I've often been told on these boards that much of Africa wasn't suitable for white settlement because of problems with climate and disease. However, the two major Portuguese colonies, Angola and Mozambique, had huge white settlement. These areas are both tropical, malarial and at low altitude, i.e. everything that's supposed to be bad for whites. How come such large scale settlement happened? As a secondary question, do these examples mean that settlement in other parts of Africa is more plausible than is commonly assumed?
How come white settlement in Angola and Mozambique?
- Thread starter Socrates
- Start date
The Portugese also settled Brasil which would have similar climate in some areas.
But I believe large scale Portugese settlement in Angola and Mozambique only began in the 1950s and steadily increased until the 1970s.
In which time period housing and health care for European immigrants would have been far superior than they would have been for settlers in the 18th of 19th centuries.
Surely West Africa would be included within the 'jungle areas'.
But I imagine it would be possible in Zambia, possibly Katanga, Malawi and the highland areas of East Africa.
The problem is that after the 1960s these countries are independent so why would they want huge white settlement?
While before 1970 Europe is progressing well economically and there are other more advanced places to migrate to - North America, Australasia, South America and South Africa.
BlondieBC
Banned
This is mostly from my research for my TL, so it has a German bias to information, but some of problems/issues/ideas.
1) Malaria is huge issue. Over time, you get drugs to help, but there are ways to minimize. The highlands were seen as better for settlement. Few reasons such as fewer swamps, easier to drain sloped land, temperature closer to what Europeans like, dam rivers for water, dam rivers for energy. Angola, South Africa, East African highlands are consider good areas. Now once you get enough technology, then sure everything works fine. But this is a many decade long problem.
2) Lack of Coal. Oil discovered better late. Lack energy for production outside of South Africa which has coal. Also does not have malaria. So you need hydroelectric, which is seen as expensive.
3) Different food crop package. You can go to South Africa and use Med crops. Not true in much of Africa.
4) Soil. Tropical soil are less fertile due to more rain that has removed critical trace minerals and elements. Easy to fix today with modern science, but in 1880 you don't have the soil testing technology. So take central Brazil as example. Now huge farm area, but it took a generation of work with 1960 technology to first get fertilizer mix right, and second breed/engineer right types of grass and farm crops.
So is it plausible. Yes and no. Yes it is technically plausible but it cost a lot over a 40 year development period. No, no one will fund. But lets use ASB magic on motivation. After Germany unifies the gods of Germany get UK and German to make deal. UK gets many things it wants, but German ask for either Greater East Africa (German East Africa plus British East Africa) or Greater Kamerun (Kamerun + Nigeria OTL) or Greater SW Africa (SWA + Angola + slice of deep Congo basin). German gods decide German people want badly so budget is say 5-10% of size of OTL army budget (Strong Alliance with UK keeps Germany safe). German gods have Germans to move to these areas.
OK, so by 1900 or so, we have major German colony with a few hundred K white Germans. Malaria is under control (manageable). Crops have been figured out. We have rail network. We have good farm/ranching land. We have factories using local materials to make something for export back to Germany. By 1950, we could have white supermajority area that is part of Germany or views self as Germanic.
People see USA taking over so much land, but miss we had fewer issues (less severe strain of Malaria), unpopulated, and we invest a fortune making it work over 100 years or so. Do same investment with Africa, sure you could have it work. Will is lacking. Sure Portugal could have metropolitian Portugal include white Angola. UK could have white Dominion in East African Highlands. USA could have greater Liberia as State. etc, etc.
1) Malaria is huge issue. Over time, you get drugs to help, but there are ways to minimize. The highlands were seen as better for settlement. Few reasons such as fewer swamps, easier to drain sloped land, temperature closer to what Europeans like, dam rivers for water, dam rivers for energy. Angola, South Africa, East African highlands are consider good areas. Now once you get enough technology, then sure everything works fine. But this is a many decade long problem.
2) Lack of Coal. Oil discovered better late. Lack energy for production outside of South Africa which has coal. Also does not have malaria. So you need hydroelectric, which is seen as expensive.
3) Different food crop package. You can go to South Africa and use Med crops. Not true in much of Africa.
4) Soil. Tropical soil are less fertile due to more rain that has removed critical trace minerals and elements. Easy to fix today with modern science, but in 1880 you don't have the soil testing technology. So take central Brazil as example. Now huge farm area, but it took a generation of work with 1960 technology to first get fertilizer mix right, and second breed/engineer right types of grass and farm crops.
So is it plausible. Yes and no. Yes it is technically plausible but it cost a lot over a 40 year development period. No, no one will fund. But lets use ASB magic on motivation. After Germany unifies the gods of Germany get UK and German to make deal. UK gets many things it wants, but German ask for either Greater East Africa (German East Africa plus British East Africa) or Greater Kamerun (Kamerun + Nigeria OTL) or Greater SW Africa (SWA + Angola + slice of deep Congo basin). German gods decide German people want badly so budget is say 5-10% of size of OTL army budget (Strong Alliance with UK keeps Germany safe). German gods have Germans to move to these areas.
OK, so by 1900 or so, we have major German colony with a few hundred K white Germans. Malaria is under control (manageable). Crops have been figured out. We have rail network. We have good farm/ranching land. We have factories using local materials to make something for export back to Germany. By 1950, we could have white supermajority area that is part of Germany or views self as Germanic.
People see USA taking over so much land, but miss we had fewer issues (less severe strain of Malaria), unpopulated, and we invest a fortune making it work over 100 years or so. Do same investment with Africa, sure you could have it work. Will is lacking. Sure Portugal could have metropolitian Portugal include white Angola. UK could have white Dominion in East African Highlands. USA could have greater Liberia as State. etc, etc.
BlondieBC
Banned
Less severe type of Malaria (species). Mostly used blacks who have better immunity. Often had sex with said blacks so pickup up said immunity. So yes, this can be a model. Back to German focus, Germany gets say Kamerun in 1870. German gods have 2-3% surplus German males and few females move there. They take native wives. Roll forward to 1970, and we end up with something that looks like Brazil. Genetically mostly African, but with small white elite and medium sized mixed race population and large mostly African genetics that has Germanic culture.
BlondieBC
Banned
USA built Panama canal and cleared out malaria in 1908 or so. Seems like Cuba had malaria program with in decade of this, so if you have the will and funding, it is doable in any areas. So back to Germany, WW1 is adverted. Somehow about 1910 you get 100 million mark budget (about 5% of army budget) going towards developing something. Lets say Germans partition Angola as they were talking about with British. You can end up with White Angola now. You could have this by 1950 completed.
That's not Brazil. Look at the Genetic studies and 70% of the genetic material in the Brazilian population is European. Still if you wanted to settle Angola your idea would work.
Kaptin Kurk
Banned
Afte a brief bit of research, the whole 70% of Brazil is genetically European seems to be a Y chromosome / X Chromosome issue. While not necessarily a falicy, it would be more properly stated that 70% of Brazil has Y chromosomes from European fathers. For those who don't understand genetics, I'll keep it simple: If a European Man fathers a child with an indian, his son fathers a child with a black man, and a his son fathers a child with a Chinese, and his son fathers a child with a Sioux, that child is still 50% European. (Assuming all the children are boys) Phenotypically, we could expect a person who doesn't look much European, but genetically such a son would be 50% European.
Or to clarify, the Y chromosome is passed on from generation to generation, and most subject populations tend to have the y chromosomes of their conqueros prominent in their genes, no matter their phenotype.
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Parts of West Africa seem to have savannah, similar to Zambia:
http://www.zonu.com/fullsize-en/2010-01-11-11674/Biomes-of-Africa.html
I'm posting this in the pre-1900 forum on the basis that it would be with a much earlier POD. There is nothing inevitable about independence in the 1960s.
If settlement in Mozambique is possible, then why should East African settlement be restricted to the highlands?
The first one seems to go out in the window post 1960. The other three all apply to Kenya, yet there was plenty of settlement there.
Well if you look at the Portuguese program under the Novo Stado it seems like the highest percentage of europeans settled in Mozambique was 3% of the total population. In Angola the percentage is much higher at 26% during the peak of Salazar's program. This makes sense since Angola isn't low altitude and has a plateau in the interior of the country with more moderate temperatures, and the coastal region is home of the best and deepest harbors in all of West Africa. So there are obviously natural assets that Angola has compared to German Cameroon or the French Congo.
Portugal was surprisingly successful in their colonies despite being the smallest and poorest European nation to own colonies. In 1950 80% of Portugal was functionally illiterate and was very much a peasant based society. The other thing about Portuguese colonial administration is that it was decentralized. Portugal had a much lighter touch than the other european powers on their colonies. The railroads and mining that led to the boom in the 1900's was mostly funded and controlled by British merchants.
I think that Salazar was the first attempt of centrally developing the African colonies, since he nationalized the Companies that owned the mining and railroad concerns there. He also provided subsidies to Portuguese to settle there. I think for agricultural Portugal it was probably eaiser to send Europeans to live there since the standard of living would be a smaller difference. This is much different than the idea of a country like Germany or Britain sending their people there. Since the standard of living was so much higher there than in Africa.
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katchen
Banned
Take a good look at Angola and Mozambique's geography. Angola and Brazil actually used to be part of each other about 65 million years ago before plate tectonics split them apart (that's why if you find big oil deposits on one side of the cookie cutter side of the coast where the two came apart, chances are you'll find a huge oil deposit on the other side--Africa to South America and vice versa). What this means is that since there is a part of Brazil where there is a highland rising up from the ocean to about 4500 feet (where you get places like Sao Paulo), you get a similar place in Angola. And that's where the Portuguese settled and called it Nova Lisboa (now called Huambo).. And it extends south along the coast all the way to Namibia, though not north along the coast to Luanda.
And with Mozambique, the far south of the country is south of the Tropic of Capricorn, giving it a cooler climate like Florida. That's where the Portuguese put the capital of Mozambique, which they called Lourenco Marques (now called Maputo and still the capital). And to help matters, Lourenco Marques became the major port of enttry for the Boer South African Republic back in the day, before the Boer War between 1870 and 1900 when South Africa was independent and experiencing a gold rush and Lourenco Marques whas where they built the railroad to Johannesburg.
Does that help?
And with Mozambique, the far south of the country is south of the Tropic of Capricorn, giving it a cooler climate like Florida. That's where the Portuguese put the capital of Mozambique, which they called Lourenco Marques (now called Maputo and still the capital). And to help matters, Lourenco Marques became the major port of enttry for the Boer South African Republic back in the day, before the Boer War between 1870 and 1900 when South Africa was independent and experiencing a gold rush and Lourenco Marques whas where they built the railroad to Johannesburg.
Does that help?
BlondieBC
Banned
Why? Do you see too much or too little German immigration in my scenario. Too European or too African?
BlondieBC
Banned
True on the Savannah, but you have to first get port going in Malarial zone. Again, not technically hard, but takes a big budget lasting over a decade. A lot of the funding tended to be small. The "huge" German SWA improvement budget was 15 million marks or so, over half decade or more. Call it 3 million marks per year. Army budget was 2000 million marks at one point. Navy was 400 million marks. Add up cost of what you need, and you will simply find budget too low. The reason I got such a huge German wank in Africa in my TL was everything is easy with unlimited budget (well, budget running into hundreds of millions per year, no questions asked). Just look at the cost of the various items, not sure if discussed in my TL. But you need a lot of things. Port, RR, incentives for settlers, colleges for local conditions research, industrial subsidies, etc. Or you need a lot of time. It took from 1620 to 1780 for USA to get off eastern seaboard. It took hundred years to do rest of continent. The startup part is the hard part.
Too little European immigration in your scenario. While I accept Kaptin Kurk's point about patrilineal DNA not being everything the majority of the DNA in the Brazil gene pool is European.
But that's not exactly what the research is saying. The research indicates that the average Brazilian has more genetic ancestry from Europe than all other places combined. It's not just an issue of a child happening to have one European male ancestor going back a ways. Here is a link on the subject:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0017063
The major settlement of Angola and Mozambique really occurred during the last 30 years of the empire in the 1943-1973 period. It dramatically increased in the 1962-1973 period. Ironically the guerilla threat made the Portuguese government really pay attention to economic development, and as the guerillas were faraway from the urban areas, they were not seen as a threat to settlers.
The other European powers' colonies also had their settler populations grow substantially during the 1945-1960 period. If they had held on longer like the Portuguese, I'm sure the Belgian Congo, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia and French West Africa all would have had similar white populations. Home air conditioning and air conditioned cars only became commonplace in the 1960s after most of Africa was independent.
Getting to Africa was easier than ever, by the 1940s there were ocean liners that carried prospective settlers in relative speed and comfort to Africa. By the 1960s jet liners made getting to Angola and Mozambique even faster. By April of 1974 the government was helping pay fares for prospective settlers on TAP jumbo jet flights to Africa. Once in Africa, homes had electricity, telephones, radios, etc. so living in Africa no longer resembled a scene from "Out of Africa".
One thing that really set the Portuguese colonies apart from those of other European powers was that the settler society in Angola and Mozambique as considered far more modern and liberal than back in Portugal. Also, the standard of living in Portugal was much lower than that for whites in Africa, so it made Angola and Mozambique very attractive places to move to. In contrast, white Rhodesian society was more conservative and provincial than Britain's and there wasn't as large a disparity in living standards. Portugal in 1974 was still a very conservative old-fashioned country, where women were expected to wear black mourning clothes for the rest of their lives if their husbands should die. It was also still a very rural country where many people lived in small villages where gossip was very prevalent and where the social hierarchy was very rigid.
Settler society in Portuguese Africa was very different. Most settlers were middle and upper middle class, and had a standard of living that was more comparable to that of Canada, Australia or the US. Most families owned comfortable modern homes or apartments in the major cities or their suburbs, the average family owned 2 cars, and their children were 5 times more likely to receive post-secondary education than their counterparts in Metropolitan Portugal. Even Coca-Cola, which had not been allowed in Portugal, was allowed in Angola and Mozambique.
Below I've added a have added a home film that illustrates what life was like for Europeans in Sá da Bandeira (today Lubango), Angola. The city was majority white and having a temperate climate. The video shows a wedding, and even the way the people are dressed is in contrast to what life was like in much of Portugal. The material comforts of this family are very much in evidence by the style of home they live in and the cars they own (Mercedes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdG_WH4JbPM&list=TLWuAwjFiTp8g
Below you can contrast the video above with a scenes of rural life in Metropolitan Portugal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLZ1qL0pdEg
The other European powers' colonies also had their settler populations grow substantially during the 1945-1960 period. If they had held on longer like the Portuguese, I'm sure the Belgian Congo, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia and French West Africa all would have had similar white populations. Home air conditioning and air conditioned cars only became commonplace in the 1960s after most of Africa was independent.
Getting to Africa was easier than ever, by the 1940s there were ocean liners that carried prospective settlers in relative speed and comfort to Africa. By the 1960s jet liners made getting to Angola and Mozambique even faster. By April of 1974 the government was helping pay fares for prospective settlers on TAP jumbo jet flights to Africa. Once in Africa, homes had electricity, telephones, radios, etc. so living in Africa no longer resembled a scene from "Out of Africa".
One thing that really set the Portuguese colonies apart from those of other European powers was that the settler society in Angola and Mozambique as considered far more modern and liberal than back in Portugal. Also, the standard of living in Portugal was much lower than that for whites in Africa, so it made Angola and Mozambique very attractive places to move to. In contrast, white Rhodesian society was more conservative and provincial than Britain's and there wasn't as large a disparity in living standards. Portugal in 1974 was still a very conservative old-fashioned country, where women were expected to wear black mourning clothes for the rest of their lives if their husbands should die. It was also still a very rural country where many people lived in small villages where gossip was very prevalent and where the social hierarchy was very rigid.
Settler society in Portuguese Africa was very different. Most settlers were middle and upper middle class, and had a standard of living that was more comparable to that of Canada, Australia or the US. Most families owned comfortable modern homes or apartments in the major cities or their suburbs, the average family owned 2 cars, and their children were 5 times more likely to receive post-secondary education than their counterparts in Metropolitan Portugal. Even Coca-Cola, which had not been allowed in Portugal, was allowed in Angola and Mozambique.
Below I've added a have added a home film that illustrates what life was like for Europeans in Sá da Bandeira (today Lubango), Angola. The city was majority white and having a temperate climate. The video shows a wedding, and even the way the people are dressed is in contrast to what life was like in much of Portugal. The material comforts of this family are very much in evidence by the style of home they live in and the cars they own (Mercedes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdG_WH4JbPM&list=TLWuAwjFiTp8g
Below you can contrast the video above with a scenes of rural life in Metropolitan Portugal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLZ1qL0pdEg
The 'sickle cell' trait that confers improved resistance to malaria isn't a purely "African" condition: Evidence suggests that it has arisen by separate mutations in quite a few different places... and the Portuguese, like some other peoples from southern Europe, tend to have higher frequencies of this mutation than peoples from northern Europe (who have ancestrally had less exposure to malaria, and therefore less pressure to develop resistance to it, than the southerners) do anyway...
If Malaria and Yellow Fever were the sole problem about Africa it'd be easy. Until the mid 1800's almost all US had Malaria and Yellow Fever outbreaks and it didn't stop Northern Europeans immigrants to come. If I'm not wrong, even Lincoln had Malaria more than once.
As for Portuguese Africa, as most people said, most of the Portuguese settled there under the Facist regime in the mid 1900's and there was never a massive settlement there. They were a really small part of these colonies population: Angola had about 6 million inhabitants and a population of 400,000 Europeans and 100,000 mixed race by 1970.
They were not immigrants, they were colonizers. They were public servants, land-owners, businessmen... Of course, the real work was done by the native African servants.
As for Portuguese Africa, as most people said, most of the Portuguese settled there under the Facist regime in the mid 1900's and there was never a massive settlement there. They were a really small part of these colonies population: Angola had about 6 million inhabitants and a population of 400,000 Europeans and 100,000 mixed race by 1970.
They were not immigrants, they were colonizers. They were public servants, land-owners, businessmen... Of course, the real work was done by the native African servants.