The DRC arguably didn't inherit either. They mostly just got empty desks.
I'm not saying post-colonial client states are good, but they are -literally- better than nothing.
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AHQ: Is a prosperous Congo possible with a 20th Century POD?
- Thread starter Texas Bulldog
- Start date
I'm not saying post-colonial client states are good, but they are -literally- better than nothing.
Anything is better than nothing. I am simply refuting the idea that the institutions or infrastructure the Europeans left had any tangible effect on uplifting the native peoples besides giving them the means to exploit themselves, which was the main moral argument of colonialism in the first place.
South Korea and Taiwan became successful primarily through the efforts of the people leading them. I wouldn’t attribute their success to the US, although you could argue they helped. The Americans have invested in many countries across the globe. Almost none of them have seen that level of success.
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I am not sure about South Korea, but in the case of Taiwan, they were colonized with the thought of them being an extension of the home islands. Thus they were left with an educated population, proper government institutions, and an actual functioning economy.
Yes, I agree. Especially since, the West was not trying to sabotage that nation.
A hell of a lot of weird takes in this thread.
An often ignored factor is that many of the African colonies were decolonised in 1960 because the population (and the evolues, who in Congo were the western-educated political class) demanded immediate decolonisation.
Many of the major money-makers in the colonies (Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga being a good example in the Congo case) were under the direct control of Europeans with little to no economic benefit for the Africans, and a longer colonisation period would mean the robbing of more and more wealth, as well as giving the European managers more time to figure out a post-independence strategy that would keep the wealth in their hands and outside of the native-led states.
States like the Congo of course had internal divisions and issues (unsurprisingly given the way their borders were usually drawn), but these were exacerbated by the meddling of the Europeans, Americans and South Africans. If the European states had actually sought to create positive, constructive relationships with the resource-rich African countries, they could have. Instead they wanted kleptocrats like Mobutu who they could use as compradors to keep the zinc/bauxite/cobalt etc flowing.
In the specific case of the Congo, I think you need a surviving Lumumba to provide some semblance of stability, get past the instability of the early 60s, and go from there. With the US' OTL refusal to work constructively with Lumumba, the only realistic option is taking aid from the Soviets and try to build up enough of an infrastructure base (paid for with nationalised mining) to start creating an actual workable state and tie the provinces together. There's still going to be challenges, particularly due to overflow of issues from Burundi and Rwanda into eastern Congo, but a prosperous Congo is only doable with either a lot of help from the Eastern Bloc, or a complete (and unlikely) policy volte-face from Washington.
An often ignored factor is that many of the African colonies were decolonised in 1960 because the population (and the evolues, who in Congo were the western-educated political class) demanded immediate decolonisation.
Many of the major money-makers in the colonies (Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga being a good example in the Congo case) were under the direct control of Europeans with little to no economic benefit for the Africans, and a longer colonisation period would mean the robbing of more and more wealth, as well as giving the European managers more time to figure out a post-independence strategy that would keep the wealth in their hands and outside of the native-led states.
States like the Congo of course had internal divisions and issues (unsurprisingly given the way their borders were usually drawn), but these were exacerbated by the meddling of the Europeans, Americans and South Africans. If the European states had actually sought to create positive, constructive relationships with the resource-rich African countries, they could have. Instead they wanted kleptocrats like Mobutu who they could use as compradors to keep the zinc/bauxite/cobalt etc flowing.
In the specific case of the Congo, I think you need a surviving Lumumba to provide some semblance of stability, get past the instability of the early 60s, and go from there. With the US' OTL refusal to work constructively with Lumumba, the only realistic option is taking aid from the Soviets and try to build up enough of an infrastructure base (paid for with nationalised mining) to start creating an actual workable state and tie the provinces together. There's still going to be challenges, particularly due to overflow of issues from Burundi and Rwanda into eastern Congo, but a prosperous Congo is only doable with either a lot of help from the Eastern Bloc, or a complete (and unlikely) policy volte-face from Washington.
The answer above is good, but firstly if you have a loose definition of prosperous, there are many possibilities.
To some, modern day Rwanda, or modern day Kenya, or modern day Tanzania would count as "prosperous."
Any three of those can actually be achieved by a POD as late as 1995 in my opinion (aka removing Mobutu and replacin him with someone more competent who can sanely manage Congolese/Zairean foreign policy regarding the situation in Rwanda.)
For a late POD, Étienne Tshiseked managing to *completely remove* Mobutu is probably your best bet.
Simply avoiding the first and second congo wars would do a massive uplift to the Congo, whose current deplorable state is greatly a result of those two conflicts and the instability and foreign meddling they brought.
If Etienne Tshiseked successfully repairs Zairean institiutions to something functional, Kagame and Museveni will not be able to attempt their looting fuckery in the periperhies of the Congo and create proxy militias to run amok that prevent any stability. A soverign Zaire or Congo would easily be able to keep Rwanda humble, and frankly Uganda as well.
Such a late POD won't bring utopia or a western of even chinese idea of "prosperity," but it could bring in continued economic growth and stability akin to that enjoyed by Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg until the unfortuante recent premiership of Abiy Ahmed.
To some, modern day Rwanda, or modern day Kenya, or modern day Tanzania would count as "prosperous."
Any three of those can actually be achieved by a POD as late as 1995 in my opinion (aka removing Mobutu and replacin him with someone more competent who can sanely manage Congolese/Zairean foreign policy regarding the situation in Rwanda.)
For a late POD, Étienne Tshiseked managing to *completely remove* Mobutu is probably your best bet.
Simply avoiding the first and second congo wars would do a massive uplift to the Congo, whose current deplorable state is greatly a result of those two conflicts and the instability and foreign meddling they brought.
If Etienne Tshiseked successfully repairs Zairean institiutions to something functional, Kagame and Museveni will not be able to attempt their looting fuckery in the periperhies of the Congo and create proxy militias to run amok that prevent any stability. A soverign Zaire or Congo would easily be able to keep Rwanda humble, and frankly Uganda as well.
Such a late POD won't bring utopia or a western of even chinese idea of "prosperity," but it could bring in continued economic growth and stability akin to that enjoyed by Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg until the unfortuante recent premiership of Abiy Ahmed.
one of the problems was Belgium messing around with the internal affairs of the Congo and also sabotaging any chance of the US working with the Congo. Belgium did everything it could sabotage the Congo. Lieutenant-General Émile Janssens, the Belgian commander of the Force Publique literally antagonized the Congolese soldiers and wanted Belgian troops to intervene. Belgium bombarded a city and withdrew all white administrators from the Congolese government crippling it. It also backed a secessionist movement in the country. The Eastern Bloc was barely interested and when Lumumba approached the Soviets for help. Eisenhower and the CIA treated it as the smoking gun that Lumumba was a communist.
I don't what is up with some of the other posters takes. they seem to be neo-colonialist sympathizers.
I dont think its that they're neo-colonialist sympathisers per se. I think they are probably just subscribing to the school of history that has basically tried to absolve responsibility of the West in the postwar situation in Africa by claiming that "if the West was there a little longer, they would have been better off via construction of democratic institutions". I dont think any of the above posters that made such claims are nefarious in any way, I just think that view of history is very "big picture" and ignores the actual situation in many of these territories.
The question of "what is prosperous?" Is a good point. In my post I was thinking of prosperous as starting to industralise or at least create value-add mechanisms and an emerging middle class. So somewhere between Latin American and Eastern European levels of economic stability and comfort. It isnt exactly Denmark, but being on the right track for further improvement down the line. China is also a decent comparison.
If by prosperity you mean Tanzanian levels, I absolutely agree that your later POD is possible.
Perhaps as a POD, Bush Sr. is reelected in 1992 and the intervention into Somalia in 1993 isn’t fumbled - empowering the US to intervene to stop the Rwandan Genocide before it truly starts. This thus prevents the massive refugee wave to neighboring Zaire and therefore the First Congo War.
Thank you all for your responses!
I would just like to clarify, when I said prosperous I meant a Balkan-Latin American level of development, nowhere near perfect, but far better than the current situation in the Congo.
Also, if anyone has some good online resources focused on the Congo/Central Africa/Cameroon specifically, that would be greatly appreciated. I am currently about to move into a new stage of my timeline and need some good sources.
I would just like to clarify, when I said prosperous I meant a Balkan-Latin American level of development, nowhere near perfect, but far better than the current situation in the Congo.
Also, if anyone has some good online resources focused on the Congo/Central Africa/Cameroon specifically, that would be greatly appreciated. I am currently about to move into a new stage of my timeline and need some good sources.
I do not believe a Balkan/Latin American level of development is possible anywhere in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. If nothing else Iberian colonialism in LA ended circa 1820 and Ottoman occupation of the Balkans ended between 1820 - 1885 (except for Albania/Macedonia). African decolonization only took place in 1958-1963, or 1975 for the Lusophone colonies. I would argue that the only real analog for the Congo is Africa is Nigeria. Both are well populated, resource-rich, and ethnically divided. As bad off as Nigeria is, it is in a far better situation than the Congo, to which the major culprit has to be Belgium. Even after the utter evilness of Leopold, Belgium itself had neither the will nor the resources to properly administer and develop the Congo (or Rwanda & Burundi). The cake was already baked by 1960. I do believe that even trying to make a single entity of the entire Congo was a mistake, and all of Central Africa has been paying for that mistake over the last few decades of near-perpetual war and genocide.
South Korea was a military dictatorship and economic backwater for a very long time. We think it was more successful in hindsight given how crazy things got under Kim Jong Il in the North and how South Korea now is a stable democracy and has been for most of our life times, but that's mostly a product of the 80s and 90s.
North Korea had a higher per capita GDP than South Korea until the middle of the 1970s, for example. That was not so much due to the nature of their governments (though that didn't help) as it was a combination of that and the existing infrastructure on the ground. Most of the previous industry and state apparatus of Korea was in the North, while the South was primarily agricultural hinterland that had to be built up (after the dictator enriched himself, crushed all opposition, and so on, of course).
Congo is a good example of that kind of problem. A longer decolonization would not have solved things, it would just be Belgians enriching themselves more, but more foreign aid spent in the training and construction of political, administrative, and industrial infrastructure was probably necessary to avoid the type of collapse we have now.
That aid would not ever come from Belgium. It was pretty much only conceivable via the US or the USSR, and Eisenhower made it very clear how jumpy he was about communism (though, to be fair, Lumumba had a habit as a former postal worker without much government experience of being a bit too reactive and alienating the political class of other nations).
Quite frankly, the best and most likely path for the Congo is if Lumumba manages to avoid alienating a couple less people internally or externally, but is aligned enough with the USSR that they start backing him and the Congo to the hilt while the US focuses its energies in other parts of the world.
Or someone other than Lumumba or Mobutu comes to power who is anti-communist and anti-imperialist. Those aren't necessarily contradictory stances. They would promote some kind of French-style nationalism (so Zaire rather than Congo and Kinshasa rather than Leopoldville). And actually use American and international aid to build up the economy of the country rather than just embezzling it all. I don't know how likely any of that is, but it is at least possible.
And I think a lot of people in this thread (not just you Jord839) are romanticizing Lumumba. Just because he was assassinated early on does not mean that he would have been a great or even mediocre leader in the long run.
The Resource Curse (wiki) was the major factor, which instigated foreign meddling and corruption. That and the Belgians.
Absoltue best-case outcome I can get for a congo rolling all sixes is a developmentalist dictatorship on it's second or third leader at Kenyan levels of development in 2024. Compare this to OTL's warlordism and other problems in that country, though.
Yeah, “die a hero or live long enough to become a villain” is the strongest with politicians.
Having read Congo: The Epic History of a People, Lumumba's government was unsurprisingly incompotentent, though honest (which is better than can be said of almost all the other leaders Congo has had).