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[–] mamwad 6 points 16 points (+22|-6) ago  (edited ago)

Before they were colonized, the locals were part of a fairly complex society that made its money by controlling trade routes, mining gold, and harvesting ivory. Then, hundreds of years of colonialism sparked a protracted civil war that destroyed the economy and put nationalist warlords in power, who promptly killed the educated white people and fleeced the gullible, albeit legitimately pissed, masses. Kind of typical of most of human history, really.

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[–] AlphaWookie [S] 5 points 17 points (+22|-5) ago 

Explain Hong Kong Macau, Singapore, and The Republic of Ireland, then. They where colonized where they not?

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[–] mamwad 6 points 14 points (+20|-6) ago  (edited ago)

I don't understand your question. I'm not saying that history always takes this specific course. It just doesn't surprise me that it went down as it did. The cycle of the oppressed becoming the oppressor is typical, and drastic land reform measures (i.e. taking land away from people who know how to farm it and giving it to government cronies who don't) tend to lead to famine and/or economic collapse.

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[–] raisinade 2 points 13 points (+15|-2) ago 

Sure, but they weren't inhabited by black people.

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[–] Thruxton 0 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago 

by controlling trade routes, mining gold, and harvesting ivory

You mean warlords robbing merchants, forcing slaves to mine gold and killing elephants for more gold. So, they are back exactly where they game form but with more powerful weapons.

Do you know that not a single African tribe/country ever made it to a proper iron age without the "evil" colonists getting involved. Most of them where stuck in stone age and many still are. I am not saying stone age is bad. Not at all.

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[–] primaryappellation 2 points 6 points (+8|-2) ago 

They should be allowed to keep slaves again. It seemed to be the key to african civilization

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[–] mamwad 3 points 2 points (+5|-3) ago 

I can't find any evidence of Kingdom of Mutapa being a slave society, though it must be said that slavery is seen throughout history in all types of cultures. It's hardly a African phenomenon.

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[–] luckyguy 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Reading up on it the only indicator that I see that they were advanced is that they traded. Nigerian gangsters do a lot of trading today. I wouldn't call them sophisticated. So do gypsies. Did they have secure households, education, and a lack of squalor? If somebody farmed something could they expect it to not be harvested by someone else?

The only thing I see is that they hunted elephants and got kind of good at making the ivory into things. They had a king but bush people with a power structure are still bush people. Maybe the king had cool artifacts. I see evidence of imports, but too often histroy measures the advancedness of a society by the richest person there. I don't think that's class centrism. I think it's creating excuses for the fact that a lot of societies that historians study are just backwards villagers or bushmen. Nobody wants to admit that they've dedicated their lives to studying idiots so they make up any way to spin that what they are studying is actually super sophiticated.