A worse scramble for Africa

What possible POD would have the Europeans being worse then they were OTL in the colonization of Africa?

Also If they were so much worse would Africa fall more to a a Anti imperialist Ideology like OTL Communism (Of course the communists OTl were still pretty imperialist).

And if they were so much worse then what would the demographics look like in Modern Africa?
 

Deleted member 67076

Its really, really hard to top the monstrosity that was OTL. Why would you ask this? :confused:
 
It is bit difficult to create even worse imperialism in Africa as in OTL. You need make all African slaves and/or take genocidal direction. Probably very similar politics as what Leopold II had.
 
Pink Map doesn't happen. That will lead to problems between Portugal and GBR. If it leads to war we could see some funky things going on
 
Its really, really hard to top the monstrosity that was OTL.

It's all too easy, actually - just abort the Berlin Conference and have it fail, so that colonial powers fight over spheres of influence rather than agreeing on them. This could turn Africa into a mess of proxy wars and small-scale clashes, with African men drafted as colonial troops and porters and woe to every village that's in the soldiers' way. When the elephants fight, the grass is trampled.
 
But the Pink map didn't happen? :confused:

But since Gurroruo claims that it did, that can only mean one thing... Slider! Or a traveler from another TL , which is petty much the same thing but I digress...

Also well, more genocides and an even greater disregard for native groups should do the job. Can't think of any details right now, though.
 

Mathuen

Banned
It's all too easy, actually - just abort the Berlin Conference and have it fail, so that colonial powers fight over spheres of influence rather than agreeing on them. This could turn Africa into a mess of proxy wars and small-scale clashes, with African men drafted as colonial troops and porters and woe to every village that's in the soldiers' way. When the elephants fight, the grass is trampled.

mc7qcw.jpg


I decide to take a stroll across Pre1900 and this is the first thing I come across. I can already feel that this day will be full of child-like wonder and bliss.
 

Arkocento

Donor
So much of this thread is a train wreck of emotion without valid arguments.

If you want to make it worse, make the goal of the scramble for africa to be less about resource extraction, and more about colonization.
 
Having all the colonization done by chartered companies or private entities?
Not always a guaranteed nightmare. Sure you have the classic example of Leopold II's personal holding of the Congo but at the other end of the scale you also have the British North Borneo Company and the Brooke's rule of Sarawak that were apparently pretty enlightened.
 

Deleted member 67076

It's all too easy, actually - just abort the Berlin Conference and have it fail, so that colonial powers fight over spheres of influence rather than agreeing on them. This could turn Africa into a mess of proxy wars and small-scale clashes, with African men drafted as colonial troops and porters and woe to every village that's in the soldiers' way. When the elephants fight, the grass is trampled.
Jesus Christ how terrifying....

7e1.png
 
It's all too easy, actually - just abort the Berlin Conference and have it fail, so that colonial powers fight over spheres of influence rather than agreeing on them. This could turn Africa into a mess of proxy wars and small-scale clashes, with African men drafted as colonial troops and porters and woe to every village that's in the soldiers' way. When the elephants fight, the grass is trampled.

a multipolar "cold war", where only proxy wars exist between nations; where an African fights a fellow African not because of anger, or ideology, but pure greed of their masters; where millions die out of the whims of greasy-fingered, drunk bureaucrats.
 
Its really, really hard to top the monstrosity that was OTL. Why would you ask this? :confused:
"Monstrosity"? Don't get me wrong, the colonization was hardly a good thing, but I think calling it a monstrosity is a gross exaggeration. It's true that there were monstrosities taking place, such as the Congo Free State and the Namibian genocides, but colonial rule usually wasn't that relentlessly awful.
 
the CSA somehow gets independence, and claims a section of Africa to be their slave factory

The British would never let that happen.

If you want to make it worse, make the goal of the scramble for africa to be less about resource extraction, and more about colonization.
I'm guessing by colonization you mean settler colonization, which already happened OTL in most of the more temperate parts of Africa that Europeans would want to settle--Algeria, South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenyan highlands. You could certainly have settler colonialism more widespread than OTL, for example the British allowing South Africa to annex Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana, or maybe Morocco becoming a settler colony similar to Algeria. Also, Ethiopia could easily have ended up a settler colony if it were successfully colonized during the Scramble. None of this would be pretty.
 
IOTL Congo Free State villages eventually got to the point where they warred with one another in order to obtain the oh-so-valuable resource of severed hands.

Expand this dystopian nightmare state, have others copy its model, and combine it all with what Jonathan Edelstein said. Might as well call it Generalplan Afrika at that point.
 
IOTL Congo Free State villages eventually got to the point where they warred with one another in order to obtain the oh-so-valuable resource of severed hands.

Expand this dystopian nightmare state, have others copy its model, and combine it all with what Jonathan Edelstein said. Might as well call it Generalplan Afrika at that point.

Think of it a bit like 1984's buffer zone - the people are used for forced labor, periodically fought over with no regard for collateral damage, and then rounded up to do forced labor for someone else. I'm willing to bet that African and South Asian bush villages in the 1984-verse fight over severed hands too.

That said, a New Imperialist regime of this type probably wouldn't be a boot stamping on Africa's face forever. This isn't the 1984 universe, after all - it's one in which the colonial powers like to think of themselves as civilized and enlightened, and someone would eventually expose the colonial atrocities and spark an outcry for reform. Also, the spheres of influence would eventually shake out to the point where continued endemic warfare would eat into the profits. So by 1920 or thereabouts, there would be a switch to less lethal forms of resource extraction - but by then, Africa would have experienced a generation of extreme brutalization, and as with the Belgian Congo, even the "reformed" regime would be oppressive.
 

Sulemain

Banned
It's all too easy, actually - just abort the Berlin Conference and have it fail, so that colonial powers fight over spheres of influence rather than agreeing on them. This could turn Africa into a mess of proxy wars and small-scale clashes, with African men drafted as colonial troops and porters and woe to every village that's in the soldiers' way. When the elephants fight, the grass is trampled.

That's frickin' terrifying.
 
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