Black History Month

is this an accurate description of african history?

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Pretty much

I expected a /pol/ rant but was very pleasantly surprised

Unexpectedly good. It's generalizing a lot, but that's pretty inevitable when dealing with a huge continent and a billion different peoples.

The first part, about how the lack of native state-structures impeded development compared to places like India and Southeast Asia seems interesting to me. I think people tend to overlook the importance of premodern history in shaping the modern world, as if the only stuff that really matters is colonial or post-colonial history. For example, I'd say Japan's success in the modern world owes more to the fact that it was so highly developed in the Tokugawa period than it does to the specific policies of the Meiji regime, while Ethiopia's failure owes above all to its complete lack of development prior to the 20th century rather than its Communist regime. Not that the Meiji and Derg regimes didn't both shape their countries' modern developments, but they would not have done so in the way that they did if not for the the conditions already prevailing in those countries, which have their roots centuries ago.

Anyway here's a paper about this in Uganda; sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/eopp/eopp39.pdf

Thanks

I think you are right about the importance of premodern history. But a giant factor also exists in terms of how the culture of the nations and peoples in question functioned.

Places like japan became a actively militant but self-reliant and internationally isolating at certain crucial periods, for example the process of limiting and resistance to Portugese cultural influence that led to the isolationist policy of the Edo period.

Meanwhile comparatively in india, commerce and industry was pretty huge source that contributed to massive wealth concentrations in india during those times under the Mughals. Akbar's rule was close to a golden age during those times and this was around the time the Dutch East India company was earning in the 'East Indies' and other european powers increased their resources in and around india, especially English and the French, the reaction in india was more open to foreigners because international trade was a very important source of revenue and historically has been since the time of the IVC.

So you mean that part of the reason India was colonised was because they attracted foreigners with their wealth, while Japan remained independent because they were isolationist?

I completely agree with that, but that concerns independence or colonization rather than modern poverty or prosperity. I'd say that even if Japan had been open and India had been closed, resulting in Japan being colonised and India being independent, even then Japan would have ended up better off than India because of its higher degree of premodern development. We can even see this in the difference between Thailand and Korea; Thailand wasn't colonised while Korea was, but (South) Korea ultimately came out better at least partially because as an East Asian state it was more developed than an Indochinese state.

I'm not trying to imply that premodern history determines a country's development forever and without any other influences; I'm assuming Thailand will eventually catch up with Korea, and India with Japan, sooner or later. And of course things like economic policies, internal and international politics, individual decisions and other completely modern factors can send countries on very different courses. Just look at North and South Korea. But I do think that the degree of economic, educational and political development in a country prior to its modernization or colonization is one of the most enduring factors shaping them today.

>giving corrupt politicians and landowners bribe money in exchange for access to resources is the same as "trickle-down" economics

the only part that's bullshit

eggzplain

Structure is very important. An independent agent can either act within the boundaries of a structure, like us politicians in the tripartite division of power they use. Or you can act outside of your structure, usually fucking it up - gorbachev. Or you can be africa, with no structure... You can see how that works out

I think it was reffering to the fact the ruling power brings in corporations with low taxes and cheap labor and the lower class doesn't gain anything.

The excuses liberals will come up in this thread to avoid talking about inherent intellectual inferiority among africans

What's wrong with that claim?

African politicians and companies say that if some American group manages their oil fields, it will bring jobs and money to the nation. Yet these countries stay poor.

Yes but you also need to know that the Soviets supported many Communism style African states post-colonialisation, and then suddenly and quickly abandoned them with no support.

The state of Africa today is far, far more due to political meddling of the rest of the world than "fucking niggers". Though they are too lazy and quick to violence

R u black, Veeky Forums?

Quarter-African

I think the nature of Western interest in a country is more important than anything else, though previous levels of social and economic development are very important anyway. What made Japan develop fast was because Western nations and corporations could only access its markets and gain profitable contracts through a very watchful state. When the state was too weak to secure local Japanese interests allowing Western powers to run roughshod over everything, it was quickly replaced by a new government.

India, however, fell apart politically and its individual princes signed away much of their provincial prosperity in exchange for foreign support in the form of loans and soldiers. Thus the commerce and industry that was originally their strength stagnated as European interests naturally privileged their own companies. Thus the Japanese nobility turned into capitalist tycoons who industrialized the nation while the Indian nobility turned into cogs in Britain's bureaucracy who helped deindustrialize their country in order to open up markets for European manufacturing.

yeah, very good for /int/

no but my girlfriend is

Posts like this make me lose my faith in humanity, I didn't fucking need this blackpill tonight.

Slightly off topic but I've always maintained that postcolonial studies wrongly doesn't emphasize the caste system as much in favor of placing the blame on the European powers.
The claim that the caste system wasn't as harmful before the British seems to be suspect as the British merely inserted themselves into the highest category and took advantage of the already exploitative system. In Nepal we can see the effects of harsh caste based rule even with little colonial intervention.

The arguments that castes weren't genetically separate also fall apart when you realize that while the lower caste may be genetically mixed the Brahmans show very distinct genetic markers compared to the rest of the population.

This isn't supposed to be colonial apologetics, but the a preface to the question:
Can the introduction of European colonial powers be be seen as an impetus for radical change in the Indian caste hierarchy? Or without European intervention would there have been a revolution against the caste system anyways?

It's hard to say, but probably not, or at least not for a long time. India would have ultimately been exposed to Enlightenment ideals about equality eventually, but there wouldn't have been a regime encouraging the adoption of these ideals. It may have caught on eventually, once the castes started to realize how shitty they had it and found the philosophy to justify their anger, or they might have developed the idea themselves, but the British definitely sped it up.

I've been paying attention to rising nationalist movements across the world and it seems like Hindus are trying to erase their past with memes like " the British invented the worst aspect of the caste system" as if the vast majority of them weren't just poor and illiterate but thought to be deservingly so.

??

If we're going by how many different religions and ideas passed through India without making much of a dent then it could have been a VERY long time before they rebelled against the caste system.
Ego most likely. They'd prefer not to admit they had a really shitty system, so for those with little knowledge of history it's easy to blame the worst aspects on something everyone already acknowledges was also bad.

Ye

Bump

Yeah, that's p gud, but Black History Month is about African-American history, not African history.