Why are so many countries called Guinea? (Short Animated Documentary)

guinea guinea baisao papua new guinea and of course equatorial guinea since you have ears you'll notice that they all share a common name something which few other countries do since even states with similar names get mixed up but why is this the case why are there so many countries with guinea in their name so before we answer that there's something that needs to be cleared up the guineas and the guyanas are not related two different words with two different histories the one we're focusing on most likely comes from an old berber word which means dark skin and it was used to describe the collective lands along the coast of their south and the people who lived there europeans only had a few names for parts of africa like barbary for the north ethiopia for most of the continent another term for this area and guinea was adopted for these lands you see europeans made use of north african navigators to help them sell down the coast of africa and so it wasn't long until the name for the region stuck with all of them and when europeans later colonised the area the different european powers used guinea to refer to their separate parts of it the first was portugal who claimed this area calling it portuguese guinea there was also swedish guinea which would later become danish guinea and soon after that dutch guinea before the british took it for themselves and called it the gold coast in the late 19th century france had its turn to colonize parts of the area and in a shocking display of originality called it french guinea later when de colonization saw africa freed french guinea was the first to win its independence and so it got dibs on plain old guinea about 20 years later portuguese guinea followed and it soon took the name guinea by sao to the south mostly outside of the region is equatorial guinea this was first colonized by portugal who soon sold this island to the spanish who soon took control of this region in the late 19th century the french muscled in on this region they signed a deal with the spanish which settled on these borders with spain gaining the small colony of rio muni which combined with the island of biaco in 1929 and it called this combination spanish guinea because the island of biako was a part of the region despite the rest not being so and when the nation gained its independence it kept the name guinea but given that guinea was already taken it adopted the name equatorial guinea because of its location so what about papua new guinea on the other side of the world which is firmly and entirely not within the region of guinea well before europeans arrived the island was known as papua but cultural sensitivity is not the cornerstone of imperialism and said the spanish explorers who first mapped the island's coastline picked a new name new guinea so why guinea and not something else like new aragon well they chose this name because as far as they were concerned the natives who lived on papua were indistinguishable from the africans of guinea and so they were essentially the same several centuries later the island was divided between three powers with the netherlands germany and britain taking their own chunks as you know germany's team came second in world war one and so their part went to britain and in 1949 both parts were united under australian leadership in 1975 it gained its independence and given that the name had been used for about four centuries at this point it just sort of stuck and that's why there are four countries called guinea i hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with a special thanks to my patrons james bisonette kelly money maker mr wolf sky chappelle corso wolff jerry lambda in adam stalter jordan longley rod d martin wyan hockey spencer lightfoot captain cydog marvin cassell gustav swan buggily wiggly words about books podcast robert wetzel winston k wood aaron the white matthew shipley alex schwinn maggie paxkowski corey turner anthony beckett copper tone the mukwopa spinning three plates charles the first ben evinson and scottish trekkie

Channel: History Matters

Views: 3,073,179

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Id: 7Zed-g6dbZ8

Length: 3min 16sec (196 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022