit] More recently, the Hodgson-McNeill Gunpowder-Empire hypothesis has been called into disfavor as a neither "adequate [n]or accurate" explanation, although the term remains in use.[8] Reasons other than (or in addition to) military technology have been offered for the nearly simultaneous rise of three centralized military empires in contiguous areas dominated by decentralized Turkic tribes. One explanation, called "Confessionalization" by historians of fifteenth century Europe, invokes examination of how the relation of church and state "mediated through confessional statements and church ordinances" lead to the origins of absolutist polities. Douglas Streusand uses the Safavids as an example:
The Safavids from the beginning imposed a new religious identity on their general population; they did not seek to develop a national or linguistic identity, but their policy had that effect.[9]
One problem of the Hodgson-McNeill theory is that the acquisition of firearms does not seem to have preceded the initial acquisition of territory constituting the imperial critical mass of any of the three early modern Islamic empires. except in the case of the Mughal empire. Moreover, it seems that the commitment to military autocratic rule pre-dated the acquisition of gunpowder weapons in all three cases. Nor does it seem to be the case that the acquisition of gunpowder weapons and their integration into the military was influenced by considerations of whichever variety of Islam the particular empire promoted.[10] Whether or not gunpowder was inherently linked to the existence of any of these three empires, it cannot be questioned that each of the three acquired artillery and firearms early in their history and made such weapons an integral part of their military tactics.
Gunpowder weapons in the three empires[edit] Ottoman Empire[edit] The first of the three empires to acquire gunpowder weapons was the Ottoman. Its decision was inevitable given that it faced Byzantine, Balkan and Hungarian fortresses and enemies already possessing such weapons. The adoption of the weapons by the Ottomans was so rapid that they "preceded both their European and Middle Eastern adversaries in establishing centralized and permanent troops specialized in the manufacturing and handling of firearms. "[11] But it was their use of artillery that shocked their adversaries and impelled the other two Islamic empires to accelerate their weapons program. The Ottomans had artillery at least by the reign of Bayazid I and used them in the sieges of Constantinople in 1399 and 1402. They finally proved their worth as siege engines in the successful siege of Salonica in 1430.[12] The Ottomans employed European founders to cast their cannons and by the siege of Constantinople in 1453, they had large enough cannons to batter the walls of the city to the surprise of the defenders. [13]
The bronze Dardanelles cannon, used by the Ottoman Turks in the siege of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottoman military's regularized use of firearms proceeded ahead of the pace of their European counterparts. The Janissaries had been an infantry bodyguard using bows and arrows. During the rule of Sultan Mehmed II they were drilled with firearms and became "perhaps the first standing infantry force equipped with firearms in the world."[12] The combination of artillery and Janissary firepower proved decisive at the Varna in 1444 against a force of Crusaders, the Başkent in 1473 against the Aq Qoyunlu,[14] and Mohács in 1526 against Hungary. But the battle which convinced the Safavids and the Mughals of the efficacy of gunpowder was Chaldiran.
Persian Musketeer in time of Abbas I by Habib-Allah Mashadi after Falsafi (Berlin Museum of Islamic Art). At Chaldiran the Ottomans met the Safavids in battle for the first time. Sultan Selim I moved east with his field artillery in 1514 to confront what he perceived as a Shia threat instigated by Shah Ismail in favor of Salem's rivals. Ismail staked his reputation as a divinely-favored ruler on an open cavalry charge against a fixed Ottoman position. The Ottomans deployed their cannons between the carts that carried them, which also provided cover for the armed Janissaries. The result of the charge was devastating losses to the Safavid cavalry. The defeat was so thorough that the Ottoman forces were able to move on and briefly occupy the Safavid capital. Only the limited campaign radius of the Ottoman army prevented it from holding Tabriz and ending the Safavid rule.[15]
Safavid Empire[edit] Although the Chaldiran defeat brought an end to Ismail's territorial expansion program, the shah nonetheless took immediate steps to protect against the real threat from the Ottoman sultanate by arming his troops with gunpowder weapons. Within two years of Chaldiran Ismail had a corps of musketeers (tofangchi) numbering 8,000 and by 1521 possibly 20,000.[16] After Abbas the Great reformed the army (around 1598), the Safavid forces had an artillery corp of 12,000 and 500 cannons as well as 12,000 musketeers.[17]
The Safavids first put their gunpowder arms to good use against the Uzbeks, who had invaded eastern Persia during the civil war that followed the death of Ismail I. The young shah Tahmasp I headed an army to relieve Herat and encountered the Uzbeks on September 24, 1528 at Jam, where the Safavids decisively beat the Uzbeks. The shah's army deployed cannons (swivel guns on wagons) in the center protected by wagons with cavalry on both flanks. Mughal emperor Babur described the formation at Jam as "in the Anatolian fashion."[18] The several thousand gun-bearing infantry also massed in the center as did the Janissaries of the Ottoman army. Although the Uzbek cavalry engaged and turned the Safavid army on both flanks, the Safavid center held (because not directly engaged by the Uzbeks). Rallying under Tahmasp's personal leadership the infantry of the center engaged and scattered the Uzbek center and secured the field.[19]
Mughal Empire[edit]
Mughal matchlock rifle. By the time he was invited by Lodi governor of Lahore Daulat Khan to support his rebellion against Lodi Sultan Ibrahim Khan, Babur was familiar with gunpowder firearms and field artillery and a method for deploying them. Babur had employed Ottoman expert Ustad Ali Quli, who showed Babur the standard Ottoman formation—artillery and firearm-equipped infantry protected by wagons in the center and the mounted archers on both wings. Babur used this formation at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Afghan and Rajput forces loyal to the Delhi sultanate, though superior in numbers but without the gunpowder weapons, were defeated. The decisive victory of the Timurid forces is one reason opponents rarely met Mughal princes in pitched battle over the course of the empire's history
A Mongol bomb thrown against a charging Japanese samurai during the Mongol invasions of Japan after founding the Yuan Dynasty, 1281.
In the year 1780 the British began to annex the territories of the Sultanate of Mysore, during the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The British battalion was defeated during the Battle of Guntur, by the forces of Hyder Ali, who effectively utilized Mysorean rockets and Rocket artillery against the closely massed British forces.
In fact, the 'rockets red glare' from the Star Spangled Banner comes from British versions of the Mysore Rockets.
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I think a lot of it is people wanted to be part of what the Europeans were selling even if it was to their own demise ultimately. But yes fundamentally it is the divide and conquer strategy at play. Unfortunately most people didn't have a concept of a monolithic racial identity prior to the arrival of Europeans to band together around. So Africans to this day don't see themselves as "black people" or "african people" and unify around that identity, whereas Europeans have been unifying under the "white" banner for a few hundred years now.
That's not quite true while there are obvious problems Pan Africanism the concept have grown since 1897 but with a continent the size of the moon, it would be no easy task, even the E.U which would be a dot in the middle of Africa have it's issues, but if you guys get to know Africans away from the continent like I have then all that divisions melts away.
As Europeans began their global conquest, they realized they needed a banner to unify under in order to beat and dominate other populations. There is nothing in Africa that even comes close. It doesn't matter the size of the continent, the mentality and desire is the issue. And in most other cultures they still to this day are somewhat divided along various lines. If that was not the case, divide and conquer would not have worked. So yes, some Africans wanted part of what the white folks had to offer, just like some Indians did, some Native Americans did, some Chinese did and so on.
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Baalberith
Ungodly and Satanic Entity
Member # 23079
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Clyde - this seems to confirm your theory that West Africans regularly sailed across the Atlantic.
So I'm thinking that you will be looking into the work of John Thornton and others of that interest.
Interesting how the Albinos work, isn't it?
Initially we were told that the Egyptians didn't like open water, therefore they never crossed the Mediterranean: so they could not have influenced Greece or Crete.
Then it was that West Africans didn't like open water, therefore they never crossed the Atlantic, therefore those ancient Blacks in the Americas came from somewhere else.
What's that saying about the "Struggle Continues"?
Read the Quote from Thornton below-- i.e. African vessels were not designed for the high seas. They were long canoes, low in the water designed for rivers and coastal areas.
Did you deliberately comment on this thread to just note this one quote? Like really, was it so important for you to mention that one small detail of an African fleet. Anyway here are some threads on African navigation.
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
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