Which colonial power "improved" their colonies the most?

[Sacer Bubonicus]

All the colonial empires had atrocities on their hands - some more than others - but all of the participants in the Conference of Berlin made a big fuss about taking over large swathes of land in the name of the civilizing mission. These were to be their vanity projects to showcase their power versus the other European nations - in other words, it was basically just a dick-measuring contest, but it had some results nevertheless. This included Christian missionary work, education, building hospitals and railroads, ending slavery in many places, etc, etc. But, leaving aside their rhetoric, who actually left their colonies in the least awful shape afterward?

Also, I've heard that after the Belgian government took over the Congo Free State from king Leopold, it actually managed to do very well in unfucking the situation so it was at least decent by colonial standards by the time for independence. Is this true, and what could they have done if they'd run the Congo from the start? Would the Congo be more stable?

 

[Beacon]

Any "improvements" the colonials made were done to extract further resources from the colony.
I'm not even going to bring up settler colonies which required stealing homes and land from the previous inhabitants.

 

[Historywatcher0]

Also, I've heard that after the Belgian government took over the Congo Free State from king Leopold, it actually managed to do very well in unfucking the situation so it was at least decent by colonial standards by the time for independence. Is this true, and what could they have done if they'd run the Congo from the start?

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the worst basketcases in Africa, and Belgium administrators in Rwanda also helped create a artificial division that turned into a genocide. Congo remains one of the least developed places in Africa and incredibly unstable. When Belgium left, the number of university graduates in the entire country, numbered in the low hundreds, for a nation of tens of millions.


By virtue of successful entries, that actually lasted then the only real answer is probably narrowly the British. Not everything they touched. But a few examples. Such as Somaliland being a stable island in the rest of Somalia falling apart. Or Botswana, which they kept out of South African hands and setting up a native council which served as a transitory stage to democracy, which is really the main extent of their positive involvement. The rest goes more to Seretse Khama. Even South Africa, for all its long running apartheid did have a successful more advanced economy. Of course South Africa also created its own decline, but at least it is still muddling along rather than violently collapsing.

British colonies also had their share of dictators and warlordism, but they at least didn't have the worst lows in that regard.

 

[Zincvit]

SNIP

And even then, it was mainly due to the competence of native leaders, Somaliland had to faced a genocide by the Siad Barre Regime, and only thanks to the willingness of the leaders of mainly Isaaq-Dominated Somali National Movement to share power and reconcile with non-Isaaq Communities in Somaliland did they get the stability they have today, and we all know of Seretse Khama’s ability as a statesman.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I think Somaliland is currently on the verge of civil war, but it's a very recent development.

 

[anotherlurker]

I've heard it half jokingly said that in 50 years of austro-hungarian rule more was achieved in Bosnia than under 500 years of turkish rule.

 

[Zincvit]

I think Somaliland is currently on the verge of civil war, but it's a very recent development.

Oh, I’ve just searched it and it is mainly between the Somaliland Goverment and Somali Unionist in the Eastern Regions.

 

[Navigator]

Perhaps the opinions and personal experiences of the islanders of Pulo Run may provide some enlightenment concerning the treatment of natives by colonial powers. They voluntarily invited the British in to protect them from others.

 

[pompejus]

Since countries treated different colonies differently and even the same colony differently at the different times in, this question is unanswerable. Britain treated India different to Kenya and 17th century India differently from 20th century India (and probably different parts of India differenly from other parts, India is big after all). So the question is meaningless, unless someone is willing to "calculate" some sort of an avarage. And even than it is meaningless, since what does that avarage mean?

 

[TRH]

I wonder if you could make a case for Russia in Central Asia, oddly enough. At least in terms of literacy and economic development there were some big strides as I understand it. But you need to balance that against subsequent famines, environmental mismanagement and the usual settler colonialism displacing local populations.

The case is probably more comfortable if you specifically just look at Central Asia under the Russian Empire and discount the USSR.

 

[GunterW]

That’s a tricky question because in Africa, colonies were mostly extractive in nature. You’ll find there is a lot of difference between the attitudes of the European countries depending on whether it is a settler or a resource extraction focused colony.

I’d say most were bad or rather neglectful and built the barely minimum infrastructure to facilitate the extraction of resources. Whatever they built was usually along the coast leaving the interior mostly untouched.

The UK was a bit better in some places, particularly in South Africa and Kenya where there was a large settler population.

France was neglectful in most of Sub-Saharan Africa as their focus was coastal Algeria.

Portugal had a 500-year presence in Africa and for the most part, did nothing there but to build ports to ship slaves. It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that you see investment and immigration to Angola and to a lesser extent Mozambique.

Germany didn’t have many colonies, Togo was profitable but was miniscule, Namibia was a mostly unhabitable desert and Tanganyika had some commercial activity going on along the Swahili coast. I agree that it was “well managed”.

Spain is a strange case, because their portion of Africa was inconsequential, a small chunk of Saharan coastal desert and an outpost in Equatorial Africa. There’s so much you can do there, at least in Guinea, Spanish is still spoken, unlike the Philippines. The Iberian nations had limited resources in the 1800s to invest abroad.

Italy did build up Somalia and Eritrea from the ground up, and coastal Libya also had significant resources invested as part of the “fourth shore” vision, but once they left the whole place fell apart. The infrastructure was built to accommodate Italians living there, they cared nothing for the locals.

Belgium inherited Leopold’s mess and built the bare minimum to facilitate extraction from the resource rich regions in the interior. AFAIK, most infrastructure was privately sponsored, the Belgian state didn’t do much until the mid-1900s when their time was up. There was no large-scale immigration to Congo, so no need to build anything but the bare minimum. If people went there, it was mostly to work for mining companies from what I understand.

 

[Rattenfänger von Memphis]

But, leaving aside their rhetoric, who actually left their colonies in the least awful shape afterward?

I think that Denmark was/is the best of the colonial powers. They treated Iceland pretty well and are currently treating Greenland well. But, like all long-time colonial powers, there was slavery in the Danish Caribbean possessions of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix until 1848.

Before Denmark was coerced into selling the Danish West Indies to the United States in Danish West Indies Purchase, they were worried about lynchings in the United States and sought, with more than mere rhetoric, to protect the mostly black islanders from such horrors as best they could.

“Danish leaders resisted ceding the islands and their majority-black inhabitants to the racially-segregated United States.

Angry at this, Lansing insinuated that if Denmark didn’t sell the U.S. the islands, it just might go and seize them to prevent Germany for getting to them. It was a bullying tactic, and it worked.”

In his 2015 book, “American Foreign Relations: A Nice Diplomatic History”, Walter L. Hixson further described Denmark’s concern when considering selling the Danish West Indies (today’s U.S. Virgin Islands)to the United States in 1916 – 1917, on page 131:

“Concerned about American racial policies, the Danes had called for a plebiscite to get the approval of the predominantly black islanders before the sale could become final. The Danes also sought guarantees that the islanders would receive US citizenship, but Secretary Robert Lansing flatly rejected these proposals and threatened that if Denmark refused to sell the United States might occupy the islands, justifying the action by invoking the Monroe Doctrine.

Denmark acquiesced and the US Navy took over the administration of the islands. In 1920 the United States decreed that Virgin Islanders had “American nationality” but not the “political status of citizens.”

 

[Daztur]

Germany didn’t have many colonies, Togo was profitable but was miniscule, Namibia was a mostly unhabitable desert and Tanganyika had some commercial activity going on along the Swahili coast. I agree that it was “well managed”.

I'm not sure if "well managed" is the term I'd use to describe the nightmarish genocides that took place in Namibia.

 

[Avrorrange]

British Hong Kong was probably the best run non-Settler colonies.

 

[The Ranger]

Only Hong Kong and maybe Macua got boosted by colonialism.

 

[Bishop Len]

The ones that were colonised for the shortest period seems the obvious choice. More seriously its hard to weigh one set of victims suffering against another's. And colonialism spread suffering every where it went.

That said British settler colonialism was probably the worst. North America, Australia and New Zealand saw along the indigenous peoples suffer genocide with the survivors left as worse than second class in their own lands. Add to that the slave plantations in the Americas, then there's Africa, India and Ireland all with genocide or at least millions of dead. While the Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese all did the same the British out match them in sheer volume. But all of them would have done much the had they been in the same position.

By that standard the least worst would have been the smallest and shortest lived. I'd say the Danish colonies such as they were. It's all pretty awful though.

 

[PrinceofApathy]

None.

 

[FALightFighter]

There's quite a bit of hyperbole going on in this thread. Not defending colonialism, but there are certainly gradations and variations that can be assessed. And genocide in Africa and India? Give me a break. There were certainly atrocities, some on a vast scale, but the intent was not, in most cases, to destroy the people as a group. The Brits were entirely happy for Indians to continue to live in India and keep being Indians, as less no as they were subservient to the Brits. The same is true in Africa, at least for the Brits and French to a very large degree. That's far different than, for example, the Holocaust or even what happened in the Balkans, where the intent was that Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, etc (and Croats, Bosnians, etc, in the Balkans) would cease to exist.

 

[Navigator]

North America saw the indigenous peoples suffer genocide with the survivors left as worse than second class in their own lands. Add to that the slave plantations in the Americas.

How are the British to blame for the extreme genocidal actions of the United States rebels after 1776? George III specifically prohibited any invasion of First Nation lands. Those slaughtered and enslaved millions are directly due to the policies of the 13+ states in encouraging westward migration, because of two factors: the absurdly arrogant concept of 'Manifest Destiny' and the greed of the profiteers who wanted to reduce their production costs by completely eliminating workers' pay.

Edit: Three factors (the third possibly connected to, or a superset of, the second) - taking valuable land and resources without the appropriate payment.

 

[Bishop Len]

They aren't directly. But they are for the ones in Canada and the various Caribbean colonies. Besides that the USA was basically a rogue group of British settler colonies. Had the revolution not occurred an empire would have mostly likely rolled into those lands sooner or later. Be it an American Republic, British monarchy, French, Spanish or whoever.

Not saying the British are uniquely evil. Just that empires are in general evil enterprises. They require conquest, oppression and subjection to exist in the first place. The bigger the empire the more people suffer. As I said initially you can't really weigh one lot of suffering again another.

You are right though I shouldn't have left the USA off the list of colonial empires.

PS. I'm by no means anti British. I am British, far too British probably. I meant no offence to anyone or seek to lay blame. I've only just started posting here and hope to be polite.