Colonialism in Africa

Okay, so, first of all I don't want this thread to be a series of posts about how vile the institution of colonialism is. We all know this, and I don't think I should have to say that this is purely hypothetical and by no means "wish-fulfilment".

That said, we also all know that the African colonies were by and large complete money sinks for the European nations that ruled them. My question is, how can we make the African colonies more profitable? How can they be exploited more thoroughly and efficiently? It can be as nasty as you like towards the natives. I'm not trying to build a utopia. What I'm looking for is an Africa where the colonial empires could be looked at later and said to be actually profitable.

Are there any PODs which could do this, or is it more of a general over-all movement that would need to take place?
 
No 1: Don't depend TOO much on one single resource. It may be lucrative in the short term but once that thing goes, you'll end up owning land that's worth next to nothing. Always have a backup economic plan.

The Congo Free State nearly fell to this with it's exploitation of wild rubber. The main reason the whole machine kept going was due to the mines in the east and the Katanga region.
 
The Congo Free State nearly fell to this with it's exploitation of wild rubber. The main reason the whole machine kept going was due to the mines in the east and the Katanga region.
Yeah. I mean they already had rubber trees, and therefore seeds, right there in right environment for them, if they had just pumped a little of the large sums of money they were making into building up some of the basic infrastructure and developing modern rubber plantations they would have been in much better shape. Instead they seem to have been too short sighted looting the place in the present and automatically assuming that conditions wouldn't change in the future.
 

Benevolent

Banned
So perhaps you'd need a more business-savvy and fore-sighted man advising King Leopold on what to do with this vast territory?

If you can remove Tippi Tipu and the Swahili presence you could prevent the resource draining of the Congo Arab War or if you cement a true alliance you could probably form a continent wide band that could effectively create a buffer population to do the Belgians bidding.

Rumaliza is an issue in the latter situation, Tippu being made governor of Stanley Falls district by the Belgians which is rich with gold deposits. Focusing on mining you hit basically the mineral reserves that now provide Katanga alone with 3bil in taxes.

It's be quite fascinating if it could be pulled off though realistically speaking unless you incorporate thousands of Congolese into positions of power and authority the whole thing will collapse.
 
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Good use of media-based propaganda, along with just normal economic development with a growing pro-West middle class. For long-term growth that seems the only way.

That's of course another point, which I would have brought up later or in another thread. It's amazing how propaganda and education weren't implemented more in indoctrinating the locals to think that being a colony was a great thing. Especially in Algeria; if the French had been more tolerant of Islam, perhaps, then conditioning the young Arabs and Berbers into believing France to be a benevolent ruler could have produced an entire generation of people who were quite okay with being part of France.
 
That's of course another point, which I would have brought up later or in another thread. It's amazing how propaganda and education weren't implemented more in indoctrinating the locals to think that being a colony was a great thing. Especially in Algeria; if the French had been more tolerant of Islam, perhaps, then conditioning the young Arabs and Berbers into believing France to be a benevolent ruler could have produced an entire generation of people who were quite okay with being part of France.

And propaganda goes a very long way in controlling the population, and it seems only the Communists realised this at the time.
 
If you can remove Tippi Tipu and the Swahili presence you could prevent the resource draining of the Congo Arab War or if you cement a true alliance you could probably form a continent wide band that could effectively create a buffer population to do the Belgians bidding.

Rumaliza is an issue in the latter situation, Tippu being made governor of Stanley Falls district by the Belgians which is rich with gold deposits. Focusing on mining you hit basically the mineral reserves that now provide Katanga alone with 3bil in taxes.

It's be quite fascinating if it could be pulled off though realistically speaking unless you incorporate thousands of Congolese into positions of power and authority the whole thing will collapse.

If you can combine that with zeppelinair's ideas, it might work. Incorporating the Congolese would be a matter of convenience in the end, and could still be seen as "darkies doing our bidding" if you spun a certain light on it (a bit like how on plantations slaves were often used as overseers). Convince them they're being rewarded, getting a station above the "common negro", so to speak, through indoctrination, education, and propaganda, and maybe you have a situation that works out more favourably and more economically for the Belgians.

This all sounds very dirty, of course, considering what the Congo Free State was.
 
Another factor that could make colonies more better-run would be infrastructural development, though this is one thing that could easily go either way IMO. Sometimes, it is better to specialize on a few parts of infrastructure than building everything in one go.

One interesting example of this would be Sarawak during the Brooke era. Up until the early 20th century, the kingdom was ruled basically through telegraphs and river transportation. In fact, most of the population and the Rajah's officials traveled by boat due to the state being densely forested and having many many navigable rivers. As a result, the administration focused more on building port infrasturcture rather than roads.

Now this didn't exactly balance Kuching's budget and the effects of this are still seen today, but it did allocate money to a sector that, for the time and circumstance, allowed people a great deal of travel and small-scale opportunity. Of course, it also led more raw materials out, which was the main point of building those ports in the first place.
 
....That said, we also all know that the African colonies were by and large complete money sinks for the European nations that ruled them. My question is, how can we make the African colonies more profitable? How can they be exploited more thoroughly and efficiently? .....

Quick answer: have the nations in question pick and then rule their colonies with the sole intend of making money. Most African regions were colonized for a lot of reasons, many times the most popular being: "No other nation has claimed this part yet, so we can just as well claim it for us before someone else comes along". Then there was the requirement to at least make it seem to your home population that you actually are doing something good for the natives. Exploitation, yes. But not overtly. Without that requirements, if a nation were openly out for fleecing the colony and using the natives as slaves in order to do so, it could make such a fat profit as Spain did in the Americas in the 1500's, yearly treasure fleet and all..
 

Benevolent

Banned
If you can combine that with zeppelinair's ideas, it might work. Incorporating the Congolese would be a matter of convenience in the end, and could still be seen as "darkies doing our bidding" if you spun a certain light on it (a bit like how on plantations slaves were often used as overseers). Convince them they're being rewarded, getting a station above the "common negro", so to speak, through indoctrination, education, and propaganda, and maybe you have a situation that works out more favourably and more economically for the Belgians.

This all sounds very dirty, of course, considering what the Congo Free State was.

There's already a French cultural institution of a class of educated and privileged natives, literally just incorporate the children of local leaders through the education system that at that time was quite imperialistic on its own.

I mean Dutch did this and every other colonial power did this too once you look into it.
 
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