\
  The most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world.
BackRefresh Options Favorite

Imagine Africa today if colonialism never ended. 180 place?

I think so, I think so.
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
This
multi-colored lime people who are hurt potus
  10/29/13
SPS India was SPS with or without the British.
Mischievous locale pocket flask
  10/29/13
What does this have to do with my OP? India is a SPS place w...
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
My point is that, given a SPS population, colonization will ...
Mischievous locale pocket flask
  10/29/13
It looked pretty wonderful at the end of the colonial period...
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
I'm not sure which part you are referring to, my friend.
Mischievous locale pocket flask
  10/29/13
british brought them an ounce of civilization at least. and ...
provocative bossy pit ratface
  11/18/17
British also sucked out a lot of natural resources. The Brit...
razzle-dazzle puppy hall
  11/18/17
and? They'd still be better off
Cerebral chrome point
  11/18/17
Fuck off Ranjeet
fuchsia crackhouse
  12/15/19
Ah, Ethiopia and Liberia! Bastions of modernity!
Amethyst marvelous indirect expression
  10/29/13
American slaves return to Africa to govern themselves...100 ...
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
lol @ "themselves." american slaves returned and b...
Jade Laser Beams
  10/29/13
The point is, when they had the power they created an utterl...
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
sure, it's a shithole. just saying "they" is two g...
Jade Laser Beams
  10/29/13
"this "nation" was kind of doomed to fail, wo...
dashing milky marketing idea fortuitous meteor
  10/29/13
americans and native americans is a more analogous situation...
Jade Laser Beams
  10/29/13
lols what a joker. First, Native Americans are only &quo...
dashing milky marketing idea fortuitous meteor
  10/29/13
fucked relative to other Americans is the relevant scope. ev...
Jade Laser Beams
  10/30/13
a bunch of uneducated psychologically traumatized people fro...
Laughsome knife tattoo
  10/29/13
South Africa was 180 when the whites were running the place....
fighting slate ceo range
  10/29/13
I wish I could have gone to S.Africa before if became necess...
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
My parents took me in '88. It was fucking paradise man.
fighting slate ceo range
  10/29/13
bastard
Submissive elite senate
  10/29/13
It was 180 for whites duh. Remember the economy is not ba...
ungodly forum cuck
  10/30/13
colonialism, in most cases, was a net drain for the colonial...
Jade Laser Beams
  10/29/13
of course they would. They're all completely helpless on the...
Cerebral chrome point
  11/18/17
Picture of Mogadishu, circa 2013, under colonial rule: ht...
effete idiotic karate space
  10/29/13
fucking lol
Mischievous locale pocket flask
  10/29/13
colonial rule by the protoss
Jade Laser Beams
  10/29/13
...
Plum Native Newt
  11/01/13
...
naked stag film
  11/01/13
...
thriller police squad elastic band
  10/29/13
...
Supple cruel-hearted library
  10/30/13
we must embrace that fact that we are like the sith and that...
Hot dark voyeur
  10/30/13
looks like Chandrila from Rogue Squadron
Hairraiser Orchid Church Really Tough Guy
  11/01/13
*Colonizes a peaceful segment of Africa's population* *en...
Laughsome knife tattoo
  10/29/13
Oh? Africa was a peaceful paradise where everyone lived in p...
floppy nowag
  10/29/13
cr. The idiotic excuses libs make for blacks are hilarious
Mint hospital sneaky criminal
  10/29/13
...
provocative bossy pit ratface
  11/05/15
"Bastardized western justice? Like corruption, tribal w...
opaque temple useless brakes
  10/29/13
DIN DO NUTHIN
fuchsia crackhouse
  12/15/19
it would literally be like an Epcot ride or something
Pale Orchestra Pit Mad Cow Disease
  10/29/13
We'll start with the worst. Or after it, anyway. Our case st...
Plum Native Newt
  10/29/13
180
provocative bossy pit ratface
  10/29/13
"There are no schools here, no clinics, no electricity,...
Hot dark voyeur
  10/30/13
Fuck, being a white colonial back then must have been 180^18...
Grizzly Factory Reset Button
  10/30/13
You must be the dweeby 3l sitting by himself in the cafeteri...
ungodly forum cuck
  11/01/13
seems like you're reading a lot into his offhand comment
Plum Native Newt
  11/01/13
"We should just give it all back to the whites," t...
Cerebral chrome point
  11/18/17
...
Plum Native Newt
  10/29/13
100% yes
provocative bossy pit ratface
  10/29/13
for everyone but the africans
cobalt stead kitty cat
  11/01/13
http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&foru...
Plum Native Newt
  11/01/13
Having roads, potable water, no malaria and electricity soun...
fuchsia crackhouse
  12/15/19
multiply the westgate mall disaster by whatever exponent. ...
violent excitant trailer park candlestick maker
  11/01/13
It'd be nice to go for a boat trip up the Congo without havi...
vivacious sticky set
  11/01/13
...
Frisky weed whacker electric furnace
  11/05/15
...
Cerebral chrome point
  11/18/17
Almost certainly - especially in places like Rhodesia and th...
Mind-boggling personal credit line
  11/18/17


Poast new message in this thread



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:35 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

I think so, I think so.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327914)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:37 AM
Author: multi-colored lime people who are hurt potus

This

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327928)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:37 AM
Author: Mischievous locale pocket flask

SPS

India was SPS with or without the British.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327930)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:39 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

What does this have to do with my OP? India is a SPS place with 5 billion turdskins jammed on top of each other. Africa is a continent of unrivaled natural beauty that could be 180 if it was being run by colonialists who built infrastructure and maintained stability.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327947)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:44 AM
Author: Mischievous locale pocket flask

My point is that, given a SPS population, colonization will not render the land magically wonderful.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327966)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:44 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

It looked pretty wonderful at the end of the colonial period. The only thing keeping the continent remotely functional now is the broken down remnants of colonial infrastructure.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327972)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:45 AM
Author: Mischievous locale pocket flask

I'm not sure which part you are referring to, my friend.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327978)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 9:57 PM
Author: provocative bossy pit ratface

british brought them an ounce of civilization at least. and they were beneficent about it. ingrates.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720445)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 10:00 PM
Author: razzle-dazzle puppy hall

British also sucked out a lot of natural resources. The British Empire was not free. They took more in taxes than gave out in benefits. Even the much touted infrastructure like railroads and the civil service was for the British to efficiently take out resources from deep inside the Indian hinterland and move it to ports at Calcutta, Karachi, and Bombay.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720460)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 10:15 PM
Author: Cerebral chrome point

and? They'd still be better off

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720533)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 15th, 2019 6:06 AM
Author: fuchsia crackhouse

Fuck off Ranjeet

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#39267618)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:38 AM
Author: Amethyst marvelous indirect expression

Ah, Ethiopia and Liberia! Bastions of modernity!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327932)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:40 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

American slaves return to Africa to govern themselves...100 years of bloodshed and instability follows. LOL!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327951)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:50 AM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

lol @ "themselves." american slaves returned and basically oppressed the natives as badly as any other conqueror would.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327994)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:51 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

The point is, when they had the power they created an utterly SPS place that was in civil war for decades.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327999)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:58 AM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

sure, it's a shithole. just saying "they" is two groups. one group of self-interested americo-liberian rulers who didn't give a shit about the natives and wanted to enrich themselves from the very beginning. this "nation" was kind of doomed to fail, wouldn't you say?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328031)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:10 AM
Author: dashing milky marketing idea fortuitous meteor

"this "nation" was kind of doomed to fail, wouldn't you say?"

Not true at all. Was America doomed as a "nation" because one group (british) didnt give a shit about the natives and wanted to enrich themselves from the very beginning?

Every current nation has the same tale of one group coming over and oppressing the shit out of whoever was there before for their own benefit. The difference is that for the ones that are now developed and rich, the "group", which didnt give a shit, still built infastructure and proper governance because they realized that is how they could profit the most. The ex-slaves were too stupid and short-sighted to realize this.



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328106)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:47 AM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

americans and native americans is a more analogous situation.

brits come to america. pwn the shit out of non-united native americans (including some actual enslavement) with the support of britain. native americans: fucked for 100+ years

americo-liberians go to liberia and pwn the shit out of non-united native africans (including some actual enslavement) with the support of america. native africans: fucked for 100+ years

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328228)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 1:29 PM
Author: dashing milky marketing idea fortuitous meteor

lols what a joker.

First, Native Americans are only "fucked" in a relative sense to other Americans. Compared to the rest of the world they are doing just fine. The same cannot be said of native africans.

Second, even the americo-liberians are now living like shit. So they came there, oppressed the shit out of the populace, and then were to stupid to actually build a sustainable nation. Thus proving the OP's point.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328673)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 6:56 PM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

fucked relative to other Americans is the relevant scope. even so, native americans were objectively fucked for 100+ years (notice the -ed)

the americo-liberians ruled the country like shit. show me where in this thread where i said they were smart or competent rulers.

the only point that i made was that liberia started as a sham "nation" from the very beginning. there was an arbitrary line drawn around people who resented each other. and then they had many years of civil war. big surprise. then we post things like: "American slaves return to Africa to govern themselves...100 years of bloodshed and instability follows. LOL!"



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24337220)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:56 AM
Author: Laughsome knife tattoo

a bunch of uneducated psychologically traumatized people from random tribes try to run a government and fail, big surprise

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328017)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:44 AM
Author: fighting slate ceo range

South Africa was 180 when the whites were running the place.

Fucking Nelson Mandela.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327969)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:45 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

I wish I could have gone to S.Africa before if became necessary to live behind 15 foot walls with electrocuted fences and armed guards.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327974)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:56 AM
Author: fighting slate ceo range

My parents took me in '88. It was fucking paradise man.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328016)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:57 AM
Author: Submissive elite senate

bastard

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328024)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 11:09 AM
Author: ungodly forum cuck

It was 180 for whites duh.

Remember the economy is not based on ingenuity but mining royalties. When you are 10% of the population and almost all of the revenue from the mines of course life is going to be 180.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24335121)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:45 AM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

colonialism, in most cases, was a net drain for the colonial powers. the colonies would probably be better off economically if they were still colonies.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24327975)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 10:03 PM
Author: Cerebral chrome point

of course they would. They're all completely helpless on their own.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720472)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:53 AM
Author: effete idiotic karate space

Picture of Mogadishu, circa 2013, under colonial rule:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110205225047/future/images/9/9a/Billings.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328007)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 10:59 AM
Author: Mischievous locale pocket flask

fucking lol

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328042)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:00 AM
Author: Jade Laser Beams

colonial rule by the protoss

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328045)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 1:59 AM
Author: Plum Native Newt



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346847)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:54 AM
Author: naked stag film



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24347043)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:41 AM
Author: thriller police squad elastic band



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328211)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 11:18 AM
Author: Supple cruel-hearted library



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24335149)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 7:12 PM
Author: Hot dark voyeur

we must embrace that fact that we are like the sith and that is a good thing most of the time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24337275)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:08 AM
Author: Hairraiser Orchid Church Really Tough Guy

looks like Chandrila from Rogue Squadron

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346886)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:05 AM
Author: Laughsome knife tattoo

*Colonizes a peaceful segment of Africa's population*

*enslaves errbody and systematically turns ethnic groups* against each other

*rapes the country of valuble natural resources*

*puts in place a system of bastardized western justice*

*leaves country*

*surprised when it can't stand on it's own*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328074)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:21 AM
Author: floppy nowag

Oh? Africa was a peaceful paradise where everyone lived in perfect harmony before the Europeans came?

I gather there were no racial/ethnic tensions in Africa prior to the Europeans?

What valuable natural resources? True, there's the gold mines of SA but otherwise all the promised natural resources didn't pan out due to transportation and extraction logistics. It's taken another 100 years and the Chinese before Africa has finally been able to rape itself of valuable natural resources.

Bastardized western justice? Like corruption, tribal warfare, religious warfare....



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328157)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:23 AM
Author: Mint hospital sneaky criminal

cr. The idiotic excuses libs make for blacks are hilarious

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328165)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 5th, 2015 7:23 AM
Author: provocative bossy pit ratface



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#29114883)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:37 AM
Author: opaque temple useless brakes

"Bastardized western justice? Like corruption, tribal warfare, religious warfare...."

There was plenty of that in Europe

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328194)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 15th, 2019 6:10 AM
Author: fuchsia crackhouse

DIN DO NUTHIN

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#39267620)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:27 AM
Author: Pale Orchestra Pit Mad Cow Disease

it would literally be like an Epcot ride or something

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24328175)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 7:16 PM
Author: Plum Native Newt

We'll start with the worst. Or after it, anyway. Our case study in colonialism: the Belgian Congo, aka Zaire. There is no defending the Congo Free State - but 1960 minus 1908 is quite some time. Observe the sinuosity with which this propagandist redacts an inconvenient half-century:

Government as a system of organized theft goes back to King Leopold II, who made a fortune [in the Congo] equal to well over $1.1 billion in today's money, chiefly in rubber and ivory. Then for fifty-two years this was a Belgian colony, run less rapaciously, but still mainly for the purpose—as with colonies almost everywhere—of extracting wealth for the mother country and its corporations. The grand tradition was continued by Mobutu Sese Seko...

In other words: skip from Leopold to Mobutu as fast as possible, noting only that the Congo under Belgian administration was... gasp... profitable. Sacre bleu! Another of those nitroglycerines, nurse - I think my heart just skipped a whole bar. Profitable government! Why, it's practically a second Holocaust.

And what did this astonishing crime against humanity involve? Let us consult our favorite source - the New York Times. From 1991:

Nearly a century ago, when the first Europeans ventured into Zaire's vast interior, Kikwit was a small village whose people and institutions existed in a quiet, self-contained world wholly uninterrupted by the frenetic rhythms of modernity.

The village gradually disappeared as a social and cultural force as Belgium, Zaire's colonial ruler, exploited the region's mineral and agricultural wealth, transforming Kikwit into a provincial trading center. A paved highway was built to speed diesel trucks hauling cassava and corn to other regions.

While the Belgians were often consummately patronizing to their African subjects, they installed an efficient colonial administration. In time, they introduced health care, water projects, education, telephones and power lines, helping to turn this once isolated village into one of the most affluent and best-tended cities in the core of equatorial Africa.

Today, the legacy of Kikwit's colonial past is swiftly disappearing.

"Civilization is coming to an end here," said Rene Kinsweke, manager of Siefac, a chain of food stores, as he spoke of how Kikwit has become a dispiriting tableau of chaos and catastrophe. "We're back where we started. We're going back into the bush."

It is difficult to exaggerate the dizzying pace of decay in this city of nearly 400,000 people. Six months ago, the Siefac food conglomerate consisted of 21 stores in Bandundu Province. Today, a single store is left, and it is to close as soon as its remaining stock is sold, Mr. Kinsweke said.

The main road to Kikwit is now rutted and crumbled, and for most of the year the city can be reached from Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, only by a four-wheel-drive vehicle. In 1960, when Zaire gained independence, a visitor could drive the 300 miles in six hours. Today the same drive takes at least 10 hours.

Elsewhere in town, squatters have moved into homes that once belonged to the Belgian colonials. Entire families now camp on sidewalks, in parks and even in cemeteries. Streets and backyards are littered with indescribable filth, and toward the edges of the city the roads crumble into dirty sand and then disappear altogether. Rats and flies are breeding as never before, adding to critical sanitation and hygiene problems.

It is at night, though, that Kikwit's seemingly inexorable roll toward ruin is felt the strongest. The sky of this sprawling city is lit with exactly two street lights, one for each of the city's remaining nightclubs. Aside from private generators, there is no electricity; nor is there running water. The postal, telex and telephone offices have been on strike for months, and no one seems able to recall when the regional radio station made its last broadcast.

Since 1991, of course, the Congo has made a dramatic turnaround. Not! But at least no one is "consummately patronizing" the Congolese, or "exploiting" their "mineral and agricultural wealth." At least, no one white. As for the "frenetic modernity," perhaps the next Ebola epidemic will get Kikwit back to that "quiet, self-contained world." More cake, Mrs. Antoinette?

And how do the Congolese themselves feel about this victory of social justice? That infamous hotbed of reactionary imperialism, Time magazine, tells us:

Come Back, Colonialism, All Is Forgiven

Le Blanc and I are into our 500th kilometer on the river when he turns my view of modern African history on its head. "We should just give it all back to the whites," the riverboat captain says. "Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won't see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn't just stay where we were. We went backwards."

Of course, we learn "Le Blanc" is actually... part-white. So maybe he's just another exploiter:

Le Blanc earns his keep sailing the tributaries of the Congo River. He's 40 years old, and his real name is Malu-Ebonga Charles — he got his nickname, and his green eyes and dark honey skin, from a German grandfather who married a Congolese woman in what was then the Belgian Congo. If his unconventional genealogy gave him a unique view of the Congo's colonial past, it is his job on the river, piloting three dugouts lashed together with twine and mounted with outboards, that has informed his opinion of the Democratic Republic of Congo's present. "The river is the artery of Congo's economy," he says. "When the Belgians and the Portuguese were here, there were farms and plantations — cashews, peanuts, rubber, palm oil. There was industry and factories employing 3,000 people, 5,000 people. But since independence, no Congolese has succeeded. The plantations are abandoned." Using a French expression literally translated as "on the ground," he adds: "Everything is par terre."

It's true that our journey through 643 kilometers of rainforest to where the Maringa River joins the Congo at Mbandaka, has been an exploration of decline. An abandoned tugboat here; there, a beached paddle steamer stripped of its metal sides to a rusted skeleton; several abandoned palm oil factories, their roofs caved in, their walls disappearing into the engulfing forest, their giant storage tanks empty and rusted out. The palms now grow wild and untended on the riverbanks and in the villages we pass, the people dress in rags, hawk smoked blackfish and bushmeat, and besiege us with requests for salt or soap. There are no schools here, no clinics, no electricity, no roads. It can take a year for basic necessities ordered from the capital, Kinshasa, nearly 2,000 kilometers downstream, to make it here — if they make it at all. At one point we pass a cargo barge that has taken three months to travel the same distance we will cover in two days. We stop in the hope of buying some gasoline, but all we get from the vessel are rats.

Even amid the morbid decay, it comes as a shock to hear Le Blanc mourn colonialism. The venal, racist scramble by Europeans to possess Africa and exploit its resources found its fullest expression in the Congo. In the late 19th century, Belgium's King Leopold made a personal fiefdom of the central African territory as large as all of Western Europe. From it, he extracted a fortune in ivory, rubber, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and minerals such as gold and diamonds. Unruly laborers working in conditions of de facto slavery had their hands chopped off; the cruelty of Belgian rule was premised on the idea that Congo and its peoples were a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible. Leopold's absentee brutality set the tone for those that followed him in ruling the Congo — successive Belgian governments and even the independent government of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled from 1965 to 1997 and who, in a crowded field, still sets the standard for repression and corruption among African despots.

Observe the Jedi mind tricks again, as our journalist skips straight from Leopold to Mobutu. Obviously, nothing interesting could have happened in the Congo between 1908 and 1960.

Or could it? We set our time machine for 1955, and see...

In the Belgian Congo last week massed tom-tom drummers practiced a welcome tattoo. Prosperous Negro shopkeepers climbed up wooden ladders and draped the Congolese flag (a golden star on a blue field) from lampposts and triumphal arches set up along Boulevard Albert I, the spanking concrete highway that bisects the capital city of Leopoldville. In far-off mission churches, encircled by the rain forest that stretches through Belgian territory from the Atlantic to the Mountains of the Moon, choirs of Bantu children rehearsed the Te Deum. African regiments drilled, jazz bands blared in the bush, and on the great brown river that drains the middle of the continent Negro captains tooted the raucous steam whistles on their swiftly gliding paddle boats.

The toots and Te Deums were all in preparation for the arrival this week of the slim, spectacled young man who is King of the Belgians and, as such, the sovereign lord of 14 million Congolese. It will be his first state visit to his African Empire.

The Congo is King Baudouin's richest, widest realm. It is eighty times the size of the mother country, and half again as populous. Booming Congo exports provide the dollars and pounds that make the Belgian franc one of the world's hardest currencies. Belgians drink Congo coffee, wear shirts made of Congo cotton, wash them with soap made from Congo palm kernels. Without the mighty Congo, little Belgium might go broke; with it, a nation of 9,000,000 still counts as a world empire.

To novelist Joseph Conrad, the Congo River was "an immense snake uncoiled" curving through "joyless sunshine into the heart of darkness." There was plenty of darkness in the Congo during the 19th-century "scramble for Africa," when Baudoin's great-granduncle, Leopold II, staked out his monarchical claim to the uncharted Congo Free State. Leopold's rubber gatherers tortured, maimed and slaughtered until at the turn of the century, the conscience of the Western world forced Brussels to call a halt.

Today, all has changed. Nowhere in Africa is the Bantu so well fed and housed, so productive and so content as he is in the Belgian Congo.

In little more than a generation of intense economic effort, the Belgians have injected 20 centuries of Western mechanical progress into a Stone Age wilderness. The results are staggering: in forests, where 50 years ago there were no roads because the wheel was unknown, no schools because there was no alphabet, no peace because there was neither the will nor the means to enforce it, the sons of cannibals now mine the raw materials of the Atomic Age.

Belgian brains and Bantu muscle have thrust back the forest and checked the dread diseases (yaws, sleeping sickness, malaria) which sapped the Bantu's strength. In some areas, the Congo's infant-mortality rate is down to 60 per 1,000—better than Italy's figure. More than 1,000,000 children attend primary and secondary schools—40% of the school-age population (compared with less than 10% in the French empire).

The Belgians taught the Bantu to run bulldozers, looms and furnaces, to rivet ships, drive taxis and trucks. Girls with grotesque tribal markings etched into their ebony foreheads sell in shops, teach in schools, nurse in hospitals. Already thousands of natives in the Congo's bustling cities earn $100-$150 a month —more than most workers in Europe, and small fortunes by African standards. They buy sewing machines, phonographs and bicycles in such profusion that Sears, Roebuck has recently put out a special Congo catalogue.

The Belgians compare the Congo with the state of Texas, though in fact the Congo is bigger and far richer in its natural resources. The Congo's gross national product has tripled since 1939. Money is plentiful. Belgian investors take more than $50 million a year in dividends alone. Once the Congo depended exclusively on mining and farming; today it manufactures ships, shoes, cigarettes, chemicals, explosives and photographic film. With its immense reserves of hydroelectric power (a fifth of the world's total), the Belgians expect the Congo to become "the processing plant for all Africa."

The Congo boom makes its cities grow like well-nourished bamboo shoots. In six years the Negro population of Elisabethville has jumped from 40,000 to 120,000, Costermansville from 7,000 to 25,000, Stanleyville from 25,000 to 48,000. But the pride of the Congo is Leopoldville (pop. 370,000), a bustling, modern metropolis that is spreading along the south bank of Stanley Pool (see map).

Leo, as the Belgians call it, has tripled its population in the past six years. Its 20,000 whites live apart in a suburb that seems far too big for them. There are broad, empty boulevards and a scattering of modern skyscrapers, but the buildings seem isolated amid the mango palms and yellow-flowered cassia trees where the red-tailed parrots roost. Many streets are unpaved and unlighted; in heavy rain they turn to quagmires. Leo's whites are mostly officials or highly trained business executives—managers, engineers, sales agents. They are a hardworking, hard-drinking crew, and they have plenty of money to spend on oysters, Scottish salmon and French wine, served in Leo's nightclubs. The Belgians drive American cars, particularly Buicks, and wear colorful combinations of sun helmet, khaki shirt, pink shorts, bright green woolen socks and beige suede shoes. "They have two kinds of conversation," gibes an English-born resident of Leo. "One is an offer, the other a counter-offer."

Adjoining "white Leo" is the teeming "native town," known to the Negroes as Le Beige. Without its 350,000 Africans, Leopoldville would crumble in the tropical sun. Each morning, thousands of Negroes bicycle into downtown Leo to work in the shipyards and offices. Evenings, they stream homeward to the jumble of shacks, tenements, modern homes and tastefully built hospitals that make up "black Leo." In the darkness, millions of candles glow under the mango trees where Negro market women do a roaring trade in bread, beer and dried fish, green-and-brown-striped caterpillars (a delicacy when fried in deep fat) and blackened lumps of elephant meat...

And the source? Time magazine. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The various colonial regimes were by no means perfect. But to assert that their average quality of government service was anything but far better than either their predecessors, or their successors, is a political distortion of history which I have no trouble at all in comparing to Holocaust denial. Far more people were murdered in decolonization and postcolonial violence than in the Holocaust. Moreover, only a few fringe nutcases deny the Holocaust - whereas anticolonialism is a core tenet of everyone's college education. Oops.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24330680)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:47 PM
Author: provocative bossy pit ratface

180

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24332968)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 7:10 PM
Author: Hot dark voyeur

"There are no schools here, no clinics, no electricity, no roads. It can take a year for basic necessities ordered from the capital, Kinshasa, nearly 2,000 kilometers downstream, to make it here — if they make it at all. "

This is a libertarian's dream. Let's tell them about this place, and perhaps they will all move there.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24337270)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 30th, 2013 9:18 PM
Author: Grizzly Factory Reset Button

Fuck, being a white colonial back then must have been 180^180

Any recommended non-shitlib reading on that time period in Africa (other than that article that was awesome)? Anytime I read about, say, British colonials in Kenya, it makes me nostalgic as fuck.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24337941)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:23 AM
Author: ungodly forum cuck

You must be the dweeby 3l sitting by himself in the cafeteria. Clearly you crave white prestige/superiority to make up for what is missing in your as an individual.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346923)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:27 AM
Author: Plum Native Newt

seems like you're reading a lot into his offhand comment

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346940)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 10:15 PM
Author: Cerebral chrome point

"We should just give it all back to the whites," the riverboat captain says. "Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won't see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn't just stay where we were. We went backwards."

XO Le Blanc

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720526)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:40 PM
Author: Plum Native Newt



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24332899)



Reply Favorite

Date: October 29th, 2013 11:44 PM
Author: provocative bossy pit ratface

100% yes

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24332943)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:00 AM
Author: cobalt stead kitty cat

for everyone but the africans

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346850)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 2:03 AM
Author: Plum Native Newt

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24330680

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24346862)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 15th, 2019 6:11 AM
Author: fuchsia crackhouse

Having roads, potable water, no malaria and electricity sounds like a positive. Not like they’re doing any better now that they’re “free”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#39267621)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 3:02 AM
Author: violent excitant trailer park candlestick maker

multiply the westgate mall disaster by whatever exponent.

africa would be a unified enemy of the west, despite its utter lack of unity.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24347088)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 1st, 2013 3:09 AM
Author: vivacious sticky set

It'd be nice to go for a boat trip up the Congo without having to worry about being decapitated and raped (probably in that order).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#24347119)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 5th, 2015 1:29 AM
Author: Frisky weed whacker electric furnace



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#29114426)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 9:51 PM
Author: Cerebral chrome point



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720418)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 18th, 2017 9:56 PM
Author: Mind-boggling personal credit line

Almost certainly - especially in places like Rhodesia and the East Africa Protectorate and especially in South Africa.

Also, if colonialism never ended it would mean that libs were not be running rampant in Western nations, so Europe and North America would also be much better places.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2399844&forum_id=2#34720443)