re: Winston Churchill is no better than Adolf Hitler says Indian politician Dr Shashi Tharoor

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Yeah that's what happens when an imperial power makes up countries. You need to educate yourself on the fall of colonialism.

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You sound like someone who just finished your mandated history classes for your Ag-D major, so I'm going to try to keep the condescension out of my post as much as possible. Forgive me if some seeps through.

In the 1400s, Africa (from this point forward, when referring to Africa, I mean sub-Saharan Africa, excluding Ethiopia) was almost entirely without any civilization past the development point of chiefdoms, or small communities of mostly distantly related persons. This is pre-colonialism. Africa had a few small kingdoms, but they tended not to last very long and were quite local. Benin, Dahomey, and a few river tribes in the Niger or Mali watersheds, but again, they were both: relatively new and relatively unorganized.

In addition, at this time you had areas such as Europe (blessed with excellent arable land in large coastal plains, numerous natural harbors, a large collection of domesticated animals and plants which had lead to dense population growth, navigable rivers, and abundant natural resources) and western China (Same goes for the Yangtze watershed) which had tons of advantages.

So why did Europe colonize Africa and not the other way around? For the same reasons Africa today is still a shithole. Are their borders arbitrary? yes. So are many borders in Europe, surprise surprise. The border between Germany and Poland was drawn on a map in 1945 without regard to language or culture. Yet, its a peaceful border. Why? Because the Soviet Union forcibly removed 99% of the Germans from the modern state of Poland. Stettin was never a Polish city, yet today it is.

African nations suffer from many, many disadvantages, much of which is pre-determined by geography and climate. Arbitrary borders are a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things they have to deal with. More important is that none of the countries have a unified culture or language, its expensive and difficult to connect one area to another via natural or modern transportation, and even when connected to the coast for import/export, again, they have few natural harbors, and even fewer harbors which are easy to connect to interior resource areas.

A great example is the DCR. The DCR is the remnant of the Belgian colony of the Congo, and covers most of the Congo river basin, a huge river system that on a map, looks as useful as the Mississippi river system in the US, able to connect vast areas of resources cheaply and drive that cargo to the coast where it can be exported for profit. But like all rivers in Africa, the Congo river is full of cataracts, preventing easy transport of goods. Most importantly, the last 200 miles of river before it connects to the ocean is cataract. The only way the Belgians were able to export anything from the Congo is to float it down a stretch of navigable river to Kinshasa, and then unload it, and load it onto a railroad for the last 200 miles to the sea, to the poor ports on the Atlantic. This railway has to pass through highlands to get to the ocean, which further increases the rail cost.



I'd advise you to read two books: Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is a good starting place. Further reading for more modern explanations of why some areas do better than others is Prisoners of Geography, which I happen to like as a general overview of some of the main ideas.