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The author, Daniels, has failed to take what he has learned to its obvious conclusions. He notes the material and spiritual benefits he gained from his time in Africa, and the goodness of many Africans. He fails to understand to what a degree he, and others like him, were a blessing in turn to them. The racial discrimination was wrong, of course, but he makes it clear that this was passing away, just as over time it had once existed and then faded in the US.

Empire is not only a function of rapacious greed on the part of the British, far from it. Greed was very obviously the driving force behind the German and Belgian colonies in Africa, but British colonialism was always more than that, it was a natural result of commerce and cultural confidence. His description of the Rhodesia they had built is a snapshot of who these people were. They built, they created, they established the rule of law, and the common people of Africa were the beneficiaries. The British were not doing charity work, by no means, but the benefits of British rule were the natural byproduct of their presence..

Daniels goes to great pains to point out that the Africans were at heart very good people, and sees dimly that something in their culture made them unable to sustain the civilization they inherited upon taking power. But he fails to understand what that was.

The creation of wealth is, first, the natural result of creation. You build, you create, and the obvious result is wealth. But there are other preconditions that are equally necessary; individual liberty, so that each person may do what he sees best with his own life and goods; clear and predictable laws; and honest courts to protect him and the fruits of his labor.

Daniels recognizes that the British brought rule of law, and that they sought to apply the law equally, to all whatever their station in life. He recognizes that for many cultural reasons the Africans simply do not understand the rule of law, and he sees the chaos that resulted once the rule of law was ended.

He blames the chaos that resulted, though, on the fact that the British were there, imposed changes to Africa's natural order, and then departed. He doesn't see that the chaos, and slaughter, that ensued are exactly what the British found when they arrived two hundred years previously; that the order and freedom and prosperity he saw were what the British had built out of misery, and that once you take the rule of law away, misery and slaughter and mendacity are the natural and obligatory results.

He does correctly note that African wars for independence were not about winning freedom, and that in the end they destroyed freedom for African and colonial alike. Independence and freedom are two separate things. Power and freedom are two separate things. African wars against British colonialism were not wars for freedom, far from it, they were wars that put an end to the rule of law, and Africa has paid a tremendous and bloody price for that.

Simply educating Africans did not help, as the author notes, because the British themselves did not fully understand what they brought to the equation. Individual liberty and rule of law were embedded in the culture, but are not expressly taught anywhere. Far from it, most universities teach from an almost Marxian perspective, and the Africans returning home with their degrees came home often as confirmed Marxists. And the British themselves, mis-educated in the same schools, were unequipped to dispute philosophically the Marxian attacks on their rule. They lost their confindence, and they went home.

The dam burst, and the result is what you see.

We are not immune to the African disease. As our societies move away from the simple concepts that made us, individual liberty, individual responsibility, rule of law, the moral and social chaos sets in among us as well. What you see in Africa is what we are if we let go of the key concepts that made us.

He blames the chaos that resulted, though, on the fact that the British were there, imposed changes to Africa's natural order, and then departed. He doesn't see that the chaos, and slaughter, that ensued are exactly what the British found when they arrived two hundred years previously.

Yes, if I read your comment correctly I think you have articulated something I was thinking about but didn't put into words.

The author tells us about Africa under colonial rule, and he tells us about Africa after colonial rule. But the article says nothing about what it was like before colonial rule.

It seems to me to be entirely possible that Africa was worse (or about the same) before coloniazation than it is today. If so, the colonists can't really be blamed for making things worse, and in fact they might deserve a little bit of credit for making things better for at least a temporary "window" of time.