WEST AFRICA IN THE PRE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ERA.

It is important for commentators in the public to get a good grasp of history before offering opinions and stirring up emotions, cultivating ill feelings and etc. One of such commentators was being enlightened thus

‘ The first Europeans here were the Portuguese then our people were going to Europe and the Americas, so they knew the Spanish but later on by the 17th, 18th century, the Germans, English, French and etc took over. Togo, Cameroon and etc were formerly held by Germans. Togo and Ghana went from the hands of the Oyo to essentially the Germans who were later driven out by the British as an aftermath of the two great wars’.

He came back to say "then our people were going to Europe and America's",when you write this you meant on slave ships,right ? .

I had to educate him further

‘The Malians were contempories of the Oyo ie the Yoruba who prided themselves as pace setters, not copy cats as is clear in the saying 'Ajisebi Oyo laari Oyo ise bi Baba eni kankan'. I am Ijesa, the Ijesa would not submit to Oyo overlordship, so they taxed Oyo merchants passing their territory to go towards the Atlantic to trade with Europeans which led to Oyo establishing a military post in Ede Osun state against the Ijesa. I am a Yoruba from Ijesa. The Oyo knew the Malians as Imale or Male. Yoruba cities were bigger than Malian cities. Infact the Eredo of the Ijebu was the largest in the world that time. Malians were contemporaries of the Moors, both had Islamic universities as did Kanem Bornu on a lesser scale. Nothing they were doing was strange to the Yoruba back then. They infact saw the Yoruba as superior in mystics. So Malians and Moors were contemporaries and the Yoruba had larger cities than the Malians. The Moors ruled Southern Europe ie Spain and Portugal after being driven back by Charles of the Hammer in France. Spain as a result became number one in Europe looking down on Germans, English and etc as uncivilized, the English saw the Spanish as not only like senior brother but father! Later the Moors were driven out of Spain and Portugal by Catholics. But the Moors and other Muslims still controlled the route to India and the legendary Africa of 'Prester John'. That led to the Spanish and Portuguese risking southward voyages into uncharted West African waters of which stories of boiling seas was told by the Moors. The Portuguese and Spanish appeared on the Yoruba coast but to meet people better organised or as organised as themselves. They were not better than the Yoruba back then and they dealt with us as equals. They learnt our language and we learnt theirs. We went to Europe. South America and settled, they came here too. South America is a Yoruba enclave because of that. There are more Yorubas there than in West Africa. We had European slaves in West Africa too and titled Yoruba in South America but you dont use Europeans for slave labor in West Africa. Why? Because of tropical diseases. Go and sulk somewhere else. My ancestors were never sitting ducks being raped and sold into slavery by foreigners. Maybe yours not mine. Colonisation of Yoruba land started like 200 years after that of India.
When the Yoruba say ilu to wa lehin Ofa o ju Oje lo it means the cities after Ofa is more than the Oje that you know. In the past, the most Northerly Yoruba big city was Ofa but after it is Oje a smaller Yoruba city known to all Yorubas as well but Yoruba travellers must have started the saying that after you leave Oje are still hundreds of cities that you will meet that are outside the Yoruba world. From Oje to Gwari on the Northeast to Bariba in the North west, north to Hausa to Kanem Bornu to Mali to Moor to Europe and etc. So the cities you will meet pass Oje, so be prepared! That is the meaning of the adage.’

This above lecture was what I was forced to give someone who might even be a PhD!
We could have caught up in West Africa as did Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China to a lesser extent but the big nations of West Africa are locked in a death embrace, a bear hug that Nigeria is!

Ok

The truth about Africa and Africans is strouded in obscurity and any attempt to validate the history is mere academic manipulation than the true fact.



No relevant documents and those available are bias in presentation.

@op. Ice and 'shrooms are bad for your mental health.

After the fall of Rome, the Yoruba and Hausa were more organised and advanced than Europeans. They lived in bigger cities and had more viable nation states, walled cities and many of the walls are still visible today. You ask Julius Berger to construct Eredo rampart today and they will quote for you billions of dollars. Slaves were being sold all over the world. If an Ijesa man needed an assortment of slaves from India, China, Europe, Japan, he would get. He can buy war captives, criminals and etc from anywhere in the world. The Yoruba were streaming to the Americas same way as Europeans like Germans and British, the European rate only surpassed ours greatly after the industrial revolution. All were going initially mainly as indentured servants before it turned to full scale slavery for some time before abolition. Even at that there are Yorubas all over South America that are not descendants of slaves or even indentured servants.


So only Igbos of the three main Nigerian groups were not socially advanced in the past. Such does not really apply to Hausa and Yoruba. If Nigeria had not been one at all, there would have been better results for West Africa as the three main groups would compete amongst themselves.


So if not for the industrial revolution that sprung in England because of their timely invention of corporations which managed capital more efficiently than individuals or the crown, we would still be a pre industrial society! The revolution started centuries after the first Europeans arrived here and the people that arrived here the Portuguese and Spanish were left behind! Britain carried the day! They started the prosperity we are now enjoying, stopped the slave trade, colonised us, gave us independence and handed the baton to the USA.

lawani:
WEST AFRICA IN THE PRE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ERA.

Togo and Ghana went from the hands of the Oyo to essentially the Germans who were later driven out by the British as an aftermath of the two great wars’.

what sort of rubbish talk is this

Anybody can write their own version of history to favor them. The truth is Dahomey was a vassal state of Oyo bringing income worth hundreds of billions of dollars pa in today's money to the empire, the Ashanti marched against Dahomey territory and the Oyo marched against them. The two contenders were Oyo and Ashanti. The Ashanti were routed by Oyo forces comprising of Fon, Ewe and Yorubas in Atakpame Togo. The Oyo removed the Asantehene and put another that became a vassal in 1776. They controlled the whole place as at then! You better wake up from your slumber. Britain colonised Yoruba land by merely settling a 16 year long civil war. Listen to Kwam 1's song to get an idea of what happened E wo iji to ja to gbe Oba Aganyin! Kofi, Nene, Ajonto, Agomoh..... So wake up from your slumber. All of Ghana, Togo, Benin republic was in 1776 part of the Oyo empire. Just like Yoruba fell under the British empire in 1890s.

The Dahomey broke away in the 1820s, the Egba in the 1830s and Ilorin 1840s. Do wake up!

https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/battle-of-atakpamé/isbn/978-613-8-11645-5