Is reddit right? Did the african poverty come from european imperialism and vulnerability to various diseases?

Is reddit right? Did the african poverty come from european imperialism and vulnerability to various diseases?


reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xc7wq/eli5_why_is_africa_as_a_whole_such_an/

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg5zbsqq1K1qgfbgio1_r1_1280.jpg
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

False.

The answer is Africans.

No.

Africa has a huge lack of natural resources that allow for first-world prosperity.

Africans have had domesticated animals for a long time, as similar to Europeans. Domesticated animals caused the plagues that Europeans became immune to, and Americans didn't have domesticated animals, thus causing the mass death when Europe made contact. Africa has always had contact with Europeans and wouldn't see the same somewhat instantaneous culling of population because of it.

> vulnerability to various diseases

let me get this straight, reddits best answer is genetic inferiority?

>Is reddit right?
never
>implying africa, much like Sup Forums, was ever good

M8, Europe has brutal winters that kill half the population every year

How can you say Africans had it tough.

Well think of it this way, before Europeans the Africans didn't even have the concept of money. Most tribes had a dominant Alpha male who would be the only one who could procreate with the females and lesser males had to go by his will or kill him.

Someday I hope Africans will find their roots and be happy once again.

>Africa has a huge lack of natural resources that allow for first-world prosperity.
Now that I have never ever heard of. What resources is Africa lacking?

>muh "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

Africa is a shithole because it is filled with niggers

Ethopia was never really colonialized and is still one of the biggest shitholes in Africa.

>Africa has a huge lack of natural resources that allow for first-world prosperity.
>Africa was plundered by European nations for its resources.

If Africa was such an advanced place, why were the Europeans able to conquer it so easily?

Why wasn't the European invasion of Africa a WW2-level armed conflict? They didn't even need an army, they literally just walked in with a ship-load of men and took over the place

The bashed each other to death so often they couldn't advance passed ape

Humans

Came here to post this.

>reddit

Africans did not domesticate a single animal for agriculture or companionship.
Just hunting.

>Africa has a huge lack of natural resources that allow for first-world prosperity.
It is perhaps the richest continent on the planet in terms of natural resources. Europeans did not "steal them all" like sociologists claim all the time, that would be impossible.

A normal civilization would use the natural resources they own to build themselves up, but... well, I'm sure you know why that hasn't happened...

no its from technocracy/authoritarian autocrats with nations with no property rights

they need the free market and laws to stop people from stealing from each other

>MUH GUNS GERMS AND STEEL

Fuck off

why are you poisoning the board with /reddit/ trash?

>reddit
>right

> Lack of natural reasources

>Gold Check
>Diamonds Check
>Gadolinium Check
>Iron Check
>A billion people to draw from for workforce....

Yet, nothing works.... Nothing gets better..... Now, gee. What could be the cause of that?

Could it be the fact that they carry Homo Erectus admixture still?

Africans are actually very resistant against diseases. The problem is the deadliest diseases are all passed by Africans insects

Probably has something to do with being communist until 1991. They were effectively colonized by USSR.

>Africa has a huge lack of natural resources
>lack of natural resources

white people

Underrated

They wuz kangz but them evil ass white honkey crackas took they mind powers.

false, Africa is the most resource rich place on earth. What makes " niggers " niggers is they had it easy forever and never needed to evolve and develop.

Why is everyone here so racist? Fuck you all

After the Europeans left, the African officials that made up the middle tier of the colonial government ascended to the top and just kept up the old system of exploiting the shit out of poor Africans.

The only difference is that now, they have managed to convince the average African that this is all the fault of the Europeans. It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking sad. Rhodesia was one of the richest countries in Africa when Mugabe took over and made it Zimbabwe. It was the breadbasket of Africa, had great roads, decent schools, hospitals....Mugabe built one road. ONE. It led from the capital to his home village. He let the rest fall into disrepair, then just took his time stealing land from the whites.

The last Rhodesian President, Smith, was interviewed around '05 or so, and he finds the whole situation hilarious because literally everything he said about Africans being incapable of ruling themselves is being proved correct before his eyes.

No, they just lack infrastructure to fully utilize and exploit their resources.
Watch Empire of Dust user

This the first time i've actually seen shareblue in a real context other then just memes or conspiracy theories.

>free markets
>laws
Nah why should they pay taxes for the state to fund mercenaries (police) so theyre able to extract money from you under the threat of force?
They should protect their property with their own weapons or hire a private security firm.
Africa is full of ancap paradises like Somalia.

No, because Nigeria

what the frick, there was only primal tribalism in Africa before the Européans arrived, not that it was ethical but it's not like Africa would be better off today if it was quarantined from the outside world

If you watched that you would also realize that Africans have zero desire to build infrastructure. They are physically incapable of thinking long-term.

There's no thought to building, say, a railroad with steel and wood. No, they would rather just sell off the steel and wood for money.

Is it cultural?
Is it biological?

I don't know, but it's there. Even in America, it is there.

Problem is that the Gaddafis get killed, while the Mugabes remain in power

actually went to read it and the first paragraph alone seems completely wrong.
>All tropical areas tend to be more impoverished because they are more prone to disease
You may notice that Northern areas and very Southern areas tend to be better off than Equitorial areas, especially wet ones.

I thought that the accepted theory is that people in colder climates didn't have a choice but to invent technology such as better farming tools and learn to live together and create a society in order to not starve to death, and that the reason that this hasn't happened in tropical areas is because they haven't had the need to?

Unless you want to go to race there's not much of an answer, India is a much worse place to try to carve a civilization out of than most of Africa is, yet the Indians did it. In Mexico the Aztecs didn't have any beasts of burden and yet they managed to build a city in the middle of a goddamn swamp which became the capital of an empire, in South America the Incas built a civilization in the hills and mountains by carving terraces to farm in. In short OP the land itself has little impact on whether a nation will become prosperous or whether civilization will develop there, it's mostly based on the people.

>Congo

No. We contributed, but if they hadn't been so intellectually impoverished in the first place we wouldn't have been able to colonise them so hard.

>Advance passed
>passed

Hmmmm

This. Soviet backed "revolutions" whether full communist (See: Ethiopia, Somalia) or not (See: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) was essentially a second wave of colonialism that arguably fucked the continent even harder than the first.

Africa was (apart from parts of the Horn and Maghreb) for the most part divided between primal tribal societies constantly at war with each other who did not even remotely tap into any resources of the continent, the wealth there is today is near entirely a direct result of colonisation.

Also blacks have no drive or willpower to improve themselves or their community. Unlike every other civilization on Earth, they have never once looked at something that works and thought "How can I make this better?"

They look at their shitty mud and straw houses and say "This works, why would I need anything bigger or grander?"
They look at the crops growing on their own and say "This works, why would to plant them myself?"
They look at their tools and say "This works, why would I need something that does it faster?"

I guess you could also call it a lack of ambition and dreams. They are one of the only races to look out at the sea and NEVER wonder what could be on the other side.

In order for this to be true then Europeans would have to have not accomplished anything up to that point, meaning they would not be able to colonize.

Economics is not a zero sum game and Africans have retard level IQ. Now you know.

I just would rather live with facts.

...

>Did the african poverty come from european imperialism and vulnerability to various diseases?

Every single leftist treatise on colonialism operates on the same false premise, that history began when the region was colonized. Anthropological evidence, oral history, a limited written record, and common sense inferences invariably demonstrate that most regions colonized by Europeans were occupied by populations living a hopelessly primitive existence, or were governed by oppressive regional warlords.

Oppression and exploitation was the global norm until the European enlightenment chipped away at it. The history of exploitation they are recording is the very recent history of white people gradually eliminating unchecked global oppression and exploitation.

A lot of the more exploitative colonial missions were corporate operations that offended the sensibilities of ordinary Europeans even at the time. It was just so remote from their lives that they chose to ignore it in favor of reaping the economic benefits, just like we do today with sweatshop labor. We may not like it, but we still buy iphones.

Why is it every time this question is asked whitey gets blamed for ruining Africa ?

Go back hundreds of years ago to before a white man ever thought about setting foot in sub Sahara Africa. Do people like Jared Diamond think those niggers were living like the fucking Jetsons with flying pyramids ? The only reason Europe was able to colonize Africa at all was because they were little better than cavemen with no roads or bridges or anything not made of mud and sticks when they were found. Or am I wrong about that ?

Well there are some semi-permanent mud structures from ancient african civilizations dotting the land.

Some rocks and a mud and wood fort or church or something.

>mfw a nigger on the inside

African poverty came from climate. Europeans had to plan ahead of the winters to survive. They also had to make structures capable of keeping out the cold so they had to advance quickly or perish.

Meanwhile in Africa they just lazed around in the sun all day and occasionally got up and chased an animal to death then smoked various plants and played the drums all night. They didnt have to plan ahead or even make great structures to keep them warm. Hence the difference between the two groups work ethics.

for people that don't want to go reddit I will be copypasting the top answers into this thread:

Africa is impoverished for many reasons.
In no particular order, I will list some:
All tropical areas tend to be more impoverished because they are more prone to disease

-- You may notice that Northern areas and very Southern areas tend to be better off than Equitorial areas, especially wet ones. Places like the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Argentina used to be among that list of prosperous countries but had bad governance, and Chile is now quickly joining them.
This is because of disease. Until very, very recently (as in, since maybe the 1980s) people in those areas could not rely on being healthy tomorrow. Tropical diseases of many sorts, as well as diseases also common to temperate areas, ravaged them. This leaves working age people disabled or dead. Without a good ratio of healthy people to sick, an economy cannot be productive.
Africa has suffered from bad governance

--Since European contact, Africa has suffered from bad governance -- mostly from Europeans but also from African leadership as well. For a few hundred years, Europeans really wrecked the place with extortive policies aimed to overtly impoverish the population. This eased European rule and thus the capacity for Europeans to extract what they wanted from the area.
Immediately upon independence, bad governance continued in many, but not all areas. Why?
Because those areas wanted to practice autarky (autarky is the opposite of free trade & open migration -- Trump loves autarky if that makes it easier to understand). Why did they want to practice this policy?
(cont)

(cont)
They wanted to close their borders because of their history of subjugation at the hands of foreigners. So they decided to not trade with anyone, not accept investment, and not allow labor migration.
This left them without a means to transfer technologies from more technological areas, and without a way to get out of destitute poverty since they could not generate investment from exports or from foreign aid, or from foreign direct investment. They couldn't build industries at home because they had no source of income.
Today, many many African countries are much better managed. But, they've got a lot of growing to do. Nigeria, Botswana, and Kenya are some of the best examples of growing prosperity.
Africa has recently been suffering from armed conflict, as is common among newly independent states

-- Whether it was the fall of apartheid, the genocide in Rwanda, child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Uganda, or the ongoing civil war in the Congo, many Africans have not had their most fundamental need -- safety -- met. Without safety there is usually economic contraction, and often it is severe. This means that these areas, which were already poor, become more destroyed and more poor due to ongoing war.
Any political revolution, on the short and medium term, tends to cause economic contraction due to a loss of faith in contracts and jeopardizing safety. Some revolutions tend to cause economic growth -- sometimes huge growth -- on the long term. An example of this is of course the American revolution. Another would be the fall of Apartheid, from the fall of Apartheid until the rise of Jacob Zuma South Africa had very robust growth (but Zuma killed that with tribalist division).
Africa lacks mature, essential institutions.
(cont)

(cont)
This one can unfortunately be blamed mostly on colonial powers, as most African nations haven't been independent long enough to have developed fundamental institutions. It also falls as part of bad governance, but should be cited on its own.
While public schooling in Africa is becoming fairly common now, previous generations often were illiterate or had not finished elementary school. So, until this generation grows up the workforce in Africa -- while cheap -- is unviable. Sure, African workers will work for less than those in Bangladesh... but they can't read. They can't read instructions. Again, not all. The region is in a period of huge transition right now and places like, say, Kenya or Botswana, or South Africa are much further along than, say, the former Zaire or Sierra Leone.
(cont)

(cont)
Additionally, they lack banking industry. They lack large corporations and large bureaucratic structures. They lack a fully fleshed out police force especially in rural areas. A farmer in Namibia cannot, unlike an American farmer, enter in to a long term contract with a large purchaser to sell all of his, say, grain for the next two years at a fixed price. He can't do this because there aren't good courts and if there were then even if he won there aren't police out in the boonies where he lives to make the person pay him. He has his word, his family, and their collective weaponry to enforce agreements, and that's it. This limits the capability of investment and tends to cause disastrously volatile pricing which is extremely dependent on local conditions for that season.
The keys to prosperity in this world are fairly intuitive.

We need safety -- not only from violence, but from disease and dirty water too. Then, we need justice. -- those in power cannot be performing backhanded deals or serving their own profit. Finally, we need to be open -- freely exchanging with our fellow man and allowing the inflows and outflows of goods and people.
Africa had none of these things until recently. Now they need time.
(end)

it comes from reality, differences greatly from what moron creates in his own mind

everyone who goes to reddit should gas themselves

There is a fascinating concept called the "geography hypothesis" that might explain the economic hardships faced by subsaharan Africa. There are wide ranging causes of economic despair across the globe. When looking at a globe however, there seems to be a noticeable divide between the wealthy nations and nations with low income levels. Nations that lie in the tropics are on the wrong side of the tracks when it comes to economic prosperity. According to economist Ricardo Hausmann, these tracks exist at twenty degrees latitude and nations below this line are cursed with stagnant, declining, or slow economic growth rates as well as noticeably shorter life expectancy rates. Nations in the temperate zones exhibit overwhelming economic success by comparison. The temperate zones contain twenty-seven of the thirty wealthiest nations, the three exceptions being Brunei, Hong Kong, and Singapore. These nations seemed to have escaped the curse by having extensive coastlines allowing them access to global markets. Singapore for example is a small and flat island with few natural resources other than, arguably, the sea that surrounds it and allows the nation to enjoy low import and export costs. The rest of the tropical zone is not so lucky, and economists who subscribe to the geography hypothesis have three main reasons for this: the tropics are geographically prone to diseases, tropical agriculture cannot use technology from other geographic zones because the different climates produce equally different crops, and the countless landlocked nations of the tropics face exorbitantly high transportation costs for imports and exports. Many nations in the tropics face all three of these geographical obstacles simultaneously, and without the resources to overcome them these nations will continue to experience little or no growth.
(cont)

(cont)
Malaria is a useful example to study for this topic due to the vast amount of data collected on the disease, and it has such strong associations with the economically impoverished tropics that it has been dubbed the ‘disease of the poor’. Ninety-eight percent of all malaria deaths occur in thirty-five countries, five of which are in Asia and the other thirty are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is often treatable depending on the severity of the strain, however the most severe strains are virtually exclusive to Sub-Saharan Africa where they cause jaundice and frequent loss of consciousness in their victims. The disease also claims more lives there than anywhere else. One out of every twenty children under the age of five in Sub-Saharan Africa dies from malaria and adults, while more likely to survive, suffer frequent and long-term debilitation. The crippling effect malaria has on workforces in Sub-Saharan Africa has made investors wary and growth elusive. The disease has effectively isolated the region from international trade and tourism by raising transactions costs to prohibitively high levels. This unfortunate reality is sustained by the geographic attributes of the topics. The tropical climate allows malaria to thrive year round, whereas colder temperatures spare temperate zones from having to contend with the disease as an economic hurdle. Malaria continues to pester tropical economies as relentlessly as the mosquitos that spread it.
(end)

Born and bred West African here who spent the first 24 years of his life on my beloved continent. Problem numero uno in my opinion is bad leadership. One thing you always have to remember about Sub Saharan Africa is that a lot of these nations are artificial non homogeneous creations by European powers. Take my home nation of Nigeria as an example. There are three ethnic groups within its borders with populations of over 20 million each. Sure they may have all looked black to the British but these groups are as culturally and linguistically different as Russians are from Chinese (if you think this is not a problem, imagine aliens invading Earth and declaring that henceforth, Greece, Turkey and Russia will be one country). Throw in another four or five groups with populations roughly equivalent to that of Ireland and another 20 or so numbering over a million and you have a recipe for chaos as individual groups jostled for power. It's no accident that the Nigeria of my childhood was wracked by constant military coups. In such a situation, it's not the cream of the crop with drive and vision who rise to leadership. It's the most brutish and the most unscrupulous who force themselves into positions of authority.
(cont)

(cont)
Something else people tend to forget is that the colonial period is still relatively recent. When I was a toddler, Zimbabwe, Angola and Mozambique were still engaged in conflicts related to their wars for independence. Apartheid was still a thing in South Africa. Heck, 7 years before I was born my own country was engaged in civil war. These conflicts were devastating and take time to recover from.
Overall, I'm optimistic about Africa. I believe the younger generation are far less hung about ethnic identity than previous generations. People now take as much pride in being Nigerian, Senegalese or Ghanaian as they do in being Igbo, Wolof, Yoruba, Akan etc. Skilled African migrants are returning home to setup businesses as a kind of reverse brain drain. The internet has made the world a lot smaller and you can sit in a small village and pick up valuable skills by browsing MIT Courseware. The politicians are still no prize but they are a lot better than they were when I was growing up.
I choose to remain positive. Give it 50 years and I think this is a story that turns out well.
(end)

This is probably going to get buried in the comments but Paul Colliers book titled, The bottom billion does a great job explaining this. He boils down poverty and economic disparity to these 4 main problems:
Never-ending conflict (countries plagued with conflict will never be economically successful in any meaningful way. Without security there's no economic success)
The natural resource trap (poor nations who are blessed with a few natural resources that should theoretically make them rich end up squandering the money and concentrating all their efforts into these resources while neglecting all other industries)
Being landlocked (Surprisingly this actually has a huge impact on the success of developing nations. Countries on the coast or those with access to the sea have a greater ability to trade and move around goods and people. If you're landlocked then you're in trouble because you're dependent on neighbours for trade and if they happen to be a neighbour that's in conflict, poor or badly run then it's not just unfortunate but your own economy will suffer as a result).
Bad governance (this one pretty much speaks for itself and unfortunately most countries in sub-Saharan africa suffer from this)
The book goes into depth about all these points but it's easy to read and really informative. Highly recommend!
(end)

Interesting hypothesis

I assume you're asking about Sub-Saharan Africa, yes? Because the African Mediterranean coastline has always done pretty okay, at least in comparison to parts further south. And it ought to be pretty clear why Saharan Africa is pretty poor: for the most part it's a godawful wasteland where almost nobody lives. So I'm assuming that you're really interested in Sub-Saharan Africa here.
As to that, the simplest answer I can come up with is that Africa is a continent where just about everything wants you dead, from lions on the macro scale, to microbes on the micro scale.
European explorers/colonists travelling to Africa had a distinct tendency to die like flies. There's a reason European countries spent almost three centuries colonizing North and South America before seriously turning their attention to Africa (which they'd always known about!), and this is a big part of it. Infectious diseases endemic in Africa--yellow fever and malaria in particular--contributed to such a high European mortality rate that Africa was known as the "white man's grave," and not for no reason. The climate is about as fantastic a breeding ground for the spread of infectious disease as one could imagine. The parts of Africa that aren't tropical are sub-tropical. It almost never freezes, meaning microbes and the bugs that carry them never have to go dormant.
Well if Europeans died in such large numbers, how did Africans survive? Part of the answer is that African populations do seem to have developed a certain resistance to some of the more common tropical diseases. For example, there's a recessive genetic disease, sickle-cell disease, that's pretty miserable for people who have it. But for people with only one copy of the gene carrying the sickle-cell traits, it provides a fairly robust resistance to malaria. Sickle-cell carriers can get malaria, but it's a lot less severe when they do get it. There are some other examples, but that's a classic one.
(cont)

(cont)
But the other part of the answer to how Africans survived in places Europeans died so much is that they basically didn't. European mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period could be fairly described as "catastrophic". African mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period, by contrast, could be described as merely "pretty damned bad". Life-expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa has pretty consistently been among the lowest in the world for a very long time. Assuming the lions (or whatever) didn't eat you, and the monsoons cooperated to the point that you could bring in at least something in the way of crops, there was still a really decent chance you were going to catch some bug and die.
There are certainly other reasons. European colonial misadventures certainly didn't do the continent any favors, that's for damned sure, and certainly contributed to Africa staying poor a lot longer than most of the rest of the world. But Africa has trailed more temperate regions in terms of physical prosperity for a very long time. It's just a really tough place to live.
(end)

You can read "Why Nations Fail" jointly written by a developmental/growth economist at MIT and political scientist at Harvard that answers this exact question (among other impoverished countries) and are frankly far more qualified to do so than some of the other books and theories out there, they are THE top researchers at the forefront of this subject, period.
Basically they have poor governments which can't enforce even basic property rights and rule of law - preventing any investment which would boost living standards. Also, the political institutions are so extractive they disincentivize anyone from seeking wealth because it will simply be taken either by criminals or the government itself.
Also, the book strongly disputes the answer the other person has given, that access to natural resources plays a significant role
edit: a lot of people in this comment thread are bringing up objections that are thoroughly answered in the book. For example, a government that is an awful human rights violator does not always equal a government that doesn't protect property and attract business
(end)

Parts of Africa are doing reasonably well and lots of countries are improving economically SIGNIFICANTLY every year, the development there is insane. Cities in West Africa, places like Nairobi and the east, and of course South African cities are very diverse and well-developed, and often very international too.
The obvious major barriers to a lot of development with impoverished nations comes from their origin as a 'nation-state,' which is from colonially drawn artificial lines, sort of like how Iraq was never a country and was just drawn up on a map. That, followed by the mass rape and pillage of resources, means there was a 'late start.'
As for what's going on now, though the rapid development in Africa is grossly understated in media (but its obvious to those who visit every few years and see how much changes each time), there is also major problems involving international trade.
Check out the Doha rounds, the most recent World Trade Organization set of rounds began in 2001, and STILL hasn't become solved. This is because trade standards are set by the WTO (and IMF), where developed countries have a massive vote majority. It wasn't until Doha that developing countries finally banded together.
The problem, essentially, is that developed countries have forced open trade involving most goods except things like agricultural goods and textiles. These happen to be the only things many developing countries actually have a comparative advantage in and would benefit from selling. The capital-intensive countries get to use their trade advantage, then keep tariffs and subsidies to prevent developing countries from using their point of advantage, essentially an unfair system.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
(end)

Yes. Other places had LESS effective modes of production than advanced feudalism (slavery, primitive communism, less advanced feudalism) and thus were susceptible to being conquered and exploited by European/American expansionism.

There is an error though: THERE WAS NO IMPERIALSM. Imperialism is the phase of monopoly capitalism that was brought about during the 20th century and thus imperialist wars like World War 1, that reshaped the hegemony of imperial powers as well as WW2.

Simple. Terra Nuills. It caused the decline of most of Africa's Kingdoms and Empires. Heres an overview of the continents history.
Firstly West Africa should be considered one of the most important area for civilisations in the world. The richest man ever to live came from here, Mansa Musa, who on a pilgrimage to Mekka, sank the gold price for almost a decade in every country he visited.
West Africa was also home to the Kingdom of Benin, notable because of two main things. First is Benin City, whose walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”. [1]
The second is the bronze's of Benin, the best in the world at the time. They demonstate a complex knowledge of metallurgy. These great Benin artisans refined that technique until they were able to cast plaques only an eighth-of-an-inch thick, surpassing the art as practiced by Renaissance "masters" in Europe.
The cities populace were also versed in complex mathematics:
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.
(cont)

> Yes, Africans had build a huge kingdom, with buildings out of gold and diamonds
> No, the egyptian empire ended immediately after mixing with the black slaves started

do you even historic facts?

(cont)
As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.” [1]
This knowledge of mathematics and science was mirrored in the more northerly (but still sub-Saharan) city of Timbuktu, where a university was founded (perhaps the oldest in the world, boasting 25,000 students in city with a population of 100,000). The Tumbuktu manuscripts are perhaps the best example of an advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics in sub-Saharan Africa. In an episode of Sahara with Michael Palin, he is shown one manuscript which might even suggest they discovered that the sun was the centre of the system, many years before Europeans did.
As we move further south we come the Kingdom of Kongo on the West African coast. In 15th when the Portuguese, the first Europeans who sailed the Atlantic coasts of Africa “arrived in the coast of Guinea and landed at Vaida in West Africa, the captains were astonished to find streets well laid out, bordered on either side for several leagues by two rows of trees, for days thet travelled through a country of magnificant fields, inhabited by men clad in richly coloured garments of their own weaving! Further south in the Kingdom of the Kongo, a swarming crowd dressed in fine silks’ and velvet; great states well ordered, down to the most minute detail; powerful rulers, flourishing industries-civilised to the marrow of their bones. And the condition of the countries of the eastern coast-Mozambique, for example-was quite the same.”
For example the Kingdom of Congo in the 15th Century was the epitome of political organization. It “was a flourishing state in the 15th century.
(cont)

(cont)
It was situated in the region of Northern Angola and West Kongo. Its population was conservatively estimated at 2 or 3 million people. The country was fivided into 6 administrative provinces and a number of dependancies. The provinces were Mbamba, Mbata, Mpangu, Mpemba, Nsundi, and Soyo. The dependancies included Matari, Wamdo, Wembo and the province of Mbundu. All in turn were subject to the authority of The Mani Kongo (King). The capital of the country (Mbanza Kongo), was in the Mpemba province. From the province of Mbamba, the military stronghold. It was possible to put 400,000 in the field (Edit: they never did put this many in the field though, in the Battle of Mbwila the Portuguese reported facing an army of 100,000, thought the figure is likely to be lower).” (African Agenda - PD Lawton)
Here's a picture of the city of M'Baza Kongo: 24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg5zbsqq1K1qgfbgio1_r1_1280.jpg
I could go onto talk about the stone castles of Great Zimbabwe. The carbon steel of the Africans who lived on the shores of Lake Victoria, created over a thousand years before it was discovered in the West. A shout out to the Lunda and Luba empires of Central Africa. And of course, the Tanzanian city states of the East Coast who filtered out the steady stream of resources from Central Africa to the trade routes which ended in China. Kilwa Ksiwani is the most notable, especially for it's beautiful stones buildings and elegant arches.
Terra Nullius led the destruction of most of the continents ancient structures, and a stripping of the continents natural wealth. And racial prejudice meant archaeology is only now catching up with the continents history.
Edit: The African's are a people ignorant of their own history (not all obviously), and it leaves them without a grounding to base their progression upon. They lost all their knowledge and traditions. It can be pretty devastating.
(end)

>Kingdom of Benin

Wasn't it an Empire though? Were they slavers?

yes. they are correct.
well, any theory is correct as long as it is not the truth that nigroys are stupid

th Europeans weren't all that advanced either, it was a backwards shit hole until they met with the mongols who brought advanced chineese shit to them like gunpowder.

what is more disturbing is how china was such a shit hole when europeans got there but that is more about how much they like to steal from each other than how intelligent they are.

>going to leddit
kys my nigga

Tfw Rhodesia doesnt exist anymore

Almost anything they can say will be nullified by underperforming black populations in white countries.

>Problem is that the Gaddafis get killed, while the Mugabes remain in power

No. The Gaddafis are no better. The problem is that the Lumumbas* were all either murdered, or simply had the brains to flee the continent, the in 1950s and 1960s. Those who remained were the crazy or corrupt bastards.

Africa experienced colonialism much faster than the Americans and Asia, and experienced "de-colonization" much faster. It makes sense that it also experienced "brain drain" much faster.

When the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" was founded, do you know how many people had a college degree? TWENTY. FUCKING TWENTY. TEN OF THEM FLED THE COUNTRY IMMEDIATELY. The remaining two were slaughtered by local warlords. That is Sub-Saharan Africa in an nutshell.

>unironic "the government's bad (but not the people)" claims
I don't know what I expected

*google Lumumba, genuinely well-intentioned guy
*The remaining ten were slaughtered by local warlords
*in a nutshell

Sorry, a bit drunk, so my spelling is fucked right now

>be Singapore 1956
>poor postcolonial backwater shit hole in South East Asia
>be Singapore 2017
>developed first world nation with highest education standards and high GDP per capita than most western countries

Africa is shit because Africans are mostly dumb

>european imperialism and vulnerability to various diseases

But it was Europeans that were susceptible to disease in Africa. It's a major part of why we never treated Africa like the New World.

Whites couldn't cope with the horde of aggressive diseases and parasites, especially before modern pharma.

What about King Nigger, the richest man in the history of the world that was so rich he traveled gifting gold to people but then lost everything and had to get a loan to return to his nation because he wasted all the gold. The loan was done to Jews and he never managed to repay them back. He died in his sleep that night.

What about him? If I remember the story correctly from my history books, it was before colonization. And if so, to answer your question. No, white men have nothing to do with how poor they are. They had shit micromanagement skills and blew it every single time AKA: niggers being niggers.

You can't make a civilization from scratch out of diamonds and metal
you need shit like clean water and fertile soil, it's the reason the egyptians existed and prospered, it's thanks to the Nile

Don't forget, they had literally no resources whereas the other two nations they were allied with were rife with oil and gas.

Then compare modern singapore with modern brunei and malaysia.

Chinese>Malays

african poverty came from a lack of ever reaching the copper age. this in turn prevented them from advancing to many other steps

the native americans some how avoided the copper age as did the people of south america and they still managed agriculture . but it still limited their progress

any region who had managed copper moves on to bronze ect. it wasnt all passed down either. china manages iron age before every one else but they still get there on their own if they managed to get to the copper age

its that first step that leads to everything else including but not limited to more advanced dwellings and textiles

I saw that thread. 1 person had the balls to say IQ over the entire first page. Reddit is fucking garbage.