Was decolonization messy on purpose?

Colonization ha s been over for some time, any conditions the blacks are living in now is due to their own actions

It's not white people's fault that blacks are super corruptible

Botswana is only relevant because of its diamond mines, otherwise its an absolute shithole

So what you're saying is that Africa needs to have more foreign funded resource extraction so africans can huddle around the giant vacuum hose for warmth because they're not ever going to do anything themselves

>dude africa's great if it has diamonds!
okay

>Africa was colonized for 80 years
>Africa has been independent for 60 years
Still pretty long especially in an era where tech has made massive jumps and the whole conquest game radically changed where things went much faster than they did in previous centuries lol. Look at Angola. The Portuguese only made the jump from their small coastal control to full on domination in the 1920's after having been in Africa for literal centuries.

>Somalia
Italian

>Zimbabwe
Actually doing better now.. Still in the gutter but actually making little steps to recovery.

>Britain left behind a fair share of horrific shitholes
True but they thing is that many of them are on their road to recovery or actually have a chance of making it big.

What do you think about Ghana history? What do you think is in store for Ghana?

>mfw Ghana is now a French colony

Yes I can indeed. He claims Nigeria is the only somewhat successful British Colony in west Africa, which means he's implying
a) Ghana is less successful than Nigeria, which is a glaringly false claim
b) or he's implying Ghana is not a British colony, which if not, would imply it to be another part of French West Africa
Both implications are false but I gave him benefit of the doubt and assumed he meant the less moronic claim

>West Africa
>Worst: Mali (french)
It's actually Niger (which is French as well)
Mali has a pretty bad HDI (roughly similar to the shithole British ex-colony Sierra Leone) but still quite above Nig(g)er

>East Africa
Worst: Burundi (belgian)
Burundi is considered part of Central Africa, and anyway has a higher HDI than South Soudan (British) which is in East Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_the_African_Union

I knew I was forgetting somewhere important, thanks anon. It's laughable to call Apartheid the worst thing that happened down there.

>Algerians are one of the most wicked people on earth and everything they got during colonization they fully deserved it
How fricked are you in the head?

>Hell, the very reason why Algeria was colonized in the first place is because these subhumans had been enslaving Europeans for centuries
that was actually the first war that various Euros cracked down on Algeria. The reason for the conquest was not due to "THEY ENSLAVED US".

What resources? Algerians lived or piracy and goat herding when the French arrived
Soil was full of oil but it aint like them sheep fricker knew how to extract it or even had the technology to use it.
Btw colonization was a payback for the enslavement of white europeans by Algerians

>resources from Algeria
What, like their alfalfa farms?

>a word that comes from "Beber", how fitting
You got that wrong, champ. Bar bar is influenced from the greek Barbaroi which was used to describe all non hellene. Say, even your gallic ancestors were called Barbaroi at one point or the other.
By the way, since it's a matter of perspective, and you consider it wholly justified and legal to lynch and nuke nafris, I'm pretty sure nafris felt wholly justified in killing a bunch of settlers who weren't native to the land, no? Funny how morality works both ways.

>By the way, since it's a matter of perspective, and you consider it wholly justified and legal to lynch and nuke nafris, I'm pretty sure nafris felt wholly justified in killing a bunch of settlers who weren't native to the land, no? Funny how morality works both ways.

I'm sure even the most racist guys in France just want to remigrate muslims and not genocide them.
I doubt any of them could castrate a father in front of his children before killing them all or slice newborns with a cleaver like Algerians did to random white and israeli civilians on that day
Only arabs (and maybe mexicans) are capable of that kind of sadistic shit

Algerians are the scum of the earth, aren't they the kidnapping capitol of the world?

BUT THE COMPLETELY MADE UP ALGERIAN GENOCIDE ANON

French people in 2021 are just as justified in wanting to kill every Algerian in France as the Algerians were justified in 1960 in wanting to kill every French person in Algeria.
French people in France and Algerian people in Algeria.

Don't forget German people
Algerians are literally killing and raping their people as shown on pic

https://i.imgur.com/UI23OJ0.jpg

Algerians really don't have any self awareness, it's amazing
The drowings in Paris in 1961 occurred during a pro-FLN rally at the heart of Paris, after FLN terror attacks in Paris had been killing dozens of policemen in the previous weeks.
So yes, the policemen snapped when they saw a pro-terrorism rally in their fricking city by a bunch of foreigners, just like any other police in the world would have.

Algerians are one of the most wicked people on earth and everything they got during colonization they fully deserved it (unlike sub-saharan africans, viets, native americans....etc)
Hell, the very reason why Algeria was colonized in the first place is because these subhumans had been enslaving Europeans for centuries
Most justified colonial conquest ever

And they don't even have the excuse of "it's revenge for muh colonization" like in France
It's just pure chimp behavior from subhumans

No matter how biased you are, beating up someone before throwing him in a river or throwing someone to his death from a helicopter is objectively less bad than castrating a father in front of his kids and putting the genitals in his mouth or hacking newborns into pieces with a cleaver.
The French were brutal and rutheless while the Algerians were barbaric and sadistic.

The most racist guy in any country would absolutely genocide every other race. Except they don't have any power because they are moronic. You need diplomacy with other people and other countries to negociate or trade in the real world. Thankfully you are also moronic and that's why you also don't have any power.

That saying the most racist guy in France would absolutely genocide the algerians is a stupid and useless statement.

>Only arabs (and maybe mexicans) are capable of that kind of sadistic shit
the French did fricked up shirty to religious minorities within France during various parts of history.

And Europe is part of Asia if we go by moronic landmass distinction instead of cultural and racial distinction.
You know very well what people mean when they say "Africa", and no they don't mean Egypt or Algeria

Holy shit, we found the ancestral bloodline of the gypsies

So? Even with more infrastructure it would never have met the bottom line anyways. It was sparsely populated, halfway administrated, relied on growing crops that weren't worth shit and ruined their soil, and getting the products back was a logistical nightmare. More roads is just money down the drain unless you're talking very long term. Colonialism was not economically sound ever.
For most of the period there is practically no "colonial economist" to speak of or great economic figure who lauded the colonies as sound economical projects.
It's no coincidence that European parliaments were filled with parties repeating to stop wasting the European taxpayer's money on this. During decolonization the European taxpayer wasn't any more keen on spending his money there than he was previously.
Why should Europe have dumped more money into Africa? I thought Europeans shouldn't even have gone there in the first place.

What if the (allgedly insufficient) money made to build that infrastructure was used to build it in Europe ?
You essentially agree with me about the economic bottom line of colonization but argue that it was worth it in terms of geopolitical strategy : was it really? The money would have been much better spent in the homeland. How many schools could have been built in rural Europe with the money of colonization? How many roads and ports?
"Mass labour and land" anon they were a bunch of farmers and AEF governorate itself admitted in the early 1900s that it had barely mapped like 20% of the territory it was supposed to administrate. Colonies were a shitshow.

As for the importance of cash crops, maybe the Brits had better land or administration. In France every report from historians left and right absolutely states it was overall a major loss of money where the French state had to artificially increase their prizes by up to 30% just not to have the colonies go bankrupt.

and many colonies did not have much of a burden on taxpayers. Technically many of them subsidized the mainland in some way like hiring Europeans and paying them Euro salaries on the colonies dime as seen in the AEF.

>Because outside of Portugal most epicurean nations were not uber dependant on the colonies to maintain their status.
Yeah sure, regardless because they didn't have to doesn't mean they shouldn't have
>And land always is valuable espcialyl for military
Sub Saharan Africa only really came into play during WW2. During WW1 it was mostly symbolic. And during WW2 it was contested between Vichy and FFL.
>and resource purposes.
Well that also came into play really late
>Access to dirt cheap African labor and military force was vital in being able to to maintain the tax income and to be able to extract resources
Most exports up to a good part of the XXth century was purely agricultural, palm oil and cocoa, not uranium, how is it that unique that it would be such a worthwhile investment over similar agricultural projects in the mainland i do not know. Nobody took into account the uncertainty of what would happen with this land in the future, apparently.
>on top of being a guaranteed market later on.
Yes this is the whole issue here. It all might have been a worthwhile investment, given an infinite amount of time to colonize and develop Africa. As it is it only started being valuable right before independences, and for a few decades post-independence.
>That's not really clear cut. Especial since many of the paper work for colonial budgets
Well it's testimony from the administrators. True we don't have much more than quotes here.

And the funny thing is that despite many French historians saying so the cost of the colonies hasn't exactly been empirically proven per say.

Might be the reason why i always get into the same arguments in these threads, naturally what i have read is mostly from French historians. It's worth noting that even turbo leftists like Stora can do nothing but remark that Sub Saharan Africa was hardly the crown israeliteel of the empire

I note also that i am somehow getting you to defend colonization, I argue that it was a waste of time and money and here you are, presumably an anti-colonialist, telling me why you think colonization was a good idea for Europeans

>https://spire.sciencespo.fr/hdl:/2441/24502lcc1r91eqi8qjsc2299mq/resources/black-man-s-burden.pdf
Read all of it, pretty interesting but I do have remarks.

First, the author claims that colonization was more of a cost than a benefit for Africa because it self-financed it's investments.
However she is looking only at AOF numbers, a government which was created in 1895. When France really started expanding beyond it's old outposts in the 1830s it established the very governments and cities which allowed this in the first place.
The author herself justifies the discrepancy between her study and others by the time period studied, but the fact is she studied the 1895-1960s period while omitting 60 years that France spent building up the place enough for it to even be called the AOF.
Even though Africa's growth was self-financed, it wasn't self-made. The author seems to make the assumption that independent states would arise, making an effort of collecting taxes, having state investments, urbanization, of improving literacy, developing trade and infrastructure. Nothing is less certain. This growth relied on European goods and knowledge which those states certainly wouldn't have gotten this simply, if at all.
The state of Africa if colonization suddenly stopped in 1895 might be somewhat better, but if it never happened in the first place I wager it would be very different.

cont.

>black man's burden
>AOF

So that's what the other dude used to disprove the claim that colonization of "Africa" cost more to France than it brought in?
Pretty dumb given that this (sourced) claim takes in account Algeria, where the French spent massive amount.
That being said, the French also spent a fair amount to build Dakar from scratches in the 1880s. Funny how the "study" starts in 1895, after Dakar had been built and established as France's colonial capital.

Then she insists on the salaries of French officials. She ironizes about how French officials couldn't have been ten times more efficient than African ones. There is actually no way to prove this and allow me to doubt that. The fact is Africa absolutely needed those French officials to set up this government, else they might have kept their medieval states that relied on slave trade for their economies. Also, this salary isn't so much money grabbing as it is a desperate incentive to get competent people working there. To this day France still pays double wages to people who are willing to work in overseas territories. Also French bureaucracy is cancer in France as well.

The study also shows that while it wasn't ruinous, it's doubtful that France lost much money on this either. And it doesn't mention any aspect beyond the economy : how many men were sent there, how many propaganda campaigns were made, how much time and efforts were spent building up French Africa exactly? Those efforts could all have been directed elsewhere. It led to France taking certain political and ideological decisions. Colonization was not just an economic endeavor but also a cultural phenomenon that mobilized French society when it could have been doing something more useful. Reminds me of the example of the "Dutch paradox", when the Netherlands gave independence to it's colonies and became richer. This prompted many French economists to argue against colonization. Just as you argued that the interest of France for Africa wasn't economical, you can consider that the cost was more than just economical. This is the way in which I'd argue that colonization ended up being truly detrimental to France.

This paper gives a great account of the economy of the AOF but to truly measure something as vast as the "cost of colonization", for either side, we will probably need to see more than simply the economic side of things over a fraction of the time period.

The main issue with this thesis is that it wasn't made with a scholary mindset but with a political militant mindset.
She had one goal (showing that colonization had no positive effects) and then gathered infos, cherrypicked what was good for her point, spinned some other in various way and eventually shat her thesis.
She's a famous left-wing militant and worked for humanitarian ONGs in her youth.

Meanwhile Jacques Marseille's work is more genuine because, although he also started with a left-wing militant mindset (he wanted to prove the same thing as her), he didn't start cherrypicking and spinning stuff in various ways when he found out that raw facts and numbers went against his preconceived view point.
Instead he decided to act like an actual historian and simply told things as they are.

Neither were they across Africa.

Not really . Espcially since many of these entities had organized political structures, taxation structures, militarizes, hierarchies, castes, a ruling class or more. What is Aksum, Kongo Kingdom, Ethiopia, Nubia, Somali city--states, swahili city-states, Songhai, Mali. etc etc.