北非古代為什麼那麼厲害到近代是被殖民的？

12-29

問。。了解一下歷史

關於「北非為什麼會衰敗」，這個是歷史學爭議問題。

我有一些非常好的答案，但是都不是我自己寫的，這是AskHistorians Reddit社區（reddit雖然整體很操蛋，但是這個AH社區很牛逼，很多回答人都是專業歷史從業人員，管理也很嚴格，只要沒有引用說明之類的，都會被直接刪除答案）上的大神們寫的，我copy+paste給你：

This is an interesting question and one that historians have hotly debated for the better part of one hundred and fifty years. My expertise is on North Africa during the central Middle Ages, so this answer will focus on developments in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, although I am sure there is some fascinating research on the role of North Africa in the centuries directly following the Islamic conquests. This answer will also focus on 「Ifriqiya,」 which comprises the modern-day areas of Tunisia, western Libya, and eastern Algeria.

First off, I think it would be wrong to suppose that North Africa was simply a 「regional backwater.」 As Michael Brett has argued, North Africa was a crucial part of Mediterranean trade during the central Middle Ages, both for routes heading west from Fustat and Alexandria, as well as being a supply of gold from sub-Saharan Africa (Brett, "Ifriqiya as a Market"). The centrality of the area of Ifriqiya in the Mediterranean meant that it was an incredibly important hub for overseas and inland trade during the high Middle Ages. S.D. Goitein went so far as to describe the area of modern-day Tunisia as the "Hub of the Mediterranean" during the tenth and eleventh centuries (Goitein, "Medieval Tunisia: Hub of the Mediterranean"). In particular, Mahdia and Qayrawan served as major hubs in the sub-Saharan gold trade, which they traded for Sicilian grain. Qayrawan, whose name derives from the word "caravan," was a center for land-based trade that spanned across North Africa as well as parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Mahdia, acting as Qayrawan"s port, was a hub for primarily maritime commerce.

However, one of the traditional turning points for the history of North Africa comes in the form of the Banu Hilal, an Arab tribe that was supposedly let loose by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt in the middle of the 11th century as punishment for the regional rulers of North Africa declaring their independence. Two distinct historiographical schools have formed with regard to the Banu Hilal. The first, led by French historians of the early-mid twentieth century, argues that the economy of Ifriqiya was prosperous in the tenth and eleventh centuries (see citation group #2 on attached comment). To them, the invasion of the Banu Hilal in 1057 brought incredible devastation and destruction to the region, which would devolve into a series of ethnic conflicts between the Sanhaja and Zenata Berber tribes. However, a second historiographical school considers the invasions of the Banu Hilal in a different light. This perspective, adopted by most historians from the 1970s onwards, argues that the economy of Ifriqiya began to decline following the Fatimid relocation of their capital from Tunisia to Egypt in 969. Various groups competed with each other over control of key trade routes and the Banu Hilal were merely one of these many groups that sought economic control. At worst, the Hilalian invasions sped up an economic process that was already well underway. Regardless of these two historiographical schools, it is generally accepted that there was decline in Ifriqiya following the Hilalian Invasions of the mid-11th century.

As for /u/weltburger』s comment that Europe was simply burning witches, this is a gross oversimplification. During the 11th and 12th centuries, there was an intricate relationship between the powers on the Italian peninsula and the regional Muslim rulers of North Africa. Following the Hilalian invasions, power in North Africa became increasingly fragmented and subject to incursions. A Pisan-Genoese coalition sacked Mahdia and its suburb of Zawila in 1087 and the Normans, based in Sicily, seized multiple cities along the African coast during the middle of the 12th century (Cowdrey, "The Mahdia Campaign of 1087"). Even before the Norman invasions, the regional rulers of North Africa had been forced to accept unfavorable treaties with the Normans in order to ensure that they could feed their people. A series of devastating droughts meant that the rulers of North Africa were reliant upon Sicilian grain, a dramatic

另外，這是另外一個角度：

I"m going to steer clear of "regional backwater" and note that there"s a fair bit of talk about why North Africa was so prosperous under Rome and less so in the centuries to follow. In his new book Peter Heather (Restoration of Rome, Oxford UP 2014) makes the argument that the spectacular agricultural prosperity of Roman North Africa was a product of the unique position it held inside the trade networks of the western Mediterranean, and how so much of its trade was done with and by the Roman state itself. Certainly, North Africa continued to be prosperous and a source of agricultural wealth long after the end of Roman (or Byzantine) rule, but with its big customer (the state) gone, that prosperity was muted. As Heather puts it (pp. 171ff.): "But North Africa"s Roman prosperity had come from the fact that it was tied into a broader system of west Mediterranean exchange which was actually dependent in a series of ways on the West Roman state, not least because it [= the roman state subsidized transport costs [of NA agricultural products] for its own purposes...It [= NA] exported [after the Roman period], therefore, but on a much smaller scale, and the general level of wealth in the region seems to have settled back into a more modest prosperity." This argument isn"t new in this book--you can track down for where Heather got it from his notes.

除此之外：

Davis argues that after conquering Algiers in 1830, French colonial authorities crafted a declensionist environmental history of Algeria. This narrative related how eleventh-century Arabic invaders and pastoral nomads had squandered the once-fertile breadbasket of Rome. This contrived history reflected French racial assumptions (depicted creatively by Davis through full-color pages of contemporary French art) but also immediate military need for lumber. It legitimized lucrative French resource extraction and in turn delegitimized extant Algerian practices of pastoralism, collective ownership, and controlled burns. Davis finds that, curiously, none of the narrative was based in fact. Classical historians who described lush environs had often never actually visited North Africa themselves. Ruins of the Roman Empire had given the notion archaeological evidence: abandoned aqueducts, olive presses, and cities supposedly exhibited destructive or at least lackadaisical Algerian primitivism. Davis proves instead the topography actually changed little over the last two thousand years and elaborates the ultimate irony of uninformed, detrimental French land conservation efforts. Prohibiting prescribed burns dampened growth as newly introduced, water-intensive vegetation sapped soils across the region.

...

Distinctly concerned with the present, Davis documents (and obviously resents) the ongoing trope of independent Africa"s decline. Desiccation and impoverishment are not new developments but instead the festering legacies of colonialism: the former from introducing eucalyptus, citrus, and other absorptive plants; the latter from local economic disfranchisement and wealth extraction.

最後：

I"m surprised that I don"t see anyone mentioning the significance of Tunis, Algeria, Libya, and Morocco being periphery states of the Ottoman Empire. Under the protective umbrella of Ottoman identity the Barbary Coast flourished to some degree by bullying wealthy nations such as England and Spain into paying increasingly large sums of tribute money which granted their ships relative immunity from their pirate activity, while avoiding any real conflict with these states, and more importantly, the larger Empire to which they belonged. By the late 18th century the ties between Constantinople and the Barbary Coast were dwindling and a number of nations including Portugal and later the United States would change the status quo within the Mediterranean trade networks by launching campaigns against the Barbary pirates. These were largely effective and were the beginning of the end for an irreplaceable source of resources and wealth in a region where there was and is very little of value geographically speaking. My experience with this subject is pretty limited, but I"m getting this from a History of the Ottoman Empire class, Karen Barkey"s book Empire of Difference, and my more thorough knowledge of the Barbary Coast Wars.

還有：

My perspective isn"t from a historical point of view, but from a personal one. My father grew up in Libya and he often talks about how many animals and plant life have gone extinct in the region. Skunks, Rabbits, Owls, and many other animals have virtually disappeared from residential areas and have been forced to recede closer to the desert, in an area called (by the people where by dad grew up) Shfara. Shfara is basically the same climate as the Deserts in the US. It is loaded with shrubs and small rodents but no trees, unlike the Sahara which is a sea of sand. People can still hunt some animals, like small rabbits in the Shfara but animals like foxes, have completely disappeared because they could not live in this new climate. A similar thing happened to plants, but I don"t want to get too into it. If you go further back to when my Father"s Father was young there was even MORE wildlife and Biological diversity. He often talked about the forests and grasslands in areas which are now just houses and small family farms.

From this small anecdotal evidence I have, I"d say that it is almost surely the fault of humans. The North African Climate, unlike Europe"s, seems very susceptible to desertification, simply because it is adjacent to the Sahara. As soon as people started to use the new more intensive and productive farming methods, coupled with exponential population growth, the biological diversity, and more importantly Climate stability, were diminished.

A similar process happened in the Iraq, the old Fertile Crescent. There, water was being extracted for agriculture so much that the Earth became extremely concentrated with salt, to the point where you can find huge plains covered in salt, and much more underground. Even the humans living there have went from the arable pioneers of civilization to people who have become hardened and fruitless, like the Earth beneath them.(corny yet poetic)

I think these examples should be a lesson to the future, to show that although Civilization is truly amazing, we must remember that the Earth"s resources are not infinite, and depleting biodiversity can cause enormous changes to the climate.

Of course, I have to reiterate that this evidence is pretty anecdotal. I"d love if some other people could contribute to and criticize the thoughts I"ve presented here.

北非最輝煌的就是埃及，迦太基和綠衣大食了吧，可以發現它們都處於綠洲地帶。

其中埃及是大河流域，因此有四大文明古國之一，本身就具有一定規模，所以一直混得不錯。迦太基我們都知道是海洋貿易文明，背後沒有廣大可耕地支撐，註定成不了大國。然而它還是輝煌過，因為環地中海文明時期西歐都沒有開發呢。

綠衣大食可以看做是中東的力量在直布陀羅的偏安政權，此時西歐也是落後地區。

北非沙漠廣大，綠洲狹小，沒有大國氣派。等到西歐崛起了，最先倒霉的就是這些鄰居了……

古代的話(只說中世紀嘛)

以前看書說過突尼西亞也好像很厲害的樣子-0-

但後來土地又鹽化,突尼西亞旁邊的田地GG,以後突尼西亞一起G。(13~14世紀的事?)

沒農田=沒人口&>沒城市人口=遊牧地區的人口比例增加&>遊牧,地區權力上升=突尼西亞GG。

摩洛哥16世紀時還能和西班牙葡萄牙談笑風生,南下桑海的,但之後西方的工業革命又令他GG了,看過meiou and taxes的開局地圖(1356)...感覺好像之前更厲害嘛qwq。

利比亞不熟,貌似沙漠地區多,遊牧民族為主。

阿爾及尼亞也不熟QWQ。

埃及,超級糧倉,古埃及四大文明古國廢話不說。

中世紀馬木留克幹X蒙古,還是滿厲害的。

近代的話

歐洲發展可怕,北非在歐洲旁邊

征服首要目標,GG。

尤其是北非的地理位置敲重要,想想德國拿到摩洛哥後...法國會怎樣(笑)。

埃及更不用說,蘇伊士運河還在啦,英國的玩具都要從那面經過入口甚麼的。

所以被殖民的原因是因為他們的地理位置太重要啦。

相反,如果是賴比瑞亞 Who care you啦

布匿戰爭是古代還是近代?阿拉伯征服是古代還是近代?

從亞歷山大開始，地中海南岸有什麼時候不是被地中海北岸和東岸按在地上摩擦的。

說下自己的想法，一直想不明白除了中華文明之外的埃及，巴比倫，印度，瑪雅等文明為什麼沒有延續下來？

或者換個角度比較激烈的，南美的阿滋特克和瑪雅文明為什麼被殖民者直接毀滅？太落後了。換在北非的這個題目上，地中海一圈強人太多，古埃及，巴比倫，波斯被滅了唄。再加上文明的火種，像書籍，文字幾乎沒有留下來，後人就斷了傳承。蔡倫漢朝發明的造紙術吧，北非的幾個文明沒法傳遞！像瑪雅預言就沒有人會說了

北非厲害的也就迦太基時期了吧，那已經是2000年前的事了。之後無非要麼阿拉伯帝國勢力範圍，要麼奧斯曼的管理之下。到歐洲殖民非洲時期，無非就是宗主國從奧斯曼變成了歐洲列強罷了。