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Topic: If Africa wasn't colonised, how would things be different?
Anonymous A started this discussion 1 week ago#134,106
Apparently it's bad because they joined a lot of mini fiefdoms together which caused lots of infighting. So Africa might have 500 countries instead of about 40. Would that be a good or bad thing?
Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 1 week ago, 39 minutes later[^][v]#1,428,679
Redundancy is inefficient, and barriers to movement (people, goods, ideas) means slower progress. Security is easier when you can use resources from areas at peace and move them to the border that's under threat.
Anonymous C replied with this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,694
@previous (D)
Not really, Africa was colonized because of gunpowder, which was discovered by mistake. If somebody in Kenya decided to mix saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur instead of somebody in China, history would have gone differently. Europe was never capable of colonizing Africa without gunpowder.
Anonymous C double-posted this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,696
And actually, it wasn’t just because of gunpowder. Europe didn’t colonize Africa right after Europe got gunpowder. It took hundreds of years after gunpowder was introduced in Europe for Europe to colonize Africa. So it was the combination of gunpowder, wealth from the colonization of the Americas, which happened because 90% of the native population died of old world diseases, and the Industrial Revolution. If one of those things was missing it never would have happened.
Anonymous C triple-posted this 1 week ago, 3 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,697
Africa was colonized in the last 1800s and was decolonized in the late 1900s, so in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t actually colonized for that long (of course slavery is older, but Europeans were taking slaves from Africa before they actually controlled Africa). If you look farther back into history, Africans held territory in Europe for 800 years.
Anonymous C quadruple-posted this 1 week ago, 18 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,699
Some things aren’t accidents though. For example, Europeans colonizing the Americas. China would have had to sail across the Pacific Ocean which is a much farther distance than what Europeans would have had to travel across the Atlantic. If you look at a map, there aren’t that many islands in Africa, so they didn’t really have much of an incentive to have large fleets of ships outside of fighting over the Mediterranean in antiquity. People have different theories as to why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, but it’s probably overdetermined. In the long run, Britain didn’t really have the population to remain competitive in industry, they just sort of had an advantage by being first. They could never compete with an industrialized China or America, but it took China a lot longer to industrialize. China used to be poorer than most African nations actually. These things are correlated with demographics so to me at least, based on birth rates and dependency ratios, I think an African equivalent of China (in terms of development not in political terms) is more likely in the late 21st century but probably much more likely in the 22nd century.
Anonymous F joined in and replied with this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,706
@previous (E)
Didn’t Africans colonize the entire world? There were already humans living in other continents when Homo sapiens left Africa, but now every continent is completely filled with Homo sapiens.
> Apparently it's bad because they joined a lot of mini fiefdoms together which caused lots of infighting. So Africa might have 500 countries instead of about 40. Would that be a good or bad thing?
What is your obsession with this? Europe was partly colonized by the Muslims and Mongols. Mexico was colonized by the Aztecs. Cortez would have lost without the Tlaxcalans.
You’d probably have regional hegemons like the old Ghana and Mali and Nubian empires.
Anonymous H double-posted this 1 week ago, 3 minutes later, 20 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,796
Ethiopia wasn’t occupied by Europeans until fascist Italy took it in World War Two. It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Africa was never colonized or if Italy had never occupied it and Ethiopia was just left to their own devices under their emperor.
Anonymous I joined in and replied with this 1 week ago, 2 hours later, 22 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,428,818
@1,428,694 (C)
there is no theoretical possibility where africa is not colonized, because aftica is still living as if dinosaurs are the dominate lifeform. hell the hindoos at their most primative could beat africa thousands of years in the future, because darkies only exist to be enslaved by others.
Anonymous L joined in and replied with this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,917
@previous (D)
How is it cope? Europe didn’t colonize Africa before Europe had gunpowder, and they never colonized Africa after Africa also had gunpowder. It’s only possible to run into a country and take everything that easily if you have guns and nobody else does.
Anonymous L double-posted this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,918
Europeans also technically didn’t colonize the entire continent. Despite the gunpowder advantage, Ethiopia held out against the Europeans successfully until World War Two.
Anonymous L triple-posted this 1 week ago, 4 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,919
There’s also a pretty good counter example to the idea that the colonization of Africa was inevitable. The Chinese invented gunpowder, not Europeans, and the Chinese knew about Africa, they traded with East Africa, but the Chinese never attempted to hold territory in Africa. Just because you have a technology another culture doesn’t mean you necessarily will use that technology to kill people and enslave them. That’s a choice. There are still uncontacted tribes in some parts of the world but we generally just leave them alone.
Anonymous D replied with this 1 week ago, 0 seconds later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,920
@1,428,917 (L) > How is it cope?
europeans were doing that long before the chinkoid invention of gunpowder made it west. > Europe didn’t colonize Africa before Europe had gunpowder
europe was warring against itself and with the arabs before gunpowder.
Also,do not pretend that bows and arrows did not exist.
Anonymous L replied with this 1 week ago, 2 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,921
@previous (D)
The colonization of Africa was relatively recent in history. The Arabs were more advanced than Europeans during the Middle Ages, just because Europeans were warring against the Arabs doesn’t mean they were winning. The reason there were so many crusades wasn’t because the crusades were successful.
Anonymous L replied with this 1 week ago, 3 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,928
For most of history slavery wasn’t really associated with race and Sub Saharan Africans weren’t being controlled by outsiders. During the Roman Empire it was fairly common that for example Germanic people were used as slaves because the Romans saw them as barbarians. Chattel slavery began before Africa was colonized. The reason why Europeans started enslaving Africans is because of the colonization of the Americas. When Europeans first got to the Americas, the Native Americans didn’t have resistance to old world diseases, so 90% of them died. This made it incredibly easy for Europeans to take large amounts of territory in the Americas starting about 500 years ago. Originally they tried to enslave Native Americans but there weren’t enough of them and they died too often in order for that to be a viable labor source, so Europeans turned to Africa for a source of labor. However, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that Europeans were actually able to colonize Africa which happened more recently in history.
Anonymous L double-posted this 1 week ago, 5 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,933
European colonization of Africa understood as the control of the vast majority of African territory by Europeans only lasted from the late 1800s to about 20-30 years after World War Two.
Anonymous L triple-posted this 1 week ago, 3 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,428,935
So basically, Europeans controlled Africa for about a hundred years. But for most of history, Europe didn’t have the capability to control Africa, and they lost the capability to control after about half a century ago. Europe colonized Africa because many things lined up perfectly in order to allow for it, but the odds that those things would line up perfectly again are highly unlikely.
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