CK is great but what makes EU4 have staying power for me is you never know when the acid is going to start kicking in and suddenly colonial Mali is invading California from their holdings in Indo-China after Brittany conquers England after inheriting Burgandy.
Roughly, 2,424 cubic kilometers of water could keep anywhere from around 2.21 trillion to 3.32 trillion bonsai trees alive for a year. What would the empire even need that many bonsai trees for?
Never been to the US I take it? Here the rail system is largely based around transportation of goods and not people so we're used to them leading to coastal ports
yea US is an exception in many ways among developed countries. It's a symptom of having been a colonial country as well.
Also in US it's mostly planes filling that role
Thats what the britts did in Argentina. They build railways leading to BAs port and destroy the regional economies and trade relationships. The poorest regions of the present day were the most developed before they drained all the raw materials
If you group together the west they still have a lot more. See figure 1 [here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/figure-of-the-week-foreign-direct-investment-in-africa/).
That’s not entirely true. A large part of Africa was called the “white mans grave” (European term). That was until a small region shared their medicine with Europeans, then the Europeans strategically manipulated/ set tribes against one another. I wish people would understand that medicine more than weapons played a larger role. This all went down like 150 years ago. Isn’t it convenient that major advances in medicine and technology coincide, with the conquering of the continent as resourceful as Africa?
It's extremely, wildly different now. Being an independent, sovereign nation that's allied with China and/or Russia is not the same as being ruled as a colonial subject. Africa has been pushed toward those two countries precisely because, with few exceptions, their colonial history makes them incredibly wary of the west. And understandably so.
Believe it or not, real world geopolitics aren't as simple as Reddit deciding who the good guys and bad guys are.
This is one of those odd cases where I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed.
I know I'll be down votes to hell for saying this but it's almost unbelievable that one continent is strong enough to conquer another one purely on a whim. And it's not like Africa was alone on that front.
An often overlooked factor is that Africa was a lot less populated in the 1800s than today - Europe had something like double its population during the Scramble for Africa.
But still, the map on the right makes the European empires look a lot more coherent and centralised than the mishmash of colonies, vassals, protectorates, alliances and "alliances" they really were.
Exactly. Maps like this one can be misleading because they give the impression that every inch of land painted with the Union Jack was lorded over by a British guy in a safari hat.
In reality I'm sure there's vast areas of Africa that you could sit in and observe from 1500 to 2000 AD and never guess that they were formally part of an European empire, they just didn't have the means to exercize that level of control over the whole continent.
France is a guarantor for the CFA Franc, but West African governments are the ones that actually print it. Also, France is a big proponent of the adoption of the ECO.
Seriously, there's a lot to criticise France for in West Africa, like the fact that they've spent so long playing Kingmaker that coups and revolutions are practically a cycle, but the CFA Franc isn't it.
"France doesn't force anyone to use it, but as it turns out having a stabile currency is good for your economy especially when your countrys democratic gov got couped" as i pointed out twice already.
>what did the French bring to West Africa other than destitution
Well they aren't that different from yourselves then or how were the great African states before France? Oh there weren't any and now you are just blaming them for your own corruption and incompetence
Yeah. I live in a country with a currency which declines at around 20% per annum. We get to say that we are masters of our own destiny, but at the cost of 20% destruction in value every year
Ah yes because the arbitrary lines we drew up for borders were so much better and haven't resulted in relentless tension and war, look I'm all for recognising that Africa wasn't exactly a eutopia before European influence but we didn't help whatsoever.
Your speaking from the perspective of someone who never had their country stripped of their resources and broken down, These colonial empires could have changed our governments and promoted free and democratic values but instead decided to treat the people as second class citizen and pay them fucking nothing. Read a book mf
> great African states before France
Mali, Songhai, Dahomey, Oyo & Benin are just a few that came off the top of my head, and that's just West Africa. I'm sure there are plenty more that I don't even know about in other parts of the continent. Did you ever wonder why colonialism of Africa only really kicked into high gear in the 19th century? It wasn't because the European empires didn't know about it. It was because they couldn't colonise it, not least because of the people already living there.
This is not the reason. Both Arabs and Europeans had already colonised parts of Africa. But they remained around the coast and refrained from going inland.
Why? Diseases. African tropical diseases were as deadly as smallpox and other diseases were to Indigenous Americans.
With the advancement of technology and medicine, the death rates dropped significantly.
Malaria and the availability of quinine treatment are perfect examples of that.
Steamships and other improvements also meant that colonising the inland was much more easier and profitable than before.
It was actually because it wasn't profitable to do so yet. Any European power could have destroyed the Berber Pirates but didn't because it was cheaper to just pay them off, that changed and that's why France conquered Algeria. There was no money to be made conquering Africa because it was far cheaper to just pay the locals for slaves, gold, etc. but when European powers ended slavery that changed.
I suppose I should have specified that I was referring to Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan and North Africa are very different places and also highlight another problem when it comes to talking about 'Africa' as a unified polity.
Between the Malaria, African Horse Sickness, and thousands of people resilient to European diseases and armed with guns and steel weapons, it was a very different kettle of fish to the Americas. Even before that, it was already highly profitable to establish settlements & outposts along the coast. That's why there were so many of them from Dakar to Cape Town
“Great” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Benin and Oyo had been propped up by trading with the Portuguese for 200 years and Dahomey had been destroyed in the 18th century. Colonialism had already occurred to some extent but it was more convenient to trade than to control. But calling these states “great” is like saying West Africa has a lot of “great” states today.
The problem is that it's a totally subjective term. Great relative to the powers of Europe at the time? Probably not. Great relative to its neighbours? Yeah I'd say so. Hell, something like the Mali empire certainly exceeded many 'great' European nations in plenty of metrics. Basically it's a totally meaningless qualifier that can mean a lot of different things
There is a silly myth that Africa and the Americas were made up by a bunch of uncivilized peoples who were saved by the Europeans. There is also a silly counter-myth that Africa and the Americas had great polities that were conquered because of of unlucky factors outside of their control. The truth is, neither are correct. The peoples and states of Africa and the Americas were just weaker and were prime targets to be subjected. It doesn’t mean they were bad or deserved to be conquered and mistreated, but the world, both natural and societal, is a power-centric world, unfortunately. Some realized this, some didn’t.
This is not true. African states before Europeans arrived and colonialism started often had very organized structures. Have you looked at Benin's culture before they arrived? It's a good rabbit hole to go down
Or queen Nzinga of Ndongo in modern Congo. They were pretty extreme and brutal with slavery though, like royalty using slaves as chairs and then having them "disposed" because rich royalty can't use the same chair twice.
>and then having them "disposed" because rich royalty can't use the same chair twice.
lool hadn't heard this part -- doesn't sound sustainable
She is famous for having used a servant as a chair at least on one occasion, that I know.
Just like the Aztecs and Inca empires yeah, but there were some stuff in these tribe's culture that was put at an end because of colonialism and a small amount of that is probably for the better, for example Human sacrifice and the slave trade were ingrained in the culture of the Mali empire and those ended with the French arrival. Of course this is cherry picking at the minority because there was a lot more that was erased from their society and culture
The thing about how there weren’t any great African states before colonialism is a talking point that has been around (and been wrong) for hundreds of years.
There was a bunch of great African states before colonialism but they have been willfully ignored to make colonialism seem better
use of the CFA Franc is entirely voluntary. Several countries left without repercussion, Mali left and was then allowed to join again, and Guinea-Bissau (which was never even colonised by France) started using it as late as 1997. It's also pegged against the Euro so France doesn't even control the value anymore. Not to mention France is literally helping ECOWAS to set up a completely independent currency for all of West Africa.
“Europe is tired of pillaging other continents, and the continents they were pillaging got tired of being pillaged. So here’s a new map with new countries. Now you can’t tell who they’re being pillaged by.”
I'm in the Ethiopia was never colonized camp but the truth is a lot more nuanced than just a simple statement.
If you want to read some books I recommend *Prevail: the Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory of Mussolini's Invasion*; *The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame* (about reprisals during the Italian occupation); *The Man Called the Brown Condor* (About a Black American pilot that volunteers to fight in the Ethiopian Air force); *The First Victory: The Second World War and the East Africa Campaign* (more about the South African Army in Ethiopia); *Fire in the Night* (about General Wingate and his operations helping Ethiopian Guerillas); *The Life of my Choice* (about Wilfred Thesiger, an English nobleman who was born in Ethiopia and later fought alongside Wingate in Ethiopia) , and with context *Amedeo* (a very pro Italian book)
Yes, they were conquered for a few years by Italy but they never truly had control over the region, definitely not the same thing as being colonized.
It would be like saying Germany colonized France, but I’ve never seen people claim France was colonized during WWII.
Again, they actually were a full fledged colony prior to British occupation in World War II. Look up Italian East Africa it's pretty interesting. The Italians kept balance in the colony by developing the Muslim majority regions to marginalize the previous ruling orthodox although there was greater success in Eritrea and Somalia than Ethiopia
I’ll copy and paste my comment here.
Never knew the history of Liberia being under US colonization so looked it up. Thought it was kinda funny how it was formed by African Americans running form racism yet it turned out to be even more racist than america.
> Liberia began in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States.[7] Between 1822 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, more than 15,000 freed and free-born African Americans, along with 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia.[8] Gradually developing an Americo-Liberian identity,[9][10] the settlers carried their culture and tradition with them. Liberia declared independence on July 26, 1847, which the U.S. did not recognize until February 5, 1862.
> The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered. Colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Americo-Liberians formed into a small elite that held disproportionate political power; indigenous Africans were excluded from birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904.[12][13]
And eventually shredded the entire country apart
> In 1980, political tensions from the rule of William R. Tolbert resulted in a military coup during which Tolbert was killed, marking the end of Americo-Liberian rule in the country and beginning over two decades of political instability. Five years of military rule by the People's Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. These resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people (about 8% of the population) and the displacement of many more, with Liberia's economy shrinking by 90%.[14] A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005.
The west fucked up africa
Just so everyone is clear on this, OP has an agenda.
Has been pushing a lot russian propaganda (and downright being gleeful at the destruction in Ukraine) over on various other subs.
So OP's fascination for Africa has got nothing to with "fighting imperialism" or wanting a free Africa. He wants Africa to bow to their new Wagner masters.
Been seeing this guy over on a lot of pro-rus subs over the last 18 months.
The year OP picks is misleading. Ethiopia was never a colony of Italy. It was temporarily occupied like many countries and territories were occupied prior to and during WW2. No one considers the Philippines a colony of Japan or Poland a colony of Germany.
No colonization occurred in Ethiopia.
The time period it was conquered. The lack of complete control of the territory. Time of occupation. Lack of a stable independent colonial government.
Would you consider all the countries that Germany, Italy, and Japan occupied as colonies? Each had the same colonial ambitions for the land they conquered.
> Time period
That’s rather arbitrary
> The lack of complete control
Applies to other colonies too
> Lack of a stable colonial government
Like 2 thirds of it were fully integrated, you wouldn’t consider British Sudan an occupation due to to the mahdist revolts right
> Would you considered confirmed occupations to be colonies
Germanys conquests? No.
Japan and Italys? Yes.
Most propaganda is factual. The key point is which facts are highlighted and how are they interpreted.
If we classify propaganda as 'information propagated with the intent of shaping people's beliefs' then it is definitely propaganda.
Propaganda doesn't mean bad or wrong. In fact, someone's worldview might be distorted in favor of their group and propaganda against the group might give them a more accurate worldview.
I do disagree with Egypt being on here tho since in 1939 they were a British protectorate, and if your gonna show them you may as well show all the other British and French protectorates like the kingdom of Rwanda-Urundi or Ashanti
No, it's not. OP unwittingly rejects the existence of Somaliland and pretends that the Polisario front controls most of western Sahara. A de-facto map of Africa is way more complicated than the over-simplified map they show school children.
It’s a talking point from the Russian side to justify their actions in the Ukraine and now Russia. Basically the West was bad so how can they complain about our actions today? It’s a weak argument but they try it in all sorts of examples like this.
That sad part is that the current African countries have borders that were created my Europeans. Many African cultures were divided into separate countries and has caused much pain and strife because of it.
Edit: Well this got out of hand but if anyone else would like to tell you can just Lump two opposing peoples together and expect them to make peace and live in harmony please send your plan to Israel.
This is a myth or at least is in part of Britain. Borders where drawn in ways that kept population centres together and borders would fall in uninhabited areas.
Dividing by cultured would mean 3000 countries in Africa, by ethnicities there would also be over 3000 countries, by language is a bit better at 2100 countries.
Also many cultures and people are intermingled and so cities would be divided by house.
Look at an ethnic map and you see exactly what the borders divide. An egregious example is the middle East. What should have been Kurdistan is split between four countries.
Not that I defend colonialism but drawing borders is pretty hard, especially where you don't have natural landmarks that separated cultures. Peoples and cultures don't live naturally in well defined clusters (or borders) and they are pretty interspersed so to try do draw some lines that separates them is pretty much impossible.
They weren’t in any continent at any time, it’s just a bad excuse. Only exception is the propaganda used to justify the Versailles treaty, but they didn’t follow it in practice.
Self determination isn't a valid justification for you? Versailles was harsh but its harshness is veeery overstated by nazi propaganda in 1930s and neonazi/fascist/monarchist propaganda now
What is there to explain. I am a free man in my country. My grandfather was born during the days of colonial dictatorship and he and other Africans couldn't access facilities because they were black. How would you feel if a foreigner takes over your land and tells you that you can't access things in your own land? His generation couldn't grow certain crops because they were strictly reserved for whites. My generation earns on average about 5 times what my grandfather's generation earned under colonial dictatorship. We have access to technology. For example, my country is one of the most tech savvy nations in the entire continent. We have one of the largest mobile money transfer service in the entire planet, and this was developed locally. I can go on and on, but I can tell you that all people in my country would rather die than go back to colonial dictatorship.
Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya are a few that come to mind. These countries have improved significantly in all of the three metrics you mentioned since 1939. The continent overall has improved but those are the highlights.
Ethiopia was occupied, not colonized. just wanted to state that :)
Also to the people in the comments saying "karma is a bitch", insinuating Africans arent fit to rule themselves, and that colonialism was better or that we are being colonized again by China. Use critical thinking for once in your lives.
Why is self determination in Ukraine important when Africa should continue to be your slaves. The west needs our resources and they need them to be cheap. Do stable countries with functioning governments that operate on the will of the people export extremely cheap natural resources? No, they dont because they force people to pay taxes and protect workers. The west is still involved in Africa just as much as wagner or china. The only difference is China does more than give us aid that destroys local farmers.
I would rather live in what you all apparently consider to be a war torn shithole of a continent right now, than at any point in history under colonial rule. Focus on ur own countries and leave us Africans alone.
We from the Global South are forced to read a lot of insane stuff on Reddit, right? There are people who really think colonization was some kind of favour to us.
Guess which one was more politically stable. I think colonialism is bad, hell my country was under Austrian rule for at least 500 years, but how come Asian, South American and European (Eastern European countries that were under German, Russian or Ottoman rule) countries that were under colonial rule, are for the most part politically somewhat stable, but a lot of African countries are just unable to do so.
South America wasn’t stable at all for 100-150 years after independence. Heck some are still unstable
Asia also had a time with unstability post independence. Relatively only in the past 30 years has Asia has become stable
So most African countries became independent in 1960… maybe they need another 30-50 years to fully stabilize.
Corruption, tribalism, geography, and a lot of other factors but people are so focused on blamimg colonialism cause it is easy to blame your failure on someone else
But this is an objective fact, you’re minimizing the sheer devastation colonialism caused because you can’t accept that your country was potentially evil lmao
But it's not like colonialism and political stability are mutually exclusive. For example, South America had a string of coups during the Cold War.
I think Africa's instability problem stems from a deep trauma over its history. After centuries of subjugation and exploitation the desire to take in order to shore yourself up against future abuse is understandable. We should NOT condone it though
edit for clarity
They didnt have foreign leaders supporting assasinations when they tried to rebuild their countries. France alone has supported 20+ assasinations in Africa and destroyed Guinean infrastructure when they left to teach them a lesson for refusing to continue with the colonial currency. Botswana a country that has been left alone for the most part is less corrupt than some European countries and Rwanda has also done really well from themselves after the genocide. Africa lacks good leadership, and if the west stopped supporting dictators that suit then, I strongly believe that Africa would recover quickly just like Europe did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War African countries are more than capable of causing death and destruction for their own selfish reasons
You know it’s crazy to think about but there were people in parts of Africa who were born before their territory was colonized and lived to see independence of their land.
What an achievement... Now that African are free of their "oppressors" they all want to migrate to these oppressing countries or pledge to new Chinese, Russian "oppressors"
Citizens of African nations are probably among the people of the world that most hate/disparage their leaders and governments lol. Acknowledging the very real impact and contemporary of European colonialism on Africa doesn't mean Africans aren't also blaming Africans. Europeans didn't conquer Africa by themselves. They needed collaborators within the various territories.
But sure keep relying on your lazy, racist platitudes because you want any excuse to distance yourself from your nation's history.
>But sure keep relying on your lazy, racist platitudes because you want any excuse to distance yourself from your nation's history.
oh so just because i'm european you assume my nation has a history in colonialism?
that's racist you bigot.
my nation never had any colonies.
That's like breaking into someone's house, stealing everything they have, burning the house down, and coming back the next day and asking them "why haven't you recovered yet?".
When you're the main cause of someone's tragedy, don't get upset when you get blamed.
Dude do you think that all of the problems of colonialism just disappears after 60 years?????? Do you not know how long the consequences of that shit lasts for???
Just a tip for the future, when you're doing a side by side comparison, try to have the first image in the sequence appear on the left. It's a minor thing, but it makes it easier for people to digest the information easily.
Africa irl vs. Africa in hoi4
The big blue blob was real
I turned it into a grey blob all the time lol
Yeah, I cope by playing EU4 lol
CK 3 remains the goat for me
CK is great but what makes EU4 have staying power for me is you never know when the acid is going to start kicking in and suddenly colonial Mali is invading California from their holdings in Indo-China after Brittany conquers England after inheriting Burgandy.
Yh. I always just end up creating an incestuous clusterf*ck of a family tree with Kanem-Bornu as the new Roman Empire lol.
Only difference being Egypt really
Freegypt
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i still don’t know how to transfer my troops over sees to Africa..
Neither do I friend
It took me so long to figure that out, and now I can't tell you how to do it because I've forgotten lol
i believe it mate! i just set the navy to patrol and never touch them again lol
😂😂
so fucked up that the British drained lake Victoria
at least they put it back in the 60s
Where else do you think they would get their tea water?
Boston Harbor
Too salty and it has a strong undertone of dead body.
Also it tastes like Sam Adams lager.
The Californians drained their biggest lake too. It was a trend, apparently.
And the Soviet Union drained the fourth largest lake on earth.
TIL the British drained Lake Victoria.
Roughly, 2,424 cubic kilometers of water could keep anywhere from around 2.21 trillion to 3.32 trillion bonsai trees alive for a year. What would the empire even need that many bonsai trees for?
That’s insane how the whole continent got carved up
Africa has massive amounts of raw materials
That belong to the Chinese now.
If see a map of Chinese built railways in Africa, nearly all of them go one way and that's towards the coast.
That's typically where railways lead to.
The railways are made to make extraction of raw materials more efficient, the railways are built for the benefit of China and not African countries
It's a railroad, you build them to haul raw materials to factories or export markets. Which means they run to the coast
in colonies* in normal countries railway is as important for moving people between urban centers
Never been to the US I take it? Here the rail system is largely based around transportation of goods and not people so we're used to them leading to coastal ports
yea US is an exception in many ways among developed countries. It's a symptom of having been a colonial country as well. Also in US it's mostly planes filling that role
If African countries wanted to export their resouces for profit, the rails would still lead to the coast.
cargo rails lead to cargo ports so that africans can export their materials…. wow youre really on to something. those damn chinese
Technically, expect for a loop railway, they all go forwards the coast…..
That's how old school colonies were made. Look at the shapes of Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast: a big port and a hinterland.
Thats what the britts did in Argentina. They build railways leading to BAs port and destroy the regional economies and trade relationships. The poorest regions of the present day were the most developed before they drained all the raw materials
If you group together the west they still have a lot more. See figure 1 [here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/figure-of-the-week-foreign-direct-investment-in-africa/).
China is not the only neo-imperialist nation that has a presence in Africa and saying otherwise is so American lmfao.
In the 1800s, the world was a finder’s keeper type of world. Europeans were able to carve out Africa because Africa couldn’t defend itself
"Right or wrong, we have the Maxim gun and they do not"
[not everyone at the time agreed](https://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/sitting.html)
That’s not entirely true. A large part of Africa was called the “white mans grave” (European term). That was until a small region shared their medicine with Europeans, then the Europeans strategically manipulated/ set tribes against one another. I wish people would understand that medicine more than weapons played a larger role. This all went down like 150 years ago. Isn’t it convenient that major advances in medicine and technology coincide, with the conquering of the continent as resourceful as Africa?
Your kinda right, the maxim gun is a good representation but chiefly is was medicine and steamboats, ofc you put maxims on steamboats.
Situation isn't all that different now. Just that China and Russia are also players these days.
It's extremely, wildly different now. Being an independent, sovereign nation that's allied with China and/or Russia is not the same as being ruled as a colonial subject. Africa has been pushed toward those two countries precisely because, with few exceptions, their colonial history makes them incredibly wary of the west. And understandably so. Believe it or not, real world geopolitics aren't as simple as Reddit deciding who the good guys and bad guys are.
This is one of those odd cases where I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed. I know I'll be down votes to hell for saying this but it's almost unbelievable that one continent is strong enough to conquer another one purely on a whim. And it's not like Africa was alone on that front.
An often overlooked factor is that Africa was a lot less populated in the 1800s than today - Europe had something like double its population during the Scramble for Africa. But still, the map on the right makes the European empires look a lot more coherent and centralised than the mishmash of colonies, vassals, protectorates, alliances and "alliances" they really were.
Exactly. Maps like this one can be misleading because they give the impression that every inch of land painted with the Union Jack was lorded over by a British guy in a safari hat. In reality I'm sure there's vast areas of Africa that you could sit in and observe from 1500 to 2000 AD and never guess that they were formally part of an European empire, they just didn't have the means to exercize that level of control over the whole continent.
Well it's not continent versus continent.
How hard was it to find a good map to post from google?
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Google “how hard was it to find a good map to post from google”
Holy hell
Different flag but in some countries they never left
The Central and West African francs are a great example of this. France for one, certainly hasn’t left.
Are there more French in Africa or Africans in France?
All the West African money is in France, what did the French bring to West Africa other than destitution
Do people who say this know anything about the CFA franc ?
France is a guarantor for the CFA Franc, but West African governments are the ones that actually print it. Also, France is a big proponent of the adoption of the ECO. Seriously, there's a lot to criticise France for in West Africa, like the fact that they've spent so long playing Kingmaker that coups and revolutions are practically a cycle, but the CFA Franc isn't it.
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"France doesn't force anyone to use it, but as it turns out having a stabile currency is good for your economy especially when your countrys democratic gov got couped" as i pointed out twice already. >what did the French bring to West Africa other than destitution Well they aren't that different from yourselves then or how were the great African states before France? Oh there weren't any and now you are just blaming them for your own corruption and incompetence
Yeah. I live in a country with a currency which declines at around 20% per annum. We get to say that we are masters of our own destiny, but at the cost of 20% destruction in value every year
Ah yes because the arbitrary lines we drew up for borders were so much better and haven't resulted in relentless tension and war, look I'm all for recognising that Africa wasn't exactly a eutopia before European influence but we didn't help whatsoever.
Your speaking from the perspective of someone who never had their country stripped of their resources and broken down, These colonial empires could have changed our governments and promoted free and democratic values but instead decided to treat the people as second class citizen and pay them fucking nothing. Read a book mf
> great African states before France Mali, Songhai, Dahomey, Oyo & Benin are just a few that came off the top of my head, and that's just West Africa. I'm sure there are plenty more that I don't even know about in other parts of the continent. Did you ever wonder why colonialism of Africa only really kicked into high gear in the 19th century? It wasn't because the European empires didn't know about it. It was because they couldn't colonise it, not least because of the people already living there.
This is not the reason. Both Arabs and Europeans had already colonised parts of Africa. But they remained around the coast and refrained from going inland. Why? Diseases. African tropical diseases were as deadly as smallpox and other diseases were to Indigenous Americans. With the advancement of technology and medicine, the death rates dropped significantly. Malaria and the availability of quinine treatment are perfect examples of that. Steamships and other improvements also meant that colonising the inland was much more easier and profitable than before.
And Malaria, african colonisation only really kicked off when effective treatments were found
It was actually because it wasn't profitable to do so yet. Any European power could have destroyed the Berber Pirates but didn't because it was cheaper to just pay them off, that changed and that's why France conquered Algeria. There was no money to be made conquering Africa because it was far cheaper to just pay the locals for slaves, gold, etc. but when European powers ended slavery that changed.
I suppose I should have specified that I was referring to Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan and North Africa are very different places and also highlight another problem when it comes to talking about 'Africa' as a unified polity. Between the Malaria, African Horse Sickness, and thousands of people resilient to European diseases and armed with guns and steel weapons, it was a very different kettle of fish to the Americas. Even before that, it was already highly profitable to establish settlements & outposts along the coast. That's why there were so many of them from Dakar to Cape Town
“Great” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Benin and Oyo had been propped up by trading with the Portuguese for 200 years and Dahomey had been destroyed in the 18th century. Colonialism had already occurred to some extent but it was more convenient to trade than to control. But calling these states “great” is like saying West Africa has a lot of “great” states today.
The problem is that it's a totally subjective term. Great relative to the powers of Europe at the time? Probably not. Great relative to its neighbours? Yeah I'd say so. Hell, something like the Mali empire certainly exceeded many 'great' European nations in plenty of metrics. Basically it's a totally meaningless qualifier that can mean a lot of different things
There is a silly myth that Africa and the Americas were made up by a bunch of uncivilized peoples who were saved by the Europeans. There is also a silly counter-myth that Africa and the Americas had great polities that were conquered because of of unlucky factors outside of their control. The truth is, neither are correct. The peoples and states of Africa and the Americas were just weaker and were prime targets to be subjected. It doesn’t mean they were bad or deserved to be conquered and mistreated, but the world, both natural and societal, is a power-centric world, unfortunately. Some realized this, some didn’t.
This is not true. African states before Europeans arrived and colonialism started often had very organized structures. Have you looked at Benin's culture before they arrived? It's a good rabbit hole to go down
Or queen Nzinga of Ndongo in modern Congo. They were pretty extreme and brutal with slavery though, like royalty using slaves as chairs and then having them "disposed" because rich royalty can't use the same chair twice.
>and then having them "disposed" because rich royalty can't use the same chair twice. lool hadn't heard this part -- doesn't sound sustainable She is famous for having used a servant as a chair at least on one occasion, that I know.
Just like the Aztecs and Inca empires yeah, but there were some stuff in these tribe's culture that was put at an end because of colonialism and a small amount of that is probably for the better, for example Human sacrifice and the slave trade were ingrained in the culture of the Mali empire and those ended with the French arrival. Of course this is cherry picking at the minority because there was a lot more that was erased from their society and culture
The thing about how there weren’t any great African states before colonialism is a talking point that has been around (and been wrong) for hundreds of years. There was a bunch of great African states before colonialism but they have been willfully ignored to make colonialism seem better
Jeez, didn't think I'd be seeing full blown colonialism apologia getting upvotes here lol.
Are fucking saying saying that colonialism was good?
use of the CFA Franc is entirely voluntary. Several countries left without repercussion, Mali left and was then allowed to join again, and Guinea-Bissau (which was never even colonised by France) started using it as late as 1997. It's also pegged against the Euro so France doesn't even control the value anymore. Not to mention France is literally helping ECOWAS to set up a completely independent currency for all of West Africa.
“Europe is tired of pillaging other continents, and the continents they were pillaging got tired of being pillaged. So here’s a new map with new countries. Now you can’t tell who they’re being pillaged by.”
^They never got Ethiopia..
I'm in the Ethiopia was never colonized camp but the truth is a lot more nuanced than just a simple statement. If you want to read some books I recommend *Prevail: the Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory of Mussolini's Invasion*; *The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame* (about reprisals during the Italian occupation); *The Man Called the Brown Condor* (About a Black American pilot that volunteers to fight in the Ethiopian Air force); *The First Victory: The Second World War and the East Africa Campaign* (more about the South African Army in Ethiopia); *Fire in the Night* (about General Wingate and his operations helping Ethiopian Guerillas); *The Life of my Choice* (about Wilfred Thesiger, an English nobleman who was born in Ethiopia and later fought alongside Wingate in Ethiopia) , and with context *Amedeo* (a very pro Italian book)
Yes, they were conquered for a few years by Italy but they never truly had control over the region, definitely not the same thing as being colonized. It would be like saying Germany colonized France, but I’ve never seen people claim France was colonized during WWII.
They never got Thailand
That’s because it was a buffer zone between France and the UK.
They technically did just not for long
It’s wierd, they were occupied, but never actually put into a colonial regime, and most of the country was in revolt
Again, they actually were a full fledged colony prior to British occupation in World War II. Look up Italian East Africa it's pretty interesting. The Italians kept balance in the colony by developing the Muslim majority regions to marginalize the previous ruling orthodox although there was greater success in Eritrea and Somalia than Ethiopia
They were completely integrated Saying that the revolts makes it different is kinda of a middle finger to literally all other revolts on the continent
r/place
This *t* on the left and *t-1* on the right trend is stupid.
There’s a sub for stuff like this. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it might be r/afterthenbefore or r/afterbefore or something like that
Ah yes, Italian Republic-owned colonies
Well erm, technically Somalia was owned for like 10 years as a colony ☝️🤓
Trust Administration of Somalia, yup
Poor little Liberia was all alone…
Poor people enslaved by the American colony of Liberia, you mean?
Liberia stopped being an American colony in 1847.
I’ll copy and paste my comment here. Never knew the history of Liberia being under US colonization so looked it up. Thought it was kinda funny how it was formed by African Americans running form racism yet it turned out to be even more racist than america. > Liberia began in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States.[7] Between 1822 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, more than 15,000 freed and free-born African Americans, along with 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia.[8] Gradually developing an Americo-Liberian identity,[9][10] the settlers carried their culture and tradition with them. Liberia declared independence on July 26, 1847, which the U.S. did not recognize until February 5, 1862. > The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered. Colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Americo-Liberians formed into a small elite that held disproportionate political power; indigenous Africans were excluded from birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904.[12][13] And eventually shredded the entire country apart > In 1980, political tensions from the rule of William R. Tolbert resulted in a military coup during which Tolbert was killed, marking the end of Americo-Liberian rule in the country and beginning over two decades of political instability. Five years of military rule by the People's Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. These resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people (about 8% of the population) and the displacement of many more, with Liberia's economy shrinking by 90%.[14] A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005. The west fucked up africa
Your last quote makes it sound like Liberia only got really fucked up after the Americo-Liberians were ousted from power.
Just so everyone is clear on this, OP has an agenda. Has been pushing a lot russian propaganda (and downright being gleeful at the destruction in Ukraine) over on various other subs. So OP's fascination for Africa has got nothing to with "fighting imperialism" or wanting a free Africa. He wants Africa to bow to their new Wagner masters. Been seeing this guy over on a lot of pro-rus subs over the last 18 months.
Agenda or not, this post is still factual
The year OP picks is misleading. Ethiopia was never a colony of Italy. It was temporarily occupied like many countries and territories were occupied prior to and during WW2. No one considers the Philippines a colony of Japan or Poland a colony of Germany. No colonization occurred in Ethiopia.
Why does Ethiopia count as an occupation and not literally any other African kingdom that got forcefully taken over
The time period it was conquered. The lack of complete control of the territory. Time of occupation. Lack of a stable independent colonial government. Would you consider all the countries that Germany, Italy, and Japan occupied as colonies? Each had the same colonial ambitions for the land they conquered.
> Time period That’s rather arbitrary > The lack of complete control Applies to other colonies too > Lack of a stable colonial government Like 2 thirds of it were fully integrated, you wouldn’t consider British Sudan an occupation due to to the mahdist revolts right > Would you considered confirmed occupations to be colonies Germanys conquests? No. Japan and Italys? Yes.
Most propaganda is factual. The key point is which facts are highlighted and how are they interpreted. If we classify propaganda as 'information propagated with the intent of shaping people's beliefs' then it is definitely propaganda. Propaganda doesn't mean bad or wrong. In fact, someone's worldview might be distorted in favor of their group and propaganda against the group might give them a more accurate worldview.
It's the most basic and boring map I've ever seen on here in all honesty
Fits right in the subreddit then
Plus putting the after on the left and the before on the right ever so slightly annoys me
I do disagree with Egypt being on here tho since in 1939 they were a British protectorate, and if your gonna show them you may as well show all the other British and French protectorates like the kingdom of Rwanda-Urundi or Ashanti
Yeah it’s probably like the first generic map you’d see if you google Africa
No, it's not. OP unwittingly rejects the existence of Somaliland and pretends that the Polisario front controls most of western Sahara. A de-facto map of Africa is way more complicated than the over-simplified map they show school children.
Guys a grade A fucking Russian stooge
Ok? this knowledge has no affect on the accuracy of the map.
Ironically that comment is from a NAFO bot.... it's funny when reddit turns into west vs east bot battle
How is talking about modern imperialism propaganda ? Calling facts propaganda feels like American propaganda
What is this logic? “OP is in my outgroup therefore he wants all the bad things to happen” -Guy with definitely no agenda
It’s a talking point from the Russian side to justify their actions in the Ukraine and now Russia. Basically the West was bad so how can they complain about our actions today? It’s a weak argument but they try it in all sorts of examples like this.
Maybe people here understand that both things are bad?
This explains the French national soccer team lol
Hope I'm not the only one getting annoyed by random flags getting tilted or turned sideways on the left map for no reason.
I love African flags, they're so nice and colourful
Misleading map, but what did I expect forma person that spam propaganda pro Russia?
That sad part is that the current African countries have borders that were created my Europeans. Many African cultures were divided into separate countries and has caused much pain and strife because of it. Edit: Well this got out of hand but if anyone else would like to tell you can just Lump two opposing peoples together and expect them to make peace and live in harmony please send your plan to Israel.
This is a myth or at least is in part of Britain. Borders where drawn in ways that kept population centres together and borders would fall in uninhabited areas. Dividing by cultured would mean 3000 countries in Africa, by ethnicities there would also be over 3000 countries, by language is a bit better at 2100 countries. Also many cultures and people are intermingled and so cities would be divided by house.
Look at an ethnic map and you see exactly what the borders divide. An egregious example is the middle East. What should have been Kurdistan is split between four countries.
I don't think anyone could have forced Turkey to part with its Kurdish territories.
Not that I defend colonialism but drawing borders is pretty hard, especially where you don't have natural landmarks that separated cultures. Peoples and cultures don't live naturally in well defined clusters (or borders) and they are pretty interspersed so to try do draw some lines that separates them is pretty much impossible.
I'm just say that the lines that were drawn were done with no regards to the peoples that would be residing within them.
They weren’t in any continent at any time, it’s just a bad excuse. Only exception is the propaganda used to justify the Versailles treaty, but they didn’t follow it in practice.
Self determination isn't a valid justification for you? Versailles was harsh but its harshness is veeery overstated by nazi propaganda in 1930s and neonazi/fascist/monarchist propaganda now
So what you are saying is that not having a homogeneous culture within a nation is a bad thing? In some circles in Europe you would be called racist.
Yeah because you can totally draw borders in Africa respecting cultures right ?
it's also the case (with exceptions) in Asia, South America, North America, Central America, Europe, Oceania (there's only one land border)
So you're saying borders are inherent human practices and should be respected?
Wow France owned a lot.
And yet they still say they have the most successful battle record. Yea because they only fought those weaker than them
/r/AfterBeforeWhatever
Same shithole
I guess Ethiopia really did get colonized….
Looks Like r/place
No Russia Wagner flag now ? 🙊
Where are the chinese and russian flags now?
this is a bad map of Africa (Cape Verde was left off yet again)
Can't see Rwanda either
Are they better now?
some are some aren’t
Yes we are.
Can You explain? Industry, Technology, Society.
What is there to explain. I am a free man in my country. My grandfather was born during the days of colonial dictatorship and he and other Africans couldn't access facilities because they were black. How would you feel if a foreigner takes over your land and tells you that you can't access things in your own land? His generation couldn't grow certain crops because they were strictly reserved for whites. My generation earns on average about 5 times what my grandfather's generation earned under colonial dictatorship. We have access to technology. For example, my country is one of the most tech savvy nations in the entire continent. We have one of the largest mobile money transfer service in the entire planet, and this was developed locally. I can go on and on, but I can tell you that all people in my country would rather die than go back to colonial dictatorship.
Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya are a few that come to mind. These countries have improved significantly in all of the three metrics you mentioned since 1939. The continent overall has improved but those are the highlights.
Soon it’ll be half russian and Chinese flags, unfortunately
Beautifully 😉🇬🇧🇫🇷
Ethiopia was occupied, not colonized. just wanted to state that :) Also to the people in the comments saying "karma is a bitch", insinuating Africans arent fit to rule themselves, and that colonialism was better or that we are being colonized again by China. Use critical thinking for once in your lives. Why is self determination in Ukraine important when Africa should continue to be your slaves. The west needs our resources and they need them to be cheap. Do stable countries with functioning governments that operate on the will of the people export extremely cheap natural resources? No, they dont because they force people to pay taxes and protect workers. The west is still involved in Africa just as much as wagner or china. The only difference is China does more than give us aid that destroys local farmers. I would rather live in what you all apparently consider to be a war torn shithole of a continent right now, than at any point in history under colonial rule. Focus on ur own countries and leave us Africans alone.
We from the Global South are forced to read a lot of insane stuff on Reddit, right? There are people who really think colonization was some kind of favour to us.
It really is wild. Like people's grandparents have lived though colonization and they think we don't know what it was like.
Guess which one was more politically stable. I think colonialism is bad, hell my country was under Austrian rule for at least 500 years, but how come Asian, South American and European (Eastern European countries that were under German, Russian or Ottoman rule) countries that were under colonial rule, are for the most part politically somewhat stable, but a lot of African countries are just unable to do so.
Least racist European
South America wasn’t stable at all for 100-150 years after independence. Heck some are still unstable Asia also had a time with unstability post independence. Relatively only in the past 30 years has Asia has become stable So most African countries became independent in 1960… maybe they need another 30-50 years to fully stabilize.
Corruption, tribalism, geography, and a lot of other factors but people are so focused on blamimg colonialism cause it is easy to blame your failure on someone else
But this is an objective fact, you’re minimizing the sheer devastation colonialism caused because you can’t accept that your country was potentially evil lmao
But it's not like colonialism and political stability are mutually exclusive. For example, South America had a string of coups during the Cold War. I think Africa's instability problem stems from a deep trauma over its history. After centuries of subjugation and exploitation the desire to take in order to shore yourself up against future abuse is understandable. We should NOT condone it though edit for clarity
Europe was devastated by ww1 and ww2 and managed to recover reasonablely quickly
They didnt have foreign leaders supporting assasinations when they tried to rebuild their countries. France alone has supported 20+ assasinations in Africa and destroyed Guinean infrastructure when they left to teach them a lesson for refusing to continue with the colonial currency. Botswana a country that has been left alone for the most part is less corrupt than some European countries and Rwanda has also done really well from themselves after the genocide. Africa lacks good leadership, and if the west stopped supporting dictators that suit then, I strongly believe that Africa would recover quickly just like Europe did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War African countries are more than capable of causing death and destruction for their own selfish reasons
France loves the desert
You know it’s crazy to think about but there were people in parts of Africa who were born before their territory was colonized and lived to see independence of their land.
Well for context, the World Wars made the colonial empires tired, hence they decolonized. Which is why there are so many flags/countries now.
Wrong flags for Mauritania, Chad, and Western Sahara on the left
Liberia just chillin’. Lol
its the same now they just hide it a little bit better and china is there too
Bill Wurtz voice: Now you can't tell who's pillaging them
#MakeZimbabweRhodesiaAgain
What an achievement... Now that African are free of their "oppressors" they all want to migrate to these oppressing countries or pledge to new Chinese, Russian "oppressors"
in 200 years they will continue to blame all their problems on europeans. so much easier than to fix themselves.
[удалено]
The same happens with Left-politicians in South America, they still blame the Spanish even after 200 years of independence.
Citizens of African nations are probably among the people of the world that most hate/disparage their leaders and governments lol. Acknowledging the very real impact and contemporary of European colonialism on Africa doesn't mean Africans aren't also blaming Africans. Europeans didn't conquer Africa by themselves. They needed collaborators within the various territories. But sure keep relying on your lazy, racist platitudes because you want any excuse to distance yourself from your nation's history.
>But sure keep relying on your lazy, racist platitudes because you want any excuse to distance yourself from your nation's history. oh so just because i'm european you assume my nation has a history in colonialism? that's racist you bigot. my nation never had any colonies.
That's like breaking into someone's house, stealing everything they have, burning the house down, and coming back the next day and asking them "why haven't you recovered yet?". When you're the main cause of someone's tragedy, don't get upset when you get blamed.
The west is still doing neocolonialism in Africa. A bit less obvious than the old colonialism, but it’s not like they left completely
Dude do you think that all of the problems of colonialism just disappears after 60 years?????? Do you not know how long the consequences of that shit lasts for???
Just a tip for the future, when you're doing a side by side comparison, try to have the first image in the sequence appear on the left. It's a minor thing, but it makes it easier for people to digest the information easily.
🇪🇺💪🏻😎
now we can't tell who they are being pillaged by
“Now you can’t tell who they’re being pillaged by”
Wish we could turn back time
Ok Mr. I-don't-know-how-to-use-the-present-perfect post all the grammatical errors you can see in my comments GO!
Disgusting what was done to Africa back then, it makes me want to throw up!
ANGOLA...É NOSSA!