Would a powerful enough country have been able to prevent decolonisation?

Socrates

In our timeline, European powers were forced into decolonisation through a combination of being bankrupt after WW2 and through having fairly small populations relative to the colonies they were trying to hold on to. But would a powerul enough Western base have allowed one to maintain their hold?

For example had Britain avoided the American Revolution and had an integrated North America as a supportive base, could they have maintained control of Asian and African colonies indefinitely?
 
GrayJ12

GrayJ12

If the World Wars didn't happen,yes.

But still,no powerful country could stop the revolutions happening in Africa and Asia.
 

CrimsonKing

A CP victory in WW1 perhaps? Germany would almost certainly be strong enough to keep its colonies in that circumstance.
 

riggerrob

mrbraingrayson said:
If the World Wars didn't happen,yes.

But still,no powerful country could stop the revolutions happening in Africa and Asia.
Click to expand...

..............................................

Many of those African revolutions (Angola, Rhodesia, etc.) were funded by Communist China or the Soviet Union. Sadly, communism was only a thin veneer to justify resuming centuries-old tribal rivalries with their long traditions of cattle-rapping and mother-stabbing.
You would need two major changes to prevent those revolutions. First, draw national borders along traditional tribal boundaries. Secondly, build strong economic bonds between tribal leaders and London.
 

Grand Prince Paul II.

Socrates said:
For example had Britain avoided the American Revolution and had an integrated North America as a supportive base, could they have maintained control of Asian and African colonies indefinitely?
Click to expand...

No, because it would turn the British Empire into a North American Empire sooner or later.

fhaessig said:
Both Russia and USA avoided decolonization for their own oil, so yes. And so did China, for that matter.
Click to expand...

They all decolonized almost completely.
 

Intransigent Southerner

riggerrob said:
Sadly, communism was only a thin veneer to justify resuming centuries-old tribal rivalries with their long traditions of cattle-rapping and mother-stabbing.
Click to expand...
From John Illife's Africans
Pre-colonial Africans had possessed several social identities. They might belong to lineages, clans, villages, towns, chiefdoms, language groups, states, and almost any combination of these, the relevant identity depending on the situation. Identities shaded into each other, for people speaking the same language might belong to different chiefdoms, while one chiefdom might embrace people speaking several different languages. It was an immensely complex social order. [...] More often [the Europeans] tried to demarcate tribes for administrative purposes, often under Indirect Rule. Ethnic differences were sometimes interpreted in racial terms, especially in Rwanda and Burundi where Europeans regarded the Tutsi as a superior immigrant race and reinforced their domination over the more numerous Hutu, while simultaneously destroying the military base of Tutsi prestige. [this would lead to genocide later on, as we all know] Also influential were missionaries who reduced Africa's innumerable dialects to fewer written languages, each supposedly defining a tribe. [Chinua Achebe, among others, disliked writing in the standard Igbo engineered by non-Igbo missionaries] Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Shona, and many other 'tribes' were engineered in such a way. [...] Some intellectuals invented entirely new tribes such as the Abaluyia of western Kenya.
Click to expand...
 

david_herdson

For this to have happened, you'd need a 20th century without either world war (and no equivalent war). I'm not sure if that's at all possible. Simply to have made it through the 1910s without a Great War would have been an achievement never mind the rest of the century.

But with a much richer, more powerful and more self-confident Europe, to which most of the rest of the world still looked for leadership - political, economic and cultural - then yes, perhaps. It's as much about the local colonial leaderships wanting to be part of the empires as anything. If most survive, and consequently if they are seen as 'natural', then there would undoubtedly be negative reasons for colonials wanting to remain within their empire - the threat from neighbouring and rival empires - but the best ones would also have 'pull' factors: good governance, a degree of autonomy, investment and industry and a sense of imperial family.

Some of that is of course contradictory - you can't have too much external leadership and governance without impinging on local autonomy and self-expression but any system of government is about balance. By far the bigger problem is preventing the self-destructive calamities that destroyed the European nations' basis for global leadership.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Avoid WW1, and you still have colonial empires around. From about 1550 to 1920, colonialism went fine. You tend to lose colonies in major wars.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
riggerrob said:
..............................................

Many of those African revolutions (Angola, Rhodesia, etc.) were funded by Communist China or the Soviet Union. Sadly, communism was only a thin veneer to justify resuming centuries-old tribal rivalries with their long traditions of cattle-rapping and mother-stabbing.
You would need two major changes to prevent those revolutions. First, draw national borders along traditional tribal boundaries. Secondly, build strong economic bonds between tribal leaders and London.
Click to expand...

Really?

Cattle-rapping (sp).

If you are going to lay out racially based insults at least spell them correctly.

Take a week and find your spell checker.

Kicked for a week.
 

BeardedHoplite

A country might not have to be a great super power to hold onto their colonies. From what I gathered little Portugal managed to clear out a decent portion of Angola before the carnation revolution forced them out. Sao Tome and Mozambique were lost causes, but I believe Southern Angola was relatively free of rebels in 1974.

Maybe just have a dictatorship willing to hold on at any cost.
 
Pangur

Pangur

Donor
The simple answer is no. Go back to the entire objective of a colony, cheap resources and a captive market for your goods. The locals lose out and that breeds resentment. Resentment breeds rebellion. The end result is predefined - the colony gets its freedom and only question is when
 

Socrates

david_herdson said:
For this to have happened, you'd need a 20th century without either world war (and no equivalent war). I'm not sure if that's at all possible. Simply to have made it through the 1910s without a Great War would have been an achievement never mind the rest of the century.

But with a much richer, more powerful and more self-confident Europe, to which most of the rest of the world still looked for leadership - political, economic and cultural - then yes, perhaps. It's as much about the local colonial leaderships wanting to be part of the empires as anything. If most survive, and consequently if they are seen as 'natural', then there would undoubtedly be negative reasons for colonials wanting to remain within their empire - the threat from neighbouring and rival empires - but the best ones would also have 'pull' factors: good governance, a degree of autonomy, investment and industry and a sense of imperial family.

Some of that is of course contradictory - you can't have too much external leadership and governance without impinging on local autonomy and self-expression but any system of government is about balance. By far the bigger problem is preventing the self-destructive calamities that destroyed the European nations' basis for global leadership.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this reply - a lot of food for thought here. Some responses:

1) if we take a POD far enough back a 20th Century without a world war should be possible. A super British Empire with North America as an integral part would probably not be challenged directly. Likewise a super Germany holding much of Eastern Europe.

2) i think its a major question of whether its possible for African and Asian leaderships to look to Europe for leadership long term. It is my understanding the native elites in French Africa largely did this, but as a response they were largely either replaced, or forced to 'cross the floor' to join the rebel movements to survive.

3) I also wonder whether the pull factors you cite are viable. In our timeline 'good governance' never meant putting the locals first outside of imperial mythology and I don't see any reason why that would change with a superpower colonialist. Equally local autonomy was only really given out in our timeline when colonial powers felt in a weak position, so I doubt that would change either.
 

CrimsonKing

In my opinion, a CP victory in WW1 is much more likely than no WW1 at all, which is why Germany wining the war and keeping its Asian and African colonies indefinitely is to me the easiest way of fulfilling the OP.
 

King Thomas

Banned
Even with no World Wars, once enough of the local population act up, only genocide would hold onto the affected colony. Perhaps the UK could gain a decade or so of time by letting a colony go, deliberately cutting the trade off, letting the colony get as messed up as the DRC in our timeline, and saying to the other colonies-you can go free if you want-but that is how you will end up if you do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top