WI the border of African countries followed cultural lines and not the colonial ones.

As the question asks so every big culture gets it's own nation and population transfers occur to minimise disputes, durin. The decolonisation of Africa.


EDIT: I meant ethnical border. I got culture and ethnicity mixed up.
 
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There were attempts at this, boundaries along ethnic lines, and population transferes. They did not progress far. Odds are large scale population transfer would be a African version of the trail of tears. Such movements since the 1950s have not gone well.
 
Well, it is damn hard to make such a map, and it really depends on what you count as a "big" culture. Anyway, I fear it means more violence as these states demographics would hold a lot of groups of "small" cultures while at the same time the states would be more chauvinistic nationalistic (rather than patriotic). The decolonization would be an even larger mess with much more infighting between different cultural groups.
 
Colonial borders isn't the main issue there...the issue is the lack of national identity...
There's a book I read about Southeast Asian countries, in which the borders are set by colonial powers, but the strife isn't as much as in Africa because they have a stronger sense of nationalism...
 
WI the border of African countries followed cultural lines and not the colonial ones.

European borders largely did follow cultural lines (there are only a few instances when they got it really wrong to the point where a split might have been better).
 
The problem is, "cultural lines" and such wouldn't really work in Africa. The problem wasn't necessarily that borders weren't drawn on ethnic lines, the problem was that Europeans tried to draw along ethnic lines. Western-style Nationalism was imposed upon these places.
 
The problem is, "cultural lines" and such wouldn't really work in Africa. The problem wasn't necessarily that borders weren't drawn on ethnic lines, the problem was that Europeans tried to draw along ethnic lines. Western-style Nationalism was imposed upon these places.

Thanks for pointing that out I mixed them up without realising.
 
The problem is, "cultural lines" and such wouldn't really work in Africa.

The problem wasn't necessarily that borders weren't drawn on ethnic lines, the problem was that Europeans tried to draw along ethnic lines.

Western-style Nationalism was imposed upon these places.
Why not? What is the African type of Nationalism? Is it based on religion or what?

This would have been a stupid move, the Europeans would have rather tried the classical "divide and rule", but I´m not an expert.

Nationalism was imposed? Why would the 19th or 20th century Europeans impose their type nationalism on natives? You could say that the African elite studied in Western school and so they were influenced by Western culture and mentality, but saying that the Europeans imposed it without reason is quite strange.
 
Why not? What is the African type of Nationalism? Is it based on religion or what?

This would have been a stupid move, the Europeans would have rather tried the classical "divide and rule", but I´m not an expert.

Nationalism was imposed? Why would the 19th or 20th century Europeans impose their type nationalism on natives? You could say that the African elite studied in Western school and so they were influenced by Western culture and mentality, but saying that the Europeans imposed it without reason is quite strange.

The ideas of race and nation in Africa were quite a bit different than in Europe. For example the Hutus and Tutsis were considered separate groups by the Africans, but there was some flexibility and wealth also played a huge factor. The Europeans took that and decided to make it rigid and inflexible, and they spread this idea to the natives. They created ethnic and tribal differences where there were few to none.
 
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