AHC: Decolonization. Make it better.

Your challenge is, if you choose to accept it, is to plan a smooth decolonization that will minimize wars and make it best for Europe and its colonies as well. Good luck!

BTW- part of the challenge is to recreate African borders so it will prevent future wars in Africa. Please post maps.
 
There are lots of little things that could be done to enhance the prospects of post colonial Independent nations.

The civil service is one area:

Non sectarian (ethnic, religious, tribal etc) civil service colleges set up by the early 1920s, sufficient to create a reasonable number of mid level civil servants, police etc by WW2.

This is important because in all decolonising new states the natural reaction of the new political leadership is to appoint people they know or trust over the previous Colonial appointees. Many peaceful decolonisations had provision for leaving the Colonial appointees in place for a transition period, but that is only ever going to be short term, even where amicable.

If this is going to happen, then the states are going to do much better if they have middle-ranked or senior civil servants with long experience. If they have to promote juniors or people new to the service, then a fair amount of inefficiency and probable corruption or capture is going to occur.

These colleges need to be based in or near the new state as well, in order to create viable training institutions. Having the college in the colonial homeland reinforces dependency and is too costly without much aid.

I would think the Indian Civil Service (ICS) would be a good example of an established civil service pre decolonisation.
 
There's the problem that many of the colonial institutions were setup with a main goal: centralized wealth extraction. In many instances the European overlords with simplly replaced with local overlords who stored their wealth in Europe anyways (along with their family). This is institutional and it goes back much much further (Pre-1900), the centralized wealth will create inequality and discontent.

Also there's the problem of numerous tyrants and insurgencies supported by the USSR, France, Britain, the USA, or multinational companies. Without a cold war it definitely would've been better for the decolonized nations.

Sectarian and tribal conflicts are symptoms of social distress and poorly drawn borders, not the main cause of them. The need to redraw borders based on culture would need some extensive cooperation b/w European states.

This is a massive subject, be back later after an exam.

edit: here's a thought, much better birth control in Europe , increasing the opportunity cost of European administrators over local administrators. Europe is richer, if less populated while the colonies gets more skilled labour.
 
and make it best for Europe and its colonies as well

Why is Europe going to decolonise without either economic or military pressure forcing them? It certainly isn't (Portugal, South Africa and Rhodesia) coming out of the kindness of their hearts. Nor is it (Central America) coming from an ideological commitment to democracy.

Decolonisation is going to be messy. With fragile European states (France, for example) it is going to be drowned in blood. With other states (USSR, for example) European colonisation will continue unabated. In other instances (Two Two Koreas), modern forms of colonialism developed historically.

To get a better local administrative apparatus by 1945, you're going to introduce a class of comprador intellectuals in the 1890s or 1920s. These intellectuals will be attracted towards modern nationalist and militant socialist movements.

yours,
Sam R.
 
It would be better if decolonisation hadn't occurred against the back drop of The Cold War with rival superpowers scrambling to bring newly independent states into their spheres of influence therefore causing them to fund "Liberation Movements" and prop up dictators. Many of those did as much harm to their countries as colonialism did.
 
All good points I think. Better development requires more than just the occasional generously spirited administrator, it requires long patience and investment in human capital. This is unlikely in most resource extraction colonies.

Then, if by chance we do get my preferred option of a better indigenous civil service, then there is a huge chance that such people will be pressuring for earlier decolonisation or worst (or better?!) as that is what educated intellectual types did in the 1930s!
 
It would be better if decolonisation hadn't occurred against the back drop of The Cold War with rival superpowers scrambling to bring newly independent states into their spheres of influence therefore causing them to fund "Liberation Movements" and prop up dictators. Many of those did as much harm to their countries as colonialism did.
Very good point.
Edit: also, having so many of the independence movements jumping on anti-capitalism (partly as a result of the Cold War), really, REALLY didn't help their economies.
 
Very good point.
Edit: also, having so many of the independence movements jumping on anti-capitalism (partly as a result of the Cold War), really, REALLY didn't help their economies.
(This isn't my thinking -- I'm just seeing how people will respond to it...)

Did colonialism ever really end, except in a few brave hardy countries like Cuba (especially post-Cold War) and North Korea that took care to isolate themselves from the global economy, so that they couldn't be pressured by Western economic sanctions?
 
Decolonization could've been done better by:

1. Not partitioning the colonies. India, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa would've been far more stable if they had remained unified under one administration rather than partitioned or broken up into their constituent parts.

2. Having local administrative boundaries based on tribal boundaries rather than arbitrary lines on the map in Africa. Such boundaries would've made the colonies easier to administer as they could've used existing tribal administrations that had been modified to take into account the needs of the colonial administration.

3. A transitional period of internal self-government should've been introduced from the end of the First World War so by the time the majority of these colonies became independent they would've had a democratic tradition that had been well established and a trained and professional civil service firmly in place. (In short the example of the Dominions of the British Empire should've been used as the model to follow for decolonisation.)

4. Training business leaders to take over the key industries within the colonies before they became independent so they didn't end up with the former colonial powers controlling their economies via their key industries.

5. Not making the mistake of using the war against communism as an excuse for turning a blind eye to propping up brutal, murderous regimes once the colonial powers had pulled out. The West should've supported democratically elected leaders, regardless of who they were, and overthrown local autocrats even if they "anti-communist" or serving Western interests.
 
Too make it better for the colonies, make ethnic and religious boundaries.
For example divide up Nigeria into Hausa Muslim North, Southwest into Yoruba, South into Ijaw and Southeast into Igbo Christian countries.
These states would have a better chance to be stable as their ethnic group would be incharge and there wouldnt be any liberation movements.
Germany wouldnt want a French Prime Minister, same with African ethnic groups, a Hausa wouldnt want a Yoruba to rule his people.

Anyways in these ethnic and religious states they would increase native police force and army and have politicians work alongside the Europeans, atleast in the latter 20 years before independence.
 
The USSR liberates all European colonial powers after WWII except Portugal which is liberated by Republican Spain and except Britain. That should give plenty of time for new regimes in Africa and Asia to get their act together, and powers in Europe dedicated to make Africa better off.
 
It isn't possible to easily transfer the lessons from the Dominions to other colonies, as the former were largely British citizens relocated who sort to recreate institutions and procedures in new lands and whats more were usually allowed to do so with little fuss from London.

I don't see that London would be super happy to give such a loose rein to non British ethnic colonies
 
The two biggest problems are the colonial powers and the colonists.

1) A better transition for the natives mean more expenses for the colonial powers in most cases. Money their constituents aren't eager to spend.
2) The colonists aren't going to be thrilled with the idea of training their replacements. Even if you give them jobs in the mother country (which would cost money again) their attitude for the most part will be "I am out of here soon so why spend a lot of time and effort training this guy? It's a good time for me to slack off before I leave" and that is a best case scenario where he doesn't feel resentment against the natives. In that case the scenario might well be screwing the guy over by deliberately training him poorly in revenge.
 
(This isn't my thinking -- I'm just seeing how people will respond to it...)

Did colonialism ever really end, except in a few brave hardy countries like Cuba (especially post-Cold War) and North Korea that took care to isolate themselves from the global economy, so that they couldn't be pressured by Western economic sanctions?

Sounds like an example of "The only thing worse than being colonised was not being colonised".
 
Best bet for Decolonization to work better is to start early, planning out the colonies to be more than markets for the home nation's goods and resources colonies. That means either a major growth in the number of colonists to set up a base of skilled people in the nation (this has the potential to backfire - see Rhodesia and Portugal's African wars), training locals in substantial numbers to be those skilled people (a major problem in Africa and India owing to the latest racism that remained for decades among the colonists) or both.

Keeping nations unified is also IMO a very good idea, especially in Africa. Bloody near all of Africa's ugliest conflicts have been based in whole or in part on tribal loyalties, and yet the places where the biggest number of tribes exist in one nation (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa) have had far less of this. (Angola and Mozambique also sorta qualify - the wars there were in large part proxy wars between the USSR and Cuba on one side and the United States and South Africa on the other.) Nigeria is the primary exception to this, but Nigeria was also a proxy fight backed by oil interests. India's decolonialization has left one prosperous nation (India), one impoverished, hopeless craphole (Bangladesh), one civil war torn, bitterly-divided nation (Sri Lanka) and one nation run by its armed forces and infested with violent Muslim fundamentalists (Pakistan). It should have never been divided, if you ask me.

Best way to start this is for Europe to have the realization after WWI that colonialization will inevitably fail unless the benefits of it go to all of the colonies' subjects, and so begin the process of developing the colonies in the 1920s. This also has the effect of getting the anti-colonialist Americans off everyone's backs to a certain extent. Thus, the 1920s wealth is also shared with many of the colonies, with the resource-rich colonies and the jewels getting first pick of the new wealth. The Great Depression causes this point to be hammered home further, and in the cases of both Britain and France several million people from the homeland go to the colonies in search of a better life, which in many cases they find. After WWII, they make the job of economic growth easier, and the colonial powers begin steering the nations towards independence. India is first off, becoming independent in 1949, with the African and Asian nations following through the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Western Europe and the United States battle hard to keep these nations within their spheres, while still allowing them to make their own destinies.
 
The USSR liberates all European colonial powers after WWII except Portugal which is liberated by Republican Spain and except Britain. That should give plenty of time for new regimes in Africa and Asia to get their act together, and powers in Europe dedicated to make Africa better off.

And in the Commonwealth of Britain and India, the mutinous aviators and sailors bring economic equality to a Union Commonwealth?... then we all sing the red flag and are home by six for tea and crumpets.

yours,
Sam R.
 
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