As a Nigerian, I get that we as Africans have shot ourselves in the foot with poor governance and constantly fighting each other, but you seriously can’t argue that Europeans didn’t contribute to the mess we’re in with those horribly drawn borders The fact that there’s actual real human beings in the replies trying to justify and undermine colonialism is unfathomable. I can’t believe it
They did a lot more than just draw bad borders. They exploited our land and people. But they think it’s okay because they built a few railroad tracks and supposedly brought civilisation to us 😂
In fairness, I would say that just about every human civilization throughout history has had plenty of poor governance and wars and violence. In fact, that was the basis of the EU. After two world wars, economic interdependence was considered a more than reasonable alternative to constant violence. Now one big party that helped draw terrible lines on maps was the UK. The idea of divide and conquer. Carve apart populations and then put a minority population in charge. They then need help against the majority population and then in comes the UK to offer... services. Now the UK has been in decline for a long time. Last few decades they were economically propped up by joining the EU. However, they only wanted the economic benefits of the EU and still felt superior. So they did brexit. Have you ever heard of the word schadenfreude?
Map Reading and Topographic Navigation is a lost art only for those who practice it regularly. I'm grateful to be in the Xennial generation growing up in my early teens before the internet. Learning to read maps, navigating by landmarks, topography and even a small part cartography creating maps to reference later.
@@InconsistentManner Yes, and these little maps on our phones drive me nuts! I want to know where I´ve been, where I´m going and what´s around. Street maps are becoming scarce.
I should point out that Tanganyika didn't just "change" its name. It combined with Zanzibar, the archipelago off the coast, and both names were combined to create Tanzania.
Indeed! and yet we repeat our struggles every generation. The older I get, the more I understand that's just how life and humanity exist. We're meant to be happy and threatened and fight and love and do horrible things to various groups at times while bringing new life into the world because it's how each new wave of people learns about our social co-existence, our humanity. It also means we have positive and negative experiences; I'd be bored stiff in a Utopia! Having said that, the decolonisation 'trend' of the last 60+years is probably (?) a good thing, assuming newly independent nations can sort their sh*t out. Can older tribal borders be renegotiated in Africa? Ideally
@@chlorineismyperfume They can't be because rabid nato states defend the 'sanctity' of borders because peaceful negotiation would cause all of their land grabs to leave, starting with Scots, Welsh, Irish, Basques, Bretons, Sardinians, Corsicans, etc, etc, etc. Serbia was willing to let south Kosovo go, nato invaded to steal whole province because old internal borders set hundreds of years ago are holy or something, never mind Serbs are absolute majority in north Kosovo and east Bosnia, west will never let them rejoin Serbia and will instead try to ethnically cleanse them away. Ditto with Crimea, it voted to join Russia dozens of times since 1991, but nato wanted bases there so they started first illegal coup then war, and now are trying to paint Russia's intervention to save Crimeans and Donbass from nato sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing identical to Gaza one as "invasion"...
I was always told that Spain didn't have so many colonies in Africa because of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Which is why Portugal had only Brazil in the Americas.
The simple answer is that in the 19th century spain was in no position to do anything. They fought 5 civil wars: the peninsular war, 3 carlist wars and the glorious revolution. Two years later there was a restoration coup, which was one of the 12 succesful coups in that period. When this map was made in the 1930s, the monarchy was once again ousted and a new civil war was brewing. This is all because spain didn't manage their colonial economy well. They destroyed america for endless silver mining, which only caused inflation in the homeland.
One thing you got wrong is that Tanganyika didn't just turn into Tanzania; the modern country is made up of two ex-colonies who unified upon their independence: Tanzania = Tanganyika + Zanzibar (a set of islands off the coast, including the major city of Dar es Salaam). Similar to Senegambia, only it stuck around much more permanently
If these names are pronounced the same, the modern name should be Botshwana to make it clearer. Until now, I always made the mistake to call it Bots-Wana. Just like I learned only some years ago: that Angola is rather pronounced 'Ngola. And European names don't start with Ng or Nt or Ns, so they added a vocal in front.
That's not strictly true.... Botswana means the land of the Tswana people, or Tswana tribe. The Batswana are the people who inhabit Botswana. The language they speak is simply Tswana. There is no sh sound. And in many southern African black languages, the emphasis on almost always on the second last syllable.
@@handyvickers The language is Setswana if you really want to be correct. It is not really “just Tswana” though in English one can refer to it as such. Similarly, Lesotho is the land of the Basotho, who speak Sesotho. (Sesotho and Setswana are closely related languages, which is why the prefixes are the same). The name of the language used to be spelled Sechuana. There is no “sh” sound but it was the spelling that was used.
As a Burundian, who grew up in many countries in East and West Africa, and long time subscriber to this channel, you never cease to amaze me with how well researched your videos are and how much you excel at carrying your passion for maps. Thank you very much, I am incredibly thankful to have people like you on RU-vid.
But their past and present combativeness prevent any room for friendship.We got no friends till the hunted tell their story.How we ended up this way...
Spanish control of Rio de Oro was less about supporting/protecting the Canary Islands and more about the absolutely vast phosphate reserves in the area. It's why they built the world's longest conveyor belt there
Rio de Oro as well as the plazas of Melilla, Ceuta, and many other small islands as Chaferinas were established in the African coast to prevent the Muslim invasion after the Reconquista in 1492. Las Canarias were part of the kingdom of Castille since the 14th century therefore a small Rio de Oro territory as Melilla would have not been enough to secure it.
Deserves a part 2 just regarding the Portuguese colonies and how Portugal colonised pretty much every coastal region in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
28:30. Well, Ivory Coast _does_ appear on maps today, but as "Côte d'Ivoire," which means "Ivory Coast" in French. Although the nation refuses to recognize any translations of its name from French to other languages in its international dealings, some English language entities persist in calling it "(the) Ivory Coast."
I say Ivory Coast, but only because I cannot for the life of me pronounce the French version. I think it would be strange if the USA or UK insisted on the rest of the world saying their name in English when other languages might have a hard time pronouncing it. Note: I used to say the French version but I was very bluntly informed that I was butchering it. So I kind of just admitted defeat.
@@gumloproductionstry this: coat dee var. It's not *quite* correct, but in terms of easily pronounceable for English speakers, it's close enough to be functional. If you want to get even closer, it's a lot more like "vwar" instead of "var," and you want to say "coat" with a softer ending, so just don't emphasize the "t" so much. And then just say it all together, almost like it's one word. "Coa(t)-DEE-vwar"
@@gumloproductions It probably doesn't matter, unless you are speaking to an Ivorian (who would probably appreciate you making your best effort). Following the advice of @natahliazaring5291 (particularly the second paragraph) will serve you well.
Thanks for sharing your map of Africa. I was born in the then Southern Rhodesia which was part of the Federation of S.Rhodesia, N.Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After the dissolution of that Federation and emancipation of N.Rhodesia and Nyasaland those two countries were renamed Zambia and Malawi, leaving just Rhodesia where Cecil John Rhodes is buried. Rhodesia finally became Zimbabwe. For those who take pride in “Rhodes Scholar” please bear in mind that Cecil John Rhodes, who made a considerable fortune in Southern Africa, died without heirs and bequeathed his fortune to Oxford University to finance very academically outstanding students. Blood money,eh? I could write a book just on the history of Southern Africa. My maternal grandparents are a small but significant part of that history.
"Ivory Coast", "Gold Coast" and "Slave Coast" (I had never heard of "Grain Coast" until this video) were names originally given by Portuguese explorers/merchants. In this way of identifying a territory by its main "commodity", they are the predecessors of the American "Belts".
It annoys me that now we're supposed to say "Cote d'Ivoire" rather than "Ivory Coast". Like, dude, it means the same. But in French. Why should I suddenly start speaking French? Same with Eswatini, which just means Swaziland, but at least that's in the local language, not bloody French. Easier to say, too, actually. And I don't even find French that hard to pronounce.
@@CoolGuy-th7bl I had never seen that phrase either. I looked it up: in Portuguese we just call it "pimenta-da-Guiné" (i.e., "Guinea's pepper") or "malagueta".
@@PiousMoltar What do you mean with 'we are supposed to say'? As a non-native English speaker, most well known geographical locations have different pronunciations in different languages, so does Ivory coast/coté d'Ivoire/Ivoorkust? Same with the US/Etas-Unis/Vereinigte Staaten ect.
@@PiousMoltar We're not "supposed" to say "Côte d'Ivoire". That country's government pushed for that name on all international venues, but foreigners are free to use what they see fit. (No one ever asked the Deutsch is they like that their country is called Germany, Niemcy or Alemanha by foreigners.) Of course, one principle of diplomacy is not annoying your counterpart for no good reason - but I'm a random guy, not a diplomat, so I don't care one second what the government from the Ivory Coast wants... (BTW, the first time I was aware of that Côte d'Ivoire thing was in the early 1990's, when Portugal organised FIFA's under-21 World Cup. All titles for those games appeared in Portuguese (go figure...), so when Ivory Coast played it said "Costa do Marfim". Their team protested and they called a press conference, stating something like, "By decree of our President, "Côte d'Ivoire" is untranslatable in all languages" - to which a Portuguese journalist quipped, "Your President has no authority over the Portuguese language...". I also couldn't care less about that "Türkiye" think. For me, it's Turkey when I'm speaking English, it's "Turquia" when I'm speaking Portuguese. (Fun fact: in Portuguese, the delicious bird know as "turkey" is actually called "peru" - yes, also a misnomer, but related to the South American country of Peru.)
There was an order from the pope that Spain stayed west of the line of demarcation while the Portuguese stayed to the east. The line went through part of the south American continent and that's why Portugal colonized Brazil and had more African holdings compared to Spain in the Americas.
I'm a native motswana so I say this with care but it's not 'be-co-wana-land,' it is 'bee-ch-wana-land,'(the ch is the same one as in sandwich) but the rest of the pronunciations are spot on
Treaty of Tordesillas The Treaty of Tordesillas of 7 June 1494 involves agreements between King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile and King John II of Portugal establishing a new demarcation line between the two crowns, running from pole to pole, 370 leagues to the west of Cape Verde islands. The Treaty was finally signed following complex diplomatic negotiations between ambassadors and barristers from both Kingdoms. Modification of a demarcation line dividing the world between Spain and Portugal resulted in the birth of Brazil as its eastern end fell within the Portuguese zone. This document is essential if we are to understand American history and economic and cultural relations between Europe and America. Therefore the treaty became an important reference not only to the Atlantic Ocean history but also to the memory of the world allowing the meeting of continents and civilizations separated by unknown oceans.
I'll add that Spain was wrecked by the time the scramble for Africa had started They had minimal political power compared to France and Britain, fought of Napoleon but 20 years prior in a brutal guerilla campaign, then lost Mexico soon after, followed by losing a war to the US Spain was spent!
you mean 55 Years earlier... the Scramble began about 1875 with the conference of Berlin in 1885 or 1888 settling the disputes "finally"... JUST Spain had gone immediately prior through a Rebellion against queen Isabella II and a bloody restoration of King Alfonso XII after 6 years of "republic", it was in no state to lay claim to overseas territories even if after all those wars, losing most its american colonies in the 1820s and still suffering from the backend of tanking their own economy by importing way tooo much gold and silver from the new world in the early 1700s, they could have afforded it.
The scramble for Africa started because of development in medicine made inland Africa survivable. Spain was done as a superpower halfway the 1600's, when inland Africa would shorten the average life span of a European to 11 months.
Your videos about old maps are my favorite! Please make more! Love watching the maps up close and learning about their history and how the world has changed and continues to evolve ❤
I really love your videos, I genuinely think it’s some of the best videos being made on RU-vid. I it’s always a joy to see you have uploaded a new video 😁
Did he just skip over all the Portuguese colonies or did I miss something? I mean, he mentioned even the former German ones but not the ones Portugal kept until 1975?
Not only that, but Portugal was about the earliest player in the whole "game". Long before Spain, that was what should have been mentioned. That should have been in the script, I guess.
Its a different era that doesnt fit the video but the main reason why Spain lost its american colonies was because of the brutality of the napoleonic wars and another civil war/rebellion just a few years after the napoleonic wars. Spain resisted and fought agianst Napoleonic rule constantly with portugueze and british support and their new king after Napoleon wasnt doing the right things to keep his realm together, he ruled the exact (repealed the napoleonic reforms of 1812) same way before Napoleon while people wanted some change. Spain, Sicily and Naples all rebelled and a foreign army (french) was needed to restore order for the crown which in turn made their American colonies fed up and fight for their own autonomy and independence. Its was basically 2 decades of war and misery for the Spanish mainland and southern Italy that made them lose their overseas holdings in America.
@@niluscvp Also because the US served a symbol to other American Colonies that they could successfully rebel and become independent. Its no coincidence that a huge wave of rebellions started after the US Revolution
@@jatzi1526 Yeah and the combination of factors and timing couldn't be any worse for Spain. Experienced generals/admirals from the Napoleonic era were still able to serve and fought for former colonies (Bolivar, Cochrane, O'Higgins), a wartorn Spain ruled by a uncompromising absolutist king. No nation in Europe was interested to fight a large war in 1820 and was unsure what to really do in international matters with all the new borders/nations. Therer was a large dip in population due to young men dying in the previous napoleonic wars (weaker military strength) along with a changing current population that desired more of things you mentioned. Napoleon and US brought "liberte, egalite and fraternite" and that you should able to self-govern because of "no taxation without representation".
Not to mention that Spain was already not doing well at all before the revolutionary wars, it was a country that was going through a pretty rough spot that kept on going worse and worse for them
This is fascinating, looking at history through maps of the time. There was so much on this 1936 map, you could make a second video. But, I'm all for you continuing this as a series. 💜🌎🌍🌏✊
I loved this episode and would love for you to go through the other maps in similar thoroughness
2 месяца назад
At that time, the Spanish colonies also included the territories of Río Muni and the island of Fernando Poo (that they bought to Portugal), present day Equatorial Guinea (in the Gulf of Guinea).
Came here to say this! Yeah, he says at 3:47 that the 2 colonies in the Northwest corner are the only two on the entire continent... Equatorial Guinea is waaay too strange a country to forget about
Spanish historian here. Basically, the summary of Spain in the XIX century is: 1 Fight of the french occupation 2 Three civil wars (carlists wars) 3 First unstable republic 4 Independence of its colonies in America 5 Second tier industrial revolution, mainly focused in Catalonia and the Basque Country. It had some "ok" periods, specially the last two decades of the XIX century, but in 1935 the Second Spanish Republic was too unstable and the national/catholic/fascist part of the army brought a much worse civil war than the three previous ones. It was a second tier contender for the race for the colonisation of Africa at best.
Hey, Franco was probably the best outcome Spain could've hoped for at that time. Even Orwell, who fought alongside the Republicans, hated them. They're what inspired him to write Animal Farm, Homage to Catalonia, and 1984.
@@Skeloperch The two other outcomes would have been: become an USSR satellite (quite difficult, being bordered by NATO countries) and become a common burgoise republic like most of western europe. Both would have been better than a fascist-like regime which couldn't grow the economy until more than a decade and a half after the war was finished and which oppresed all of the historical nations of the country.
Let me rearrange and extend the History: 1 Fight vs the French occupation, and resulting devastation of Spain 2 Independence struggle of most of its colonies in America, and loss of mine$ there 3 Three civil wars (carlists wars) 4 War with USA and loss of rest of American and Asian Colonies. 5 First unstable republic 6 Second tier industrial revolution, mainly focused in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
@@tommy-er6hh Let me rearrange that again: - War against Portugal alongside France ("guerra de las naranjas") - France (Napoleon) put Joseph I as king of Spain: "Peninsular War". - 1st stage of American colonies' independence wars ("we're not fighting Spain, we don't want the French King... nor the Spanish civil servants") - France out, Fernando VII absolute king: several liberal ("democratic", sort of) coups and uprisings. - 2nd stage of American Independence Wars - Fernando VII is forced to sign the liberal Constitution - Mexico declares its independence -previous attempts were thwarted- because "those bloody Spaniards are too liberal for us" - Pre-carilist absolutist/conservative uprising ("Regencia de Urgel") - Ferdinand VII dies, Isabella II is sworn queen: 1st Carlist war - Several coups and uprising between liberal and conservative ("we want a constitution", "no you don't") - 2nd carlist War -to some historians, and mere regional uprising in Catalonia ("for the right Spain", mind you) - Isabella II is ousted by "democratic" forces ("Revolución Gloriosa") - Amadeo of Savoy is made King of Spain ---> 3rd ("2nd") Carlist war -the one they were closer to win. - First Republic: serious infighting with "federal" and "unitarian" republican forces - Cuban independence war(s) (backed by the US, in some form or another) - Alfonso XII -son of Isabella- is proclaimed king of Spain. - More Cuban uprising. Also Filipino uprising. - Spanish-American War - "Well, now that we don't have American colonies, what abut Africa? What's left?"
by 1935 the Scramble was long over... that's a 1875-1890 thing with Berlin happening sometime in the 1880s. 86 or 88 i can't remember. And hadn't there just been another dispute about sucession after the end of the Bourbons or something by 1875? leaving them with a shaky government and thoroughly bled out military?
Consider applying wide strips of clear packing tape to the backs of the folds, gently, as the map is opened, in order to support the likeliest places for deterioration to cause tears in old, folded maps.
Spain ended up with few colonies in Africa for a few reasons. First off, by the time Spain unified and started exploring, it was already all-in on the Americas. The gold and silver from places like Mexico and Peru kept Spain focused on the New World, while other European powers like Britain and France jumped on Africa. Plus, Spain wasn’t doing too great economically by the 19th century when the "Scramble for Africa" really kicked off, so it couldn’t compete with stronger nations. Also, Africa just didn’t seem as strategically important to Spain compared to closer areas like the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla. By then, Spain was already losing most of its colonies, so it didn’t have the resources or motivation to get much land in Africa. Spain didn’t get much of Africa, but it did grab a few key spots. In Morocco, Spain ended up with territories like Ceuta and Melilla, partly because of its proximity to Spain and strategic value across the Strait of Gibraltar. They also took control of the northern Rif region and parts of Western Sahara through treaties with France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Western Sahara was held until the mid-20th century, but it’s still a contested area today. Spain also colonized Equatorial Guinea, which was one of its few actual colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. They got it mostly because of treaties with Portugal in the late 1700s and held onto it for the resources like timber and cocoa. So even though Spain didn’t dominate Africa like other European powers, it did hold on to it arguably for longer, with it last possession not being vacated until 1975. For those in the US, this was during the Presidency of Gerald Ford, which means that when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State, there were still Spanish colonies in the world.
Well there are to this day british, french and US american colonies in the world with arguably NZ and Australia also playing in that game, although more by accident due to the world Wars...
This was absolutely fascinating. I learnt so much. And 1000% yes I want to see videos about those other maps! Pssst you missed Comoros and Madagascar, and probably others, but those are the only ones I noticed.
I believe you did the Treaty of Tordesillas dirty in your reasoning for why Spain held so few African colonies, if not for that I'd bet we would have seen a lot more extractive type colonies from them down the west coast of Africa as Portugal seemed more content to have an empire mostly based on purely trade rather than conquest. Which probably why the Scramble happened in the first place: Portugal never conquered these lands and Spain was prohibited so the rest of Europe could essentially go "It's free real estate" and yoink everything.
Again this idea is dumb. By the 1650s this treaty meant basically nothing or little. The main issue was Spain just didn’t held much power to control that much territory. Besides portions of Morocco right next door, they got the scraps b/c there empire by this point was already dwindling
It seems like you don't know much about the trade during the time of Portugal colonial expansion. There was widespread battles between the Dutch and Portuguese over colonial possessions in attempts to control trade. Portugal didn't conquer the north west coast of Africa because they weren't that valuable, but still conquered places like Angola and Mozambique which they held onto until the 1970s, and parts of Indonesia before being pushed out by the Dutch.
This is probably my favorite video you've done! Physically seeing the history of Africa is the best way to have the context to understand Africa today.
I loved this video! I appreciate your hard work put into this and also other your videos. I would love to see a whole series presenting the historical maps you bought.
Respect for one of the most complete videos on this subject that I've seen! 🙌🏾💯 Two important additions for context : The French charge across of Mali, Niger, etc was extremely bloody, so shocking in fact, that the particular officers, (Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine, who led massacres of the local people), were later arrested by a shocked French government. (To state the obvious, their arrests were/are never enough to ever make up for what they had done, obviously.) Credit: "How Did France Colonise Niger and West Africa?" By Firstpost ... I'm glad you took time to mention that those leaders in Francophone Africa were expelled *because they were Pro-France's extractive foreign policy* ... It's an important clarification, b/c some news outlets leave the impression that African countries just love to "coup" 🙄🙄. And finally, Botswana's current-day success cannot only be traced to Britain's less v*olent/lack of v*olent tactics in the region, (although that was a great improvement from other regions) but it's also due to the fact that three Tswana chiefs, Khama III, Bathoen I, & Sebele I travelled to London in 1895, to protest the British South Africa Company from acquiring commercial and administrative rights in Bechuanaland. (If the Chiefs had failed and this had occurred, they would've lost the rights to their natural resources, which were/are huge.) - Credit: Britannica.com They won out, and their maintaining rights over their mineral wealth 💎 is the main reason it's a stable country now. 😊
Love it. More of this please. Constructive Feedback: there were time when the music audios bass would drown out your voice. Love this direction and hope to see more
For the record, Spain also claimed Equatorial Guinea in addition to Rio de Oro and Spanish Morocco. To this day, Spanish is still a national language there. EDIT: you later make this correction.
the reason the border between Ethiopia and Somalia was dotted was because the state of Ethiopia had been expanding its boundaries south and east since the early 1800s, mostly at the expense of nomadic somali groups who were too dispersed and divided to mount a concerted resistance. this continued after they beat back the attempted Italian invasion at the battle of Adowa in 1896. however, this region is very remote and quite barren (hence why everyone in the area was nomadic or semi-nomadic - there were no consistent sources of food or water) so while Ethiopia claimed vast swathes of territory, they didn't necessarily have full military control over them until after regaining independence after WWII. it doesn't have all that much to do with Italy, except that Italy's brutal conquest of Ethiopia under Mussolini in 1935 meant the European powers had a lot of sympathy for Ethiopians in the post-war negotiations and gave them more or less everything they wanted. Ethiopia's continued control over this area and Somalia's dissatisfaction with this led directly to several wars between them in the 1960s and 70s and led directly to the Somali state falling apart towards the end of the Cold War.
@@billpugh58 Ethiopia is now in the middle of Civil War …. FANO group… TPLF… TDF…OLF … Beni Shangul ….many more will join soon 🤣🤣 Keep on fighting and killing each other. Abbiy Ahmed Oromumu is doing a good job 👍 👍👍👍
Potentially because most of these territories (like Angola & Mozambique) were colonized by Portugal centuries before the Scramble for Africa, but would be interesting to hear some thoughts nonetheless.
Angola and Moçambique, plus Guiné-Bissau, Cabo Verde, and São Tomé e Principe. And these were some of the last colonies to gain their independence, mostly in the mid 1970s.
Consider getting a pair of archival document handling gloves for things like this, to protect the very absorbent paper from the oils on your fingers. Also highly recommend an archival framing of this piece. They can likely iron out the creases and put it behind glass that protects from damage from light including UV rays.
This isnt some valuable antique, its an old classroom map that you could have bought spotless for 12 dollars on ebay (literally), its pretty cool but he hardly needs gloves to touch it, especially with all the other wear and tear.
@@Aaaaaaarrrpirate Agreed. Maps of Africa on this scale and detail can be found for about every year between the 1850s and 1950s on Wiki Commons, and some of _those_ are archival relics. But with a nicer frame, he can prevent more wear and tear to accumulate. Although, if he then hangs it on a wall, it _will_ bleach out quickly.
Dude. get a grip. This is a give-away map from National Geographic. Would you use gloves on a Texaco road map of New Jersey? No. You would order fried chicken and wipe your fingers on it. like Bruce Springsteen did.
@Redmenace96 In historical preservation and archeology, 50 years old is considered eligible for preservation efforts. Just because it's a once-common artifact does not diminish its significance as an artifact, just makes it so that, *if preserved* it can be more widely observed and the information used. Besides, who knows if the electronic storage of these things we have now will last, and in what forms. We preserve what we have in physical form, lest it be lost through our own devaluation in times of plenty.
I really like your videos and as a history teacher this one is really special, because usually students only see a map - but every map produced by humans tells a story. So thank you for that! On another note...it's really hard following you sometimes because the music so much louder than your voice. That puts a little damper on the otherwise enjoyable videos!
Europe lost massive wealth with every single colony besides India and Egypt maybe . You needed a lot of soldiers , you needed to create and pay administration , and create the extraction infrastructure. You paid the local elite . Huge expenses in manpower and wealth to extract the work of people outside Europe. Europe had the industrial revolution so a soldier was ten times more productive in a factory in Europe compared to being stationed in a colony . Colonies were worthless vanity projects to enrich some elites .
@@hriscuvalerica4814 Colonies were vital exactly so that European industry could have material inputs, and markets to export to. They extracted a ton of wealth from their empires.
There was also Liberia which was for the most part an independent country along with togo which was split after ww1 and guinea-bissau which was a Portuguese territory@@Jay_Kry5hom
@@ThorJensen-oh5gj The region was a bit boring compared to other parts of Africa, but yeah, I wish he didn't mess up the Ethiopia thing about being the only independent country.
Not to over-simplify, but there were no atrocities in the Belgian Congo. Rather, there were atrocities in The Congo, when it was the personal estate of the King of Belgium, as an exercise in adventurism. And it is an important point that in many cases proper imperialism was a reprieve from the atrocities both of the inter-tribal warfare that preceeded it, but also of the adventurism that unfortunately filled the vacuum.
The Belgian king who's private enterprise it was, was a German made king of the Belgians by the British, and the Congo FrreeState had British stakeholders too. So you could argue it was more of British than a Belgian horrorshow.
When I was only four-years old, in 1958, my father bought us kids a globe for Christmas that we'd keep for the next fifty-years. I loved that globe. Needless to say, Africa back then looked pretty much the same as Africa in this video's map. I just remember that French West Africa was enormous, and was colored purple, including over half a dozen of today's African nations. British colonies were a red/pink color, and they were extensive, as well.
11:55 as a Libyan I want to tell you that this view of the war is completely false. It does seem like that but this is the few wars where both sides are identical and the war is fought simply for power. There isn’t even an ounce of wanting to separate the country. Also this war is very mild, in wiriting this from the “frontline” but there’s no issue in me walking to the “other side” other then which army controls it. Not a regional war.
When I was young, I collected NatGeo maps. I eagerly awaited the arrival of my grandparents next issue of the magazine so I could see which part of the world would be added to my collection. I spent countless hours pouring over every line and word on these maps, imagining what these exotic lands might be like and hoping to visit all of them some day. Well, I didn't get to all of these places, but I did travel the world and spent many years living in various places absorbing the culture and enjoying my time learning about other people and their ways of living. I gained a great respect for other cultures from this exposure. I wish everybody could experience the world the way I have. I believe there would be far less conflict if we could all understand that our way of living is only one way of living among many. This all started with a young boy looking at maps. Please do continue to make more videos like this. Who knows, you might inspire world peace.
Little bummed out you didn’t speak about the Portuguese colonies considering we held onto them later than any other European country and were the first Europeans there in the 1400s. We saw them not as “colonies” but overseas provinces (like with French Algeria), and they fought bloody independence wars and even civil wars afterwards once the Portuguese left. I think it would have made a really cool addition to the video!
I love your content and this video!!! You always manage to infuse the educational content with a lot of heart! It's a real joy to learn with you in each of these videos! That shirt looks amazing on you btw!
Lovely idea! It is a great tool to discuss the present with clear reference to the past, as we lost that knowledge. Present conflicts seem difficult to comprehend, even when you find maps online with old borders overlapped. Having a whole old map of the time makes it much more clear. Well done man, I really liked it! 👍
That may be, but I'm listening at just prior to the 4-minute mark and he says, "Together, these are the ONLY two Spanish possessions on the WHOLE continent." That's what's known as BAD EDITING.
@vEvelugu he could have corrected it in the video right then and there. A quick dub of "oh, I forgot Spanish Guinea and Ifni, but I touch on them later" while showing the same pans he uses later when he does address them would have quickly solved the issue. Instead he says what he says and carries on, leaving many of us to believe that he forgot about them for 20+ minutes, or even wouldn't address them. Or he could have edited out the part where he says they were the only two Spanish colonies, and clipped the Ifni/Spanish Guinea bits there to lump them together instead of keeping them apart. I know he's a geographer, not a professional video director, but at some point the idea of ease of transfer of information should carry over from one to the other.
17:56 The Ethiopia-Somalia border is dotted on most maps of this type(even on Google). Funny enough it does extend all the way back to the Battle of Adwa when the Ethiopian emperor brokered a more favourable treaty with the Italians but they couldn't agree on any line of demarcation. Also at this time, the British were protecting some of the major western Somali tribes such as the Ogaden but due to the risk of Ethiopians supplying the Mahdists on their western border the Brits told them they wouldn't defend their protected Somali territories and later sent a letter demarcating what they considered the borderline between British Somaliland and Ethiopia. Has nothing to do with any conflict at the time of this map.
Speaking about Africa colonisation ignoring the Portuguese presence between 1415 and 1975 is like speaking about the Space Race during Cold War without mentioning the USA and the Soviet Union... what a rookie mistake...
Yeah he didn't mention the Portuguese colonies, didn't dive into South Africa (as well Lesotho and Eswatini) and I think he could've dropped something about Liberia and Sierra Leone. Really good video either way, though :)
Wonderful video, with clear enthusiasm and desire for understanding. An excellent overview for people looking to understand present and recent past issues that have become omnipresent in Africa over the last century. Keep up the great work!
When I was a little kid in the early 1960's, living in Nigeria, we visited an open air market in Dahomey (Benin) and all the meat for sale in the market place (except for one kind) was sold with a bit of hide on it to identify the animal from whence it came. I asked my Father why one of the hanging meats had no hide and he said "that is long pig". I asked him "what is long pig" and he told me that it was human meat. As a diplomat at the time he (my Father) was hosted at an official dinner at which he was served long pig (which he had to eat so as not to insult the hosts). He said it tasted like pork. The explanation of the name "long pig" is that human meat tastes like pork but the bones are longer. So that was happening in Benin in 1962-1963. A lot of westerners today have no idea that Africans sold other Africans ito the Europeans (with doesn't make that right either). Mostly the Ghananians enslaved other tribes and sold some to any who would buy them. In Belgian Congo, the Belgians would brutally punish any slaves who failed to fill thier quota of rubber production. Hands and even feet were unceremoniously cut off "as a warning" to those who failed to meet their production quotas. Extremely heinous I would say.
the term "long pig" is authentic, but stems from the Pacific Islands... and probably a bit of reputation assassination by european reports about the local population there. so no, it was not given to him in Africa as common term there, he told you a scary story
The percentage of African kings and Heads of State that sold African prisoners to White men is so small it cannot be quantified. Why did you even bring that up? Guilty conscience?
Mate you got it wrong about the history of somaliland somalia. The colonial power introduced the so called greater somalia but never divided them. SOMALILAND British (Formerly known as Adel Sultanate) never shared an administrations even history prior to the arrival of the colonial powers. The only reason British Somaliland and Somalia united in 1960 was to claim back the Somaliland territories occupied by the Ethiopians.
By 1935, the Iberian countries were no longer influential colonizers". Both had already experienced independence of their former colonies and lost. For these two countries their "empire" days were all gone, maybe this explains the lack of expansionist intentions from Spain. According to Tordesilhas they knew they weren't supposed to be there in first place and, although the treaty had no value by this time, maybe it had some historical influence. For Portugal, the situation wasn't that different. After the "lost" of Brazil, all they had were their oldest colonies in Africa. First Portugal tried to connect West coast to East coast of Africa, between Angola and Mozambique, but British expansionism ruined Portuguese plans at the infamous Berlin Conference. This ultimately led to a regicide in Portugal and the end of Monarchy. Yes, this map explains so much about how different each colonising project was and how it influenced today conflicts.
