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Discuss this article by @Youngmarshall here
A grim read.
Corvée labour is the term always used in describing what the Chinese Empire got up to, which makes me wonder if this is due to 1) it being written about by French-speakers/French being the international diplomatic language or 2) it being written about by English-speakers who wanted it to compare it to Bourbon practices to show how bad it was.And it's only going to get worse.
The corvée had been a thing in Europe until very recently: it was one of the most hated part of the Ancien Régime and featured heavily in list of grievances, and it was abolished in the Night of August 4th, although this was partly rowed back and it was not until 1793 that it was entirely gone with no need from peasants to buy it back. It got abolished wherever the French Empire's writ ran in Europe and kings slowly followed even after 1815. It being put in place by the empires in Africa really show the contempt on racial lines that the colonists and the metropoles had for Africans: not worthy of enjoying what had been proclaimed as part of the Rights of Man. It's not surprising Vichy went at it with a vengeance.
Good article. I'm not sure if I agree with the idea that you'd need to go back to the 17th century to produce a stronger polity capable of resisting external encroachment - I always find statements like that problematic from an AH point of view, because in other timelines they'd probably say that about regions which in OTL saw a new unifying conqueror or a revitalising leader. One way I use this in LTTW is to have Japan be one of those "well obviously them becoming someone else's colony was inevitable" regions.
Out of curiosity, how many articles do you intend to devote to the Congo? When it comes time for the great PR battle to be written about, I've got scans of a Free State propaganda pamphlet that I found in the State Library of Victoria I could put up for anyone who's interested.
A grim read.
I do promise that there will be articles in this series that aren't just a list of colonial atrocities but it might be a little while before we get there.