Is it possible for Europe to keep its colonies and grant the natives equality?

The French system of giving full citizenship and French department (or roughly equivalent) status to scattered island possessions of varying sizes (and to French Guiana on the South African mainland) appears to have worked fairly well.

You probably mean South American.

One would think Corsica would be key to the survival of a French-speaking state, but but it actually is relatively small in population in comparison with some of the overseas departments and may have a greater inclination to nationalism than some of the others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France

I don't understand this argument at all. Corsica was acquired 250 years ago. How does it fit with the colonies topic?

And how is it "key to the survival of a French-speaking state"???
 
Yes, I meant South America. Regarding Corsica, I was comparing it to the overseas departments, not saying it was one of them. As to the survival of the French state, I was working back and forth between this and an ASB topic about a world in which only islands are transferred to a virgin earth (I did the same thing in a comment about Cuba). Sorry about that. I corrected the South Africa remark and deleted the sentence relating to Corsica.
 
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Pretty much, tbh. It's just our version of "we are better at colony than you" that every other colonialist nation had...

Colonialism is like capitalism or communism - it works fine until you run out of someone else's money. That's what essentially happened to European countries post-WW2. Before that there was ample space for second-class intellectuals to develop theories on their colonialism being better than others.
 
I don't see why not, France was once just a colony of a city on the Seine. China was once and still kind of is a ragtag collection of distinct cultural groups linked by a common language and bureaucracy. Assimilate those that will and oppress, kill, and expel those that won't. Keep it up for a long time and the colony becomes a province. The hard part is finding the political will and economic resources.
 
The French system of giving full citizenship and French department (or roughly equivalent) status to scattered island possessions of varying sizes (and to French Guiana on the South American mainland) appears to have worked fairly well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France

Have you been to Martinique and/or Guadeloupe? They're still treated as colonies IMO.

To address the OP, I think you could get Europe to keep its colonies through force, but granting the native populations equality seems unlikely if not impossible to me. Others have cited France and Portugal as countries that attempted granting natives equality, but I do not believe that was the case, and neither did writers such as Aime Cesaire and W.E.B. Du Bois who lived during the colonial era. To address France, the policy of developing an Évolué or assimilated class was merely a strategy to facilitate colonial exploitation by developing a "buffer class" of natives willing to help exploit other natives. This class was always a minority. There was never a serious attempt to assimilate the majority of native peoples, because there was no incentive to. France didn't even treat most members of the évolué class as equal to French citizens. Although they did permit a few token people of African descent to participate in politics, it must be emphasized that this was more an instance of tokenism and less an example of how "multiracial" and "diverse" French imperialism was.

Portugal followed the same patterns of officially advocating for assimilation while treating assimilated black people poorly IMO, although Du Bois wrote that assimilated Africans were treated marginally better in Portuguese colonies than in others.

So I don't think there's historical precedent for Europeans to treat natives equally, nor do I think it's probable for that to ever happen in a post 1900 ATL. But I do think Europe could remain colonial control. If one of both of the U.S. and Soviets did not push decolonization, that would take a lot of wind out of independence movements. In addition, if European governments were more intent on maintaining political authority than economic benefits, they wouldn't just grant colonies independence. OTL several colonies became independent from Europeans with the understanding that their economies would continue to fall under European neocolonial control, with notable exceptions like Guinea. European governments that are less economically pragmatic wouldn't agree to that deal, essentially neutering independence in most French and British colonies.
 
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Colonialism is like capitalism or communism - it works fine until you run out of someone else's money. That's what essentially happened to European countries post-WW2. Before that there was ample space for second-class intellectuals to develop theories on their colonialism being better than others.

I won't comment on the other nations, but ours never did "work fine"; while it did make a lot of individuals rich, the nation itself actually lost money. We had so many political, social and economical problems in the last 150-200 yearsm we never managed to properly... manage the colonies...
 
I won't comment on the other nations, but ours never did "work fine"; while it did make a lot of individuals rich, the nation itself actually lost money. We had so many political, social and economical problems in the last 150-200 yearsm we never managed to properly... manage the colonies...

Well, the idea is not that the nation gets rich, but the selected few (aristocracy, business elite, ruling clique of Communist party, take your pick) gets rich! :)
 
I would say that the Europeans could just keep the smaller ones, but will not be able to absorb the larger ones. For example, the Netherlands can keep Surinam, but not Indonesia(although they might keeps parts of Indonesia). I think most of the smaller Carribean islands could be kept, just like there are still several Dutch, French and British Carribean islands. Actualy I think most islands could have remained part of the Europen nations, the Pacific islands, the Indian islands, the atlantic islands. Some small continental countries, like Surinam orGuyana, maybe even Belize could be kept. As long as it is too big, I doubt it is possible. So the Netherlands will lose Indonesia, Britain will lose India, France will lose Indo-China. Places like Algeria can only be kept after intrensic ethnic cleansing.
 
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