Now that the dust has settled, was the Scramble of Africa a mistake?
>>18491717this world was a mistake.
>>18491717From a grand view of history, yeah. Almost no one made a profit out of it outside of a few individuals like Cecil Rhodes nor did their state military capabilities improve and it greatly increased the chances of war between European powers. Almost two close call incidents that almost led to the First World War breaking out happened because of African colonies. It also kind of led to the concept of a global black consciousness existing. If the native African kingdoms from the slave trade still existed thanks to not being colonized, I don't think black solidarity would even exist as strongly as today. I think you already know why the scramble wasn't worth it for Africans themselves just laying out the European case against it.
>>18491743All the fortunes of the second industrial revolution came from cheap resources and captive markets in the colonies. It cost the colonial powers in one sense, they spent tax money on sending out navies and armies to colonize the world, and the state did not get a return on that in terms of taxable income from the colonies. In some sense it represented a way to take money from the working people of the metropole and transfer it to the wealthy people of the metropole, more than it was a transfer of wealth from all classes of people in the colonies to the wealthy people metropole, but both were taking place. They only stopped doing it like that because it was more efficient for the 'western' powers (former imperial powers almost all of them) to corporatize the whole system. By that time the local elites were all 'educated' anyway. Cecil Rhodes IS a good example of someone who managed to make their money and even pay back into the system without costing the taxpayer or the state much on their end.
