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Sagot :
Answer:
OK, so we have a hypothetical Africa in the modern day where colonialism never happened. Let’s for the sake of argument say European colonialism and not the Islamic kind.
So first of all; why? What circumstance leads Europeans not to colonize? Your choices are couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Couldn’t could be because they were technologically incapable of doing so (as was the case for large parts of Africa until the late 19th century due to the “disease barrier”) and wouldn’t because they made a moral decision not to. Each scenario has very different implications.
If its “wouldn’t” and we posit a Europe that managed to collectively agree not to occupy, exploit or settle Africa (which I find mind-boggingly unlikely but never mind); so Africa was given a free reign to develop itself, then:
There are likely to be a couple of dominant nations (or regional groupings) in Southern and Western Africa who dominate the economic and military make up of the continent. This is mainly a simple matter of resources; most African coal and iron deposits are in South Africa/Botswana/Zimbabwe with smaller deposits in Nigeria/West Africa. Of course Nigeria has huge oil deposits but they wouldn’t be in play during the early stages of “non-colonialism”. Without coal and iron close together, industrialization is extremely unlikely to happen (add in the third factor of convenient waterways as well). We can assume Africans learn of European methods of industrialization but without iron and coal its not going to matter that much, because there won’t be any examples of industry building that don’t follow this pattern to build on. This all assumes some kind of evolving polity that wants to industrialize, which isn’t a given, but for the sake of argument think Meiji Japan, and a healthy degree of paranoia about altruistic Europeans who aren’t behaving rationally by the standards of largely feudal Bantu states. There are still a huge number of “ifs” here (can an industrializing Africa trade in finished goods and raw materials to Europe and Asia? How? What kind of shipping and military needs to evolve? Would a proto-industrial state import expertese to create all this stuff like Russia did? Would a financial model evolve independently or are we assuming adoption of European-style banking and financial markets? All of these things have to be created somehow).
So if we assume an industrializing power in say, northern South Africa, its going to spread into other lower population territories for farm land and resources (as happened anyway; the great Bantu migrations were moving into South Africa at the same time as the Dutch started moving north and east from The Cape); and yes,hunter-gatherers like the Khoisan would be pushed aside or wiped out. Possibly even decimated by disease.
Africa won’t be divided by arbitrary European divisions, but it won’t be a million little tribal enclaves either. Human history simply doesn’t work this way. If it did, England would still be five countries instead of one part of a larger one. The dominant industrial powers could end up dominating a lot of other tribes and territories. I make no claims for the form of that domination.
Africa’s raw materials resources would make more money for Africans, but that doesn’t mean all Africans. There’s nothing in African history to suggest socialist or egalitarian traits; while Africa would definitely done a lot better trading with the rest of the world as equals, its very difficult to say whether the average African would have seen the benefits. In some areas, definitely, but in others, not so much.
Christianity wouldn’t be (as much of ) a thing. If Europeans aren’t bringing the Bible at gunpoint, then missionaries would have had to do all the work; and the reality is they weren’t making massive inroads in terms of conversions until the Europeans literally occupied the whole continent. There were Christians in Egypt and Ethiopia but almost everywhere else Christianisation wasn’t a thing once you got 50 miles inland from the coast until after Europeans took over. Islam was FAR more successful in Africa until the late 1800s. Without colonialism Africa still might have some very interesting religious beliefs floating about.
So what about the “couldn’t” scenario? This to a certain extent is the more realistic option, but it posits a less technologically advanced Europe who haven’t figured out some pretty key stuff, like how to build long-distance shipping, or economics. In this scenario Europe is still effectively in the 14th century (at best) and in that case, we know what Africa would look like; pretty much as it did back then.
Explanation:
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