Which European colonies in Africa and Asia where actually profitable

I understand that most of the colonies set up by the european powers in the late 1900s ended up being unprofitable and where kept mainly out of the hope that they could be turned around. Out of those which actually brought in profits and why?

I know that the Belgian Congo is one example since it brought profit to it sole owner, King Leopold, and mainly through slave labor.
 
Cabinda was immensely profitable Post-1967, when large amounts of Oil was discovered off-shore. It also had a decent tourism industry and produced hardwoods, coffee, cocoa, crude rubber and palm oil. In addition, it had a populace much more willing to embrace Portuguese rule, and was well within Portugal's means to defend.
 
I understand that most of the colonies set up by the european powers in the late 1900s ended up being unprofitable and where kept mainly out of the hope that they could be turned around. Out of those which actually brought in profits and why?

I know that the Belgian Congo is one example since it brought profit to it sole owner, King Leopold, and mainly through slave labor.

I think that´s difficult to answer.
How do you define profitable?

I mean you can´t simply say 100 gold coins invested / used for administrating the colony versus 101 gold coins in taxes / company profits.
So 1 gold coin means the colony is profitable.

That would totally ignore warships being built by the colonial powers to secure sea access to the colonies. Warships that might not have been needed with less colonies. Or European army units deployed overseas now and then to put down revolts in colonies.

Or the British having almost exclusive rights to Middle East oil before WW2 (Persia, Iraq and Kuwait).
In peacetimes the oil companies will pay taxes. During a war you have to deploy army, air force and naval units to protect the oil fields. And deny them to your enemies.
How do you calculate that?

Or being able to ask Indians to enlisten in a British Indian army?
That´s quite a lot of manpower even if you have to pay for the weapons?

I seem to remember that the Royal Navy before WW1 started to switch over to oil fired boilers (from domestic coal fired boilers) because of promised safe and secure Persian oil fields.
Which of course means that the Royal Navy then had to deploy naval ships to escort the tankers to the UK.

The Belgian Congo - King Leopold - slave labor -profits seems right.
The Dutch East Indies might be another example.
Malaya and rubber plantations maybe too.

The pre-WW1 German colonies are a bad example though.
Bismarck was against colonies so he just extended state protection to private colonial companies. Just like the British and Dutch East Indies company earlier on.
In the late 1880s / early 1890s every single one of these private German colonial companies went bankrupt. So to avoid a loss of prestige the German state took over the colonies.

With no experience in colonies what followed was chaos.
Involving the army, the navy, the foreign ministry and the Chancellor.
Finally in 1907 the Imperial Colonial Department was founded.
And only then we can see coordinated efforts in the German colonies.

Till 1914 quite a lot of money was pumped into the German colonies.
Schools, hospitals, roads and railways (infrastructure).
(An American delegation visiting in the 1920s observed that Entente education efforts in the former German colonies still weren´t up to pre-WW1 German levels.)

To the best of my knowledge at least German Togo and Cameroon also got agricultural / farm animals research institutes and academies.
And given the low numbers of German settlers there, they also accepted some natives.

So with an avoided (or later) WW1 a few German colonies might have become somewhat "profitable".
 
The pre-WW1 German colonies are a bad example though.
Bismarck was against colonies so he just extended state protection to private colonial companies. Just like the British and Dutch East Indies company earlier on.

Not that unusual. The British South Africa Company was contemporaneous with the German Colonies, and the Portuguese did the same in Mozambique until the 1940s. It was a cheap way of running the colonies, but not good for the native people.
 
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