State of Africa if Colonies Never Gained Indpendence

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by libbrit

Not that you go in for blanket labels for entire countries

Of course not, just the particular Brits that pulled this sort of crap. I'd assumed that was clear from the context of the discussion.

[Badshah]

Originally Posted by HeavyWeaponsGuy

Calm down bro, Heavy is on the case

It's a good thing, too.

[wolf_brother]

Originally Posted by HeavyWeaponsGuy

Calm down bro, Heavy is on the case

No, seriously, that's wtf-level shit. The Africans were better off under colonialism - that's either something either very ignorant or very fucked up.

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Originally Posted by wolf_brother

No, seriously, that's wtf-level shit. The Africans were better off under colonialism - that's either something either very ignorant or very fucked up.

Eh, I just chalk it up to not knowing any better as opposed to active racism or anything.

[Ariosto]

I have to agree with Colonialism being a force for good, but only in its decolonization stages, when they were prepping the various colonies for Semi or Full-on Independence. If given more time, I strongly believe many of the African nations would have been much better off in the long-run, having the infrastructure to maintain stability, and later achieve prosperity.

[jkarr]

Originally Posted by HeavyWeaponsGuy

Eh, I just chalk it up to not knowing any better as opposed to active racism or anything.

its more i fucked up with what i was trying to say...

i was trying to answaer in the context of the question: that if they never gained independence they wouldve stayed the same, but not with the whole white over black population and atrocities that were comitted...just having the same borders and such....
but probaly mroe liberal and stable colonies that would gone like australia and so forth..former colonies that still have ties to their colonisers, but without being directly colonies...

i was trying to refer more to the "stability" africa had being colonies, rather than what happened in them, compared to alot of nations that sprung up and fell apart/became dicatorships/still suffering civil wars like otl...i wasnt trying to down play what happened at all, just sucked by not explained myself better

[ColeMercury]

Originally Posted by jkarr

its more i fucked up with what i was trying to say...

i was trying to answaer in the context of the question: that if they never gained independence they wouldve stayed the same, but not with the whole white over black population and atrocities that were comitted...just having the same borders and such....
but probaly mroe liberal and stable colonies that would gone like australia and so forth..former colonies that still have ties to their colonisers, but without being directly colonies...

i was trying to refer more to the "stability" africa had being colonies, rather than what happened in them, compared to alot of nations that sprung up and fell apart/became dicatorships/still suffering civil wars like otl...i wasnt trying to down play what happened at all, just sucked by not explained myself better

You're not too familiar with Australian history, are you?

[jkarr]

Originally Posted by ColeMercury

You're not too familiar with Australian history, are you?

in the long process it went from being a bunch of colonies, to a federated dominion and then a independent country, with ceremonial ties to britain...plus al the mess that had to happen to get to each stage...a bit

i just mainly was using it as a example of more "stable" independence than many african nations after decolonization...which im sure someopne will jump on me for saying next, as i cant seem to say anything, anywhere on this forum, without someone jumping down my throat

[ColeMercury]

Originally Posted by jkarr

in the long process it went from being a bunch of colonies, to a federated dominion and then a independent country, with ceremonial ties to britain...plus al the mess that had to happen to get to each stage...a bit

Yep. Shame about the genocide.

[BlondieBC]

Originally Posted by jkarr

in the long process it went from being a bunch of colonies, to a federated dominion and then a independent country, with ceremonial ties to britain...plus al the mess that had to happen to get to each stage...a bit

i just mainly was using it as a example of more "stable" independence than many african nations after decolonization...which im sure someopne will jump on me for saying next, as i cant seem to say anything, anywhere on this forum, without someone jumping down my throat

Sure its stable, they basically wiped out the natives. In Tasmania, we have a 100% successful genocide, not one survivor. They hunted them for sport with guns and used other methods. I would not use it as an example of how to make things better. It is hard for exterminated ethnic groups to cause ethnic tension or ethnically based civil wars. The white government in South African would have been "stable" if all the blacks had been killed or even if 98% of the blacks had been killed. Or if in Nigeria either 98% of the Muslims or 98% of the Christians had been exterminated, it would be more "stable". And sadly, the UK was not unique in its treatment of unneeded minorities.

[ColeMercury]

Originally Posted by BlondieBC

In Tasmania, we have a 100% successful genocide, not one survivor.

Well, that's not entirely true -- there are plenty of people of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent around, but they're all mixed-race. There's no one of completely Tasmanian Aboriginal descent left, though.

[Zuvarq]

Well technically, if there was a POD early enough to stop decolonization, AIDS would be butterflied away.

[Kidblast]

Originally Posted by wolf_brother

(fillerfiller)
... WTF

There were countries whose GDP per capita were higher under colonization than afterwards for quite a while. I don't think this is the case any longer.

Ghana is one example. It's GDP was lower in the 80s than it was at the time of independence. (At the time of independence, Ghana actually had a higher GDP per capita than South Korea!)

Not all colonization was evil and not all post-independence governments were great.

I imagine the 30% of Equatorial Guinea's population who were killed or displaced during the rule of Francisco Nguema would have preferred the Spanish to have stayed.

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Originally Posted by jkarr

its more i fucked up with what i was trying to say...

i was trying to answer in the context of the question: that if they never gained independence they would've stayed the same, but not with the whole white over black population and atrocities that were committed...just having the same borders and such....
but probaly mroe liberal and stable colonies that would gone like Australia and so forth..former colonies that still have ties to their colonizers, but without being directly colonies...

i was trying to refer more to the "stability" Africa had being colonies, rather than what happened in them, compared to a lot of nations that sprung up and fell apart/became dictatorships/still suffering civil wars like otl... I wasn't trying to down play what happened at all, just sucked by not explained myself better

But "stability" enforced by brute force of exploitative colonial rule is no better than "stability" enforced by brute force of a native African dictator. It doesn't matter if it's Belgian bullets or Mobutu's, people die nonetheless. You aren't following the points I am making in my arguments, there is no such thing as "good" colonialism for the natives. You assume that holding up borders that were artificially drawn with no regard for pre-existing groups of people or for geography (i.e. one tribe could be cut off from its traditional hunting grounds by just a casual stroke of the pen that could then be claimed by another tribe and the first tribe wants it back and well... that's a war) are something that are actually particularly valuable. Stability in colonial Africa was a sham, peace was simply a greater opportunity for exploitation.

Australia in which the Aborigines, that is to say the native inhabitants of Australia before British colonization, were killed, brutally assimilated into British norms and cultural values, or some combination of the two, is not an example of successful colonization in which the natives benefited wholly from colonial rule, it is an example of a successful genocide that while not completely eradicating the target group broke it so severely that it will never be anything other than a minority demographic in Australia. A piddly 2.5% of Australia's population is of purely indigenous descent. So no, from the perspective of the Australian natives, the British colonization of Australia was a complete disaster. To their eternal credit, the Australian government has apologized repeatedly for the crimes of past Australian governments and British colonial rulers alike, and makes a strong effort to respect what traditions and values the Aborigines have left.

And ultimately the most staunch defenders of the Aborigines in Australia must at the end of the day realize that there will never be any going back, the damage is done, and it is permanent and irreversible, and that ultimately the only thing that can be done is for us to attempt to repair that which has been damaged. I do not envy the people who go to sleep at night with that on their minds, as some Americans do and many more ought to.

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as abrasive, but you have a completely warped and misguided view of colonialism in terms of its entirely self-serving intentions for the metropole (the idea of "uplifting" anyone was something supporters of colonialism used to be able to go to sleep at night) and the completely terrible situation as it was for the natives. The "stability" brought by colonial rule was only to further facilitate exploitation, the more control that could be exerted over a colony, the greater the volume of resource extraction that could take place, the greater the amount of land could be taken from the native majority and handed over to the white minority, the greater the gap could be made between the colonists and the colonized. You seem to think Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda/etc. had any desire to remain a self-governing part of the British Empire which had done nothing but systematically exploit their resources and people with little to no real benefit being returned to the colonized peoples, when in reality the historical dominions that stayed with the British Empire were almost all white-majority states, barring South Africa, which was of course governed entirely by whites with blacks being completely excluded from participation in politics so it made it just about as good as being a white-majority state for the purposes of who had a voice and who didn't.

The only one of the dominions outside the classic "white dominions" (which could of course be trusted with "British" rights because in all of them political power was vested in the hands of European-descended settlers) was India, and it left three years after because the Indians saw the writing on the wall and that dominion status for India in the late 1940's was just another way of perpetuating Britain's failing grip over India.

[Kidblast]

Originally Posted by HeavyWeaponsGuy

But "stability" enforced by brute force of exploitative colonial rule is no better than "stability" enforced by brute force of a native African dictator. It doesn't matter if it's Belgian bullets or Mobutu's, people die nonetheless. You aren't following the points I am making in my arguments, there is no such thing as "good" colonialism for the natives. You assume that holding up borders that were artificially drawn with no regard for pre-existing groups of people or for geography (i.e. one tribe could be cut off from its traditional hunting grounds by just a casual stroke of the pen that could then be claimed by another tribe and the first tribe wants it back and well... that's a war) are something that are actually particularly valuable. Stability in colonial Africa was a sham, peace was simply a greater opportunity for exploitation.

That's strongly debatable. The track record for post-African governments shows that the Europeans were not the only ones who were good at exploiting their African countries. African leaders are just as good as the most autocratic of European powers at extracting value out of a subject population.

While colonial powers were exploitative and oppressive, they did not generally display the utter kleptocracy and absence of rule of law that many post-colonial nations experienced. In addition, I would argue that the poor economic planning of most post-colonial states has disadvantaged these nations just as the resource extractive models of the colonists did.

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Originally Posted by Kidblast

That's strongly debatable. The track record for post-African governments shows that the Europeans were not the only ones who were good at exploiting their African countries. African leaders are just as good as the most autocratic of European powers at extracting value out of a subject population.

While colonial powers were exploitative and oppressive, they did not generally display the utter kleptocracy and absence of rule of law that many post-colonial nations experienced. In addition, I would argue that the poor economic planning of most post-colonial states has disadvantaged these nations just as the resource extractive models of the colonists did.

Nah man, I agree with all of that, I'm just establishing that there really was no such thing as good colonialism, I realize now that what I wrote conveyed the wrong impression and I apologize for causing confusion.

African rulers in some cases were no better, and in others were actually worse. But ultimately one can't get too caught up in the perspectives, colonialism was always bad for the colonized, whether the replacement rulers after independence were better or worse is missing the point of colonialism being bad regardless of whether or not the post-independence leadership was worse.

[wolf_brother]

Originally Posted by Kidblast

Not all colonization was evil and not all post-independence governments were great.

Name one example, and granted.

[Mr.J]

Originally Posted by wolf_brother

Name one example, and granted.

I hope you mean of the first, 'cause there have been some pretty shitty post-independence governments (North Korea, for example).

[wolf_brother]

Originally Posted by Mr.J

I hope you mean of the first, 'cause there have been some pretty shitty post-independence governments (North Korea, for example).

Well yeah, obviously. But there's no example of 'good' colonialism.

[Mr.J]

Originally Posted by wolf_brother

Well yeah, obviously. But there's no example of 'good' colonialism.

Hmm...

Taiwan under Japan is debateable, as well as Norway under Sweden (if that counts). And maybe the Jesuits in Paraguay, if you really stretch the definition of "good". But yeah, no real unequivocal example.

People who say Africa would be better off if it were still under Europe remind me of people who argue that Eastern Europe would be better off if it were still under Soviet domination. They 1. extrapolate the past to today without realizing the myriad ways it would get worse and 2. ignore the wishes of the locals.