Africa is where humanity began, the second-largest and second-most-populous continent, and home to some of history's wealthiest empires and oldest states. Yet its rich past is too often erased by a false idea that Africa 'has no history'. This course pushes back, tracing some of the continent's great civilisations and the upheavals that shaped the modern map. (It broadens our world-history library across Africa beyond our standalone Ancient Egypt course.)You'll explore the dazzling medieval empires of West Africa — Mali, its gold, and the legendary pilgrimage of Mansa Musa — then travel to the highlands of Ethiopia and Aksum, among the world's oldest continuous civilisations. You'll then confront the two great ruptures that followed: the transatlantic slave trade and the European 'Scramble for Africa' that carved up the continent. Honest note: Africa is 54 countries and thousands of years of history; four videos can only open a door, and this course centres a few stories from an immense and varied past.
Ethiopia home to more than 100 million people the original home of the coffee bean seat of the African Union and a nation whose roots stretch back into ancient times Ethiopia has been heavily settled going far back into prehistory damit is the earliest known kingdom in this region and was a contemporary of ancient Egypt and Nubia to the north on the opposite side of the red sea facing Dom it was a kingdom of Saba in modern-day Yemen these kingdoms appear to have had close ties and some even theorize that they may have formed a single Kingdom according to Theo peein tradition this was the home of the legendary queen of sheba she converted to the faith of Solomon of Israel and bore his child who returned to Ethiopia to rule as king beginning a long line of Ethiopian kings who claimed direct descent from King Solomon the Ethiopian church today maintains the Ark of the Covenant was brought to this ancient kingdom during this period and is being kept safely there under guard for more than two and a half thousand years for unknown reasons dama gradually eroded into several city-states and successor kingdoms around 400 BC one of these Aksum would evolve into the first well-documented great power to rise in Ethiopia and was able to unite the northern Ethiopian highlands beginning around the first century BC where they established bases on the Ethiopian plateau and from there expanded by the 1st century AD they became a major player on the commercial route between the Roman Empire and ancient India a notable Persian religious figure and scholar of the time regarded Aksum as one of the four great powers of his day alongside Persia Rome in China to facilitate this booming trade the Aksumite Kings minted large amounts of gold currency that became widely used and have been found throughout the Mediterranean to India around 325 AD the King XANA converted to Christianity making it the state religion and was also the first state to ever use the image of the cross on its coins Azana campaigned against the kingdom of cush to the north as far as the borders of the Roman of Egypt and is believed to have been the reason for that thousand year old kingdoms collapse included in his many titles were king of kings king of Sabah king of Sal hen and king of him yar which are all in modern-day Yemen indicating that he either controlled or annexed these kingdoms or perhaps they were merely tributaries the kingdom of Aksum would reach its Apogee during the reign of King Kaleb who invaded the Arabian Peninsula in 520 with a vast army against the Jewish King Youssef of him yar who had been persecuting the kingdom's Christian population five years after installing a native Christian Viceroy one of his own Aksumite generals killed the Viceroy and declared himself king of hem yar this general turned King Abraha of him yar is mentioned in the Koran for his failed invasion of Mecca in the year 570 the rise of the Arab Empire would signal the decline and eventual demise of both of these kingdoms Aksum was completely cut off from any contact with a Christian Roman Empire and the vast revenues generated from Roman trade the kingdom of Aksum had a slow decline and began to contract back into the highlands the kingdom of alodia formed on its northern border and converted to Coptic Christianity as VOCA Nubian dialect in contrast Askim semitic dialect in script use since the days of dhamma in the 9th century BC according to Ethiopian tradition around the Year 1000 a female pagan warlord overthrew the kingdom of Aksum laying waste to the land burning ancient churches to the ground and hunting down all members of the royal family of Aksum the last of her dynasty which ruled over a much diminished Kingdom was overthrown by Mara Tecla hymanot in 1137 establishing the segueway dynasty although some scholars believe this dynasty was established earlier the most famous ruler of Zeigler dynasty was Gabriel Lalibela who constructed 11 churches carved straight from a single piece of stone and attempted to construct a new Jerusalem as his new capital in response to the capture of the old Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1187 despite the pious nough subs eggwin they had one thing working against them in the eyes of many of their subjects they did not claim direct descent from the biblical King Solomon and around the Year 1270 they were overthrown by a dynasty that did claim Solomonic descent this Solomonic line of Kings ruled Ethiopia for more than 700 years with a brief interruption during the 14-year Abyssinian a dal war in which the adult Sultanate was able to NX Ethiopian Abyssinia with Ottoman help only to be beaten back to their original borders by the Ethiopians with Portuguese assistance the age of princes was a period in Ethiopian history from 1769 to 1855 when the country was de facto divided within itself into several regions with no effective central authority it was a period which the Emperor's from the Solomonic dynasty were reduced a little more than figureheads combined to the capital city of gundog and local warlords fought each other for supremacy this came to an end with the reign of T Woodrow's ii who reestablished his dynasty's authority over the nation however this respite was short-lived and he would commit suicide instead of being taken prisoner by a British expedition the British would sack the Ethiopian capital and carry the Solomonic dynasty's crowns and treasure they had accumulated over the centuries back to Britain Ethiopia's troubles were not over and in 1874 the Ottoman backed Ismail Pasha of Egypt invaded Ethiopia with the goal of creating an empire that would include the entire length of the Nile River his sizeable army included a large number of recruited American and European officers the Ethiopians had been working hard on organizing and modernizing their military since her experience against the British and were able to utterly defeat the Egyptians in two decisive battles the Ethiopian Emperor Johannes would die in battle against a Sudanese raiding force 13 years after defeating the Egyptians his successor metalic ii would expand the ethiopian empire and defeat a full-scale italian invasion the technologically superior italians were decisively defeated in a bloody war that they expected to be a casual affair 40 years later reminded by the italian journalist turned dictator Benito Mussolini the italians invaded again this time sending an overwhelming force of approximately half a million men 600 aircraft in 800 tanks despite this the war was still a long and bloody affair italians gained little from the annexation and committed widespread atrocities against the ethiopian population which they never fully managed to control ethiopian emperor Haley c-elysée returned to Ethiopia from exile in England to help rally the resistance the British began their own invasion in January 1941 with the help of Ethiopian freedom fighters the last of the organized Italian resistance in Italian East Africa surrendered in 1941 ending the Italian rule the Solomonic monarchy was fully restored after the war in the decades that followed Haile Selassie would begin to slowly implement democratic reforms in the nation however many blamed his grasp on power for the slow pace of modernization during the Cold War c-elysée received the backing from the United States and when widespread drought and famine hit the nation in 1974 the age of monarch was overthrown by a social interaction in the military they viewed c-elysée as an agent of the corrupt capitalist West and United with Eritrea forming a larger chaotic state that was plagued by infighting and disastrously planned and implemented socialist policies eventually men just to halema Ram brought an end to the more than decade-long power struggle and attempted the creation of a state following the Soviet model famines and genocide included in 1991 as rebels closed in on the capital of Addis Ababa he fled and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe as an official guest of Zimbabwe and President Robert Mugabe where he still resides today at the age of 80 despite calls for his extradition this was followed by a transitional government in Ethiopia which rafted a new constitution allowing any of the nation's ethnic regions to secede if they ever wanted to Eritrea did so right away and the remainder is the modern nation-state of Ethiopia this has been Epimetheus huge thanks to all my awesome patrons over on patreon who helped me with his channels expense and my fantastic subscribers if you're new to this channel don't forget to sub hit the bell icon to get notifications every time I make a new video and smash that like button one more interesting bonus Factory if you made it to the end of the video the Rasta fire religion originating in Jamaica in the 1930s regards Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as the second coming of Christ and the embodiment of Jah on earth