# How Africa would look if it hadn't been colonized **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 5, 2014, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716 "2014-05-05T15:58:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/41 "2014-05-06T20:21:38Z")
This is not true. The Nazi movement was at its fundaments racialist and about ethnic hatreds. You gloss over the extreme Left components in the early party when the Socialist phrase was still taken seriously by some, and it was not about communists but ‘internationalism’ and the rootless, which always meant Jews and other minorities. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/42 "2014-05-06T20:52:37Z")
What boringly reasonable counterfactuals. What about a giant Zulu Empire, that just kept expanding until it covered the whole of sub-Saharan Africa? 😃 Imagine a ‘cold war’ between the Zulus and the Aztecs! 🆒 I’ll get my copy of “Civilization II” fired up … ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/43 "2014-05-06T20:52:46Z")
> [@OurLordPeace](#): > > The “stab in the back” story that emerged after WWI, promoted by many elements including the Nazis, said that Leftists, particularly Communists, didn’t support the troops, and brought defeat to Germany. Because of the aforementioned stereotype, this smear gained particular traction, and Jews were judged to be prone to Communism as an innate ethnic trait. Again, you have this backwards. Especially given that anti-Semitism had been around in Germany before Communism was even conceived of. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/44 "2014-05-06T21:00:47Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > Confused. > > People keep blaming the colonial powers for carving up Africa in an arbitrary and unworkable way. This ignores the fact that there is NO way to divide Africa into nation-states that does justice to every ethnic group, especially large ones with divided and overlapping ranges (like the Hausa). Any attempt to do so would end up like the picture in the blog… a giant mess of Balkanized micronations. As has been pointed out, this drawing assumes that they conglomerated into nation-states which is far from a sure thing, and more like a best guess. > > What I will say is that any idea of a unified pan-African nation is a joke. Afrocentric statements like njtt’s ignore the reality that Africa is a hodgepodge of competing and often violently opposed tribal groups fighting over limited resources… just like everywhere else in the world. The idea that all of Africa’s woes are based on some foreigner carving up the map is a farce. Didn’t Germany used to look like that? Why couldn’t there4 be an African Bismark? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/45 "2014-05-06T21:06:11Z")
> [@OurLordPeace](#): > > For what it’s worth, on a per capita basis India’s ethnic groups get along very well. Sure, but only becaue there’s so many _capita_. But would you say " it is not the primary unit of identity" is accurate? i.e would people see themselves as e.g. Indian first, Sikh/Tamil/Punjabi second? I highly, highly doubt it. And “relatively rarely the cause of deadly violence”? This is a country where one entire region has been ethnically cleansed [as recently as 1990](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India#Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_Hindus), and has ongoing ethnic-motivated [massacres](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India). > [@Malthus](#): > > What boringly reasonable counterfactuals. > > What about a giant Zulu Empire, that just kept expanding until it covered the whole of sub-Saharan Africa? The Zulu Kingdom was never going to be an empire. While I don’t subscribe to the Great Man theory of history, it’s clear that it was strictly Shaka who made the Kingdom what it was, his heirs would not be able to sustain his gains, never mind expand it. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/46 "2014-05-06T21:14:55Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The Zulu Kingdom was never going to be an empire. While I don’t subscribe to the Great Man theory of history, it’s clear that it was strictly Shaka who made the Kingdom what it was, his heirs would not be able to sustain his gains, never mind expand it. I think you took my post a tad more seriously than I meant it to be taken. 😉 A giant Zulu Empire is more interesting than likely … the reasons it was unlikely are legion. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/47 "2014-05-06T21:28:31Z")
🙂 You got me. Although there’s something to be said for a Khoisan empire, bursting out of the desert like Fremen, [riding their battle-oxen](http://www.agefotostock.com/previewimage/bajaage/93440e72cccf18760af29d9c0c749abf/XY2-1412658.jpg?iact=rc&uact=3&dur=1421&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=0CFYQMygCMAI) (this bit is actually [historically](http://dl.wdl.org/11279.png) [semi-accurate](http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/45/4546/97DDG00Z/posters/hottentot-riding-his-ox.jpg?iact=rc&uact=3&dur=1384&page=1&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=0CFUQMygBMAE)!) and trampling all before them. Making everyone submit to their tongue-clicking commands, or suffer… ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/48 "2014-05-06T22:18:13Z")
I’m going to base my speculations on a single counterfactual: quinine didn’t exist, and so Europeans didn’t have a half-way effective preventive/treatment for malaria. That being the case, the general outlines look like this: As happened historically, the Arabs establish outposts of their culture in East Africa. Likewise the Portuguese sail around Africa and find a route to India and beyond. The Portuguese partially but not completely conquer former Arab holdings, and on the Guinea coast in the west set up ports for the slave trade. The Dutch establish outposts on the Cape. The bifurcation from actual history comes in the 18th century. when in actuality new ways of refining cinchona bark made it more effective, and at the same time the British started dominating the seaways. In the counterfactual British imperial expansion is hampered by devastating mortality rates from malaria. As a result the British are largely limited to outposts on the coasts which are seen as hardship duty, and they are much more dependent on alliances with the locals (including semi-acclimated Portuguese and Afrikaners) rather than garrisoning large forces. While a moral movement against slavery still takes place, it’s much less successful because of Britain’s limited ability to project power into the interior and it’s dependence on good relations with slave-holding tribes. European firearms technology and trade goods trickle into the continent, and those groups that adopt the musket overpower their less advanced neighbors resulting in considerable upheaval. As late as the end of the nineteenth century large parts of the continent are still “Darkest Africa”, all but unknown to Europeans beyond second-hand reports. The germ theory of disease and the discovery that the Anopheles mosquito is the vector of malaria allows some advances (mosquito netting, draining swamps), and better firearms are helpful against hostiles, but it’s still a recklessly brave Breton or Frenchman who dares explore deep inland. European explorers are still mapping the interior and meeting previously uncontacted tribes as late as the start of WW2, and the most remote areas like the Congo remain as poorly explored as the Amazon. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/49 "2014-05-06T22:24:18Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > A giant Zulu Empire is more interesting than likely … the reasons it was unlikely are legion. Shaka started with a few villages and conquered and ruled an empire the size of Portugal, with no horses. That was unlikely by itself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/50 "2014-05-06T22:35:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > 🙂 You got me. > > Although there’s something to be said for a Khoisan empire, bursting out of the desert like Fremen, [riding their battle-oxen](http://www.agefotostock.com/previewimage/bajaage/93440e72cccf18760af29d9c0c749abf/XY2-1412658.jpg?iact=rc&uact=3&dur=1421&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=0CFYQMygCMAI) (this bit is actually [historically](http://dl.wdl.org/11279.png) [semi-accurate](http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/45/4546/97DDG00Z/posters/hottentot-riding-his-ox.jpg?iact=rc&uact=3&dur=1384&page=1&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=0CFUQMygBMAE)!) and trampling all before them. Making everyone submit to their tongue-clicking commands, or suffer… Whoever controls the _!_|_kharagugu_ root controls the Universe! ---
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/51 "2014-05-06T22:54:38Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > This is not true. The Nazi movement was at its fundaments racialist and about ethnic hatreds. You gloss over the extreme Left components in the early party when the Socialist phrase was still taken seriously by some, and it was not about communists but ‘internationalism’ and the rootless, which always meant Jews and other minorities. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Again, you have this backwards. Especially given that anti-Semitism had been around in Germany before Communism was even conceived of. The proto-Nazis, and the party’s founders, were brawling with the Young Communist League long before 1933. Political opponents were their first targets. The hatreds of previous centuries were obviously still very strong, but in the 20th century there was (perhaps by necessity) a new, political/ideological basis for what transpired. That makes the Holocaust, and other atrocities, much easier to understand. The fading Ottoman Empire was rife with anti-Armenian (and anti-other Christian minorities) sentiment, but it wasn’t universal. It wasn’t until tens of thousands of Armenian nationalist militia members worked in concert with the Imperial Russian military to launch attacks on Ottoman targets, resulting in a certain amount of ethnic cleansing, that the regime in Istanbul commenced with the deportations, leading to mass killings by both commission and neglect. There was no ethnic-nationalist rebellion against the German state, but there had been considerable militant leftist activity (including elements with which I identify; if only they’d won!) in the wake of the war and the monarchy’s fall. In part due to longstanding anti-Jewish and anti-Roma attitudes, it was easy for many Germans to believe, and then convince others, that these minorities had been all over such actions, and thus did not belong, and required elimination one way or another. And what does that have to do with Africa? Recall that in Rwanda, there was a lot of violence in areas that were pretty much all-Hutu. Ethnicity doesn’t explain foreign interference (of any sort, although it partly explained under-the-table support for white regimes), which has done so much to destroy African political/social/economic development. Ideology explains much more. ---
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/52 "2014-05-06T22:59:52Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Sure, but only becaue there’s so many _capita_. But would you say " it is not the primary unit of identity" is accurate? i.e would people see themselves as e.g. Indian first, Sikh/Tamil/Punjabi second? I highly, highly doubt it. I doubt it also, but I think the ratio (per capita) matters. It’s often forgotten when one fails to take into account the sense of scale in such matters. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/53 "2014-05-07T01:25:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Shaka started with a few villages and conquered and ruled an empire the size of Portugal, with no horses. That was unlikely by itself. About a third the size of Portugal. The Zulu kingdom was about 11,500 square miles (30,000 square kilometers). Portugal is about 35,000 square miles. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/54 "2014-05-07T02:57:21Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > About a third the size of Portugal. The Zulu kingdom was about 11,500 square miles (30,000 square kilometers). Portugal is about 35,000 square miles. [You’re right.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_Kingdom) I had assumed the Zulu Kingdom encompassed more or less all of what is now [KwaZulu-Natal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KwaZulu-Natal) (36,433 sm). ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/55 "2014-05-09T16:36:19Z")
Well, if Person X had/hadn’t died in infancy, well who knows what might have happened. I’m not much of a believer in the Great Person school either, but there are some people who rearranged the deck chairs pretty decisively. Without Alexander you don’t have the hellenic empires. Or if Alexander hadn’t died in his 30s, the gods know what sort of mischief he might have gotten up to. So, the whole XXXXX empire doesn’t exist today, because person XXXXX was killed in battle before he assumed supreme leadership of the XXXX army, and went on to rout his enemies and found the XXXX dynasty which ruled XXXX for XXXX years, which prevented the incursion of YYYY into XXXX, instead they went to ZZZZ and really fucked things up there, which means WWWW never happened there. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716/56 "2014-05-09T16:46:26Z")
But in the case of the Zulus, we _know_ the heirs of Shaka (his brothers) were fuckups. This isn’t a counterfactual. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-africa-would-look-if-it-hadnt-been-colonized/687716.md?page=2)