“In 1800, 10% of the world’s poorest nations were in Africa. In 2000, 80% of the world’s poorest nations are in Africa”
Thus sayeth the Facebook status of a friend - is there any way of verifying the first part of the statement?
(or the last - just don’t start debating the merits of the two parts, this is GQ after all…)
Grim
It would be difficult, as standard economic measures and record-keeping have changed drastically over the centuries. A lot of the data we use to assess national wealth just didn’t exist two hundred years ago.
There’s also a huge confound here. The fact that much of Africa was carved up by colonial empires in 1800 (and in fact, the continent wasn’t even fully explored by Europeans) raises a question: How many independent nations existed in Africa in 1800? Does this alleged statistic count only those recognized by Europeans at the time? What of nominally independent states under European “protection”?
And, to reiterate - how are we measuring poverty?
I’m biting my tongue to keep from getting into the merits of these claims, but I’ll hold off until and unless this thread gets moved to GD.
I could buy it, because of how dramatically Asia has improved its position in the past century. Post WWII, Singapore and Korea had lower per capita GDPs than Nigeria ad Kenya.
No.
That sort of information from 1800 doesn’t exist for the entirely of Africa and you’d be hard pressed to get your friend to even demonstrate what the “Nations” in Africa at the time were.
I would guess that this claim has assumptions piled on top of generalities piled on top of rounding. I think the gist of it - that Africa’s being a horrible shithole as compared to the rest of the world has not always been the case - is generally true. You’d be hard pressed to show me that the Songhai state was any less wealthy than any equivalent European state at the time. Attaching such broad, conveniently round numbers to it is silly.
Yes, I think we need to start with a list of the world’s nations as they were in 1800 – and much of the world, including large parts of the Americas, Africa and Australasia did not have “nations” is any meaningful sense.
Actually in 1800 most of Africa was NOT colonized. The “Scramble for Africa” occured after 1880, and by 1914 only Ethiopia was still independent. Which is why they were invaded by Italy in the 1930s, because where else was Italy supposed to invade?
I shouldn’t think that there is enough data about the indigenous nations in Africa - or indigenous states - to make a statement.
Lacking data one can’t really say much on poverty or not.
Nit: And Liberia. Due to Ethiopia’s run-in with the Italians, Liberia remains the only pre WWI independent African country to have never been colonized since 1880.
(Fully prepared for an immediate “you idiot, you forgot about …” correction)
I doubt you can even define “poverty” in this context. Sub-Sarhan Africa in 1800 was tribal – small groups of people who lived in a small, well-defined area. The economy was usually subsistence and barter. You could live adequately without money because you had crops and goats.
Well, there’s no small number of Africans who advance the critique that Liberia was effectively a disguised American colony of sorts, given the way it was governed.
I can see the point, although it doesn’t strike me as entirely fair.
One certainly could if there were data.
It bloody well wasn’t: There were right and proper states in SSA from at least the Medieval period forward. I wish people would stop repeating this ignorant nonsense.
Parts of SSA were stateless, that’s true, but great swathes of West and Western South-Central Africa (e.g. Angola, pre-colonial) were right proper states and well beyond subsistence and barter - had their own monetary systems in fact.
Didn’t get beyond iron age on their own, but… easily as much a state with poverty or not as if were were speaking of late Medieval Europe.
Only difference is in late Medieval Europe there is enough surviving writing that one can take a guess at standards of living (although just a guess), whereas virtually nothing in Africa - even where there was either Portuguese or Arabic literacy - survives so one knows pretty much fuck all about economic details.
A lot of it was that Europe and other nations were also poor.
It’s like looking at kids at 17 in their senior year in high school and rating them economically. Then looking at them when they’re 37 and seeing the difference.
There were fewer poorer nations in Africa because Europe was also poorer. Argentina was one of the advanced nations of the world prior to WWI, basically because of it’s rich farming and cattle business. But as industrialization took over, that ceased to be the measure of developed and Argentina no longer ranks among the tops in terms of developed nations.
It’s really a poor comparison.
<snort>
Now that’s rich!
Life for most people in rural SSA is not some sort of unending parade of horrors. It’s pretty much the normal. everyday, unremarkable farming lifestyle that most of humanity has been living since we settled down. For the most part spend your childhood playing, working the farm, having childish adventures and maybe getting in a bit of school. Then you grow up and get married and have kids of your own. You grow your food, sell stuff at the market now and then and maybe try to improve your house. For fun you gossip, drink the local brew, take walks in nature and make art or music. In the end you hope to grow old peacefully surrounded by a loving family. Of course there rae problems along the way- for example without antibiotics and vaccinations, disease takes a big toll. But the normal stuff of day to day life? It’s really not that bad.
There is a good chance your own great-grandparents wouldn’t feel too out of place.
Thank you.
Medieval west Africa was actually shockingly similar to medieval Europe. African empires developed feudalism, engaged in inter-continental trade, opened centers of education, practiced organized religion, developed trade languages that spanned across regions and contributed to the world dialogue at the time. The evidence of these ancient kingdoms lives on today…the sultanates and laamidates of the Hausa kingdoms (which are rooted in the truly ancient Kanem empire) are still very relevant political entities today.
Wikipedia has a lot of good articles on Pre-Colonial African states. It’s a subject worth reading up about, especially if you don’t know much about Africa besides the “savages and spears” stereotypes.
Of course Africa had more wealth in 1800. They were still selling slaves to the Americas.
(This post paid for the by the It’s a Silly Comparison fund.)
Gapminder has data back to 1800 for Africa and they look to be just as poor then as now in comparison to the rest of the world.
Though, in fairness, a lot of SSA really is an unending parade of horrors. Citizens of the DRC, for example, enjoy nontrivial odds of dying horribly at the hands of villains who wouldn’t seem out of place in a Mad Max film. So did citizens of Liberia, until recently. And Cote D’Ivoire, in the 90s - and heck, that might start up again. Zimbabwe is its own special brand of wretchedness, as is Equatorial Guinea.
One can (and should!) dismiss the “Africans are savage, bloodthirsty tribablists and failures” meme and still acknowledge that large swathes of SSA are really quite horrible places to live by any measure.
That being said, it would also be foolish to forget that African states can be stable, multi-party democracies. South Africa is the classic example, but Botswana was doing the multi-party democracy thing right from independence - no coups, no dictatorships, just democratic goodness under a government that respects the rights of the people and a military that recognizes the primacy of civilian government. (I’ve sort of got a government-crush on Botswana). Namibia’s doing fine as well, and Benin is exceedingly poor, but quite democratic. Even the less democratic states are often far from nightmarish - Camaroon, Kenya (really flawed democracy), Nigeria, etc.
Probably the fairest way to describe SSA would be “mostly varying levels of fairly unremarkable poverty, with pockets of wealth and big swathes of democracy (not always in the same place) - but the worst places are both really big and really exceptionally bad.”
Well considering we just went on about the lack of data - it is hard to conclude anything off of no data - that doesn’t tell me much (although c. 1800 I’d expect that this would be not untrue at that stage.).
Magical charts mate unless there is data say fuck all.
I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but let’s not play down too much the disease and medical facilities toll. Getting sick with the myriad nasty illnesses rampant and you are right fucked as an ordinary farmer.
It’s also true that increasing population has made old school life untenable in many areas - land can’t carry the population using traditional practices. Things have to change.
There are some very, very bad places to be, of course. But the worst atrocities tend to be limited in time and geographic scope. Even in the DRC, arguably one of the worse places to be hanging around, most people are just living their lives, often hundreds of miles from any violence. I have an American friend running a cafe in Lubumbashi who recently described it as “a nice place to raise kids.” She’s a bit eccentric, but the point is that the whole country isn’t a crazy war zone, much less the whole contient.
99% of Africans are just normal people, living normal lives and working in normal occupations for an unindustrialized economy. The continent has huge problems (and even the ordinary poverty of subsistence farming is a problem…especially when it comes to getting modern medical care) but it’s important to have some perspective. There is more to the place than famine and war.