AHC: Failed Colonization Of Africa

So with a POD after 1838 find a way for the colonization of Africa to have failed to gain much ground there and for much of the continent to remain independent of European rule.
 
Prolonged wet period could do it. According to John Hunter's "The Fate of Africa", the scramble for Africa succeeded because the continent had just entered a period of drought. Keep the climate wet for a little longer, and the extra population/food security could give Africans a military edge against occupation.
 

Meerkat92

Banned
Prolonged wet period could do it. According to John Hunter's "The Fate of Africa", the scramble for Africa succeeded because the continent had just entered a period of drought. Keep the climate wet for a little longer, and the extra population/food security could give Africans a military edge against occupation.

Not to mention the increase in mosquitoes...
 
So with a POD after 1838 find a way for the colonization of Africa to have failed to gain much ground there and for much of the continent to remain independent of European rule.

About the latest PODs where this is feasible are either averting the Anglo-Egyptian War or alternately Leopold II's bid to take over the entirety of the Congo region. Leopold had the conscience of Reinhard Heydrich with balls of adamantium, but his gamble was warned against by a lot of people. If the Scramble's two direct causes are either singly or jointly averted, there's rather less cause on the part of the rest of Europe to want Africa without Belgium grabbing a portion the size of all of Western Europe, meaning everyone else wants it too, or the UK deciding that indirect rule was not enough, direct rule was preferable.
 
First of all there were fairly successful colonies with settled populations of Europeans in south Africa mocambique and Angola prior to the pod (pardon the lack of punctuation/cellphone) and they had existed for at least 200 years. I think if there was a socialist revolution in either France or Britain and it had an anticolonialist ideology; they would be able to check large annexations of African land.

European expansion often came from international agreements and it was never that profitable. Native states such as Egypt, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar could have colonized the continent themselves.


Another crazy idea is an expansive US or a Brazillian based Portuguese empire could play a role in the colonization of Africa.

Throw in a totally independent Free State of Congo or semi-wanked Boer state and there will probably be enough going on to stop European imperialism. I think Europeans will instead simply rule a trade empire instead of a territorial one, this might be more profitable in the long run.
 

scholar

Banned
"Failure" is an impossibility, it was already partially a success at the time.

However, it is certainly a possibility to merely have the Europeans cling to the coastline and islands surrounding Africa. Controlling the interior would be rendered unnecessary and the dangers of doing so would be made apparent if they attempted to do so. Why not keep a profitable empire where its safe with a mostly mulatto population than attempt to engineer an empire and have your soldiers die horribly by the thousands?
 
Also, the Bantu peoples in the east and south-east IOTL were significantly weakened by a disease ('Rinderpest') that wiped out a lot of their cattle and thus triggered famines shortly before the European powers began to annex those areas: Have that not happen, and not only would they have been able to put up a bit more resistance but the main part of Kenya where white settlers congregated IOTL would still have had a much higher level of occupation by native peoples which would have helped to discourage that settlement...
 
Its not a question of failure. Europeans weren't chomping at the bit throughout history to conquer Africa.
However...it is perfectly possible that they might not bother.
Get rid of the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent economic crisis and depression and you may not see Europeans frantically carving up Africa to try and spur growth and head off others in the now turbulant economic situation.

I'd have to think though that eventually European business interests would start pushing into the interior...which would not be pleasant; imperialism is a moderating force on capitalism. Take away the imperialism and you end up with bodies like the Congo Free State.
 
I think your best bet is to have some early venture be a horrible expensive catastrophe similar to the British Afghanistan campaign, to the extent that no other government wants to repeat it.
 
Early, well-published outbreaks of Ebola and Lassa fever, at least one of which makes it back to a european capital might encourage a hands-off attitude.
 
I think your best bet is to have some early venture be a horrible expensive catastrophe similar to the British Afghanistan campaign, to the extent that no other government wants to repeat it.

Uhm...
Abd al-Qadir winning big in Algeria? Napier's expedition to Ethiopia wiped out Adua-like?
For the record, Isandlwana and Majuba Hill did not stop the Europeans in the slightest.
 
Its not a question of failure. Europeans weren't chomping at the bit throughout history to conquer Africa.
However...it is perfectly possible that they might not bother.
Get rid of the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent economic crisis and depression and you may not see Europeans frantically carving up Africa to try and spur growth and head off others in the now turbulant economic situation.

I'd have to think though that eventually European business interests would start pushing into the interior...which would not be pleasant; imperialism is a moderating force on capitalism. Take away the imperialism and you end up with bodies like the Congo Free State.

Which in any honest definition of Imperialism was imperialism of a very direct sort. Unless you don't think the proprietary colonies in Virginia and India were imperialism, or British imperialism in Niger. :rolleyes:
 
You'll get European penetration of Africa one way or the other. Whether that is economic or military, it's going to happen.

The best you can hope for is that it's less enthusiastic, and that indigenous African powers are more adept at repelling incursions into the central areas.

You would then have a scenario where the Europeans remain effectively confined to coastal areas, perhaps indirectly or economically controlling inland areas - just like real life, basically, but without the formal governance structures.

Such a scenario would give rise to pretty horrible abuses, though. As Tyr has noted above, a lot of imperialism in Africa was much better in humanitarian terms than what preceded it.

I could easily see a scenario with more surviving indigenous powers, though. Less enthusiasm from the Europeans, and I see no reason why Sokoto, the Tukulor Empire, Ashanti, Dahomey, Rwanda, Burundi, Buganda, Lozi and some of the other Congo/Lakustrine kingdoms couldn't have survived.
 
About the latest PODs where this is feasible are either averting the Anglo-Egyptian War or alternately Leopold II's bid to take over the entirety of the Congo region. Leopold had the conscience of Reinhard Heydrich with balls of adamantium, but his gamble was warned against by a lot of people. If the Scramble's two direct causes are either singly or jointly averted, there's rather less cause on the part of the rest of Europe to want Africa without Belgium grabbing a portion the size of all of Western Europe, meaning everyone else wants it too, or the UK deciding that indirect rule was not enough, direct rule was preferable.

There's also the French penetration of the Senegal, which was mostly luck as the region had just been smashed all to bits by empire-builders like El Hadj Umar Tall and Samori Ture who were still in the process of consolidating their claims. You'd need to either make the French (and likely the British as well) distracted from West Africa for at least a decade, or make the Fulandi Jihad happen ten years earlier.
 
After 1838, it's already to late. The better you can have is more indigenous states being only semi-colonized.

The colonial problem wasn't a diversion for inner issues (contrary to what was said for France mainly, it caused more problems without resolving anyone) but because

1)The coastal regions needed to be protected from raids.

2)Ressources just waiting for someone with better guns.

3)Research of new markets.

The biggest difference I can think of is all the countries adopting a more Commonwealth-like policy, with more use of indigenous elites in Black Africa.

Probably more semi-colonized lands, with Congo being "shared" rather than atributed to Leopold, by exemple.
 
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