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Colonial Africa

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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Actually Angolans loves the Portuguese, they even feel Portuguese and support they team and watch their tvs. Don't know about the Algerians but I know many of them emigrated to France after they expelled the French minority (I can consider that a racism or xenophobia). Italy was the best colonialist country, they did too much for the small amount of colonial period. I went to Egypt and all the infrastructure there was made when during English rule. I think France maybe was the worst by seeing Mali, Chad, Mauritania etc... The French ex-colonies are the worst in Africa. Dutch colonialism was also not bad, in South Africa they did populated the empty area and not only explored. And to finish the topic, Salazar was right and had a great vision of the future os decolonization of Africa, that man had an IQ was superior to his fascist homologues, he knew exaclty what would happen to Africa without Europeans.

    So why did the Angolians fight a war of liberation against Portugal in which 50,000+ people died.
    I'll assume the part about Italy was a joke in poor taste.
    I didn't know the English built the Pyramids, did they build Machu Picchu & the city of Atlantis as well?
    Some minorities learn to love their oppresser. In Ireland Carson formed 100,000 man militia tofight against Irish freedom.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    You're right, the right the British Army in the 1950's nearly started a nuclear war over Suez, and killed a lot more than ISIS.

    Anyone who defends clear-cut war crimes is a moron.

    When people raise ISIS in discussions its rarely as a means to offer an example of record numbers of human killings. It is normally to refer to ISIS's extreme evil or the ideological nature of its evil so your comment is churlish.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    feargale wrote: »
    If all of that is correct, what on earth were you doing here?
    Pointing out the weaknesses in the position stated in your OP. If you were looking for discussion in which people only commented on your OP in order to agree with it, I think you've come to the wrong discussion forum.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,920 ✭✭✭mikemac2


    Das Reich wrote: »
    Italy was the best colonialist country, they did too much for the small amount of colonial period.

    You left out the part in the 1930´s they flew low level over Ethiopia and spread mustard gas. They used gas multiple times in that war


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,636 ✭✭✭feargale


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Pointing out the weaknesses in the position stated in your OP. If you were looking for discussion in which people only commented on your OP in order to agree with it, I think you've come to the wrong discussion forum.

    Wrong. I invited, and received, comments pro and con. I think we're doing fine here, thank you.

    If you think the thread is in need of improvement you like everybody else are free to post a constructive contribution on either side of the discussion.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    feargale wrote: »
    Wrong. I invited, and received, comments pro and con. I think we're doing fine here, thank you.

    If you think the thread is in need of improvement you like everybody else are free to post a constructive contribution on either side of the discussion.
    So are you, which was kind of the point of my first post in the thread, to which you apparently took exception.


  • Registered Users Posts: 106 ✭✭Historybluff


    feargale wrote: »
    I have read a comment in another site asserting that Africa's best years were in the colonial era. Please discuss, comment, criticise.

    I don't think Africa's best years were in the colonial era. Fundamentally, colonialism is economically exploitative and/or racist. 'The white man's burden' and the 'civilizing mission' were largely, though maybe not entirely, excuses.

    On virtually all metrics, Africa is a better place to live in today than it was when it was ruled by European Powers. Since independence, taking the continent as a whole:
    • there are more democratic regimes
    • most African countries have benefited from economic growth
    • life expectancy has risen
    • infant mortality has declined
    • a higher proportion of children and young people receive a formal education
    • poverty has fallen, while the middle class has expanded

    Sources: African Development Bank Group, Tracking Africa's Progress in Figures (Tunis: African Development Bank Group, 2014) and Our World in Data, Africa in Data slideshow


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    When people raise ISIS in discussions its rarely as a means to offer an example of record numbers of human killings. It is normally to refer to ISIS's extreme evil or the ideological nature of its evil so your comment is churlish.

    But like beauty, evil is a subjective quality.

    Me and you find beheading people horrible, shocking & disgusting. A minority find it thrilling & a thing of glory.

    It is strange, people celebrate the French Revolution now, yet tens of thousands of people lost their heads, even the Royal couple, and people were cheering while the beheadings took place. Are the French "evil"?

    ISIS share the same ideology that Saudi arabia (Wahhabism) have, yeah that country the U S gives billions of dollars in hi-tech weaponry to, the same weapons the Saudi's have used to create hell on earth for Yemen, hmmmmmm I wonder who gives ISIS their weapons?


  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    You're right, the right the British Army in the 1950's nearly started a nuclear war over Suez, and killed a lot more than ISIS.

    I don't remeber ISIS putting 1 million + Kenyan Tribes People in concentration camps either...


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    I don't remeber ISIS putting 1 million + Kenyan Tribes People in concentration camps either...

    My point exactly. They never caused several famines in India either & 2 major ones in Ireand. Never split Palestine into a chess board were fighting continues to this day over it. Speaking of camps, the Boers were the first of camps of the modern war era.

    This does not mean ISIS are good far from it, but they're the latest line of boogymen. First the "red" Indian, the sneaky "Japs", reds under the bed, Castro, plane hijackers who were "always" Palestinian, Taliban & Bin Laden even tho we armed them, ISIS, Mexican immigrants ..... And the West forgets t's own dirty past.

    Wonder who'll be next.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    I don't remeber ISIS putting 1 million + Kenyan Tribes People in concentration camps either...

    Yeah ISIS don't use concentration camps. They just put people to the sword right away. Internment camps and concentration camps violate human rights but they are normally used on the basis that human life is worth of protection or that a state has to at least pretend that human life is worth protecting. Colonialism has a dark history but European colonialism was usually practised by states that shared many values we have today. The same can not be said of ISIS.

    The Brits did not cause famines in India. Neither did they cause the Irish Great Hunger. Their policy made it worse but was not the cause.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    European colonialism: not quite as bad as ISIS.

    It doesn't go very far towards supporting the thesis in the OP, does it?


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    European colonialism: not quite as bad as ISIS.

    It doesn't go very far towards supporting the thesis in the OP, does it?
    A lot better than ISIS and this isnt a defence of colonialism and in some cases colonialism helped people eg. British ending of the Arab slave trade.

    Yes I would agree that Africa's best days were not in the colonial period. Africa is a rapidly growing continent and there is enormous economic activity there. That been in said, you will always find exceptions, in the height of the AIDs crisis perhaps some African countries were slightly worse than under colonialism but that is debatable. Until recently Kenya's colonial train network was far better than post colonial. The Democratic Republic of Congos road network was better under colonialism but these are just small exceptions. Africa started far behind Europe due to vastly harder enviroment. Ireland adopted the plough in the Neolithic, much of tropical Africa was never able to and is transitioning from hand hoe to tractor. They have a long transition to do.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    A lot better than ISIS and this isnt a defence of colonialism and in some cases colonialism helped people eg. British ending of the Arab slave trade.

    Yes I would agree that Africa's best days were not in the colonial period. Africa is a rapidly growing continent and there is enormous economic activity there. That been in said, you will always find exceptions, in the height of the AIDs crisis perhaps some African countries were slightly worse than under colonialism but that is debatable. Until recently Kenya's colonial train network was far better than post colonial. The Democratic Republic of Congos road network was better under colonialism but these are just small exceptions. Africa started far behind Europe due to vastly harder enviroment. Ireland adopted the plough in the Neolithic, much of tropical Africa was never able to and is transitioning from hand hoe to tractor. They have a long transition to do.
    We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.
    Castration by British troops and denying access to medical aid to the detainees were also widespread and common. Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was, the grandfather of Barack Obama, the former President of the United States. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods and two others were castrated.

    Maybe a small bit better?
    But, by the time you're getting that badly tortured would you really be thinking, "so glad this this torture is being done to me for imperial reasons & not a religous fundamental ideology." ?


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Maybe a small bit better?
    But, by the time you're getting that badly tortured would you really be thinking, "so glad this this torture is being done to me for imperial reasons & not a religous fundamental ideology." ?

    One crime during one particularly bad outbreak in one colony doesn't define the history of a continent.


  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    One crime during one particularly bad outbreak in one colony doesn't define the history of a continent.

    You think the 1950's was "one particularly bad outbreak" when compared to the rest of the time European powers colonised Africa?

    Are you insane?


  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    yoke wrote: »
    link - https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zmkwtfcALkE/V-IYRt-8v2I/AAAAAAAALHY/UqHE4jHUmaENaeI2L7WFfF8ThESYsdFNQCLcB/s1600/cong_hands_1904.jpg
    A father stares at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter as punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, in Belgian Congo, 1904.

    It was other native African guards hired by the Belgians that did that, not white Belgians. Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?


  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    Lyan wrote: »
    It was other native African guards hired by the Belgians that did that, not white Belgians. Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?

    There is a mountian of evidence that King Leopold ordered his forces in the Belgian Congo to do the things they did. Cutting off hands and genitles and murdering over approximately 15,000,000 people in a period of 23 years up to 1908.

    The population of the area was reduced by +/- 25% due to his rule.


  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    There is a mountian of evidence that King Leopold ordered his forces in the Belgian Congo to do the things they did. Cutting off hands and genitles and murdering over approximately 15,000,000 people in a period of 23 years up to 1908.

    The population of the area was reduced by +/- 25% due to his rule.

    Can you provide a source please?


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,636 ✭✭✭feargale


    yoke wrote: »
    If you already knew about the likes of Leopold and their actions, then I have serious misgivings about your motivation for asking this question.

    If you have "serious misgivings" say what your problem is. Don't just do the Pontius Pilate "just saying" trick, of smearing while dodging responsibity for your words.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    Lyan wrote: »
    Can you provide a source please?

    Are you being obtuse are you genuine this ignorant of the historical record of Leopold II's rule of Belgian Congo?

    I find the latter hard to believe.


  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    Are you being obtuse are you genuine this ignorant of the historical record of Leopold II's rule of Belgian Congo?

    I find the latter hard to believe.

    I genuinely want to see a source showing the Kingdom of Belgium's government or Leopold II mandating that limbs be cut off of workers and their families for minor disobedience.

    I know what happened. I just want to see if it was an official policy or if it was something that happened but ignored by the Belgians/not investigated/not taken seriously/etc. I can't imagine it was official policy as the whole debacle turned out to be quite embarrassing for Belgium when all the details came out.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Lyan wrote: »
    I know what happened. I just want to see if it was an official policy or if it was something that happened but ignored by the Belgians/not investigated/not taken seriously/etc. I can't imagine it was official policy as the whole debacle turned out to be quite embarrassing for Belgium when all the details came out.
    Why would it matter which of these two is the case? Either is absolutely damning to your thesis that the evils of colonialism were isolated aberrations rather than an integral aspect of the system. If these evils are being perpetrated it makes no difference at all, practically, politically or morally, whether are beeing systematically ordered or merely systematically ignored. Either way, the system is depraved and that depravity is producing monstrous and unconscionable outcomes.


  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Why would it matter which of these two is the case? Either is absolutely damning to your thesis that the evils of colonialism were isolated aberrations rather than an integral aspect of the system. If these evils are being perpetrated it makes no difference at all, practically, politically or morally, whether are beeing systematically ordered or merely systematically ignored. Either way, the system is depraved and that depravity is producing monstrous and unconscionable outcomes.

    Justice doesn't view the world in black and white.

    Anyway what thesis are you talking about? I just want a clear picture of what happened back then.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Lyan wrote: »
    Justice doesn't view the world in black and white.

    Anyway what thesis are you talking about? I just want a clear picture of what happened back then.
    Well. you came in to ask:
    Lyan wrote: »
    It was other native African guards hired by the Belgians that did that, not white Belgians. Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?
    The answer is "sytematically ordering this" and "sytematically creating the conditions which incentivise this and and giving people the authority to do it and then accepting it when they do it" are both mandates to do it.

    In much the way that historians look for evidence of the occasions on which Hitler directly ordered the implementation of the Final Solution, so they might look for orders that Belgian officials directly ordered mutilations. But the former question is not relevant to the issue of whether the Nazis mandated the Final Solution - they clearly did - and the latter question is equally not relevant to the issue you say concerns you. The Congo Free State clearly mandated this behaviour. It makes no difference at all whether any of the various officials who were directly or indirectly complicit in various ways were black or white, Belgian or Congolese; they were all agents of the Congo Free State, which - relevantly to the topic of this thread - was a colonial institution.


  • Registered Users Posts: 78,218 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    Lyan wrote: »
    It was other native African guards hired by the Belgians that did that, not white Belgians. Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?
    Why would the Belgians tolerate such maiming and murdering people? Because it was policy. Policy was to extract resources by brutality, not incentivisation.

    Can you imagine a situation where a beef factory would tolerate it's staff killing farmers en masse, if it wasn't policy?


  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    I have no thesis. I stated a fact and I asked for a source. I don't need you implying I shouldn't be asking for it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 78,218 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    Lyan wrote: »
    I have no thesis. I stated a fact and I asked for a source. I don't need you implying I shouldn't be asking for it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement#The_Congo_and_the_Casement_Report and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casement_Report - these are references in that.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Lyan wrote: »
    I have no thesis. I stated a fact and I asked for a source. I don't need you implying I shouldn't be asking for it.
    You did more than state a fact and ask for a source; you also asked "Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?"

    I have offered an answer to that question; the Congo Free State mandated them to do this and, if you accept that the Congo Free State was controlled by Belgians (you don't want a source for that, do you?) then it follows that Belgians mandated it.

    Perhaps I was wrong to ascribe a "thesis" to you, in which case I apologise. What I was getting at was that you started out by asking:

    "Is there evidence of the Belgians giving a mandate for them to do this?"

    But you subsequently say:

    "I just want to see if it was an official policy or if it was something that happened but ignored by the Belgians/not investigated/not taken seriously/etc."

    By "thesis" I mean the implication that it makes some difference whether Belgian colonial officials (a) ordered mutilations, or (b) merely authorised, encouraged and accepted mutilations; that the former wsould be a "mandate" for mutilations but the latter would not. If that is your view, it is wrong, and fairly transparently so. If that is not your view, then I humbly apologise for ever thinking that it was. But in that case you should explain why you ask the question at all. Does the distinction matter in any way, or have you abandoned your concern with mandates and are merely looking for an answer to a trivial question that is wholly unrelated to your earlier question?


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  • Registered Users Posts: 220 ✭✭Lyan


    Is there a problem here? Asking for evidence is just another way that I worded "can I have a source". And yes, I wanted a primary source showing the Belgian authorities expressing that extreme punishment be carried out on workers. This is a history forum and I'm actually interested in history. Do you not think such a document would make for a fascinating read?


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