WI: Smarter African Colonialism?

[Deleted member 97083]

No of course Napoleon didn't invent this but he hyper charged that desire. An entire generation was raised with his conquests and it was a major criticism of the restored Bourbons that they were not adding new territory to France. Hence the 1830 invasion of Algeria

True, Napoleon did build upon and increase that desire. However, I think colonial desires would be completely eliminated if either a communist revolution was successful and took over France, or if not successful, managed to bog down the imperial/republican government for years, to the point where France can't afford expansionism and has to make concessions to its people.

 

[Crying]

So, in summary; the Scramble for Africa was a big dick measuring contest between the European powers and in order to stop it you need to make sure that France either doesn't feel inadequate, never whipped their dick out in the first place or is too busy with stuff back home to go looking for a penis enlarger?

 

[Eivind]

make sure that France either doesn't feel inadequate

Maybe France winning the Franco-German war (1870-71) would help?

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Yeah, that's why I said the Paris Commune takes over. Communists aren't going to want to colonize Africa.

I'm not so sure. The entire concept of Evolue and the need for 'uplifting' native populations were distinctly popular amongst the French Left, far more than they were on the Right Wing at the time, given the latter's romanticist notions to premodern civilizations.

One could totally imagine a Communist French government still expanding into Africa on the basis of spreading revolution and obtaining captive markets to bolster its economy.

 

[Rridgway]

What if Portugal had severe economic and political problems arise due to their colonizing efforts? I'm not exactly sure what form they could possibly take but it could sour the rest of Europe to colonizing the rest of Africa.

 

[yogsothoth]

Well if they could have maintained their colonies until the dawn of the digital age many of the rare metals and minerals found throughout Africa would experientially increase in value due to their use in electronics. With advanced methods of finding and extracting these minerals and metals it would significantly easier than it is today for African countries. Additionally their administrators would likely be less corrupt so the potential profits could be quite high. This could potentially change the modern world as we know it as the European empires control of these metals would allow them to resist the economic global shift and allow them to compete with NICs in the field of electronics. While certain African countries would likely see less development due to continued European dominance others might avoid the conflicts that are there today as the mining that motivates and funds many warlords would be in European hands and Europeans would have interfered less earlier in the period meaning there would be less artificial states to cause conflict. Its hard to say if the net change for Africans would be better or worse but I think it would certainly have been a benefit for European industry and a hindrance to China's.

 

[Bad@logic]

Rule in Africa often was very indirect, it relied on association and local tribes and there were only very small corps of European administrators.

Sure, they were colored the colonizer's colors on the map, but it relied extensively on local elites for doing the vast majority of the work. In that way, it isn't really that different than having client states. The British fetishized it with lauding it to the heavens about how glorious their indirect rule was and how all of the other Europeans were brutal direct monsters who didn't respect local traditions (while the British merely invented them for their own advantage and ignored them where it was convenient), but pretty much everybody did the same thing, as the presence of a large white presence in black Africa to actually do direct rule was limited, and even the French weren't interested in a mass assimilated elite.

So really, original time line largely fulfills it with puppet/client kingdoms, just the Europeans called them tribes, not kingdoms.

 

[funnyhat]

If people cared mainly about growing the economy, sure. But most people don't think like that, and are happy for the government to spend money to uphold the national honour. Plus, I'm not entirely sure it was obvious at the beginning of the Scramble that it wouldn't end up helping the colonising nations' economies.

And one argument for colonialism was that it represented a potential future investment: a colony that might not have much value in the 1870s could turn out to have some later on, when new resources (or new uses for existing resources) might be discovered. Accordingly, a great power should not less this opportunity pass by.