Did Decolonisation Happen to Fast ?

[Furion Matsuya]

Like the title says, did the decolonisation of the European colonies in Africa and Asia etc happen too quickly ?. I ask this not because I support imperialism or racism or anything like that, but rather after observing the situation in Africa and how large parts of it have turned out.

Obviously the deplorable situation and living standards in Africa and parts of Asia is caused by a wide variety of factors but over all would these places have benefitted from a more gradual and prolong decolonisation which ensured that the political situation was fairly stable and the country had a decent level of development and such before pulling out or would places like the Congo have still fallen to the cycle of violence they currently suffer from regardless due to other factors such as long standing ethnic and religious tension etc ?

PS: I hope this thread doesn't cause any offense as that is not my intension at all.

 

[The Super Pope]

Decolonisation happened because the European nations were too devastated by war, and the post-war order was too anti-colonial for them to survive. They could not have held them longer then they did, and when they tried the results were messy. See: Portugal and its African colonies.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Not fast enough.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

Not fast enough.

What makes you say that ?

 

[Calad]

Well decolonization could have been planned better.

 

[Ming]

You could say the problem wasn't so much that it happened too fast, but that the colonizers didn't do much of any building up of the countries towards stable economic or political systems. This also goes before independence was a real possibility. It's really a question about what Colonies are for and why they existed.

A 'proper' decolonization program wouldn't have been a colony at all.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Not fast enough.

Good you finally overcame your Goa-trauma.

 

[Gordy]

Good you finally overcame your Goa-trauma.

No, no, no, no.

Britons ruling Indians = bad, bad, bad racist Britons
Portuguese ruling Indians = good, enlightened, non-racist and progressive

Have you learned nothing?

 

[Gordy]

Decolonisation happened because the European nations were too devastated by war, and the post-war order was too anti-colonial for them to survive. They could not have held them longer then they did, and when they tried the results were messy. See: Portugal and its African colonies.

In the specific case of the UK decolonisation happened because there was a huge shift leftwards in British politics following the first post-war election which lasted until 1979. Even the Conservative party were pretty left-wing by modern British standards.

 

[Henry IX]

A slower process of decolonisation where the colonial master sets up systems and administration and trains the locals to run these effectively would have been the ideal form of decolonisation (aside from staying in Europe in the first place). In the places where this happened the results tended to be better (e.g. Kenya compared with Uganda). However, most of the colonial powers were not interested in expending time, effort and money on improving the chances of a successful post colonial state - indeed a dependent former colony could be seen to be a better outcome (from the master's view). So we ended up with a whole lot of messes and some conservative types pointing and saying "we told you that they were better off under our benevolent leadership".

 

[Semper Victor]

Despite what some ill-informed romantics still seem to think, colonies were not set up for the enlightenment and benefit of the colonized peoples, but for the interests of their metropolis, and the political and economic interests of the metropolitan ruling elites. When after the IIWW it became increasingly clear that the costs of running a colonial empire had become far too high for the benefits they provided, the smarter colonial powers cut their losses and run (like Britain or the Netherlands) while the others who tried to cling to their old empires for internal political reasons (like France and Portugal) were forced to undertake hasty and humiliating retreats in the end.

It was a thing to run an empire in the good old days when some soldiers and mercenaries armed with Maxim guns and repetition rifles could easily control sparsely populated lands against disorganized natives armed with spears and arrows. But when said natives increased in number, organized themselves into ideologically motivated mass "liberation fronts" and began smuggling arms (either supplied by the Soviet bloc like in the First Indochina war, or purchased in the black market like in the Algerian war), the "burden of the white man" began to feel to heavy for said white men's comfort.

Thinking that in those circumstances the colonial powers would try to stay and improve things in their colonies when they had shown no interest in doing so in earlier times when things were much calmer and easier for them is being quite naïve.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

Despite what some ill-informed romantics still seem to think, colonies were not set up for the enlightenment and benefit of the colonized peoples, but for the interests of their metropolis, and the political and economic interests of the metropolitan ruling elites. When after the IIWW it became increasingly clear that the costs of running a colonial empire had become far too high for the benefits they provided, the smarter colonial powers cut their losses and run (like Britain or the Netherlands) while the others who tried to cling to their old empires for internal political reasons (like France and Portugal) were forced to undertake hasty and humiliating retreats in the end.

It was a thing to run an empire in the good old days when some soldiers and mercenaries armed with Maxim guns and repetition rifles could easily control sparsely populated lands against disorganized natives armed with spears and arrows. But when said natives increased in number, organized themselves into ideologically motivated mass "liberation fronts" and began smuggling arms (either supplied by the Soviet bloc like in the First Indochina war, or purchased in the black market like in the Algerian war), the "burden of the white man" began to feel to heavy for said white men's comfort.

Thinking that in those circumstances the colonial powers would try to stay and improve things in their colonies when they had shown no interest in doing so in earlier times when things were much calmer and easier for them is being quite naïve.

I'm well a wear of what the colonies were established for. But surely it's common sense, not the mention the colonizers responsibility to clean up the mess they made before pulling out at the very least, even more so since by pulling out they may be abandoning the people who have settled there like what happened when France pulled out of Algeria "supposedly I'm no expert so I'm probably wrong about what happened there"

 

[Calad]

I'm well a wear of what the colonies were established for. But surely it's common sense, not the mention the colonizers responsibility to clean up the mess they made before pulling out at the very least, even more so since by pulling out they may be abandoning the people who have settled there like what happened when France pulled out of Algeria "supposedly I'm no expert so I'm probably wrong about what happened there"

Algeria was not a colony but a province. Something like 10% of population were French and that was the reason they fought so long there.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Have you learned nothing?

Obviously not.

 

[Gordy]

A slower process of decolonisation where the colonial master sets up systems and administration and trains the locals to run these effectively would have been the ideal form of decolonisation (aside from staying in Europe in the first place). In the places where this happened the results tended to be better (e.g. Kenya compared with Uganda). However, most of the colonial powers were not interested in expending time, effort and money on improving the chances of a successful post colonial state - indeed a dependent former colony could be seen to be a better outcome (from the master's view). So we ended up with a whole lot of messes and some conservative types pointing and saying "we told you that they were better off under our benevolent leadership".

That's hindsight talking. Slower decolonising meant fighting lots of colonial wars e.g. the aforementioned Kenya. Hard to educate the masses when you are also fighting them. In the war era the average European had no idea that post-colonial Africa would work out as badly as it has, people were quite optimistic about countries like Ghana making a go of it. It's often ignored that most colonies did "make a go of it", it is really only sub-Saharan Africa (and not all of it) that has made little progress. Many South East Asian countries were as poor as Africa on independence but certainly aren't now.

 

[The Super Pope]

I'm well a wear of what the colonies were established for. But surely it's common sense, not the mention the colonizers responsibility to clean up the mess they made before pulling out at the very least, even more so since by pulling out they may be abandoning the people who have settled there like what happened when France pulled out of Algeria "supposedly I'm no expert so I'm probably wrong about what happened there"

1. The colonizers felt no such responsibility
2. To stay and try and prepare a country for independence would mean actively establishing a national identity. Which would make the colonised far more aggressive to aforementioned colonizers. And some countries made a very good job of a hasty or unprepared independence (India, Israel, Singapore).
The problem of Africa was the complete lack of national identity in most of sub-Saharan Africa, that states were ruled by a small colonial-educated elite, and that the army was loyal to its generals, not to the state.

 

[Gordy]

1. The colonizers felt no such responsibility
2. To stay and try and prepare a country for independence would mean actively establishing a national identity. Which would make the colonised far more aggressive to aforementioned colonizers. And some countries made a very good job of a hasty or unprepared independence (India, Israel, Singapore).
The problem of Africa was the complete lack of national identity in most of sub-Saharan Africa, that states were ruled by a small colonial-educated elite, and that the army was loyal to its generals, not to the state.

It's merely one problem in Africa. Somalia had almost all its citizens belonging to just the one ethnic group and yet it's one of the most unstable.

 

[The Super Pope]

It's merely one problem in Africa. Somalia had almost all its citizens belonging to just the one ethnic group and yet it's one of the most unstable.

Ethnic homogeneity =/= identifying with the state. The absence of the government outside of urban centres is as much a factor in the lack of national identity as is the ethnic diversity of, say, Nigeria.
The fact that said governments were run by a small crooked elite for their own benefit, and were highly susceptible to military coups added to the poor chances for African states.

By contrast, India has a whole load of ethnicities and languages, but there was a strong sense of being 'Indian' rather than simply Gujurati or whatever

 

[Gordy]

Ethnic homogeneity =/= identifying with the state. The absence of the government outside of urban centres is as much a factor in the lack of national identity as is the ethnic diversity of, say, Nigeria.
The fact that said governments were run by a small crooked elite for their own benefit, and were highly susceptible to military coups added to the poor chances for African states.

By contrast, India has a whole load of ethnicities and languages, but there was a strong sense of being 'Indian' rather than simply Gujurati or whatever

That's just inaccurate. India had partition with two new states (Bangladesh and Pakistan) being created out of it. It also has major issues with Kashmir and there are armed separatist groups in the North East. There is popular opposition to Hindi in the south of India with South Indians even favouring English as an alternative national language.

"identifying with the state" (in your sense) is not the same as "national identity". I doubt you would find many Somalis that didn't feel Somali. They just don't rate their government very highly. That's not an issue of the wrong boundaries having been set by colonialists.

 

[The Super Pope]

That's just inaccurate. India had partition with two new states (Bangladesh and Pakistan) being created out of it. It also has major issues with Kashmir and there are armed separatist groups in the North East. There is popular opposition to Hindi in the south of India with South Indians even favouring English as an alternative national language.

"identifying with the state" (in your sense) is not the same as "national identity". I doubt you would find many Somalis that didn't feel Somali. They just don't rate their government very highly. That's not an issue of the wrong boundaries having been set by colonialists.

Nowhere did I really mention the 'wrong boundaries' issue, I personally think that that case is overstated.
India was partitioned into two states (Pakistan and India, no Bangladesh at that time) but the Republic of India has faced no serious problems of ethnic unrest despite its multi-ethnic nature, and many languages. Pakistan's problems by contrast stem in large part from the fact that people there felt the whole show was being run by the Punjabis for the benefit of the Punjabis, which is how they lost East Pakistan