#I think this documentary on the rise and fall of west african empires is instructive **7. The Songhai Empire - Africa's Age of Gold** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUT6LhBBYs It's long (2hrs), but it covers the rise and fall of multiple empires. They all have pretty similar features: - The empires are always founded on primary economic activities, with gold and slaves being the export goods. Even then it's not like they have a complex system of gold mines, it's just farmers panning for gold during the off-season and selling tiny scraps to wandering traders. - Technological innovation and manufactured goods always come from abroad. They learn basic ironworking, but they still import complex armour and mail. They learn writing, but they still predominantly import books. They learn horse breeding, but their cavalry is still mostly outfitted with imports. - Every so often an innovative military leader comes along who manages to conquer a large territory, but they're never capable of maintaining their gains beyond one or two generations. Inevitably the empires dissolve into a chaos of assassinations and civil war, then they break up again. This matches the pattern of what we see in Africa today where countries on the scale of, say, France, simply cannot hold together. They are constantly fighting internal conflicts and waiting for the globalists to decide who rules next. - Of course the documentary glosses over the middle-eastern slave trade. It then brings up the occidental-jewish slave trade as a defining moment in the region's history, claiming it was both larger and more cruel. But the fact is that it was nothing new. Gold and slaves were the bread and butter of every empire up until that point.