New NESes, ideas, development, etc

[TheLastOne36]

Actually i think that if the Europeans had drawn borders better, Africa in general would be a better place.

My map proves it when it comes to Nigeria, Nigeria is perhaps the best off sub-saharan nation besides south africa and the one most promising to improve, and if you take a look at the map, the borders align well with the real world. The Yoruba (the native people of Nigeria, and the nation on the map in Nigeria's place) fit the border well, and guess what? Most of modern day Nigerian problems are with the north, (and a few terrorist groups along the southern coast) The north isn't a part of the Yoruba nation on the map.

For Eritrea, yah i just didn't bother erasing it on paint since the border looked hard to draw and it seemed almost the same as in real life.

I hope to continue the project soon, now that i am settled in in Venezuela and have my new computer ready and everything. Perhaps next week i'll continue working on it after the update for my NES to keep me occupied.

 

[bombshoo]

Actually i think that if the Europeans had drawn borders better, Africa in general would be a better place.

My map proves it when it comes to Nigeria, Nigeria is perhaps the best off sub-saharan nation besides south africa and the one most promising to improve, and if you take a look at the map, the borders align well with the real world. The Yoruba (the native people of Nigeria, and the nation on the map in Nigeria's place) fit the border well, and guess what? Most of modern day Nigerian problems are with the north, (and a few terrorist groups along the southern coast) The north isn't a part of the Yoruba nation on the map.

For Eritrea, yah i just didn't bother erasing it on paint since the border looked hard to draw and it seemed almost the same as in real life.

I hope to continue the project soon, now that i am settled in in Venezuela and have my new computer ready and everything. Perhaps next week i'll continue working on it after the update for my NES to keep me occupied.

I actually did a major project on development and economy of African states compared to their democracy level and stability last quarter for one of my classes. Once you are all done it would be interesting to compile data and see what matches up.

 

[Thlayli]

I do not think that the Igbo would highly approve of your characterization of Nigeria as a Yoruba state.

Then again, they also tried to secede bloodily in the Biafran War, so I suppose that supports your point. The general African pattern seems to be ethnic stability = political stability. Virtually every intra-state African conflict (South African apartheid, recent Kenyan unrest, Zimbabwean economic troubles, the Congo wars, the Rwandan Genocide, the Darfur Genocide) has had ethnic motivations. The only real exceptions I can consider are the LRA rebellion in Uganda, and possibly the Liberian civil wars, and those might be ethnically motivated for all I know.

 

[TheLastOne36]

I decided that the Igbo and Yoruba wouldn't be fighting each other if it wasn't for tensions between them caused indirectly from British colonialism, and that in this altered timeline and through enforcement by this 'Yoruba' State, they wouldn't really know they are Igbo, but Yorubians of Igbo descent. They speak similar languages to from what wikipedia says.

It'd be sorta like how the Macedonians in Yugoslavia didn't really know they were Macedonians, but more Yugoslavian. But than again, look how Yugoslavia turned out!

 

[Thlayli]

Whaaaaaat.

The Igbo were DEFINITELY independent of the Yoruba before British colonialism. And this presumes that the Yoruba and Igbo weren't fractured all to hell pre-colonialism, which they were. There was no Asante-style unified kingdom, to my knowledge.

And yeah, French and Italians speak similar languages, but that's where the analogy breaks down.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Whaaaaaat.

The Igbo were DEFINITELY independent of the Yoruba before British colonialism. And this presumes that the Yoruba and Igbo weren't fractured all to hell pre-colonialism, which they were. There was no Asante-style unified kingdom, to my knowledge.

And yeah, French and Italians speak similar languages, but that's where the analogy breaks down.

I might have to rethink the Igbo thing, but so far the Nigerian guy who saw the map on the forums had no problem with it.

 

[bombshoo]

I might have to rethink the Igbo thing, but so far the Nigerian guy who saw the map on the forums had no problem with it.

Well is he Igbo or Yoruba?

 

[TheLastOne36]

Well is he Igbo or Yoruba?

No clue. >.<

 

[Masada]

Geographical determinism is the answer. Europe ultimately focused on machinery, which no other region in the world did to the same extent. From there came industry and power. It's not a matter of Africans not having a "strong" civilization, which in some terms they did, but of technical superiority of the Europeans and the ultimate reliance which the African kings and sultans ultimately placed upon European goods.

No, European mechanical superiority was largely a work of fiction. China was in raw terms superior to Europa in mechanical implementation up until the Industrial Revolution (and even beyond that, depending of course on where you place the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution). It was also at technologically parity as well. European advantages stemmed not from any real technological advantage but from better incentives the result of conquest, colonialism and settlement in India, the Americas and Southeast Asia. Without cotton Europe wouldn't have had a medium to industrialize around, without Caribbean sugar it wouldn't have had the requisite funds for the cotton, without slaves it wouldn't have had the workforce for the latter, and without silver from the New World it wouldn't have had the wherewithal to trade with Asia which was the major driver of demand for cotton. Those are just a few of the necessary preconditions for European industrialism. Go fish?

I'm also going to quote Adam Smith on this one:

According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign commerce. This order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any territory, it has always, I believe, been in some degree observed. Some of their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could be established, and some sort of coarse industry they could well think of employing themselves in foreign commerce.

But though this natural order of things must have taken place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe, been, in many respects, entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of some of their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together, have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order.

*

What surprises me more is the Swahili, they were already in small states competing with each other like the Maya and Ancient Greeks, plus they could've traded for technology with the Arabs long before Europeans came. Not to mention the effect religion(islam) had on the area.

It's been said in these forums a number of times that group A should have acquired the technology of group B simply because what benefited group B must surely benefit group A. I'll use a simple example to show how that is often fallacious. My favorite is the attempt by a certain someone to mounted arquebusters firing from horseback despite the massive plumes of black-powder, the noise, the length, the weight and a whole host of other problems. That's a simple rationale but it can be logically applied to most historical situations viz. technological proliferation.

I actually did a major project on development and economy of African states compared to their democracy level and stability last quarter for one of my classes. Once you are all done it would be interesting to compile data and see what matches up.

... hasn't that been done to death in about a thousand books in developmental disciplines. I can think of about a dozen goods one for the economics side alone.

 

[bombshoo]

... hasn't that been done to death in about a thousand books in developmental disciplines. I can think of about a dozen goods one for the economics side alone.

It was for a college project, I'm not trying to get a book published or anything. Regardless it was about the relationship between democracy, economy and stability in African states not just the individual topics of democracy, economy and stability. It also had a sort of side project to it which was sort seeing how those indexes which seem to measure immeasurable things such as the Democracy Index and Failed State Index supposedly do it.

 

[Disenfrancised]

What surprises me more is the Swahili, they were already in small states competing with each other like the Maya and Ancient Greeks, plus they could've traded for technology with the Arabs long before Europeans came. Not to mention the effect religion(islam) had on the area.

Yeah because you 'trade' for technology .

Ah that makes a lot of sense. My only guess for the Swahili is that it was almost treated as a colony by the Arab traders in a sense and they might have purposely kept it behind. I've never read anything in depth on how the Slave trade actually affected the area.

The Swahili problem was that disease and high mountains made exploiting the interior very difficult and they thus remained a thin strip of developed territory till very late. Coupled with that is the vulnerability to drought and raids (that neither the greeks nor the Mayas suffered to such an extent), and their trading lifeblood being dependent on the fickleness of Arab markets, made the ability for any one polity to accumulate physical and intellectual capital limited.

Thus with forging larger structured states in east africa requiring very expensive navies or magically disease immunity, they never really got of the ground. Thats not to say they weren't developed though, just small, Zanzibar by all accounts had pretty much the same quality of life as cities on the Arabian peninsula.

 

[Daftpanzer]

What if World War One went on too long, and spread too far?

What if the Spanish flu was even deadlier?

What if the Great Depression happened earlier, and was even more dramatic?

What if Socialist and Fascist revolutions were spectacular failures, doing nothing but spreading chaos around the world?

What if the world of 1930 was conveniently split into warring territories, suitable for a simple risk-style game using cheerful sprite graphics?

 

[Kraznaya]

I find it disgusting that you named China's heartland Guangdong, and named the Midwest Mississippi.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I'm the decider, and I decide what's best.

 

[Angst]

I like that Kraznaya didn't gripe about Polar Bear Fortress.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I like it Daft!

 

[Angst]

If anything, I'd claim the Polar Bears.

 

[carmen510]

I've withheld this idea for quite a while, but I've decided to put it out there:

What would happen if for some reason, the United States government collapsed and factions appeared all over the States? And what if all the factions were different ideologies, with many different beliefs, and they all had their own hidden agendas for the world, vying for power?

Would any of you be interested in this type of NES?

 

[Cynovolans]

I want the faction with the Carolinas.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I think that 'collapse' scenarios are a bit overdone, especially when they're not fully explained.