Isaac Samuel

The Luba kingdom and the divergent fortunes of pre-colonial Central Africa (1750-1870). The connections between pre-colonial Central African kingdoms and the expansion of international trade during the 19th century feature prominently in debates about African agency and dependency.

Luba elites created a rich visual vocabulary for expressing concepts of memory, and for encoding and stimulating mnemonic processes using memory boards, beaded headdresses and necklaces, thrones, figures, and staffs www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-luba-k...

Appreciated 🙏🏾

appreciated 🙏🏾

“What was history and legend must be recounted,
We should revive and bring to light all this great wealth of information.
Let us resurrect our ancestral forebears who bequeathed to us a rich heritage.”

From Tiyo Soga's 1862 journal, you'd almost mistake him for Chinua Achebe

-Politics
-Art
-architecture
-technology
-Religion
-writing and scholarship
-economies
-warfare
-cities
-ruins and other historical mysteries
-Seafaring and exploration
-the diaspora
-Music
-Knights, etc

Each topic could fill separate volumes, and we're just getting started

thank you 🙏🏾

205 essays in 4 years

My only regret is having to leave so much on the cutting room floor for the sake of brevity
(a comprehensive history of African explorers, for example, would fill at least five volumes)

There's little excuse to be ignorant of African history

my bad, its actually demotic

The ‘three kings’ monument in Gaborone, Botswana, commemorates the 1895 London embassy by Khama III, Sebele I, and Bathoen I, who secured Bechuanaland's autonomy from Cecil Rhodes’ Rhodesia and the Cape Colony.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Portrait of Matheo Lopez, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Allada to France in 1670.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

The ambassador Antonio Emanuele Ne Vunda of the Kingdom of Kongo and the embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga of Japan.

Painting by Agostino Taschi. ca. 1616 in the Sala dei Corazzieri, Palazzo del Quirinale., Rome
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Illustration depicting the Ethiopian monastery in Rome known as Däbrä Qeddus Estifanos (Santo Stefano degli Abissini), made in the 1750s

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Latin inscription made by Acutus, the Roman envoy to Kush in the 3rd century, found at Musawwarat al-Sufra (Nubia)

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Panel painting from Herculaneum, Italy, depicting aithiopian (Nubian) priests as central figures in an Isiac ceremony.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

A 26-line inscription of Sasan, Kush's envoy to Rome in 253 CE

The inscription includes prayers to the goddess Isis for Sasan’s success in his diplomatic mission to Rome and a safe return to Meroe (in Sudan).
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

South African explorers of Victorian Britain: Perspectives and consequences of southern Africa's age of exploration | Isaac Samuel Get more from Isaac Samuel on Patreon

The perspectives of these South African explorers and the consequences of their diplomatic negotiations are the subject of my latest Patreon article

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www.patreon.com/posts/135566...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

The varying outcomes of these meetings would have important repercussions for the nature of colonial expansion experienced by the different societies of southern Africa in what is today Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Eswatini, and Lesotho.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

Between 1853 and 1895, at least seven kingdoms in southern Africa sent embassies to the court of Queen Victoria, five of which successfully met with the monarch and were treated as official envoys of what were then independent states.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

Soga also advocated for the continued independence of African rulers, many of whom sent embassies directly to London, hoping to achieve a diplomatic alternative to armed resistance against colonization by the British Cape Colony and the Boer Republics.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

“I would ask my African friends to go to London, to Edinburgh, to Glasgow
Let them see the pale, sickly, careworn factory girls who have no hope of life but in that imprisonment, and they will thank God for having been born in the free air of the desert.”
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

“I would ask my African friends to go to London, to Edinburgh, to Glasgow
Let them see the pale, sickly, careworn factory girls who have no hope of life but in that imprisonment, and they will thank God for having been born in the free air of the desert.”
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

In southern Africa, one such African traveller was Xhosa prince Tiyo Soga, whose visit to Scotland from 1848 to 1857 influenced his pragmatic approach to western acculturation, advocating for a selective and controlled relationship with the European Other.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

A general history of African explorers of the Old world, and a 19th century Bornu traveller of twenty countries across four continents. This article provides a brief outline of over sixty African explorers who traveled across the ‘Old World’ from the classical period to the turn of the 20th century.

During the 19th century, some of these intrepid explorers produced lengthy accounts of their journeys, and played a critical role in African attempts to mitigate or modify the tide of European imperialism that was engulfing the continent
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/a-general-...

A general history of African explorers of the Old world, and a 19th century Bornu traveller of twenty countries across four continents. This article provides a brief outline of over sixty African explorers who traveled across the ‘Old World’ from the classical period to the turn of the 20th century.

From the end of the Middle Ages to the dawn of the colonial period, African travellers in various capacities from virtually all parts of the continent visited most of the Old World, from Western Europe to East Asia and Russia

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www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/a-general-...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

“It would be much wiser to welcome in charity and Christian love all Christians, be they Greeks, Armenians, Ethiopians, because we are all sons of baptism and share the true faith.”
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

In response to the attempts by the Portuguese Catholic clerics to subordinate the Ethiopian church, the Ethiopian envoy Sägga Zäᵓab authored a treatise titled The Faith of the Ethiopians in 1534, which advocated for the co-existence of the Christian sects
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

This period of mutual exploration produced some of the earliest African perspectives of European societies and cultures.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

The arrival of Ethiopian envoys and pilgrims in various European courts and pilgrimage sites between the 14th and 16th centuries also resulted in increased contacts between the African kingdom and its Latin co-religionists.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

While Nero ultimately decided against the expedition, these exchanges resulted in increased contacts between Rome and Kush, which involved the exchange of embassies and the travel of Isiac priests across the Roman world, from Philae to Herculaneum in Italy
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...

Perspectives and outcomes of Africa's age of exploration Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather in...

Nearly a century after the Kushite envoys of Queen Amanirenas visited the court of Augustus in 22-20BC, a pair of Roman centurions was sent on a reconnaissance mission to Kush in 61-63 CE to gather intelligence for a planned campaign against the kingdom
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/perpsectiv...