Africa without the "Scramble for Africa"

I agree that lack of capital would be a problem, and may lead the weaker states to a situation of chronic indebtedness and ultimately economic vassalization to the European powers (something like Latin America vis-à-vis the US). But the incentive to modernize would be there all right: any state that didn't may risk falling behind its neighbors.

Would they not risk social upheaval if they pushed for major reforms, though? Most regimes go out of their way to avoid that. That might of course depend on the particular polity, but changes would in most cases need to be quite substantial for them to be upgraded to new levels of competitiveness (they'd need to basically build up everything from scratch - infrastructure, educational facilities, effectivised agriculture etc etc).
 
Unlikely. The Boer population was too small to have feasible colonies stretching that far. They only had a tenuous hold over parts of the Transvaal. And the Rhodesias were settled more for business reasons by the British than any variation of "manifest destiny". You may have seen some Boer expansion into what would become Southern Rhodesia, and possibly Mozambique, but you wouldn't see formal republics there.

That said some Boer trekkers did make it as far as Kenya and Tanzania, but they were a very small minority.

There are issues of climate and health as well. The Congo is a miserable place for pasty northern Europeans. There is way too much nice land availalbe where the Boers actually are for them to be wandering into tropical jungles. And the intervening areas are a bit barren.
 
I am not sure Africa would be in a better position, we'd see African Vassal Empires getting guns from their European allies and then ruthlessly expand and crush their neighbours. We'd still end up with multi- cultural nightmares.

This is insupportable. You seem to be operating from the impression that Africa was a bunch of grass huts and loin-cloth wearing barbarians with spears before the Light of Europe Shone Upon the Darkness. There were plenty of vast multi-cultural empires that were anything but nightmarish. There is no reason to assume that there would not continue to be, and many of these would have benefitted by the synergies of exposure to capitalism, as opposed to being violently conquered with horrendous death toll.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
It's amazing how the term "multicultural" has become a dirty word, much as "liberal" did a few years back. People accuse the Left of being Orwellian in its treatment of language, but all the evidence seems to point rightwards. I wonder what's next on the hit list?

A really interesting reference on the effects of the slave trade on these African civilizations is Allan Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America. It's a collection of primary sources, all written by literate slaves from the region. A really engaging read.
 
Would they not risk social upheaval if they pushed for major reforms, though? Most regimes go out of their way to avoid that. That might of course depend on the particular polity, but changes would in most cases need to be quite substantial for them to be upgraded to new levels of competitiveness (they'd need to basically build up everything from scratch - infrastructure, educational facilities, effectivised agriculture etc etc).

The big changes of modernisation have the advantage of being practically automatic (if you want to call that an advantage). In the nineteenth century, all over the world millions of people experienced the (often violent) disruption of their social fabric, the loss of their livelihood, the destruction of traditional patterns of life, poverty, famine and sudden deprivation of rights and dignity once believed secure. The agents of change more often than not were European colonialists, but the difference whether it was done directly or not really was gradual - the real force behind it was what we like to call 'progress'. Africa can not escape this, and this development has winners as well as losers. The Victorians believed differently, but men like Shaka Zulu and Tippu Tip were exponents of African modernity. KwaZulu would not have had too much trouble surviving as a state. Some of its neighbours - different story. But that's not unprecedented, either.
 
Wouldn't Africa be way more primitive if there wasn't a colonial administration that built up roads, infrastructure etc? The local governments wouldn't be very interested in modernisations that upset the status quo, and likely wouldn't have the capital for major improvements. Were there even functioning states in many parts?

No. For the most part, colonial administrations only built rail and roads for strategic purposes or to extract resources. The only places that really benefitted from colonial adminstration were settler colonies, like Algeria, Tunis, and South Africa.

Local governments were actually very interested in modernization, they just didn't really have an opportunity to implement them before they were invaded and violently destroyed.

Part of the problem was that there was a deliberate policy of withholding modern weaponry from Africa, which left African governments stuck with primitive firearms or whatever could be produced in Africa, which was of course limited. That left African states at an insurmountable technological disadvantage.
 
Would they not risk social upheaval if they pushed for major reforms, though? Most regimes go out of their way to avoid that. That might of course depend on the particular polity, but changes would in most cases need to be quite substantial for them to be upgraded to new levels of competitiveness (they'd need to basically build up everything from scratch - infrastructure, educational facilities, effectivised agriculture etc etc).

This depends upon the threat level. For example, Ottoman reform efforts caused immense upheaval, but were regarded as absolutely essential. Likewise Japan.

In the case of African polities, the options were modernize or face utter destruction. Most would have chosen modernization - but their options in that regard were severely limited.

For example, sleeping sickness prevented the use of livestock in most of the populated parts of Africa - that is a massive disadvantage - and the general lack of industrial resources in most of the continent was another.

Rather long-lived states like Bornu were more or less hopelessly located for purposes of modernization, so you're kind of left with North Africa and Zanzibar, all of which probably had the resources to successfully reform, e.g. build railways, etc.
 
The big changes of modernisation have the advantage of being practically automatic (if you want to call that an advantage). In the nineteenth century, all over the world millions of people experienced the (often violent) disruption of their social fabric, the loss of their livelihood, the destruction of traditional patterns of life, poverty, famine and sudden deprivation of rights and dignity once believed secure. The agents of change more often than not were European colonialists, but the difference whether it was done directly or not really was gradual - the real force behind it was what we like to call 'progress'. Africa can not escape this, and this development has winners as well as losers. The Victorians believed differently, but men like Shaka Zulu and Tippu Tip were exponents of African modernity. KwaZulu would not have had too much trouble surviving as a state. Some of its neighbours - different story. But that's not unprecedented, either.


I would also add that modernization also caused horrendous social upheaval in Europe - in fact probably greater than in the "Third World", and despite occurring over a much longer period - yet states still pursued it.

And also, the vast majority of European states have not survived. Just those of Germany probably outnumber all the states of Africa that have ever existed!
 
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