Non-colonial Africa 1950-2000

[The Tai-Pan]

I know it is very mainstream among prissy left-wing Westerners to decide that those who disagree with them should die, but it is abundantly clear that you don't know much about Africa.

Nice to be called names. You don't have to be prissy to find these things......unappealing?

Herero and Namaqua genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Atrocities in the Congo Free State - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mau Mau Uprising - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

War of the Golden Stool - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and the list goes on endlessly.

 

[Sol Zagato]

The question is how are modern institutions transmitted. If there is no colonialism, then that also implies little to no peacekeeping. Ergo, wars of conquest waged by native states that adopt modern technology or additionally partner with advanced nations.

Pro: Organic borders, local innovation and initiative.
Con: It's still colonialism (or empire) if your overlord is African. Atrocities likely to be swept under rug.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

The question is how are modern institutions transmitted. If there is no colonialism, then that also implies little to no peacekeeping. Ergo, wars of conquest waged by native states that adopt modern technology or additionally partner with advanced nations.

Pro: Organic borders, local innovation and initiative.
Con: It's still colonialism (or empire) if your overlord is African. Atrocities likely to be swept under rug.

very true, it isn't as if lack of European empires would be some utopia, where all live in peace and harmony. But Africa would probably have hospitals and schools, even if whites didn't build them.

 

[Chris Nation]

Nice to be called names. You don't have to be prissy to find these things......unappealing?

Herero and Namaqua genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Atrocities in the Congo Free State - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mau Mau Uprising - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

War of the Golden Stool - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and the list goes on endlessly.

You suggested I should die. Forgive if I take your protestations a bit less seriously.

I'm not saying that European colonialism was meant for the benefit of Africans, and I'm certainly not saying that it was undertaken peacefully.

I'm saying that the towns in Africa were built by Europeans. As were the hospitals. As were the schools. And the people jabbing millions of doses of vaccines into Africans' arms were as well.

The colonisation of Africa, when it happened, and how quickly it happened, has therefore resulted in a much higher African population.

 

[Chris Nation]

Also, I'd look into Mau-Mau before you start glorifying them. There is a reason Kenya's postcolonial government never glorified them.

 

[Chris Nation]

Nepal, an uncolonized state innoculated its major urban cities against multiple diseases from 1860-90. Bhutan did the same in the 1890s in Thimpu. Your point doesn't deflect the fact that colonization was not strictly needed for medicine to reach.

The massive vaccination campaigns undertaken in this period is directly responsible for the explosion of the African population. I'll have to find them, but I've original photos of an ocean of Kikuyu queued up (peacefully) in front of a small white tent in the Kenyan Highlands.

It simply wouldn't have happened at the time period it happened otherwise.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

You suggested I should die. Forgive if I take your protestations a bit less seriously.

I'm not saying that European colonialism was meant for the benefit of Africans, and I'm certainly not saying that it was undertaken peacefully.

I'm saying that the towns in Africa were built by Europeans. As were the hospitals. As were the schools. And the people jabbing millions of doses of vaccines into Africans' arms were as well.

The colonisation of Africa, when it happened, and how quickly it happened, has therefore resulted in a much higher African population.

You are African? I am truly loath to argue with you about your homeland but.....I'm not advocating anyone. Obviously. If anything I am arguing for less of that. By thrust of the argument is, Africa could have had modern medicine, infrastructure and politics by their own efforts and not foisted on them by indifferent (at best) European powers.

 

[Chris Nation]

You are African? I am truly loath to argue with you about your homeland but.....I'm not advocating anyone. Obviously. If anything I am arguing for less of that. By thrust of the argument is, Africa could have had modern medicine, infrastructure and politics by their own efforts and not foisted on them by indifferent (at best) European powers.

That depends on your definition of African, and I certainly wouldn't call myself an African.

You suggested that apologists for imperialism should die, after suggesting I was one such apologist, and then complained about my less than flattering characterisation of you.

The thrust of your argument is that somehow in this magical fairyland uncolonised Africa that the African tribes were just on the cusp of a major vaccination programme when Livingstone got lost and thus that in the Naughties, Tens, and Twenties there would have been a comparable scheme of mass vaccination (accompanied by a mass building of Western hospitals), which would have produced a similar explosion of the African population.

I'm pointing out that that is a fantasy and therefore that the African population would be much lower.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

That depends on your definition of African, and I certainly wouldn't call myself an African.

You suggested that apologists for imperialism should die, after suggesting I was one such apologist, and then complained about my less than flattering characterisation of you.

The thrust of your argument is that somehow in this magical fairyland uncolonised Africa that the African tribes were just on the cusp of a major vaccination programme when Livingstone got lost and thus that in the Naughties, Tens, and Twenties there would have been a comparable scheme of mass vaccination (accompanied by a mass building of Western hospitals), which would have produced a similar explosion of the African population.

I'm pointing out that that is a fantasy and therefore that the African population would be much lower.

Wait, when did I say this? That's a pretty big claim. I just wish people would stop apologizing for the mass murder, land theft and brutality that is Empire (regardless of who does it).

Population growth did not require European overseers to happen.

'In the century between 1900 and 2000, Thailand went from a country with around 10,000,000 citizens to having over 60 million people living there.'

'Ethiopia (Abyssinia in 1900) grew from an estimated 4 million people in 1900 to 90 million today, a growth of 22.5 times and the largest one we could find'

You'll note, neither of those nations were colonized.

 

[Sārthākā]

Wait, when did I say this? That's a pretty big claim. I just wish people would stop apologizing for the mass murder, land theft and brutality that is Empire (regardless of who does it).

Population growth did not require European overseers to happen.

'In the century between 1900 and 2000, Thailand went from a country with around 10,000,000 citizens to having over 60 million people living there.'

'Ethiopia (Abyssinia in 1900) grew from an estimated 4 million people in 1900 to 90 million today, a growth of 22.5 times and the largest one we could find'

You'll note, neither of those nations were colonized.

Similarly Nepal had a population of 2.5 million in 1910 and now has 30 million. Bhutan had 65,000 in 1910 and has 600,000 today.

Also to note on the Ethiopian Issue, a good portion of its country was massacred during ww2 and the Abyssinian wars and still managed to create a humongous population

 

[Seandineen]

Also, I'd look into Mau-Mau before you start glorifying them. There is a reason Kenya's postcolonial government never glorified them

Also, I'd look into Mau-Mau before you start glorifying them. There is a reason Kenya's postcolonial government never glorified them. Did Kenyatta coopt the message?

 

[The Tai-Pan]

I do want to stress, I'm not saying vaccine drives and such were bad because white people did them. Obviously having people avoid deadly or disabling illnesses is a Good Thing. It doesn't matter where it comes from, if you stop some kid from going blind or losing foot, that's all good.

I just think Africans could have got that stuff through their own means and under their own control, without the oppression part.

 

[Chris Nation]

Wait, when did I say this? That's a pretty big claim.

I know it is very mainstream here but all these imperialist apologia really needs to die.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

The apologia, not the people saying it.

 

[Chris Nation]

@Seandineen, I can't quote your post. But, I would say it was a mixture.

Kenyatta always preached nonviolence and distanced himself from the Mau-Mau. They were legitimately batshit crazy, whereas he...wasn't.

However, he certainly needed the Mau-Mau to pressure the British into leaving.

 

[Seandineen]

@Seandineen, I can't quote your post. But, I would say it was a mixture.

Kenyatta always preached nonviolence and distanced himself from the Mau-Mau. They were legitimately batshit crazy, whereas he...wasn't.

However, he certainly needed the Mau-Mau to pressure the British into leaving.

Thanks, that’s what I thought.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

I think some of you are forgetting exactly how backwards the interior of Pre Scramble Africa was. The Dark Interior was stuck at a lower level of development than early Iron Age Britain. That doesn't justify the actions of the colonial powers but has to be remembered when discussing a world with no Scramble for Africa, Coastal areas were more developed of course but largely reliant on the Slave trade.

 

[Seandineen]

Greater Liberia here we come!

 

[Glory2Cabinda]

The population of Kenya in 1900 was less than 1.5m. The population of Northern Rhodesia/Zambia in 1900 was less than 1m.

By 1950, these figures were 6m and 2.3m respectively.

In 2019 these figures were 52.5m and 18m respectively.

Modern medicine and Westernisation have resulted in an African population explosion. It's almost hard to fathom how many more Africans there are now than before Livingstone got himself lost.

In 1904, the French laws mandating compulsory vaccination of every French subject were extended to the African colonies. Similar schemes were undertaken by the British in Kenya in the 1920s (I'm only using Kenya as an example because I'm familiar with it, I'm sure similar schemes happened all over British Africa).

One of the first things built in Nairobi was the Native Civil Hospital in 1901, when, as previously mentioned, Nairobi looked more like a railway stop in 1860s California than a town. Incidentally, this was built more than 50 years before the hospital intended to serve Europeans in Kenya was built.

Your assuming here that Native Africans were unable to westernize on there own. Modern Medicine can introduced via trade and Missionaries. They can find the copper deposits by themselves and exploit them.

 

[Glory2Cabinda]

The massive vaccination campaigns undertaken in this period is directly responsible for the explosion of the African population. I'll have to find them, but I've original photos of an ocean of Kikuyu queued up (peacefully) in front of a small white tent in the Kenyan Highlands.

It simply wouldn't have happened at the time period it happened otherwise.

And you think conquest was the only way to achieve this how?