Why was Africa never colonized like the Americas/Australia?

[scy12]

Unlike what everyone here seems to think, it had nothing to do with geography, and had everything to do with the fact that Native American women were hotter than African women.

And they are hotter due to geography(environment) ...

 

[innonimatu]

Because it was colonized during a different period. New Imperialism wasn't as concerned with settlement and colonization as Old Imperialism.

No, what happened was that there were two models of empire-building. The original model applied by europeans in America did not view its intervention as "imperialist" but as a true settlement or conquest. Spain and Portugal, in the americas, had a policy of conquest and settlement which drew in their experience from wars in the Iberian Peninsula. England and France got into this game later in North America, and England succeeded (and eventually failed ) because it invested more (accidentally...) on settlement. Using one or the other solution (settlement/conquest) depending on the existence, or not, of a large local population.

The other model, "trade imperialism", I'll call it, was simultaneously applied in the east, In places like India, Arabia, Africa and Indochina/Indonesia, where both conquest and settlement were, for different reasons, impossible. So there are no "old imperialism" and "new imperialism", but two different strategies.

The first component of that first strategy, conquest/settlement, eventually became completely unusable by the 20th century, as a consequence of the effects of nationalist and ethicist ideologies. (now conquest only works together with "ethnic cleansing" and resettlement...)
But before that conquest sometimes worked just as well as settlement, and was preferred to settlement when possible. It worked for the spanish in America, it failed in North Africa, where the opponents were on a much higher level, culturally and technologically. It nearly worked for the portuguese in Ceilan, but it failed in India.

It was mostly just a land grab to satisfy imperial ambitions fueled by national rivalry. The first to go were, of course, places with resources like the Congo, but later on even useless pieces of land like Togoland were taken.

No, while governments were not initially enthusiastic about spending on these land-grabs, there was a clear intention of holding on to the lands eventually occupied in Africa. The stumbling block was the slow rise of democratic politics during the 19th century, and the power/representation issues this raised about the people of those territories.

The way to look at this question is actually in the exact opposite way - why did tens of millions of Europeans in the mid 19th century and onwards decide to emigrate, and where did they decide to emigrate to? The places they didn't go never saw large-scale settler colonialism in operation.

Yes. And we should note that Africa was colonizes, several times, probably. Much earlier that the 15th century there were already migration waves in motion inside Africa (which would continue), and these were reshaping the population map of the continent. And to which some ethnic conflicts like that well-known one in Rwanda, can be traced.
Europeans didn't join in these simply because there were more attractive places to go.

 

[aelf]

No, what happened was that there were two models of empire-building. The original model applied by europeans in America did not view its intervention as "imperialist" but as a true settlement or conquest. Spain and Portugal, in the americas, had a policy of conquest and settlement which drew in their experience from wars in the Iberian Peninsula. England and France got into this game later in North America, and England succeeded (and eventually failed ) because it invested more (accidentally...) on settlement. Using one or the other solution (settlement/conquest) depending on the existence, or not, of a large local population.

The other model, "trade imperialism", I'll call it, was simultaneously applied in the east, In places like India, Arabia, Africa and Indochina/Indonesia, where both conquest and settlement were, for different reasons, impossible. So there are no "old imperialism" and "new imperialism", but two different strategies.

New Imperialism and Old Imperialism are terms used in history.

And Africa was in fact politically subjugated, unlike some of the Asian countries.

The first component of that first strategy, conquest/settlement, eventually became completely unusable by the 20th century, as a consequence of the effects of nationalist and ethicist ideologies. (now conquest only works together with "ethnic cleansing" and resettlement...)

But before that conquest sometimes worked just as well as settlement, and was preferred to settlement when possible. It worked for the spanish in America, it failed in North Africa, where the opponents were on a much higher level, culturally and technologically. It nearly worked for the portuguese in Ceilan, but it failed in India.

There are other reasons why settlement was not done significantly in Africa despite the pretty successful conquests, and they have been pointed out in this thread.

No, while governments were not initially enthusiastic about spending on these land-grabs, there was a clear intention of holding on to the lands eventually occupied in Africa. The stumbling block was the slow rise of democratic politics during the 19th century, and the power/representation issues this raised about the people of those territories.

Well, European powers have in fact been practicing trade imperialism for some time, even in Africa, before the Scramble started. They were only interested in land grab without settlement because of the intensifying colonial rivalries, made worse by the entrance of newly formed powers.

Democracies were fine with subjugating the natives and depriving them of rights since they were considered 'uncivilized'. And it's not like each democracy cared much about people outside of itself anyway.

All this is pretty standard historical stuff one can learn in school if one is attentive and reads up on the topic. I don't think they are factually wrong.

 

[Yui108]

Because two main reasons, as far as I understand.

1 Excepting regions such as South Africa and Tunisia, areas where European settlement was quite wide ranging, Africa is nowhere near as hospitable to traditional European crops.
2. More importantly, disease is a huge factor. Not only were the Africans already immune to many of the diseases that the Europeans had and the Americans died of, they had several far nastier things waiting for any would be European explorer in their deep jungles.

Overall also, the African climate is too say the least, no very nice.

 

[jessiecat]

As I explained earlier, the rush for European colonies in Africa was solely profit-driven on the behalf of trading companies backed by political support in the home country and military power to enforce it. Nothing much to do with climate or any desire to settle European populations in those territories. As one historian has described it, the typical European colonialist arrived "with a bible in one hand, a rifle in the other and a balance sheet in his top pocket".

 

[innonimatu]

New Imperialism and Old Imperialism are terms used in history.

They're part of the current historical fashion. So what? People end up reinterpreting history each new generation anyway. I'll stick to my view that those terms are inappropriate.

And Africa was in fact politically subjugated, unlike some of the Asian countries.

If you hunt for exceptions you'll find them also Ethiopia, Liberia. Each place's history is unique.

There are other reasons why settlement was not done significantly in Africa despite the pretty successful conquests, and they have been pointed out in this thread.

Some of those (the "Jared view") are nor a real explanation. There were no unsurmountable natural barriers to european expansion there, nor human barriers (opposition). It was a matter of resources and priorities (and chance, also).

Democracies were fine with subjugating the natives and depriving them of rights since they were considered 'uncivilized'. And it's not like each democracy cared much about people outside of itself anyway.

No, that's too simplistic a view, for such an important subject. The issue of representation is old. Medieval european societies had their forms of representation already, whether the english parliament, the french provincial parliaments, the iberian cortes, the polish sejm, etc. Who was represented in these changed, of course, and most started with the nobility and evolved into incorporating other elements (with some drifts on the opposite direction). The american colonists of england gave it enough importance to present it (lack of representation) as the main cause of their declaration of independence.

There was no tradition of depriving natives of rights because they were "uncivilized". There was a tradition of distributing rights unevenly, which favored a small elite - even in 18th century england (once again, the denunciations of the "corrupt" english parliament... first by english politicians and the taken up by the american colonists). The issue of the natives' rights was indeed discussed during the 16th century (the polemic in spain about whether native americans had souls and could be enslaved...) which ended with natives being officially recognized as citizens. Unfortunately for them, citizens on the lowest level, the one which hardly got represented, anywhere. But it wasn't because they were "natives", it was because they were "plebians".

Even during the earlier europena colonization colonial cities did sent representatives to their country's assemblies, or at least that was the case with several spanish and portuguese colonial cities. Only two changes, combined, would make this practice uncomfortable to power centers: when the colonies became bigger that the "mother country", and when the idea of political equality took hold. These were the cause of the separation of the remaining european colonies (from Spain and Portugal), as liberalism took hold. The power elites in the capitals would simply not accept that they might lose control of state affairs to the elites of some far away territory.

The new wave of territorial imperialism, in Africa and Asia, had to take these changes into account. And it was then, as a defensive reaction against the potential "electoral thread" of natives within a liberal democratic regime, that new racial theories ("scientifically validated", of course), were put forth, now seeking to characterize natives as hopelessly uncivilized and therefore to be excluded from the political process altogether.
In fact I believe that one of the two main reasons europeans governments at first opposed private efforts at territorial imperialism was precisely a fear of getting entangled in that political problem. The second reason was, obviously, the cost of those colonial adventures for the public finances (especially as the profits tended to be private).

 

[innonimatu]

Anyhoo, in the chapter entitled "How Africa Became Black," Diamond makes the hypothesis that the two regions that were most settled by Eurasians, North Africa and the very tip of South Africa, were settled because their climates were most suitable to Eurasians. Both areas had a mediterranean climate; the middle area did not and thus the Fertile Crescent crops could not be grown there. Both of the aforementioned areas were devoid of sleeping sickness-causing flies; the intervening areas did and thus cattle, horses, etc could not be brought there. The two areas of primary Eurasian settlement in Africa were continually devoid of widespread malaria; the intervening areas were. Thus, North Africa and the Cape of Good Hope area were the two areas of Africa that were primarily colonized by Eurasians because these two regions had the most hospitable climate to those incoming Eurasians to produce crops, livestock, and stay healthy.

Europeans preferred those areas, but they were by no means restricted to those. The whole eastern and western coast had european settlements, and it wasn't as if every european that went there immediately died struck by a tropical disease. During the whole 17th and 18th centuries the impact of trade in Africa went well beyond just the slave trade. Wax and other natural resources were also traded, new crops such as beans, corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, etc, were introduced into Africa, european traders lived there (many of them marrying and creating families there), writing was introduced, etc.
What we should point out is that those areas had a numerous warlike native population hard to defeat, and its resources were readily available through trade, which was more profitable than settlement. And I see that jessiecat has already explained this very well:

We should remember too that West and Central Africa had established kingdoms like the Songhai, Ashante, Zimbabwe and Benin cultures that actively traded with Europe and the Muslim world esp. following the Portugese explorations of the late 15th.C.
Trade with these kingdoms, particularly in slaves, was big business in the 17th. and 18th.C. There was no need for anyone to posess the land or settle there. The maintenance of trading forts to manage commerce was all they required.
It was only with the end of slavery in the 1830's that European attention shifted to colonisation of these area. But first the terrain had to be explored and it's possibilities examined, as well as the destruction of any native kingdoms that stood in their way. That's how Victorian explorers and missionaries like David Livingstone were very much deliberate scouting parties for military "punative expeditions" based on fabricated "provocations" and finally full colonial occupation and political absorbtion in the late 19thC.
Even then, apart from a few hundred colonial civil servants and traders with a strong military garrison, there was no incentive for European settlement on any meaningful scale.

There were some attempts at conquest done by the portuguese on the Congo region during the 1600s, but resources were always limited and Brazil and the remnants of the empire around the Indian Ocean were more profitable. Large parts of the african interior were already know to a few european traders who lived there. Those families, however, guarded their knowledge and contacts as "trade secrets". Until the 1840s the main trade in Africa was in slaves, after this period there was a messy reorganization (commercial and political, as local rules always rose and fell according to the wealth they extracted from from the control of trade routes), and eventually ivory and wax emerged as the main commercial commodities (and later, rubber).

The local traders, both european and african, would be instrumental in supporting the earlier "explorers" of Africa, who just followed the established trade routes, often calling on help from these traders. In fact the portuguese government, short on funds to sponsor "geographic expeditions" intended to claim lands in Africa (such as as those of Stanley or Livingstone), just used some local traders, presenting them as explorers (Silva Porto, etc), only to dump them as "local rustics" without a formal education and qualifications necessary for the "scientific" appropriation of the continent, once their usefulness was exhausted...

 

[aelf]

They're part of the current historical fashion. So what? People end up reinterpreting history each new generation anyway. I'll stick to my view that those terms are inappropriate.

Sure, but they referred to the different periods of time in which imperialism experienced surges, which coincided with different strategies and circumstances.

If you hunt for exceptions you'll find them also Ethiopia, Liberia. Each place's history is unique.

That is true. However, that doesn't defeat the argument from the big picture.

Some of those (the "Jared view") are nor a real explanation. There were no unsurmountable natural barriers to european expansion there, nor human barriers (opposition). It was a matter of resources and priorities (and chance, also).

If you want to put it that way, nothing is impossible. Well, maybe almost nothing. But it was not possible in the sense that the circumstances did not lend well to its execution and therefore it did not happen.

No, that's too simplistic a view, for such an important subject. The issue of representation is old. Medieval european societies had their forms of representation already, whether the english parliament, the french provincial parliaments, the iberian cortes, the polish sejm, etc. Who was represented in these changed, of course, and most started with the nobility and evolved into incorporating other elements (with some drifts on the opposite direction). The american colonists of england gave it enough importance to present it (lack of representation) as the main cause of their declaration of independence.

There was no tradition of depriving natives of rights because they were "uncivilized". There was a tradition of distributing rights unevenly, which favored a small elite - even in 18th century england (once again, the denunciations of the "corrupt" english parliament... first by english politicians and the taken up by the american colonists). The issue of the natives' rights was indeed discussed during the 16th century (the polemic in spain about whether native americans had souls and could be enslaved...) which ended with natives being officially recognized as citizens. Unfortunately for them, citizens on the lowest level, the one which hardly got represented, anywhere. But it wasn't because they were "natives", it was because they were "plebians".

Even during the earlier europena colonization colonial cities did sent representatives to their country's assemblies, or at least that was the case with several spanish and portuguese colonial cities. Only two changes, combined, would make this practice uncomfortable to power centers: when the colonies became bigger that the "mother country", and when the idea of political equality took hold. These were the cause of the separation of the remaining european colonies (from Spain and Portugal), as liberalism took hold. The power elites in the capitals would simply not accept that they might lose control of state affairs to the elites of some far away territory.

The new wave of territorial imperialism, in Africa and Asia, had to take these changes into account. And it was then, as a defensive reaction against the potential "electoral thread" of natives within a liberal democratic regime, that new racial theories ("scientifically validated", of course), were put forth, now seeking to characterize natives as hopelessly uncivilized and therefore to be excluded from the political process altogether.
In fact I believe that one of the two main reasons europeans governments at first opposed private efforts at territorial imperialism was precisely a fear of getting entangled in that political problem. The second reason was, obviously, the cost of those colonial adventures for the public finances (especially as the profits tended to be private).

Are you sure that is not nitpicking, though?

There is plenty of evidence that the citizens of European powers denied the rights of natives and even settlers in the colonies. In some places, there were indeed questions of representation, such as I believe in French Algeria. The fact that the natives were sometimes even forced into virtual slavery, such as in the Belgian Congo, speaks volumes about the grossly unequal status even after the the liberal revolutions in Europe. Settlers might indeed be represented, but that is not very surprising, is it?

Of course all that you have said is true, but to sum it up it is simply the case that European citizens did not, for various reasons, really give two hoots about democracy outside of their own countries, especially not in Africa.

 

[innonimatu]

Of course all that you have said is true, but to sum it up it is simply the case that European citizens did not, for various reasons, really give two hoots about democracy outside of their own countries, especially not in Africa.

European elites did not give two hoots about democracy. Outside or inside their countries. And they still do not. When they seem to that's an act for the benefit of "public morals" - which secures their own position.
Give them an excuse, such as that constructed by what I call the "scientific racism" of the 19th century, and they'll piss on their inferiors - any and all of them.

And on that they're not unique.

I just nitpicked because I believe that taking a look at how the idea of representation evolved shows this very well.

 

[aelf]

European elites did not give two hoots about democracy. Outside or inside their countries. And they still do not. When they seem to that's an act for the benefit of "public morals" - which secures their own position.
Give them an excuse, such as that constructed by what I call the "scientific racism" of the 19th century, and they'll piss on their inferiors - any and all of them.

And on that they're not unique.

I just nitpicked because I believe that taking a look at how the idea of representation evolved shows this very well.

I'm aware that social Darwinism was a reaction to imperialism, as you said. However, it also reinforced imperialist attitudes.

And, of course, if you want to put it that way, it is indeed the elites who did not give two hoots about democracy. But they at least had to make it appear that they did to some significant extent in their own countries (depending on which) because the average citizen did care about democracy domestically. The same could hardly be said of his attitude towards the outside world.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

That is, the original population removed and colonized by white Europeans? Northern Africa was traditionally viewed as having some degree of civilization but why was sub-saharan Africa not treated the same was as America and Australia? Was its population too high, too unhospitable terrain? Some efforts were appearantly made in South Africa but whites were always a small minority from what I can tell.

Africa WAS colonized by Europeans, but it proved to be more resistant to colonization for several reasons.

First of all, Africans did not succumb to Old World disease like measles or smallpox, which crippled the Aztec and Inca empires and may have caused the demise of the Cahokia Empire.

Second, malaria was endemic throughout Africa. Until the 19th century, there was no effective treatment for malaria, so that not until the 19th century was there a scramble to land-grab Africa.

Third, not all African nations were such push-overs. Many had contact with the rest of the world, so that their technology was not as backward as those of America and Australia, which hadn't had any significant contact with the rest of the world in 10,000 years. For example, Ethiopia resisted colonization until 1937, when it was invaded by Italy.

 

[Provolution]

I think the jungle brings out the worst in people. They saw that, and learnt to stay away.

Just observe Joseph Conrads novel "Heart of Darkness", observe other tall tales from the region, and you get a sense of it.

 

[Masquerouge]

I think the jungle brings out the worst in people. They saw that, and learnt to stay away.

What? What do you mean? In which people? The natives or the colonists?

 

[DBear]

African colonialism didn't have the time to colonize that American colonization did. Spain had centuries, and even the English had at least 150 years. In Africa, they had less than a century before the drive for independence, which was way too soon.

 

[Death_Machine]

There are a lot of long theories why Africa was not colonized like other lands. My theory is simple: it's hard to grow food in the sand.

 

[Masquerouge]

African colonialism didn't have the time to colonize that American colonization did. Spain had centuries, and even the English had at least 150 years. In Africa, they had less than a century before the drive for independence, which was way too soon.

too soon for whom?

 

[Huayna Capac357]

The answer is Jared Diamond's answer. Thread over

 

[Cutlass]

Horses would not survive in central Africa before modern medicine, and that limited the European's advantages.

 

[Arwon]

Another thing: Large chunks of Australia were not and have not been colonised.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

South Africa was. While North Sub-Saharan fell under muslim influence. And Central, yes, has very unhospitable terrain. Climate prevented Europeans to colonize whole continent and Black population was more resistent to european diseases, than Native Americans, because of historical contact with Old World.
BTW, it was high native population in Americas.

Often discounted is French Algeria. It was so heavily colonized and developed by Europeans that it ceased to be a colony, and was formally incorporated into the Republic as a French Department.