What would better African borders look like?

Seriously, to get reasonable national borders in Africa you need to get in a time machine and do one thing. Eliminate the late 19th century partition of Africa and allow the indigenous states develop. If you can't do that, then go forward in time and make all European nations turn sub-saharan Africa over to a single multinationally managed UN mandate in the 1950-60's and establish processes for national/ethnic nations to be established by plebiscite that are unrelated to old colonial boundaries. Or, declare the entire continent off limits to the rest of the world and let Africans get about the business of nation state creation and expansion that Europe went through in the 17th thru 19th centuries. Bloody mess, but that's nation-building for you.
 
Seriously, to get reasonable national borders in Africa you need to get in a time machine and do one thing. Eliminate the late 19th century partition of Africa and allow the indigenous states develop. If you can't do that, then go forward in time and make all European nations turn sub-saharan Africa over to a single multinationally managed UN mandate in the 1950-60's and establish processes for national/ethnic nations to be established by plebiscite that are unrelated to old colonial boundaries. Or, declare the entire continent off limits to the rest of the world and let Africans get about the business of nation state creation and expansion that Europe went through in the 17th thru 19th centuries. Bloody mess, but that's nation-building for you.

Africans are just as capable of being dicks to Africans as Europeans are. If not moreso- when you're living next door to someone hate tends to take on a far worse, more personal dimension.
The building of homogenous states generally isn't a pretty thing. Sometimes it works nicely, similar peoples gradually building a common identiy, more often than not though there's going to be suppression and genocide.

As to stopping the partition of Africa...well we historically have two examples there.
One, Ethiopia. Great. Worked out quite well.
Two, the Congo. Ah.....yeah......
There would doubtless be a few more Ethiopias in Africa, maybe Sokoto and the like. But the majority....its going down the Congo's route.
You have to stop industrial civilization arising at all to completely protect Africa, capitalism was going to spread its influence there whether imperialism came too or not.

Its really not as simple as just saying keep the Europeans out.
 
As to stopping the partition of Africa...well we historically have two examples there.
One, Ethiopia. Great. Worked out quite well.
Two, the Congo. Ah.....yeah......

Er...what the hell are you talking about? If I'm understanding correctly, what happened to the Congo is exactly the kind of madness that the OP doesn't want to see happen to Africa: a huge, randomly unified chunk of geography populated by a variety of different ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups, many of whom have longstanding enmities with each other. Which is very, very different from the relatively centralized (if medieval) state that was late 19th century Ethiopia.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Acctually late 19th century Ethiopia was an expanding empire, conquering new land to the empire. Then the conquests ended after they bordered European holdings in all directions.

Ethiopia has had it shares of instability (for example Haile Selassie was never secure on his throne). There has been ethnic tensions, revolutionary guerillas and a Marxist regime. Only recently (in the 90s) has Ethiopia become a stable and secure state.
 
Something like that was the original idea, however they calculated it would take 40-50 years. Basically 2 generations to get a stable civil service and government structure and get people used to the idea so it would be sustainable, and allowing enough time for the rough tribal situation to be mainly sorted.

Thanks to America, this never happened.

WWI and WWII were the death knells of colonialism not America. There was simply no way Britain or France were going to hang onto their colonies any longer than they did. Financially they weren't up to it and the populations of Europe didn't want to make the sacrifice.
 
Acctually late 19th century Ethiopia was an expanding empire, conquering new land to the empire. Then the conquests ended after they bordered European holdings in all directions.

Ethiopia has had it shares of instability (for example Haile Selassie was never secure on his throne). There has been ethnic tensions, revolutionary guerillas and a Marxist regime. Only recently (in the 90s) has Ethiopia become a stable and secure state.

I stand corrected. It doesn't change my point about the Congo being the exact opposite of the kind of thing the OP wanted in an ideal African political geography, though. Ethiopia's present day boundaries have been decided, like those of the European and Asian nation-states, by a century and a half of warfare and bickering. They've evolved in a naturalistic manner, in other words. Congo/Zaire/whatever it's currently calling itself's borders, like those of most other African countries, haven't. They were arbitrarily and externally imposed and have little to do with the reality on the ground.

Of course, as devolved rightly pointed out way back at the top of the thread, naturalistic borders come into existence through...well, warfare and bickering, and oftentimes very brutal warfare and bickering at that. And as the interwar and post-WW2 periods may show, even something as nice and democratic as a plebiscite can lead to some pretty damn unpleasant situations, even to ethnic cleansing. So, yeah. :(
 
So it seems like we've got enough examples here to say that ethno-linguistic borders in most cases would not solve the problems created by arbitrary borders. Sound about right?
 

yourworstnightmare

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So it seems like we've got enough examples here to say that ethno-linguistic borders in most cases would not solve the problems created by arbitrary borders. Sound about right?
The ethno-linguistic borders in Africa were very confusing to begin with, usually there were no clear borsers at all. The African kingdoms were also multi-ethnic since they usually had their roots in one tribe starting to expand their territory and thus conquering other tribes. Some ethnic groups were nomadic and spread on huge territories, but usually lived side by side with other groups. When the Europeans arrived the ethno-linguistic borders were already very hard to determine. Of course the Europeans cared little. Some times they respected ethnic borders when they determined the borders of colonies and protectorates, but usually they didn't, sometimes a Colony or Protectorate was based on an old African kingdom, but many times it wasn't.
 
Er...what the hell are you talking about? If I'm understanding correctly, what happened to the Congo is exactly the kind of madness that the OP doesn't want to see happen to Africa: a huge, randomly unified chunk of geography populated by a variety of different ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups, many of whom have longstanding enmities with each other. Which is very, very different from the relatively centralized (if medieval) state that was late 19th century Ethiopia.

The Congo escaped European colonisation. No European country annexed it to its empire until the 20th century....But it existed in the modern world, it wasn't protected by some force field keeping all outside of influences away. Hence though imperialism spared the Congo it still got capitalism....capitalism without imperialism to control it...and the result was one of the worst regimes ever in existance with the Congo Free State.
Getting rid of the scramble for Africa wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for Africa, you'd still get foreign buisness interests coming in.
Imperialism brings with it bad stuff but it also brings positive ideas like white man's burden and, with some countries, a government which must be responsible for its actions and can't be too evil or people at home will be annoyed.
Corporations though care only for profits. They'll do nothing but exploit and kill to get them money, they're under no obligation to try and appear to be doing good as well.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
One of the few good things Imperialism brought was "the slow death of slavery", and slave trade and slaving had ran rampart in certain parts of Africa during the 1800s. Of course Imperialism brough forced labour (ok, it existed before, but the Europeans made it much worse) which was very bad.
 
The Congo escaped European colonisation. No European country annexed it to its empire until the 20th century.

Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. So, it wasn't formally annexed by Belgium until the 20th century and was, during the scramble, the private property of King Leopold. That doesn't mean that it "escaped European colonization" in the same way that Ethiopia did. It didn't have a local government, but was ruled by Europeans who imposed an arbitrary geographic boundary on it.

You've got a good point, mind you, that the sweeping economic effects of the European global hegemony were gonna fuck Africa up one way or the other. But there's still a world of difference between the Congo, which DIDN'T escape colonization, and countries like Ethiopia, Iran, or Thailand, which, however hard they were pressed by the European powers, did. Of course, the fact that Ethiopia, Iran, and Thailand are still pretty fucked-up places only supports your point further. So I guess I'm just picking nits now. :eek:
 
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