[Potemkin]

I have to ask but before the deplorable acts committed by colonialists, was there much peace in the region before ?

The truth is, nobody really knows. My guess is, not.

[mikema63]

Africa is largely, and will likely remain for a long time, a monument to shitholes everywhere.

[The Immortal Goon]

Congo was fucking awesome before the Europeans arrived. And really, even for a while after they did.

They actually had a power structure that was similar to that of the Europeans did. When the first European, a missionary, ran across the Kingdom of Kongo, they were pretty quick about figuring everything out about each other. The Portuguese and Kongo exchanged nobility and, eventually joined the Catholic Church after Alfonso had a Constantine-like victory over his rivals.

They even had a Protestant Reformation unconnected with that in Europe.

It was slavery that broke them. While they were initially fine selling slaves, the Europeans ceased recognizing the nobility and whatnot and any black was just black. After that there were more power grabs, a long series of wars with various different Europeans to go in there and break them in several ways, civil wars, but they did comparatively okay until the Berlin Conference when Europe decided that Portugal should have it. And then Belgium.

Then Roger Casement went in there, roomed with Conrad and gave him some ideas about a book while he exposed everything and was knighted for his work; then Casement went to Brazil and was called a little crazy because he found that companies were treating the natives in much the same way the Belgian monarchy had treated the natives in Africa and British companies were generally okay with the British government; and then he decided that the whole colonialism thing was fucked so he tried to help the Irish get independence (arguably helping to start the IRA) and then he was smeared as being gay (rightly or wrongly) and killed.

Making Roger Casement, the only person I can think of, that's a hero to Africans, Irishmen, and homosexuals.

[Rich]

I have to ask but before the deplorable acts committed by colonialists, was there much peace in the region before ?

It was pretty bad! There was no right to a gay marriage. Wheel chair access was limited and access to higher education can be best described as patchy.

[Potemkin]

It was pretty bad! There was no right to a gay marriage. Wheel chair access was limited and access to higher education can be best described as patchy.

The horror... the horror...!

[KlassWar]

I know this may sound imperialist but I think another (marginally) more stable African nation like Angola should annex DRC.

The DRC is too big and too messy for anyone to annex: There's no African country that can absorb that vast sea of utter chaos and not collapse immediately. If it was an option at all, they'd probably have reunified Congo already, putting it under the control of the saner and much more competent Brazzaville authorities.

the DRC has vast resources it could nationalize and fertile ground that could be used to feed the rest of Africa.
It'd be a waste to throw all that away.

Unless somehow there's a socialist revolution in Congo, ain't no fixing that place.

[SE23]

[It was pretty bad! There was no right to a gay marriage. Wheel chair access was limited and access to higher education can be best described as patchy.

Sounds like my idea of heaven !!

[layman]

500 years of colonialism

No this is misleading. Only very small parts of the African coast were colonised before the big push in the 19th century.

The taking of slaves might be what you are refering too. This would have little effect on their way of life though, other than stripping them of human capital of course.

[SE23]

From my understanding, the continent was rife with slavery before colonialism. The Europeans simply utilized it more and made better profit.

[fuser]

If we are talking about Congo, its just downright stupid to think that pre leopold era and leopold era were just same. This is just insane, if it had been same and leopold era just the normal continuation, there wouldn't had any people left in the Congo, seriously. That much death and destruction the Belgiun king brought upon Congo, its just unprecedented.

[KlassWar]

From my understanding, the continent was rife with slavery before colonialism. The Europeans simply utilized it more and made better profit.

Yes, chattel slavery was pervasive in subsaharan africa to begin with: Slaves were captured in raids, bought and sold and so on... But the whole slaving biz was more or less contained by the demand for slaves in the regional slave markets, which can actually be quite limited. By and large, warlords don't spend resources raising warbands to capture slaves they figure out they won't sell. Typical African kingdoms might have a few million people and a few tens of thousands or hundred thousand slaves.

Cue the Islamic and European slave trades: Large nations with vast populations and vast riches from the massive plunder from their nascent empires (the colonization of the Americas, Islam spreading East as far out as Malaysia) need slaves, and they establish a truly global slave trade. Suddenly there is a demand for tens of millions of slaves: The result is insanity, pure and simple. Entire economies in coastal Africa came to rely on industrial-scale slave raiding. This destroyed entire African peoples, shattered tribes, emptied the land of productive people and further entrenched tribal hatreds. Slavers' devastation of Africa went on to do its nasty work for centuries, and when the industrial revolution resulted in the formal abolition of chattel slavery and its trade, when Africa might have started to recover, the Scramble for Africa began, fucking up the whole continent all over again.

[Gletkin]

I remember reading articles claiming that the seeming "chaos" was actually the rise of "authentic African nationalism".

Africans may have rebelled against and won their independence from the Europeans, but it was the Europeans who drew their borders and these first-generation African nationalists preserved these borders even though they were drawn chiefly for the European empires' benefit and not according to pre-existing ethnic homelands in Africa.

Since the '90s it seemed to outsiders that Central Africa's been engulfed in bewildering combinations of civil and international wars. But "African experts" are claiming that the old alliances and rivalries that preceded the arrival of the Whites are remanifesting themselves.

[Kilwa]

From my understanding, the continent was rife with slavery before colonialism. The Europeans simply utilized it more and made better profit.

Fake, read about the slave defense walls in Ghana, (Gwollu and Nareligu). Africa is the biggest continent after Asia and you are only showing your ignorance generalizing. Well, however I don't expect an American to understand, you don't even can tell me 5 different architectural stiles of 5 different Afican kingdoms. I take for granted that you know shit