I like the sound of something like this! Maybe Aztecs taking over the Atlantic Coast?
Sub-Saharan techgroup is now only +60%!
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‘ when the solid evidence is that pre-colonial Africa was NOT a land of failed states’
Ahh, almost like you ignored every argument and cherry picked vulnerable arguments.
Was pre-colonial China a failed state (it wasn't even colonised much)? Did it stop it from falling behind? Can you not see what the massive shock of western ideals like democracy, capitalism and later communism had on developing countries?
If prime non-western states like China couldn't withstand these shocks, somehow Africa with its history of a few decentralised states, would come out much better? Are you kidding me?
Dude West Africa had a long history of state or empires rising based largely off the gold salt trade across the Sahara but the states then swiftly falls when their gold mines dried up only to be replaced by another regional power who still had the gold and took over the lucrative gold salt trade until there gold ran out and they were replaced again, they cycle happened many times in West Africa of states rising and falling largely based upon their short term wealth in gold from their gold mines, which for the record its kinda silly that gold mines last all of EU4 we would mine them out if we mined a gold mine for 350 years
That's about as accurate as the EU III setup in Mesoamerica.
Mali's gold mines were still running long after Songhai supplanted it ; Songhai had little gold mines of its own and was supplanted (after a century) by a military invasion armed with guns that hadn't yet been introduced in that part of Africa ; Kanem Bornu didn't have gold either and fell to foreign invasion by Sokoto, etc. The notion that those state only rose and fell on the basis of who had working gold mine is a flight of fantasy ; not something that's reflected in the actual facts.
Mali's gold mines were still running long after Songhai supplanted it ; Songhai had little gold mines of its own and was supplanted (after a century) by a military invasion armed with guns that hadn't yet been introduced in that part of Africa ; Kanem Bornu didn't have gold either and fell to foreign invasion by Sokoto, etc. The notion that those state only rose and fell on the basis of who had working gold mine is a flight of fantasy ; not something that's reflected in the actual facts.
Qing China was a failed state by the 1800s, when their refusal to accept the rise of western powers as serious challenge to their empire led to their fall.
They were not that much of a failure before, except for the fact it was a handful of Manchus ruling over hundreds of millions of chinese people, and that kind of setup never works too well.
They were not 'failing' by any stretch of the imagination, Qing at the start of 1800s was still the largest economy and nation in the entire world. It was the Taiping rebellion in 1850 that devastated them, before that they were as successful as it can get.
Nor does the manchu part matter, the late emperors could barely speak Manchurian themselves, and the manchu culture was already facing extinction from assimilation, it became a problem later on (few decades later) only because of the spread of nationalistic zeal, and even then the dissatisfaction was combined with the massive losses to western powers.
So the incredibly successful and complex Qing imploded with a few minor wars with the west (a test every nation has to pass sometime), underwent 100 years of continuous decline until 1979, THIS is the challenge of westernisation. Now, some people want to imply SS-Africa would have been prosperous today if not for colonisation..........
I don't think people say they would be as prosperous as the west, but I don't find it unreasonable for much of Africa to be in a similar position as Southeast Asia today.
China and Japan become as backward as Kongo and Timurids become more primitive than Ashanti? No no no.
Well, wasn't SEA also extensively colonised? In fact, aren't the fates of these two regions relatively similar? If colonisation never happened, then SEA would still be richer than Africa.
Not to mention SEA is endowed with a much better geographical position, sitting between the Europe-middle east-East Asia route, making trade easier.
Also, SEA is also quite diverse in its situation, but the three best performing nations are: Thailand, never been colonised, existed for quite some time, and thankfully retained its king, preventing disastrous political instability. Malaysia, ethnic homogeneity and lots of oil&gas, Singapore, which is more Chinese than SEA.
The worst performing nations like Burma are only marginally better than your average African state. Laos and Cambodia are only developed as moderately successful African states like Kenya.
So, even if Africa resisted colonisation, ending up like SEA is not much of an improvement, not to mention communist zeal tends to spread in such areas, Ethiopia's (who resisted colonisation) destiny was led astray by communism in the end.
There are a hundred perils to modernisation, colonial legacy is significant but not even the largest one.
I'm happy to see Sub-Saharan Africa's tech brought more reasonably close to others for the start of the period. They didn't really fall off until later, and in alternate history things might not have gone that way. I'm also less annoyed by slower westernization (IE no more easy western colonial border) if they're teching better there, as they have more ability to take matters into their own hands.
1800 china was maybe one of the largest economy if not the largest, but was still starting to fail on many levels.
China history of failures in the contemporary era began around 1800 when the flow of silver was being reversed by the E I C in Exchange for opium. Also China being self sufficient (and a s you said the largest economy) was not a display of success but the onset of its failure.
By refusing importing goods from europeans (because they somehow thought didn't need to), they set themselves in a defensive attitude while the british were free to do as they please in asia. When the opium war broke out in 1839 Qing China was already too much of a failure to do anything about it, and continued to decline for the next hundred and 30 years or so.
China history of failures in the contemporary era began around 1800 when the flow of silver was being reversed by the E I C in Exchange for opium. Also China being self sufficient (and a s you said the largest economy) was not a display of success but the onset of its failure.
By refusing importing goods from europeans (because they somehow thought didn't need to), they set themselves in a defensive attitude while the british were free to do as they please in asia. When the opium war broke out in 1839 Qing China was already too much of a failure to do anything about it, and continued to decline for the next hundred and 30 years or so.
This change is FANTASTIC. The old tech group malus was TOTALLY ridiculous from both a historical and gameplay perspective. African nations were far more sophisticated than they're given credit for. Great kingdoms like Mali and Kongo and the trade forces like Mombasa were on par with most of the world from a military perspective until the Europeans, having much greater naval power, became capable of sending gunboats down the lenght of Africa. Even then the Europeans had no way to colonize or invade past the shores due to attrition, pre-industrial supply lines and, frankly, because those Africans who lived in kingdoms or other larger societal structures were perfectly able to put up a fight. The only reason Africa didn't show up regularly in European conception of "world powers" is because the continent is separated from Europe by one of the most impassable geographic features in the world, the Sahara Desert. To the Europeans of this era, the enormous and quite sophisticated African nations were mostly relevant as trade partners - due to enormous amounts of gold and slaves available. It's obviously a terrible thing to think about, but it's important to remember that the Europeans didn't really take many slaves in Africa. Rather, it was large and powerful African nations that traded the slaves for gold, guns, other weapons and luxury items. Which goes a long way towards defeating the stereotype that Africa was "just a bunch of disorganized savages the Europeans could invade at will", which is unfortunately exactly what the current build of EU4 is portraying.
Putting the Sub-Saharans on par with Indians or the Chinese also makes sense from the perspective that the Europeans started conquering lands from both Africa and the Malayans and Indians at virtually the same time due to relatively recent progress in naval technology and improved guns, which allowed massive European ships - practically floating fortresses - to show up anywhere in the world, en masse. Some areas were still harder to conquer than others due to various reasons, of course. Most importantly, some areas were far more profitable than others, partly due to attrition and trouble with the locals. This all went on rather later in the game - in fact, the new tech level malus will probably allow the African nations to keep up with the Europeans to enough of an extent that they will start falling behind around the time they did historically. It will also allow for a MUCH more interesting gameplay from the perspective of both European and African starts.
I'm really excited to see EU4 make this important change I've been pining for for a while.
Edit: By the way, the reason Europe developed naval technology so early and at the rate that they did is plainly obvious if you look at a world map. Europe easiest has the largest coastline-to-size ratio of any other continent due to massive inland seas which allowed people to travel enormous distances extremely easily. This allowed for trade routes that led directly to the development of Egyptian and Greek civilizations, allowed the Roman Empire to even exist (due to its massive capacity for grain imports), allowed the entire Viking era to be a thing, all of which led up to the Europe we know from Europa Universalis - Venice, Ottoman Greece, Spain, England and France all being massive naval powers. European history is almost defined entirely by naval history (plus mass migrations from Asia, but that's a CK2:Charlemagne thread.).
Putting the Sub-Saharans on par with Indians or the Chinese also makes sense from the perspective that the Europeans started conquering lands from both Africa and the Malayans and Indians at virtually the same time due to relatively recent progress in naval technology and improved guns, which allowed massive European ships - practically floating fortresses - to show up anywhere in the world, en masse. Some areas were still harder to conquer than others due to various reasons, of course. Most importantly, some areas were far more profitable than others, partly due to attrition and trouble with the locals. This all went on rather later in the game - in fact, the new tech level malus will probably allow the African nations to keep up with the Europeans to enough of an extent that they will start falling behind around the time they did historically. It will also allow for a MUCH more interesting gameplay from the perspective of both European and African starts.
I'm really excited to see EU4 make this important change I've been pining for for a while.
Edit: By the way, the reason Europe developed naval technology so early and at the rate that they did is plainly obvious if you look at a world map. Europe easiest has the largest coastline-to-size ratio of any other continent due to massive inland seas which allowed people to travel enormous distances extremely easily. This allowed for trade routes that led directly to the development of Egyptian and Greek civilizations, allowed the Roman Empire to even exist (due to its massive capacity for grain imports), allowed the entire Viking era to be a thing, all of which led up to the Europe we know from Europa Universalis - Venice, Ottoman Greece, Spain, England and France all being massive naval powers. European history is almost defined entirely by naval history (plus mass migrations from Asia, but that's a CK2:Charlemagne thread.).
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Colonization is a more reasonable suggestion because colonization is literally the only thing that the many regions of "SS-Africa" (read: the vast majority of the inhabitable portion of the continent) have in common with each other. There's also the fact that historians have documented over and over again how imperialism destroys nations and people, while all this cultural inferiority nonsense is antiquated Western propaganda designed to justify imperialism. There's no basis to it.
And speaking of basis, you're still dodging the many examples of historically strong African states. The Ashanti Empire stood for roughly two hundred years before colonialism brought it down by literally pointing guns at it (bullets only work on people who don't understand the concept of a nation state, amiright?), and when Thomas Bowdich wrote about his experiences in the country, the state of the nation was so far above British preconceptions of Africa (read: racism) that they assumed he was lying.
And on a side note, saying that the Africans can be noble as any race is ridiculous because you're implicitly saying that races can even have nobility. Europeans decided to arbitrarily categorize people based on certain characteristics (mostly melanin) and not others, and they decided to discriminate based on race to make it easier to justify imperialism, but there is no scientific (and especially not genetic) basis for the concept of race, and the European version of the concept only popped up around the 1600s.
Wow that Ashanti Kingdom looked awesome, it even had matrilineal nobility and a leader queen that led her people against the evil britishmen
Oh wow.
Tech best measures what happened in these nation groups.
Unless you want tech to be called a freedom/liberty index.
This is what europe excelled in for its own citizens, freedom from religion and the state relative to other parts of the globe.
A strong consistent legal system and strong private property rights, allowing for pursuit of science or commerce without interference. This is the kickstarter for progress.
property rights also leads to the conclusion that slavery and serfdom is wrong. This pushes up production cost, pushing people to search for alternatives(capital)
Blame bad customs, bad belief systems, weak legal systems, non-existent private property rights, not IQ.
Tech best measures what happened in these nation groups.
Unless you want tech to be called a freedom/liberty index.
This is what europe excelled in for its own citizens, freedom from religion and the state relative to other parts of the globe.
A strong consistent legal system and strong private property rights, allowing for pursuit of science or commerce without interference. This is the kickstarter for progress.
property rights also leads to the conclusion that slavery and serfdom is wrong. This pushes up production cost, pushing people to search for alternatives(capital)
Blame bad customs, bad belief systems, weak legal systems, non-existent private property rights, not IQ.
Most of these were also true of Europe in 1444. Beginning to progress past those was one of the first "step ahead" Europe took (and even then it was gruelingly slow progress).
That said, again, given what happened during the era (whatever the reason), a tech penalty make sense. Modelling why is very difficult as we have many various competing theories as to why;w but what remain unquestionable is that it did happen.
That said, again, given what happened during the era (whatever the reason), a tech penalty make sense. Modelling why is very difficult as we have many various competing theories as to why;w but what remain unquestionable is that it did happen.
You might not need to westernize period if it's only a 60% tech increase. You can keep up with western Europe in military tech at a 60% tech increase (as I'm sure you know), so it honestly sounds pretty alright now.
While you don't need to, the relative proximity and access to tactics that let you snag cores early make it seem quite worthwhile.
East Asia arguably had a better history of freedom from religion since they didn't require people to believe in one religion (European religious freedom also involved a lot of killing people who disagreed with your idea of freedom), the rise of the merchant class and property rights actually led to the expansion of European slavery (plantation system, anyone?), and China played the consistent legal system game like a boss.
Several things,
First, Africa should be represented by the tribes, so instead of blank province there should be an actual country. There should be a terrain modifier that accounts for disease. So if you try to colonize the interior of Africa you really suffer and its expensive. I think that the problem is that there are too many places where the colonizing countries settle too early. West Africa should be super difficult to colonize, but instead there should be trade missions set up, or a sort of protectorate of a tribe and then you gain the resource such as slaves. Europeans did't really settle Africa so much as they extracted wealth from it. Obviously there are places where euros lived such as Cape, Kenya, the islands like sao tome, cape verde, Mauritius, and so on. I just think that it should be more like sphere of influence and construction of a fort in Africa to extract the wealth. Then when slave trading gets activated it weakens the respective tribes and it becomes easier for euros to colonize.
Really the whole Atlantic slave trade and its dynamics need to be completely remodeled, they were one of the largest influences on colonization of n, central, and s america.
First, Africa should be represented by the tribes, so instead of blank province there should be an actual country. There should be a terrain modifier that accounts for disease. So if you try to colonize the interior of Africa you really suffer and its expensive. I think that the problem is that there are too many places where the colonizing countries settle too early. West Africa should be super difficult to colonize, but instead there should be trade missions set up, or a sort of protectorate of a tribe and then you gain the resource such as slaves. Europeans did't really settle Africa so much as they extracted wealth from it. Obviously there are places where euros lived such as Cape, Kenya, the islands like sao tome, cape verde, Mauritius, and so on. I just think that it should be more like sphere of influence and construction of a fort in Africa to extract the wealth. Then when slave trading gets activated it weakens the respective tribes and it becomes easier for euros to colonize.
Really the whole Atlantic slave trade and its dynamics need to be completely remodeled, they were one of the largest influences on colonization of n, central, and s america.