WI: Europe tries to "Mestizify" Africa

Hierosolyma

Banned
It's well known that Spain and Portugal "Mestizified" Latin America by sending Iberian men to impregnate Amerindian women, and that as a result, the people their mostly have a Hispanic/Latino consciousness and culture, instead of an Amerindian one.

What if Europe tried the same thing in Africa, to the point where the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa was about half black/half white?

Do you think that the African nations would have still had anti-colonialist feelings and an African national consciousness? Or do you think you would get a second America/Mexico/Quebec/Brazil in the parts colonized by Britain/Spain/France/Portugal respectively?
 
It's well known that Spain and Portugal "Mestizified" Latin America by sending Iberian men to impregnate Amerindian women, and that as a result, the people their mostly have a Hispanic/Latino consciousness and culture, instead of an Amerindian one.

What if Europe tried the same thing in Africa, to the point where the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa was about half black/half white?

Do you think that the African nations would have still had anti-colonialist feelings and an African national consciousness? Or do you think you would get a second America/Mexico/Quebec/Brazil in the parts colonized by Britain/Spain/France/Portugal respectively?

Well, there was an OTL micro-example of this: my country of Cape Verde. Almost 100% mulatto at decolonization, speaking Kriolu as a first language, and we were still full-throated backers of independence alongside the rest of Portuguese Africa. It wasn't even a matter of being swept up along with a tide of liberation - Cape Verdeans had been promoting liberty or self-rule in various forms since the late 1930s. This was even despite being used as colonial administrators in parts of Portuguese Guinea - without reforming European rule and European ideas on the fitness of both black and mulatto Africans on self-rule, there isn't much hope of keeping anti-colonial feelings down.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Well, there was an OTL micro-example of this: my country of Cape Verde. Almost 100% mulatto at decolonization, speaking Kriolu as a first language, and we were still full-throated backers of independence alongside the rest of Portuguese Africa. This was even despite being used as colonial administrators in parts of Portuguese Guinea - without reforming European rule and European ideas on the fitness of both black and mulatto Africans on self-rule, there isn't much hope of keeping anti-colonial feelings down.

Didn't Cape Verde have no native population, and Whites and Blacks were both imported to the Island by the Portuguese Empire?
 
Didn't Cape Verde have no native population, and Whites and Blacks were both imported to the Island by the Portuguese Empire?

Indeed, which makes it a case where you'd expect even less chance for an independence movement to form, since we never really had a heritage to hearken back to like Mainland Africa did (except the heritage of mostly New Christian Portuguese adventurers and kidnapped Senegambian slaves.)


The fact that even a nation of mulatto colonial administrators literally created from scratch by Portugal still sided with liberation over the homeland (though it was at first mostly in favor of peaceful separation before Portugal performed the Pidjiguiti massacre in 1959) speaks volumes about the depth of European misrule in Colonial Africa and the feelings it inspired.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Indeed, which makes it a case where you'd expect even less chance for an independence movement to form, since we never really had a heritage to hearken back to like Mainland Africa did (except the heritage of mostly New Christian Portuguese adventurers and kidnapped Senegambian slaves.)


The fact that even a nation of mulatto colonial administrators literally created from scratch by Portugal still sided with liberation over the homeland (though it was at first mostly in favor of peaceful separation before Portugal performed the Pidjiguiti massacre in 1959) speaks volumes about the depth of European misrule in Colonial Africa and the feelings it inspired.

Why did Cape Verde want independence? Why didn't the Azores and Madeira?
 
The Portuguese didn’t behave different in Africa than they did in America, there was never a policy of mestizification, the reason why it happened some places was because those places was either virgin land or because the natives simply died off in large numbers when interacting with Europeans. The only place where we saw something like that was in the Dutch Cape Colony, where we also saw the rise of a mixed raced group.
 
Why did Cape Verde want independence? Why didn't the Azores and Madeira?

Likely because the Azores and Madeira, being far more "white" and Portuguese than the "mulatto" and culturally mixed islands of Cape Verde, were considered more integral parts of the nation than Portuguese Guinea (Cape Verde/Guinea-Bissau) by both the residents and mainland Portuguese alike. That effects the way the places are treated by colonial rulers.
 
What if Europe tried the same thing in Africa, to the point where the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa was about half black/half white?

Not enough European settlers to do that. The disease environment is too harsh to do so until the early 1900s. Unsurprisingly, many places this happened to any real extent are in the southern part of Africa (Cape Coloreds and related ethnic groups, plus in Mozambique and Angola). It is possible that given Portuguese rule over the Cape, you could get a "Brazil" there.
 
The OP's example of places with mixed populations was South America. South America is independent and wanted independence.

Mestizified Latin America had an anti colonial attitude (seeking independence?) just like Cape Verde or mainland Africa, they also experienced pan South Americanism to a degree.

So I am confused why the OP expects things from Africa that weren't true about South America?

I think any place in Africa would have been happy to host a Portuguese monarchy before independence. Cape Verde certainly would have loved to have been the seat of the Portuguese Empire as would mainland Africa. These nations wanted to be in charge, and if the royalty is in their land then they are in charge.
 
The OP's example of places with mixed populations was South America. South America is independent and wanted independence.

Mestizified Latin America had an anti colonial attitude just like Cape Verde or mainland Africa, they also experienced pan South Americanism to a degree.

So I am confused why the OP expects things from Africa that weren't true about South America?
I'm it's more of a generalist regionalist/autonomist tendency that you see in all far away places than based on race.
 
Whether in the Americas or Africa, colonial conditions were much harsher than in the metropole. Additionally the military was exclusively male, second sons and others out to make their fortune were essentially all male, and so forth. These natural tendencies meant you had a lot of unmarried men in these colonial areas and very few "white" unmarried women. However there were native women and colonial wars tended to kill more native men than women, and of course the native women could be "separated" from native men as well. The obvious result of this was the rather rapid coming in to being of mixed race populations, some of these children were the result of stable relationships often sanctified by marriage with conversion of the female partner. Others were the product of commercial relationships, brief relationships, or outright rape.

I doubt there was any official policy that said "lets send lots of unmarried men to the colonies to breed with native women to produce mixed race populations". Human nature (boys and girls will be boys and girls) does that without any need for official programs. Yes, there were policies to make the imported culture the dominant or only one but that was through conversion to Christianity, forced suppression of native languages, elimination of many/most native cultural practices (often combined with conversion and destruction of "paganism"). Additionally, a deliberate policy of "race mixing" would seem to go against the concept of "limpieza de sangre" which was prevalent in Iberia at that time.
 
Réunion is something like this - the population is very mixed ethnically from various origins. But there also was no indigenous population before the arrival of Europeans.

On the African mainland this was not possible in most areas, because of tropical diseases that were too harsh for Europeans until the late XIX century. South Africa was one place where it could happen, and did to a degree.
 
Whether in the Americas or Africa, colonial conditions were much harsher than in the metropole. Additionally the military was exclusively male, second sons and others out to make their fortune were essentially all male, and so forth. These natural tendencies meant you had a lot of unmarried men in these colonial areas and very few "white" unmarried women. However there were native women and colonial wars tended to kill more native men than women, and of course the native women could be "separated" from native men as well. The obvious result of this was the rather rapid coming in to being of mixed race populations, some of these children were the result of stable relationships often sanctified by marriage with conversion of the female partner. Others were the product of commercial relationships, brief relationships, or outright rape.

I doubt there was any official policy that said "lets send lots of unmarried men to the colonies to breed with native women to produce mixed race populations". Human nature (boys and girls will be boys and girls) does that without any need for official programs. Yes, there were policies to make the imported culture the dominant or only one but that was through conversion to Christianity, forced suppression of native languages, elimination of many/most native cultural practices (often combined with conversion and destruction of "paganism"). Additionally, a deliberate policy of "race mixing" would seem to go against the concept of "limpieza de sangre" which was prevalent in Iberia at that time.

Hear hear! Regarding the bolded bits:

1) I'll take the "doubt" part out, there WASN'T any colonial policy (as in, anybody's) with mixing in mind as a goal at all. Ever. The narrative supporting one's existence fails due to there not being one shred of official government or administrative documentation with that end in mind (RE Gilberto Freyre, he's a hack civilian writer, not an official). Lusotropicalism, Hispano-American Exceptionalism, et al are all just ex-post-facto justifications/excuses for what had already been occurring for centuries, which happened precisely and solely for the reasons you listed.

2) Yeah, people tend to forget just how historically racist Spanish and Portuguese colonial societies oft were, and arguably are still in places. Limpieza de sangre was upheld to some degree or another throughout colonial Latin America as a policy, and where climate/terrain took on more Eurasian characteristics you invariably see demographics strikingly similar to those of French or Anglo America, with very little mestizaje (and what mixing there was corresponding to similar relative trends in said other nations' holdings) . Hmmmm...

@Hierosolyma, this could've been done on a smaller scale near the coasts and further south. As noted though, the climate and relative hardiness of natives there made this dynamic trickier to pull off. I suppose butterflying away the expansion of scientific racism in Europe could help, but it wouldn't lead to most of sub-Saharan Africa becoming mixed, it's too populated and hostile to colonization (whether by violence or disease).
 
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Albert.Nik

Banned
Except for parts of South Africa,Botswana,Zimbabwe,I don't think there is any large tract of land that is suitable for a large settlement of Europeans due to diseases in the tropics and such problems. It could be possible in these regions. But not that easy.
 
The best way to get this is by establishing a Portuguese colony in the Cape during the early 1500s. Early Portuguese colonies suffered from severe gender imbalance, mostly due to sailor superstitions saying that women in ships caused bad luck. Miscegenation through intermarriage between Portuguese men and Xhosa women would start immediately. After that, it's only a matter of time before the favorable conditions of the Cape cause the mixed-raced population to explode. Then, it can spread througout a large part of southern African, perhaps in a way that is analogous to the Brazillian bandeirantes movement.

Regarding the enactment of policies deliberately promoting miscegenation, Iberian and Latian American nations were inconsistant about it, but there exist case where those policies were, in fact, enacted. More competent colonial administrators in Portuguese Asia, such as Afonso de Albuquerque, encouraged their men to settle permanently in India and Southeast Asia and take local wives. These were called casados (married men), and colonial administrations frequently gave them land confiscated from Muslims.

I don't know if there were any laws, but there was definitely some form of racialist pro-miscegenation movement in Brazil during the 19th century.

800px-Reden%C3%A7%C3%A3o.jpg

This painting is called The Redemption of Cain, and it shows a black woman thanking God for the birth of a white grandson (the woman holding the baby is her mixed-raced daughter).

Also, Paraguay went as far as to ban the marriage between people of the same race during the de Francia dictatorship.

I'm not trying to propagate the myth that there was no racism in Iberian cultures, I'm just saying that, given the right circunstances, state-sponsored miscegenation can, indeed, occur.
 
Warning
Repeat after me ... "Gani unaweza kufanya hivyo doggy doggy"
"Do you do it doggy doogy"
in Swahili
 
Africans could not be decimated by disease in the same way as Native Americans.

However the creolization process is something that did extend throughout thr continent and a European affiliated identity did get proliferated in ways that movie beyond Eurocentric notions of racial identity.

I'm always pushing this book but people need to read Eurafricans in western Africa
Book by George E. Brooks.

Being mestizo is not just about being half and half, it's an identity rooted within a cultural and social positionality.
 
I think this sort of thing is below the level of discussion we expect on this board.

Wow your failure to understand this is truly remarkable!

To the extent that explaining its humorous, and very, very obvious, comedic intention and point of origin is pointless.
(It might be a little off colour, and perhaps not strictly PG-13, but your censoring satire ... that falls into the category of Something I don't believe I have to explain. So I'm not going to do it for you)
 
Wow your failure to understand this is truly remarkable!

To the extent that explaining its humorous, and very, very obvious, comedic intention and point of origin is pointless.
(It might be a little off colour, and perhaps not strictly PG-13, but your censoring satire ... that falls into the category of Something I don't believe I have to explain. So I'm not going to do it for you)


We got that it was a joke, its just an incredibly unfunny and disrespectful joke. (also explain how a warning on an internet forum with rules= censorship)
 
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