What is Veeky Forums opinion about colonialism?

>people still confuse the Congo Free State with the Belgian Congo

The Congo Free State was shit, but it sorted itself out when the Belgian state took control over the colony, creating the Belgian Congo, which was fairly benign, see

China was never really colonised, they just took some ports and shit

The opposite, son, the opposite.

It was a bad idea in hindsight. Yes, all that surplus production had to be consumed somehow, but the way it was done ensured that, a century and half years later, there will be one of the biggest migrations in history.

they build rails though

Good for the colonized countries, bad for the colonizing countries

The real question is, what would be an alternative to colonialism?
What should European powers have done with/in Africa in 19th century?
Suppose slave trade had ended by 1830s, should Europeans have limited themselves with occasional trade and left it to its own devices or should they have tried to "civilize" Africa in some way or another without exploitation?

very relevant

It was possible to help the countries technologically without the brutal colonization.

>The opposite, son, the opposite.
Are you deluded?

They should have killed all niggers and settled the land themselves

have fun with that malaria and yellow fever friendo

China has infrastructure built by the Europeans? I mean, outside the ports they directly controlled? Do people living in the areas that were under this or that power speak said power's language to this day? I don't think so.

Both objectively better than blacks.

Are you retarded?
It isn't that the removal of the black population means that yellow fever and malaria springs instead existence, it was already there.
You just make it so that instead of the blacks dying from yellow fever and malaria its white colonists.
This isn't even counting any other practical matters like finding a hundred million whites to move there since you could only be trolling.

You know, there were malaria in italy too, but the swamps which hosted it was removed, that's the difference, the root problem would be removed instead of doing nothing to remove the problem while you instead only sit there sucking the water out of cow dung in your hut all day

I live in a tropical place and I never had trouble with those illnesses. You only need a fucking vaccine.

Well I know that French is widely spoken in Africa.

If you are then that's the fucking point: most of Africa got heavily colonized by France, no European power has done the same to China (or indeed meaningfully colonized the classical way).

>1800s medical technology is as good as modern medical technology
It took until around 1900 for appropriate responses to jungle diseases to start to even make an appearance, with projects like the Panama Canal a good example of their transmission. In the French colonial empire it took until the post-ww2 era for quinine to become universal.

>the climate in Italy is the same as Africa!
Italy had scores of millions of people, even in the 19th century.
Africa's population was dismally low, draining all of the swamps was impossible.
Besides, do you think the Europeans did not know this? The French issued a host of hygenic orders for their colonies in West Africa in the early part of the 20th century, and the problem is that Africa happens to be a hostile and big place which was too large for the sparse population to deal with.
All that trying to do the clearing jungles thing is that you'll clear jungles, the population will be too small to keep it intact, and a vast number will die trying to clear them.
It'll deal with European overpopulation pretty well though.

in other news, if you teach a man to fish, he will fish if he feels like it, but if you teach a man to run a fishing boat, he will sell fish and become rich
that is to say, the Congolese knew how to work, otherwise they wouldn't have been working; what they lacked is management and resources and discipline

also there are people that fondly remember the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, that doesn't mean those were good either

live and let live in much the same way as Asia
there were always going to be missionaries and outreach programs; it's better to let them do their thing at their own pace and let the people learn and adapt at their own pace
you can look to New Guinea here, the inland areas were never really colonized and for the last century or so modern technology and ideas have been filtering through the various places and cultures and affecting the region-- not always for the better, but that's how it goes

bump for interest

the strong conquer the weak. If they weren't colonized by one colonial power, they would have been colonized by another, it's just how the world works. This fairytale scenario where all these weak little groups somehow survive colonization in tact is pointless to discuss.