Comments by "Ikenga Spirit" (@ikengaspirit3063) on "Another 11 Historical Misconceptions." video.

21:44 Franciscans also played an important role in diminishing and practically eliminating usury laws which allowed the banking system and interests to develop
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10:03 Kinda Ignored Swahili there and the Map depends on when exactly you mean by pre-colonial. If the Map represents the middle ages, then fairly accurate but if just before colonization then most of the Illiterate Urban societies had become literate whether in Arabic, Latin or native scripts (Nsibiri among others had developed into a script and Bamun had been invented)
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This doesn't make sense. The same argument can be made for Scandinavia, the Rus and Frankia. And the most famously warlike African peoples (Songhai, Fulani etc) had their own relatively developed Empires (especially after the conquered more advanced sedintary people). So this doesn't make sense. For one, becoming a warrior just drastically increases the chances you have of being captured and sold, like they were in the war directly so easiest to capture and by ur logic of reducing hostiles, then they would be the prime target of slavery as they are the main hostiles. Two, becoming a scholar, at least in the urban societies and states will definitely keep you live longer. Zara Yakob was a literate low noble and was basically protected for that reason alone, same didn't apply to soliders. Scribes and Artisans were usually important enough that Kings and Chieftains protected them using those soliders. The real people at most risk were the farmers, then the soliders who were soldiers in the first place not for safety but loot and status.
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11:41 There is a similar "Bantu expansion never happened" in Africa and the Afro-Diaspora
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@demun6065 Swahili while influenced by the Arabs weren't Arab colonization, like I know he mentioned Oman but in the way he mentioned it it just sounds like simply an Arab East African Colony, when the Swahili were more like a Vassal state and only the stuff inland that were more like colonies. And Swahili while Arab influneced weren't the result of Arab colonization, their language and DNA is Bantu and no Arabian state ever controlled it (until Oman, tho they did respect Arab states before the kinda like how Thailand recorgnized Qing China).
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@Munchausenification Okay, I mostly agree with you. The slave trade did in my opinion stunt other more useful avenues of technological and economic growth but I disagree that this was so drastic that most African societies were reduced to only skills necessary for basic survival. (And given you said, I shouldn't take it too literally I think you agree with me on this to some extent). So yes, the slave trade brought about states and tribes more warlike and less likely to involve in the arts and industry and less people to involve in the arts and industry, but the same period saw expansions of the trade routes, more state formation. It is during this era that the African equivalent of trade guilds became more sophisticated, Africans in response to the violence began manufacturing better guns and fortifications, Nsibidi became more widely used as a script, Awka BlackSmiths making guns comparable to the quality of Euro rifles and they and others creating better quality steel than the mass produced crap being sold to Africans. So I would agree that useful economic and artistic development stalled and people like griots couldn't get more specialized as you would expect them to get in this time period but that was still far from only basic survival, to me.
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Whoa, whoa, what's with the hate on Sowell?
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12:53
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How are African parliamentary ideals "primitive" when even according to the video those were on the same level as Euro parliamentary ideals for much of their overlapping existance?
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@Mrminibagel I have read some of his books but I didn't know he had a book that dealt with African history until now. In my experience his bias is mostly a strong bias towards geographic determinalism and lassire-faire economics and culture so nothing bad enough to make his works unusable. I'll read the section on African the book later to see if it is actually where the YouTuber got it from.
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There seems to be this thing were people think child marriages were common. While I can't be sure I highly doubt that, for one it seems to me that there is a natural social aversion to anything that seems to hurt "the children" and fucking pre-pubersent children. Most records of even Noble Child marriages I have come across are between children or that the older partner (typically the man) is more like a parental figure/the younger remains with the parents till later teens. So I feel the idea that pre-modern society marriages of pedophillia were common is wrong
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