[cigattIcTot]

lol nuke them LOL /standard poly stupidity

[sXVUOUVC]

I don't think Europe gets enough **** about Africa. It's pretty much their mess. Oh sure, let's bash America for Iraq... Bush is evil... America teh evil empire, blah blah blah... meanwhile, there's a whole continent that is ****ed up because of European colonialism and the Euros enjoy pretending that it's not their fault.

Europe

[esconsise]

Africa itself isn't exactly blameless, though.

[lXwVlTgO]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Africa itself isn't exactly blameless, though. Yup, they're humans too, and thus they suck

[Phoneemer]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Yup, they're humans too, and thus they suck Yes, its always a pity.
You think that they´re fine people, until finally you discover they´re humans

[CathBraun]

As far as I understand the European colonialism has done Africa much more good than what it has destroyed. Am I wrong to think so? If so, why?

[SueveDobe]

Originally posted by Sava
I don't think Europe gets enough **** about Africa. It's pretty much their mess. Oh sure, let's bash America for Iraq... Bush is evil... America teh evil empire, blah blah blah... meanwhile, there's a whole continent that is ****ed up because of European colonialism and the Euros enjoy pretending that it's not their fault.

Europe I hate self-lashing stuff like this. (sub-saharean) african mess is not european fault.
What was there before colonialism? Nothing. Colonialism left there infrastructure and patterns for development. Colonialism could have had benefitial effects on Africa, if they only were willing or able to make use of it. But they do not and it's not european fault, but theirs. It seems they are, for whatever reason, so miserable at self-gouverning they would have been better off with colonialism still going on.
Without colonialism, there would be
- chaos. Dozens of tiny trabe states fighting. Hutu vs Tutsi on a continental scale
- no infrastructure of ANY kind - no electricity, no hospitals, no schools
- slavery would still be going on (well, it does somewhere)
They would be still living as they lived 200, 500, 1000 years ago. Perhaps even those with vast natural resources, because you need stable gouverment to attract investments.

[euylvaygdq]

we need farm subsidies. Peasants living in Europe live by western standarts, which require more money. They can't live that way without artificial protection. Of course, You can have giant farms instead, but it means worse food, less wildlife, depopulation of rural areas etc.

[MIBgirlsXXL]

Harrison: Thats bullship, if your concerned about the livelyhood of farmers subsidize their personal Incomes, not the product itself.

I agree with you that a self lashing by Europe over this issue is a waste of time and largly irrelivent. We should agree that Africa should be helped because its a wretched have-not continent and the have's are moraly obligated to help regardless of what ever happened in the past.

They need a manufacturing sector to stabalize thing first and formost, the Asian model sound good but I'm wondering who they are going to sell too, the west will buy the cheaper Asian goods and Asians generaly want to keep their imports of finished goods low. Maybe India?

[glamourcitys]

All millions of them at once?

It wouldn't be like that if we hadn't been coddling them. Structural unemployment is a great thing, it means we have spare labor we can put somewhere else.

the other way round. On the boarders of traditional, small farms, there used to be belts of uncultivated land, trees etc, where different insects, birds etc could dwell. They are becoming obsolete when all this land belongs to one person (or when the farmers, as in UE, are paid for quantity of cultivated land), and the ecosystem changes drastically.

With less total land used for farming. Particularly if much of it goes overseas.

And your subsidies probably go to argicorporations too. I doubt they want to miss out on feeding at the government trough.

what's good about it?

Urban economies of scale.

[n2Oddw8P]

I think it's more a problem of eastern Europe than western, for there are a couple more times peasants there.

Doesn't something like 50% of the CAP go to French farmers?

[Vznvtthq]

Originally posted by laurentius
As far as I understand the European colonialism has done Africa much more good than what it has destroyed. Am I wrong to think so? If so, why? The relationship between Africa and Europe hasn't started with colonization, but with trade.

Several African countries were using a particular kind of shellfish (the Cauri) as currency. Something that is rare enough in Africa to act as currency, and which is absolutely everywhere in the maldives. When the Europeans sold Cauris in exchange of slaves, they had the double impact of creating a massive monetary crisis (because of vast excess of currency now existing in Africa), as well as creating an economic crisis.

The Arabs had been practicing a brutal slavery for ages when the Europeans started tapping the African slave market. However, there's a difference between the two: the European demand was much more intense than the Arabic one, and was less geographically localized. As a result, slavery became the leading economic activity for many tribes. It resulted in a constant state of war, of fear and unstability that didn't exist before, plus a strong hit in the workforce. Whole African economies, as well as countries, collapsed because of this.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming only the Europeans for slavery and cauri trade. The Africans (especially local leaders) have been essential in the destruction of Africa's previous structure. And it is acknowledged by the official history of some African countries (IIRC, it is Benin which has a slavery day in which it expresses the guilt of the locals - much to the dismay of many a black-pridist worldwide).
However, regardless of the part of blame in the hands of Africans, the Europeans cynically provided and maintained the stimulus that laid waste to Africa's structure. And they knew full well they were bleeding the continent.

---------------------

As to colonization.
Rememeber that the serious colonization of Africa started in the late 19th century. The settlement on African coasts (which began in the 16th century IIRC) is nothing compared to the urge of coloring the world map with as much red or blue as possible.

Sure, colonization can sound a good idea. White man's burden and all that. We built their hospitals, railways and even sometimes schools. An infrastructure that's generally still here. And sometimes (rarely, I haste to add), it's still the only infrastructure in place, decades after the independences.

However, colonization brought several big evils:

1. An economic structure based on foreign dependence. The colonist clearly intended that Africa would provide raw resources, while Europe would provide processed goods. The Africans were whipped into this economic paradigm, and the local craftsman or merchant classes were considerably weakened (especially when the trade of local resources was made by European merchants).

Today, we are still seeing this. African industry is basically non-existant. There is very little capital in African hands (while there was quite a bit of capital into Japanese hands before the Meiji revolution). The little local production of industrial goods is fully unable to compete with European and now Chinese products, because the factories/workshops are obsolete.

Also, the over-reliance on natural resources is one of the reasons for constant warfare in some areas of the continent.


2. A political structure fully unadapted to the realities of the African continent.
Our way to see a State (territory + population + one government) is not universal at all. Traditionally in Africa, the link between territory and population wasn't nearly as tight as it is currently in the west, notably because of large nomadic populations and low density of settled pop.

Besides, the politcal power was very different to 19th century Europe, and more akin to feudalism: personal loyalties to the clan, because of your birth. The clan being (literally) a very big family. However, unlike feudal Europe, many many people did belong to a clan, not only the nobility.

As a result, you have a political structure with flexible territory, and a relatively flexible clan sturucture (not that you can easily switch clans once you're born - but clans often branched off), and ergo very little centralization in the hands of bigger rulers, where they existed.

When the colonist left, the continent was left with the "civilized" notion of state. The borders not only were fully artificial (they mirrored how far the colonists from each country had gone, and the administrative districts within a colonized area), they also were carved in stone. Look at a map of Africa now, and a map of Africa right before the independences, and you won't find that many differences. Generally, when new countries were created, it was seriously bloody.

Not only did we create artificial borders, we also brought our ideas of centralization and administrative power, which were quite alien in the continent (except the north that had known Ottoman rule). Most African rulers tried to use this centralization for the benefit of their own clan, and they often seriously disfavored other clans to that effect.


3. Cultural destruction.
Tht's more relevant to the French colonization, but not exclusive to it.

With our white man's burden, we believed that the Africans were all uncivilized savages without history, without culture, and to whom we should spread our glorious civilization. And thus, we attempted to destroy local social structures (which often carried tradition and culture with oral transmission). As a result, we seriously hampered the Africans' ability to transmit their knowledge to the next generation. In Mali, for example, many, many stories and know-hows have been lost during WW1, when young adults from all castes (including the cultural caste) were sent to die in battle, thus creating a vacuum between the generation that teaches, and the generation that learns.

Today, there are still quite a few consequences of that. Many Africans don't have a strong feeling of collective identity. There's a huge feeling of inferiority toward the white man. Many countries don't have any official history that predates colonization, or even that predates the independance.



But well, yeah, we did build railroads

[Friend_Joe]

btw, Mali would have sucked anyway

[Boveosteors]

oh, You do not understand the context of the Mali remark

I am ignorant in this matter.
Please, however, enlighten me with great accomplishements of Africans south to Kamerun -Aethiopia line (I know eastern coast would be the place where something could be going on, and there are ruins of Zimbabwe, but, still it's not enough)

the "nothing" part was about industry anyway.

[PristisoliTer]

As to this:
boarders HAD to be artificial, unlike You'd like to deal with something like 10000 states in Africa. Also, even in Europe boarders were and are separating people of the same ethnicity

The problem with African borders is not so much that they separate ethnical groups, or force separate ethnical groups to live together. Actually, ethnical groups in Africa aren't as numerous as one would imagine.
The idea of a country that fits an ethnical group is typically a European one, more specifically a German one (but since you're Germany's b*tch, it's normal that you can't see through this )

In places in Africa, you have political divisions within the same ethnical group, with the clan structure. Those people share the same culture, understand each other, and the relationship between each clan is supposed to follow an old historical pattern. It's not really the same as separate ethnical groups with wholly different cultures.

Now, this clanic structure exists over large territories, much larger than an African country. And at the same time, they aren't identical depending of the place. It is fundamentally a flexible structure, whereas our notion of the state is a rigid one.

The political tradition of clanic Africa is one of mixed loyalties: loyalty to the family, to the village, to the clan, to the king (when there's one). But that's no hierarchical order: people from different clans could live in the same village, territory wasn't necessarily exclusive. Again, Africa is quite big, so it ain't the same everywhere.

The European notion of state binds the territory with its resident population and its political structure. And this bondage is extreme: borders are extremely precise, and any modification in borders is a ****ing hassle.
Whereas in clanic Africa, the political structure wasn't nearly as much bound to the territory, but to the population that belongs to the group. Say, a Coulibaly chief could order around a Coulibaly underling, but not clearly a Yatabaré.

Now, I'm not saying that clanic structure would correspond to the challenges of the modern world. Just like the Holy Roman Empire couldn't correspond either. However, by imposing a paradigm of nation states, we prevented the Africans from finding their own way to do a political system that works in today's world. And their adapatation to our system is bound to take a while still (though things seem to be improving, as the west strongly pushes for good governance nowadays).

[themsrsdude]

Originally posted by Heresson


I hate self-lashing stuff like this. (sub-saharean) african mess is not european fault.
What was there before colonialism? Nothing. Colonialism left there infrastructure and patterns for development. Colonialism could have had benefitial effects on Africa, if they only were willing or able to make use of it. But they do not and it's not european fault, but theirs. It seems they are, for whatever reason, so miserable at self-gouverning they would have been better off with colonialism still going on.

[BakerBonce]

The solution to most problems in the world lies in education combined with a pragmatic approach. Unfortunately too many principled idealists object to reasonable solutions on ideological grounds. I am not going to get into specifics because this is the story no matter if we are talking about Africa, the War in Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Globalization... pick a topic... any topic.

[swwatch]

Originally posted by Oerdin
If Africa really wanted to develop then they'd follow Asia's example. Fight corruption, promote trade, seek foreign investment, invest in infastructure instead of the military. Greater free trade and an end to Western farm subsidies would also help.
1. look at the asians that were firt to prosper. Japan. South Korea. Singapore. Taiwan. Generally homogeneous pops, often with major security challenges. Spending on the military is a neg, but feeling besieged, that you MUST develop, and to do so must overcome corruption, accept trade, etc, seem to help. Yeah, Malaysia and Indon are growing in recent years, but deeply influenced by their immediate neighbors, and with more issues. So that gets us back to the borders problem. Look at Ivory Coast, everyones star a few years ago, but now held back by ethnic conflict.
2. Nonetheless some african countries seem to show potential, like Ghana, Uganda, etc. Using largely the approaches you outline.
3. Yup on the free trade and subsidies.

[carfAball]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
Europe constantly says, open your markets, open your markets, but so far only one side has done that QFFalse. Europe (and the US) should stop subsidising farmers, but I hate it when protectionists in developing countries make it seem as if their countries are making all the concessions. Average tariffs are way, way higher in developing countries than in developed ones.

[finasteridonline]

Originally posted by Heresson

and? polish history, religion etc predating introduction of christianity is also largely lost, and yet we managed to continue our existance and create our own culture.
Polish adoption of christianity - circa 900 CE (or whatever) Polish industrialization circa 1900 (or so)

You willing to give the africans 1000 years to get things together enough to industrialize?