Mr. Zambezi: *I think that it is disengenuous to state that the africans were all getting along as peaceful, nobel savages before the europeans showed up. *
Sigh. Nobody here is stating that, Mr. Z. All we are stating is that among modern Africa’s many serious problems are many that were caused by colonialism. If you can’t provide any hard evidence to support your own claims, could you at least stop misrepresenting other people’s positions?
Jeez, no offense, Mr. Zambezi, but outside of your username, do you actually know anything about Africa? You’ve said that you’re no historian–well, once in a while you’ve got to defer to the perspectives of people who are conversant in history. Tom and magdalene, particularly, have gone into some detail about the problems cause by colonial administration of African territory–i’d especially recommend magdalene’s post on the other African thread. But let me distill one of the main points into language that ahistorical shlubs like you and I can understand:
Colonizing powers in Africa drew national borders that were largely arbitrary, without regard for pre-existing ethnic groupings. Their artificial boundaries often hemmed several competing tribes into the same institutional framework–witness Nigeria and the Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa-Fulani peoples. Alternatively, the borders imposed by colonial governments sometimes split the territory of a single ethnicity between several nation-states (as happened to the Kurds in the formation of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey). Both of these caused problems. In addition, colonial governments had the nasty habit of playing ethnic groups against one another, exacerbating centuries-old conflict by bestowing certain tribes with more bureaucratic influence than the others–again, see the history of Nigeria.
When the imperial governments withdrew following World War II, they left behind political frameworks imperfectly suited to the history and structure of African tribes. Moreover, they imposed political borders which–though badly fitted to the indigenous ethnicites–were recognized as legitimate by the world at large. It’s not as if the tribes could just tear down the institutional infrastructure and start over, so they tried to exist within the colonial framework–even though that framework was often not conducive to the cultural and political needs of the newly autonomous nations. So in many cases, the relationships between the many ethnicities in a given region of Africa was a hell of a lot less stable in the post-colonial environment than they were beforehand.
Honestly, the idea that colonial governments have done some lasting harm to the development of African nations is really not debatable among comparative political scholars and historians of Africa.
Kimstu, thanks for pointing out that I am making up an argument for you. In doing so, you assigned to me an argument I am not making.
For the record, I agree that colonialism did harm to the African peoples. If the one wants to argue that the Africans are worse off, one has to establish what they are worse than.
For example, Somalia. There are six major clans:Dir, Isaaq, Hawiye, Dartod, Digil and Rahanweyn. Every clan is sub divided into sub clans. Non clan members are called sab and are thought of as inferior. They bore the brunt of the crafted campaign of starvalion perpetrated by the Samale. Accounts of the first explorers state that Mogadishu was war torn when they showed up.
In my mind, life doesn’t get a whole lot worse that living in a hut with no medecine, no electricity, no refrigeration and whatever you can dig up for dinner. Sure, Africa is much worse off than many other countries. And it is possible that they are failing because of colonialism. But their relative poverty does not make them any worse off than they were 500 years ago.
I don’t know if any of you read the book “the Poisonwood Bible”. It is about the Congo and it gives different views of what US meddling did to the country. I think that the author was trying to show how we messed them up. But what I saw was people whose standard of living never changed.
I am not arguing about the effects of colonialism or the standard of life there. I am simply pointing out that you can’t state that a people is worse off without showing what life was like for them prior. If anyone has good stats or reports from precolonial times, I would honestly like to see them and learn more about Africa. But no one can honestly say they are worse off without such information.
Z, you’ve said that the colonial governments are “not to blame at all” for the problems experienced by modern African nation-states. We’re showing you evidence that points emphatically to the contrary.
Really, to me it’s like someone saying that slavery in America had no lingering ill effects, because “after all, American blacks are better off today than they were four hundred years ago.”
Both are claims that, given the wealth of historical scholarship available, are ridiculously easy to refute.
500 years ago in europe, people we’re living much the same as they are in Africa. Yet, when europeans imposed government on europe they cam out better, when they did on Africa, they came out about the same. I think that if you take two geographical areas, and one shows improvement, and the other does not. It is fair to place some blame on colonialism. Europe, prevented Africa from further development. Now I have about as much proof of that statement as you do of yours. The quality of life of africans should ahve imporved over the last 500 years. The fact that it has not, is pretty damning.
Actually, if I were starving to death, going to jail might make me better off. Slavery may have put many current US black in a better position that they would have been had they stayed in Africa. That does not justify slavery, but it can be very true.
Let me re-configure my position a bit.
Africans, while not really worse off than they were before colonialism in terms of life expectancy and how they live, might possibly have been an industrialized world power had the euros not messed them up. Then again, maybe they would not have changed their life a whit.
This is a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to point out the unbelievable nationalistic arrogance embedded in a statement like this.
Well let’s just check on this. Is the standard of living for an African descendant higher in the United States then various nations in Africa?
Marc
Well, let’s just check on this. Is it okay with you if I take all of your family and friends away as slaves for my Chocolatebunnyland utopia, with assurances that their great, great, great, great grandchildren will be able to throw off the shackles of my oppression and enjoy a quality of life superior to that of the United States (whose land and resources I’ll have ravaged in the meantime, while fomenting ethnic conflict and stunting U.S. development), but inferior to that of other Chocolatebunnyland citizens whose ancestors were not forcibly brought over for three hundred years of involuntary servitude and oppression?
Naw, I think black people should be honoring the slave traders who were kind enough to free their forefathers from the horrific squalor of Africa!
I’m pretty sure you were aware that nobody here thought the ends justified the means. In fact Mr. Z even said it didn’t justify slavery. So instead of your very stupid post why not acknowledge that blacks in the US have a higher standard of living then blacks in most African nations? It doesn’t lessen the crimes of the past at all.
Incidently sometimes terrible things do have some positive side effects. The Crusades helped launch a new era of enlightenment when Europeans brought back Islamic ideas.
Marc
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mr.Zambezi *
**In my mind, life doesn’t get a whole lot worse that living in a hut with no medecine, no electricity, no refrigeration and whatever you can dig up for dinner. Sure, Africa is much worse off than many other countries. And it is possible that they are failing because of colonialism. But their relative poverty does not make them any worse off than they were 500 years ago. **
[QUOTE]
I hope you never have a power failure where you live. Sound like you’d have nothing left to live for.
The ways we measure quality of life are signifigent- life expectancy, GNP, infant mortality. What could possible be more signifigent than infant mortality? But they’re not the only standand. And a people in poverty who havea coherent culture (and a reliable way of produing manioc (see tomndebb) are better off than those without. And inasmuch as European colonialism destroyed the existing culture while not eqiping the people for a modern culture, yes, it did signifigent harm.
(Um, and yes, I know that that culture was not some “noble savage” paradise. Nobody’s talking about noble savages but you.)
The first question that springs to mind is since when are the Zulu people all of Africa? Literacy is first recorded in West Africa, for example, through grave stones in lower Mauretania and Mali. As for living standards, we can look to both records from the literate societies of West Africa, North East Africa and the Swahili coast, as well as those of Muslim, largely Arab, travellers and early Portuguese and Dutch travellers. Unsuprisingly, it’s hard to make a generalization about thousands of years of history over an entire continent. However, records amply demonstrate that both rich and poor societies existed in Africa, comfortable and uncomfortable. They also suggest living standards declined during colonial rule for most people, except towards the end of the colonial period, especially after WWII when the colonial powers began for the first time seriously investing in public works – in response to unrest of course and the changing political climate. Of course this is a vast over-generalization and some areas could be said to be more favored etc. South Africa of course has a rather different history entirely.
Your point largely reveals your aggresive ignorance. Numbers of Africans did indeed live in such circumstances, as did numbers of European peasants. Numbers also lived in considerably better circumstances as a wide variety of independant sources tell us. The same sources indicate that colonial rule – which was largely self-paying, that is colonial budgets in Africa were largely paid out of local taxes-- imposed immense and usually unbeneficial burdens on the locals. Forced labor, high taxes to pay for European officials, etc. Again, of course this depends a bit on where and when and who was the colonial power. Grossly, Belgium was the worst, followed by the Portuguese --whose rule might be said to be mitigated only by their weakness- then perhaps the French and the British. However, this really depends on time and place.
Does that make the “whites” evil? That seems to be your sore point. Well, those who imposed colonial rule were certainly exploitive asses who I would call evil, but when it gets right down to it, they were using power like humans everywhere: abusively. Race works into this particularly in the way racism was introduced to Africa by 19th century Europeans, who of course believe they were thinking in the right way. We know better now but…
It is equally disingenuous to call them savages, any more than my ancestors were savages or I am a savage. (Well, perhaps I am a savage.) Africa is a big place with a long history, or rather histories. I hope readers of this thread will check out the link I provided above on “tribalism” – a hoary old stereotype rather devoid of analytical value. Personally, yes, West Africa looks rather like any other spot on the globe in the middle ages, to pick a time period. Wars and peace, good rulers and bad. Pretty human all around.
Ah here is your real objection, well given the pittance of aid which goes to Africa, you should sleep well.
Very laudable, try doing it from a factual basis.
**
I’m sorry, I am terribly confused by this paragraph. Can you pinpoint what dates we are talking about? Or are these more vague generalizations?
Until I became interested in this topic a few years ago, I was prone to the same baseless assertions. I hope you’ll provide the basis for this.
Ah, continent, Africa is a continent. Large numbers of people do in fact have medicine, electricity and refrigeration. Sadly large numbers do not or have inadequate access. However, that is rather beside the point. Your vision here is wildly exageratted. (Explicit note, this is not to say everything is rosy, no things are quite hellish in may a city, and conditions of horrible poverty exist. Nonetheless, to imagine most Africans live like they did in 1500 is ludicrously stupid.)
I think you should try doing some reading in African history. Basil Davidson might be a good place to start, although he does go a little on the rosy side. Popular writer and not an academic. REally good place to start would be the emminently fair and balanced Cambridge History of Africa. (Newest edition, late 1980s if memory serves) or even better although written in a professional historian’s style is Fage, J. D.
A history of Africa New York : Routledge, 1995 which is an extremely well-respected if a bit dry volume.
There is also Oliver, Roland Anthony. The African experience London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, c1991.
I would also recommend Africa edited by Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O’Meara: London : Currey, c1995. The authors are both respected historians of Africa and editors of peer-reviewed journals.
If you’re worried about a ‘liberal’ slant or something like that you can always try Phillip Curtin (Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore) volume African history : from earliest times to independence London : Longman, 1995.
Curtin is known as a conservative if such things matter to you. Nonetheless he will nicely do away with your prejudices about the African past, if you read with an open mind.
Oh yeah, on my comments on Central Africa, (Congo especially) most of my thoughts are based on Phyllis Martin’s edited volumes on the region by the same name (Central Africa) as well as readings from the very well-known Jan Vansina. I would also recommend reading, although it is slow going, The Colonial Disease, a medical history about the impact of colonialism on disease in Africa. Can be very tough to read through as it is very academic, but if you want sources…
I fail to see how a book on the 1960s and the Cold War era intervention in Congo casts any light at all on African living standards before colonialism, given of course that this is set (1) just after the colonial regime’s VIOLENT COLLAPSE (2) in the Congo, undoubtedly among the areas of Africa which suffered the most from rapacious robber-barron style rule. (Hell, the Belgian managed to scandalize the other imperialist powers of the day.) So, how is that this more or less journalistic account sheds light on Congo before the Belgians or proves they are not largely responsible for the horrors there?
Wonderful advice, perhaps you should take it instead of making wild assertions whose form and content show you actually have little knowledge of what you’re talking about.
Please see some of the works cited above to help you alleviate your lack of knowledge. A correlary for your statement is no one can say they ARE NOT worse off without such information.
A last word on all this tribalism talk. Please do run by the link I posted – I hope it will help.
And back to this point, again:
Leaving aside the emotionally weighted, but probably misleading, “cow dung huts” phrase, the point is not that people who lived one way in the 1500’s are living the same way now and “It’s the white man’s fault.” There are any number of people living on the upper Amazon or the mountains of New Guinea for whom efforts are under way to leave them alone.
However, in Africa, very successful groups of nomads and farmers were displaced by white encroachment and shown the possibilities of modern industrial life. Having given up (not always willingly) the knowledge and experience of their previous ways of life to accept the European modes of economy, they are often forced to fall back on subsistence living using methods that are no more familiar to them than they would be to the typical city dweller of Chicago or Denver.
The issue is not that people followed the same lifestyle for the past 400 years and now it’s “our fault” that they are not joining the 21st century. The issue is the the vast majority of them were dragged into the 20th century and then the 20th century infrastructure was pulled out from beneath them.
Should the industrial nations “save” them in the manner of the OP? No. That would simply perpetuate the problems forever. Should the colonial powers pay massive reparations? I doubt that simply throwing money at the situation would work and the whole concept of “reparations” is one that always causes more problems than it solves. (Who owes whom what and how much?)
On the other hand, a plan inspired by (not identical to)such efforts as the Marshall Plan, in which certain loans are made for specific projects with attainable goals and reasonable repayment schedules–and supported by technical guidance to meet the goals–is probably very much worth the effort.
Despite the very real problems mentioned in the OP, there are a number of African nations that have taken great steps toward the 21st century, both economically and politically. Building an association of nations around that core group and allowing that group to make the decisions regarding the approval of projects and the disbursement and collection of loans would create a situation in which Africans would be making the decisions on how to improve Africa (and the success of the group would be an incentive for other nations to “clean up their acts” to join).
It is in the interest of the entire world economy to not let any portion of the world sink to unrecoverable levels. To the extent that the richest nations in the world owe a certain amount of their current wealth to the removal of resources or people from Africa, those same nations do owe support to the efforts to stabilize and improve conditions in Africa. If you choose to couch that in terms of “white man’s burden,” you may, although if you mean it as “We white men have to keep carrying the poor benighted 'eathen” then you are seriously missing the point.
let’s create a fictional tribe called “tongi”. And lets imagine that we have a special device that measures qulity of life (QOL) with 0 being sheer hell and 1000 being bliss.
Tongi, in 1600 ad has a QOL of 200. something very bad happens to them in 1700. In 1800 the QOL is 450.
Now can you say that Tongi is worse off in 1800 than they were in 1600?
It doesn’t matter what the bad thing was. It doesn’t matter who did it. it doesn’t matter that had the bad thing not happened that they would be at a QOL of 950.
What matters is: is it true that they are better off?
I wil be candid here despite the risk of being roasted. I am going through the proces of invitro fertilization now. I am doing this because of a rotten, nasty thing that happened to me 10 years ago (which I blame only on myself.) It is bad. It is costing me a fortune. But I would not have it any other way. I am much better off than I was 10 years ago. I would certainy bbe much better off had it not happened. But I am Emmersonian in that I believe that even bad things can have positve cionsequences.
So if someone said to be, “you would be better off if that never happened”, I say, “that is not necesarily true. We don’t know what might have happened otherwise.”
While I appreciate the evils inflicted upon the Africans by the euros, I do not think that it is logical to state that since something bad happened, that they are worse off than before. In my mind, this is a logicval, not factual argument.
As someone stated, it is near impossible to generalize the continent. I am not trying to do so. But those that would say that Africa as a whole is worse off because of the euros is indeed making such a generalization.
Let’s try a different analogy.
Several groups live on different islands. The group on island A gets a bit ahead of the technology on islands B, C, and D.
The group from island A goes to island B and forces the B islanders to build summer homes for A vistors and to create large farms to send food for use by island A.
The group from island A goes to island C and forces the C islanders to build winter retreats for A visitors and to construct wells to drill for oil for use by island A.
The group from island A then goes to island D, builds their own fall cottages, but forces the D islanders to uproot their orchards for mine shorings so that the A islanders can dig mines and take the ore home to island A.
Then the A islanders go home.
The B islanders have learned the building skills and large-scale farming techniques and they now have large farms on which to raise food which they can either eat or sell.
The C islanders have learned building skills and well-digging techniques and they have oil which they can sell.
The D islanders have not been shown any building techniques; they have not been shown how to keep the mines working, and they cannot fall back on eating their fruit because the orchards have been destroyed.
Of course, we cannot know that the D islanders are “really” worse off than they “might” have been.
Sorry. If we want the world to be a better place overall, it behooves us to not allow any major group to fall outside the world economy. Regardless of any ethereal discussions of Africans’ status being “better” or “worse” based on hypothetical alternative histories, it was intervention by Europeans and European-descended Americans that created the current situation. In order to prevent the African situation from deteriorating, those European-based societies should provide the necessary assistance to avoid further deterioration.
If it looks too much like “guilt” to you, then don’t feel guilty. I do not feel any guilt regarding Africa. I do think that an enlightened self-interest indicates that I and my children will encounter fewer dangers in the world if more people are able to compete on an equal plane. It is in the interest of making the world a better (and safer) place for my grandchildren that I argue that we should be working to raise the quality of life for all people.
Don’t worry, Tom. I do not feel guilty even though it may seem that way from my bleeding heart views 
you said
You interest me strangely. How does it help us to make sure that the entire world is an equal player? I am not being snide. I am really curious.
Well, my actual phrase, I believe, was “able to compete on an equal plane.” Competiton, of course, implies that some will be more successful than others.
However, to the extent that any group is actually able to compete, it is more likely to stay in the competition and not choose to go outside the rules to gain what it wants.
Societies where one group perceives that they will be excluded from economic gain tend to be ripe for revolution or warfare. For example, the Israeli/Palestinian strife is generally couched in terms or religion or culture and the situation in Northern Ireland is seen as a “religious” battle. However, the Protestants of Northern Ireland perceived the Catholics as an economic threat through the post-war years and practiced the various discriminatory acts that led to the protests of 1967 and 1968, resulting in the outbreak of violence that continues today. The reason that the Palestinians were so receptive to the various anti-Jewish propaganda efforts sewn between the World Wars was the recognized success of the kibbutzes and the perception that immigrant Jews would take away Palestinian livelihoods. (Ironically, the dislocation following the 1948 war brought about the economic disparity that has perpetuated that conflict.)
The U.S. labor movement was very violent throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, settling into more peaceful negotiations only after laws were passed to allow the unions to play on a more level field with corporations.
The Nazis came to power in Germany, not during the hyper-inflation (and starvation) following WWI, but after Germany began to recover. When the world depression knocked back the nascent recovery, the Nazis used the French veto of the restructuring of their war debt to increase their recruitment over the communists, who were sticking to the “workers of the world unite” concept. The Nazis argued that the Allies were deliberately suppressing the German economy and they won the ideological battle.
Belgium (that haven of placid, well-fed, beer-drinking bourgeoisie) was threatened with violent outbreaks in the 1960’s when the Flemish perceived that the Walloons had an unassailable economic edge in governing the country, based on the accident of the location of coal fields. Laws to put Flemish on an equal footing with French were needed to address the agitation, but what saved the country was the freeing of (Walloon-held) governmental purse strings to develop Oostende and Antwerp into truly international ports, allowing some of the wealth to enter Flemish society.
The Quebecois simply hate people who speak English? Not really. The separatist movement grew out of a perception that Francophones could never achieve the same wealth as Anglophones in Montreal.
Notice that Colorado doesn’t fly the Union Jack over the state capital? The U.S. War for Independence was not triggered by some idealized vision of self-government; self-government was seen as the only effective way for the merchants of the 13 colonies to have a shot at mercantile equality with their British cousins.
I am not arguing that idealism does not exist or that sectarian animosity is a fiction. However, people who perceive that they cannot get ahead when they see the success of others are more ripe for agitation: by visionaries, by religious zealots, by the power-hungry.
I am not an advocate of statist socialism in which all people are dragged down to some base level. I agree that we should all be striving to reach higher, not settle for less.
However, to the extent that a group is excluded from participation in the striving, that group is more susceptible to be led to violence.
I would tend to agree with your hypothesis about the cause of uprisings, Tomndeb. But the example you cite tend to be problems within a country. I am not sure that people on one continent look at those on another and choose to create violence. I think that our risk of terrorism is higher when we get involved in the governance of other countries.
When we give aid, send advisors or send in troops, we are increasing our risk of terrorism. If we stay out of the business of other countries, they are happy to merely kill each other. But of course, that is a different thread.
I am a strong proponent of letting countries fight out their own battles and settle their own disputes.
Your exampe escapes me since we have ample evidence of decline in standards of living with the onset of the colonial state, usually because of violence and disruption associated with it, and the subsequently heavy taxation to pay for the European superstructure. A rebound occured, it appears, as I noted earlier, in the 1950s. Investments began to pay off and the imperial powers, afraid of losing control, began to alleviate some of the burdens as well as begin health and education programs. You are begging the question with strange and unnecessary hypotheticals.
snip
Your logic franky is opaque. It is a factual argument, living standards seem to have largey declined and the negative features or inheritances of the colonial state clearly have outweighed the positives. It strikes me you are engaging in a hand-waving retreat from an illogical argument.
In fact you are trying to do so, that is make generalizations about the continent. It doesn’t help your argument to begin by saying you’re not doing what you are in fact doing. Generalizations are awkward, however given the balance of evidence, I feel fairly comfortable concluding that the colonial experience was largely a negative one for Africa and that European intervention right through the post-Colonial period was largely negative. Your dancing around the facts with strange hypotheticals is not making a case.