Chinese firms are, incidentally, beginning to move into Africa. I’ve not looked into why but perhaps they’re more able to secure their investments there?
That is quite interesting. Perhaps the Chinese are silently negotiating some Hong-Kong style free zone under Chinese/English law with some African country ( comes to mind). Or perhaps the word is spreading that the Chinese plan to declare some sort of “Monroe Doctrine” on . Otherwise I find it difficult to see why Chinese firms would throw themselves at the hand of the unbelievably corrupt local governments and gangs. Any possible gain in lower labor costs (vis-à-vis Chinese wages) would appear to be largely offset by bribes and risk.
I’m trying to go around the circularity of the answer, as I understand it so far:
The reason that Africa is poor is that it lacks capital (i.e. “It’s poor”) and its uneducated population (because it’s poor) keeps allowing corrupt governments to stop capital from coming in while sustaining themselves on foreign aid. Sort of a “circular symbiosis of misery” converging to: It’s poor because it’s poor.
How does one break a circle like this? Is it as simple as stopping foreign aid?
Then lack of a concept for property and property rights was proposed. How natural are natural rights, then?
No agenda here. Just some thoughts on a very interesting thread.
Z.
I think that’s a good question, and we can look at how Europe developed its own culture of respect for property rights, freedom from the state, and enforcement of contracts: by centuries of radical de-centralized political entities (think of the 300+ independent german states, for example, the italian city states, etc…).
So I think what the solution is, is 1) for Western government to stop exporting to them our corrupt system of government (welfare democratic demagoguery), stop supporting their corrupt government, intervening in their affairs, and let African organize themselves the way they see appropriate.
Any solution imposed on them is doomed to failed. Especially when those solutions are cooked up by socialists experts, such as LSE graduates.
Im not sure it is circular, if the problem were circular then no society could have become weathly. Every continient and group of people were in the exact same boat at one point or another. It seems to me its more like "Africa is poor because it lacks capital, it lacks capital because its people never saved, its people never saved because ???
Incidentally this problem is not unique to just Africans living in Africa, but to African populations living throughout the world.
Bingo, that’s the billion dollar question. Perhaps one could go one step further: Africans don’t save because they would not reap the benefit of their investment due to their predominantly communally owned land and/or banditry. But why is that Europeans developed a sense of property rights while African are not? This is, I’m afraid, as far as we’ve come until now. Let our imagination run free and push that a step further.
Isn’t “lacks capital” = “it’s poor” ? To me, “lack of capital” is more of a definition than a reason for “being poor”, hence the circularity.
Z.
Ok, “Africa is poor because its people never saved, its people never saved because ???” now are you saying they dont save becuase they are poor? Creating the circular dilemma.
Then question becomes why did poor Europeans and Asians save while poor Africans didnt? After all European and Asian populations lived in the save poverty at one time too.
Someone said it earlier in this thread that the rise of Africa should be easier than the rise of Europe simply because the ideas and technology that allows development dont have to be invented. If you look at east Asia (parts of China, Tiawan, Korea, Japan), thier develpment over the past 50 years has been at break neck speed. Why have these people embraced western ideas and technology?
Actually it is the other way around. African elites were schooled in colonial metropolas and were exposed to the West in a great way. China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan on the other hand had elites that were bred locally.
So I wouldn’t link success with “embracing western ideas”. Marxism is a western idea.
The question you should be asking is what is wrong with exploitation?
One thing helped Europeans become wealthy: conquest by more advanced powers forced them to change or die.
The threat of conquest is what forced Japan and China to modernize.
If your society is stuck in a circle of poverty, you have to import a new society,
But in order to modernize (aka accumulate capital) they had to divert some of their production away from consumption to investment. These were poor people yet they did so. The threat of conquest prompted Japan and China to adopt new technologies and ideas, while the threat to Africa lead to realatively unchanged societies and eventual conquest.
Even the native americans of North America adapted to the threat of European conquest. They adopted horses, firearms, and (in some cases) different political structures to resist. Ultimately they lost the battle of demographics but even they (who were further behind Africa technologicly) adapted and changed. Africa has been much slower to change than any other group.
Resistance to Europeans was more successful in Africa than in America by far.
Agreed tropical diseases made the colonization of Africa very difficult for europeans (the temperate regions in South Africa were colonized early on), while european diseases made it very difficult to stop colonization for native americans. Even after colonization in the 19th century european populations never grew very large in the tropical regions. But the point was not how successful resistance was, but that other populations adapted relatively quickly, while Africa was slower to do so.
Europeans were driven out not by tropical disease but by wars of decolonialization. The examples you used were horse and gunpowder but the horse is largely useless in Africa while rifles weren’t made their own by Indians until centuries after Cortez and Pizarro.
It would seem Africans were slower to adopt firearms than you would expect but this has to be weighted with the fact that de facto European control over Africa was to some extent always fictitious with only the coastal areas fully incorporated while the tribes inland had minimal contact with Europeans, and with colonial authorities.
I assumed when you talked about resistance to colonialism you meant the initial conquest of Africa and the Americas. The tropical diseases is what made it difficult to initially establish control over Africa and the Old world diseases is what made it particularly easy to establish control over the Amercias. As far as the end of colonialism in Africa (and the world for that matter), it had as much to do with the Europeans exhausting themselves fighting one another in two world wars than the native populations.
The horse and gunpowder were examples of things adopted by native americans to illistrate the point that other groups adapted much more quickly than Africa. Nothing more (maybe they were weak examples). This is a pattern still present today.
This was true of most of North America up untill the late 1700 to 1800s. The point remains Africa was much slower to adapt than the rest of the world (Politically, Economicly, Socially, ect.) Its hard to argue otherwise. Africa has been left behind.
Europeans suffered many setbacks in the process of conquest as well. But resistance yes I meant as a whole. It is important to take it as such because it makes it obvious that, unlike with the Americas, the resistance of Africans was actually successful in the end. So they either enhanced their methods of resistance just fine, or they did not have a great need to do so in the first place. You can’t argue with success.
Portugal did not fight in the two world wars jet it still lost its colonial empires. Also the Europeans of South Africa and Rhodesia were not really effected by it either.
Yes and do they really illustrate this. How quick really were the Indians to adopt gunpowder?
Politically, economically, socially does not really tell me anything. I don’t understand. What do you mean, precisely? What should they have adopted?
In that case every group except the aborigines of australia and native americans of North America were successfull in resisting colonialism? I think the late cololinization of Africa does not speak to the successful resistance to European expansion. More to the lack of interest in colonizing Africa with much easier and lucrative alternatives. Europeans did not turn their attention to Africa until it was the only corner of the globe left to claim.
Never the less the two world wars dramaticly shift the economic and political structure of the world. Free trade became the norm and the need for nations to secure resources through colonization was rendered pointless. In other words it was the end of mercantilism, which was the economic system which drove colonization. Its affect would also reach those who did not fight.
Late 1700’s or Early 1800’s? We have to remember early firearms were very limited. I would imagine adoption of the gun by native populations would be limited untill guns were refined to a point where they were superior to bows in every way.
I wish i could say what they should have done. All I can say is what they have done has been insufficient to keep up with the rest of the world.
Obviously not. They remain subjugated to this day.
One thing that is interesting about Africa is that while it is labelled “a continent of wars” since decolonialisation there have only ever been three conventional wars in sub-saharan Africa that I can think of.
The Ogaden War (1977-78)
South African Border War (1987-89 for the conventional phase)
Eritrean–Ethiopian War (1998-2000)
The South African Border War involved apartheid South Africa which was a colonialist state so we can not even talk fully about a war in decolonialised Africa plus the Angolans could only fight it because they were beefed up by Cuba and the Soviet Union. The other two on the other hand took place on the horn of Africa which is not characteristic of Africa at large since it is home to Ethiopia, a country traditionally possessing a strong native central government. Something of an African version of Prussia.
So only three conventional wars on a continent with countless antagonism between governments. But instead of duking it out using their armies these governments almost always fight their wars by proxy instead. Eg, Sudan funds the rebels in Chad and Chad funds the rebels in Sudan.
Why is this? I would speculate this has a lot to do with governments being rather powerless due to Africans chronically lacking reverence for the government and the state. Probably because their first loyalty is instead to their extended family, their tribe or their ethnic group.
Of course lack of such reverence would also have other consequences. It would mean the position of the government is much less secure and therefore their outlook much more short term. It would mean the people entering politics are even less likely to do so out of selfless, patriotic reasons and it would mean the populace is much less likely to expect them be patriots. All of this lends itself great to a corruptocracy. A relatively benign form of government in terms of GULAGs and the number of people murdered by the secret police for political reasons, but one very efficient at impoverishing the populace. Anecdotally this is exactly the type of government typical of Africa, tribes playing a game of musical chairs, overthrowing one another from the government to take turns at looting all the other tribes using for this the instrument of the state.