Talk:Ancient African nations

What a lovely example of a blatantly ethnocentric article

I've already stated the issues I have with overgeneralised articles like this one on Talk:African national parks#This article smells of ethnocentrism. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:20, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

We have generalized articles on whole continents such as indigenous cultures of South America, indigenous cultures of North America, prehistoric Europe and medieval Europe, and Eurasian wildlife covers a region much larger than so. The historical travel article tree is more developed for Europe than sub-Saharan Africa, and if we want to tell more about Africa, we need to start somewhere. /Yvwv (talk) 12:53, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

if we want to tell more about Africa, we need to start somewhere.

That does not mean start articles about an overgeneralised topic. Please tell me what has Egypt have anything to do with Namibia per se culturally, apart from being on the same continent. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:00, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

What have the Sámi to do with the Romans? Each of the empires may not have had much to do with the others, as most have been separated in time and space, but a traveller might want to know something about Africa's history, in the same way that somebody might be interested in East Asia. Then, reading some more, they learn to know the ancient empires of Mali and those of Sudan (or those of Thailand and Mongolia). I think that there is no problem in following our geographical hierarchy at this scale. The more logical breakup isn't known by the reader who comes here before having read up on the subject. –LPfi (talk) 11:27, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Geographic hierarchy describes the hierarchy for destination articles, and defines continents as the top-level categorization. For travel topics, we don't have a universal standard, but many topics describe a whole continent; except those mentioned above, we have cycling in Europe, driving in Europe, rail travel in Europe, European art, association football in Europe and many other articles which generalize across a whole continent with vast cultural and natural difference. Driving through the streets of Lisbon certainly raises very different concerns from driving across countryside roads around Archangelsk, but still we need continent-level topics to anchor more detailed information. Articles such as the Mali Empire and ancient Ethiopia would be appreciated, but we are not there yet. /Yvwv (talk) 13:22, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Africa is not comparable to Europe. Thanks to the immense level of cooperation within the EU, many topics relating to Europe are interwined. Regarding LPfi's question, the simple answer is we don't cover both in the same article: that's why Sami culture and the Roman Empire exist as two different articles, not like one. Africa is not a country. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:23, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, Africa is more like Asia - an incredibly vast continent, far, far bigger than any other except for Asia. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:22, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Ikan, you've nailed it: LPfi and Yvwv, do you think it's appropriate to have an article called "Ancient Asian nations" which stretches from Türkiye and the Middle East all the way to Indonesia and Japan? I think the answer is an unambiguous no. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:39, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Create an article called Ancient Asian nations if it feels appropriate. I frankly still don't see the problem. /Yvwv (talk) 05:43, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

If it wasn't clear already, the problem is this and Ancient Asian nations are ridiculous overgeneralisations. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:47, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

It seems as articles such as indigenous cultures of North America does a decent job of including the Aztecs and Cree; in particular since we have yet to have Aztec culture and Cree culture, similar to many other continent-level cultural articles. The problem is a ficticious one. /Yvwv (talk) 05:55, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I wouldn't oppose creating Ancient Empires. Those that know Rome, China and the Incas would see that there were several contemporary ones elsewhere. Same with Africa. You might know about Egypt, but have no idea about Mali. The point with this article isn't to describe the common features of African empires and compare them to European ones – that would have the problems SHB is thinking of. This article is more like an index with summaries facilitating finding the content about individual "nations", which can be here or in more specific articles. The Understand can also relate the individual "nations" (I cannot use that term without quotes; in Swedish it sounds very odd in this context) to each other and the contemporary ones on neighbouring continents (mainly the Muslim world and the colonial empires of Europe). –LPfi (talk) 06:04, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I'm actually fine with this article. Of course, if people know enough to create articles about the Mali Empire, the Swahili Coast, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe and so on, that's great, but I'm not sure if we have many people with enough expertise to create all those. The important thing is to ensure we appropriately cover the diversity of African cultures, and impress on people that there is not one African civilisation but multiple different African civilisations in different parts of the continent. But otherwise, I could certainly see "African history" being a search term people might type. The dog2 (talk) 19:54, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Yvwv got right to the point of the argument at its beginning: "if we want to tell more about Africa, we need to start somewhere." If it's too general, expand it then branch it. For now, I think this is a good list of places to visit for someone interested in African history. Ground Zero (talk) 21:13, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Name

Based on the scope of the article, something like "Pre-colonial Africa" may be more appropriate than "Ancient African nations". Nations tend to refer to modern political states, not ancient states and groups which more often called empires, kingdoms, chiefdoms, etc. depending on how the state was structured. Not referring to any type of state also allows for nomadic cultures to fit within the article. Gizza ^(roam) 01:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

As you can tell by my sentiments in the thread above, I have a strong distaste for this overgeneralised ethnocentric article; the name you propose is much better than the current name, which gives an impression that these kingdoms/empires were much like European nations (which was a concept unheard of pre-colonialism). Support. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:22, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Defining African history on the basis of its interaction with Europe seems to be the worst kind of ethnocentricism to me. I prefer the current title. "Nation" has a lot of meanings, and probably should not be applied to many European entities before the 19th century, yet we still do. "States" would be better a term, but I don't know if it's worth changing. Ground Zero (talk) 21:10, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The actual content of the article is based on the period before Africa's major interactions with Europe. That is how its current scope has arbitrarily been defined, for better or worse. Changing the title to a more accurate name isn't the source of the ethnocentrism but the content itself. "Ancient African history" would be better than nation/state because it would encompass more fluid political entities but using "ancient" for history up to the 17th century is far more problematic than pre-colonial IMO. Gizza ^(roam) 00:15, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd support "Ancient African history". Ground Zero (talk) 00:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I expressed my deep reservations above about an article that seeks to cover the entire vast continent of Africa in the first place, but I have some comments about colonialism, what "ancient" means and what parts of Africa are not covered (at least so far) by this article. North Africa is entirely absent from this article. That's also significant for the fact that colonialism from other continents existed in North Africa in ancient times. Was Carthage an ancient African nation? You bet your ass it was! But it was of Phoenician origin. And Egypt, even under Hellenistic or Hittite rule, remained an African kingdom. What else could it have been? It didn't suddenly move to another continent! As for "ancient," the 19th and 18th centuries were not remotely ancient. (Another side point is that since it's routine to use the term "pre-Columbian" in describing the Americas, and not ethnocentric, as the arrival of Columbus and the Europeans who followed changed and severely damaged the Americas and those who were living here, it wouldn't be ethnocentric to use "pre-colonial" in regard to Africa, except that it's so ahistorical. The Arab invasions also had a clear element of colonialism to them, didn't they?)

I think that if we are to have this article, it should be called something like "Pre-19th-century African history" and needs to cover Egypt, Carthage and Greek and Roman colonization and rule over places in North Africa as well as great African civilizations that have no origins in Europe or Asia. It's not an elegant name, but it's accurate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:02, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

This – it's my concern with the entire article as it stands and much prefer Pre-19th-century African history over any of the other recommended titles. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:13, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

"needs to cover Egypt, Carthage and Greek and Roman colonization and rule over places in North Africa as well as great African civilizations that have no origins in Europe or Asia" -- this article can only cover these things if someone adds them. If you think they should be added, then it is up to you to do so. If you choose not to add them, complaining about their absence is pointless.

I think it would make more sense to split our coverage between "indigenous African history" and "colonial African history" until such time as we have enough content to split it further, e.g., into regional articles. Ground Zero (talk) 11:14, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I was not the one who created this article, but I've long held the sentiment that we (the human race in general, not just Wikivoyage) need to do more to raise awareness of Africa's rich history in order to combat deeply-entrenched stereotypes of Africans supposedly being inherently dumber than Europeans. I think "Pre-colonial African history" would be a good title. I don't mind covering ancient Egypt and Carthage here since they were after all on the African continent, but for better or worse, those civilisations are already more or less well known to non-Africans, while the civilisations of sub-Saharan Africa are largely overlooked. Regardless of whether Chinese expansion in the Han Dynasty or Arab expansion into Spain under the Caliphates are a form of colonialism, I think "colonial" in modern English parlance is generally understood to mean European-style colonialism beginning from the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, which the United States (which is essentially an outpost of European civilisation) and Japan later adopted too. The dog2 (talk) 14:10, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Restricting this to Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel is a good idea, if people would like to do that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

It wouldn't, but if it does, it should be renamed from its currently overgeneralised title. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:50, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I understand the concern that the scope is overly broad given how diverse Africa is and the richness of African history, but until we have more African editors who can step up and do justice to each individual African civilisation, there probably won't be enough content to justify creating articles for each one of them. If someone up to the task, then certainly I will welcome that. The dog2 (talk) 14:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)