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Comment by retsop_tihs | Hacker News Reader

Spent years in The Gambia. Beautiful country and really friendly people. It's really sad how things were left by the British--they are decades or even 100+ years behind in terms of education, infrastructure, access to opportunity, etc. Corruption top to bottom is currently holding the country back, and it's quickly falling way behind even other nations in the region.

As one of the major ports of the continent established for the purpose of the slave trade, the country's history is fascinating. Pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of HN :).

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Is it fair to blame the British? The country has 56 years of independent existence. At what point do you stop blaming the former colonial power, and take responsibility for your situation?

Supposedly someone took over your town, but they established a completely new system. No longer do we decide by council or by elders or by merit, we only listen to the despot. This happened because a large company moved in and started taking over and installed the despot. They then kept their authority by force. Things deteriorated and the company caused lots of grief, tears and blood spilled. All the generations of how to manage the town has left and now the model for organization in society has become corruption. How will you teach your kids that this is not a good way forward for our town when no one remembers the old way? Why not just bribe? You cant fix the situation, everyone does it. After about 50 years the company moves back out of town leaving a horribly broken system that has erased generations of culture on how to operate. But what people do know is the despot system, after some violence they settle back to ANYTHING that works cause no system is so much worse.

But hey why blame the company that moved in? its been a while now tell them to just put things back they way they were.

Its not like the company did this all over the world? Right?.... They did.

Its the case that every other similar company from the area practiced the same pattern, all over the world.

Speaking from behind the former Iron Curtain, corruption is a lot more widespread than people think. Not too long ago bribing a doctor for a better hospital bed was normal here.

Corruption itself isn't a prohibitive barrier to development. Countries as different as Italy, Poland, India and China managed to develop pretty fast even with endemic corruption. Heck, the U.S. themselves is pretty corrupt, at least on the political level. Didn't stop you from becoming a world power.

The interesting question is why some countries sink into such a deep corruption that they lose even the basic ability to function. Lebanon comes to mind.

For me there's an easy marker: if the local corruption is for the sake of an wealthy external power's resource extraction, it won't result in local development, other than luxury development to support elites and foreign employees. If the local corruption is really local (not an inundation of foreign currency), you'll see some development.

Saying that India has managed to develop is an exaggeration, though. India supports a large (and maybe growing?) middle class (because India is large) but it has an enormous number of people who precariously, and no better than their great-grandparents.

> Countries as different as Italy

I found it fascinating that we had the patron system during Roman times where people made daily visits to a rich local and got paid basically for showing up and chatting. This created a useful network of connections all around. Meanwhile today in some instances we call this bribery, or organized crime.

> All the generations of how to manage the town has left and now the model for organization in society has become corruption.

Arguably in many cases the social behavior remains the same, but is defined as "corruption" within the context of the introduced political system. The "corruption" is undesirable in large part because the outcomes are being compared to alien systems that produce economic benefits previously unfathomable. And that perspective shock would have been inevitable, whether conquered or not, once they began interacting with the outside world. Look at some of the Amazonian and similar tribes elsewhere that were introduced to the outside world in the latter half of the 20th century.

Quid quo pro and careful cultivation of personal relationships existed everywhere. That's the default state of small societies and, in many cases, even very large ones. Heck, it's still the case in many wealthy, ostensibly modern societies today, like China. Such behavior is corruption from the perspective of the modern authoritative structure, yet the same cultural norms the Chinese had been beneficially practicing for millennia.

There are counter examples of ex colonies like Taiwan and South Korea and Singapore. But we also have the US vs Mexico, both are ex colonies.

What’s important is the leadership and their vision. This is exemplified by the divergent results in N Korea vs S Korea. They both emerged from brutal colonization but took different paths. Same history, same ethnicity, etc., but different leadership.

There is a massive difference between the New World colonialism that largely ended in the 1800s and countries colonized during the Scramble for Africa. If you HAD to compare New World colonies with Scramble for Africa countries, you would probably compare the fate and status of the indigenous groups.

We can look at ex-Soviet republics. Some are utterly corrupt and barely functional and some are up and coming economies. The difference is governance and leadership. It’s fundamental and extremely important to not have self serving leadership.

The condition you rise from isn’t key. It’s what you do afterwards.

It’s not too different from two high school students. One decides they’re happy being a dropout because they had a broken home, the other decides because she came from a broken home is going to do her darnedest to do something with her life. One becomes a professional the other still handles the till at the 7-11.

ex-Soviet states were also protected from Cold-War meddling by the West, unlike many other countries. Meanwhile, people like Lumumba and Allende are assassinated.

I don’t know your point. The west didn’t interfere. Great. Despite that some ex-republics did well after de sovietization/colonization and some did poorly. Some are utterly corrupt and inept others are doing relatively well for themselves. Leadership after liberation has enormous impact on how well they do.

In EX-Soviet states, there clearly was no Cold War meddling after the Cold War from anyone.

Not sure why you're downvoted, I didn't clarify that ex-Soviet states ONLY existed during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union existed. I messed up on that point.

That makes no sense. As long as the Soviet Union existed, the "ex-soviet states" you're talking about existed as republics of the Soviet Union (which is just a colloquial abbreviation for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). They weren't states at that point. They became ("ex-Soviet") states when the Soviet Union broke up, and that coincided with the end of the Cold War. Since their existence as states and the Cold War don't overlap in time, those states couldn't have been subject to "Cold War meddling".

> The difference is governance and leadership. It’s fundamental and extremely important to not have self serving leadership.

This.

There was a whole book written about it. It is called Why Nations Fail IIRC.

edit: add link

https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B007MIXOEC

Oh woe.

Taiwan, SK and Singapore are western protectorates. Particularly US and ENG heavy investment in these states post WW2 [Germany included]. The US is built on the dead indigenous populations - and is an extension of the British isles as is Australia, South Africa, New Zealand. All seem to be mysteriously well for themselves.

My point is just to shift your perspective just ever so slightly and you might come to an altogether different conclusion.

> What’s important is the leadership and their vision.

Blanket statements like these are and always have been the common European view of Africa for centuries. To suggest that africans are incapable of thought. It gives them a right - I suppose a righteous cause - to pillage and do as they please since they were dealing with barely human animals...cattle.

Just after WW2, Hitler had reduced Europe to rubble and independence was granted...but was it really?

African leaders with an african agenda - back in the 50's and 60s- just after independence suddenly found themselves dead, suddenly farmers and their sons had AK47s and righteous cause to overthrow a government they had previously never dared to speak of. Suddenly, American companies were getting absurdly favourable terms to extract minerals by the military leaders of whatever coup was successful, EU rose from the ashes and the music started playing again. Africans know that familiar tune. It's been playing for centuries.

> African leaders with an african agenda - back in the 50's and 60s- just after independence suddenly found themselves dead, suddenly farmers and their sons had AK47s and righteous cause to overthrow a government they had previously never dared to speak of. Suddenly, American companies were getting absurdly favourable terms to extract minerals by the military leaders of whatever coup was successful

And yet, somehow I don't believe that the Brits are to be blamed for those AK47s or for whatever deals American companies are getting.

To get a glimpse how this plays out in real life, i highly recommend the documentary about Fela Kuti.

(edit): add link to trailer

https://youtube.com/watch?v=937SQ8-6RV4

This is an interesting thread with thought provoking arguments to a moderately sensitive topic. I would have preferred that continue than to rule out the outliers to a theory attack hundreds of years old behaviour to leave the countries that support a narrative

Comparing countries like this to the US and Mexico shows how clueless you are.

And the hypocrisy of bringing up South Korea... like North Korea doesn't exist. I guess because it has to be us African savages who don't have leadership and vision right? North Korea doesn't fit the narrative so we'll pretend they weren't part of the Korea that was colonized... right.

I always tell people trying to act like an entire continent is just magically incapable of giving birth to a leader this example of why these countries end up like this.

(The choice of Texas comes from the fact it's usually white Americans saying this stuff, so this might be lost on others, but feel free to sub in "big group A that looks down on small group B")

Imagine today the Netherlands invaded North America, and then took Texas.

Then they took not Mexico, but just Chihuahua state (3 mil pop), an area half the size of Texas (29 mil pop)

That'd be bad enough right? Imagine Texas of all places having to deal with the humiliation of being conquered, then topping it off with becoming the same country as the Mexicans they have a history if looking down on.

From there the Netherlands puts the Mexican minority in charge of the Texans knowing the history of anti-Mexican racism in the state.

They intentionally treated the Mexican minority as kings, and the Texan majority as second class citizens to ensure distrust and hatred between them. So even if you weren't some anti-Mexican racist before, you sure more likely to be one now... After all, all the negative notions that were already stewing just got proven right?

That ensures the Mexicans who are in higher positions of power are loyal to the Netherlands, and are highly motivated to maintain this new state, lest the Texans get their payback for the current set up.

In the meantime the rest of the US undergoes the same thing.

Then one day, the Netherlands just leaves.

I'd like to know what leader and "vision" you think would keep the average "damn illegals" Texan from not revolting immediately and destroying every reminder those Mexicans ever existed in a position of power over them.

You have a country that was intentionally engineered as a powder keg. That was supposed to be the leverage that kept things running.

So is it any surprise that when you haphazardly toss the powder keg out the window because sour grapes about losing your new toy... it explodes?

Oh yeah then I guess to sprinkle some spice on all that, let's remove Christianity from the Mexican side. Netherlands brought it, but only the Texans took to it. So now the Mexicans are also heathens to the bible thumpers.

North Korea shows what a difference leadership makes. On the one hand one pushed education and industrialization on the other hand cult of personality and some flavor of communism/collectivism.

I think this is a stark example of what a difference leadership can make.

That's nonsense.

It's like saying because a tourniquet stopped you from bleeding to death after someone went around cutting people's hands off, the problem isn't that your hand got cut off, the problem is you didn't get a tourniquet in time.

If anything NK vs SK just shows how ridiculously vulnerable these colonies were and exactly how little internal factors mattered.

Both were simply pawns of the cold war.

SK was on a downwards trajectory but saved by an export economy propped up by billions of US dollars and heavy US military support in amounts far exceeding other countries because SK was considered an important front of the Cold War.

NK went from arguably doing better than SK in the 70s and ended up losing 25% of their economic output as the USSR collapsed...

How would someone seriously hold these two nations up as proof that success or failure after your country has been put through a meat grinder and chopped up into new pieces, it's on internal factors to see if you'll make it in the long term?

NK did pretty ok for awhile as long as they had the USSR as their sugar daddy. And SK was a dump ruled by a dictator for many decades as well. Funny how the roles reversed.

I don’t know if it’s that personal fwiw colonisation is horrible

And there are countries that have come out of colonisation to succeed, South Korea Singapore Malaysia India in Asia Australia newzeland Canada US. Germany and Japan were bombed and occupied Inspiring hopefully other countries

I don't think you get to count Australia, NZ, US or Canada here. For the most part, colonization in those places was a process of removing the indigenous populations to make room the offspring of the colonial power's settlers. That allowed the colonizing countries to export their political systems wholesale, including cultural expectations and created a relative tabula rasa for historical grudges (though there are some that we still see ripples of today, e.g. in Quebec and Appalachia).

On the other hand, most of the colonization of Africa was characterized by, er, conscripting the local population as labor forces for extractive industries (running from slavery in the 17th century to minerals today). The colonial powers imposed controlling political systems onto groups of people who had their own histories, political cultures (read: methods of conflict resolution) and grudges. Since the colonizers were running the colonies solely for extraction without expectation for economic growth, they didn't prioritize economic and political self-sustaining capability in drawing borders; that those borders have remained in place after the withdrawal of colonial life support has been the source of much of the economic struggle (which begets violence, which begets destructive undevelopment, which begets further economic struggle).

I don’t know if the topic is cut and dry, but I am 100% sure describing the horrors of colonisation and occupation doesn’t imply your theory is correct neither does saying well these countries don’t count, ignoring the countries that developed post colonisation. How about India and all the countries that were at some point occupied in history

> they didn't prioritize economic and political self-sustaining capability in drawing borders

And even further, they weaponized this. They wanted inherently unstable countries that required their presence to function.

That was what culminated in the Rwandan genocide, intentionally setting up a country such that without their invisible hand propping one side up, the other would seek to destroy it.

That talks to the horror of occupation and colonisation. It’s doesn’t address the thread’s proposition of why some countries had a different path afterwards like India and Singapore to mention a couple

Germany has been invested in by the US, to build up as quickly as possible, to act as a frontier to Communism. This was called the Marshall plan. Another plan was to keep Germany at a medieval level to stay peaceful. Has something like that happened in Africa? Nowadays China invests into Africa, in a complete loans + workers + knowledge package.

I think the situation is far more complex than just blanket blame of former colonial powers for present day problems. It is also disingenous to expect such countries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps considering the legacy of colonialism.

I don't think it's disingenuous whatsoever. I think at some point you should expect that. As an extreme example, what's now the United Kingdom was once an occupied colony of Rome, and they've done ok for themselves since. The United States was a colony of the United Kingdom just 250 years ago. Singapore was a colony of the UK just 58 years ago and they are incredibly rich now.

Some points:

1) It's about 1600 years since Britain was a Roman colony. A lot has happened since then, such as the Dark Ages. When Rome was in charge the local population was in effect the Welsh (and Cornish and Bretons). How's Wales doing now relative to England?

2) Yes, the US was a British colony, but the dominant group in the US is still the descendants of the colonizers.

I don't the history of Singapore, but I would be curious to know who was in charge when England took over versus who is in charge now.

In all these cases there is a complex history which can't be glossed over by saying "they were all colonies". Important issues are the support they were given to create or rebuild institutions, population replacement, the extent to which they achieved control of their own resources, the institutions they were left with, or whether they were saddled with debt. Haiti was a colony that achieved its freedom, but was left with a crippling debt to its occupiers which it only finished paying off in the 20th century.

But my point is that it's perfectly reasonable to expect the passage of time to improve previously colonized countries.

1600 years is obviously plenty. Should 56 be enough such as in the case of Gambia? I'm not sure. That's almost three generations.

A few questions:

How well did British colonisation work out for Native Americans? That would be a more fitting comparison to make. Look at life in the reservations.

Did the Romans meddle in British affairs after they were booted from the isles? How was life in the British isles in the aftermath (let's be generous and give them 100 years) of Roman colonisation for the common people?

Singapore is an interesting, and exceptional case. But also worth noting that even here, the economically and politically dominant Chinese Singaporeans supplanted indigenous Malays. The Chinese mostly arrived during the British colonial period.

People who espouse this sort of thinking also say similar things about South Africa. "Apartheid ended almost 30 years ago. You should be over it." Or that Black Americans - people who were only accorded full civil rights in the 60s - should get over centuries of domination since it's "already" been a couple of generations since they could vote and sit at the front on a bus. I could keep going.

As you have mentioned these are extreme examples. I think Singapore is the most interesting since it is the example politicians in my home country use to gaslight the electorate.

This doesn't actually address why an Asian Tiger like Singapore was able to rapidly industrialise or the difficulties of implementing good governance and economic policies.

I'm sure being a politically stable, western-friendly port in the middle of a shipping superhighway during a globalization boom didn't hurt.

From point of view of the Portuguese colonism, naturally the current goverments are to blame, yet those in power were the ones that in a way were part of the colonial power structure, and most colonial powers still have priviledge positions with their former colonies, so it is not easy to separate waters in such matter.

It is quite eye opening to travel in Africa and realize that while the countries are now "independent", the industries are mostly the same ones as before the independence took place.

There's certainly a lot of blame that can be placed on the country's leadership over the past fifty years, but it's not as straightforward as that.

For one, there's been huge economic, political, and commercial pressure applied to ensure that the colonial-era extractive industry relationships broadly remain the same and with similarly bad terms for the former colony. Investments are often directed at infrastructure that improves the efficiency of those extractive operations, rather than local beneficiation, intra-African trade, or other local development.

France was even more blatant, applying the Françafrique restrictions to its former colonies, such as the requirement that they keep portions of their foreign reserves in the French Treasury, and keep the CFA Franc, in order to get French investment.

In simple version of the reality it isn't fair. Why many western people prefer to accept this simpler version of reality is rather obvious (not my fault, I heard enough, they rule for themselves for decades so who gives a fuck variants.

In more realistic version, evil leaves marks across generations and centuries. I don't need to theoretize - my country came out of soviet iron embrace 32 years ago, one could say a generation and a half. General laziness, corruption, fuck-it-all that were pervasive and brought by our russian 'friends' and 'liberators' are still there, in fact in much worse shape.

There is no easy guaranteed trick to get out, its more a spiral and not every nation has its internal strength to change the course. I blame former colonial powers for most of evil that is currently in this world, former Soviet union/Russia for most of the rest. Does it mean I blame you/anybody else specifically? Nope, but your countries definitely yes. And you can see some of them, ie UK didn't even fully reconciled with their own doings till now, not even making up for the vast damage to whole world. Ie artifacts stolen remain in museums, just empty words and gestures flying around.

The Civil Rights Act was passed in the US in 1964, so it's been about the same amount of time since then.

Do you think that your comments would equivalently apply to the societal tensions in the US, and be considered reasonable? Why, or why not?

> The country has 56 years of independent existence.

Independence isn't binary. Despots in these countries are often directly chosen by colonial powers, but even when chosen by local processes, they enter into a relationship with those well-resourced colonial powers that maintains their dictatorship. These countries end up run by local elites with western education and relationships (and multi-million dollar London/New York apartments), with help from those nations to put down any local resistance, up to and including intelligence agencies giving the despots lists of names to help solve their political or labor problems.

The US, UK, French, and Chinese sell weapons to them to put down their own populations, and US, UK, French, and Chinese companies are allowed to build infrastructure for resource extraction for export. This makes it in their interest for friendly despot #294 to maintain his position. The populations of these countries can't compete with that.

The usual process is that the colonial power helps the despot (or the series of despots if a few show a little defiance or get a little greedy) exterminate all of the country's secular resistance as "communists," leaving the religious opposition as the only uncorrupted institution left. Support for it grows to a majority of the population, you have a revolution, and now you have a theocracy. Then the colonial powers try their best to immiserate the population through sanctions and annoyance attacks against civilians to turn that theocracy back into a dictatorship.

Vaguely related prediction: the US will soon be, if we are not already, paying and arming "ISIS" to attack the Taliban. There will be fawning profiles of "The Warlord Who Turned Away From ISIS - Afghan Women's Only Hope?" about somebody who supports decapitating women for adultery but also has kids at US and UK grad schools.

Yes, it is fair.

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