What if extensive unclaimed land still existed?

Fatal Wit

Banned
Up until very recently, much of Africa(and other parts of the world) was unclaimed by any state.

Apart from a chunk of Antartica, however, that is no longer the case.

So, would their be a reasonable chance with any divergence within the last 250 years for their to remain extensive unclaimed(or at least unclaimed by serious states, Sealand-style claims don't count) territories in Africa? Could all those thoroughly disorganized tribes remain undisturbed?

Oh, and as an addendum- the technology science and economy cannot be significantly wore then it currently is- ie. the unclaimed and uncontrolled areas must not be that way due to backwardness of the world as a whole.
 
The tribes wouldn't remain undisturbed.
Even assuming the Europeans decide not to expand their claims inland (perfectly possible, there was no money to be made there and only economic collapse and a unstable political situation pushed them into doing that) you would still get contact going from the tribes on the coast (who are right next door to European colonies) to the tribes in the interior with the spread of modern trade items as it goes. That is at the very least.
Far more likely Africa couldn't hide from the powers of capitalism even without formal government intervention. This is a scary prospect; Africa opened up to capitalism without colonialism. You get a lot of stuff sprouted today about the white man raping Africa of its resources....what happened IOTL would be nothing compared to what would happen if big buisness was given a free hand, free of government scruitiny.
 
Africa would be opened up by the corporations looking for natural resources. You think European governments were bad? At least they were humane in some cases. The corporations would have only had money in mind, and without any law or order, they could essentially do whatever they wanted in Africa to get what they wanted.

However, maybe the UN would do something about it to save them. However, the Africans still have to wait until 1945 to get protection.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Corporations don't have ideologies to promote, they're not going to come into the interior with the same damaging ideas that colonialists did, (i.e. no 'civilising missions', no eugenic experiments, etc.). Yes, the resources would be plundered, but they were anyway, (its incorrect to say that Imperial governments protected their colonies from the excesses of capitalism).
 
Corporations don't have ideologies to promote, they're not going to come into the interior with the same damaging ideas that colonialists did, (i.e. no 'civilising missions', no eugenic experiments, etc.).
Sure, democracy, peace, emancipation and meritocracy are very bad things.
Yes, the resources would be plundered, but they were anyway, (its incorrect to say that Imperial governments protected their colonies from the excesses of capitalism).

Thats one of the big reasons the British empire even existed.
And no. Resources were not plundered.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
I don't think you can make blanket generalizations about government vs corporate intervention in Africa. After all both committed terrible atrocities. Think of the colonial Herero genocide in German SW Afrika or Leopold's private enterprise in the Congo Free State that became such an embarrassment. So on the one hand I could see that in some cases more stable native African states could develop (ie slowly developing their own institutions and infrastructure and most importantly competent rulers and administrators) while on the other had you might see some sporadic and really terrible exploitation in regions where the natives wouldn't 'cooperate' or were too primitive to work with efficiently as partners/contractors?/laborers?. But I'm hardly an expert on 19th century Africa so I could be way off. ;)
 
Couldn't you make a decent argument that parts of Somalia and perhaps the Congo are technically unclaimed?
 
You mean unclaimed by an external power right? Surely the various tribal or whatever you want to call them groupings in say Africa, Australia, (Non Incan) South America or New Zealand would have some claim to owning the land they live on?
 

ninebucks

Banned
Sure, democracy,

Wow. That's some disassociation with reality you have there... Firstly no British colony had any kind of elected self-government.


Secondly, war was endemic to the whole empire-building business.

emancipation

Formally, yes, after a point. But forced labour remained a reality for the entirety of the colonial period.

and meritocracy are very bad things.

Meritocracy? Well yes, so long as you were from the British middle classes. And yes, I would include picking even the best of the best to rule over a foreign country as a very bad thing.

Thats one of the big reasons the British empire even existed.

The British Empire existed to better the lives of its captive subjects? That opinion was naive even in the 19th century! The British state involved itself in the affairs of its colonial corporations for a share of the profits, not to regulate corporate affairs. What altruism did exist towards the colonies was almost entirely misplaced, consisting of people who thought the only way to civilise a negro was to wipe out his native religion, drive him off his ancestral lands, enforce middle class Victorian gender values onto his women (destroying communal economies that relied on delicately balanced division of labour between the sexes), et cetera, et cetera. The British Empire did as much harm when it was trying to do good as when it didn't care.

And no. Resources were not plundered.

I refer you to the works of Eduardo Galeano, who identified two types of rail network, the one type is designed to connect major population centres, to allow the easy transport of people, and a second type designed to be extractive, to go from the mines and the forests straight to the ports, bypassing completely the places where people actually live. I'll give you one guess which type of railway system the British built for theirselves, and which type they built for their colonies.

'Plunder' is the only fair word to describe colonial policy in Africa.
 
Corporations don't have ideologies to promote, they're not going to come into the interior with the same damaging ideas that colonialists did, (i.e. no 'civilising missions', no eugenic experiments, etc.). Yes, the resources would be plundered, but they were anyway, (its incorrect to say that Imperial governments protected their colonies from the excesses of capitalism).

India under the company and under the Raj would seem to demonstrate that the sufferings of the subject people were greater in the first case that in the second. Belgian Congo comes to mind as well.
 
Wow. That's some disassociation with reality you have there... Firstly no British colony had any kind of elected self-government.
...loads of them did.
And before you say that was only the whites I would advise you read up on the history of the Indian Empire.


Secondly, war was endemic to the whole empire-building business.
Not nessesarily.
And once the empire was there the constant tribal wars were reduced greatly.

Meritocracy? Well yes, so long as you were from the British middle classes. And yes, I would include picking even the best of the best to rule over a foreign country as a very bad thing.
Not really no, have you never heard of Tata?
There are many other examples like that too.
The empire of course wasn't pefectly equal, it was the 19th century afterall, but it was much much better than what came before.

The British Empire existed to better the lives of its captive subjects? That opinion was naive even in the 19th century! The British state involved itself in the affairs of its colonial corporations for a share of the profits, not to regulate corporate affairs. What altruism did exist towards the colonies was almost entirely misplaced, consisting of people who thought the only way to civilise a negro was to wipe out his native religion, drive him off his ancestral lands, enforce middle class Victorian gender values onto his women (destroying communal economies that relied on delicately balanced division of labour between the sexes), et cetera, et cetera. The British Empire did as much harm when it was trying to do good as when it didn't care.
I'd direct you to read about the Indian mutiny and its after effects.
Britain was fundamentally at the core a progressive democracy.
Just look at all the unrest today over American and British involvment in the middle east; we're just there to steal the oil, we don't care about the people, etc.... Its a major political issue.
In the 19th century it was much the same. Maybe a bit less due to the media being less well developed and maybe a bit more due to it being the progressive age. Certainly comparable.

I refer you to the works of Eduardo Galeano, who identified two types of rail network, the one type is designed to connect major population centres, to allow the easy transport of people, and a second type designed to be extractive, to go from the mines and the forests straight to the ports, bypassing completely the places where people actually live. I'll give you one guess which type of railway system the British built for theirselves, and which type they built for their colonies.
...sorry to tell you to read something again but: the history of railways.
The first major steam railway in the world was that of George Stephenson. What was its purpose? To help the people of London go on holiday to Brighton? No...to connect those two major population centres of Darlington and Stockton. Its initial purpose was entirely just to get Durham's coal to the coast so it could be sold and shipped away.
And anyway, the railways generally weren't built by the governments but by private companies.
 
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...loads of them did.
And before you say that was only the whites I would advise you read up on the history of the Indian Empire.

Funny, I don't remember India ever becoming a Dominion - though the history of both India and Britain might have been better if the it had done so around 1920-1925.
 
I do think this is an interesting topic, but I have no idea how to achieve it do to the race for colonies in the 1800's took up almost all the unclaimed land. I remember seeing a thread with a POD that some of the Pacific Islands remain unpopulated, but I can't seem to find it.
 
Funny, I don't remember India ever becoming a Dominion - though the history of both India and Britain might have been better if the it had done so around 1920-1925.

It did though, 1947.
Prior to that it had quite consistantly been becoming steadily more and more democratic.
 
As far as companies not having political agendas. Dutch East India Co., East India CO. (Britain), etc. etc. They had contract through their governments yes, but they ruled and used troops in foreign land. And they did NOT play nice with the locals. As soon as there was one instance of relations with any outside source, the Tribes on the coast would play the same game, namely, get whatever it is the white/ Latin man wants to make their tribe more powerful. Also, a good deal of the early slave trade was kind of ancient in parts of Africa. When Greeks or Romans defeated a people, the defeated became slaves. Same with the powerful African Tribes. They won, they took slaves. Now they had someone to supply them to instead of just killing off the excess.
 
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