DBWI: Scramble for africa?

Straha

Banned
What would have happened if the european powers had not written africa off as a disease filled primitive land and had colonized it?
 
European powers go under like all those naiive companies throughout the century who kept trying to make money out of the place?
(obviously not in exactly the same way, they aren't going to go under- but suffer economicly at least)
 

Straha

Banned
Perhaps the nightmarish congo diseases like AIDS or Ebola would be global problems instead of lcoal problems.
 

HueyLong

Banned
The continent would probably be far better off. More European efort would be put into the diseases of the area, for example.

And, we wouldn't have the gray area on maps that we have now- there would be actual states, instead of the two or three recognized states and the thousands of patchwork entities.
 

Straha

Banned
Why would it be better off? The disease environmetn precludes largescale european settlement.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Malaria would have likely gotten an earlier vaccine, for example- there would be more of an incentive to cure African diseases if they set their sights on Africa.

And even now, Africa is too undeveloped for real disease research. If Ebola or AIDS hit Europe or America, there would be major attempts towards a vaccine or better treatment. There are some isolated cases that get observed and recorded, but most of the Dark Continent is still full of unknown diseases.
 

Straha

Banned
I don't see it as being worth the price of exposing euro-american trade routes to the dark continent and getting its diseases passed along.
 

HueyLong

Banned
But, if they had moved into the continent (as you suggest) diseases would have to be studied and cures would have to be worked towards.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
Many more Africans might be Christian today, instead of the spattering of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Animist they are today. The Indians might not be quite as strong, as least navally, today, without their colonies to protect. Maybe the battle of the Cape would have favored the British instead?
 

Straha

Banned
But, if they had moved into the continent (as you suggest) diseases would have to be studied and cures would have to be worked towards.

Ok so we're a bit better in tropical medicine and have LASIK surgery in 1990 instead of in 2005. Not much changes in medicine.
 
How About This...

Well, the Great White Fleet by Marcus Garvey wouldn't have had as much access to the African continent in the 1920s, that it had. Bessie Smith wouldn't have been the author of the 1924 "Anthem for Black Folk". Frighteningly enough, we may have had to deal with the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois of "peaceful coexistence"...
 
Well let's remember that Portuguese Angola and Mozambique are probably the best places to go in Africa... if there were more areas like Angola, I don't see how Africa WOULDN'T be better off.
 
The continent would probably be far better off. More European efort would be put into the diseases of the area, for example.

And, we wouldn't have the gray area on maps that we have now- there would be actual states, instead of the two or three recognized states and the thousands of patchwork entities.


What sort of maps are you using? Thanks to the import of guns, foreign mercenaries, state-building by the Swahili in east-central Africa, etc., most of the subsaharan continent outside of the more impenetrable jungles and barren deserts is nowadays divided up into fairly sizable states. Admittedly, one has to redo the maps every few years as some states fall apart or are swallowed (whole or in parts) by their neighbors.

Bruce
 

HueyLong

Banned
Those sizeable states exist only by decree of the Concert of Nations- they hold almost no reality, and most modern maps show only the known and stable entities, and show everything else as a disputed gray area.
 
Actually, J. D. Fage's alternate history novel, A History of Africa, addresses this precise scenario. As a satire, the book ends with the least plausible possibilty: Europe fights 2 (!) devastating wars and the resulting political and social exhaustion and destruction forces European nations to give up their African empires. I actually found a site with the map showing what Fage proposed his alternate Africa would look like today. Here it is:

Africa-map.jpg


Weird, huh?
 
Does he even know anything about African tribes? Those borders often seem to make no sense... I don't think the Europeans would be THAT bad.

And in Europe, Austria-Hungary has mysteriously vanished... I suppose they tried to colonize Africa and overstretched themselves? (I haven't read the book)
 
Does he even know anything about African tribes? Those borders often seem to make no sense... I don't think the Europeans would be THAT bad.

And in Europe, Austria-Hungary has mysteriously vanished... I suppose they tried to colonize Africa and overstretched themselves? (I haven't read the book)

Well I'm pretty those colonies are the result of consolidated spoils of war. I mean why else would a european country rule an outside territory twice its size with a hundred times as many cultures and languages.
 
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