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I mention this numerous times when industrialization and democracy came to Europe it took many European states over a 100 years to get political stability. They didn't just turned in a democracy and that was end of the story. They kept sliding back in Dictatorship and Monarchies, and repeating violent civil wars and revolutions.
A democracy is very fragile thing, To a new population experiencing it unfortunately it take trail and error for many places to arrive at point of long political stability.
We were not alive during romantic era of Europe nor is many of us can give experience of the world Wars so Europe and the West seem like it political stability that existed for every. When no... When democracy was just as new to Europe, Europe had same amount of conflicts and etc as Africa does now.
How many of yall now about the French Revolution and The terror? The terror was period after the King was over thrown one the hero of the French Revolution Maximilien Robespierre turn into a psycho, and started beheading thousands of people.
During the Terror, the Committee of Public Safety (of which Maximilien de Robespierre was the most prominent member) exercised virtual dictatorial control over the French government. In the spring of 1794, it eliminated its enemies to the left (the Hébertists) and to the right (the Indulgents, or followers of Georges Danton). Still uncertain of its position, the committee obtained the Law of 22 Prairial, year II (June 10, 1794), which suspended a suspect’s right to public trial and to legal assistance and left the jury a choice only of acquittal or death. The “Great Terror” that followed, in which about 1,400 persons were executed, contributed to the fall of Robespierre on July 27 (9 Thermidor).
France
French Revolution 1789–1799
Kingdom of France 1791–92
First Republic 1792–1804
First Empire 1804–14
Restoration 1814–30
July Monarchy 1830–1848
Second Republic 1848–52
Second Empire 1852–70
Third Republic 1870–1940
The Industrial revolution to the start of WW2. is about 200 years to now 300 years. A lot of African and middle eastern counties gain Independence just last century, So with in time frame during the romantic era in Europe there was massive political instability, Revolution, corruption, mass poverty and wealth gap etc. And way more conservative places with less rights. There wasn't gay rights, there hardly were even women rights in Europe during this time,
Because of the poverty and wealth gap as well as less human rights both civil and workers cause violent Revolution, countries changing political systems repeatedly.
Europe now is not like the Europe before the World Wars, and late Victorian era. There reason why there was massive immigration out of Europe to Americas 1820 to 1920.
But even in US immgrants often came right back to poverty for a Generation or two
African nations have to find who they are, get through these civil wars, and go though a Progressive Era to weed out corruption. it took Western nations a hundred years after idea of democracy re popularize 1776/1789, and to near the end of the industrial Revolution to be a more modern first world nation that they are today.
Now a lot of this crazies in the Congo, relates back to King Leopold, a lot of the these rebels groups and dictators basically adopted King Leopold rule by terror ideas.
Local wars have been going on in the Congo almost continuously since the 1950s. Every once in a while they catch the attention of the world media.
It is as huge country with much of it only loosely under any regulatory watch from "the capital". Local strongmen are pretty much free to form little empires, with no restrictions on the methods they use to gain or hold power. And no shortage of marketers who will keep them supplied with arms, paid for by whatever they can steal.
Even with the horrific things going on in Congo the country as a whole is still better of than independence when life expectancy was in the high 30s, now it’s in the high 50s.
Kind of a ridiculous comparison, the life expectancy of the world in general has risen at a similar rate. What was GDP per capita then adjusted for inflation?
NYT writer retraces steps of Joseph Conrad’s journey through the Congo a hundred plus years ago, discovers not much has changed.
Quote:
In 1890, Conrad traveled on one of the first steamboats on the Congo River. The Roi des Belges had been constructed in 1887 out of parts imported from Europe, then carried up the rapids on the backs of 1,700 porters and assembled in Kinshasa. Steamships were the engines of European civilization, bearing merchants, missionaries and militias into Africa’s uncolonized interior. Conrad hated them.
More than a century later, with hardly any roads or rails linking most of Congo’s cities and with flights too expensive for nearly all Congolese, boats — belching tugs that push open barges with no facilities — are still the primary way people use to travel between Kinshasa and Kisangani, a commercial hub a thousand miles upstream. If you’re lucky, you can make the upriver journey in four weeks and the downriver journey in two, the same amount of time it took Conrad.
That may be an exaggeration, but only a mild one. It is possible to travel by car Kisangani to Kinshasa, which is theoretically a 72-hour drive. But in practice might take weeks. A Lonely Planet contributor described his 700Km trip overland from Goma to Kisangani, which took four days, in good weather. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntr...#post_21032162
Most roads in Africa do not have all-weather surfaces, and many cities are connected by roads that are considered impassable during the rainy season. I saw only a small part of Zaire, in 1976, and just traveled from Uvira to Bukavu. It was 150Km, but had a good road that could easily be done in a half a day on a public minibus. Bukavu was one of the most beautiful cities in the world then, and may still be.
Kind of a ridiculous comparison, the life expectancy of the world in general has risen at a similar rate. What was GDP per capita then adjusted for inflation?
So your telling me the life expectancy of the world has risen since 1960 by 20 years.. In actuality it has risen less than 15, roughly 12-13 while Congo has risen 20... The world is 100% a better place now than it was in 1960, and even hellholes like Congo have the statistics of their citizens living longer to prove it.
USA- life expectancy has risen less than 10 years. GDP per capita is useless when talking about standard of living if 0.01% of your country is wealthy and the rest live in abject poverty, GDP is high. If your country has a small but growing middle class with the rest living in poverty it is very possible to have the country have a lower GDP per capita than the previous country. The perfect example is Equatorial Guinean and Literally almost every country on the African continent. All the other countries outside of DRC, Somalia, CAF, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe have either the same or considerably higher standard of living yet because of mineral wealth the country is one of the richest in Africa. Life expectancy however shows its actual development as it relates to other African countries. Clearly GDP per Capita is useless compared to life expectancy as a measurement of standard of living.
Life expectancy doesn't mean everybody lives longer. It means more people within the population live to maximum expectations. In a country where everybody has the optimum nutrition and health care, the life expectancy has already peaked, and will rise only by a small increment as cures are found for some terminal conditions. But in a country where 10-20% die in childhood and a high proportion of adults remain malnourished and exposed to disease and other risks, the average life expectancy can be significantly raised just by expanding measures to mitigate early death.
You don't raise life expectancy by keeping 80 year olds alive to 90, You raise it by keeping children and young adults alive until their 60s or 70s. In a country with a life expectancy of 40, there are still plenty of people living to 70. But the average is pulled down by all those children who never make it to adulthood at all. This is where all the progress is being made in the increases of life expectancy in Africa, with the significant decline in infant mortality and the ready availability of antibiotics, diagnostics, and other straightforward median interventions for a potentially healthy younger demographic..
Life expectancy doesn't mean everybody lives longer. It means more people within the population live to maximum expectations. In a country where everybody has the optimum nutrition and health care, the life expectancy has already peaked, and will rise only by a small increment as cures are found for some terminal conditions. But in a country where 10-20% die in childhood and a high proportion of adults remain malnourished and exposed to disease and other risks, the average life expectancy can be significantly raised just by expanding measures to mitigate early death.
You don't raise life expectancy by keeping 80 year olds alive to 90, You raise it by keeping children and young adults alive until their 60s or 70s. In a country with a life expectancy of 40, there are still plenty of people living to 70. But the average is pulled down by all those children who never make it to adulthood at all. This is where all the progress is being made in the increases of life expectancy in Africa, with the significant decline in infant mortality and the ready availability of antibiotics, diagnostics, and other straightforward median interventions for a potentially healthy younger demographic..
I know this fact, life expectancy increases most when Infant Mortality goes down. Some people think murder rate affects life expectancy in any way when it simply doesn’t at all (Unless we are talking War). Life expectancy drops also when major diseases sweep an area. I understand that. But my point still stands a society that has a 60 years life expectancy has improved lving standards from when it has a 40 year life expectancy. When European societies had life expectancies of 40 they looked dramatically different from when they had life expectancies of 60. Now to the untrained eye they just see a poor country and another poor country but that doesn’t suddenly mean Iran and Afghanistan are the same level off development. It doesn’t mean CAR, Somalis and Botswana are the same level of development just because their both poor. Clearly things have improved from independence in the Congo or else it wouldn’t be reflected in lower mortality rates for children leading to higher life expectancies. People like to think Africa hasn’t changed at all since independence and maybe that was more or less true from 1950-1995-ish but the amount of Wartorn countries on the continent has dropped a ton and almost every country is growing rapidly Economically especially when compared to Western/ Developed nations. People seem to think because China and Korea took of, their the only countries growing, but most developing nations worldwide are growing rapidly, and Ask anyone who has been to Lagos for example in the 90s and 80s and lives there today outside of maybe Crime it has massively improved by every objective measurement you can come up with.
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