AHC: Congo Wank

By Congo, do you mean the Kingdom of Kongo (or perhaps Loango, if you want to be different), the Lunda, the Luba or some other people?

It's going to be difficult. Slave pressures from Europeans and Arabs disrupted the internal cohesion of Kongo constantly, and the Lunda and Luba were gone by the time of full colonialism in the 1880s.

In my TLIGGT, I'm going to have Kongo recognized by the Papacy and given its own Catholic infrastructure, freeing it from the worst of Portuguese influence and giving it avenues for diplomacy. Also, it'll be a lot more genuinely Catholic because Catholicism won't be tinged by the greed of European missionaries.

OTL, there was a Kongolese Bishop of Utica, so the idea isn't without precedent.

EDIT: Oh, post-1800? Not a freaking chance. Least developed part of Africa, Kongo already under the Portuguese boot, Lunda and Luba gone, and without any of the state-level native organization seen across the Sahel and the Swahili coast. Not to mention it was the most economically desirable part of Africa... nope.
 
Well it won't stay independent, so it would have to be colonized by people more invested in infrastructure/development than the Belgians. And then you'd have to get them to work with actual decolonization, instead of the mess that Belgium left behind. Maybe an alternate *Liberia or *Sierra Leone could conquer much of the Congo and develop peacefully as an American ally/British colony?
 
Well it won't stay independent, so it would have to be colonized by people more invested in infrastructure/development than the Belgians. And then you'd have to get them to work with actual decolonization, instead of the mess that Belgium left behind. Maybe an alternate *Liberia or *Sierra Leone could conquer much of the Congo and develop peacefully as an American ally/British colony?
West African nations-could conquer much of the Congo
and develop peacefully

Sorry, but I don't see how.
 
Sorry, but I don't see how.

By alternate Liberia/Sierra Leone, I meant that the United States/Great Britain settles free slaves in the Congo instead of West Africa. I wasn't referring to the historical West African nations, although I can see how I might have been unclear.
 
Have someone other than King Leopold and the Belgians colonize them, and they could do find. The Congo was probably the least prepared of any of the African colonies to govern themselves because of the way the Belgians exploited them. Both the French and British did far better.

Now that is unlikely to make Congo a BRIC equivalent by itself; more likely it'd be like Nigeria. But it's still far better than what exists now. With some good luck and a second major POD though, it could do a lot better.
 
Central African rubber colonialism was bad no matter who practiced it. The French were as bad as the Belgians, the Germans would have been just as bad (plus they are, after all, the ones who did the whole Herero thing) and the British probably wouldn't have been much better. Portugal had forced labor in Angola until 1961. And their attempts at developing Africa were "throw our biggest degenerates at Luanda and hope the Africans civilize themselves". The Africans ended up with huge contempt for the Portuguese and often had to bail Portuguese farmers in Angola out.

Of all the regions of Africa that aren't inhospitable desert, the Congo is probably the hardest to wank even to sub-BRICS levels unless it is non-independent, in which case it could get subsidy windfalls etc.
 

Deleted member 67076

Could we not butterfly away the scramble? Have native client states in the region instead of direct colonization?
 
Not with that late a POD, and not in that particular region- slave raids and population movements had ended what major states existed in the Congo at the time. The Sahel, for example, had city-states and native sultanates to make into protectorates, as did South Africa and the Great Lakes with their small kingdoms.

Kongo was essentially beholden to Portugal by 1800, and Lunda and Luba were either gone or at the best on the swift road to decline. Furthermore, even with a limited scramble, the Congo offers not only rubber for the 1880s but ivory and eventually oil (Gabon and Cabinda) and a variety of mineral resources.

This is, as I said, the hardest part of the continent to protect from outright Euro domination.
 
Well, I think the problem here is a question of perspective. Africa DOES have big and, rather rich, countries, at least on par with BRICS

First, BRICS commonly includes South Africa, so wealth in Africa is possible. Then, most BRICs have a GDP per capita of between 10k and 5k (India) (per year, in Purchasing power parity)

Countries like Nigeria or Ghana have between 2.5k and 5k, so it's not THAT far off. And it means there's no African curse or whatever.

So, what can you do about it?

Well Congo will be colonised, there's no way around it especially after 1800, the whole world was colonised, no reason that Congo escapes that. So the question is how can you make it better?

First you can butterfly away Belgium. Not being ruled by a mad king who basically killed one person per ton of rubber might be a good start. I mean, the man was considered cruel and inhuman with his locals, cruel by late XIXth standard, that means something.

Second, let's say Congo still gets ruled by our dear Leopold. Well, at decolonisation you can separate Congo in two, or even three countries, maybe even along ethnic lines? The Belgians were big on ethnicities, so maybe they find it better that everyone is in their place with no unhealthy mingling of races? Some goes to a bigger Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda get reunited (there are a lot of ethnies which are transborders there so it would make sense, correct me if wrong)

That way you can have more stability in Congo as the big problem is civil wars caused by ethnic problems, especially in the Great Lake region. A smaller Congo closer to the coast would have more chances of succeeding
 
By alternate Liberia/Sierra Leone, I meant that the United States/Great Britain settles free slaves in the Congo instead of West Africa. I wasn't referring to the historical West African nations, although I can see how I might have been unclear.

Sorry, I was being unclear. How do the people coming from West Africa not encounter resistance from the natives?
 
No matter what POD you choose you need to account for the Resource Curse/Dutch Disease/Paradox of Plenty issue that they and many others have. Succinctly, countries with an abundance of non-renewable resources tend to perform more poorly than their counterparts. And they often experience higher rates of civil insurrection and other political instability. The exceptions tend to be countries with well developed economies before they discover the resources (like Norway with oil), or the ex British colonies like the US, Canada, and Australia where the resources were discovered in conjunction with broader economic development.

To the OP (revised with POD of 1600) my best guess is have the British get their first and establish their legal and economic institutions. Ideally, perhaps it develops economic institutions beyond natural resources perhaps trade along the Congo river or some nascent manufacturing before independence.

Have independence occur relatively peacefully. Anything that prevents unnecessary military expenditures and a build out of the military or police. Also keep the Cubans away in the 70's and 80s so that it doesnt become a cold war hot spot post independence. Given its location, that seems a bit remote but...

Not being an expert on the specifics of Congo, that's the best I have to offer.
 
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