A History of Yemen

PROFILE

Region: The Middle East

Climate: Arid, hot desert

Leader(s): Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, since 2015 (at time of writing), leadership disputed

Population: 25,408,000

Capital: Sana'a, Aden (sort of)

Largest City: Sana'a
Currency: Yemeni Rial
Languages: Arabic

Independence: North Yemen - 1918 from the Ottoman Empire, South Yemen - 1967 from the United Kingdom, Unified in 1990
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS

Yemen, officially The Republic of Yemen, (the most popular official name for a country: the Republic of ___) is a country in the middle east at the far southwest of both the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and Asia in general.

Yemen is relatively arid in the eastern and less populated part of the country, but in the more heavily populated west it has some vegetation.

The country is important in trade as it lies on the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the gateway from Africa, Asia and Australia to Europe via the Suez Canal.

Along with Somalia and Djibouti, Yemen has problems with pirates that prey on ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait.

ANCIENT HISTORY (????-650s)

Now, the Middle East as a region, as vast and diverse as it is, is often associated with Islam. All of the countries in the region except Israel are muslim and many of them are theocracies ruled by a muslim monarch.

Nations in this region are very conservative, with laws against drinking, public displays of affection or homosexuality.

It’s a common misconception that the Middle East is home to all or most of the world’s muslims. There are huge populations of Muslims in the Caucasus Region, the Balkans, Kazakhstan, India and Indonesia among other places.

Islam is an important factor in the history of Yemen, but it doesn’t really come into play until the 700s. Islam, despite what many would like you to believe is very closely related to both Christianity and Judaism. They are sort of three branches from the same tree, or maybe Judaism is the trunk and Christianity and Islam are the branches. Whatever way you decide to look at it, these religions are very closely related.

The main differences between these religions is age. Judaism is a good 3,500 years old, christianity is about 1,900 years old and Islam is a measly 1,450 years old. Which is REALLY old, but not nearly as old as Judaism and Christianity, which means there was a long portion of time when Yemen was well connected, but not a Muslim state.

The reason Yemen was so well connected was because of its perfect position. Yemen is located in the middle east, which really was the middle back in the old days. The world was believed to be just Afro-Eurasia until the late 1400s when the New World was re-discovered and even later when Antarctica and Australia were discovered.

If you look on a map the Middle East is the midpoint between Africa, Europe and East and Central Asia. Yemen was in close proximity to the Roman Empire’s outposts in Arabia, Northern Arabia, Egypt, Central Asia and other areas in Southeastern Africa.

Now, what did Yemen trade? Their primary goods were spices and incense, like Frankincense and Myrrh, both resins from trees that can be used to make perfume and other things like that and they both fetched top dollar. Frankincense and Myrrh might seem familiar if you’re familiar with the nativity story where the three wise men each bring Frankincense, Myrrh & Gold, the first two I’m guessing were not as popular as Mr. Gold. It seems kind of rude to bring gold like that. The Wise Men should have agreed on a price limit so nobody looked stingy.

But Frankincense and Myrrh aren’t cheap, they were highly coveted products in the ancient world.

 

Before the rise of Islam several kingdoms ruled the area known today as Yemen. They all capitalized on the dolla dolla billz (which back then was salt) that could be gained from selling spices and incense.

In around 150 B.C.E. the Romans came to Egypt. You probably know the story, Shakespeare did, Mark Antony and Cleopatra were in a pretty intense relationship that ended when Mark Antony left for Rome and some other things happened. I’m not here to recap Antony and Cleopatra, but it was set in this time period and I will go into this more in the Egypt post (which will be a long and complex post, I foresee).

Anyway, the Romans show up in Egypt and add it to their increasingly ridiculously large list of “Places We Want”. The Romans flex their colonizing muscles and reroute much of the incense and spice trade away from the land routes favored by the Yemeni rulers (they favored them because that’s the only way they made money) and rerouted them through the red sea and across Egypt (which Rome owned) to the mediterranean and up to Rome (which Rome also owned) or maybe to Greece or Spain (both places Rome owned).

This obviously crippled the economy because like in Zambia (where they put all their chips on “copper”) putting all your chips on one easily disruptable industry is a really bad idea (looking at you Modern Arabian Nations with your oil dependent economies. Let’s hope this isn’t a retread of Ancient Yemen).

The smaller kingdoms who oversaw trade slowly dwindled down into nothingness and from their ashes arose newer kingdoms that were at the disadvantage of not having any money.

These kingdoms weren’t prosperous in any sense of the word and in the late 400s Ethiopia, at this point known as Abyssinia showed up and occupied many of the weakened city states and kingdoms that were once powerful spice barons.

An interesting side-note that will show up again in the Ethiopia post (one that I’m really looking forward to) is that Ethiopia unlike many of the other African nations wasn’t made christian when missionaries arrived, they had been Christian for a really long time and even today Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest branches of Christianity: Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.

The Ethiopians were lead by Abraha. an Abyssinian leader. Abraha was known for his massacre of Jews in Abyssinia and Yemen. After the conquest he stayed in Yemen to rule it and expand the Abyssinian Colonial Empire. Abraha sent a war party north to Mecca to try and capture it but failed.

As you would expect of a group that’s being controlled by a crazy war-monger like Abraha, Yemeni people weren’t thrilled and looked for any way they could of overthrowing the Abyssinians, but their military superiority prevented that from happening alone, so the people of Yemen went to the Persian Sassanids for help. The Sassanids overthrew the Abyssinians, but the Sassanids instead of leaving started to occupy the land again.

The Yemeni people just traded one group of colonial occupiers for another, but by 628 Islam had taken hold in the region as the dominant monotheistic religion, which before was Judaism.

The Sassanian leadership could sense the religious landscape was changing. The majority of the populace of Yemen at this point were muslim, but the ruling Sassanids were either Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian (one of the first monotheistic religions).

The Sassanids’ control of the region became less and less secure and finally it was completely relinquished in the mid 600s.

ISLAM SPREADS (650s-1538)

Islam reached the region in the early 600s, and spread reaaaaaaally fast. The Yemeni people (at this point still a disparate group of tribes and city states, not one national identity) had experienced a period of about two hundred years under oppressive colonial regimes, with little economic freedom or prosperity and were looking for answers. This is one reason why Islam spread so quickly. It was a religious alternative to Christianity or Judaism, which the Yemeni people were wary of because of how the Christian Abyssinians and predominantly Christian and Jewish Sassanians treated them.

Another factor for Islam’s quick spread was its close proximity. Mecca was about 500 kilometers away from Yemen and Arabian soldiers from Mecca often passed through Yemen en route to Africa.

In 632, Yemen was unified with the rest of Arabia under Muhammad’s successor Abu Bakr, but broke off. (DISCLAIMER: I know that Abu Bakr is a really incendiary topic for some muslims and forms the main difference between Shia and Sunni muslims, so I’m not really going to discuss him in great detail.)

Abu Bakr had trouble unifying the peninsula. He would often send representatives who would just never come back and be like “chillin’ in Yemen now Abu Bakr, sorry”.  

At this time (the early 800s to 1538) Yemen was still a muslim area, but not under the control of the unified Arabia (not as unified as one would hope I guess) and instead went back to its status as a land of many small kingdoms and city-states ruled by various dynasties like the Salayhids, Fatimids, Ayyubids and Rasulids. (Side note the Fatimid flag and Ayyubid flags are terrible, solid green and solid yellow, respectively. It’s almost as bad as Libya’s flag.)

Former Libyan Flag... *Comic Book Guy Voice* Worst... Flag... Ever

After the control of these various dynasties started to die out, the opportunists over in Portugal saw an opening. They were busy with their entrance into Indian Ocean trade, colonizing Mozambique and other southern African states. The Portuguese took control of the Yemeni Island of Socotra (home to some of the coolest trees ever) but they failed at securing the mainland. The Mamelukes tried to secure the mainland, but failed too, and finally the Ottomans, in 1538, took control of Yemen after their crushing defeat of Egypt in 1517.

Now, why was everybody from Europe to Africa trying to gain control of Yemen? The obvious answer is that the various dynasties weren’t in any way united and you would think that defeating an army that is splintered into many groups would be easy (except for Portugal), but the real reason for wanting to capture the land was the hot (literally) new bean that was taking the world by storm in the early 1500s: Coffee. Coffee was becoming the new beverage of choice for Europeans after tea and beer, but it could only be grown in the coffee belt, which Europe was too far north to be in the coffee belt which meant that all of their coffee had to be imported, and Yemen was in a pretty convenient location, being on the entrance to the red sea, so since coffee was such a prized commodity, and Yemen was a good place to grow it, everybody was fighting over it.

Interesting side fact, the word mocha, comes from the Yemeni town of Al Mukha, a coffee trading port in the highlands of Yemen.

TWO YEMENS AND UNIFICATION (1538-PRESENT)

As the Ottomans did, they didn’t like letting go and didn’t until the early 1900s. Well, it’s not this simple. The British at the time were expanding their empire into the middle east and they captured the lands in the south setting up their government in Aden, Yemen’s second largest city and expanding their territory to southern Yemen. The Ottomans remained with North Yemen, setting their territory’s capital in Sana’a. This began the conflict that still rages on today.

The two colonial powers drew a border separating North Yemen from South Yemen.

The Ottomans kept control of North Yemen until in 1911, a revolution began against the Ottomans. The residents of North Yemen were fed up with being controlled by a far away empire which they saw as a remnant of a different time. After seven years and defeat in World War One, the Ottomans evacuated North Yemen, the first half of the modern country to gain independence.

Starting in 1918, North Yemen was transformed into an imamate, a monarchy ruled by an imam, in this case Imam Yahya Hamididdin, who revitalized the country’s traditional muslim identity, but many in the country were unhappy as Yemen was lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of political freedoms and technological advancements.

The Imam became less and less popular and finally in 1948 the Imam was assassinated, but his son overthrew the revolutionaries and regained control of the country. Amad bin Yahya Hamididdin, the son of Yahya Hamididdin assured people that he would rule the country fairly, unlike his father and create a government with actual representatives, but of course he was full of shit, as many of these recently installed revolutionaries are.

Meanwhile in South Yemen, still a British territory, the local government rulers were starting to get worried. After a leader gets assassinated and his son comes in saying he’s going to enact all of these reforms and then reaffirms a monarchy, you’d probably be a little worried, so the local leaders offer their support to the British.

Britain said it would be advantageous if all of the local governments unified into a larger government that would be good if they ever needed to leave forever. They said they should be prepared to fight North Yemen.

In 1958, the British controlled South Yemen split into a federation of Six States, which is kind of like a team of countries. It’s hard to explain because there aren’t any federations anymore, but they were usually provisional and lasted only a few years. Two or more countries, bonded by similar culture or more realistically getting fucked by the same country combine forces for a common goal. This federation was backed by the British and was still technically British land even though they had almost full sovereignty.

But almost wasn’t enough. The Southern Yemeni people saw the Northern Yemeni people and their economic and political independence and wanted in on it. Britain wanted to avoid conflict with their almost independent protectorate so they left Yemen in 1967, but not after a war with the revolutionaries. After all of the conflict leadership was replaced with the racist and/or nationalist sounding National Liberation Front (the words National, Liberation or Front in a party doesn’t usually have good connotations).

The newly born country was renamed the People’s Republic of South Yemen, and was in immediate disarray from all of the fighting. Their communist leanings made it hard to make friends with the West. They didn’t receive any help or aid from Western countries so instead decided to go full Communist and ask the USSR for help. The USSR had been looking for ways to expand communism around the globe, from China in the East, to Angola and Benin in West Africa to Yemen in the Middle East (a strategic trading location).

Meanwhile in Northern Yemen a civil war broke out between the Imam (the royal leader of North Yemen) and civilians who wanted a republic with elected officials. The war lasted until 1970, and became a major area for proxy war. Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, the UN, the British and the Americans all threw their hat in the ring for different sides. The Arab nations supported the royalty, on account that Saudi Arabia was a huuuge fan of royalty itself and the UK and US supported the civilians fighting for a republic.

In 1970 a compromise was struck that saw North Yemen becoming a republic, but the royal family could maintain a few positions in power in the legislature. It seems like the royalty got the short end of the stick, but I have no sympathy for oppressive monarchs.

Like they often do the recently installed republican government told the North Yemeni people that the following years would be marked with reforms and improvements to infrastructure, education and civil rights, but with no resources to do any of the things they promised, they were overthrown by Military Leader Ibrahim al-Hamdi  who ditched the idea of having any reforms in favor of an oligarchy run by Yemeni business owners. However, al-Hamdi did, after much pushback from the public, offer to try some reforms. He forced Yemen into the 20th Century replacing many cultural institutions with western ones, which angered the sector of the populace in tune with their cultural heritage.

Al-Hamdi’s regime was unpopular he was assassinated along with his successor eight months later.

A period of instability marred by coups rocked North Yemen until 1978, when officials from both North and South Yemen said it might be beneficial to unify. This was difficult because of ideological and cultural differences which led to a war, but in 1990 the two countries unified. Both countries found oil and decided to unify to share the profits and resources used in selling the oil. Both countries also lost a lot of aid money from the USSR and were forced to get each others backs to make it through the time of economic rebirth and instability.

The two sides agreed that the unified Yemen would be a non-communist republic, favoring the governmental style of North Yemen (this is why the current capital Sana’a is in the North). After 1990, the country was struck with a series of assassinations and suicide bombings which left the residents of the country afraid. The already weak economy faltered yet again and food prices skyrocketed. This conflict postponed the elections until 1993.

In 1993, the elections had gone somewhat smoothly, but yet again conflict was looming. The vice-president fled Sana’a for Aden (the capital of former South Yemen) and threatened to remove himself from politics, which would leave the country semi-leaderless again.

In 1995, the economy failed again when remittances stopped coming in. Remittances are small amounts of money sent back to the country by workers living abroad and in many 3rd world countries are an important part of the GDP.

The next important development in Yemen’s history was in 2001, after 9/11 when Yemen promised to help George W. Bush defeat the terrorist elements in the country, something that still hasn’t happened. Al Qaeda used to pose the most threat in the nation, but now ISIS has infiltrated the country and is proving to be more of a problem.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemeni President until 2012

Finally on our long journey to the present in Yemen, was 2011. In 2011 the “Arab Spring” affected much of the Middle East and North Africa including Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and if you remember Yemen. In 2011, on the “Friday of No Return” protesters called for the resignation of Saleh and after nothing happened, the presidential palace was bombed in hopes of killing Saleh. Saleh wasn’t killed, but injured badly and was sent out of the country for surgery.

Yemen’s current president took over as acting president and has been president of a disputed regime for the last four years. Yemen is a nation that has been in constant turmoil since 1967, and the future isn’t looking very bright. The regime wasn’t successfully overthrown, but protesters are continuing to fight against the current government.

YEMEN FACTS

Weddings are incredibly important in Yemeni culture and the average wedding lasts about a month.

Noah from the Bible knew Yemen as “The Land of Milk and Honey” and is the origin of that saying.

Next up, the Ancient Kingdoms of Vietnam...

http://www.yemenweb.com/History.htm

http://www.britannica.com/place/Yemen

http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemen-crisis/p36488

A History of Zambia

PROFILE

Region: Sub-Saharan Africa

Climate: Moderately sub-tropical, regionally arid

Leader(s): Edgar Lungu, since 2015 (at time of writing)

Population: 16,212,000

Capital: Lusaka

Largest City: Lusaka
Currency: Zambian Kwacha
Languages: English, Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Lozi, Chewa, Nsenga, Tumbuka, Lunda, Kaonde, Lala, Lamba, Luvale, Mambwe, Lenje, Namwanga, Bisa, Ushi, Ila, Mbunda, Ngoni, Senga, Lungu, Toka-Leya

Independence: 1964 from the United Kingdom

Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS

Zambia, officially The Republic of Zambia is a country in the Southern African region of Africa and bordered by our previous country Zimbabwe as well as Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and Namibia.

It is climatically very similar to our last entry Zimbabwe and in fact was part of the same colony while under British rule. Zimbabwe was Rhodesia and Zambia, even though it is much bigger, was Northern Rhodesia.

ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL AND PRECOLONIAL HISTORY (????-1500s)

The ancient history of Zambia very closely follows that of our previous entry Zimbabwe as they are both in similar areas. Zimbabwe had a group of people that mixed with Bantu immigrants to the north from South Africa, then developed empires and kingdoms that did trade in the Indian Ocean.

Zambia too, follows this similar arc. Zambia was populated mainly with nomadic herders (as this was basically the only job you could have if you were a nomad, besides forrager). Herding was an alternative to both hunting and gathering and agriculture as it allowed a large amount of food, with less work than hunting all day, every day.

If you were part of a hunter-gatherer society, those were you two options. Hunt or gather. With herding there was slightly more varied occupations. You could be basically a cowboy and wrangle livestock and grow the herd or you could be a scout looking for new grazing lands and grasses to feed the animals or you could forage and gather fruits and nuts and things like that.

It probably wasn’t so cut and dry, one group wasn’t JUST a hunter-gathering society or JUST a nomadic one. Some nomadic groups did do a fair bit of hunting and gathering, just as hunter-gatherer societies did have groups that wandered off to graze livestock.

However, this being said agriculture was not introduced and agricultural societies didn’t usually do a whole lot of nomadic grazing, because agriculture requires a set population to stay in one place and nomads do, by definition, the exact opposite of that, but Zambian people are an interesting exception. The Zambians practiced Slash-and-Burn agriculture (which sounds pretty metal by the way.) This means stopping and planting for a season, harvesting and moving on and repeating.

Now, I’m not saying herding or agriculture, or this combination that Zambians did are better than the others, but Agriculture did make way for huge societies which often became powerful Kingdoms or Empires (which are often bad themselves, because of like slavery and stuff), but huge Empires did do a lot of good like developing education, philosophy and writing. This is all because of food surplus. If you can grow a large volume of food, not everyone needs to farm, so people can do things like write and make pottery and art and explore.

But, these early Zambians were mainly nomadic hunter-gatherers, until the Bantu (you’ll remember the Bantu from the Zimbabwe post) show up. The Bantu are hugely prolific in African history and will show up or at least be mentioned in almost every African post I do, I expect.

Victoria Falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe

IRON AGE KINGDOMS (1500s-1798)

At this point, around the 1200s and 1300s the Bantu migrate north. Some stop in Zimbabwe to set up shop, but some keep on going up to Zambia. Eventually the Bantu meet with the nomadic tribal cultures of the area and introduced a more traditional form of agriculture, by just staying in one place.

The Bantu, who were technologically more advanced brought with them metallurgy and ironworking. This combination of traditional agriculture and badass iron swords led to the growth of larger empires as seen in Zimbabwe.

A third thing was also integral in the advancement of the larger kingdoms in Zambia and it’s a recurring theme tackled in Zimbabwe. BOOM. Indian Ocean trade is back and the Zambians, like the Zimbabweans were well connected to the Indian Ocean. You can tell on a map that the Zambians were ever closer to the Indian Ocean, which was a winning formula for making a truckload of money.

During the 1500s the Iron Age Kingdoms of Zambia thrived with a centralized government passing laws to various smaller tribal settlements and governments.

The Iron Age Kingdoms had mostly traded with other Africans which had traded to the outside world and didn’t have a whole lot of contact with outsiders. This also had to do with both Zimbabwe and Zambia being pretty far inland (both countries are very landlocked today).

EUROPEAN VISIT AND COLONIZATION (1798-1964)

The Portuguese arrived in the 1700s, pretty late for the region considering they popped by Zimbabwe almost a hundred years earlier and set up their client “colony”.

The Portuguese originally had the whole region on lock and were one of the few powers in Europe at the time with easier trade access to India and China via their South African “colonies”, which were less colonies, but close trading partners.

The Portuguese explored the region all throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s, a period of extreme in-fighting between the Barotseland Kingdom and other smaller Kingdoms and large tribes. AGAIN, as they did in Zimbabwe the Portuguese tried to exploit infighting to install a leader, but this AGAIN failed. When will Portugal learn that they suck at this.

The 1800s in Zambia were a time marked by the Kingdoms gaining an influx of migrants from South Africa, as did Zimbabwe and Botswana. The displaced Zulu moved north from South Africa after the British led primarily by notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes arrived in South Africa (more in the South Africa post).

British Imperialists continued their march north to the site of present day Victoria Falls, originally named Mosi-oa-Tunya and renamed after the Queen by David Livingstone, who for some reason got a town named after him, but got his when he died of painful internal bleeding from Malaria and Dysentery (a disease that makes you diarrhea out your intestines, soooo…, maybe karma is real).

Imperialism truly started in the mid to late 1880s, when Cecil Rhodes buys mining rights from the local government with his insane amount of money in order to make an insane amount of money. Zambia, at least at first, was a case of imperialism not by gun (although their was a fair amount of killing), but by dollar (or pound, actually).

Cecil Rhodes bought himself into the pockets of local government and slowly expand not only his companies’s influence, but the influence of the British Government, who he was appointed by.

Cecil Rhodes was the leader of the British South Africa Company or BSAC, which kinda looks like Ballsack, so I will call it that from now on. Rhodes was also the leader of De Beers, which he founded in 1888, a company that still exists and still mines diamonds using exploitation, a sign that British colonialism isn’t truly over.

Now, here is where Zimbabwe and Zambia again overlap. The kingdoms of Zimbabwe and Zambia, now being largely ruled by Britain were led by the Ndebele king Lobengula (who you’ll remember from the previous post for selling the natural resources of Zimbabwe and Zambia to Britain, because he wanted that gold money).

His decision affected both countries which at this point consist of homogenous kingdoms, primarily the Ndebele led by Mzilikali and later Lobengula. Cecil Rhodes is pleased with this deal on account of the fact that he now controls almost all of the gold and diamond mines in South Africa and Lobengula is fucked out of everything. Rhodes calls the British to start officially colonizing Zambia and Zimbabwe from the south, incorporating them into the British Empire as Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, respectively.

As you may remember Zimbabwe fought against the British for independent control and Zambia (along with Malawi) helped, because neither of them wanted to be colonized by the British. The British gained control after controversially using newly invented Maxim Water-Cooled Machine Guns to mow down Zambians, Zimbabweans and Malawians with swords and shields, who stood their ground for an impressive amount of time.

In 1911 after a few years of redrawn borders and administrative changes Northern Rhodesia’s political borders start to look like Zambia’s do now. Britain just held the colony for a while for strategic troop placement or just to hold land, but in 1902 copper is found in the Copperbelt region and the Ballsack is on that shit super fast. While Copper isn’t as lucrative as gold or diamonds (both of which Zambia has) Copper isn’t worthless and is useful for minting coins. The U.S. penny was 95% Copper, when even copper became too expensive for pennies and they switched to zinc. Now the penny’s about 2.5% copper. Every other U.S. coin also contains a majority of copper.

After the Ballsack has finished getting rich off the land they finally allow the British Government Proper to take hold of the land in 1924. The copper deposits become increasingly useful in the 40s during WWII, when copper was used to make bullets. The dangerous and exploitative conditions of copper mines led to several strikes by white and Zambian copper miners.

The final stage of colonialism for Zambia (and Zimbabwe and Malawi, too) was when the British government joined Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to create a huge SUPER-COLONY!

In 1964 the SUPER-COLONY’s residents want out, more specifically out of the British Empire, so they join forces negotiate independence for all the countries. Northern Rhodesia secedes as Zambia, writes a constitution and goes off on it’s own way, Southern Rhodesia secedes as just Rhodesia and eventually Zimbabwe and Nyasaland secedes as Malawi (but that’s another story for the Malawi post).

POST-COLONIAL HISTORY (1964-PRESENT)

After the yoke of British rule is lifted in 1964 Zambia is relatively prosperous in the beginning years of its independence. Zimbabwe was having a rough time with independence as you may remember from the previous post. Zimbabwe was locked in a war for independence until 1979, but Zambia was peaceful during this time. The money that used to go to Ballsack or the British Government from Copper and Gold mining now is being redirected to the Zambian government which leads to an economic boom.

However, Zambia makes a crucial mistake so many countries have made in the past and are making right now. They put all their eggs in one basket. When copper prices fell in the mid-seventies Zambia’s basket was stomped on and their economy crumbled. The semi-dictator at this point Kenneth Kaunda was heavily criticized for his economic plan and lack of ideas on how to fix things. The reason I call him a semi-dictator because he was the head of the only political party in Zambia allowed to run in an election (which makes elections literally one sided), he once said “The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains a state is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence” which I guess is self-aware, but still, and when you google “Zambian Dictator” Kenneth Kaunda is the first result.

In 1991 the policy of not letting any other political parties besides Kaunda’s party UNIP to exist was ended, which immediately led to Zambian people telling UNIP to “get the fuck out.” The MMP, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (cool idea) wins 85% seats in parliament because the Zambian people are refreshed by the idea of not having to vote for UNIP.

But, eventually as these kind of things go the once idealized MMP and to an extent their scowly leader Frederick Chiluba begin to start violating human rights and embezzling money and being really shady in general. Then, recently unseated Kaunda is like “see look, I’m gone one minute and your new president starts violating human rights!” so the Zambian people are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.

Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda

Tensions become increasingly more… tense, when laws are passed that make Kaunda’s presidency unconstitutional and he’s shot at a rally and then arrested (geez, this guy is having a hard time, although I don’t really have sympathy because of his semi-dictatorial status). THEN! Right when Kaunda is released from house arrest after two years his son Wezi is assassinated (people don’t know who, but others think it was Chiluba and the MMP).

Oh my. While Zambia’s postcolonial history had smooth beginnings the country has faced a lot of struggle, food shortages, semi-dictators, political unrest and the like, but Zambia has a new president after a few years with a string of acting presidents and a random white guy (Guy Scott) as a leader. This new guy Edgar Lungu head of the racist-sounding Patriotic Front, who are actually a progressive Socially Democratic Socialist party, neat.

So far he seems fairly anti-death penalty and seems to be proposing actual plans for fixing the country’s rapidly inflating currency, the Kwacha, unlike Mugabe’s fix for Zimbabwe’s financial woes of “just print more money”.

ZAMBIA FACTS

Zambia was and is home to a genre of music popular in the 70s called Zamrock, a combination of psychadelic rock and funk music, popularized by Rikki Ililonga, WITCH, the Peace, Amanaz and Chrissy “Zebby” Tembo.

Next up, Yemen from the Early Spice Trade to Today.

WITCH, a Zamrock band.

SOURCES

http://www.zambiatourism.com/about-zambia/history

www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad27

A History of Zimbabwe

PROFILE

Region: Sub-Saharan Africa

Climate: Moderately tropical, seasonally dry

Leader(s): Robert Mugabe, since 1980 (at time of writing)

Population: 12,973,808

Capital: Harare

Largest City: Harare
Currency: U.S. Dollar, Chinese Yuan, Indian Rupee, South African Rand, Zimbabwe Bond Coins
Official Languages: Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa

Independence: 1965/1980 from the United Kingdom

Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS

The first country I’m gonna do is Zimbabwe. It’s all the way down at the end of the list (alphabetically) and it’s not a bad place to start. Zimbabwe is officially called the Republic of Zimbabwe. The accuracy of the name  is debateable because Republic means “a country where supreme power is held by elected representatives and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.”

Zimbabwe’s current President Robert Mugabe while “elected” was elected in a series of often rigged elections or elections where most people in the country couldn’t vote, etc…

ANCIENT & PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY (????-1880s)
Archaeologists have done most of the leg-work uncovering the history of Zimbabwe as there weren’t written records and the only remnants of what past life was like are literal stone remnants. 

Archaeologists know that the people living in Zimbabwe at several points throughout history had a centralized government. A lot of people might look at Africa and have an idea of disparate tribes with no central leadership, just roaming around and doing whatever, but Zimbabwe (like Egypt) was an African society with a central leader and a huge capital city built between the 900s and 1200s called the Great Zimbabwe (where the country gets its name). 

Before the Great Zimbabwe was built the land was governed by the very hard to pronounce Mapungubwe people and the Great Zimbabwe was actually built by a band of people who left the central Mapungubwe land and moved east towards the Indian Ocean. 

The Mapungubwe were good at trading to Egypt, India and China, but it was kind of hard when you’re seat of government is so far from the Indian Ocean (the go-to place for trading, besides the Silk Road, at the time). This group of people set off walking towards the Indian Ocean and decided to set up shop around the Great Zimbabwe, an easy-breezy 385 mile trek to the Indian Ocean. Now, obviously I’m joking, 385 miles is still really far to walk, but it’s waaay better than the 680+ mile trek it would have been had they stayed. 

Now, the group that founded the Great Zimbabwe weren’t separate from the Mapungubwe, they were just a group of Mapungubwe people who seeked easier trade and access to the Indian Ocean.

I think people have this idea that Africa was totally walled off from the world, but that’s not the case. Africa played a pivotal role in Indian Ocean trade with groups around the indian ocean like Northeastern Africans, Egyptians and to a certain extent, Indians, Middle Eastern people and Southeast Asians. Africa however didn’t play as much of a pivotal role in the Silk Road, a series of trade routes that stretched from Mongolia to Europe. Textbooks tend to focus on the Silk Road more because Europe was involved, while the Indian Ocean Trade routes fall to the wayside because Europe was less involved (considering they’re veeery far away from the Indian Ocean). 

Zimbabwe had connections, sometimes even to places Europe wished it had, connections like China, where Chinese Silk and Chinese China were valued luxury items. 

Anyway, back to the Great Zimbabwe. The Great Zimbabwe was by no means the only city like it. There were several stone cities built by this group of Mapungubwe people. The Great Zimbabwean people group were successful traders because they had access to the Indian Ocean, where previous Mapungubwe settlements didn’t and therefore had more access to Chinese, Indian and Egyptian goods.

Migrations of Early Zimbabwean Groups

Eventually, around the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Great Zimbabwean people group got bigger than its parent settlement and expanded. At this around the fourteen hundreds a trader by the name of Nyatsimba Mutota wanted to trade more went with the tried-and-true method of “if you wanna trade more, just get closer to the Indian Ocean” and moved even closer than the Great Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean, which led with even more trade and even more money and eventually as Biggie would put it “Mo problems.”

The portuguese, who started poking around the area in 1531 took interest in the newer Mutapa Kingdom and wanted control of its money and trade strength. (Remember Europe at this point is jealous of Indian Ocean Trade and wants in on it.)

The Portuguese figured they could infiltrate the higher government of the Mutapa Kingdom and slowly dismantle it from the inside, but the Mutapa’s army and strategic location (still a good 400 kilometers inland from the Ocean) proved too much for Portugal, until the Mutapa began squabbling about boring government tariff stuff (which is a surprisingly frequent cause of downfall) which led to a bunch of infighting. Portugal, being the opportunists they were, decided to slide in and install their own guy Mavura Mhande Felipe to basically gain control of Zimbabwe, showing the very early 17th century roots of colonialism.

This was a very broad definition of a colony though. While the Mutapa remained independent (kind of) they basically were. While Portugal claimed they owned the land, the Mutapans knew they had no control over it and while Portugal said they wanted all of the gold in the area to sent to Portugal, the Mutapans were like “no, why would we do that?”

Eventually infighting destroyed the Mutapans and after them came smaller empire of the Butua Kingdom, which Portugal in a last ditch effort to gain control invaded in 1693 and were defeated by Rowzi Dynasty.

Anyway, the Rowzi kicked Portugal’s ass, and set up their own government, that several local tribes wanted to join for the money, power and sex, o.k., well more the first two. These things are the three most powerful motivators in history, so watch out for them in the future.

Now if all of these different empires over-throwing other empires seems confusing, the general gist of this is that over time the focus on Indian Ocean Trade became more and more important which led to Zimbabwean settlements closer and closer to the ocean.

COLONIAL PERIOD (1880s-1965)

Now, hold up, you may be saying. How did we get from the relative stability of the Rowzi Dynasty to the British showing up and mucking everything up. Well, the Rowzi were doing pretty well until yet ANOTHER kingdom overthrows them. Well, this time they weren’t really overthrown, but another ethnic group slowly assimilated with the Rowzis until they both held positions of power. What group was this? The Zulus are the answer. You may recognize the name from Shaka Zulu, by far the most famous zulu, who had been dead for about 60 years at this point, or you may know the Michael Caine movie about the battle between the Zulu and British.

The Zulu were very good at fighting and pushed back against the British for a incredibly long amount of time considering the British had horses, steamships and machine guns and the Zulu didn’t.

I will delve deeper into this in the South Africa post, but the Zulu were displaced and many of them fleed north to Zimbabwe. Many Zulu wanted positions of power as they held in South Africa so they began assimilating into the Rowzi culture and people and eventually the two groups were ethnically more similar.

From this ethnic group came the Kingdom of Matabeleland, which arose from the decaying ruins of the Rowzi, which had been plagued with infighting and instability like its predecessors the Mutapans and Matungubwe.

The new ruler of Matabeleland, Mzilikali Khumalo was worried, rightly so about the ever encroaching British led by the notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes along with his British South Africa Company.

Notorious Asshole Cecil Rhodes

Mzilikali Khumalo was ethnically Zulu and saw what happened to his homeland so he tried to cool things off with the British by proposing trade agreements to try and prevent the British from needing to colonize. The British didn’t really want anything they had, until... gold was found... or re-found, because if you remember the Portuguese wanted Zimbabwe’s gold a good 200 years prior.

Now, Mzilikali had a son Lobenbula, who didn’t have interest in cooling ANYTHING off and just wanted to make some sweet gold money. He told Britain that, hey guys, you can take all this land as long as I get money for the gold and guns and power. (Again money and power are huuuuuge motivators.)

Britain was like, yea we’ll take the gold, but how about we don’t give you ANY money and NO power. Obviously Lobenbula was not at all into this plan, as most African leaders had been when British pulled this bullshit in Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa.

Lobenbula was so pissed in fact that he took his grievance to London and negotiated with Queen Victoria. Lobenbula proposed that Matabeleland would be its own sovereign state, with control of its gold, land and the people living there and Britain would have nothing to do with it, except for trade.

Queen Victoria surprisingly agreed. But notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes seemed to think he was above the law and went in invading anyway. This obviously made Lobenbula really pissed off and he went to war, which the British won with the same tactic that they used in South Africa of “have machine guns.” These wars weren’t even at all. You had the British sitting in a bunker with a machine gun, literally mowing down people with swords and bows.

Lobenbula ate it and in retaliation the still un-free people of Matabeleland went to war again, where they lost, again!

The colony was renamed Rhodesia after notorious asshole Cecil Rhodes. Cecil really like naming things after himself. Not only did he name Zimbabwe Rhodesia, he named Zambia (Zimbabwe’s northern neighbor North Rhodesia.)

Things sat like this for a while until 1914. This is about when the U.K. entered into World War I on the side of the Triple Entente with Russia, France and later the U.S.

At this point the scramble for Africa was really heating up and the war only perpetuated that, as colonies were really good for getting resources and people to fight in your military (which wasn’t always a good plan because indigenous people usually hated their colonizers and weren’t willing to fight for them.)

Africa was a huge source of resources for the war effort and in total war a country could use all of the materials it could get.

Zimbabwe was also very important in the war because, while France and England had colonies, so did Germany and the German colonies were also at war. The English and French colonies were at war with the German colonies and Southern Rhodesia was right in the middle of it, with Namibia, then called German West Africa to the west and Tanzania, then called Tanganyika or German East Africa to the east.

World War II was less chaotic because after World War I Germany got its colonies taken away (which crippled its economy, but that’s a story for the Germany post, and probably for the Namibia and Tanzania posts.) French and British colonies in Africa helped the war effort more through manpower and through resources.

After the unification that came with something like a World War ended in 1945 the country was again ideologically split. The white minority had control of the government and the black majority was pissed off, rightly so. Eventually the black populace (like 97%) of the population could vote in elections, but this came with shady stipulations and was much like the literacy test instituted by the U.S. in the 1870s.

This meant that most black people still couldn’t vote. Tensions were growing higher and the seeds of rebellion were planted. Borders in the area were redrawn and redrawn and redrawn until Zimbabwe ended up in a colony that was previously South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), North Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi). South Rhodesia declared its independence as did North Rhodesia and Nyasaland, but things got complicated and independence took a backseat to the struggles going on north in Zaire. Eventually in 1965 Zimbabwe gained their independence from the U.K.

POSTCOLONIAL PERIOD (1965-PRESENT)
Immediately after gaining independence the country again erupted into war between the Rhodesian government (a bunch of white guys, with in Robert Mugabe’s opinion, no right to the presidency, and it’s kinda hard to argue with that), the ZANU-PF led by current dictator Robert Mugabe and the ZAPU and the ANC. 

The Rhodesian government were pretty much hated by everyone in the country on account of them being mostly made up of British colonizers and supported by the British colonizers in South Africa and the Portuguese colonizers in Mozambique.

The Rhodesian government fell to the wayside and the other four parties fought over control for the next FIFTEEN!!! years until in 1980 the war stopped. 

In 1980 Robert Mugabe, who led the winning ZANU-PF party gained control of the presidency and began exiling the white populace and massacring political dissenters. 

In the 90s Robert Mugabe “won” the next election and decided to propose a constitutional amendment to make him president for life, which didn’t pass. In retaliation he lowered spending in several areas and pocketed government money.

Zimbabwe was hit incredibly hard by the AIDS crisis and Mugabe didn’t really do anything about it, but embezzle money that could’ve been used for health care. 

Mugabe, since then has kept running for President and winning with rigged elections. In 2008, Mugabe actually lost the election, but complained they weren’t rigged enough and called a second election, which he rigged and surprise surprise he won.

Mugabe has been President since and not a whole lot has changed. However, Mugabe is reeeeeeeeaaaally old at the ripe-old age of 91, he’s likely not going to exist for much longer, soooooo.

ZIMBABWE FACTS
If you check the currency section of the country profile, you would see that Zimbabwe takes all sorts of currency like the U.S. Dollar, the British Pound and even the Chinese Yuan. Why is this? Is Zimbabwe part of the U.S., Britain or China... Well, no, the reason this is is because Zimbabwe's original currency: the Zimbabwean Dollar hyper-inflated so much that it's basically useless and they had to use other countries currency.

This started when the country ran out of money and instead of proposing tax cuts, seeking aid or taking out a loan (all solutions to these problems) Mugabe decided to start printing more of the country's currency (the Zimbabwean Dollar). When you start printing money, you don't get more money, the money you currently have gets less valuable.

The Dollar was losing value so fast that at one point, prices would double in just 24 hours. To fix this the government began printing larger and larger bills, even getting up to the trillions. Eventually the currency was demonetized and is no longer in use.

Also, Zimbabwe had a president named Canaan Banana, who so far is the title-holder for "Best Name in History!"

Next up, Zambia, from the Iron Age Kingdoms to the Present.

SOURCES

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/03/17/zimbabwe.mugabe.0430/index.html?related

http://zimbabweandrelatedtopics.weebly.com/zimbabwes-pre-colonial-history.html