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By Root 1586 0

resulted in wars and relocation problems killing millions of innocents in Africa. Brutal dictators arose from the chaos, gaining control of wide areas, and brutalizing the population to maintain control. These dictators often obtained the blessing and financial support of the United Nations. The international organization was trying to alleviate suffering but achieved just the opposite. The dictators used the money to buy weapons to maintain their power. The problems of genocide, tribal warfare, religious warfare, disease, poor farming conditions, discrimination between tribes, poor leadership, dictatorships, exhausted economies, and a lack of management skills persist into 2010. The suffering in Africa since the end of colonial rule was, and is, appalling.

Let Us Learn

From Africa, we learn outsiders never have your best interest at heart.

Books and Resources

A Short History of Africa, Oliver and Fage, 1990 Penguin 6th Edition. I really like this book. Easy and excellent reading, especially for a newcomer to African history.

Chapter 8

The Middle East and

the Fall of Byzantium

(The Eastern Roman Empire) 500 to 1453

Now we must again retreat in time, visit the Middle East, and review what happened when Islam expanded across Africa, conquered Spain, invaded France, and later invaded and destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire (called Byzantium). Once again, odd as it may seem, when Byzantium fell its Roman culture disappeared. The Ottoman Turks had no use for heathen Christian ways and obliterated the remains of Rome in the east.

In AD 640, out of the deserts of Arabia, came a new monotheistic religion firing its adherents to conquer in the name of their god Allah. Long before the fall of Constantinople, the Muslim warriors had swept out of Arabia, through Egypt, and across North Africa to the straits of Gibraltar. After crossing the Mediterranean to Iberia (Spain and Portugal) the Muslims destroyed the disunited forces of Christianity, conquering Iberia for Allah. Now that Spain was Muslim, the armies of Islam looked to the conquest of France as the next logical step to winning the world for their god.

Islam Turned Back at Tours

732

A powerful Muslim force crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and moved into Southern France where they shattered the Christian forces of Aquitaine before moving north and falling into battle with Charles Martel (the Hammer) at the Battle of Tours in 732. Accounts of the battle are somewhat terse and extremely scarce, but both Arab and Christian writers tell of the clash. The Muslims had never known defeat, and they outnumbered Charles and his men. After the battle began, Charles positioned his men in squares where fierce Muslim charges failed to dislodge them. It is said that it was the force of Martel’s personality that held his men together as they withstood charge after ferocious charge. Although losing a large number of men in the clashes with Martel the Muslims were prepared to fight on. Then the Muslim army discovered a few of Martel’s men had infiltrated into their camp, where they were releasing European prisoners and pillaging loot seized in previous battles. Many Muslims turned their horses around and hurried back to the rear trying to save their riches. Martel surrounded the remaining Muslim force and totally destroyed them, including killing their commander. Martel gathered his far-flung army and organized to renew the fight the next day, but the Muslim forces were gone never to return.

Historians debate the significance of the victory at Tours; nonetheless, there is no doubt Charles Martel won one of the world’s most important victories. Like the victory of Vasco De Gamma at Du, which destroyed an Arab fleet in the Indian Ocean securing the waterway forever for the West, the victory at Tours by Charles Martel and his men denied the Muslims entry into Europe for the rest of time (at least up until 2010), and saved Christian Europe. If Martel had lost, Europe could have suffered Islamic conquest. If Islam had won Europe we could forget about the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery,