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You sure are full of 💩 Africa didn't help Europe says the American France still suck the hell out of it's ex-colonies they just took what they want You really need to stop saying it didn't help Europe cause your wrong from extracting the raw materials and resources to forced labors it all went overseas to build up whatever home country was colonizing the country
to be fair, the treaty of todisillas DID mean that all of africa belongs to portugal in terms of colonization, and they were one of the first to do so. the only reason they didnt take more land was because there was no real profit incentive.
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszykiewic3338 It was because they couldn't. They lost against Zimbabwean, Senegambian (including Mali) states and Kongo. So much so that they didn't try anything militarily when Bini stopped selling them slaves and the Ethiopians expelled them. Also, tropical diseases
Portugal agreeing to give up Africa so the smaller colonial powers could have a crumb of colony was an even bigger chad move. After all they still had all of Asia.
@@ikengaspirit3063 Portugal only went to war against Kongo once and Won. Those countries you mentioned never entered in war whit Portugal. Ethiopia fought whit Portugal not against it Can you source what you said? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Portugal
I’m surprised you didn’t mention anything about Ethiopia in this timeline. Historically they had more contact with European and Middle Eastern states which allowed them to purchase weapons and expand even in our time line. Without the colonial powers land locking Ethiopia they could dominate Red Sea trade similar to how the Auxumites had done thousands of years before.
@@fritoss3437 Egypt fighting Ethiopia would be extremely far from their power base. The mountainous terrain also makes invading hell. The result of the Ethiopian Egyptian War of 1874 would likely repeat
@@toobeast673well in this timeline islamic states are pretty well established and powerful in east africa so I could see Ethiopia being cornered and conquered with an alliance with between those states and egypt
@@KratosAurion7777 Good comment but I strongly disagree with the last part of it. Just as this excellent video showed. It is absolutely not necessarily because your country is controlling more territory that it is stronger. The more France keep Algeria the more France suicides herself. In fact you your comment reveal it itself, Algeria would be the winner at the end. France having algeria oil is nothing compared to the implacable demographic and religiou pression France would have suffered (even more than today !)(moreover France would probably not emphase nuclear energy with lots of oil).
European scramble for Africa is basicly "If we don't take it someone else will and they might possibly maybe find something worthwhile there and we can't have that."
Honestly though, if Europe didn't scramble for Africa; Arabic regions at the time would of definitely. While other African tribes may have eventually came to together. It was unlikely. On par with say France giving up all there power to merge with the british empire at the time, or perhaps the Austrian Empire merging with the Russian Empire. The arabs would of definitely enslaved them in there own homes. While the european powers at least had the decency of buying 90% of them from african warlords of the region. Arabs were casually stealing from the east & west coasts
@@icarusunited Arabs weren’t kidnapping anybody you low IQ joke they brought the Africans from East African black Muslim warlords who happily sold pagans for lolz. Arabs very very very rarely needed to raid or could get away with it. The only places in africa that were colonised by MENAS would be Sudan and Zanzibar the rest of the continent was far to powerful to be defeated by a couple yellow boys with turbans
Btw I would say the main reason how western Europeans conquered Africa so easily was diplomacy. Basically the whole "we help you against these other African tribes" loop hole, turning them into a vassal and then annexing them. And not keeping promises.
Kinda sounds like what happened to Lesotho. They teamed up with the British to beat the Dutch and got annexed against their will after defeating the Dutch.
Nah, in most of those places the Africans didn't even know white men were "ruling" over them. In the British colonies especially, they used very few administrators and left power largely with the chieftains
@@VasilyMusic thanks! I don’t know you obviously, but I’ve yet to meet a Vasili (whichever way it’s spelt) that hasn’t been an absolute legend, and I’m sure you’re no exception - cheers
@@uydagcusdgfughfgsfggsifg753 Lol it's pronounced "Vah-see-leey", and frankly I'm impressed you've met other Vasilii's because even in my country it's not a very common name Btw you're the first person named uydagcusdgfug hfgsfggsifg that I've met in my life. That's quite a rare name too lol... Cheers bruv!
Strong Tribal Groups like the Igbo, the Tutsi, the Zulu, the Kikuyu etc. would trade at the coast and dominate other groups. This would mean they would have much larger territories and not be tied down to current national borders. Eventually large kingdoms and chiefdoms competent enough to contact groups outside of Africa would emerge and this would facilitate social change such as promotion of capitalism etc.
It would be incomplete and full of guesstimations. How do you measure If the Fulani jihad would've expanded east and reach the Blue Nile? Do you think that the Xhosa and Zulu would've joined and fused in a single political entity with borders and bureaucracy? Can you put that on a map? It's a dumb attempt. It would be like using that crappy Marvel movie Black Panther as a source, it doesn't take on account that that's not how people develop technological advances.
Well, that would take someone with a big and detailed Knowledge on pre-colonial African history which I don't think there are enough of for those simultaneously also highly interested in and involved in Alternate history to exist yet.
Yeah - this was essentially what I was interested in here as well. I'm also not sure about the idea that Britain does not intervene in World War I. The Germans are about to so completely disrupt the balance of Power in Europe and that was always (well almost always) why Britain intervened historically. Britain is not going to stand by while Germany takes most of the continent. It might actually be the trigger that stops the war. Germany being on the verge of winning in late 1906 or early 1907 but is also exhausted from what turns out to be such an awful and brutal type of war is basically told by Britain "All right you won - take some gains but keep it reasonable or we are entering the war against you". Germany gets another slice of France and all of Poland and the Baltic States. This had been how the wars where generally settled by Europeans between the Napoleonic Wars and the actual historical World War One.
A special shout-out to Ethiopia. That didn't let the scramble for Africa to happen in their territory until the italian invasion in world war 2 (but that doesn't count as a colonization).
And also shoutout to Morocco being the last African country to be colonized even though it's at the 2nd most strategic point of Africa after Egypt ( and also beating the sh*t out of the Spanish at Annual)
@@joundii3100, how exactly is Morocco the 2nd-most strategically vital territory in Africa after Egypt? Just curious, because I would think that if anything, South Africa would be the one to make that spot, being on one of the only two points in Africa where you can go from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and all, but Im interested in what you have to say.
There's this myth, or at least an urban legend, that German chancellor Bismarck once met with an official, who advocated for a greater expansion of German colonialist endeavours. That official apprently folded out a map of Africa in front of Bismarck and started explaining where Germany should grab new land. Bismarck allegedly then took a map of the German empire off the wall, pointed to it and said: "This is my Africa." As in: I don't care about that other continent. I'm concerned with this nation first and foremost. Pretty cool, if true.
As a Victoria 2 player I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Never heard of the effective occupation cb. And going for China instead of Africa? But China requires AE to conquer whereas Africa is mostly free. So confused.
@@darken2417 It really doesn't, the whole point is that you can lock Chinese army on a island at the very bottom(Don't remember the name) and either siege them while it's stuck there or kill it. Chinese army being so huge and under tech that you can get the warscore without taking any land. And for example, there is a province with gold with almost the population of your country prior to annexation(depending on you who you play of course) located there. If you're not a great power that can boost up your economy with all the people paying taxes and the land itself bringing in profits. Perhaps it's not as effective in vanilla but still should have some benefits. China becomes a burden late game though when every farmer suddenly feels the urge to rise up all over the world
Yep, the Congo is MASSIVE. And as massive as it is unproductive and extremely difficult to explore. The Amazon is a Sunday stroll compared to the Congo. You also have the dilemma of having to think "Is it really worth demolishing thousands of hectares of almost virgin forest for some charcoal in the name of progress?"
@@sirjordancarter they didn't conquer all of it, bc they didn't have to to claim conquest. You do not understand geopolitics if you do not understand this
Like how "tiny Madagascar" is literally more than twice the size of Britain... Or how the (contiguous) USA is basically equal to just West Africa. The "true size" website is really helpful for visualizing it.
@@akselamundsen2193 Advanced? No. Saintly and minding their own business? Now that's more like what I've heard people say. And they get all clammy when I bring up the prexisting slave trades.
And they never wanted to let it go until the revolution war happend in 1954 which resulted to 1.5 million Algerians getting killed by the French between 1954 and 1962 " the independence"
@@sadeksama5057 That's called war. Welcome to the world my boy. And th FLN used to do terrorist attack on the civilians, like the Islamic State or Al-Qaida are doing today. Not great guy neither on the algerian side.
@@mr_bridou6507 lol are you seriously defending the France side here ? Even the US was against the occupation after ww2 And if the FLN didn't fight for their freedom algeria won't be liberated Just like if the founding fathers didn't fought for america freedom America would be apart of the Britain
I might add something about Angola and Mozambique in this timeline, and the fact that without a scramble for Africa and a British ultimatum, Portugal would have probably expanded itself to make railroad connecting Maputo to Luanda and the mines. Also no British ultimatum would probably mean the Portuguese empire would probably still exist as a kleptocratic constitutional monarchy
I doubt the Portuguese would have any economic or political reason to expand their colonies until they would connect. It would make no sense to do so in a world that wasn't scrambling for Africa. The railroad would have no practical reason to exist as the goods that came from the Indian Ocean would just be shipped via the sea furthermore, and as he points out in the video, the center of Africa is a cesspool of diseases, further deterring the expansionistic endeavor. And as for the connectivity between colonies, neither was important enough that railroad connection was of necessity, and trade between them could easily be done via the ocean. But yeah, the kleptocracy, some things never change.
@@martim6828 Angola and Mozambique have natural resources vthat must be transported and naturally a rail road will be built to take those resources and in time east and west coast of Africa would have been united
I doubt it, yes the Portuguese empire could still exist as a monarchy, but it would end nearly exactly how it did in our timeline, war, independence of the colonies, Portuguese empire's death
In that timeline slavery wouldn't be 'the white man's guilt' and would still exist in Africa, as it still does today with more or less 10 millions estimated enslaved in our Africa, but would probably be twice to tenfold in that world.
@@penzorphallos3199 I mean, if you are going by UN definitions of Slavery, alot of that is still Western Run companies like Nestle that are running them.
@@ikengaspirit3063 even without considering corporate slaves, Africa is n'1. There's more house slaves in Africa right now, then there were slaves caught and shipped off to the Americas during the triangular slave trade in total.
@@gennericrapperalt2120 Because it dont agree with their opinion. They didnt even notice that alt history is literally fiction and tries to shit on the video on being "fantasy writing". Cpt. Obvious strikes again!
Idk about the "no major resistence on the Europeans part" I could think of 4 instances of the top of my head which the europeans where incredibly brutal
Well single atrocity´s are not what this is about but more the sending of serious troops to suppress the unrest. Algeria i would think comes to mind as an exception but in general it seems we just simply packed and left after ww 2 whiteout a serious fight. Don´t really know what you mean, sure European nations at first obviously tried to prevent it but there where not many interventions and such to acutely keep power and it was more let happen. Also i would think this just means things after ww 2 in the new US world order where western society reformed.
@@kingoliever1 sure just ignore that most of western subseherean africa is still subservient economically and militarily to france. That the British waged a decades long war across eastern africa and other such actions. There was heavy resistance and this is why the French, Dutch and other such european powers still have holding accros the world. If the USSR and the USA weren't forcing them too give up there colonies they just weren't going too do it.
@@AnotherConscript What decade long battle the British had in Africa? While French influence in Africa today is just something totally different and sure not based on them whit there military occupying foreign lands. This rather has to do whit economics as African countries are generally poor and probably have some huge advantages when they also get help and a bit integrated into European systems. For example Africa gets basically a huge tariff deal gifted by the EU which allows them to tariff anything from Europe they want while also getting themselves to import whiteout tariffs in the EU. I really never seen anything where this claim that Europe exploits Africa is somehow is acutely true, like that we somehow steal there raw resources when buying them as the trade whit Africa is simply just a rather small part of our economy think just 10% of imports from outside the EU come from there which is simply not much whit 5 of our BIP % while they also get 10% of this money back as development aid. While this modern holdings simply have the right to vote for independence, there was recently some referendum where some French oversea territory decided to stay and there is a whole list on wiki whit them. I am also not really trying to deny European atrocities but from what i know this was just mostly before ww 2 and the only thing i really would know about is France in Algeria. What seems more to be the case that then as many nations where build on the idea of divided and conquer where going into chaos while we in many cases somehow where still involved but in the time after the second world war which i just referring to this where simply not the colonial conflicts from before about them keeping control but rather preventing civil wars. For example Israel would be the example i mean whit this where the Brits wanted to go rather sooner then later but had to deal whit being in the middle between fighting Jews and Arabs which both hated them. Or the South African bush war would be another example which sure was caused by the colonial legacy but the war reason was not colonialism.
So trade wouldn't exist in this timeline? The outside world wouldn't want African resources & goods? I find it highly unlikely that railroads,etc. Won't make it to Africa.
Railroads were only created in Africa, because they were an interest to Europeans. All trade between Europe and Africa was practically only slavery up until colonisation. And Europe never bothered to push inwards, only maintaining costal trade hubs. Trade might exist, but it would be very slow and very gradual to have any actual impact on Africa. Colonialism forced administration and unification between tribes. Without it, Africa would be far more divided and far less developed. In fact conflict might have gotten more brutal, since guns would be imported from Europeans and the power gap between Natives with guns and Natives without guns would be extreme. Also, most of African resources couldn't be extracted by Africans, because they hadn't the technology to do so.
@@learningagain4094 not entirely true. Countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco and mali have existed for thousands of years. Egypt is extremely close to Europe and already had modern technology such as guns, the printing press and factories etc, while Ethiopia closely connected to Egypt and the oman sultanate could get technology by trading with them. It wouldn't take long until countries like Congo and Ghana pop up, the rest of Africa will still stay mostly tribalised until the 20th century. However the poverty and separate would be alot less due to less ethnic and tribal conflict due to messy borders created specifically by the French, British, Portuguese and Spanish.
The main thing that determines the success of nations are their economic policies. For a variety of reasons, most of Africa would be better of in this timeline then our own, albeit with some parts in the interior staying underdeveloped. African states were mostly decentralised empires and city states, which means that it is difficult to form hyper tyrannical governments like in much of the rest of the world. Without colonisation, the African states wouldn’t have nonsensical borders and would thus have less internal conflicts and civil wars, making business and the society stable. The hybridisation of Abrahamic Religions with native polytheistic religions means that strict religious fundamentalism is less likely in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahel has a long history of being united and will most likely reunite later on. Coastal West Africa was already quite advanced and had stable governments. The Ashanti Empire (which started as a federation of city states) for example reformed in the 1700s to have a meritocratic parliamentary system where the Kotoko Council would regulate the king’s decisions. The Igbo also had a semi-democratic government that guaranteed equal rights for citizens. Ethiopia was already a robust state and was more powerful than its neighbours. Without European colonies on its border, it would be able to expand. The states of the Swahili Coast were wealthy city states, which have a good track record in the industrialised world. Buganda and the African Great Lakes nations were states that also looked promising from East Africa. Central and parts of Southern Africa had many states like the Luba and the Rozvi Empire at were quite powerful and had trade connections with Portugal. The main problems that Africa faced were diseases, difficulty of transportation and slavery. The first two wouldn’t be a problem with medical technology and later roadways connecting the developed parts of the continent. Slavery would be a bigger issue but as technology diffuses into the continent, the economic problems of slavery would slowly make the practice go away. When the Atlantic Slave Trade ended, it hurt the economies of many coastal African nations, however, in the long run this would have decreased the amount of wars for slaves, kept the population growing and lead to more diverse economies later on. Africa in this timeline would probably be more like Southeast Asia, with a lot of both developed and undeveloped parts, but broadly be growing rapidly.
@@christiandauz3742 If they had that technology and governments didn’t ban it, then they could genuinely conquer the world, especially with the lower world population at the time. Over time, the technology would probably diffuse into the rest of the world and lead to everyone gaining independence, since you can’t effectively control the whole planet.
@@myagrimm4719 There’s a RU-vidr called From Nothing who makes good videos about African history without being overly afro-nationalist. He focuses more on pre-European African history and less on stuff like slavery.
@@Antonio-xq2hg im not arguing, you dont show anybody how to build a railroad is my point. People take years to learn construction right? WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN THE COMMENTS HAVE TO BE AN ARGUMENT TO YOU
Everything is Free. I mean if you can overcome the forces putting a price on something, that means your force can put the price to zero. In a lot of grocery stores, the only force preventing theft is personal shame. If you dont care about that, you can set the price to zero. No one will stop you from taking that shit. Likewise they equally dont give a rats ass if you pitch a tent an live in their parking lot. Just ready to leave once the force escalates to the police. Then you can promptly return. I mean, you take the whole grocery store if you can kill every cop and serviceman.
This is very nice indeed. As a Sudanese person I will say the greatest benfit of colonial rule was creating a sense of solidarity that didn't really exist before helping form our contemporary nation states. Hell my country has a personal history with that (the brutal Mahdist uprising which united the nation against Turk-European rulers). One correction I would make there was even more profitable colonies in Africa but all of them were almost entirely British. Another would be I can't really understand the economic downturn you showed after the end of colonialism. Also lmao we did build many rail roads, bridges, roads since the British left I don't know where you got that part from. From what I know at least in my own country we we had vast economic growth unprecedented under British rule until the Socialists got in power. . I don't know where you got the railways part, my country has been expanding railroads since the 1960s, Hell we built a ton of high way roads thanks to American aid in the 70s. . It must also be said that colonial nations did in fact oppose letting go of their colonies but their hands were forced by being both physically destroyed by ww2 and the Global powers in the form of USA and USSR.
@@JcLazy1 our existence was a civil war lmao, still matter is hilariously irrevlant in contemporary Sudanese society. The civil war is treated as 'Security Hazzard' not a war with actual loses as much country side banditry and counter banditry. The exception to that is south sudan during the 90s, that one was our Vietnam. It got much better however with 2005 peace deal, and unfortunately separation it was. We still have many southerners in my city, lovely people!
@@lif3andthings763 nah nah bro, it's just misunderstandings that's all. Using a language of superiority when trying to make someone else understand is not good. If you want to make someone understand you try to explain to them. If they refuse to understand well truth doesn't care for my opinion nor anyone else's
@@lif3andthings763 it wouldn't. Africa was huge dude with a lot of labour. Europeans could invest into those machines or else they could just throw enough men at it to make it work but then black death happened which was exactly why had no other choice then do expensive 'gambling' into machines. This is the reason why, not just africa...india and china couldn't industrialise. All three were just huge.
Didn't the belgians literally invent the saying "Crimes against humanity". The british seemed to be the only European nation in history that treated African colonies in any decent way towards the end of it, perhaps this is why so many weller off Africans live in UK? Also it's crazy that polygamy & exploitation of natural African resources is still happening to this very day just in different ways than colonialism, it seems to be one of most abundant places of resources on the planet.
Britain treated their African colonies fairly well compared to countries like France, Spain and Portugal. A lot of African countries who were colonized by Britain aren’t as resentful as countries like Angola and the Congo
As a South African I am always happy to see it when we get featured, especially in this detail. Just a note on the pronunciations. Natal is pronounced Nah-tal, not Nay-tal. Keep it up. I love your videos!
Dankie Stefan. Ek het ook in detail na hom geluister. Die man (Jay Girgis?) het beslis talent, maar sy vertolking van Geskiedenis is aweregs. Sy interpretasie is sy voorreg, en nie noodwendig die waarheid nie. Byvoorbeeld:"The Dutch/ Afrikaners is responsible for Apartheid"' Joe Slovo vd ANC en Europese Kommunis het ook uitgewys. Die Engels kielhaal die Afrikaners oor Rasseskeiding, terwyl die Engelse dit begin het...
The Ottomans, essentially. Albanians had immigrated, through the Ottoman Empire, to Egypt. Over centuries, a sizeable and powerful minority of Albanian governors, generals, mercenaries, etc, coalesced into their own dynasty. After kicking Napoleon out of Egypt, the Albanian soldiers forced the (dying) Ottoman Empire into accepting their rule over the territory. Eventually Western powers stepped in and checked the Khedivate dynasty in Egypt from truly taking off. Then a revolution in the 50's kicked out the last Albanian king, Farouk, and the rest of the Albanians largely fled back to Europe. The Ottomans had a habit of using slave soldiers from far flung corners of the Empire, but then freeing them and giving them political power after good service. Which is how the Albanian's originally got settled into Egypt.
I love to see how the quality of videos is constantly raising as time goes by. Maybe some parts of Africa that are more stable could slowly industrialise, selling goods for European merchants, buying weapons to defend their lands, been open for foreign investment as fertilizers became cheaper and more available, etc.. One good point is that borders would make more sence and be mostly divided by culture.
well to industrialise/ have a reason to produce so much stuff they kind of need access to the ocean, so maybe the coastal people groups who arrange by culture and industrialise. those kingdoms may go on to colonise the interior.
it's been almost a year since this video. I hope you make more What If? scenarios in the future. I love the socio-political analysis videos, but I miss the what ifs
Not that I don’t love the alternative history, but I would love to have a series. Break down the history of human interaction by region, illustrate it via map etc., and then describe macro level interactions now.
Your wrong about the reason Europeans colonized Africa, Europeans did colonize Africa in part for glory and strategic importance, but the truth is that most of their colonies provided invaluable raw materials, like gold, rubber and resource intensive crops, that their economies slowly became dependent upon, in fact the only reason they decolonized so willingly is that they found a cheaper way through multinational companies.
@@lif3andthings763 Yep, same thing happens today with the US in our middle eastern efforts. The country loses big amounts of capital but a lot of companies make solid profits.
@@johnl.7754 that’s true. Or maybe we could have a weird reverse scenario were once Europeans started to enter sub Saharan Africa the Africans start dying from diseases like the native Americans did. A pretty odd alternate history though.
Africa was much more populated than native America and had already had contact with diseases European had through contact with Arab traders. Europe entering Africa much earlier would be very interesting. Conquest would be MUCH harder without the maxim gun and repeating rifles and the like. That’s a very interesting scenario indeed.
Having played conflict of nations, I can say for certain that it is crap compared to the other game by bytro (the devs of CoN and CoW) call of war, to me it always seems to be more polished
I made a pretty similar but much more optimistic timeline about Africa you should like even more (although my mic and editing weren't as good back then) Don't let the title fool you THIS ISN'T A TROLL I SWEAR! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Pt5Xu8Ebbw.html
The scramble for Africa is happening again but most people don’t realise that.China has already given 300 billion dollars of loans to poor African nations and is establishing military bases in Djibouti and India is countering China by providing loans to other African nations and is establishing military bases in Mauritius. Japan is also doing the same. I guess history is repeating itself
@@KalixtoKahlo Well, I am fine with the word I used, after all it was de jure Portuguese land, or does brutally colonizing something not make it yours?
@@martim6828 what! how in the world Portugal had right to own an African territory? Last time i checked the map Guiena-Bisau is located west of central Africa 11.8037° N, 15.1804° W
@@KalixtoKahlo So under that logic, countries can't have exclaves, for example, all the French islands scattered around the globe and French Guiana aren't rightfully French, or the Azores aren't rightfully Portuguese? Regardless, that is besides de point. What I am saying is that, just because a territory is far away, doesn't mean it can't belong to a faraway nation. The coastal parts of Guinea-Bissau had been under Portuguese rule since around the 1500s, the rest was later explored and settled over the 1800s; The Portuguese had, in guinea-Bissau, a permanent PORTUGUESE population inhabiting the region under Portuguese law, using Portuguese money and in a region in which (granted not everyone did) speak Portuguese. So what your telling me is that owning something for around 350 years (to be in line with the Berlin conference), whilst having a permanent population from the mainland living there not give you the right to say it is, rightfully, yours?
"Africa wasn't claimed for economic reasons--well actually, it was, but the colonies lost money so it doesn't count." Yeah, sorry, that is pretty incoherent. It was claimed in competition with other European powers for the future prospect of wealth. Also, it probably isn't too wise to say that America was "anti-colonial". It's hard to get more colonial than 19th and early 20th century America. We just were colonial on our own continent, adjacent to established territories. We also practiced economic colonialism and military interventionism in Latin America and also East Asia. What, for example, is Commodore Perry's "Opening of Japan?" Or US Marines fighting against the Boxer Rebellion? Sure, we did oppose European-style political colonialism in our sphere of influence (the Monroe doctrine).
This gets into how you define colonialism versus straight up conquest. And neither of these are particularly moral, so don't take this as me saying "America did nothing wrong!" But the westward expansion generally isn't considered colonialism. Colony implies that an outside power takes over a region and harnesses their work force and economy to serve the colonial power. America didn't want the natives as a work force, they just wanted them gone so American citizens could have the land to work for themselves. So it's much more a case of conquest. A "colonial America" would have had plantations and ranches across the midwest where the only white people would have been the land owners and administrators, but all the workforce would have been native.
@@ressljs That’s a good point, wouldn’t that be considered settler colonialism, where the goal is to replace the original population with a new one of settlers?
@@jessetaran7116 There seems to be an impulse to use "colonialism" in the context of the Americas where it wouldn't be used elsewhere. Let's look at similar cases in history. The Saxons invaded Roman Britain and pushed out the Celts from what we now call England. The Arabs spread out over the middle east and now the lands they ruled are populated by Arabs rather than the people there before 600 AD (probably due more to assimilation rather than expelling the previous population). I've never heard those described as colonialism, just conquest. I can't help but think "settler colonialism" is just rebranding "invasion" or "conquest" because colonialism is a hot buzzword. And before anyone forgets my original argument and thinks this is an excuse for everything America did, invading and expelling natives is hardly a moral act. It's just not the same thing as colonialism and I think doing a switcheroo on the terminology just makes history harder to talk about and understand.
@@ressljs I think colonialism and conquest aren’t super rigid or distinct categories. The borders are fuzzy and sometimes they cross into each other. I’ve heard the Anglo-Saxon conquest and Arabization be referred to as colonialism (although you’re right that Arabization is mostly due to assimilation over the centuries, but could even that be considered colonialism?) I think conquest works for all the examples we talked about, but I wouldn’t rule out colonialism being a part of it as well. And I also agree that it can be a buzzword nowadays, and buzzwords can be irritating as hell sometimes. Idk when the term “settler colonialism” originated, but I’m almost certain it was in the 20th century. I’ll have to look into it
Couple disagreements - The primary purpose was for economic reasons to maintain access and extraction to raw materials in their colonial areas - The decolonization process was brutal especially when it came to covert coups to prop up dictators and Portugal's wars against its former colonies and France/Algeria. There's couple more but those are the main disagreements
Hmm French colonization of Africa was very much Jules Ferry’s attempt to redirect the populace’s energy away from Alsace-Lorraine and avoid a war with Germany that France would definitely not win. I wonder if a general European war might have broken out earlier if the scramble had not happened
The French colonisation of Africa was a direct result of the suppression of the Barbary pirate kingdoms. It could have just as easily been Britain or the United States (as both were getting tired of repeatedly suppressing them).
Also the argument that "the colonies mostly didn't turn a profit so profit wasn't their motive" is extremely bad thinking. You can go look up the charters of all of these companies, and listen to them laugh at you, if you like. They were all there to turn a profit. Or "facilitate trade" as the rhetoric of the day was. First: All of these colonies were intended to be long-term investments. This is, I understand, a very alien concept in modern capitalism. It used to be that people would sink a lot of money into something now, and expect to gain profit years, even decades later through accrual. No German alive in 1884 dreamed that establishing a colonial company over Tanganyika would see a single pfenning profit for anyone in 1885... and so no one was surprised when it didn't. In every case, no matter the chartering government, it was held that a big investment up front for subdual of the native peoples, construction of infrastructure, and creation of "civIlIzAtIoN" would turn a profit EVENTUALLY. Second, remember that most nations at the time still ordered their economies on mercantilist thought. strict objective monetary profit was rarely the point of trade. For an example, the Barbary Company, strictly speaking, lost money hand over fist. It traded high-quality British cloth in Morocco, mostly in exchange for Moroccan sugar. it short-sold the cloth and was charged exorbitant rates for the sugar, but since England had a surplus of cloth and absolutely no capability of producing sugar at home, it was still seen as a good deal. Third, I think you underestimate profitability. Consider France in west Africa. Here's a fun fact about France; it has absolutely no domestic gold production, yet it has the largest gold reserve in Europe. France also controlled Africa's largest gold-producing region for almost a century, and still maintains an economic stranglehold on its former colonial states - none of which have any governmental gold reserves. Why is that do you think? Correlation is not causation, I know, but I think a very strong inferral can be made that Malian and Mauritanian gold is going into French treasuries, and has been for over a century. This goes straight into state coffers instead of the general economy, so might not track as "profit."
Suggestions: -What if Ukraine became anarchist under Nestor Makhno? -What if the Pernambucan Revolution suceeded and established the 3rd republic in modern history?
@@marrymekatsuya he could if he became a strongman and abandoned almost everything that anarchism represented or if he aligned himself with the USSR(considering in this timeline someone who isn't as centralist as Stalin becomes leader,like Bhukarin) or other eastern european countries
This video and subject were really well done, thank you. However, I was wondering if you could start linking at the bottom or at the end of the video putting some of the books you used to research? Some of these subjects are really interesting and I want to know more than (no offense) a cursory glance. You’ve done similarly for your historical misconceptions videos and I think it would be really neat to do here too! Cheers
You think this guy is actually researching shit? This is literally just some guy making up things that fit his world view. None of this is based on critical analysis.
@@lilemont9302 I'm not saying it's all bad, but there are some glaring problems. There were multiple brutal wars and military campaigns to supress African independence by France, Portugal and Britain. France still maintains economic hegemony over most of West Africa. He says that none of the colonies were profitable except the Congo. Zimbabwe was, as was Mali, Djibouti and the Swahili coast, to name a few.
The cost of conquering land is generally greater than the cost of resource extraction. It is not as though mineral wealth is just laying around on the ground. Rather, there is the cost of mining, the cost of building infrastructure, the cost of governance, and the cost of conquest. The colonial powers are not more wealthy than the corresponding non-colonial powers. In fact, the two poorest and most backward nations in Western Europe: Spain and Portugal, had the oldest colonial empires.
@@neinno8172 Well we have had pointless wars and rebellions in recent years as it is; No, I mean men need to have more balls in the Western world right now, then things will fix themselves.
@@kingarthur1217 No it was absolutely worse back them and going back to that times means you have a higher chance of dying in a war or war induced famine.
@@kingarthur1217 Not on that scale, no. What you're asking for, with the weaponry we find ourselves armed with in the modern world, entails catastrophe. Worth mentioning it was due to the amount of young men, not the quality.
@@neinno8172 No one wants a nuclear war. I hope to God every day for no nuclear war. I do mean that today’s men need to be better, not that we need more young males. The men we already have should get their act together (as well as women) and know THE TRUTH so that societal stability, prosperity and success is ensured.
So glad you've done this topic, I did the same topic a few months ago and as you're a massive inspiration for my channel I'd love to get some feedback, and maybe one day to do a collaboration! Keep up the great work and stay blessed!
I will say there are a lot of historical inaccuracies in this video. Doesn’t mention the frequent battles off the Mozambican coast with the Portuguese or the prior more devastating Arab slave trade that stole faaaaar more Africans. Also you don’t mention Ethiopia which remained free and was never colonized. Or great Zimbabwe that not only fought back canon fire but actually repelled invaders before surrendering. I could literally go on talking about how it was not as easy as you think. Just that all of Africa is classified under Africa while Europe both changed history and had deaths spread out across Spain, Britain, Germany, etc… There is sooooo much more I’m leaving out but please redo this video cause it is so factually inaccurate. I’m African so I know this. Please do better research. I love your videos 💙
I agree that the video doesn’t involve most intricacies, and mostly just generalizes sub-Saharan Africa to the rest of the continent. One thing you said piqued my interest though. I can’t seem to find anything regarding Great Zimababwe and the way they fought back, most of what I found said they were crushed. Could you point me in the right direction or at least provide some keywords so I can find the battles you’re talking about?
7:18 Congo Crisis Mau Mau Uprising (Borderline Genocide) Malagasy Uprising (50,000 people killed just for protests) Algerian War Cameroon Conflict Portuguese Colonial War Spanish Moroccoan War Egyptian Revolution etc.
Good video, but one caveat. The Bantu people are not native to most of South Africa - they were pushed there by the British because they didn't want the Nederlanders, later Afrikaners, to have a majority presence in certain regions. But we, and the San people, were there before the blacks and the English. That's our land and if anyone wants it they'll have to pry it from our cold, dead hands.
the bantu we already going there long before britain was a thing they had left their homeland in 2000bc and were moving all across africa to reach south africa and even kenya.
The argument that colonial Africa was not profitable is to me much the same as the modern anti foreign aid arguments. All of the raw materials are taken through terrible deals or just force and then we act like that does not play into their economic viability. It’s not like the free oil Britain took from their colonies in Africa during the colonial period helped them no? Your views are inescapably myopic.
What "free oil?" Mining minerals requires mines, wells, railroads, pipelines, and so on. Plus there is the cost of governing the area, education of the native population, and so on. Also, those minerals were there without the input or even knowledge of the native population. The resource argument only makes sense if you look at from the perspective of failed African states. They see most of their income being generated from resource extraction, because they have little industry. Therefore, they assume that is how the rest of the world works, and that all industry and manufacturing just sort of happens.
@@blkgardner so an economy being run largely off of the back of raw materials from its colonies and the subsequent markets and opportunities they generate is not benefiting from the colonial relationship?? I suppose the tobacco farms of Malawi are to this day a benefit to their population and not to British American Tobacco (established 1902 btw) and those like us more easily enjoying the capitalist benefits associated with higher rank in the current world system. It’s not like whole industries were/are entirely reliant on extracting raw materials from developing countries. The only reason they were willing to leave the colonies behind is because they realised they could more easily engage in the same actions through corporate activity. Yes there was investment made into the infrastructure of the colonies but it was mainly to the benefit of the ones exercising their rule. Western Chauvinists tend not to understand that everything comes from somewhere. From chocolate to tobacco to the fruit you get to enjoy, everything is coming from somewhere and if you don’t think those markets were and are still set up to the requirements of the colonists then you are truly blind.
@@blkgardner you also I fear failed to understand my point. I was not talking about whether the colonies were using the resources or whether they were stolen; I was stating the simple fact that these resources and most of the labour behind them were definitely producing positive effects in the west regardless of their effects on the colonies.
@@juliomontoya8214 That is basically "I pushed the button, now I rightfully own the factory" logic. Many of those natural resources only have value because the rest of the world is developed. Additionally, all commerce that is not coerced is mutually beneficial to both parties. For example, running oil well only makes money if you sell the oil. (Or move to your downstream refineries. But even then, you need to sell the product at some point.) Likewise, nobody will buy your product unless it is mutually beneficial, or you force someone to buy to your product. So basically, any production for sale, by definition, is for the benefit of someone else. The "exploitation argument" basically assumes that resources create "wealth" out of thin air, and that commerce, manufacturing, education, and technology just sort of happen. In nations which are impoverished by civil wars and bad economic policies, industry and commerce collapse, leaving only mineral extraction, since that can not be relocated.
I'm now thinking there needs to be a list of how many scenarios ends up creating a Central Powers victory in WWI outcome. WWI Seems to be the biggest butterfly effect target
Anything that keeps Britain out of the war. Weaken Russia enough to either keep them out of WW1 or collapse relatively early on. Anything that weakens France enough. Strengthening the pan-German ties from the HRE while forming the German Empire. Strengthening Arab loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. Italy not allying itself with France. Italy's army not being so bad. Austria-Hungary's army not being so bad. Germany not pushing to become a naval power. Plenty of options to choose from.
Really wished you touched on what the outcomes would of the African empires and kingdoms How would Ethiopia turn out? How does Benin (Edo) fair on without British incursion? Do the Hausa extend into central Africa? Would the Ashanti try and push the British off the coast?
He should know better than to leave out the impact of their kingdoms and empires naturally rising and falling and how that would impact the people, economy, cultures, religion and the relationships they would eventually have with the rest of the world. It's fucked how he basically said that the entire continent would be stuck as hunter gatherers If Europeans didn't violate.
@@Cynoteeria yeah I doubt that very much 😭 hunter gatherer thing because when you crunch the numbers when colonial governments took population census most Africans would’ve been living under some sort city state governing entity. The fact is people don’t understand that to this day LARGE parts of the continent are uninhabitable for non nomadic settler development even with all those odds without connections from the outside world independent African communities did fairly well.
@@Fu3g0.100 yea ikr it's pretty awesome. I like African cultures and civilizations and it's awesome to see them discussed with a historical lens rather than hoteps and racists screaming in tangents
@@quadeevans6484 This guy literally said the Europeans introduced cities and that the Egyptians conquered the Congo. Some of these comments show pretty clear bias.
@@quadeevans6484 I think it has to do with the apparent positive praise than the lack of toxicity. More or less would be the same, especially on a topic about Africa.
I can't really see a world where this didn't happen given that the Americas had already been colonized years prior and Europe was still in the colonial mindset to get more power/prestige and resources to one up each other. For this to have happen, Europe would have never colonized at all to begin with.
However, you have to consider the people of the Americas’ were almost completely wiped out by Eurasian diseases that left only a few scattered tribes and multi-racial groups. When comparing Europe to Africa, it was the reverse because the Africans had developed relative tolerance to the same diseases Europeans experienced. Still, they also had developed tolerance to diseases that Europeans were unfamiliar with; thus, Europeans who had no level of tolerance or immunity to those diseases usually on mass when colonizing the interior of the African continent. That's why Europeans could only colonize the coasts, North-Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa because everywhere else was filled to the brim with extremely lethal diseases to Europeans that the tonic water made manageable. That's why the conditions in the Americas don’t apply to Africa by any measure. This is because foreign diseases would not wipe the Native African populations. That depopulation was the number one reason for quick and relatively easy European conquests of the Americas. For Africa, it would be the reverse and was for most of History Europeans died in mass from native African diseases. At the same time, the Native Africans would not lose the massive proportions of the native populations that native Americans lost from foreign diseases. Those deadly diseases made the conquest of Africa by Europeans significantly more difficult, if not impossible, in most areas for most of history, except in the regions of Africa I mentioned previously.
@@InquisitorXarius Open a damned book ffs. Most aboriginal population did not die. Most intermarried with european migrants, forming the vast mestizo population that forms a big % of the americas population now.
You're spoiling us, our little hearts can't take it. How well do you speak french? Can you read it fluently? If yes I would love for you to check out the Jour J series, it's from France and I don't know if it was ever translated.
Everyone: go back to the thumbnail and hover over it. "What if the Scramble for Africa Never Happened?" 1. 13,000 Gold reward 2. Switzerland gets bombed 3. World War III
6:28 The Germans colonized Togo, not Benin. EDIT: Also, Cameroon extended into modern-day Nigeria at one point. Just in the Northeastern part of Nigeria, though.
This video is based on European accounts of history, that's why there is no mention of thriving Africa states before the europeans arrived. Based on accounts of africans of africa before the europeans arrived, i believe africa would have been more stable and peaceful if the europeans never came here. (my informed opinion )
Maybe so, but those who could trade to acquire modern weaponry would have a massive amount of power compared to those that couldn't - the whole MGs vs spears/muskets would've still happened in any wars between exterior and interior regions. Maybe on the whole African nations would've all lived in peace and harmony being paragons of virtue compared to the rest of the world, but it would only have taken one Shaka Zulu type to come into power in an industrialising nation for a bigass empire to be formed via conquest and slaughter. Meanwhile, without the scramble for Africa, the rest of the world would have no real interest in Africa and therefore no reason to step in should any bad shit happen like the Rwandan genocide or worse (not that outside powers did jack shit during the Rwandan Genocide, but still).
I think you'd like this similar and more optimistic timeline. It's even more informative Don't let the title fool you THIS ISN'T A TROLL I SWEAR! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1Pt5Xu8Ebbw.html
00:24 Wrong, King Leopold II of Belgium colonised it, not Belgium, Belgium was forced to take it by the international community after King Leopold II's atrocities came to light.
I know a handful of Americans - particularly African-Americans - like to push the "Wakanda Theory", wherein they argue that Africa would've been highly advanced if it weren't for European "exploitation". This is nonsense... although that's not to insult Africans themselves. It's just that, in terms of geography, most of Africa is the "hard mode" of civilisation building. It doesn't lend itself well to agriculture, much less industrialisation.
Two states at least would have industrialized in that time line by the mid 20th century in this scenario in my opinion. My main picks are the Ashanti and the Ethiopians. Most Africans were indeed farmers, some pastoralists and the very few hunter gatherers. Out of Asia only Japan was able to industrialize. Oh yeah and Africa would be much better off today.
i always learned that europe started colonizing africa because germany unified then france went to war with germany to show that it was still the dominant force, lost, and to regain pride started colonizing africa and the other nations followed because france would have too much
@@zombieat lol he never conquered Congo though… one trade post doesn’t mean “Congo captured” that’s like me taking over Plymouth and saying “Britain is part of my empire”
@@makeytgreatagain6256 i clearly said reached congo not conquered it. congo is almost as large as egypt and sudan combined. he simply did not have the manpower to take it over.
I don’t think the scramble for Africa couldn’t have happened. It’s the worlds largest power vacuum that also happens to be full of diamonds, gold, and precious gems.
@@Hispanocel either way it was still a vacuum relative to Europe. And why would you industrialize Africa when adequate industry exists at home? Export raw material from Africa at a ridiculous bargain because you can and process it to create products with 100x the value of the raw material for sale domestically. That’s why trade with Africa was always such a small percentage of total trade in Europe. Africa is cheap.
@@pat7785 actually taking ressources from Africa could have been done without colonisation as it was before. Colonisation appeared because of nationalism it had no financial interest
