#BlackHistoryMonthChallenge: The Great Empires of Africa

One of the core myths of white supremacy is that Europeans are the only group of people in history who have built international empires and “advanced” civilization.

In grade school, my “world” history classes reinforced this notion, drawing a straight line from Ancient Egypt (the white-washed version) leading to the Greek and Roman empires, and then exclusively European history for the rest of the year.

As a child reading the National Geographic magazines that my grandparents bought for me, I was excited to learn about the historical empires of east Asia, India, Central America and the Andes in South America. But I never, ever heard about the major empires of Africa (ancient Egypt aside) until I was 26 years old and took an elective course on African history at my college.

While Europe was in the Dark Ages, struggling with poor sanitation, disease epidemics, and internecine warfare, there were no less than seven major empires across the continent of Africa. These empires boasted international trade, military prowess, art, literature, universities, riches — even amazing castles.

The Axum Empire of Eastern Africa was an international superpowers equal to the empires of Persia, Rome and China. Axum traded and projected its influence as far as China and India, where coins minted in Axum were discovered in 1990.

The Kingdom of Ghana was known as the “Land of Gold,” possessing sophisticated methods of administration and taxation, large armies, and a monopoly over notoriously well-concealed gold mines.

The fabled King Sundiata established the Kingdom of Mali, which became a world-famous cultural center for learning and international trade. Timbuktu had vast libraries and universities where the finest scholars, poets and artists from across Africa and the Middle East would meet. The Kingdom of Mali had a semi-democratic government with one of the world’s oldest known constitutions, the Kurukan Fuga, and a 32-member governing assembly, the Gbara, that were a check against the king’s power.

The Empire of Abyssinia in Ethiopia ruled for 700 years, from Europe’s Dark Ages into the 20th century, and successfully fought off every wave of attempted colonization, from the Arab and Turkish to the Italian armies, and made fruitful contacts with some European powers, especially the Portuguese.

These are just 4 examples of many more. And we don’t learn about them, not in school, not in popular culture, not unless we really try to seek the knowledge out, because if we did, that would make the myth of white supremacy impossible to sustain.