AHC: A white majority nation in Africa- discuss potential implications

There are a couple of possibilities for South Africa.

The earliest is if the Cape Colony doesn't get ceded to Britain in 1806 (I think). This might mean no Great Trek, which means a bigger white population in OTL Cape Provbince. This will have all sorts of other butterflies and South Africa as we know it will be unlikely to exist.

Another possibility is the talks around Union collapse and each of the four colonies decide to go their own way. It is plausible then to have a Cape with a white plurality - a majority might be harder to accomplish.

There3 is also a conspiracy theory that Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated because he was planning on splitting South Africa into two. You could thus have a white majority state (there would have toi be some population transfer) with its core in OTL Western Cape, connected to Johannesburg and Pretoria via a land strip, which would then include Bloemfontein. Port Elizabeth and the large areas of white settlement in Natal could be exclaves of this state too.
 
Namibia would be the easiest, the POD could be in 1886. At that date, Portugal ceded to Germany all of the territory South of the Cunene to Cabo Frio in return for acceptance of the Rose Coloured Map, perhaps they can offer Germany some territory elsewhere. That strip of Nambia contains over half of the country's population. Ethnically speaking, 70% of the Namibian population is from that area (though there has been migration southward).

In 1990 you would have a mere 300,000 nonwhites in the territory south of Cape Frio and north of the Orange River. The butterflies for Namibia are enormous, as SWAPO is mostly Ovambo. It would not be far-fetched to have around 400,000 whites in the territory by that date, with just over half living in and around Windhoek, perhaps 50,000 in Swakopmund/Walvis Bay, and the balance in the other small cities and farms of the country.

The problem is how to convince Germans to go there instead of Latin America or the US.

I have an idea but it depends from how this is received by volkish nationalists: OTL, the Jewish Colonization Association bought land in Argentina and housed there up to 200,000 Jews; TTL, it could buy or be granted estates in the German South-West Africa to make Askhenazi Jews settle there, far from the pogroms; on the hand, their practice of the Yiddish language might make this more palatable to the authorities wanting to settle these land with European settlers but, on the other hand, Ostjuden weren't popular in Germany, even among Yekke.
 
A while back on the pre-1900 section there was a thread about the French birth rate not declining in the 1800s.

One of the consequences of that would be more French emigration to Algeria and Tunisia. It might also mean large scale emigration to French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. Perhaps there would be enough French people there for France to retain some enclaves along the lines of Ceuta and Melilla which Spain has in Morocco.
 
This is ASB and requires a POD before 1500, but here goes...

I did do an alternative history where the British Isles had double the population from 1500 if not earlier. It was called Scenario B2 (i.e. Britain with double the population). I did it so that the UK had the money and personnel to be a more significant military power after 1945.

However, one of the side effects was doubled emigration from the British isles. After the American colonies become independent (twice as many British, but twice as many rebels too, so same result) most the extra emigrants settle in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. But there were also at least twice as many white British settlers in South Africa, the Rhodesias and Kenya. In the case of South Africa it was enough to produce a narrow white majority in the 1950s IIRC.
 
Guinea-Bissau could possibly work. It's current population is 1.7 million, but the Portuguese white settlers mostly settled in Angola and Mozambique. If Portugal wanted to, they could have encouraged enough settlement in the region. They would need to get around 600,000 settlers early on, which is smaller than the total amount of Portuguese settlers if they were redirected. Assuming that birth rates among whites and blacks stay similar, it could be majority white.
 
Guinea-Bissau could possibly work. It's current population is 1.7 million, but the Portuguese white settlers mostly settled in Angola and Mozambique. If Portugal wanted to, they could have encouraged enough settlement in the region. They would need to get around 600,000 settlers early on, which is smaller than the total amount of Portuguese settlers if they were redirected. Assuming that birth rates among whites and blacks stay similar, it could be majority white.

Why would they go there? Guinea-Bissau was less wealthy than either Angola or Mozambique.
 
South Africa with a different history. Remember that Whites were in parts of South Africa before the Bantu got there. So... Have the white settlers keep the Bantus from moving west (and south), and a 'South Africa' that's somewhat larger than Cape Colony (but probably smaller than OTL's South Africa) could easily be majority white.

It would be helped, of course, if the descendants of white/Khoisan marriages were counted as white (basically OTL's 'Coloured' count as white).
 

Ryan

Donor
have the British originally found and settle the cape rather than the Dutch. IIRC the cape under the Dutch didn't receive as much immigration as it could have due to the policies of the east India company, so under the British there would likely be a greater amount of immigration earlier on which, combined with the population growth of the larger amount of settlers, would lead to a larger white population in south Africa. it would also have the benefit of making the white population more homogenous (no British/Dutch divide) which would likely affect the politics of the cape to their benefit e.g. no white immigration restriction to ensure specific white group dominance.
 
Saint Helena is usually considered part of Africa, and it's mostly all white. Does it count?

But more seriously, I think the Seychelles might be the best bet. You wouldn't have a huge white majority given the plantation economy, so maybe 55%. As always, it helps if you can define some of the lighter-skinned mixed-race people as white.

Cape Verde could work. They could receive significant Portuguese immigration at some point.

Do Cape Verdeans count as white? They seem very mixed race. There's Cape Verdeans that are indistinguishable from Iberians and then there's Cape Verdeans who look very African. Are they not white enough, or would there need to be more European genes in the population so more people would consider them white?

Why would they go there? Guinea-Bissau was less wealthy than either Angola or Mozambique.

Yeah, the Portuguese never invested much into it and it was a very poor colony.
 
Do Cape Verdeans count as white? They seem very mixed race. There's Cape Verdeans that are indistinguishable from Iberians and then there's Cape Verdeans who look very African. Are they not white enough, or would there need to be more European genes in the population so more people would consider them white?
They're nearly 70% mestico and have a small population, so slightly more immigration and a looser definition of 'white' could make it happen.
 
The challenge here is to have a nation in Africa, and likely to be a former colony of a European power, be majority white (kind of like Australia). This ideally should be accomplished without means such as genocide.

What would be the implications of this on the international scope and in the regional scope?
Israel would have been a good contender. It's a former colony of Britain (and of Rome, etc...), and majority white. However, it's just a titch inside Asia instead of Africa.

3%20conntinant.JPG
 
Last edited:
Not really considering that most of the Jewish population comes from Arab countries (if you consider Middle Easterners nonwhite, which if not than all of its neighbors are white anyways). Anyway it's really tempting to say this is OTL with North Africa being mostly white. Other than that its hard to see how it would be possible.
 
Thinking outside the box here: what about Western Sahara? At a population of half a million, all you need is a half a million European (or possibly North American) immigrants to make it 51% White.

Of course, it's mostly inhospitable desert, but it's not impossible given a span of decades.
 
Thinking outside the box here: what about Western Sahara? At a population of half a million, all you need is a half a million European (or possibly North American) immigrants to make it 51% White.

Of course, it's mostly inhospitable desert, but it's not impossible given a span of decades.

Kick-start the whole thing by mining phosphates and fishing; fish processing, iron ores and hoping there is enough offshore oil might make the whole enterprise doable, but Spanish Guinea is a more worthwile investment than the Sahara.

OTL, this is an economic burden for Morocco, because of the subsidies.
 
Suppose Germany does not lose its colonies to misadventure, Southwest Africa becomes a sunny place to retire to beginning in the Fifties, air-conditioning, manicured lawns, Oompa bands, a boring sort of Florida. Add jet airliners and a casino and you easily push the european populace past a million. Do Germans take up golf? Beaches and surfing? Thousands of sun tanned nudists. Maybe they buy Walvis Bay to put in a cruise ship terminal. We merely need to butterfly the global wars.
 
Top