WI French West Africa comes in as one Country?

[Earl_of_Somerset]

What would be the affects if all of French West Africa become on Country?
Where would its capital be? How strong would its economy/Military be?

What relations would it have with france?. Could Algerian Sahara (Algeria South of the Atlas mountians and not officialy Metropolitian France) be included in this new state? Would togo be included although its official a Mandate? Would any British colonies join this new nation?

What affects would this have on the French-Algerian War, and would French Equilatoral Africa be granted indepence as one country as well?

What kind of Government would it have?


Green:French West Africa.
Grey:Other Countries
Dark Grey:French Colonial Empire
Darkest Grey: France

[thekingsguard]

West Africa, I can see being infinately more stable than it's OTL West African counterparts. If the French take thier time developing infrastructure and educating the locals prior to independance, it may see standards of living at least on the same level as say, a poorer Latin American country.

I can see them getting Algerian Sahara, and maybe a few of the coastal West African countries joining later.

[Equuleus]

I would think Dakar would be the logical capital.

I know many post colonial African States have problems with various tribes and ethnic groups being at eachothers throats. If you put that on a much larger scale then it could either be worse from more opposed interests, or better since there is less of a chance for one group to dominate the others and tick them off.

[yourworstnightmare]

Originally Posted by thekingsguard

West Africa, I can see being infinately more stable than it's OTL West African counterparts. If the French take thier time developing infrastructure and educating the locals prior to independance, it may see standards of living at least on the same level as say, a poorer Latin American country.

I can see them getting Algerian Sahara, and maybe a few of the coastal West African countries joining later.

Or not, with even more division it could be much worse.

[archaeogeek]

Senegal and Mali were shortly united but Senegal withdrew a few months after independence - Senegal is pretty much the most stable state in this grouping but Mali hasn't been too bad. The main problem is really economic - I could see at least three countries sticking to the union - Mali (then called french Sudan), Guinea and Senegal, mostly because they were historically all part of Mali.

[Don Lardo]

Originally Posted by Earl_of_Somerset

What would be the affects if all of French West Africa become on Country?

Uniformly bad. You're essentially setting up another Nigeria/Congo by stitching together a multitude of ethnic groups, languages, religions, and cultures according to lines drawn on a map by Europeans.

Where would its capital be?

That doesn't matter because the capital will be moved within a few years after independence and then ignored as this Franken-nation tears itself apart.

How strong would its economy/Military be?

Both will be inconsequential on the world stage. Like the Congo, the former will rely on illegal resource extraction and, like many other sub=Saharan African nations, the latter will be little more than an armed mob of drug addicted homicidal kleptocrats.

What relations would it have with france?.

Pretty much the same as with the OTL west African nations; France will have perpetual basing rights it will enforce robustly, the "national leaders" will be on France's payroll and receive French political cover internationally, and France will intervene often and with little fanfare.

Could Algerian Sahara (Algeria South of the Atlas mountians and not officialy Metropolitian France) be included in this new state?

I suppose if France had been stupid enough to create the Franken-nation you propose they could be stupid enough to throw more ethnic groups, cultures, languages, and religions into the mess.

Would togo be included although its official a Mandate?

See Algeria.

Would any British colonies join this new nation?

Absent collective insanity, no.

What affects would this have on the French-Algerian War...

The economic/military drain France will be experience propping up this Franken-nation might mean fewer resources are available for adventures elsewhere.

... and would French Equilatoral Africa be granted indepence as one country as well?

Again, if France is stupid enough to do this in west Africa, why not in equatorial Africa too?

What kind of Government would it have?

Corrupt, genocidal, cannibalistic both literally and figuratively, ineffectual, intermittent, entirely dependent on foreign aid of all types, and unable to impose it's rule beyond the range of the AK-47s the armed mob it calls an army. Google, "Sudan", "Congo", "Nigeria", "Biafra", "Liberia", and others for a quick primer.

Africa was screwed by both colonization and the process by which that colonization ended. While it scarcely seems possible, this suggestion makes the OTL's horrific decolonization process even worse.

[Strategos' Risk]

Now I'm starting to think that a Nazi victory in Europe might have perversely helped French Africa

[Cináed]

Don Lardo - aside from the scale, how would this particular buggered-up multiethnic, lines-in-the-sand banana republic be any worse than all the ones around about it...?

To be honest, assuming it held together, I'd imagine it would cope just the same, more or less, as its constituent countries have in OTL. There's maybe an argument that, given the right leadership, it could turn out a bit better than, say, Nigeria.

The main problem is going to be the perception that the coast is subsidising the interior, and any government of a united French West Africa is going to have top work very hard to counter that them-and-us tendency. I'd imagine that the capital will be on the coast, and most of the development, infrastructure etc. There's also the religious divide - Christians, Animists and Muslims trying to live together is always going to be difficult.

Centrifugal ethnic groups are a massive element in a lot of the trouble in Africa, that's for sure: but a lot is also down to poor leadership. A few good, non-corrupt leaders (or well, comparatively non-corrupt: this is Africa we're speaking about, afterall) could be enough to hold the federation together long enough for real infrastructure to be built, and something approaching a national consciousness to develop. Africa needs less Mobutus and more Dr Francias.

Indeed, the ruler of this federation might do well to encourage locally based ethnic nationalism, rather than 'Senegalese' or 'Ivorian' nationalisms, as it is these units which will pose the greatest threat to what will be a sprawling empire by any standard of the word.

If it can hold together, this monster will unquestionably be a regional power to be reckoned with. Anticipate a pretty impressive army by African standards. To be honest though, there's too much against such an entity working.

[von kressenstein]

Originally Posted by Cináed

Don Lardo - aside from the scale, how would this particular buggered-up multiethnic, lines-in-the-sand banana republic be any worse than all the ones around about it...?

well a few other countries have managed to do it..

I would have to agree that it may be unlikely, however if there is a democratic government, decently educated populace and a solid constitution then why not. France just has to give a damn enough to want to bring them up to some sort of standard of living that is above the normal for Africa. help them industrialize. give them something to bind them together.. fat, happy, content people fight less then un-nourished, pissed of people with nothing to loose.

Hell look at the USA.. amazing it didnt tear its self apart.. wait it tried..
Look at China.. wait it tried..
Look at russia.. wait its tried as well..

guess no such thing as stability.

Problem with Africa is that it was used and abused and treated like a cheep date on GHB for the most part. Actually still kinda is treated as such. the west puts up petty dictators and warlords, takes the resources and pays no mind to the atrocities being committed. Hell if they didnt care about the Balkans .. why would they care about West Africa...

[Don Lardo]

Originally Posted by Cináed

Don Lardo - aside from the scale, how would this particular buggered-up multiethnic, lines-in-the-sand banana republic be any worse than all the ones around about it...?

Scale is the issue here. The bigger they are they harder they fall and this West African Federation is going to be HUGE.

Look at the current troubles in the Ivory Coast or the recent troubles in Liberia. The international community had a devil of a time intervening in those tiny "nations" once the coast/interior, north/south, Christian/Muslim/Traditional, and other problems kicked off. Now imagine the "nation" in question is larger than Europe or North America...

In fact, you don't need to use your imagination at all because the Congo exists. The UN has dropped it's largest peacekeeping force to date in that alleged nation and the result has been akin to slapping a band-aid on a decapitation. The Congo is simply too big and the problems too large for any outside force to deal with.

I recently listened to a report on the BBC World Service about the annual Christmas massacres perpetrated by the homicidal maniacs of Lord's Resistance Army in the eastern Congo. They've observed that "tradition" for nearly a decade now. Everyone knows they'll go on a killing spree again and no one can do anything about it because the region is too large, the troops on hand too few, and, to the world at large, the consequences basically inconsequential.

And that's just one disaster among the hundreds at work in the Congo.

The creation of a West African Federation is nothing more than the creation of another Congo.

[Strategos' Risk]

Colonialism sucks.

[Don Lardo]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Colonialism sucks.

We have a Sealion and Vlad Tepes award, so is there an Understatement of the Century award too?

[Strategos' Risk]

Could it be named after me?

[Wendell]

This idea is interesting, and not impossible, but is difficult. Fortunately, with a few of these countries, there is a shared history of language and/or culture. The project could fail, but might not. It won't thrive either, though, if Toure or Boigny-Houphuet get their hands on it. What is certain is that Algeria will NOT join.

[Strategos' Risk]

What if it was united through some sort of pan-African ideology. Like African communism.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

What if it was united through some sort of pan-African ideology. Like African communism.

Probably doomed to fail then. The Afrocommunists ran some of the countries that have turned out the worst and none that have emerged relatively strong following independence, with Ghana as potentially the only exception.

[Admiral Matt]

Meh, I think about the closest you could get is to exclude some of the southern bits and form a loose Islamic federation. Then at least you have an ideological purpose for the "state."

Don Lardo is quite correct, though, this thing will be awful, problem-riddled, and probably fall apart. If anything, he's generous. Good navigable rivers, arable land, greater accessible mineral wealth, higher population density, and just plain higher population - all advantages that the OTL Congo has over this bloated monstrosity.

[Strategos' Risk]

Hey, what do you know, Randy McDonald's famed Tripartite Alliance Earth timeline actually does this!

History of West Africa

For millennia, the territory of the modern West African Federation has been home to numerous brilliant indigenous civilizations. It is not until the 15th century that the region of West Africa came into intense contact with Europe, via the rapidly expanding slave trade. Upon European contact with the Western Hemisphere, an estimated 25 million Africans, mostly from the region of West Africa, were transported to the Americas as slaves. As the nation-states of western Europe -- particularly France, which had outposts along the Sénégalais and Guinéen coasts dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries -- industrialized in the 19th century, they considered the possibility of colonial expansion into West Africa, considering its potential as a market for their goods. Throughout the 1860's and 1870's, France steadily expanded into West Africa at the expense of the indigenous states. At the Berlin Conference of 1885 which ratified the final partition of Africa between the western colonial powers, France was given title over almost all of West Africa, save for the lower Niger basin and Sierra Leone, which were ceded to Britain.

The French colonies in West Africa were organized into a loose federation under the control of a Governor-General based in the Sénégalais city of Dakar. Until the end of the 19th century, France was concerned mainly with consolidating the lands under its control. It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that France began to consider the possibility of modernizing the West African colonial economy. The French administration sought to increase productivity and extract valuable resources. They fostered production of groundnuts and cotton where appropriate conditions were present and imposed taxation as a means of inducing participation in the cash economy. Where crops could not be grown, they encouraged migration to wage-earning areas elsewhere in West Africa, or even across the Atlantic Ocean to underpopulated Guiana. In the First World War, a native army of two hundred thousand was raised and transported to the trenches of the Western Front, where almost a quarter of their number died.

By the 1920's, French West Africa had become one of France's most important colonies, ranking alongside Algeria, Guiana, and Indochina. Economic modernization, and French cultural influence, had created the beginnings of an indigenous middle class working alongside the larger number of European and Algerian French. It was this indigenous middle class that began to support the idea of a self-governing West Africa more loosely associated with France. Although many French resisted the idea, the trend towards decentralization of power inside the British Empire and the establishment of federal institutions in France proper and her overseas colonies of settlement created an inevitable impetus towards West African self-government.

In 1939, after years of negotiations between the French colonial government and West African political parties -- particularly Houphouet-Boigny's RDA (Rassemblement démocratique africain) and Senghor's Convention africaine -- French West Africa was given effective home rule by the loi cadre. The loi cadre sought to establish a compromise between the RDA's desire for West Africa's transformation into a cluster of independent self-governing colonies and Senghor's ideal of a strong central government based in Dakar. Both a federal West African parliament, based in Dakar, with ultimate control over such things as national economic policy, the development of an integration transportation network, and relations with the metropole, and local parliaments in each of the colonies concerned with local affairs, were established. The bravery of West African soldiers in the European theatre of the Second World War created a new sympathy for West African concerns in France.

In the post-war era, the West African federation prospered, gaining full membership in the French Community in 1959, and finally gaining full independence from the Community in 1969. From its beginnings, the West African Federation was in a privileged position relative to most of the rest of Africa, since it retained a close association with the European Confederation along with the smaller and more vulnerable former French colonies in the Caribbean, and in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. West Africa enjoyed remarkable economic growth, as European and South American investors took advantage of West Africa's inexpensive but moderately skilled labour force and West Africa's strategic position on air routes between western Europe and South America. Cities such as Dakar, Conakry, Abidjan, and Accra quickly acquired new belts of factories and suburbs, while the agriculture of the interior was modernized. By the early 1980's, West Africa was on the verge of emerging as a member of the select group of newly industrializing countries.

Sounds very implausible and too optimistic? Well, the project intentionally wanted to have Southern Hemisphere nations do better than in OTL. However, the project also called for "a Third World War -- a nuclear world war -- sometime in the 1980's that killed billions of people, yet which miraculously left billions more alive in intact societies to witness the aftermath." So this happens-

Although West Africa was spared along with the rest of the African continent from the Third World War, West Africa did suffer terribly from the famine intentionally provoked by President Chang of the United States. This famine took the lives of one-third of West Africa's citizens outright. Although the West African government was able to preserve rule in the coastal areas and in the larger cities of the interior, social structures collapsed throughout most of rural West Africa, bringing about anarchy and precipitating a large number of local famines. By early 1984, when the entire territory of West Africa had been brought back under government control, forty-five million of West Africa's prior population of 75 million had died.

The horrors of 1982-1983 forever changed West Africa. The devastation of rural West Africa led to mass migrations, not only to West Africa's major cities but to Europe, particularly Francophone Europe. There, the seven million West Africans permanently settled inside the European Confederation performed a vital service by sending their surpluses wages to West Africa, saving the national economy from collapse. 1982-1983 also transformed the ethnolinguistic composition of West Africa: Although the West African peasantry was uniformly decimated, many of the smaller ethnolinguistic communities were reduced to non-viability. In the West African interior, many members of these communities assimilated into larger and more cohesive ethnic and linguistic communities, such as those of the Wolof in Senegal, the Hausa in the upper Niger basin, the Ewe and Ashanti of Côte d'Or, and the Bambara of the upper Mali basin. On a West African level, though, the continuing migration from rural areas of West Africa to West African metropolises seemed likely to encourage the expansion of French at the expense of most indigenous West African languages.

Perhaps the most profound change in West Africa was on the West African mentality. Prior to the events of 1982-1983, nearly the entire West African population was confident about a prosperous future. The death of 60% of the West African population in the space of two years brought an end to West African optimism. Just as many Eurasians of the 14th century reacted to the death of a third of the Eurasian population in the Black Death by turning to religious extremes, so did many West Africans. With the help of the League of Nations and the Tripartite Alliance, the West African government managed to repress such disparate threats as the threatened Fulani jihad of 1985 and the attempt by the apocalyptic Children of God cult to forcibly "agrarianize" and "traditionalize" the Côte d'Or in 1986. The annexation of the failed Sierra Leonian state in 1988 removed the last major enclave of instability near West Africa's borders. By the end of the 1980's, the West African Federation had stabilized.

West Africa's recovery from the 1982-1983 period accelerated in the 1990's, as the revival of agriculture and international trade coincided with an increase of remittances from West Africans in the European Confederation. The flood of West African peasants to West African cities and to Europe began to decline over the decade as South American and European investment began to return to pre-War levels.

The multiple invasions of Eurasia and the Americas in 1998 fortunately had little effect on West Africa, as nearly all of the actual combat occurred in regions of central Eurasia. Since Tripartite Alliance Earth gained full membership in the ITA, West Africa has undergone considerable modernization, due in large part to international and offworld investment, and to the gradual emergence of a thriving export-oriented industrial sector. Purchasing power adjusted GNP per capita was some 11 300 écus in 2000, while real growth per capita has averaged at 6 to 7 percent per annum since 1995. The large West African diaspora in Europe has also brought West African culture -- music, literature, graphic arts -- new prominence. With some reservations, a prosperous West Africa seems to be inevitable.

So, implausibly successful West African regional union/superstate, apocalyptic death and destruction following a global nuclear war, then implausible reconstruction leading to an inevitable utopia.

[Robin Hood]

Multi-ethnicism coexistence, multilingualism, and multiculturalism** don't work well in Europe*, do you think it will work in Africa?
That, if we assume France raises these Africans' standard of living and they don't suffer from poverty.

* See: The Balkans and Belgium.
** When a European country says it's multicultural, it's BS. Only it's big cities are multicultural.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by Admiral Matt

Meh, I think about the closest you could get is to exclude some of the southern bits and form a loose Islamic federation. Then at least you have an ideological purpose for the "state."

Don Lardo is quite correct, though, this thing will be awful, problem-riddled, and probably fall apart. If anything, he's generous. Good navigable rivers, arable land, greater accessible mineral wealth, higher population density, and just plain higher population - all advantages that the OTL Congo has over this bloated monstrosity.

Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, and Guinea are not deserts and the Niger and Senegal are navigable, but your overarching point is nonetheless correct.