Session 4: KINGS OF AFRICA
SOME INTRODUCTORY PERSPECTIVES
Adam Blatner, M.D.

Posted February, 2014 for Lectures for Senior University Georgetown
There were significant civilizations in Africa before Europeans came, and before the Muslim invaders more than a half century before that. Some afro-centric webpages claim that many pharaos and kings in northern Africa were more negroid than arabic in their background, which may be so---there was certainly ample mixing in the northern African realms. This report sidesteps that controversy and focuses rather on the kingdoms that we have some record of, though writing was yet a relatively new technology---mainly Arabic from the 9th century on. Nor will I comment at length on the interactions of the European traders, slavers, missionaries, and colonists who ventured onto this vast continent in the last 200 or so years. The records of those interactions would fill a whole college curriculum. So this talk will focus more on the kings or rulers of states that were relatively organized and elaborate, during a period of time when European states were comparably organized. The point here is that Africans were by no mean savages incapable of levels of civilization---again, comparable to the various nations of Europe.

I will note that at present I don't think any country has a lock on what civilization could yet become.