The Historical Origins of Africa’s Underdevelopment

VoxEU.org ^ | December 8, 2007 | Nathan Nunn

[PeteB570]

Culture and Tribalism

DB is spot on.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

"So why did Africa not thrive and develop prior to the slave trade?"

Ummmm, Africa was thriving (generally) and developing prior to the slave trade. There seems to be a misconception that the continent wasn't.

While not a match for China, India, the Spanish, Portugal, or the Italian city states, etc., several of the more developed African kingdoms were basically on par--give or take here or there; cross-the-board higher development doesn't seem the norm up until Europe and the United States raced ahead with the Industrial Revolution--with lesser states in Eurasia.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Figured that this absolving from blame would come up. Why not just make the issue abstract then?

Some continent on a planet lost a large portion of their people who were of prime laboring/working age and often in prime condition. Does that continent falling behind in development as a result seem all that far-fetched to you?

What is with the plot-to-blame-whitey paranoia that is so rampant on FR? Is everything about 'you?' The loss of people was bad for Africa. Blaming a group is unnecessary to acknowledge that fact. As pointed out on many threads by many freepers, Africans were largely responsible, and Arabs took around as many slaves as the West. The West also took slaves--tough.

The point is that those slaves could have been developing Africa, not that people from a particular group--and especially those who are merely the descendants of that group--are to blame.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Uganda Zimbabwe.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

What makes the author a ‘jerk?’ Can see how you might be of the persuasion that he’s a moron—actually his idea in general makes a lot of very common sense (if you would just push aside your particular feelings on the topic, you might see that the hypothesis is valid), but how is he a jerk?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Also, the Spanish and Portugeuse were fairly developed (compared to France and the British Isles) in large part due to......MUSLIMS. (hoo boy, could write a book on how to be unpopular on FR).

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

comment 22.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

comment 23.

[Thermalseeker]

Culture and tribalism.

Exactly. Slavery was an institution long before white Europeans ever set foot on the continent of Africa and it exists there to this very day without one iota of western help......

[huldah1776]

Would this also happen where any nation was deprived of the most influential? Like Poland when the Germans killed everyone?

[BnBlFlag]

In answer to your question posed in post #7 please see the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen.

[BnBlFlag]

“And why is the IQ around 70”?
Simple. Its Genetics.

[america4vr]

(hoo boy, could write a book on how to be unpopular on FR).

You're only as popular as the *Moderator* deems you to be. That's the ONLY popularity that counts.

[Constantine XIII]

Those words that you are saying do not mean what you think they mean.

[Constantine XIII]

You mean Rhodesia.

*facepalm*

[KeepUSfree]

We have a Bingo. Tribalism.

Nothing more, nothing less. And, a large percentage who live in THIS country still can't let it go.

Slavery is the best thing that ever happened to blacks of this generation in this country.

[Darteaus94025]

Some continent on a planet lost a large portion of their people who were of prime laboring/working age and often in prime condition. Does that continent falling behind in development as a result seem all that far-fetched to you?
Uh, frankly yes. Didn't Japan lose a "...large portion of their people who were of prime laboring/working age and often in prime condition" during WWII? And wasn't their industrial base, social structure and political system similarly destroyed? And yet, they recovered within one generations. Similarly with Germany. So, I do see as far-fetched to believe slavery caused "...that continent [to fall] behind in development as a result.."

[IronJack]

Let me guess ... the solution to this problem would be to send boatloads of money to Africa to redistribute some of the West's ill-gotten wealth ...

Did I get it right?

[yankeedame]

The tragedy of Africa: Part II
by Thomas Sowell

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

Nature and man have combined to make Africa the most tragic of the continents — and the men who did this have been both black and white.

The great French historian Fernand Braudel said, "In understanding Black Africa, geography is more important than history." Much of Africa's history was in fact shaped by its geography.

Almost every great city in the world has arisen on navigable waterways — and such waterways are more scarce in Africa than in any other continent. An aircraft carrier can dock on the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan but there is not a single river where that is possible on the vast continent of Africa, which is larger than Europe or North America.

Even smaller boats can travel only a limited distance on most African rivers because of cascades and waterfalls. Most of the continent is more than 1,000 feet above sea level and more than half of Africa is more than 2,000 feet above sea level. That means its rivers and stream must plunge down from those heights on their way to the sea.

Water transport was crucial in the thousands of years before there were trains or automobiles. It was crucial for developing an economy and crucial for developing a culture in touch with enough other widely scattered cultures to make use of advances in the rest of the world. But many African societies have been isolated by that continent's dearth of both navigable rivers and harbors.

Isolated regions have almost invariably lagged behind regions in touch with a wider cultural universe. One among many signs of the isolation and cultural fragmentation of much of sub-Saharan Africa is that African languages are one third of all the languages in the world, even though African peoples are only about 10 percent of the world's population.

Small, tribal societies were another consequence of geographic isolation — and the vulnerability of such societies to conquest by outsiders was another.

If cultural diversity was all that the multiculturalists claim, Africa would be a heaven on earth. Too often and in too many places it has been a hell on earth....

Rest of the article (non-geographical section)

[sportutegrl]

Blaming black underachievement on something whitey did 400 years ago. It’s been done.