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Originally Posted by Alphagamuga
I was under the impression that there were tribes but the colonial influence mucked things up by creating geographical groupings that didn't make sense in terms of the tribes.
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Well, the colonial influence also royally mucked things up, particularly in Western Africa in the very early years of North and South American colonization, via the slave trade, which encouraged different African groups/tribes to conduct wars in order to capture people from other tribes to sell to Europeans for the slave market. It's certainly true that slavery created that problem. But there was already conflict between these different groups/tribes before European contact: the Europeans just capitalized on this conflict.
The geographical thing came later, in terms of European nations divvying up actual territory in the 19th century--where what you're saying is definitely true. But at first (pre-1800) the Europeans were not as interested in setting up colonies in Africa itself but using its resources (human and otherwise) to further their colonial goals in the Americas.
/history grad student