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Colonial Africa

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


    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?

    No, just being balanced. My thesis is not that Europeans were particularly kind in Africa but it is that it was far less transformative than elsewhere. The 1950s was indeed a particularly violent period in Kenya's history. In some regions there was more violence then Kenya but in entire countries there was nearly no violence against local peoples at all. Most of Africa was not colonised like the Americas. Excluding was certain regions like costal Mozambique and South Africa, colonisation was very brief and lot of pre-Europeans social structures were retained. People were not forced to convert or give up their languages and in many most cases not their land. Terrible harm can be done in short spaces of time, see Congo and Namibia, but it is clear colonisation was very different to other continents.

    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.
    You forgot to mention that many died from economic collapse and hunger from the violence.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,639 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manach


    Mod note
    Given the subject matter and tone of this discussion this is a reminder as per charter to be civil to fellow posters, who are free to provide or not any primary or secondary proofs.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,906 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Lyan wrote: »
    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?
    It would. But my concern is that you initially asked that whether the Belgians had mandated this behaviour, before asking whether there is evidennce of the Belgians directing that it be done. I've already pointed out that this suggests that, if they didn't direct that it be done, they didn't mandate it. If you want to clear up any confusion by saying, no, you are no longer asking if the Belgians mandated these cruelties and are now asking the completely different question of whether the mandate took the form of a documented order, now would be a good time to do that.

    The short answer to your question, however, is that the cruelties of the Congo Free State regime and the direct complicity of (European) officials in administering and supervising them were extensively documented in the Casement Report, which was published by the UK Parliament in 1904 as Command Paper Cd. 1933, which you will find in any academic library, and which includes many witness statements. This led to a poliltical scandal in Belgium which resulted eventually in the annexation and dissolution of the Congo Free State and the prosecution and imprisonment of a number of its (European) officials. If there's not much talk nowadays of primary evidence of colonial officials directing acts of cruelty as a matter of company policy, it's because that question was asked and answered more than a century ago.


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


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    It would. But my concern is that you initially asked that whether the Belgians had mandated this behaviour, before asking whether there is evidennce of the Belgians directing that it be done. I've already pointed out that this suggests that, if they didn't direct that it be done, they didn't mandate it. If you want to clear up any confusion by saying, no, you are no longer asking if the Belgians mandated these cruelties and are now asking the completely different question of whether the mandate took the form of a documented order, now would be a good time to do that.

    The short answer to your question, however, is that the cruelties of the Congo Free State regime and the direct complicity of (European) officials in administering and supervising them were extensively documented in the Casement Report, which was published by the UK Parliament in 1904 as Command Paper Cd. 1933, which you will find in any academic library, and which includes many witness statements. This led to a poliltical scandal in Belgium which resulted eventually in the annexation and dissolution of the Congo Free State and the prosecution and imprisonment of a number of its (European) officials. If there's not much talk nowadays of primary evidence of colonial officials directing acts of cruelty as a matter of company policy, it's because that question was asked and answered more than a century ago.

    The scandal and prosecutions is good evidence that although there was a streak of barbarism in the Belgian administration, it wasn't shared by European colonial authorities. Clearly they had concern for peoples welfare.


  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    The scandal and prosecutions is good evidence that although there was a streak of barbarism in the Belgian administration, it wasn't shared by European colonial authorities. Clearly they had concern for peoples welfare.

    Except of course for the British, who then went on to put 1+million people in concentration camps in the 50's, torturing tens of thousads, developing a special type of pilars to crush their testicles, pulling teeth and ripping off fingure nails, and worse, and then went to the effort of burning, burrying at sea and hiding millions of pages of internal reports which would highlight these issues as part of "Operation Legacy" with what was left of these documents only being released publicly in 2011 as part of a legal challenge by survivors of the concentration camps against the British government.


    Or the French who raised the infrastructure of Guinea when the country declared independance unilaterally, with the French saying if Guinea wanted independance they shouldn't "profit from the history of the colonisation" as if they somehow owed the french for being subjugate.

    Or the dozens of other examples of European powers being absolute scumbags during the decolonisation of Africa.


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


    When reading about colonial crimes against Africa, it is important to remember that European states at the time were very brutal to their own home populations, the conquested African populations were also extremely brutal to each other.

    I am no defender of colonialism but I really feel the need to quash the myth that poverty in Africa today is a result of Europe or some colonial asset stripping. This isnt remotely true. Differences in wealth of continents is mostly driving by climate and geography. Sub Saharan Africa is a tough 'spawn point'. It has all sorts of ecological challenges that are unfathomable to Irish people. But the good news is that those differences are declining all the time due to globalisation and Africa today is booming and extreme poverty is going the way of the dodo.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,483 ✭✭✭mr_fegelien


    No one seems to have touched on Africans themselves.

    I'm from Tanzania and both my parents in their 50s have said unequivocally that the best time was in the 70s-80s. It seems that many African countries went downhill in the late-80s from poor economic policies and HIV


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,445 ✭✭✭Rodney Bathgate


    No one seems to have touched on Africans themselves.

    I'm from Tanzania and both my parents in their 50s have said unequivocally that the best time was in the 70s-80s. It seems that many African countries went downhill in the late-80s from poor economic policies and HIV

    I thought you were from the US?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,483 ✭✭✭mr_fegelien


    I thought you were from the US?

    I lived in Tanzania until 2006 then moved to Atlanta for 2.5 years. Came to Ireland in 2009.


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


    When reading about colonial crimes against Africa, it is important to remember that European states at the time were very brutal to their own home populations, the conquested African populations were also extremely brutal to each other.
    Yes, brutal, but they didn't usually go around chopping off hands from 5-year olds.
    I am no defender of colonialism but I really feel the need to quash the myth that poverty in Africa today is a result of Europe or some colonial asset stripping.
    It certainly didn't help. However, the processes that went with colonialism and decolonisation, e.g. the destruction of existing power structures, creating borders that paid no respect to existing social structures, favouring certain groups, the Cold War powers using Africa for proxy wars, etc. have us where we are now.


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


    Victor wrote: »
    Yes, brutal, but they didn't usually go around chopping off hands from 5-year olds.

    It certainly didn't help. However, the processes that went with colonialism and decolonisation, e.g. the destruction of existing power structures, creating borders that paid no respect to existing social structures, favouring certain groups, the Cold War powers using Africa for proxy wars, etc. have us where we are now.
    Victor wrote: »
    It certainly didn't help. However, the processes that went with colonialism and decolonisation, e.g. the destruction of existing power structures,
    The regions I am referring were mostly rural farming societies with no cities. There were some exceptions like highland Ethiopia, Kongo Kingdom and Zimbabwe but mostly you are talking about very small states with short hierarchies. There was no local civil service before. When colonies were formed very often local rulers were kept. Most of Africa was not micromanaged in anyway.
    Victor wrote: »
    creating borders that paid no respect to existing social structures, favouring certain groups, the Cold War powers using Africa for proxy wars, etc. have us where we are now.
    Generally speaking the borders do follow local ethnic lines, not always but very often they did. These are imperfect borders, but they were formed in places where they were none before. How many lives would have been lost for those borders to form without European invention?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 386 ✭✭Biafranlivemat


    I look at colonialism in sub Sahara Africa slightly different.
    Why make a big deal about it. Yes terrible things happened. But it seems to me not much happened before outsiders arrived

    Think about it, Modern humans have existed in Africa for at least 100,000 years. And Everybody only talks about at most the last 500 years.

    History only Mostly started with the Arrival of outsiders to Sub Saharan Africa.

    Examples
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Uganda
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-colonial_history_of_Zimbabwe
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nigeria

    compare that to Ireland, before the Normans.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland


  • Registered Users Posts: 23,246 ✭✭✭✭Dyr


    I look at colonialism in sub Sahara Africa slightly different.
    Why make a big deal about it. Yes terrible things happened. But it seems to me not much happened before outsiders arrived

    Think about it, Modern humans have existed in Africa for at least 100,000 years. And Everybody only talks about at most the last 500 years.

    European Colonialism in Africa only really took off in the late 1800s and was pretty much done by the 1960s, you're looking at a period closer to 50 years than 500 hundred


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,586 ✭✭✭ Khari Noisy Opera


    Instead of always looking backwards, take a look forwards:

    1. China is currently owning (colonising) Africa, ports on 999yr leases, new roads, rail and mines, surely all at some cost.

    2. Africa may well colonise much smaller Europe's 1/2 bn, by 2050 Africa will double their population, 2.5bn strong. Of this half will be under 25yo.
    Thanks to the Barca' accord (cultural exchange), and also the rise of faster, cheaper boats, rail etc. You may expect to see 10's if not 100's of millions aiming for the shores of the EU (brexitland, and likely Italiexit {and others e.g. Francexit} all exculded). Ireland would be the only viable english speaking country to aim for, for many, given the brits former influence and colonies.

    Mod Note:
    As current and future speculations are outside a history forum, please keep any subsequent posts within the bounds of the OP's subject manner and within charter's rules.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,906 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    The scandal and prosecutions is good evidence that although there was a streak of barbarism in the Belgian administration, it wasn't shared by European colonial authorities. Clearly they had concern for peoples welfare.
    You make an entijrely spurious distinction there. The "Belgian administration" were the "European colonial authorities". The prosecutions happened not because authorities in Belgium had concern for peoples welfare, but because public opinion in Europe couldn't look away from what was happening, and also couldn't tolerate looking at it.


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


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    You make an entijrely spurious distinction there. The "Belgian administration" were the "European colonial authorities". The prosecutions happened not because authorities in Belgium had concern for peoples welfare, but because public opinion in Europe couldn't look away from what was happening, and also couldn't tolerate looking at it.

    European colonial authorities is not the same as the Belgian colonial authorities. The culture of Belgians running things in Kinshasa has nothing to do with equivalents in Nairobi, Lajos or Brazzaville just across the river from Kinshasa. I wasn't sloppy in my language so you should not be either. What happened in the Congo was not representative of colonial Africa. If it was there would have been far less outrage. The outrage at what happened demolishes the argument that Europe of the era had no compassion for Africans.


  • Registered Users Posts: 663 ✭✭✭MidlanderMan


    European colonial authorities is not the same as the Belgian colonial authorities. The culture of Belgians running things in Kinshasa has nothing to do with equivalents in Nairobi, Lajos or Brazzaville just across the river from Kinshasa. I wasn't sloppy in my language so you should not be either. What happened in the Congo was not representative of colonial Africa. If it was there would have been far less outrage. The outrage at what happened demolishes the argument that Europe of the era had no compassion for Africans.

    The British in Nairobi who less than 40 years after the end of CFS put 1 million + people into concentration camps, raped and murdered untold numbers, invented special pliars to crush peoples testies as part of a mass torture programme, and then tried to destory or hide all the documentary evidence that this was widespread, systemic, and sanctioned until forced to release the papers 9 years ago by the living survivors and their families?


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,906 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    European colonial authorities is not the same as the Belgian colonial authorities. The culture of Belgians running things in Kinshasa has nothing to do with equivalents in Nairobi, Lajos or Brazzaville just across the river from Kinshasa. I wasn't sloppy in my language so you should not be either. What happened in the Congo was not representative of colonial Africa. If it was there would have been far less outrage. The outrage at what happened demolishes the argument that Europe of the era had no compassion for Africans.
    The Belgians are European, YF. Belgian colonial authorities are European colonial authorities. And the notion that "culture of Belgians running things in Kinshasa has nothing to do with equivalents in Nairobi, Lagos or Brazzaville" is to silly to require refutation. The Congo may have been the worst example of colonialism - let's assume it was - but, even so, the worst example of any phenomenon is not something wholly separate and distinct from the phenomenon as a whole. Colonialism is brutal, it is exploitative, it is oppressive, it is destructive. And if the best defence we can make of colonialism as exemplified in Nairobi or Lagos or Brazzaville is "not quite so bad as Kinshasa", well, that's a pretty feeble defence.

    The outrage at what happened wasn't based on any "compassion for Africans"; if the European powers felt any compassion for Africans there wouldn't have been colonies in Nairobi or Lagos or Brazzaville. It was based on shame. Maintaining oppression frequently requires the oppressors to be in denial about what they are doing; Casement's reports on the Congo Free State confronted Europeans with the reality of colonialism perpetrated in their name; it was Ghandian tactics before Gandhi, really. This naturally made them angry and ashamed. They channelled that into condemnation of the particular colony of the Congo Free State, because that made it possible to maintain a false distinction between our colonialism (good) and the colonialism of Those People Over There (bad! bad! bad!), and by this mechanism the whole obscene edifice was maintained for another fifty years or so. But the truth is that the excesses of the Congo were just the most extreme manifestation of an inherently oppressive colonial system. You can't maintain a colony without denying the dignity, the autonomy, the equality and ultimately the humanity of the indigenous people you are colonising, and once you deny those things you have opened the way to treating them as less than human.


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


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    The Belgians are European, YF. Belgian colonial authorities are European colonial authorities. And the notion that "culture of Belgians running things in Kinshasa has nothing to do with equivalents in Nairobi, Lagos or Brazzaville" is to silly to require refutation.
    The onus is on you to prove that other colonial projects were within the same realm.

    Your comment is appalling ignorant of African history. Take Nigeria for example, Nigeria was colonised because black missionaries wanting to end the slave trade petitioned London to depose the indigenous proslavery king, which they did and replaced, but not with a white governor, they installed a Nigerian ruler deposed some years before. With historical hindsight we can say London didnt have the purest of intentions but they did wish to end slavery and succeeded.
    Peregrinus wrote: »
    YThe outrage at what happened wasn't based on any "compassion for Africans"; if the European powers felt any compassion for Africans there wouldn't have been colonies in Nairobi or Lagos or Brazzaville. It was based on shame.
    As if shame and compassion are any different in this context.
    Peregrinus wrote: »
    You can't maintain a colony without denying the dignity, the autonomy, the equality and ultimately the humanity of the indigenous people you are colonising, and once you deny those things you have opened the way to treating them as less than human.
    Yes you can. Look at French colonies today all across the globe. I don't support their existence, but one would be a fool to argue that France is denying equality or the humanity of local people. If I was born in Mayotte I would like to think I would support independence from France but it would be moronic of me to claim my humanity was being denied.


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


    I look at colonialism in sub Sahara Africa slightly different.
    Why make a big deal about it. Yes terrible things happened. But it seems to me not much happened before outsiders arrived

    Think about it, Modern humans have existed in Africa for at least 100,000 years. And Everybody only talks about at most the last 500 years.

    History only Mostly started with the Arrival of outsiders to Sub Saharan Africa.

    Examples
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Uganda
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-colonial_history_of_Zimbabwe
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nigeria

    compare that to Ireland, before the Normans.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland

    That's because the topic were talking about is covering the colonial period.

    Are you suggesting there was no war in in pre-Norman Ireland?


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


    That's because the topic were talking about is covering the colonial period.

    Are you suggesting there was no war in in pre-Norman Ireland?

    I think they were contrasting how old the written record is in Ireland compared with much of tropical Africa and that there is something of a blank slate before that. People complain about the saturation of ancient Ireland with Roman culture and christian religion etc etc, but it did bring us out of the dark ages, or as I should say Dark Ages as the preceding period in Irish history, before AD 400 is considered our Dark Ages, so thus maybe, we should be grateful and same applies to Africa. I am not saying I advocate this view, but it would be very popular.


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


    I think they were contrasting how old the written record is in Ireland compared with much of tropical Africa and that there is something of a blank slate before that. People complain about the saturation of ancient Ireland with Roman culture and christian religion etc etc, but it did bring us out of the dark ages, or as I should say Dark Ages as the preceding period in Irish history, before AD 400 is considered our Dark Ages, so thus maybe, we should be grateful and same applies to Africa. I am not saying I advocate this view, but it would be very popular.

    The fall of Rome & the rise of the Catholic church brought us into the Dark Ages.

    How much vital history, culture & knowledge was lost from Christian destruction of pagan temples, scrolls & practises, how many women were murered for being a witch? Good 2018 book by Catherine Nixey called "The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World" about how how early Christianity played a role in the destruction and suppression of culture.
    Ireland more than other country helped to propogate these ideas.


  • Registered Users Posts: 23,246 ✭✭✭✭Dyr


    The fall of Rome & the rise of the Catholic church brought us into the Dark Ages.

    How much vital history, culture & knowledge was lost from Christian destruction of pagan temples, scrolls & practises, how many women were murered for being a witch? Good 2018 book by Catherine Nixey called "The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World" about how how early Christianity played a role in the destruction and suppression of culture.
    Ireland more than other country helped to propogate these ideas.

    If that book gave you the notions that the mythical Dark ages were brought about by the Catholic church and the church was burning witches duirng that period, I'll give that book a massive body swerve.


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


    The fall of Rome & the rise of the Catholic church brought us into the Dark Ages.

    How much vital history, culture & knowledge was lost from Christian destruction of pagan temples, scrolls & practises, how many women were murered for being a witch? Good 2018 book by Catherine Nixey called "The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World" about how how early Christianity played a role in the destruction and suppression of culture.
    Ireland more than other country helped to propogate these ideas.

    You are just not right and certainly not in Ireland. We know that the preceding period was a time of population contraction and turmoil in Ireland, Barry Raftery described the population during this time as ‘the Invisible People’ because of the scarcity of archaeological evidence of their existence. in contrast, connection to the Roman world brough all sorts of innovations, from chickens, water corn mills, oats and rye and all sorts of agri tech. Some time during this period there is a clear evidence of population expansion. The Bronze Age is sometimes called our first Golden Age and the early christian period our second Golden Age.

    On the continent this early christian period is called a dark age but mainly because Rome was destroyed by barbarian tribes.


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


    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.

    HAHA. Removing all the eatable food from a coutry doesn't cause famine? That's news to me. It was the same policy that caused the famine that made it worse.


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


    You are just not right and certainly not in Ireland. We know that the preceding period was a time of population contraction and turmoil in Ireland, Barry Raftery described the population during this time as ‘the Invisible People’ because of the scarcity of archaeological evidence of their existence. in contrast, connection to the Roman world brough all sorts of innovations, from chickens, water corn mills, oats and rye and all sorts of agri tech. Some time during this period there is a clear evidence of population expansion. The Bronze Age is sometimes called our first Golden Age and the early christian period our second Golden Age.

    On the continent this early christian period is called a dark age but mainly because Rome was destroyed by barbarian tribes.

    Well by the 1840's these chickens were missing from Ireand.

    Yes, the period was great for Ireland & horrible for Europe.That's basically what I said except I didn't use some of that rhetoric.


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


    Bambi wrote: »
    If that book gave you the notions that the mythical Dark ages were brought about by the Catholic church and the church was burning witches duirng that period, I'll give that book a massive body swerve.

    That's not what I said at all. But the chuch certainly played a huge part in witch trials., you couldn't have had them without papal appoval.

    And up until about the 11th or 12th century the church was against the ideas that people could collude with the devil, have supernatural powers, were witces etc... but there was a shift in Christian doctrine, in which certain Christian theologians eventually began to embrace the idea of witchcraft.
    It was in the 1230's that a papal bull by Gregory IX created a new inquisition in southeren France led by Dominicans, their goal was oppress Christian groups considered heretical, like the Cathars.
    The first systematic campaign of witch hunts began at Valais in the early 1400's. This ushered in the periods of witch trials. By 1428 the authorities in Leuk issued a formal proclamation of the necessary proceedings for a witch trial. According to this document, the "public talk or slander of three or four neighbours" was enough for arrest and imprisonment, even if the accused was a member of the nobility. The use of torture was reserved for victims "slandered by five, six, or seven or more persons, up to the number of ten, who were qualified to do so and not under suspicion themselves", but also those "accused by three persons who had been tried and sentenced to death for the practice of sorcery".

    A bit like how during the Great French Revolution Terror, if you didn't like someone you could accuse someone of anti-Republican activity & their head would role, here they would burn.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 157 ✭✭Liamo57


    I worked in various countries in Africa, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda etc. I was proud to be Irish in so far as the natives never met a white man who talked across to them and not down, as did the English, Germans and the Americans who are very parochial and export their culture to Africa without getting to know the natives.


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