Africa during the Scramble: The Herero, the Nama and the Germans Part 2

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss the latest article by @Youngmarshall here

 

[Thande]

Discuss the latest article by @Youngmarshall here

Facebook decides all by itself whether to include the preview image or not whenever I post a link to an article. I think this is the only time I've deliberately told it not to...

 

[SenatorChickpea]

That's... I won't say a good article, but a necessary one.

Christ, that was hard going.

"It is tempting to imagine a happier Africa wherein colonialism was less brutal but in that case you’re no longer accurately representing colonialism as it is."

This is succinct, correct, and a great deal of the reason I've largely stopped commenting on the other site.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Grim.

I, too, take note of that line of what's tempting and inaccurate. And that the only way to avoid as bad a series of atrocities was a different empire that wasn't going to care to go that far, because it would be brutalising somewhere else instead.

 

[Alex Richards]

Hoo boy that was grim, even in summary.

 

[Yokai Man]

Chilling article,with a lot of good points made.

 

[Gary Oswald]

"It is tempting to imagine a happier Africa wherein colonialism was less brutal but in that case you’re no longer accurately representing colonialism as it is."

This is succinct, correct, and a great deal of the reason I've largely stopped commenting on the other site.

Yes, that was largely the point of this. There's been a number of happier Africa timelines and there's essentially two ways to do that if your POD is prior to 1950. You can avoid European colonialism to a much greater extent or you can make European colonialism kinder and the latter tends to be the easier choice. But I think there is something quite uncomfortable about those timelines, even the well written ones.

I have often talked about my love/hate relationship with Malê Rising and what the writer of that timeline does with Namibia is something that bothers me a little. Essentially the Herero don't ever recover from the Rinderpest epizootic and sell much more land, meaning the Germans become the main landowners with the Herero being reduced into neo-feudal serfs. Because the Herero rich lands are now open to German settlement, the settlers find easy riches and land and so there's no need to pick a fight with the Nama so the Nama remain a loose protectorate outside of the German colony. Likewise because the Herero have been removed as competition, there's less resentment aimed at them and the all white security forces of OTl start recruiting Africans as most colonial armies did.

Then there's a devastating French/Russian/Austrian invasion of Germany. And to make up for the manpower losses more and more africans are recruited into the armies and factories back in Germany, with the Herero eager to leave their neo feudal colony to find opportunity in Europe. This eventually leads to Berlin being more fond of them and so demanding that Windhoek gives them more rights. Eventually South West Africa becomes a new state in the German empire and the chancellor says that the Herero have been good Germans for 50 years.

And yeah, it kind of works. Jonathan obviously read the same sources I did and came to the same conclusions I did about the inevitability of the genocide emerging from German resentment of lack of land and came up with a scenario that removed it.

But it's one of my bugbears with that timeline, as brilliant as it can be, which is by trying to find the best possible result for Africa you end up portraying various states as their best possible side. When you have on one side a German official declaring that every single man, woman and child of the Herero was to be exterminated and on the other a German official saying the Herero are Germans and should have the full rights of that. Well the latter is a much better outcome for the Herero but the former is what happened. And if you paint every colonial relationship as being the latter not the former, in order to get that richer post colonial Africa, than you're saying things about colonialism that you maybe don't mean to.

 

[Redolegna]

I was in tears midway through that article. It's just so absolutely horrible. And then come the end: 'so we'll have a look at the Belgians next'.

I expect to have some more water flowing, then.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

But it's one of my bugbears with that timeline, as brilliant as it can be, which is by trying to find the best possible result for Africa you end up portraying various states as their best possible side.

I love Malê Rising, but I think you make an excellent point here. In some ways, I think the timeline acts as a cautionary tale: consider that this is a well researched piece of work that tries to cover the world in exhaustive detail, that tries to find the 'best' outcomes for Africa and doesn't make the mistake of thinking that those 'best' outcomes can be duplicated from colony to colony. His Egypt is different from his Ethiopia from his Kenya and so forth.

Now consider just how unpleasant and horrible much of the timeline is anyway. Sometimes from design- his vision of the Congo Basin is convincing, but also a rather different (if slightly more restrained) version of hell than the one we got in OTL. Sometimes through unfortunate implications- is the best case scenario for Namibia really serfdom?

The point is that this 'optimistic' view of the world still results in genocides, corporate states, serfdom, cultural destruction and Empires that are more resilient in the long term than in our world.

I would like every poster on the other site who goes 'What if Imperial Federation plus the colonies?' or 'What if America ran the Congo And Was Nice' to have a good think about that.

 

[Alex Richards]

It's basically why my response to 'ASB: Reunified British Empire in 2012' was 'actually the how does this happen even with ASBs is more interesting.'

I got about as far as 'ok so you start with a slight shift in opinion polling, regional federations see more success and mass Hong Kong protests that start using symbols/actions harking back to the old colony as a strike against Beijing' before running out of steam.

Didn't help that the entire Arab Spring element was written in a far more optimistic time.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

I think part of it is that Imperialism's triumph was so total.

Now, it's not true that colonised cultures were completely swept away. The Academic push to reclaim subaltern voices, the indigenous renaissances, the movement to decolonise art, the focus on local voices in the Global South- all important, all admirable.

Nonetheless, it's necessary to remember the sheer scale of destruction we're talking about. Languages and religions that had existed for centuries or millennia were almost destroyed, surviving haltingly and trapped in amber. Political and economic systems shattered. Land stripped away and often never returned to this day. And we're not just talking about Africa, either. There are still Tasmanians... hanging on in tiny groups, arguing over who
among them is genuinely indigenous, trying to hold on to the remnants of one of the oldest cultures on the planet.

Consider the fact that some of the most important texts in the anti-imperialist canon were written in French, English and Spanish. It's as if anti-capitalist societies were forced to meet in McDonalds.

It is easier for me to imagine a world where, in 1788, every Briton simultaneously suffered a fatal heart attack than it is to imagine a world where Australia somehow made it to 2020 without ever being carved up by an Empire.

Does this mean that the ravages of Imperialism were inevitable? No. I think my failure of imagination is just that, a failure of my imagination. However, I do think it explains the tendency in counterfactual communities to try and soften the blow, rather than consider if the blow could be avoided at all.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Incidentally @SenatorChickpea the white australian briefly mentioned in the article for joining up with the Nama guerillas in their war of venegnce after the Herero genocide was named Edward Presgrave. He'd come to Africa as part of the recruits for the Second Boer war and just kind of stuck around and ended up fighting the Germans. He was shot by two boers under German employ and this led to a minor scandal back in Australia as to whether he was a legitimate target with some letters of protest being sent to berlin.

Thought you might find that interesting.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Absolutely going to look for some papers on him now.

Thanks!

 

[Charles EP M.]

or 'What if America ran the Congo And Was Nice'

That's a real thing? Because that sounds like the Draka would read it and say "This premise is really implausible"

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Moreover, I'm not sure exactly why you say no one would want to move to Kongo. The pioneer spirit has long been an American tradition. Hostile natives and wilderness were obstacles that were overcome in order to inhabit new lands. What makes the Kongo any different?

I won't link the damn thing because it frankly isn't worth the effort of reading through, but yes- the OP started with an innocent question of what an American Congo would be like and a couple of pages in the exceptionalists showed up.

 

[Charles EP M.]

aaaarg

 

[Avian Overlord]

I won't link the damn thing because it frankly isn't worth the effort of reading through, but yes- the OP started with an innocent question of what an American Congo would be like and a couple of pages in the exceptionalists showed up.

I would still put money on it turning out better than the Belgian Congo.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I would still put money on it turning out better than the Belgian Congo.

This is the next topic but I think you can recognise both that the Free State was particularly awful and that the situation is such that any colonial rulers of that area would be pretty nasty. Rubber colonies always were even when Leopold wasn't involved.

 

[Indicus]

I would still put money on it turning out better than the Belgian Congo.

Even that is arguable - both the French Congo and northern Portuguese Angola were treated brutally, and I see little reason why am American Congo would be any different. But even if that were to be the case, that’s a very low bar to cross

 

[Avian Overlord]

And of course, any America with a Congo is going to be a more imperialist America, which is another paradox of "benevolent colonialism." If you're respectful enough to treat the natives well, you're probably respectful enough not to conquer them in the first place.