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Comment by AndyMcConachie | Hacker News Reader

Is this why African countries were so prosperous before the scramble for Africa kicked off in the 1870s? And why today, the countries in Africa least touched by colonialism are the most well off?

Or are they, actually. The human development index [HDI,1] can serve as a proxy for "prosperity", but I'm having a hard time finding the "degree of colonization" each country suffered, to see if the two are anti-correlated. The closest I could find was that Ethiopia and Liberia are considered to never have been colonized [2], but both are near the bottom of the HDI list. Maybe duration or how recently colonization ended could be used instead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_H...

[2] https://www.thoughtco.com/countries-in-africa-considered-nev... (I found it amusing how the article says Turkey was never colonized by the West. Yes. In fact, a large chunk of Europe was under Turkish colonial control [3]. One could argue a large chunk, Byzantium, still is, but is no longer considered Europe due to being conquered.)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_O...

Before the independence wars, all modern stuff reached our colonies before they were even an idea in Lisbon.

After the independence and continuous wars, mostly sponsored by western countries, they keep a shadow of their former selves.

I have been a couple of times in African countries and it is quite sad to see how hard it is to come out of this vicious circle.

I also find tragic that in some countries despite being independent, the colonization for all practical effects never left, because most companies that offer jobs worth having, are in the hands of European/US multinationals or expats.

I'm surprised Ethiopia is that low down on the human development index. Addis Ababa seemed pretty developed compared to places I've been to in Texas.

There are a lot of places that have a really nice major city that gets foreign investment and stays under the watchful eye of the government. Other places, particularly rural, fall to the wayside. The US has a lot of interest in catering to rural/suburban voters, sometimes more so than they do cities.

Mmm, are Bosnia and Albania not Europe to you either? If some part of Europe had stayed pagan (say Hungary) would that be Europe either?

> Is this why African countries were so prosperous before the scramble for Africa kicked off in the 1870s?

African countries were prosperous. In sub-Saharan Africa, hunter-gatherer bands often worked less than 40 hours a week (as observed by anthropologists even after the Scramble for Africa). This prosperity exceeded that of many programmers working in the San Francisco Bay area today.

Hunter-gatherer cultures were also only ever one bad season away from starvation/famine, highly dependent upon very specialized workers. Agriculture required more work in quantity of hours, but there are decided advantages to it - general prosperity being the primary one. Humanity has voted on this. By and large, cultures have moved in one direction on this question, consistently, for eons.

> Hunter-gatherer cultures were also only ever one bad season away from starvation/famine

Huh? Famines, disease outbreaks and such were much more common at the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Hunter-gatherer bands were much safer from famine than early agricultural workers. This was true from the beginning, to the Irish famine in the UK 170 years ago. And insofar as epidemics - we are in at least one right now, if the monkey pox one doesn't get set to make two.

Insofar as general prosperity - the inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US is below what it was a half century ago. This also pre-dates the recent inflation and Covid. I don't see how wages falling over the past 50 years is some sort of general prosperity.

This is about the shaky existence one group of people will have living the H/G lifestyle. Animal populations fluctuate naturally, disease and accidents affect skilled workers, affect animals, plants. Droughts the same. H/G populations are highly vulnerable to these whims of nature in a way that agricultural societies are more insulated from. Sure bad things happen to agricultural societies too, but it is (evidently) more a more stable and prosperous existence in the main.

In terms of general prosperity, you're comparing some metrics today to 50 years ago, and I'm not sure I understand the relevance. We were no more a H/G society 50 years ago than we are today. Do you know of any H/G societies that exist today? How does their prosperity compare to the poorest of the developed world? Do you know any developed nations that are still hunter/gather societies? Do you think this is merely coincidence or perhaps a big conspiracy?

very impressive, now show me their infant mortality

This thread now spans from the predictable 4channer talking about racial IQ all the way to this person talking about how sub-Saharan Africans were prosperous due to working less than 40 hours.

This conversation officially wins my "this oughta be good, just from the title" award. Reader, ye be warned, you'll find nothing of value here.

Can't tell if this comment is sarcasm or not.

One of the points of the article was that the DR was also the subject of imperialism, but it’s doing much better, and the majority of the divergence between the two countries occurred after the indemnity to France was paid off. This seems to undercut imperialism as the primary explanation for Haiti’s current problems. What do you expect economics historians to do? Ignore this fact because someone on Twitter says it must be wrong?

What made the dominican republic immune to imperialism and colonialism?

That articles says DR was used mostly for cattle-raising pasture because Spain was busy in South America.

It mentions coups repeatedly, and, discusses and refutes thr French payments issue, makes multiple comparisons (unfavorable) to the success of Jamaica, another former imperial nation that has done significantly better.

coup is there, imperialism is mentioned few times too but without that explicit word... care to actually read the article commenting on?

In the wake of independence, Haiti carried out a genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre

You seem to be ignoring the Polish and Germans that were allowed to stay (and considered legislatively black!)

Why is your post combative instead of conversational, i.e adding information to the conversation or asking questions?

I can cite the relevant section of the then in force Haitian Constitution but not sure how that adds to the point at hand.

One of the rare cases where it was entirely justified

France has had nothing to do with Haiti for over 200 years. Of course the same cannot be said of the USA...

In any case, it's simplistic to always blame external forces. Haiti's situation today is on Haitian people first and foremost.

From the article: “Haiti paid millions of dollars every year to France until the debt was finally paid off in 1947.”

Seemed to be right after that Haiti began to rapidly fall behind the Dominican Republic in GDP per capita. Also from the article "But the debt payments were a fraction of customs revenues, which were themselves a small fraction of the Haitian economy. Furthermore, the most significant divergence came long after the debt was paid off."

I read the article. I just wanted to point out that statement was entirely incorrect.

As for the top comment the point they are making is that you can’t have a conversation about Haiti without including all the details. All history is complicated and leaving out or downplaying major pieces of the story is a bad idea. There is no one simple explanation that answers the article’s question.

The top comment missed this part of the article entirely where they actually did mention and consider some effects of colonialism, and dismissed it as a major factor (due to the reasons given in the part I quoted, and more, "Indeed, Mats Lundahl, the leading economic historian of Haiti, does not even include the indemnity in his list of decisive events in Haiti’s economic history.").

Whether that was wrong or too simplistic might be up for debate but the assertion that they didn't mention imperialism is just incorrect.

What does most significant divergence mean?

https://vodoueconomics.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-haiti...

"I’m going crazy because even though I know the graph is wrong, I don’t have direct evidence to refute it."

Should have stopped reading there. Seems like an unhinged, expletive-heavy and evidence-light rant.

Most significant divergence means that before around that time the GDP per capita of the two countries were traking quite closely, and afterward, DR's GDP per capita started to grow while Haiti's remained flat, the difference today being over 5x.

Some countries have been completely dominated and leveled to the ground by foreign forces more recently than that but perform better economically. Some had straight up genocides.

Which has nothing to do with anything (payments were very small amounts for a country as mentioned in the article), especially the way Haiti has been run by its government, and taking into account that we are now in 2022.

France is used as a convenient scapegoat for Haiti's problems partly because of the nasty way independence occurred and partly because it's sometimes easier to blame others than to take responsibility.

You should have written that opinion then instead of the simply incorrect assertion I responded to.

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