Would communist revolutions in Africa be a good thing?

[Lusankya]

The British weren't so bad at it with India, were they?

India had a long tradition of being "civilised" beforehand, though. If you look at the places that ended up not being crap after British rule, you have two kinds:

a) the kind where the majority of the people living there are descended from Europeans (Australia, New Zealand, North America).

b) The kind that already had writing and fences and stuff before the British came along. (Singapore, Malaysia, the Indian Subcontinent)

The former kind obviously didn't have to deal with tribal rivalries or anything of the sort, and the latter sort could integrate more easily with the British by themselves by virtue of being more familiar with what the British were doing. (Let's face it - aside from a certain superficial level, bureaucracies all have underlying similarities.)

I remember reading a book on Captain Bligh, and in one of his diary entries he commented on how the Indonesians looked 'civilised' compared to the Africans and Australians.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I remember reading a book on Captain Bligh, and in one of his diary entries he commented on how the Indonesians looked 'civilised' compared to the Africans and Australians.

I think Indonesia was carved up between the Dutch and Portuguese.

Excepting N. Africa, central and south Africa, the only known empire that had some degree of civility, i.e. a functioning government and civil service, was the one centered at Timbuktu. Well, that little state imploded due to internal unrest, and other problems related to slavers and such.

[Lusankya]

I think Indonesia was carved up between the Dutch and Portuguese.

Yeah, I know that. But Bligh went home via Indonesia after one of the times he was mutinied on. I figured I'd just use it as an example because it's from the right general area and it was the only 18-19th century example that I could think of at the time.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Ghetto EDIT: In central and south Africa, the only known empire that had some degree of civility, i.e. a functioning government and civil service, was the one centered at Timbuktu. Well, that little state imploded due to internal unrest, and other problems related to slavers and such.

N. Africa on the other hand have had a history of civilisation. Not so for the rest.

[Big Phil]

Frankly, almost any form of strong centralized, absolute control with the aim of modernizing or advancement (rather than lining the leaderships/juntas pockets) would improve.

Wrong. A dictatorial government without a goal of industrial modernization will wreck them. Isn't it actually what is now? They have dictators, but none of them seem to have any vision of industrialization?

Isn't that exactly what Death said?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ghetto EDIT: In central and south Africa, the only known empire that had some degree of civility, i.e. a functioning government and civil service, was the one centered at Timbuktu. Well, that little state imploded due to internal unrest, and other problems related to slavers and such.

N. Africa on the other hand have had a history of civilisation. Not so for the rest.

I assume you're not counting the Horn of Africa with the 3,000-year history of Abyssinian Civilization, nor are you counting the Arab Sultanates of East Africa which spread the Swahili trading tongue as they dominated the slave trade into Arabia?

Even then the Kingdom of the Kongo and the Great Zimbabwe Empire still showed some signs of organization at a greater level than tribes in the southern regions, and of course there were the states during the early European period of exploration in Angola, and a few inland in the Congo, though the details of those are, I grant, murkier.

Africa is fairly consistently underestimated in terms of the age of civilization there, though I grant that's no help for people trying to find a quick answer to why it's so fucked up.

[Adrian Laguna]

There's also the Zulu Empire, which did not last long only due to having the misfortune of running into Europeans shortly after its rise.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I assume you're not counting the Horn of Africa with the 3,000-year history of Abyssinian Civilization, nor are you counting the Arab Sultanates of East Africa which spread the Swahili trading tongue as they dominated the slave trade into Arabia?

Even then the Kingdom of the Kongo and the Great Zimbabwe Empire still showed some signs of organization at a greater level than tribes in the southern regions, and of course there were the states during the early European period of exploration in Angola, and a few inland in the Congo, though the details of those are, I grant, murkier.

Africa is fairly consistently underestimated in terms of the age of civilization there, though I grant that's no help for people trying to find a quick answer to why it's so fucked up.

Ok, I did miss those, so I concede. But I lumped the Christian/Muslim kingdoms in Ethiopia/Entrea together with N. Africa.

But do these civilizations at least left some form of written record of themselves? It's one thing to have a form of organization, but written record is another different matter.

[Pelranius]

Botswana did pretty well for itself after independence. Of course, their president and former king was a pretty good and competent man. I wonder how things would have turned out if South Africa hadn't made him abdicate after he married a white woman while at school in London.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I assume you're not counting the Horn of Africa with the 3,000-year history of Abyssinian Civilization, nor are you counting the Arab Sultanates of East Africa which spread the Swahili trading tongue as they dominated the slave trade into Arabia?

Even then the Kingdom of the Kongo and the Great Zimbabwe Empire still showed some signs of organization at a greater level than tribes in the southern regions, and of course there were the states during the early European period of exploration in Angola, and a few inland in the Congo, though the details of those are, I grant, murkier.

Africa is fairly consistently underestimated in terms of the age of civilization there, though I grant that's no help for people trying to find a quick answer to why it's so fucked up.

Ok, I did miss those, so I concede. But I lumped the Christian/Muslim kingdoms in Ethiopia/Entrea together with N. Africa.

But do these civilizations at least left some form of written record of themselves? It's one thing to have a form of organization, but written record is another different matter.

Why? The Inca had only corded knots to make tallies of their Empire, but they ruled one of the most far-flung states imaginable with an incredibly efficient system of communication which the arriving Spanish could scarcely imagine, on roads of incredible sophistication. What makes the written word a necessary pre-condition of an organized state society? Literacy rates among the Mayan and Aztecs were probably 1 - 3% for that matter with their cumbersome pictograms, and I doubt that was much better for the early Seal Script of Shang China, either.

[Kanastrous]

Why would there be any improvement? It would just replace one inefficient form of tyranny with another.

Didn't it force industrial development and social change in Russia that severely modernised them in comparison? While it obviously devolved into tyranny, it definitely laid the groundwork for modernity, rather than leaving tribal groups to eat each other and the aristocracy on the backs of the peasants.

The October Revolution did not 'devolve into tyranny;' the Communists were tyrannical from the outset, ie lining up and shooting every theoretical 'counter-revolutionary' they could lay their hands on, while the Russian Revolution was still being fought.

The fact that the White Russians were no better, is beside the point.

[Thanas]

Damn. Here, we've got native Filipinos mixing with Spaniards, making the mestizo class. Lots of these folks got educated abroad, in Europe even. These educated guys were rather important in rallying folks to free themselves from the shackles of imperialism and other cool stuff.

These things didn't happen with Africans, did they?

The french actually were (in-)famous for educating almost the entire leadership of their former colonies.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Ok, I did miss those, so I concede. But I lumped the Christian/Muslim kingdoms in Ethiopia/Entrea together with N. Africa.

But do these civilizations at least left some form of written record of themselves? It's one thing to have a form of organization, but written record is another different matter.

Why? The Inca had only corded knots to make tallies of their Empire, but they ruled one of the most far-flung states imaginable with an incredibly efficient system of communication which the arriving Spanish could scarcely imagine, on roads of incredible sophistication. What makes the written word a necessary pre-condition of an organized state society? Literacy rates among the Mayan and Aztecs were probably 1 - 3% for that matter with their cumbersome pictograms, and I doubt that was much better for the early Seal Script of Shang China, either.

My question was not on the level of literacy, but rather whether they had written records, i.e. some degree of a civil service bureaucracy that employed records and so forth which are among the basic requsities to a proper functioning government. Of course I might be pulling a red herring here, but I am interested to know whether the Africans ever experienced some kind of a working government before, instead of the tribal politics extremely prevalent now.

[K. A. Pital]

The October Revolution did not 'devolve into tyranny;' the Communists were tyrannical from the outset, ie lining up and shooting every theoretical 'counter-revolutionary' they could lay their hands on, while the Russian Revolution was still being fought.

Well, the October Revolution was a relatively bloodless overthrow, with most cities in Russia under Soviet power within days from November 7. The communists were also not the only party to the October Revolution. Most of the shooting of "counter-revolutionaries" happened later, during the Civil War. Incidentally, if the overthrow is relatively fast (re: Cuba), much bloodshed is spared. If a civil war starts, lots of people die (Russia, China).

Incidentally, given Africa is in a constant state of Civil War anyway, it's not unreasonable to say that a win of one faction dedicated to industrial progress would constitute some progress.

[Duckie]

Why? The Inca had only corded knots to make tallies of their Empire, but they ruled one of the most far-flung states imaginable with an incredibly efficient system of communication which the arriving Spanish could scarcely imagine, on roads of incredible sophistication. What makes the written word a necessary pre-condition of an organized state society? Literacy rates among the Mayan and Aztecs were probably 1 - 3% for that matter with their cumbersome pictograms, and I doubt that was much better for the early Seal Script of Shang China, either.

Actually, the mayan system of writing was a marvellously detailed system, which was somewhat pictographic but also phonemic in other respects. It was something like ancient chinese in that respect.

Example. Balam, meaning Jaguar, could be written like such:
[PICTURE OF JAGUAR], Ba-[JAGUAR], Ba-[JAGUAR]-ma, or Ba-la-ma.

Further, the phonetic symbols were simplifications of monosyllabic words, so that Ka was for instance a word that meant "Fin", so it was a picture of a fish's fin or a fish or whatnot.

Thus the Mayan language could be written entirely phonetically. However, like the Japanese of today, they still used pictograms in addition to phonetic elements to help the language be more readable as it easily breaks the language into segments without there being a space marker or other unit to ruin the flow, using the phonetic symbols only as markers for how to pronounce the word depicted or as grammatical aspects. This is similar to how chinese characters were formed, with pronunciation and meaning distinguished in the body and radical, but not squashed together into a single square.

Mayan literacy was probably no worse than any other area of the time (that is to say, atrociously bad among non-priests and educated bureaucrats, but still present), as it wasn't a particularly 'cumbersome' or 'primative' language as intimated, unless we are to presume that Japan's is also.

[Adrian Laguna]

Damn. Here, we've got native Filipinos mixing with Spaniards, making the mestizo class. Lots of these folks got educated abroad, in Europe even. These educated guys were rather important in rallying folks to free themselves from the shackles of imperialism and other cool stuff.

These things didn't happen with Africans, did they?

The french actually were (in-)famous for educating almost the entire leadership of their former colonies.

As a result, government business in former French colonies is conducted mostly in French, not the native language. They are also generally not complete shit holes.