Libya- another colony gone bad?

jonniebgood1

Libya has a history that is common to many African countries. A colony before 1951. Set up as a country without the administrative capacity and infrastructure as required to survive. Taken over by a 'popular' revolt. Exploited by its rulers until now.

Are there any examples of European colonies that got freedom between 1945 and 1965 that have not went on to have huge suffering? Also should former ruling countries not now retrospectively sponsor their former colonies to assist in setting them up properly?

Is there any historical reason why colonies have consistently had this type of outcome?

delta_bravo

Morocco I think might be the only one. I'm not too familiar with African History though.

mike65

Global ex colonies

Singapore. Okay its not exactly a progressive democracy but its peaceful and rich. India, its been largely poor and has had periods of upheaval but it has remained a functioning parliamentary democracy thoughout and has developed as well as any country of billion can do.

Africa - er

edit - Botswana, it actualy gained independance in 1966.

Judgement Day

These former British colonies could be added to the list - Belize (1964), Hong Kong (1997), Jamaica (1962), Malta (1964) and Mauritius (1968). Arguably you could also add Canada, Australia and New Zealand although they are still tied to Britain as they are Constitutional Monarchies with Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. It is difficult to find peaceful examples of transition from colony status and the French legacy is bad too - Indo China and Algeria both come to mind as disasters. It's a law of nature that that something artificially created or annexed will turn in on itself when the strong controlling power is removed look at the USSR or Yugoslavia as more recent examples.
I don't know about compensation but certainly countries like Britain should be well placed to intervene in a positive political way in countries like India, Pakistan etc. where they have history.

brianthebard

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Is there any historical reason why colonies have consistently had this type of outcome?

Yes, colonialism.

InTheTrees

Greece should be bailing out Egypt.

That'd be fun.

yosemite_sam

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Libya has a history that is common to many African countries. A colony before 1951. Set up as a country without the administrative capacity and infrastructure as required to survive. Taken over by a 'popular' revolt. Exploited by its rulers until now.

Are there any examples of European colonies that got freedom between 1945 and 1965 that have not went on to have huge suffering? Also should former ruling countries not now retrospectively sponsor their former colonies to assist in setting them up properly?

Is there any historical reason why colonies have consistently had this type of outcome?

Ireland

Judgement Day

InTheTrees wrote: »

Greece should be bailing out Egypt.

That'd be fun.

More likely the British as they operated Egypt and Sudan as puppet regimes for years.

who the fug

Judgement Day wrote: »

More likely the British as they operated Egypt and Sudan as puppet regimes for years.

They were the IMF of their day , one merchant banker ruling a country

Lord Cromer

Fratton Fred

Places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and the Bahamas had peaceful transitions and have done ok since.

Fratton Fred

Judgement Day wrote: »

More likely the British as they operated Egypt and Sudan as puppet regimes for years.

not as long as the Turks did, should they not cough up?

brianthebard

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and the Bahamas had peaceful transitions and have done ok since.

Morant Bay Rebellion?

Denerick

Colonialism really cannot be blamed for the present troubles in Libya. (Whatever about their past difficulties) Countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece (Two of which were Imperial powers) had strongmen dictators until very recently. Is that the fault of troublemaking westerners?

There is an element of blame dislocation in all of this.

Fratton Fred

brianthebard wrote: »

Morant Bay Rebellion?

isn't that 100 years earlier than the context of this thread?

mike65

Libya was an Italian colony, for the ignorant on here.

brianthebard

Fratton Fred wrote: »

isn't that 100 years earlier than the context of this thread?

Shows that it wasn't a peaceful transition as you claimed.

Fratton Fred

brianthebard wrote: »

Shows that it wasn't a peaceful transition as you claimed.

The Moran bay rebellion happened 100 years before Jamaica gained independence. I'd hardly describe it as part of the transition process.

donaghs

Interestingly, Ethiopia, which largely escaped colonialism (apart from Italy briefly 1935-41), hasnt been a model of social harmony, economic development and good government.

brianthebard

donaghs wrote: »

Interestingly, Ethiopia, which largely escaped colonialism (apart from Italy briefly 1935-41), hasnt been a model of social harmony, economic development and good government.

It was many of those things beforehand though.

Simarillion

Oh please, lets not have the "it's all the white mans fault" argument again!

Ethiopia is a barren wasteland plagued by famine and civil war, and has spent years massacreing its own people. Outside of Addis, there is little to nothing left. Are you honestly going to blame this on FIVE YEARS of Italian occupation?

Luxembourg was a lovely little country too but then after those 4 years of German occupation its never quite been the same!


Colonialism destroyed many countries there's no getting away from that fact, but plenty of the countries that were colonised were handed over to native government only to be bled dry.
Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Libya, Nigeria etc. etc.

Some of these were flourishing economies with plenty of resources that the rest of the world needed and were happy to pay for.

Everytime an African country undergoes turmoil, the local and international press blame colonialism but they fail to highlight countries who have blossomed since there independence

Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Argentina, Brazil, Botswana to name a few.

Why is it that when a foreign government runs your country it is a disgusting form of enslavement, but when one man robs the nation of all it's worth it is termed democracy?

brianthebard

Simarillion wrote: »

Oh please, lets not have the "it's all the white mans fault" argument again!

Ethiopia is a barren wasteland plagued by famine and civil war, and has spent years massacreing its own people. Outside of Addis, there is little to nothing left. Are you honestly going to blame this on FIVE YEARS of Italian occupation?

Luxembourg was a lovely little country too but then after those 4 years of German occupation its never quite been the same!

Ethiopia was a stable, decently developed country with a strong ruling family before colonialism. Luxembourg got plenty of cash after the war, how much did Ethiopia get? How many m/billions of their resources were used to keep the Italian economy and war machine going.

Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Argentina, Brazil, Botswana to name a few.

Brazil and Argentina have had two hundred years to get things right since they were emancipated, and they've had their share of dictators, resource pillage, ethnic cleansing, etc. If these are your best examples then Africa is doing better than expected by your own measure.

Why is it that when a foreign government runs your country it is a disgusting form of enslavement, but when one man robs the nation of all it's worth it is termed democracy?

Super strawman there but absolutely no relevance to the discussion.

jonniebgood1

Simarillion wrote: »

Why is it that when a foreign government runs your country it is a disgusting form of enslavement, but when one man robs the nation of all it's worth it is termed democracy?

Eh.... Libya??? democracy???

Simarillion wrote: »

Colonialism destroyed many countries there's no getting away from that fact, but plenty of the countries that were colonised were handed over to native government only to be bled dry.
Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Libya, Nigeria etc. etc.

Some of these were flourishing economies with plenty of resources that the rest of the world needed and were happy to pay for.

Everytime an African country undergoes turmoil, the local and international press blame colonialism but they fail to highlight countries who have blossomed since there independence

When a pattern develops as has done with many African colonies, it is fair to question why this is the case. That other colonies in other parts of the world have different fates does not make this question less relevent. The thread should develop into looking at the reasons for these problems rather than just blaming colonialism. To me the consistent theme seems to be the sudden removal of both infrastructual administrators and law/ order controls. In Congo for example, despite the atrocities committed, Belguim had developed a decent infrastructure that should have allowed the independent Congo to develop means to expand. This did not happen because the control of this and their mineral wealth was allowed to pass into control of a corrupt minority who did not have the means, knowledge or desire to run the country. This was something that for all their faults, european colonial administrator were capable of. That is not a pro- colonial point of view however, the real problem was that the native people were not allowed involvement in these areas so when the colonial staff went home they brought the working of these things with them. To compare with other colonies shows that native people were allowed more meaningful roles, for example in India the railway system had begun to allow Indians into more senior roles (albeit limited and with preference for half-Britons).

brianthebard

Would very much disagree about there being a good infrastructure in the Congo, any infrastructure was there to extract raw materials with, when the Belgians left there were a couple of hundred civil servants running an area the size of most of Europe, with very few natives employed at all, it was never going to be a peaceful transition to power.

jonniebgood1

brianthebard wrote: »

Would very much disagree about there being a good infrastructure in the Congo, any infrastructure was there to extract raw materials with, when the Belgians left there were a couple of hundred civil servants running an area the size of most of Europe, with very few natives employed at all, it was never going to be a peaceful transition to power.

European colonialists were good at providing infrastructure. The Belgian authorities spent vast sums of their Congo state budgets on transport improvements on a consistent basis throughout their rule. The main purpose may have been to get raw materials to port but this same infrastructure was extended to other areas under Belgian rule. Much of these railways are now taken over by the dense jungle again due to lack of maintainence. Infrastructure was also built by companies as part of deals allowing them access to raw materials for exploitation. An example of this is the Huileries du Congo Belge company (HCB) who built roads and 15 hospitals between 1911 & 1924 in return for access to areas of land. The problem when the Belgians left was they took their civil servants with them. Alot of the colonial infrastructure was then not maintained as the country went from crisis to crisis after this. This result is repeated in similar forms in other countries where after many years of controlling and exploiting the native economy the colonial governments just left without any care for what would follow them.

brianthebard

You're really overemphasising both the scale of the infrastructure built and its usefulness for anything other than exploitation. For a start logging and lots of other materials would have been taken to the coast by the Congo river, so no infrastructure involved there. Secondly this infrastructure was not built to connect villages, so was of little use for anything other than exploitation. Thirdly the Congo especially is an example of a colony who's only purpose was exploitation and no money was spent on facilities or improvement that was not absolutely necessary. Most of the work involved was done by hand for most of the period Belgium controlled the Congo. I've done plenty of research on the Congo so I'm not new to this topic.

donaghs

brianthebard wrote: »

You're really overemphasising both the scale of the infrastructure built and its usefulness for anything other than exploitation. For a start logging and lots of other materials would have been taken to the coast by the Congo river, so no infrastructure involved there. Secondly this infrastructure was not built to connect villages, so was of little use for anything other than exploitation. Thirdly the Congo especially is an example of a colony who's only purpose was exploitation and no money was spent on facilities or improvement that was not absolutely necessary. Most of the work involved was done by hand for most of the period Belgium controlled the Congo. I've done plenty of research on the Congo so I'm not new to this topic.

The Belgian Congo is NOT a good example of a colony that was in a "suitable" condition for independence. It was essentially treated by the Belgians as a source of raw materials, and the natives were treated merely as labour, or ignored. As brianthebard pointed out, minimal investment was made that was not related to resource exploitation. According to a BBC website, at the time of independence "There were no African army officers, only three African managers in the entire civil service, and only 30 university graduates." Most of the early anti-colonial movement leaders like Lumumba were from a minority of the population who had a secondary school education.

I dont think Haile Selassie was a good ruler. He was a not as bad as some other despots, or compared with other colonial regimes. But in the 2nd half of the 20th century, with greater scrutiny of his rule, many of his shortcomings came into clearer view. e.g. his own lavish lifestyle compared with the povery of his people, his lack of interest in the 1972 Wollo Famine, etc. I dont think the brief Italian occupation can be blamed for that. It was these shortcomings that led to the Marxist overthrow of Selassie - which ironically led to even worse conditions in Ethiopia. It was also those colonialist "perfidious Albion" Brits who restored him to his throne after the brief Italian occupation.

In an interesting book by Martin Meredith "the State of Africa", he shows how other states like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe etc did have relatively good conditions at the time of indepence, and how it was mostly incompetant and corrupt rule which reduced the standards of living since that time.

This doesnt excuse the evils of colonialism, or its after-affects. But as far as I can see, most of Africa's post colonial problems stem from bad leadership. And there is huge gap between the African example and what other examples in Asian, South America etc.

jonniebgood1

donaghs wrote: »

The Belgian Congo is NOT a good example of a colony that was in a "suitable" condition for independence. It was essentially treated by the Belgians as a source of raw materials, and the natives were treated merely as labour, or ignored. As brianthebard pointed out, minimal investment was made that was not related to resource exploitation. According to a BBC website, at the time of independence "There were no African army officers, only three African managers in the entire civil service, and only 30 university graduates." Most of the early anti-colonial movement leaders like Lumumba were from a minority of the population who had a secondary school education.
.

What I said was not much different to this in my opinion:

To me the consistent theme seems to be the sudden removal of both infrastructual administrators and law/ order controls. In Congo for example, despite the atrocities committed, Belguim had developed a decent infrastructure that should have allowed the independent Congo to develop means to expand. This did not happen because the control of this and their mineral wealth was allowed to pass into control of a corrupt minority who did not have the means, knowledge or desire to run the country.

I agree that most investment was related to exploiting the country for its resources. Nonetheless it was still investment in infrastructure and it stopped after the Belguims went home. whether I am overestimatiing this infrastructure or we are talking about different standards as relative too, I don't know. I will address this point later when I have a source to illustrate the points I made. Overriding this I would point out that I am not defending in any way the treatment of the colony by Leopald or Belguim.

jonniebgood1

brianthebard wrote: »

You're really overemphasising both the scale of the infrastructure built and its usefulness for anything other than exploitation. For a start logging and lots of other materials would have been taken to the coast by the Congo river, so no infrastructure involved there. Secondly this infrastructure was not built to connect villages, so was of little use for anything other than exploitation. Thirdly the Congo especially is an example of a colony who's only purpose was exploitation and no money was spent on facilities or improvement that was not absolutely necessary. Most of the work involved was done by hand for most of the period Belgium controlled the Congo. I've done plenty of research on the Congo so I'm not new to this topic.

The river had only a limited usefulness given the series of rapids that make it difficult to navigate even nowadays. I don't dispute that the infrastructure was mostly built to assist in the exploitation- My point was that much of this infrastructure has now disappeared. This means that should the country return to peace it will not be in a good position to develop. It is resource rich but does not have the means to benefit from this as many routes to the west are now impassable. Regarding the third point I have read sources that differ slightly as per previous post. I will post these later (not to hand currently) and you can decide if they are relevent. I don't doubt at all your knowledge or research of the Congo, it is a fascinating place to this date and I agree with your tone on its treatment.

brianthebard

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

The river had only a limited usefulness given the series of rapids that make it difficult to navigate even nowadays. I don't dispute that the infrastructure was mostly built to assist in the exploitation- My point was that much of this infrastructure has now disappeared. This means that should the country return to peace it will not be in a good position to develop. It is resource rich but does not have the means to benefit from this as many routes to the west are now impassable. Regarding the third point I have read sources that differ slightly as per previous post. I will post these later (not to hand currently) and you can decide if they are relevent. I don't doubt at all your knowledge or research of the Congo, it is a fascinating place to this date and I agree with your tone on its treatment.

For this conversation to move forward I really think you need to start qualifying your statements. For instance it doesn't matter if the Belgians built millions of miles of railways (which I'm almost 100% sure they didn't) if they only purpose was to link a mine in one region to the coast. Such railways would be of minor use to natives during and after colonisation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo#Colonial_economic_policy
There's a good map of the rail system in colonised Congo here. You also have to remember that the congo is basically rainforest, Africa's brazil, there isn't open pastures either side of those railways, so contacting them would have been extremely difficult if you were not directly adjacent.

this wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo is a good summary of transport in the Congo and shows that waterways are by far the dominant mode of transportation as they have always been in the congo. I don't doubt that transport has been seriously damaged by dictatorships and the collapse of the Congolese state in the past 40 years or so, but that is a side point to the fact that a decent infrastructure was never developed to begin with.

jonniebgood1

brianthebard wrote: »

For this conversation to move forward I really think you need to start qualifying your statements. For instance it doesn't matter if the Belgians built millions of miles of railways (which I'm almost 100% sure they didn't) if they only purpose was to link a mine in one region to the coast. Such railways would be of minor use to natives during and after colonisation..

I thought I had qualified or infered this in my post saying

Infrastructure was also built by companies as part of deals allowing them access to raw materials for exploitation.

In any case I will endeavour to qualify all statements. In view of moving the topic on, would you agree that a major factor in the Congo's failure to develop was the removal of the Belgian civil service in the early 1960's and lack of replacing them.
In terms of the state of Congos infrastructure and economy in 1960 compared to now there is some interesting presentation of figures on this website: http://www.urome.be/en/econgchiff.htm
I would note that the source is not proposed as neutral.

brianthebard

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

In view of moving the topic on, would you agree that a major factor in the Congo's failure to develop was the removal of the Belgian civil service in the early 1960's and lack of replacing them.

No not really tbh, the Belgian civil service like everything else involved in the belgian control of the congo was geared towards exploitation of resources, if that civil service had remained it might have been able to continue that exploitation but not contributed to any other factor of civilisation. Unfortunately even though the civil service left the exploitation by belgium and later others remained, so even then the cs was not critical to success in that area.

Victor

brianthebard wrote: »

Would very much disagree about there being a good infrastructure in the Congo, any infrastructure was there to extract raw materials with

Not all infrastructure is physical. Simple things like a postal service, mapping, weather forecasting, keeping rivers navigable and the knowledge base on to do things and maintain equipment are just as important as any railway or port.

donaghs wrote: »

This doesnt excuse the evils of colonialism, or its after-affects. But as far as I can see, most of Africa's post colonial problems stem from bad leadership.

Largely because colonialism destroyed much of the pre-existing social structures for reasons of convenience or oppression and anyone who spoke out was suppressed or even killed.

In such circumstances, all to often only the strongman can emerge, not the balanced, educated, respected leader. While there may be overlaps between the two, its easy to see the differences also.

jonniebgood1

brianthebard wrote: »

No not really tbh, the Belgian civil service like everything else involved in the belgian control of the congo was geared towards exploitation of resources, if that civil service had remained it might have been able to continue that exploitation but not contributed to any other factor of civilisation. Unfortunately even though the civil service left the exploitation by belgium and later others remained, so even then the cs was not critical to success in that area.

My view is that the means to exploit Congo (civil service & infrastructure) needed to be retained at the level of 1960. For the Congo to develop from that era exponentially as should have happened the country needed to continue to exploit its natural resources. The difference would be that a proper government would have used the profits to provide for its people rather than allowing the corporations and elite to take all. The original colonial trinity of control (missions/ corporations/ colonial government) needed to be addressed to re-balance the equation but this didnt happen. Rather the governent part in the first hand (including civil service) was removed and not replaced leading to the problems that continue to this day partly caused by the unbalance of corporations having to big an influence. The civil service had on occasions got the corporations to benefit their workers as per Huileries du Congo Belge company (HCB) example given earlier.

Extract from pg 81; The history of Congo by Didier Gondola.

jonniebgood1

Condescending, patronising but interesting link to a 1950's piece about Congo before independence
http://books.google.ie/books?id=L0kEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=belgium+benefits+congo&source=bl&ots=q_WGdBFHOI&sig=xQwsK3WX78QZXOWaIOn1NF5hjtc&hl=en&ei=39VzTY-4MIexhAfP7vlR&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFMQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

jonniebgood1

This link is to an alternative view on the Libya situation which references to Gadaffi taking control.
http://www.infowars.com/world-cheers-as-the-cia-plunges-libya-into-chaos/

The chaos in Libyan consists of a mixture of tribal conflicts, conflict over oil revenue (since most oil is in the east of the country), radical islamists opposed to Gaddafi’s system of government, and outside destabilization by Western funded exile groups.

Gaddafi took control in a bloodless coup from a sick monarch away for medical treatment 41 years ago. His ideology is based on unification and he attempted to peacefully merge his country with Egypt and Syria.

It would take a miracle for the violence unfolding now to lead to a single stable democratic government in Libya, with full control over the entire country. The country is more than twice the size of Pakistan, but with 6 million inhabitants. Endless deserts divide many of the cities in the nation.

dpe

The biggest problem with post-colonial Africa is simply that the map doesn't represent the ethnicity of the peoples within it; think Balkans, but everywhere. Its no accident that some of the relative success stories (like Botswana) are relatively homogeneous (Botswana is actually nearly as much of a patchwork as the others, but has managed to use religion and language to bind the country together pretty well, almost everyone is Christian and speaks Setswana). The problems multiply when you have not only ethnic differences, but religion layered on top of that.

The other issue that people fail to consider is that, just like the Balkans, conflict was a pre-existing condition; everyone fought everyone else in Africa pre-colonialism, and all colonialism did was put a lid on things for a couple of centuries, but when the Europeans left (particularly the British) they left behind a particular cultural institution in almost every post-colonial country; the tradition of using the minority culture (if one existed, which was almost always the case in Africa) to rule the majority. This was the root cause of Rwanda, and has influenced the development of Nigeria, Kenya and many others.

But, Africa has had half a century to sort out these issues, and if anything conditions have got worse, not better. The question is, when do you stop blaming dead white guys and start to take responsibility for your own actions? Its like Robert Mugabe when he blames Britain for Zimbabwe's current woes; its ridiculous, but its easy politics in Africa where there's a nasty tendency for leaders to protect their own even when they're palpably corrupt or dangerous. When you start to see to see members of the African Union putting their own house in order, I might start to have some hope in the future of the continent.

easychair

dpe wrote: »

The biggest problem with post-colonial Africa is simply that the map doesn't represent the ethnicity of the peoples within it;

The biggest problem? If you think thats a bigger problem that corrupt dictators ruling by force and stripping their countries bare of resources for the benefit of their Swiss accounts, then I suggest you have a strange view of the scale of problems.

The Scientician

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Also should former ruling countries not now retrospectively sponsor their former colonies to assist in setting them up properly?

Well you've hit on a conundrum there. Many of the more benevolent colonialists used a paternalistic ethos as justification for their continuing presence in different parts of the world. British/French/Belgian etc. interference in the affairs of its former colonies smacks of a continuation of this (oft-times racist) paternalism.

dpe

easychair wrote: »

The biggest problem? If you think thats a bigger problem that corrupt dictators ruling by force and stripping their countries bare of resources for the benefit of their Swiss accounts, then I suggest you have a strange view of the scale of problems.

You're missing the point. The power base of a lot of these dictators is caused by the very tribal make-up I've described.

getz

mike65 wrote: »

Libya was an Italian colony, for the ignorant on here.

and there is a few of them

jonniebgood1

Some details of the previous experience of the forces engaging in Libya were on BBC:

London came up with a plan in 1949 to divide its three main regions between itself, France and, incredibly, Italy, the former colonial power.

The new superpower, the United States, intervened at the United Nations to stop the British plan - but not because it cared about Libyan aspirations.

Washington now saw Libya - with its long coastline, in the middle of the Mediterranean - as a strategic prize in its struggle with the Soviet Union and was expanding its huge Wheelus airbase just outside Tripoli.

Originally built by the Italians, almost 5,000 Americans and scores of aircraft were based there by the 1960s.

Libya became independent in 1951, under King Idris, but still remained a British protectorate - with both the UK and the US maintaining their military bases and control over the country's foreign and defence policies.

Commercial oil discoveries in the late 1950s gave both governments even more incentive to keep things as they were

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12882213

So there are previous attempts to divide Libya which were prevented .........