AHC: Least Worst Decolonisation

With a PoD of 1 September 1939, just as World War Two starts, make things such that individual members of colonial empires by and large end up as functioning independent nation-states without cycles of instability, civil war, insurgency, and coups, especially in Africa.

Is this plausible in the least? Or was the Third World doomed from the onset?

Sadly, the only way to decolonialize without the disasters we ended up with especially in Africa, would be for the powers right after WW2 to decide to decolonialize over an extended period of time (10-20 years) for gradual transition so enough locals could be educated and in tune with modern ideology to avoid what happened when essentially no planning was done as everyone hurried to get out as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately most of the "revolutionary" leaders who were a major reason the western powers decolonized were not the same sort as the revolutionaries of the American Revolution. Democracy, as it is understood by most members of this board, was simply not a concept they were in to. As a result, we got dictatorships and kleptocracies at best and inter-tribal massacres at worst.

You did have the issue of social infrastructure as well, which hampers democracy, let alone any hope of success for a newly independent nation. You had nations where a shocking minority of the natives had a higher education, too much of the population was not trained to do certain components necessary to a society or economy, etc. The colonizers largely pulled up stakes and left, and what you had in all too many situations was a country where the leader was one guy who had gone to a university, quickly overthrown by a military coup with things just devolving from there.

Ideally, decolonization should have taken major steps to leave behind a population which was capable to leading a successful, stable, modern nation. That would entail major efforts at education and turning over control of the nations to competent hands gradually until the colonizer was totally out of the picture. The problem being, how good is that going to sound to the colonizing power? "Pay for all of this just so you can leave and reap no benefit". Maybe the United Nations could step up more in that regard.

Let's say that World War 2 gets strangled in the crib when Nazi Germany gets its shit kicked in, and world's colonial powers aren't crippled by war and occupation, and people get wise to Imperial Japan's antics a lot sooner as a result. Does this go a long way in avoiding the "we're-broke-quick-let's-bail" attitudes that marked OTL decolonisation?

Furthermore, would it be at least possible to get Africa to, say, archipelagic Southeast Asia levels of authoritarianism, since "true" liberal democracy is such a long shot? You'd have one dominant party (e.g. the UMNO alliance in Malaysia, or the PAP in Singapore) or relatively long-serving dictators (Sukarno, Suharto), but much less bloodshed overall.

Bumpity bump.

Tom Colton said:

Let's say that World War 2 gets strangled in the crib when Nazi Germany gets its shit kicked in, and world's colonial powers aren't crippled by war and occupation, and people get wise to Imperial Japan's antics a lot sooner as a result. Does this go a long way in avoiding the "we're-broke-quick-let's-bail" attitudes that marked OTL decolonisation?

Furthermore, would it be at least possible to get Africa to, say, archipelagic Southeast Asia levels of authoritarianism, since "true" liberal democracy is such a long shot? You'd have one dominant party (e.g. the UMNO alliance in Malaysia, or the PAP in Singapore) or relatively long-serving dictators (Sukarno, Suharto), but much less bloodshed overall.

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One of the problems that plagued Africa is the relative wealth of natural resources. The problem with natural resources is they are an asset to be exploited and one that provides relatively few indirect benefits. Basically everyone fights over a pot of gold.

Contrast that to Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan where the countries couldnt simply seek to exploit resources but rather had to develop manufacturing industries. Manufacturing both requires and creates its own learning curve that can build on itself. A new strong man cant simply come in and replicate the economics as easily as they can with a diamond mine or oil well.

Malaysia and Indonesia both are fairly rich in natural resources (Indonesia with oil too), and still managed to do better than most newly independent African states. The determinant can't just be population or size given that Indonesia has a fairly massive population and population density (the latter being higher than any African country today except Nigeria or Burundi) despite being the 15th largest country on Earth. Is it possible to increase colonial guidance towards independence in Africa to the same levels as Southeast Asia?

I don't know much about British decolonisation but for the French it could unfold like this.

First you need one of these things to happen:

No colonial fighters in WWI and WWII on the French side

OR

Recognising their accomplishments and giving them the right to vote or at least partial citizenship (which is borderline ASB)

If you have one or the other, you quell Algerian uprising. From what I remember, most African countries were on the path for autonomy but decided to swerve for independence after seeing the Algerian example (can't find the reference of the book I read that in though ).

So if you have a less violent Algeria (which could be done with more rights or less war involvement) you get a smoother transition for the French.



EDIT: fairly certain my source is
http://www.amazon.fr/State-Africa-H...id=1416824286&sr=8-1&keywords=state+of+africa

Sadly I lost the book a while ago so I can't confirm

Tom Colton said:

Malaysia and Indonesia both are fairly rich in natural resources (Indonesia with oil too), and still managed to do better than most newly independent African states. The determinant can't just be population or size given that Indonesia has a fairly massive population and population density (the latter being higher than any African country today except Nigeria or Burundi) despite being the 15th largest country on Earth. Is it possible to increase colonial guidance towards independence in Africa to the same levels as Southeast Asia?

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I'm just going to focus on the former since I know more about it than on Indonesia.

The thing is that... well... the colonial powers didn't exactly treat their colonies equally, and it really showed in how the British treated Malaya. India was their crown jewel, but Malaya and Singapore formed their "Pearls of the Orient". For one thing, it's infrastructure was well-built for the time to export the Peninsula's resources; From what I can gather from my high school books, 1900's Malaya supplied a whopping 55% of the world's tin and 53% of the world's rubber, and extracting, refining, and transporting these raw materials meant that a substantial amount of investment had to go to infrastructure building, up to and even over what was the norm for colonies at the time. Otherwise, none of that stuff could get out there in such huge numbers.

Second was the urbanization. Malaya didn't have the population density of, say, London, nor did it have large cities. But the distribution of resources and the need for workers lead to massive use of contract workers and migrants, creating new towns and expanding existing ones, making it easier for like-minded individuals to seek out and form nationalist clubs.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Malaya was well connected to the world even for the standards of the time. Those contract workers I mentioned earlier? They came from India and China, and it wasn't long before the ideas of the Kuomintang and the Indian National Congress filtered across borders and seas (the founding father of China, Sun Yat-Sen, visited Singapore many times over in his life). The Malay middle-class also played a part; sending their sons to the Middle East to be educated. As early as the end of WWI, there were Malay scholars coming back from Egypt and the former Ottoman Empire discussing reforms and women's emancipation with their village imams. This, added with the Malay rulers' own penchant for reform and education (I'm looking at you, sultan Abu Bakar of Johor) created a larger intellectual class more attuned to the outside world than previously seen before.

And there were loads of other factors influencing pre-Independence Malaya, such as the Emergency, the inter-ethnic fights/cooperation, etc. , but there were the ones that stood out the most.

Returning back to the question, if you want Africa to have a more stable decolonization, you need several things.

Infrastructure. they need it. Not just roads and rail, but schools, telegraphs, water supply, mail, sewage, electricity (though this can be restricted to the cities),and etc. Extra points if you have the upper class or monarchs thinking the same, building up infrastructure from their own private purse.

Connectivity. Not in the 1940's, but much much earlier. The earlier the better. Don't just align with Europe (though this is a problem since it's hard not to) but go everywhere and have contacts everywhere. Japan, China, the United States, the Ottomans, Siam, India, etc. The more the better. This will make the African colonies more attuned to the outside world early on and get ideas.

Time. This is the most finicky thing of all. Malaya got independence in 1957, but talks and political discussions were going on as soon as WWII ended. You need the same thing with the African colonies; A London that wants a deep relationship with it's colonies and nationalists that are willing to wait and talk for a loooong time for independence.

I made this thread sometime back, which could be of use for the topic.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=310107

One of the biggest thing also is the frontiers.

In East Asia, the post-independence frontiers were made according to the pre-existing kingdoms and states. In Africa, they were made with a ruler and without paying attention to ethnic divides, which then lead to some rocky years and most African problems.

If you can't unite, you can't have a nation state which can hugely slow everything.

sloreck said:

Sadly, the only way to decolonialize without the disasters we ended up with especially in Africa, would be for the powers right after WW2 to decide to decolonialize over an extended period of time (10-20 years) for gradual transition so enough locals could be educated and in tune with modern ideology to avoid what happened when essentially no planning was done as everyone hurried to get out as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately most of the "revolutionary" leaders who were a major reason the western powers decolonized were not the same sort as the revolutionaries of the American Revolution. Democracy, as it is understood by most members of this board, was simply not a concept they were in to. As a result, we got dictatorships and kleptocracies at best and inter-tribal massacres at worst.

Click to expand...

The difficult part of this it is in the short term interest of both the revolutionaries and the colonizing power for them to leave ASAP. For the revolutionaries they want to take over before they die and to make sure they aren't being suckered and to get out from under the empire before the colonizers change their mind. As far as the colonizing power is concerned most colonies are money draining prestige projects and the quicker they are out the quicker they lose the money drain, there is also the emotional resentment of being forced to leave and the simple fact that once they leave they don't have to pay any societal costs of any chaos that accompanies their leaving. They are leaving what do they care about whether they wind up as dictatorships or not?