Mr. Walker:
Why do you remain totally blind to the truth about the colonization of Africa was completely better for the Africans except they did not have the right to self-determination? By every other metric things only improved! Here is a more detailed account of the facts:
THE EUROPEAN COLONIZATION OF WEST SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA HAD A NET POSITIVE RESULT
EXPLOITATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA BY EUROPEAN COLONIZERS IS A PROGRESSIVE MYTH
EUROPEAN COLONIZERS ACTUALLY IMPROVED SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN LIVING STANDARDS
Many neo-Marxists fervently believe that White European colonizers despoiled Africa, exploited its Black residents, and raped that continent’s natural resources. (See drawing)
These false notions have been repeatedly shown to be only left-wing hokum. European investment, spent to only improve Africa was so great that during the 20th century the Dark Continent was known as the “White Man’s Burden”. These expenditures by Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and Belgium actually greatly improved the living standards of Black Africans by a large margin. Of course, all of this happened after Great Britain’s Royal Navy terminated the Atlantic slave trade beginning after 1807 but this effort required decades to complete. After the Atlantic slave trade was fully extinguished the sub-Saharan African era of European Colonization commenced in the 1880s after the Berlin Conference in 1885, and ended in the 1960s. During the period prior to the late 19th century the presence of Whites living in equatorial sub-Saharan Africa was quite rare due to a variety of tropical diseases including TB, dengue fever, river blindness, yellow fever, cholera, malaria, and countless other parasites. The life expectancy of a White male in the African tropics was less than one year. The largest free White population lived in the temperate [Cape Town] colony and in 1700 they totaled only 1,245 people.
After the Europeans were able to partially control these tropical diseases colonization commenced but the number of Whites living in sub-Saharan Africa remained very sparse and yet European investments in Africa turned the living standards of Blacks sharply upward. The introduction of primary education began to reduce African illiteracy. The institution of widespread modern health care (which started to replace Shamen medicine) lengthened African life expectancy and the per capita income of Africans began to rise markedly. Life in Africa only improved from the 1880s until the 1960s. The alleged exploitation of Africa is a progressive ruse.
THE ANGUS MADDISON PROJECT
Angus Maddison was the best-known economic demographer of the 20th century. According to [Numo Palma] Angus Maddison was one of the most cited economists of the last century. His database extends from the Roman Empire until 2000 AD and tracks statistics for all regions of our planet.
Maddison documents that Great Britain sent half of its total annual national savings to its overseas colonies. Maddison’s April 2001 [OECD]
report “A Millennial Perspective” demonstrates that from 1900 to 1950 average African life expectancy rose from 24 years to 38 years largely due to the reduction in infectious diseases. During the colonization of the African tropics per capita income was rising at over 2% per year. Notably, after decolonization, this trend halted and growth in per capita income fell to zero. Per capita income rose 350% from 1820 until the colonial powers departed and since then African per capita income only declined until 2000. (See Table & Graph)
GDP (PPP) per capita in [1990 International Dollars] |Country Region |1|1000|1500|1600|1700|1820|1870|1913|1950|1973|1989|2008|
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
|12 country average|599|425|798|907|1,032|1,243|2,087|3,688|5,018|12,157|16,751|22,246|
|**[Africa]
During the era of colonization, the living standards of Africans only increased but this trend reversed after the colonial powers departed. The picture of human well-being could not be any more obvious. As of 2000, Africa held 13% of the world’s population but only 3% of the world’s GDP. Indeed, Africa’s per capita income is only 5% of that produced by the world’s richest region, the West. The facts could not be any clearer. Africans prospered under European colonial rule but their overall level of well-being only declined after they attained freedom and errantly adopted socialism.
PETER T. BAUER
As if any additional proof is required, one need only consult[ Bauer’s] 1981 book, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion, in which he clearly states that “The infrastructure in Africa was built by the colonial powers.” To this, he added, “Far from draining wealth from the less developed countries British industry helped to create it there.” Bauer also reports that “The colonial powers introduced the wheel to Africa.” He also demonstrated conclusively that “Europe’s colonial administrators did not exploit the Dark Continent but instead brought technology and innovation to Africa.” Bauer insists that “Africa was transformed during colonization.” For example, “In the Gold Coast, there were about 3,000 children at school in the early 1900s, whereas in the mid-1950s there were over half a million. In the early 1890s, there were in the Gold Coast no railways or roads, but only a few jungle paths. Transport of goods was by human porterage or canoe.” Bauer was far from finished. “In British West Africa public security and health improved out of all recognition … peaceful travel became possible; slavery and slave trading and famine were practically eliminated, and the incidence of the worst diseases reduced. Mortality fell, the population increased, communications and ‘peaceful contact within Africa and with the outside world’ also increased in British colonies.” Bauer concluded with “… everywhere in Black Africa, modern economic life began with the colonial period.”
GEORGE PETER
George Peter was much more forceful in his [2001 book] Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, in which he firmly contends that it “… is an absurdity to assert that cannibalism, slavery, magical therapy, and killing of the aged should be accorded the same ‘dignity’ or ‘validity’ as old-age security, scientific medicine, and metal artifacts.” Most “People prefer western technology and would rather be able to feed their children and elderly than kill them.” Mr. Peter insists that the western colonizers largely reduced “many of the worst endemic and epidemic diseases in West Africa.” According to Peter the idea of exploitation (as in Marxism) originated with western elites and not from any African natives. Western colonial administrators reduced squalor, disease, and early death. These European colonial advisers also provided clean water, sewer systems, wheeled transportation, and scientific medical care that very few Africans would choose to go without and instead return to the Rousseauian myth of a noble savage. Almost no one in Africa wishes to return to a cultural system where the supreme chief owns them as chattel and can dispose of them as he sees fit." Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South Africa’s former president, has stated unequivocally that “The average African is poorer (now) than during the era of colonization.”
NIALL FERGUSON
In his 2012 book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson offered that in Africa, colonial administrators found “Conditions unfavorable to material (human) progress” but by stopping tribal wars and slavery; by introducing the rule of law; by preserving private property; by enforcing contracts; by building infrastructure and by establishing widespread health care the colonial nations greatly improved rather than hindered human betterment.
DAMBISA MOYO
As I discussed in Chapter 2 Africa’s historic poverty statistics also clearly demonstrate my claims concerning the colonial era and Africa’s shift to socialism after obtaining freedom from their colonial overlords. In her 2009 book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way For Africa, [Dambisa Moyo] shows that African poverty rates were quite low when the colonizers departed and then skyrocketed when socialism was adopted by the newly free African nations. Moyo also clearly reports that over one trillion dollars of foreign aid have been wasted by these corrupt totalitarian governments that always appear following the adoption of collective economic strategies. Using dependable statistics, Moyo argues that government-to-government or bilateral aid (which should be distinguished from charity-based aid) to Africa undermines the ability of Africans to conceptualize their own best economic and political policies. As she puts it: “The net result of aid-dependency is that instead of having a functioning Africa, managed by Africans, for Africans, what is left is one where outsiders attempt to map its destiny and call the shots.” Her most radical proposal comes in the form of a rhetorical question: “What if,” she asks, “one by one, African countries each received a phone call…telling them that in exactly five years the aid taps would be shut off permanently?”
CONCLUSION
No serious observer can examine all of the foregoing and conclude that colonization was bad for the citizens of sub-Saharan Africa and that the shift to collectivism after the European colonizers left only spread misery, destitution, and poverty.
EPILOGUE
Niall Ferguson has insisted that “Something that’s seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I’m on the side of the bourgeoisie.” And that “If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx’s doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I’m rightwing.” Ferguson has also opined that “It’s all very well for us to sit here in the West with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it’s immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don’t rule it out.”
