European empires

When we talk up Rhodesia, it should be noted that Botswana next door also did pretty well despite the catastrophic AIDS epidemic. They've had regular free elections since 1966 and have one of the best HDIs in Africa.

Overall it's probably easiest to say the British colonies came off best but this may be skewed by the British having more colonies and having some of the naturally richest ones.

The French colonies are worse overall as far as I know, made worse often by French refusal to leave without a prolonged war.

Portugal and Belgium left absolute hellholes behind.

Spain's colonies are hard to assess because most of them were lost a century earlier than everyone else's. Someone with more expertise than me could say whether the Philippines and Cuba owe more to the US or Spain for what they have.

Before WW1 German East Africa was pretty advanced with a large schooling system, as opposed to South-West Africa where the Germans just blew the shit out of things

No the successful British colonies are hands-down the best in Africa, like Kenya and Nigeria. South Africa is in decline but still relatively good. Though the British also left some terrible colonies like Rwanda (think Idi Amin) and Sudan (civil war). Rhodesia may have been good but that might just be /pol/ propaganda. It did go to shit though after Mugabe took power and evicted the white farmers and started printing shit tons of money.

Rhodesia did fine for a decade but their economy was dependent on an agricultural base of disenfranchised
blacks. It basically collapsed in the 70s when they lost the support of those populations and the vaunted RLI were unable to provide even minimal population security.

>Rwanda (think Idi Amin)
Bravo, Veeky Forums

Wasn't Singapore practically empty before the Brits or am I thinking of something else?

So from what I gather British colonies were (for the most part) lest in the best state with a fe exceptions whilst France often had wars making them the worst state. So was France the worst in terms of leaving conditions or does Belgium or Portugal beat them? Is there a clear WORST?
Also what about non African colonies, i'm English so I don't really know that much about other nations colonies, did the Dutch leave behind any Singapore esque states? Who left behind the best and worst non African colonies if we exclude the majority Anglo Saxon colonies?
Thanks everyone for posting this is a comfy and civilized thread.

I meant Uganda not Rwanda lol

Indonesia was left in pretty good shape, then they went all ultra-nat (probably the Japanese training rubbing off) and started invading anything that bordered them but you can't really blame the Dutch for that

Wrong picture.

>clear WORST

Belgian Congo.

Did it have good infrastructure and economy compared to surrounding states?
Is the Congo Belgiums only colony or did they have others elsewhere that were equally shit outside of Africa.
Also were German African colonies brutal or is that Anglo propaganda

>Did it have good infrastructure and economy compared to surrounding states?
It had a large and developed oil industry and was THE exporter of things like nutmeg and other spices
>were German African colonies brutal or is that Anglo propaganda
German South-West Africa was absolutely a fuckpit during the and after the Herero almost genocide,but East Africa was a leader in tropical disease control, native education and even the British were impressed. It really depended on the governor

Who would you say was the best governor of a African colony?

King Leopold II

Albrecht von Rechenberg

>Algeria
It's funny you should say that because despite economic ties, they have to be the most butthurt FUCKING FROGS GET OUT REEE country of the former French colonies in Africa. For example they refuse to join La Francophonie despite having one of the largest French-speaking populations in the world. Also 99.72% (!) of Algerians voted for independence in the 1962 referendum.

Belgium had no other colonies besides the Congo (technically even Congo was not Belgian until the early 1900s, before that it was a private possession of the King of Belgium)

t. frog apologist

>So in Africa French colonies were left in the best state?
No. Fremch are shit at everything they have ever done

They were pretty good at having their republics collapse

Cuba was the wealthiest province of Spain until the US made it into their little whore house

Excellent answer, this guy seems based af from what I just read. I have one question though, what made German SW Africa (mentioned here ) so shit? This guy clearly knew how to balance the natives and Colonialists interests, why were other German colonies supposedly brutal?

this is Veeky Forums but I can't resist
youtube.com/watch?v=yetx-dH1LB8

>I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Hereros. The Hereros are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen, cut off the ears and other parts of the body of wounded soldiers, and now are too cowardly to want to fight any longer. I announce to the people that whoever hands me one of the chiefs shall receive 1,000 marks, and 5,000 marks for Samuel Maherero. The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the 'long tube' (cannon). Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people
Von Trotha losing the fucking plot

Oh fugg I've never even heard of the Herero Wars. Jesus Christ is Genocide in the Germans blood? This shit is hard core.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

hi Lindy

Idi Nahui?

Start buying Great Courses Plus

When people complain about British concentration camps in the Boer War, remember that the smallest punishment ration in a British concentration camp was more than 1/3rd larger than the *largest* ration in a contemporary German Herero concentration camp.

In Africa, I'd say Portugal

Is that true? Did the Germans imitate the British concentration camps because I read somewhere that a German state official condemned the treatment and a British official said they were no worse than the Germans which really offended them.
For what? Worst or Best?
Also was Brazil left in a good condition and did Macau become amazing before or after the handover to the chinks?

Can you explain why it was so bad without resorting to Leopold memes?

The only true answers are colonies meant to serve as military bases or trading posts. Hong Kong, Singapore, parts of Malaya, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, a few others. Everywhere else was shit because colonial policy was inherently extractive. You can't have a successful country if the whole point of colonization is to keep the subject people down. India probably got the worse deal of any colonized zone if only because of scale and for the relative disparity between pre-colonial and colonial India.

the natives would be Malays who while were not slaughtered are a minority in comparison to the Chinese.

>Also was Brazil left in a good condition and did Macau become amazing before or after the handover to the chinks?

Like Hong Kong, it was pretty good beforehand but got more autonomy and became more prosperous after being handed to the PRC.

>For what? Worst or Best?
Best

>Also was Brazil left in a good condition
It was left in good hands and had a lot of potencial

Don't know much about Macau desu but I'm pretty sure all the casinos came after

Even for the German Africa example earlier the education was not really that good and had more of a purpose of making administration easier (orders can't be misconstrued or played with) and the place itself had a lot of fucked up shit in it.

Like every single thing a you can bring up that can be construed as good has huge paragraph(s) of "fine print" so to speak for a very very sizable number of colonies.

I have went to both Africa and India and I can safely say that I would rather live in Africa. Jesus christ I don't know what the Brits did in India but the place is hell on earth. Just the smell is enough to turn you off

Hawaii is in no way a colony that was left well off. It wasn't even primarily a military base, it started off as a plantation style colony that imported a variety of ethnic groups to the point of making native hawaiians a minority.

It is one of the few colonies left without independence and with the dwindling native population and overreliance on US tourism the chances of independence are slim to none.

Puerto Rico is just as bad, and is one of the many examples of almost complete genocide. Given the crime ridden hell hole the island is today and how it suffers economically for its inability to use anything besides American sailors and ships, no government representation, and complete reliance on welfare (which doesn't work when everyone is on it so prices rise to compensate) it is troubling to believe that anyone would consider Puerto Rico better off after the supposed end of colonialism (protip: it didn't and it won't probably ever)

Italy by far. Their colonies are in absolute shambles.

Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia.

Worse than the DRC. Libya wasn't so bad under Qaddafi but now they are effed.

True, as a curiosity the first railway in any spanish speaking country in the world was built in Cuba the year 1837

>Blue background with a crest in the middle
*Barfs*