Why did the British and French leave Africa?
This is an interesting question to me, since it seems simple until it doesn't. There weren't too many large-scale rebellions, and the main political groups pushing for independence didn't have to push too hard at all. What's truly astounding is how quickly the British and French agreed to leave, basically wanting to get the frick out as fast as they could, even in colonies where there were no rebellions.
I remember talking to my professor about this, and he said there was basically a cultural change that made British and French officials basically demoralised and they effectively chose to give up their Empires.
For the record, I'm not talking about Algeria. The French definitely fought to hold on there. But they quickly abandoned everything else.
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Because there were far better economic and educational opportunities back home, and supporting colonial infrastructure is expensive
So why did it take until the 1960s to make that assessment? Why not in the depression, when money was far tighter? Why colonise Africa at all?
I believed this too, until I learned that 90% of Anglo and French debt were in US Dollars, whilst colonialism was paid for in Sterling and the Franc. Not to mention debt was falling pretty fast by 1960.
>90% of Anglo and French debt were in US Dollars, whilst colonialism was paid for in Sterling and the Franc.
Care to explain to a thicko? I'm an economic/financial dumkopf.
No problem, I didn't understand currency economics until recently.
Basically, when two countries trade, they generally don't use each other's currencies, since they can't use that currency with any other country. An Italian business trading with Argentina has no use for Pesos. Plus smaller countries' currencies are volatile so one side may get screwed over.
So countries use a third, more stable currency for trade. This is called a reserve currency. Usually it's the most stable global currency that the most other countries are using, which, for the past hundred years, has been the US dollar. (About 80% of international transactions take place through the US dollar)
Meaning Britain and France had to pay back their post-war debt to the USA in dollars. They can't just use the Pounds and Francs in their coffers. They could convert sterling and francs into dollars through forex (where you trade your currency in exchange for dollars), but doing so in large sums could cause a run on the currency as bond holders in businesses flee. So the only way to earn US dollars to pay back their debts was through bringing dollars into the economy via exports (selling their goods to other countries in exchange for dollars.)
The situation gets even worse when you realise they were spending huge amounts of their reserve dollars on importing goods from the USA since both had their industries ruined by the war. Hence, Britain was both 'broke' in the sense it owed huge amounts of dollars to the USA, but could also spend huge amounts domestically in Sterling.
In 1945 the Labour party in the UK was elected and set upon decolonization with India gaining independence in 1947. This basically confirmed that all these independence movements would go ahead. A few like Portugal under Salazar or Pied-Noirs resisted decolonization in some countries but were a minority. The narrative that capitalist Europe greedily clung to its colonies and it was only due to the assistance of the Soviet Union that they gained independence is a distortion.
The civilising mission was complete. Africa was now dotted with cities with modern infrastructure, ports, railroads and barges along navigable rivers. Africa would sell their vast quantities of timber, minerals, oil and agricultural products on their own accord and were getting into manufacturing. Why was the mother country paying for this infrastructure when Africans could do it themselves?
The problem was the security situation. Most newly independent democracies collapsed soon after independence, unlike India with a well developed civil service, most African countries were further behind and could not deal with USSR supported guerrillas and the patchwork of tribes. This instability led to corruption, despotism and sometimes civil war which crippled economic development.
>supporting colonial infrastructure is expensive
It wasn't considering a ton if it was privately owned, public-private, used colony taxes or metropole, or very few in number/scale. They weren't building mini-Londons and Paris in Africa.
>Because there were far better economic and educational opportunities back home
Not exactly. The colonial office and the colonies were a great place to offload excess labour from the continent and as a way to help grow/assist the middle class. Mainly as a way to reduce class competition in jobs.
>The colonial office and the colonies were a great place to offload excess labour from the continent and as a way to help grow/assist the middle class
The portion of Brits that went to settle Africa was a fraction of the Brits that emigrated to either the US or the Dominions (Canada/Australia/NZ).
And they all had a prwtty comfy QoL on top of a lot of handouts to either leverage as a starting point or to flip for money. That and the ample job/career opportunities.
can you actually give a mechanism of action? Rarely does economics explain world affairs - this is a hard pill for a Western conssooomer to swallow.
>be colonial landowner
>make a lot of money
>send boomer son and daughter to the UK to get higher education
>they discover they can get paid more in the home country
>global economy changes, tea and nuts no longer as profitable relative to other investments
>you get old and decide it is better to retire in the UK
WWII debts.
They had Narshall aid money to use as a source of funds alongside increased exports and taxation. West African cocoa was taxed at 50% and contributed to the war repair fund in London, SA was able to bully Britain due to their relative isolation from WW2 and the boom of mineral demand after it.
>There weren't too many large-scale rebellions
There were a lot lol. Also a ton of discontent.
>What's truly astounding is how quickly the British and French agreed to leave, basically wanting to get the frick out as fast as they could, even in colonies where there were no rebellions.
Independence movements grew and were emboldened by Ww1 and 2 experiences. Both powers STILL tried to maintain influence and control in Africa.
France fought constant prolonged and costly insurgencies to maintain their colonial empire until they couldn't no more.
the colonies made the capitalist class rich, but actually drained the wealth of the colonizing nations as a whole (India was famously the only British colony that turned a profit for the British state for instance), The two World Wars completely destroyed the militaries and economies of the Colonial powers and put them in debt to the US and USSR. This meant that the latter two simply stepped in and took the colonies for themselves. Make no mistake, Africa is still colonized, it's just now under the unified American system rather than multiple separate European ones.
>but actually drained the wealth of the colonizing nations as a whole
Anon the colonies had no expenses because they required none of the sheer human capital investment and resources to function. You don't need to have them be high school or even Prinaey school graduates because they only exist to provide cheap labour and are easy to uproot and move around.
You think those people oppressed themselves? You need a whole apparatus to force them to work, that costs a lot of money. Soldiers, Bureaucrats, Experts to build the railroads because you dare not train the locals in the expertise.
>You need a whole apparatus to force them to work, that costs a lot of money.
It doesn't. You need to provide incentives. If you got none why should you jump on the cart so to speak? Indians trading for currency did more to accelerate wage labour in Kenya vs years of of Britain trying to force it hamfistedly
>bro there were no investments in the colonie
The absolute state of this board lmao
>In the long term, on the contrary, the colonies accumulated trade deficits with France, the amount of which measures the volume of credits that the latter had to grant to allow them to simply balance their accounts. From 1900 to 1971, these credits amounted to a little more than 50 billion 1914 francs, more than four times the amount of Russian loans, or more than three times the total amount of American aid to France in 1945. to 1955. !
>Obsessed with the mystique of investments and the accounting of capital invested by companies, we have ended up forgetting that commercial credit is the preferred form of financing the economy. In this regard, the scale of the credits offered from 1945 to 1962 (32.5 billion gold francs) may surprise today. Representing almost 10% of France's budgetary revenue year after year, these credits also measure what maibland France lacked to rebuild its economy devastated by the war and better house its inhabitants, at the time when Abbé Pierre began his campaign. for the homeless. Better yet, as a percentage of GDP, France has far exceeded the 0.7% development aid desired by international authorities during the colonial period.
we have confidence in the future - or be totally blind - to devour such considerable sums for the sole benefit of the harsh criticism of those who have denounced and still denounce the pillaging of the colonies! Thus, in the ten years preceding independence, Algeria may have absorbed 20% of French exports and been France's leading customer, but the 3,350 billion old francs that the Algerian outlet represented from 1952 to 1962 were less than the 3,528 billion available in the metropolitan budget. to transfer to Algeria during the same period to ensure the solvency of its first client. As Senator Pellenc wrote in 1956, “if it is correct to say that Algeria is the “first” client of France, we cannot say that it is the “best” client, because it is a very particular customer; for a third party, he only pays for his purchases with the funds given to him by the seller. In 1961, the year preceding independence, Algeria, for example, purchased 421 billion francs of goods from France, which paid it 638 to restore the imbalance in its budget and its balance of payments!
>Worse: contrary to what a persistent legend asserts, France in no way "looted" the raw materials of its colonies. Quite the contrary. This is the surprising observation that allows us to draw up the calculation of the terms of trade between France and its colonies. Still in the case of Algeria, after having improved during the crisis of the 1930s, Algeria's terms of trade in goods rose from index 100 in 1949 to index 124 in 1960. Proof the deterioration of the terms of trade for France: from 1948 to 1954, if the tonnages imported into Algeria from France increased by 135%, exports from Algeria to the mainland only increased by 32 .5%. In fact, in many cases, France purchased colonial raw materials above world prices. (...)
>>So many observations which led the best informed minds and the driest accountants to wish for the early severance of the links which united France to its colonies. As early as the 1930s, some businessmen were already asking themselves the question. Sent on a mission to subsaharan Africa by the Minister of Colonies Paul Reynaud, in December 1931, a young financial inspector, Edmond Giscard d'Estaing, father of the former President of the Republic, wrote on his return that he was worth better, "for the very future of the country, do nothing rather than swallow up funds destined to be lost, if they [were] paid into an economy which [was] not designed to use them in the right place and productively. This was to repeat the argument of the liberal economists who, half a century earlier, had opposed the conquests. “It is a question of knowing what these new outlets are worth and what they cost us,” Gustave de Molinari wrote in 1898. “What would we say of an industrialist or a merchant who spends 100,000 francs in expenses each year? of traveling salesmen, circulars and advertisements to place 100,000 francs worth of goods? It seems that he is not in a very healthy head and we would advise his family to have him banned, or at least to force him to give up trade.”
And yet it was jackshit vs what the metropole, other states and Japanese Korea. You also only fixated on Algeria.
I can't even comprehend what you are trying to articulate, you drooling simpleton. Are you somehow implying that europeans who found subsaharans still being stuck in the neolithic age should have in the span of only 80 years, developed the entirety of africa, paved the whole continent and built public libraries on every acres out of their tax payers' pockets? You do realize that europe did not even have that at the time (still don't) or that a country like Italy was fully electrified only in the early 70s'. How can you come up with such a stupid as
>the proof europeans were le evil is because they did not manage to put Africa ahead of europe in term of development out of their sheer willpower
It it's where the bar of evilness stands, we might have a lot of thing to reconsider
>subsaharans still being stuck in the neolithic
What a dumb meme. Africans had large scale organized civilizations before colonialism. The only parts that were really neolithic in lifestyle was the south.
>should have in the span of only 80 years,
No but they should have taught Africans how to run a modern nation and give them the tools to succeed. As it stands, they just left after giving little development or education.
>Japanese Korea
Korea before Japan came was much more advanced than Subsaharan Africa before European colonialism
Korea was literally SSA tier poor lmao. The war really messed them up
>buildings=good
How basic are you?
Yes buildings are good as they improve quality of life compared to living in prehistoric huts.
But anyway that's not the point here.
The point is that building dozens of modern cities from scratch on that barren continent stuck in the neolithic era did require money and investment from the colonizing powers.
Which this moron
is denying
The top looks better, kys.
A couple of cities means nothing. The vast majority of people were illiterate rural farmers
The guy who posts these is an Aussie on IQfy
>aussie is a shitposter
What a surprise
>img
So frenchoids ruined SOVL is what you're saying?
You frenchoids subhumans are being replaced in your own capital and Arabs looted and burnt just a year ago and you did nothing =) and African countries are kicking you colonizers out =) your neocolonialism is ending, seven countries in Africa kicked u out already. Nobody cares about france. You pathetic subhumans are a drain on society and your coming humiliation and total removal from Africa will be the most beautiful thing in modern history =)
God bless us in this goal
Yep, France is finished.
Here's how people view France in 2024.
>muh victim narrative
Asian Tigers industrialized in 30 years yet Africa can't after 60 years of independence. Same with immigrants, Asian immigrants start businesses or become educated middle classes, African and Arab immigrants turn once high trust communities into slums.
>muh CFA Franc conspiracy
Their own corrupt governments would begin Zimbabwe tier hyperinflation without it.
At the moment white people are naive leftists, but gradually it is becoming more apparent what is really happening. This is why you have switched narratives, you are no longer pretending "diversity is strength!", you are now arguing "yeah we're a burden, so what, you deserve it".
>is that dark people in a train!!! it's over Pooris has fallen....
your racism and homosexualry is why no one sympathize with you, may you get swarmed by hordes of pajeet immigrants on top of arabs and africans
POOris will become a reality
Dark people bring chaos, filth and misery wherever they go.
Paris can testify of this, but so can Detroit, NYC, London, Malmo, Brussel, Milan...etc
>Detroit
ruined by white dogs who crashed the automobile industry and bankrupted all the factories turning Detroit into a poor shithole, instead of staying and rebuilding the economy they all fleed on masses to ruin the next city, then poor black people who were sent to Detroi thought by going north they will find better economical chances but the white devil tricked them and by forcing them to live in the bankrupt Detroit
>NYC
when it was white makority it was a Mafia infested dangerous shithole, till this day uncivilized cumskins still fetichize and glorify that era of white crime of violence
>London
b***h please, London before immigration was a thing was a dirty hellhole infested with every scum you can think of (smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers, pickpocket peddlers, panhandlers, prostitutes, child labor, serial killers, rapists...) Londonistan is a paradise compared to ''100% whirte'' London
>Malmo
irrelevant shithole don't care
>Brussel
blame on eastern euro trash immigrants
>Milan
Shitalian mafia shithole
>Londonistan is a paradise compared to ''100% whirte'' London
SAAAAAR
Asian tigers didn't have decades of development stolen by assassinations, french backed coups, and a colonial debt. Its okay though, seven countries have already left your colonial grip, Niger saw immediate development from it and france will soon be deprived of its African lifeline 🙂 frenchoids and even other europeans will starve and die painfully in the darkness as Africa eventually cuts off the materials they need to live. you scums need electricity to survive we don't ;D
>muh French boogeyman
How comes African countries that never had any ties with France (Congo, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe...etc) are such massive shitholes then?
How comes Gabon is in the top 3 black African countries with the best quality of life despite its heavy ties with France?
>assassinations, french backed coups,
Literal reddit memes
>and a colonial debt
No such thing, you're confusing with Haiti
Africa's debt was contracted after the independences, and it's erased on a regular basis.
>Niger saw immediate development from it
Niger hasnt improved anyhow since 2022 (not that it proves anything in a way or another, but just correcting you)
>Pic
Chirac has said everything and the opposite during and after his rule.
He was literally known for bullshitting constantly.
Trusting politicians on such topics = moron
Btw, Africa (and other brown shitholes) receive billions in foreign aid from white countries each year.
Pic related, this shithole continent is literally on life support.
Anon there were scandals of French presidents receiving funding/bribes from African politicians and vice versa. Not to memtion direct ties to many president's and interminhling between the intelligence communities. Everyone in France knows of ths you Ouiaboo
>Anon there were scandals of French presidents receiving funding/bribes from African politicians and vice versa.
Which doesn't prove anyhow that Africa is poor because of France and France rich thanks to Africa (what the other post was in overall implying).
France was already rich and developed before colonizing Africa.
Africa was already poor and backward (much more than now) before being colonized by France.
African countries with no ties with France are just as poor and backward as those that have some.
The French boogeyman theory to explain Africa's failure doesn't make sense to anyone with basic knowledge in both history and current geolopolitics.
>France rich thanks to Africa
It was oretty balkadeep until very recently eith them selling off mines in the region.
>The French boogeyman theory to explain Africa's failure doesn't make sense to anyone with basic knowledge in both history and current geolopolitics.
So you didn't even read about how France basically was in bed with all those presidents and their relationships? Sarkozy? Do you even understand the topic?
>So you didn't even read about how France basically was in bed with all those presidents and their relationships? Sarkozy? Do you even understand the topic?
How does France being "in bed" with the leaders of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gabon explain Congo, Somalia and Liberia being masive shitholes?
So we quoting Chirac now?
Personally I prefer his quote about the body odor of Africans
Imagine the smell
Chirac was like Macron, a homosexual who would spout random things whenever he felt like, no matter if it contradicted whatever he had said the week before.
Obviously this means sometimes he'd say things that are right (among the swarm of things that are not), since a broken clock is right twice a day.
But no one knows what he actually believed.
What a shitty quote. Africa only make up around 5% of France international trade, with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria being the french biggest partners. The idea that France is leeching of Africa to maintain it’s economy is not fact based at any point.
It's even funnier than that, France export more goods and services to Africa than import good & services from Africa.
>Cumulatively, France sold €29.5 billion of goods and services to Africa in 2019, and purchased €26 billion worth
And in total it does represent less than 4% of the annual French international trade
>You pathetic subhumans are a drain on society
That's fricking rich coming from Africans lmao
France & the French are better than the whole of Africa & all Africans in every single way.
better at sucking wiener
Cope.
The French made African suck their wieners.
because civil discontent was brewing within the colonies meaning it was a ticking time bomb, the few times they tried to stay ended up as massive shitshows for them that they had to leave anyway (see all of Frances attempts), not helped by the fact the political will to even have an empire at home or the international pressure from the US to leave due to fears them staying would just add fuel to communist movements meant it simply to much of a detriment to stay
I know the Algerian crisis literally brought down the entire french government. But both of these countries are still all over africa
>But both of these countries are still all over africa
Yeah and so are America, India, Russia...
What is shown in your pic is nothing like colonialism, no matter how hard you guys try to grasp at straws
Countries competing for influence in Africa is nothing like colonialism?
It's not considering none have actually political ownership or rule over them lmao. Bulgarians selling tractors to Zimbabweans isn't colonialism
The US, UK, France etc have no political influence over these countries that are hosting their militaries? Dunno about that one bud, just because the color on the map doesnt change, doesn't mean there isn't some degree of control.
So Japan and Germany are American colonies?
How come they aren't shitholes then? Could it be that the cause of Africa's civilizational failure is something else than hosting foreign military bases?
>How come they aren't shitholes then?
Both states got cucked in recent decades. That and propping up China lol.
I would say that America has a huge political influence in both countries, and since that's the criteria you established for colonialism, then yes, America has a colonial relationship to these countries.
As far as the causes for 'Africa's civilizational failure,' whatever that means, I don't really care what your opinion is. I'm just pointing out that colonialism in Africa is not something that is completely over.
Yeah, China is mucking around in Africa now. Its too bad African leaders are so shortsighted when it comes finding foreign partners
>China is mucking around in Africa now.
Their investments have droped for several years. China isn't even the top FDI for most anon. How are people still glazing China wiener this hard in 2024?
Even if they aren't as prominent, the debt that was accrued from China is still a probkem
I always find the whole "civilization failure" point silly because anyone who drops it gets assmad when it gets applied back to them from a third party. I think Sarkozy was the one who alluded to it in his Dakar speech and he got charged with corruption from accepting bribes from Gaddafi lmao. He only got off with a slap on the wrist too lol.
Not that guy but Africa's civilizational failure is obvious to everyone.
I'm from Singapore, I don't know shit about European politics of politicians, but even I can see that Africa is a failed continent and always has been. Everyone can, no matter where on the planet.
>singapora
authoritarian dystopian shithole
>Everyone can
Speak for yourself
you're a chink historylet who can only see the world through the lens provided by his colonial masters who brought his ancestors as servants to your promised island.
Yeah I mean, if Africa is a failed continent what does that make asia?
>what does that make Asia
You may begin referring to them as “massa” Black person
Lol, even if I was African, isn't Asia just an entire continent of slums? Isn't Singapore just a British colony? They aren't even masters of themselves, let alone anyone else.
Then why are zogcels freaki g out about China being the new super power?
Well I'll tell you what people aren't freak out about becoming the next super power, fricking Singapore lol.
>I'm from Singapore
Frog in a Well. Go back to mugging for your A-Levels or posting on Sammyboyforums frickface
I don't know why you even bother arguing with these homosexuals, you could've stopped a dozen posts ago and nothing they spewed would've sullied your point.
Political influence isn't colonialism you moron.
Yeah it was the guy I was replying to that made that claim, go talk to him.
They're getting kicked out as we speak.
A considerable portion of British and French societies were left wing. Many intellectuals were left wing. And I don't mean silly stuff like gay rights or feminist knitting clubs, I mean open commies.
Many who were against it weren't left wing at all. Having you subjects fight for your freedom or stopping the axis, then telling them to frick off back into being 2nd/3rd class citizens rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Especially among those in the military or those who served in the WWs.
France never left Africa
France never truly left Africa (see CFA franc)
They're leaving now though
By force teehee =)
>Blacks can't even get shitty vaporwave memes right
Those colonies became a net drain for the metropole to support and the same metropoles were busted by the Second World War
anons i am doing history about tanks and biplanes its so hard can someone get me some help abpout why they broke the stalemate
yo could i also get an encyclopedic descriptiona bout the history and use of each please
my first IQfy post
Britain was bankrupt. Hell we were bankrupt after WWI. WWII killed the British Empire, but it was already unprofitable before we declared war on Germany.
I'm not black but I'd rather be so then a jaundice skinned manlet
Because
Lmao malding chinaman. Don't talk about a people's failure when your ancestors were the ones brought to an island as willing slaves because unlike the local Malays you were too pussywhipped and ball-less to stand up to and refuse your white masters, instead you were more than happy to work like dogs for them. If that's not indicative of civlisational failure I don't know what is.
Also I didn't report you lol
Japan ruined colonialism for everyone during ww2
It was basically a soviet American take over of the continent
A mere consequence of a chimpout of a certain, jealous "Aryan race". They did manage to destroy the Western Civilization after all; they took it to the grave with them.