No world wars is decolonization handled for the better or is it handled worse

So in a timeline without the world wars would decolonization turn out for the better or for the worse?

Would Africa be more developed in ATL then OTL or would it be worse?
 
It has to be more developed. The Germans would add more rail certainly, all the way to Lake Chad in Kamerun was planned OTL. Most countries would have more money for development (a Sahara desert railway even)??

Without millions dying their would be more Europeans coming to Africa (encouraged by subsidies in the German case).

Its a Euro-Christian world. Christians in 1900 really thought they would convert the world.

More places would end up like Rhodesia, with Euro populations not wanting independence, and without the wars, Racial superiority theories and nationalism would be less discredited.

At least another generation vs OTL for independence and I suspect some High Euro concentration regions might remain European to this day.
 
I'm not fully convinced decolonisation happens, and certainly not convinced that decolonisation is completed by modern day. That is, unless it enforced by an outside power.
 
Assuming Russia still goes Bolshie (and quite possibly sooner), the Red would have a heyday in the 3rd World and no liberal democracy to counter their appeal to popular revolt. Africa, the Balkans, the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and India-partitioning would turn into bloodbaths. The one good thing that the two World Wars did was take the piss out of ideology driven government. Pragmatism and gung-hoism won the day both times (and again in the Cold War).

I can see the US being much more libertarian, smitten with screw-you economics without the Greatest Gen being sustained by the collectivism brought on by the wars. Progressivism was burning out in the 1910s. Any kind of New Deal experiments wouldn't have lasted as long or ever engendered Republican support like they did in the mid-century. Eventually that populist appeal of rugged individualism is gonna win the American consensus without the influence of great global conflicts pulling millionaires and labor leaders together.

Meanwhile the successor to the German & Austrian Empires would become more nanny statish in order to placate their restless lefties. As many faux-democratic autocrats are demonstrating in OTL's current trends, a skillful blending of soft authoritarianism coupled with a strong social welfare state is a powerful recipe for stable government. The more crowded the big nations become, the less liberal, permissive democracies are going to work as global powers. Formerly liberal regimes in the US, Turkey, Brazil, and across Eastern Europe find that a hint of Big Brotherism goes a long way toward holding power in multinational states.

Britain might plod a separate path, perhaps still trying to liberalize its colonies into a Commonwealth, but that will leave the Common/Empire really vulnerable to being pulled into regional conflicts as the more imperially oriented European powers (Germany, Italy, Austria, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, & Belgium) move to suppress their colonial uprisings (and the colonized insurgencies form global alliances, for which the Bolsheviks would provide global support.

There would still be a few big wars. Britain and Turkey would inevitably fight over the MidEast. Soviet Russia would want to expand into the Balkans, the Black Sea, and south of the Caucuses. Japan would still want to grab the Philippines and wrest more territory from China. Independent kingdoms like Iran and Siam would try to follow Japan into industrialization and become puppets for the Europeans and Japanese to try and win over, leading to border clashes and probably proxy wars among the Europeans. Germany would want to dominate the Baltic states if they managed to get free of the Bolshevik state.

Lots of fodder for thought in the global possibilities here.
 
Would decolonization even happen as Europeans won't be going into a crisis of identity that WW1 started.

Well, you'd still have pressure from the colonised. I don't think decolonisation only happened because of some sort of European identity crisis.
 
As the Czarist and Habsburg regions develop, we'd see a large wave of emigration out of Europe. More of Russia's Jews may decide to move to the US like OTL, and an alt-us culture could have more substantial slavic and orthodox christian influences.

Zionism could have a vastly different trajectory without the first world war or the collapse of the Ottomans. Before WW1, many prominent Zionists planned to become loyal Ottoman subjects and only aimed for a Hebrew-speaking autonomous region in the region of today's Eretz Israel.

In the long run decolonization is mostly inevitable, but situations with direct integration with the metropole (Algeria-style) or limited-franchise settler democracy (South Africa/Rhodesia OTL). Vast, populous areas like India and the Belgian Congo would have to given independence at some point. However, the colonial powers would probably smaller/less populated areas like Libya and Eritrea.

Fascist Italy was in the process of settling Italy as a "fourth shore" Italian style, so there might be an alternate universe where Gaddafi works his way up the ranks to become a prominent politician or prime minister.

The architecture and culture of the world's cities would look very different. Much of modern day Asmara, Eritrea's capital, is futurist architecture built during fascist rule. It looks like something from an ATL where interwar art trends lasted up to the present.


ERI-Asmara-2.jpg
 

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Thanoslives

Banned
Well, you'd still have pressure from the colonised. I don't think decolonisation only happened because of some sort of European identity crisis.
Their opinions don't matter if 60 million Europeans don't die and on top of that have kids. They could easily be handled. Especially without needing to motivate large amounts of them to fight. The American civil rights groups got really going as well for the same reason. Why fight for them if we are not equal to them .

Certain technology is slower as well so medical as well as food technology as well as computers. Things drastically change. With the Europeans being richer far more confident and capable of suppressing insurection rather easily.
 
Worse, in the general picture. WW1 and WW2 have been interpreted, for good reasons, as the discreditment of imperialism and racial suprematism respectively. Without them, the latter two would have continued longer.

Now in some places, where OTL was particularly nasty, butterflies coud have changed for the better notwithstanding.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Communism or it’s equivalent would appear but where exactly we not sure. There no guarantee it would appear in Russia. Would it find a home in the oppressed people of Russia such as poles or even caucus Muslims. Then there is the mixture of minorities in Austrian Hungarian empire. Ottoman Empire could be a good place for it to grow.

So we could see communism appear in variety of locations. Maybe starts in India.

But without a super power backing it, it would not have the same affect in destabilizing the colonies as per iOTL.
 
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