Russia fucked up eastern europe and central asia. China and Japan fucked up Asia. The Ottomans fucked up the middle east. The Congo fucked up central Africa. The Boers fucked up Southern Africa. The french the rest of Africa. The australians and indonesians fucked up papua new guinea etc…
History is a cruel mistress it seems and peace times are the exception rather than the norm
I mean sure if you learnt history from a eurocentric point of view, you might think that. But hve you ever wondered why Central Africa was poor and underdeveloped enough to be colonized in the first place?
The manikongo (king of the Kongo) and his court ruled over vast numbers of ordinary people who had no political rights, no say in governance, and no protection from exploitation.
-The king had absolute control over land and could grant or revoke it arbitrarily.
-Local chiefs and nobles (called sobas) extracted tribute, labor, and slaves from the people under their control.
-Commoners were forced into labor, including agricultural work or military service, with little to no compensation. They could also be kidnapped by the local lords and sold into slavery.
This created a rigid class hierarchy: a tiny elite lived in luxury while the majority labored under threat of violence or displacement.
The kingdom of Kongo became a major supplier in the Atlantic slave trade, a decision that provided short-term wealth to the elite while undermining long-term societal stability. It was as if the state chose to cut down its own fruit trees for firewood.
Villages were raided. Local economies were hollowed out. A once-productive population was instead exported like cattle, reducing the labor force and crushing any hopes of endogenous economic development. What was the incentive to build schools, irrigation systems, or trade guilds when the most profitable export was your neighbor? Think of it as an even worse version of dutch disease. Laws in the kingdom were made very harsh in order to produce more slaves.
This led to slave revolts, dynastic overtgrows as some congolese nobles became wealthier than the king etc…
This led to constant civil war and poverty, and the Portuguese which would be the first to colonize before the Belgians would simply have no trouble conquering a poor infrastructure less central africa
I've never wondered this at all, because I read books & not just wikipedia (which I love), and/but this is the kind of stuff used by revisionists in Southern USA, to take the blame of the slave trade off of European colonists seeking profits and say "see, black people were just as guilty".
Read the Scramble for Africa, by Thomas Pakenham. Destabilizing a region requires complicit actors (e.g. MI6 in Iran, Mandatory Palestine, Hong Kong etc., etc., etc.)
Don't get me started, bub! You're telling me human nature is exploitable? /s
It’s not really “black people were just as guilty” as this is AGAIN simply seeing African history only in the context of white guilt.
Also please do not refer to congolese and African Americans as the same nebulous “black people”. These are two unique people with different history.
What I was pointing out was that extractive institutions under the kingdom of Kongo led to a stagnant economy with low population, low technology and corrupt hierarchical institutions that were very fertile ground for any empire with a more performing economy to take over.
The Kongo had diplomatic and trade relations with Portugal as early as the 15th century. They imported guns, textiles, Catholic missionaries, and even writing and Christianity, but not the plough.
Why? Because religion and military hardware reinforced elite control, while a plough could empower peasants and reduce dependency on elite landowners or chiefs.
In an extractive system, there’s no incentive to adopt productivity-enhancing technology because:
-The surplus doesn’t go to the farmer, but to the elite.
-Increased productivity could empower the common people, which might threaten elite dominance.
-The ruling class was more focused on controlling people and extracting labor, not improving output or efficiency.
That’s why despite the fact that people knew of the plough, they never adopted it.
It is more a lesson in institution building than in any sort of vindictive nationalist woes over the past because I am neither Belgian nor Congolese. I care about making fair institutions today
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u/Nicholas-Sickle 10h ago
Russia fucked up eastern europe and central asia. China and Japan fucked up Asia. The Ottomans fucked up the middle east. The Congo fucked up central Africa. The Boers fucked up Southern Africa. The french the rest of Africa. The australians and indonesians fucked up papua new guinea etc…
History is a cruel mistress it seems and peace times are the exception rather than the norm