State of Africa if Colonies Never Gained Indpendence
- Thread starter The B
- Start date
Chances are there would still be independence movements, and likely a few civil wars. However, there probably would be some somewhat stable African states/dominions. Rhodesia comes to mind, and an earlier East African Federation is possible.
With all the insurgencies against the colonial powers, it'd be a huge mess. And a money pit for the colonizers too, unless they're willing to genocidally exploit the continent as thorougly as King Leopold in the Congo (and seeing as that wasn't considered morally acceptable even in the late 19th century, any country that did that today would probably be treated like North Korea). I can't imagine any POD that would allow this to happen: decolonization could have been delayed, but for 50 years?
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
I'm sure the residents of what was known as the Congo Free State who had their hands (or those of their offspring and loved ones) hacked off for failing to meet their rubber quotas would agree with you.
Right, the colonial powers never did things like create exploitation economies based off of resource extraction that lead to all sorts of developmental issues after independence or inflamed tensions between various African tribes, peoples, and religious groups through either ignorance or deliberate divide-and-rule that caused problems after independence, or God forbid enriched themselves and their countries at the expense of the people who were already there. Except they did.
The Germans in ruling over the colony they referred to as Rwanda-Urundi deliberately favored the entrenched Tutsi rulers over the Hutu majority population of Rwanda because A. the Tutsis were a useful proxy and saved the Germans the trouble of establishing their own administration and B. they believed that the Tutsis, with their tall, angular forms and relatively light skin made them somehow superior to the Hutu. You can't make crap like this up, the Germans who colonized Rwanda-Urundi seriously believed that Tutsis, who are descended from Ethiopians, were basically "lost white people" who had lost their way in Africa and been diluted by contact with the "savage" Africans. Stories abounded of how the Germans took a somewhat problematic system that was already in place in terms of the Tutsis dominating the Hutu and made it even worse, there were stories of whenever a Tutsi king would stand up, he would have a Hutu servant nearby and plant the haft of his spear in the servant's foot.
Along came WWI and the German loss of its African colonies, Belgium, which then ruled the Congo, was awarded German Rwanda-Urundi as spoils of war. The Belgians proceeded to change absolutely nothing about the problematic social order the Germans had established in Rwanda-Urundi and in fact only entrenched the divides between Hutu and Tutsi through the establishment of a pass card system, now allowing those who hated the Tutsis and wanted revenge to have documentary evidence on those they were targeting.
Brussels kept this ugly situation from turning into a bloodbath by sheer force of arms until it departed from Rwanda in the 1950's, at which point the situation degraded and Rwanda and Burundi alike degraded into a cycle of persecution and counter-persecution and armed conflict that only recently seems to have calmed down because of the outbreak of a genocide which claimed the lives of 800,000 Rwandans, Tutsi and otherwise, or 1 in 10 Rwandans, in less than a year.
So yes, by all means please hold to these antiquated notions that Belgian and/or German rule was better or that continued rule would have been better for the people of Rwanda, because I assure you, they both have a hand in the problems that plagued the country in the first place. Just like the British in Nigeria, or the Portuguese in Angola or Mozambique.
Really the idea that Africa was better off under colonialism is an argument founded on either ignorance or willful disregarding of the facts at hand. There was no colony that "got off easy" unless it was so unimportant to the ruling power that they never did anything with it. Take a look at a map of Kenya under British rule, how the vast majority of the land (and the best agricultural land at that) is owned by a ridiculously small white minority whose population numbers are either stagnant or declining, whereas the Kenyan blacks own even less than Asian Indians and Malays brought in from British colonies to serve as civil servants and are confined to small, cramped plots of marginal land that more often than not had enormous problems with slums, sanitation, and poor medical care that the British or the local settler community never bothered to do anything about. And in spite of everything seemingly arrayed against them the Kenyan black population was booming, this made a troubling situation into an intolerable one, and when faced with the alternative: starvation and massive overpopulation without adequate access to good land, the Kenyans chose to revolt against the British instead. The British have some fool notion that they handled colonialism like a clean, orderly fire drill where everyone got out of the building in record time and nobody got caught up or trapped inside. I say the Mau Mau prove otherwise.
So we've got a series of intolerable situations: a poor situation while the colonialists are still in the country, or a bubbling pot just waiting to boil over until the colonial rulers who caused the problem to leave, there is no room left for this idea that the benevolent, all-knowing white man civilized the savage Africans and that his departure destroyed Africa.
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Thanks so much for saying all this much better than I could. I think it's pretty close to ASB to assume that the European public would put up with endless guerilla wars to prop up an inneficient system of exploitation that probably costs far more to run than it produces, for 50+ years longer than OTL.
If you want a TL where Europe still has major colonies in Africa today, you probably have to start changing things in the 19th century, and I'm not sure how you would do that anyway (but I'll think on it)
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
BlondieBC could do this better than me, but he had some intriguing ideas on how the lack of a WWI could allow a more populous Europe to expand colonies in Africa.
Ultimately though it depends on the place, things like the Congo with huge native populations and unfriendly environs for colonists from temperate European climates are never going to be subdued.
Places like Namibia with low population density and small groups of easily-obliterated (because let's face it there are plenty of other powers who wouldn't care about the Herero and Namaqua any more than the Germans did) natives would be ideal targets for Europeanization (i.e. wiping out the natives entirely or more likely reducing them to such a weak status that they can never effectively challenge the rule of the colonial power again), South Africa, by that same vein, could be substantially more "white" than it ever was historically because of its Mediterranean climate that made it the only place in Sub-Saharan Africa that Europeans ever established a serious colonial presence in before the Scramble for Africa.
The advent of the submachine gun, however, as Wolfpaw so eloquently put it, puts colonialism on borrowed time. The French had a huge community of settlers in Algeria, they abandoned it as well when the realization set in that the Algerians would all quite literally accept death in exchange for their independence, ultimately the Algerian willingness to fight exceeded the French willingness to hold on to them.
European powers would want to modernise their colonies to an extent in terms of infrastructure and economy, they may want to get a little more money out of them or maybe some sort of liberal colonialism comes along.
Might be better. Might be worse. Maybe both. Depends on whether you think freedom, poverty and ethnic tension occasionally blowing over into civil war is better than being ruled by a foreign power who keeps things relatively peaceful and somewhat prosperous for some and bearable for others.
Of course, there will be uprisings sooner or later, so for my above to exist you'd need ASBs after a certain date. And the colonies would probably be running in the red unless things are handled brilliantly.
Might be better. Might be worse. Maybe both. Depends on whether you think freedom, poverty and ethnic tension occasionally blowing over into civil war is better than being ruled by a foreign power who keeps things relatively peaceful and somewhat prosperous for some and bearable for others.
Of course, there will be uprisings sooner or later, so for my above to exist you'd need ASBs after a certain date. And the colonies would probably be running in the red unless things are handled brilliantly.
BlondieBC
Banned
No, just avoid WW1. Europe was exporting millions of surplus whites each year before WW1, and even reversed the flow. The whites went to the better locations such as USA/Argentina/Aussie first, but overtime these places probably limit immigration. At this point, we see massive flows to Africa. And even this does not happen, a few hundred thousand per year of will go to Africa. Africa now has around 600 million below the Sahara. Back then is closer to 60 million. A lot of these countries had a few million people back then, so just a few hundred thousand immigrants over a couple decades will give you South Africa demographics. A million or so gives you a white majority. And there is the issue of how WW1 crippled the European economies, then WW2 does it again. And without the holocaust, at least some of the Europeans would solve civil wars by eliminating whole tribes.
Without some great global war, the colonial system would still at least partially exist.
BlondieBC
Banned
Why? The colonial system dominated by Europe existed from 1550 to 1900 with few issues. Sure countries would lose colonies, but new ones would be taken. The colonies were abandoned because the Europeans were too weak to keep them much more than lack of will. Lets go through some examples
1) Tunisia/Italy - Lost in a war. ITTL without WW1, they are majority Italian due to immigration and people switching identities to the wining side.
2) Suez - UK/France strong enough to keep.
3) Hong Kong wanted to stay British, but UK too weak to keep. ITTL, China will be kept down by Europe plus Japan.
4) Singapore and straights colony. Easy to keep.
5) SW africa - German majority. So likely is Angolan Highlands.
6) British East Africa. Huge Indian population used to keep natives down along with substantial white population.
7) Algeria - French win war if there is even a serious rebellion.
etc, etc.
If India itself stays British, that is... Once there's an independent India, I don't know how much this'll help Britain stay in charge. (also without WWI half of this would be German East Africa)
I was thinking about possible Soviet sponsored uprisings and perhaps an Arab Spring type situation, if one goes, so do the rest.
"Those Kenyans got their independence, what about us Nigerians!"
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
Actually this happened in British colonies after Indian independence.
After the mother country goes free, these people are still minorities in a hostile land where they may face varying degrees of persecution from the black majority. Classic British policy: when the situation doesn't work for you, find a minority whose survival and power is dependent upon British goodwill.
The African Indians were quite loyal to Britain in OTL and many had been there for a generation or two.
There is a reason why they fled to the UK after decolonisation and not India!
BlondieBC
Banned
No WW1 means no USSR. You are left with Russia ruled by either Tsars or Russian nationalists. Russia was just an old fashion colonial empire that happened to have its colonies (Central Asia, Poland, Finland, and Siberia) attached to the Russia majority areas. Whoever rules Russia in a no WW1 scenario has a vested interest in defending the status quo.
Arab spring will not happen in North Africa due to demographics. It will be majority European. In the Middle East proper, it will be controlled by the Ottomans.
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
Indeed, certainly ruthlessly cunning.
You could probably do better under the British than under any other colonial power, you just had to be willing to sell your soul to the British imperial machine to be able to do so.