Africa's Development Had Colonialism Never Happened?

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by NigerianNightmare

The rest of Africa is predominantly Nilotic, Horner, Bantu and West African and both the Horner and West African people were connected to the Islamic world and had all the information they had. The Nilotes were connected to Egypt and traded with them going back centuries and the Bantus were originally West Africans and kept their farming techniques as they moved further South into the continent, and were also connected to the Islamic world. All of these groups had nation-states before Europeans came, all of these groups except the Bantu had large cities before Europeans came. In fact many of them like the Ghana emprie and the folks of Eastern Congo were already mining before the Europeans came.

Points are well-taken though that is not what was on display at New York's Museum of Natural History when I was taken there as a kid. When I took my older son there in 2001 or 2002 the displays were the same. I take it many others were farmers who grew primarily for their own needs, not for cash sales.

[SLIMMACKEY]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

I posited that the "continents (sic) current borders would (not) have been the same." There were plenty of tribal wars before and I doubt that would have eased. The "conniving injection of colonialism from all of the colonizing nations" was not a necessary condition for those wars. The colonizers usually played off existing rivalries when they could, in the Americas as well as Africa. The difference is that smallpox and other contagious diseases did not decimate the population. On average, though, hunter-gatherers do not "harness the continents (sic) vast natural resources and human capital to build what could be a very viable economy." The climate discourages that kind of hard work.

Im not sure that we would have "basically what we have now". To believe so is to believe that the influence of colonialism had very little affect on those people. And that their chances of developing their countries and the continent as a whle would be limited.

Im sure I didnt allude to the tribal tensions and wars being a derivative of any colonial influence. To say such would be naive at the least. It cannot and should not be understated how colonialism affected any inter tribal warfare.



Thanks for the response.