Alternatives to The Scramble for Africa

What sort of things could be done in the 1860s? And what do you think there effects would be?

Napoléon III has better health / takes a more active role in his government / formally hands over complete power to Eugénie until Prince Napoléon comes of age / comes to an understanding with the few liberals to oppose the reactionary monarchists in the Parliament / take your pick of a POD / etc., so the French are better prepared for the Franco-Prussian War when/if it comes. As a result the war isn't a crushing defeat and ultimately is a narrow French victory and/or draw. Thus the French never push hard into Western Africa, and the other European colonial great powers never feel threatened by the shift in the balance of power in the African colonies and thus never ramp up their own colonial adventures. Africa still very likely becomes fully integrated into the European great power system eventually, but the change is less rapid, less based on conquest and more on co-opting the native regimes, and you see a lot more proxies, protectorates, satellites, vassals, etc., instead of direct colonization. West Africa and East Africa likely do much better - the Congo is still going to be fucked though, due to the exploitative nature of rubber cultivation on an industrial scale.
 
If there was no scramble for Africa, or ar least a significantly smaller one, which African polities would be most likely to rise to be respected powers?

Ethiopia, Egypt, a couple of major Sahelian states (I guess Samory's empire and Sokoto or some other Hausa successor state are the likeliest) possibly Zanzibar, maybe the Ndebele and the Lunda, probably some Lakes area states like the Baganda or Rwanda.
Kanem too, maybe? And of course Morocco.
 
Napoléon III has better health / takes a more active role in his government / formally hands over complete power to Eugénie until Prince Napoléon comes of age / comes to an understanding with the few liberals to oppose the reactionary monarchists in the Parliament / take your pick of a POD / etc., so the French are better prepared for the Franco-Prussian War when/if it comes. As a result the war isn't a crushing defeat and ultimately is a narrow French victory and/or draw. Thus the French never push hard into Western Africa, and the other European colonial great powers never feel threatened by the shift in the balance of power in the African colonies and thus never ramp up their own colonial adventures. Africa still very likely becomes fully integrated into the European great power system eventually, but the change is less rapid, less based on conquest and more on co-opting the native regimes, and you see a lot more proxies, protectorates, satellites, vassals, etc., instead of direct colonization. West Africa and East Africa likely do much better - the Congo is still going to be fucked though, due to the exploitative nature of rubber cultivation on an industrial scale.
I thought that the major problems with Frances preformance in the war was due to poor managment of the army and a large lack of aggressive tactics. How would those PODs change Frances military preformance? Maybe you could message me those answers so this thread doesn't get off topic.:D

Also without a scramble such as OTL how would activities such as tribal warfare, slave trading, etc. be handeled in the interior of Africa?
 
I thought that the major problems with Frances preformance in the war was due to poor managment of the army and a large lack of aggressive tactics. How would those PODs change Frances military preformance? Maybe you could message me those answers so this thread doesn't get off topic.:D

Also without a scramble such as OTL how would activities such as tribal warfare, slave trading, etc. be handeled in the interior of Africa?

I've hashed this out several times before, but essentially in the late 1860s Napoléon III was getting old and sick, and he knew it, and he was quite engrossed with the idea of created a parliamentary monarchy à la Britain. So he started to relinquish more and more of the day-to-day functions and control of the country to the Parliament, especially to the monarchist-dominated Sénat. Unfortunately for him the reactionary monarchists saw the Second Empire as merely a stepping stone to a second restoration, and Napoléon as nothing more than a parvenue. So, as they now held the reigns of power, they severely cut back on the military's budget and the number of soldiers the empire had at its immediate disposal, as the military was (rightfully) seen as a strong institution which supported the empire. Further, and perhaps more damaging, they purged the officer corps of successful leaders simply because they were bonapartists, or at least supporters of the current regime. So by the time the FPW occurred the French military was weak, and poorly staffed. Change that and the FPW is going to be radically different. Let us not forgot how well the French military performed in the Campagne d'Italie, and how much of Prussia's success in the Austro-Prussian War was due to luck.

To answer the second, well, likely as it had been for centuries before hand. I'm not sure what you mean by 'handled.' Without European interference there's little reason to believe that the Africans of the interior would change much.
 
To answer the second, well, likely as it had been for centuries before hand. I'm not sure what you mean by 'handled.' Without European interference there's little reason to believe that the Africans of the interior would change much.

Ideas would still travel, though - even without colonial rule, there would be missionaries and traders. Not to mention that the late nineteenth century was a period of state formation in the Sahel, Katanga and to some extent the Great Lakes, and that kind of change in governing patterns often leads to social upheaval. The interior would certainly change more slowly without colonialism, but I suspect it would still change, and that there would be internal movements for modernization as there were in, say, Persia and Afghanistan.
 
Ideas would still travel, though - even without colonial rule, there would be missionaries and traders. Not to mention that the late nineteenth century was a period of state formation in the Sahel, Katanga and to some extent the Great Lakes, and that kind of change in governing patterns often leads to social upheaval. The interior would certainly change more slowly without colonialism, but I suspect it would still change, and that there would be internal movements for modernization as there were in, say, Persia and Afghanistan.

Granted, but its not like 19th century Africans were, as a whole, against slavery, or would suddenly strop inter-tribal warfare. What you're suggesting would actually likely see a continuation of both, or even an increase.
 
Leopold gets all the (bad) press, but there was going to be Scramble even without him. Even butterflying him away you're still going to have a Scramble happen that is almost identical to OTL's, at least in terms of brutality and conquest. You need to go back to at least the late 1860s to really shift things away from that path, and the earlier than that the stronger the shift.

How would you do that without stopping German unification?
 
Who says you have to stop German unification to stop the OTL Scramble? You only need to avoid the Franco-Prussian War - or rather French losing said war.

Could the French be defeated in said war but without loss of territory and still have this result?
 
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