Gold For Bread - Zimbabwe

[Pragmatic]

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Disadvantages to Africa

As Europe was gaining an economic advantage from the slave trade, Africa was undergoing one of the greatest declines in development of any region in the world. For Europeans, Africa was a vast treasure, which they exploited for their own national growth and economic benefit. For Africans, the slave trade undercut the natural economic growth of the continent. It removed Africa's greatest resource, it's youth. It also crippled African industry by encouraging a dependence on manufactured goods from Europe.



Silk Road "The Sea routes"

As much as fourteen hundred years ago, during China's Eastern Han Dynasty, a sea route, although not part of the formal Silk Route, led from the mouth of the Red River near modern Hanoi, through the Malacca Straits to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and India, and then on to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea kingdom of Axum and eventual Roman ports.

From ports on the Red Sea goods, including silks, were transported overland to the Nile and then to Alexandria from where they were shipped to Rome, Constantinople and other Mediterranean ports.

Another branch of these sea routes led down the East African coast called "Azania" by the Greeks and Romans in the 1st century CE as described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea(and, very probably, 澤散 Zesan in the 3rd century by the Chinese),at least as far as the port known to the Romans as "Rhapta," which was probably located in the delta of the Rufiji River in modern Tanzania.

The Silk Road extends from southern China to present day Brunei, Thailand, Malacca, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iran and Iraq.

In Europe it extends from Israel, Lebanon (Collectively, the Levant), Egypt, and Italy (Historically Venice) in the Mediterranean Sea to other European ports or caravan routes such as the great Hanseatic League fairs via the Spanish road and other Alpine routes.

This water route in some sources is called the Indian Ocean Maritime System


Historical Record

Aksum is mentioned in the 1st century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world, and states that the ruler of Aksum in the 1st century AD was Zoscales, who, besides ruling in Aksum also controlled two harbours on the Red Sea: Adulis (near Massawa) and Avalites (Assab). He is also said to have been familiar with Greek literature.




The economically important northern Silk Road and southern Spice (Eastern) trade routes. The sea routes around the horn of Arabia and the Indian sub-continent were Axum's specialty for nearly a millennium.

International Trade

Located in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean.

It benefited from a major transformation of the maritime trading system that linked the Roman Empire and India.

This change took place around the start of the Common Era.

The older trading system involved coastal sailing and many intermediary ports.

The Red Sea was of secondary importance to the Persian Gulf and overland connections to >>>the Levant.<<<

Starting around 100 BC a route from Egypt to India was established, making use of the Red Sea and using monsoon winds to cross the Arabian Sea directly to southern India.

By about 100 AD the volume of traffic being shipped on this route had eclipsed older routes.

Roman demand for goods from southern India increased dramatically, resulting in greater number of large ships sailing down the Red Sea from Roman Egypt to the Arabian Sea and India.

The Kingdom of Aksum was ideally located to take advantage of the new trading situation.

Adulis soon became the main port for the export of African goods, such as ivory, incense, gold, and exotic animals.

In order to supply such goods the kings of Aksum worked to develop and expand an inland trading network.

A rival, and much older trading network that tapped the same interior region of Africa was that of the Kingdom of Kush, which had long supplied Egypt with African goods via the Nile corridor.

By the 1st century AD, however, Aksum had gained control over territory previously Kushite. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea explicitly describes how ivory collected in Kushite territory was being exported through the port of Adulis instead of being taken to Meroë, the capital of Kush.

During the 2nd and 3rd centuries the Kingdom of Aksum continued to expand their control of the southern Red Sea basin. A caravan route to Egypt was established which bypassed the Nile corridor entirely.

Aksum succeeded in becoming the principal supplier of African goods to the Roman Empire, not least as a result of the transformed Indian Ocean trading system.

Question: Is it wrong to support African owned businesses?

Should all African owned businesses support any particular idealogy, to gain the support of the African community?

Are African run businesses of today the same as they were in Axum?

Should African run businesses start concentrating there wealth internally, like the Kingdom's of Africa of the past had done?

Where did they go wrong?

Are African's of today making the same mistakes as the Kingdom's of the Past, by trading goods with foreigners?





African American History pg. 56-57 A Journey of Liberation
Aksumite Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silk Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Peace be upon you