AHC/WI: Have Africa be partitioned by the Europeans based on ethnic lines?

Skallagrim

Banned
As much as I like the idea, have you seen an ethnic map of Africa??!!?

(...)

Good luck putting all of that into colonies. Also how would the Europeans know the differences?

To be fair, that map doesn't show the interrelationship between languages at all. One might compare and contrast it with this map and this map. Of course, you're right that Europeans wouldn't know how to group these languages at all, but there are clear linguistic groups/families in Africa.
 
To be fair, that map doesn't show the interrelationship between languages at all. One might compare and contrast it with this map and this map. Of course, you're right that Europeans wouldn't know how to group these languages at all, but there are clear linguistic groups/families in Africa.

But then again, that map is so chaotic why would the Europeans bother with that? Why not just draw a line.
 
Here's an interesting AHC: During the Scramble for Africa, have Africa be partitioned by the Europeans based on ethnic lines rather than based on arbitrary borders.

Also, a good framework map to use for this would be our TL's 2017 borders in Europe, which in many cases are approximately based on ethnic lines.

In addition to this, what exactly would the consequences of such a move be?

Any thoughts on all of this?

I don't think this would be as impossible as most people seem to think. The Romans used to base the administrative districts of their provinces on pre-existing tribal boundaries; just having their colonialist descendants copy the idea, and voila.
 
But then again, that map is so chaotic why would the Europeans bother with that? Why not just draw a line.

That's true. Thus, OTL. ;)

There are very few arbitrary lines in Africa. African borders mostly follow waterways, resources and geographical accidents, just like everywhere else in the world (except North America). IMHO to simply follow geography and economy is clearly the best way to create a viable country.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
I don't think this would be as impossible as most people seem to think. The Romans used to base the administrative districts of their provinces on pre-existing tribal boundaries; just having their colonialist descendants copy the idea, and voila.

That is true, but the Romans actually intended to turn the areas into culturally Romanised parts of their empire. They did outright conquest, or they did vassalage. Either way, it made sense to keep existing boundaries (either because the vassal was just kept intact, or because needlessly reconfiguring the tribal boundaries op people you've just conquered is just going to cause resentment).

Europeans had little reason to care (at least to such extent) when carving up Africa. They mostly didn't aim for vassal states, but for subjected territories, and they certainly didn't intend to integrate the inhabitants as equals within their existing states. I believe that can be changed, but it requires a change in general attitude in regards to colonialism (and in particular to African colonialism). I have some trouble thinking of a convincing POD.


There are very few arbitrary lines in Africa. African borders mostly follow waterways, resources and geographical accidents, just like everywhere else in the world (except North America). IMHO to simply follow geography and economy is clearly the best way to create a viable country.

As often as not, they follow waterways that were channels for trade, rather than historic bounderies. Geographical borders make sense, yes... when applied correctly. Mountain ranges tend to be pretty useful, and often form natural boundaries. With rivers (and those were often used by Europeans), you have to be careful. If the river has historically been a boundary, that's great. But if a river is a centre of a cultural area, with the same people living on both banks, turning it into a border is terrible. And that happened regularly, too.

Best boundaries are ultimately cultural boundaries. Let people decide who they are, with whom they wish to share a geographical territory, and let them have that territory. In the end, this often resembles something geographically sensible (as with mountain ranges dividing different peoples regularly), but the goal should be to ensure that peoples who feel they ought to be joined must not be divided, and people who feel they ought to be separate should not be forced into one country.

Bottom line: borders shouldn't be drawn by outside forces. Even if they follow geographical features, these may well be the wrong geographical features, which still makes them random lines. Just... more squiggly random lines.
 
As much as I like the idea, have you seen an ethnic map of Africa??!!?
murdockmapbound.png


Good luck putting all of that into colonies. Also how would the Europeans know the differences?
That map is so generalistic and incomplete :-/
 
That map is so generalistic and incomplete :-/

Ok, fair point. The point was 1. Africa is complex. Very complex, as it is several times Europe's size. 2. Why the heck would Europeans care for this? Maybe they could take it into consideration, but I don't see why borders would be decided with it. And that's IF they even know the differences between the different people groups apart from Muslim north traditional south.
 

Deleted member 97083

Each country would be so small that it would be really easy for foreign powers to exploit. The more powerful states in traditionally more developed areas (e.g. Zanzibar region) would start conquering the poorer states, supported by US or Soviet arms depending on each power's interests.

Alternatively, if they were federations based on large linguistic groups, each country would be so large and contain so many geographically separated ethnic groups that civil war is inevitable.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Alternatively, if they were federations based on large linguistic groups, each country would be so large and contain so many geographically separated ethnic groups that civil war is inevitable.
What about doing nation-building in large African colonies for decades, though?
 

Deleted member 97083

What about doing nation-building in large African colonies for decades, though?
The economic nation building will only happen if there are no plans of decolonization, or if the decolonized country is to become an ally against some ideological enemy (e.g. "Communism").

Geographic nation building, well that would just be forming borders around mountains, rivers, and strategic areas instead of based on ethnic groups, so OTL.
 
I'm seeing a lot of posters on this thread repeat similar misconceptions about African history. Namely, that Africa did not have any nation states prior to colonization and that European colonization had no effect on inter-ethnic fighting or ethnic development in Africa. I would recommend that anyone interested in learning more about African political history read The Black Man's Burden by Basil Davidson. It's an excellent book that touches on some of the points I will make.

First, Davidson notes that nation states did exist in Africa prior to colonization. The Ashanti Empire in its form of political organization pre colonization most closely resembled what we refer to as a nation state than anything else. We should also note that ethnic borders in Africa were anything but static before colonization. In fact, there was a continent-wide trend towards ethnic and political consolidation, as seen by the expansion of the Merina and Ethiopian Empires, to name a few, that was frozen by European colonization. European colonial powers promoted ethnic conflict in order to more effectively administer their colonies, in a divide-and-rule strategy. With the end of colonization, this led to ethnic conflict, usually between the European-promoted ruling minority group and other ethnic groups. The most infamous example of this is the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda that was catalyzed by Belgian colonial policy, but there are also numerous other examples. I mention this because European colonialism is too late to create ethnic nation states in Africa. By that point, the Europeans are only going to encourage ethnic conflict and solidify ethnic divisions like they did OTL. The best way to get more ethnic nation-states in Africa is to delay or avoid European colonialism and let the process that was already happening OTL continue to its natural endpoint. I just can't see European colonizers promoting ethnic divisions unlike OTL because that would run counter to the historical goals of exploitation and conquest associated with colonialism.

Also, someone mentioned that there are "few arbitrary borders" in Africa. I would say this is demonstrably incorrect.

mapAfrica.gif


There are multiple nonsensical borders here that are the result of colonization; such as the Caprivi strip, the Congolese pedicle, the Senegal-Gambian border (or the fact that they have a border), the weird border between Cameroon, Nigeria, and Chad, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo's borders with the Republic of the Congo and Angola. A lot of them just have unnatural shapes that probably would not have formed absent European colonialism. In the case of the Congo's border with the ROC and Angola, first off Cabinda does not make sense geographically, second off it's illogical in that it splits the historically relatively unified Kikongo people among three different countries.
 
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I tired making a map of an ethnically divided Africa also trying to use historical nation states but it quickly turned into a bit of a mess. This is the kind of map I relied the most on but I cannot comment how accurate it is

9d420580ae903bff2b55ce179dd95a74.jpg
 
There are multiple nonsensical borders here that are the result of colonization; such as the Caprivi strip, the Congolese pedicle, the Senegal-Gambian border (or the fact that they have a border), the weird border between Cameroon, Nigeria, and Chad, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo's borders with the Republic of the Congo and Angola. A lot of them just have unnatural shapes that probably would not have formed absent European colonialism. In the case of the Congo's border with the ROC and Angola, first off Cabinda does not make sense geographically, second off it's illogical in that it splits the historically relatively unified Kikongo people among three different countries.

ALL the aforementioned borders exist to reach waterways and therefore improve infrastructure and trade in a region where there was a great European rivalry. This problem isn't exclusively African. One can very well say that Alsace-Lorraine border is just as arbitrary as the ones you mentioned.
 
That is true, but the Romans actually intended to turn the areas into culturally Romanised parts of their empire. They did outright conquest, or they did vassalage. Either way, it made sense to keep existing boundaries (either because the vassal was just kept intact, or because needlessly reconfiguring the tribal boundaries op people you've just conquered is just going to cause resentment).

Europeans had little reason to care (at least to such extent) when carving up Africa. They mostly didn't aim for vassal states, but for subjected territories, and they certainly didn't intend to integrate the inhabitants as equals within their existing states. I believe that can be changed, but it requires a change in general attitude in regards to colonialism (and in particular to African colonialism). I have some trouble thinking of a convincing POD.

I'm not sure the contrast is as strong as you're making out here -- whilst in later periods the Romans did intend to integrate their provinces into the Empire, in the early days (before the Social War, pretty much) this wasn't the case, and the Romans still used pre-existing state boundaries in their administration; plus the European colonisers (at least some of them) did intend to westernise their subjects (that was the whole point of the Mission Civilisatrice, for example).

Plus, the bolded bit would still apply, even if the Europeans were just looking to subjugate land: people are easier to subjugate if you don't needlessly make them resent you, after all.
 
ALL the aforementioned borders exist to reach waterways and therefore improve infrastructure and trade in a region where there was a great European rivalry. This problem isn't exclusively African. One can very well say that Alsace-Lorraine border is just as arbitrary as the ones you mentioned.

I don't mean to disregard your point, but I genuinely don't understand what you mean to say here. Would you mind rephrasing? Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm not sure the contrast is as strong as you're making out here -- whilst in later periods the Romans did intend to integrate their provinces into the Empire, in the early days (before the Social War, pretty much) this wasn't the case, and the Romans still used pre-existing state boundaries in their administration; plus the European colonisers (at least some of them) did intend to westernise their subjects (that was the whole point of the Mission Civilisatrice, for example).l.

I think you have touched on an interesting point. The Europeans did intend to Westernize their subjects, as demonstrated by the evolue class in Francophone Africa, les affranchis in the Caribbean, etc. However, it's important to note that Westernized black people were still treated as black people by European society. In addition, if you read Afro-Caribbean political theory such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa you will see that Westernized populations were deliberately kept to a small number (like say 5% of the population) and used as a "buffer class" so that frustrations about European colonialism were thrust upon them rather than the colonizing class.

As for how Westernized Africans were treated by Africans: Sure, they were black people that were slightly more "civilized" than others by European standards, but they were still subject to discrimination. There are plenty of examples of this that you could probably find with a quick google search. I specialize in African history and not in Roman history, but from my understanding the Romans would have treated culturally Romanised subjects as equals regardless of phenotype while Europeans tended to treat culturally assimilated Africans pretty horribly. That in my opinion is the distinction between Roman imperialism and European imperialism.
 
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CaliGuy

Banned
Plus, the bolded bit would still apply, even if the Europeans were just looking to subjugate land: people are easier to subjugate if you don't needlessly make them resent you, after all.
So, the Europeans in Africa could do what the Romans previously did?
 

Deleted member 67076

I specialize in African history and not in Roman history, but from my understanding the Romans would have treated culturally Romanised subjects as equals regardless of phenotype while Europeans tended to treat culturally assimilated Africans pretty horribly. That in my opinion is the distinction between Roman imperialism and European imperialism.
A bit off topic, you're right here. One finds Roman Emperors from every part of the empire- Hispania (Theodosius), Serbia (Constantine), Syria (Phillip the Arab), Africa (Caracalla), Mauretania (Marcrinus), Britain (Constantine III), etc.
 
A bit off topic, you're right here. One finds Roman Emperors from every part of the empire- Hispania (Theodosius), Serbia (Constantine), Syria (Phillip the Arab), Africa (Caracalla), Mauretania (Marcrinus), Britain (Constantine III), etc.
You make a good point but we must not forget the timelines involved.

The very start of the Scramble is 1884 and decolonisation happened less than a century after. If you say the situation stabilised around 1900 (to stay vague) and that it was starting to be noisy again in the 1930's (birth of independance movements), then you only have about 30 years, with a World war in the middle.
 

Vuru

Banned
Nations were and are weakly defined, so Africa was mostly divided like this:

"hello France, you get tribal territories of X, Y and Z, however tribe Y has it's loyalties divided, they are more loyal to W, which is loyal to us, so we take part of it, Y1, ok?
"ok"

However allegiances switched very quickly and multiple times, shitting on all attempts to divide it good
 
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