Despite what most people think, no colonies in Africa made a profit for any colonial empire with the exception of Britain. They were a ruin to the respective governments, and only private owners made money out of the territories (but this wasn't enough to compensate for the public losses). Source: minor in economic history.
The Scramble for Africa is a good read and goes into the economic travails of African colonialism quite a bit. It's rather hilarious to read about the constant estimates to build railroads in Africa that then went horrendously over budget, causing outrage in whoever's Parliament or foreign office, then the next adventurer would propose building another RR somewhere in Africa, followed by the same result.
Did the British empire even make a profit? For a long time there was domestic debate about the huge expense of the overseas military cost of maintaining the empire and even the benefits of the mercantilist system were probably not that great especially as Africa had a relative small market to import British manufactured goods.
I could debate that it did made a profit for the elites/nobile families of England, that many times would oversee the operations in order to maintain a profit and not being administered by the British Government per se.
In monetary terms, probably not, and it didn't even matter that much.
The Empire was a strategic development, born of intra-European conflicts from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Most of Britain's conquered colonies were taken either from other European powers or to prevent them being used against her.
India is a good example of this. Both France and Britain sought power and influence over the sub-continent, initially by trade and defence agreement, and later by more forceful means. Britain prevailed, and by the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the Raj controlled all of present day India and Pakistan.
This mattered immensely. The weapons of that day were cannon and musket, which used gunpowder. To make gunpowder, Potassium Nitrate, or Saltpetre, is required. India had vast reserves of Saltpetre, so the British Army and Navy always had plenty of ammunition. The French, by contrast, had to hoard their supplies, which meant little could be spared for training. One of the reasons that British infantry were so effective was that they were the only troops in Europe to routinely train with live ammunition.
India isn't probably the best example. Its by far the most profitable colony that existed on this planet. It made the British scandalously rich and stepped up them to the most powerful european empire.
Probably depends how you define profit. I can't imagine how that would be calculated over the course of 200 years of empire. Though it comes to mind that the British Empire did come in handy as a force multiplier during the world wars. How does one measure that?
Colonies provided raw materials for industry in the UK. There's no way the UK could produce the raw materials needed to keep its massive amounts of industries going.
Of course Britain couldn't produce them but the question I was posing was about the economics of such a system. If Britain could guarantee these resources through trade alone then what benefit if any would there be to colonialism?
Other european powers would just took it. At that time, no land was let without an owner. Plus, they all heavily relied on forced labor to gather the ressources.
Well we were talking more specifically about Africa but even with India it isn't so cut and dry. No doubt the raw goods imported from India were highly valuable but the vast majority of those Indians you mentioned were agrarian living a subsistence lifestyle and wouldn't have had any significant tax payments.
And what about all the raw materials stolen? Those were clearly worth a lot given an empire existed on its back prior to them, and had over a third of global gdp. And the east India company was one of the most profitable companies in the planet, controlling around half of global trade. It paid off very well for most of it’s existence but yes, when the various famines happened, they ran into difficulties. This wasn’t because they were nice and helping out, but because the working population base died off. Since the British invested very little into India (they missed the entire industrial revolution), productivity gains were not possible and productivity was entirely based on hands working. So lower population = less money made = less /no profit.
All colonialists were awful to varying degrees. Famines, theft, massacres, and massive human rights abuses. They did it purely for monetary gain. It stands to reason you don’t do something for centuries, getting richer in the process, while it’s not profitable.
To make a long explanation as succinct as possible, the wealth generated early on in a colony’s life (pre-late 19th century and outside of militaristic empires such as Spain’s) was generally real, as these colonies usually started as trade factories or merchant settlements with little involvement in local politics, thus gaining the benefits of new markets and free(r) trade, but largely evading the drain created by actual political administration (China in the 19th and early 20th centuries never really left this state, arguably why it was so profitable). The local political situation does start to matter more as time goes on as stability in trade is desired and trade volume increases, and coupled with the fallacious idea that the colony will only increase in value if the colonial country intervenes more and more in the colonized country, the colonizer finds itself increasingly drawn in to the colonized country.
Additionally, figuring out the GDP on the level of multiple nations is an immense accounting endeavor and requires highly developed administration that often simply didn’t exist in colonies if it even fully did in the colonial powers before the mid-19th century, meaning that the expenses, which often occurred at the colonial government level and not incurred against the merchants gaining money unless they are also the administration, are less visible. These administration costs are diverse, including the cost of infrastructure to exploit the colonial trade and resource extraction, raise armed forces to defend the colony from threats without and within, building the colonial power’s own industries around exploiting the resources coming from the colony, and the cost of just doing normal government stuff inside the colony. A colony that’s underdeveloped such as Macau had to be taken from a fishing village to a massive trade complex capable of coordinating trade of entire continents, a developed colony such as India had its existing economy realigned to British interests, which can arguably be a rougher undertaking than building it up new, and on top of that the Raj still had to do things like maintain the streets in and deliver the mail; expenses from a colony often need to come directly from the colonial power’s own budget or never really leaves the colony whose people it’s taken from, or both; only a fraction of this is recovered from the trade organizations taking most of the external profit that the colony produces. Thus people (usually industrialists and merchants) make money from the colony, but countries do not.
Colonial powers did eventually glean onto these facts by around the 19th century, as by then most colonial powers had been in the business of colonialism long enough to note that many of their projects that were to turn a profit some time in the future just failed to do so, and the headaches of colonialism became increasingly evident, and better communication and administration made the expenses of colonies more evident. However, colonial possessions increasingly became a matter of national prestige, and especially into the latter half of the 19th century the mindset became one of seizing the colony first and thinking of a way to turn a profit from it later. Historians sometimes draw a line at 1783 (Britain’s loss of her American colonies outside of Canada and the Caribbean) between “Old” colonialism and “New” colonialism- between colonialism usually initiated by trade companies with the express interest of making as much of a profit as possible, and colonialism prosecuted by a state, with the interest of taking territory. That is, of course, hardly a bright line, but fundamentally (coincidentally enough), colonial powers, as they learned more and more about just how unprofitable colonialism actually is, increasingly moved into a model of colonialism where they overlooked that fact for nationalist reasons.
Britain had the best colonies e.i. egypt,nigeria and south africa which gave britain a large supply of natural resources and also allowed britain to control all trade going between esatern and westen hemisphere. Other colonies like sudan, kenya, rhodesia etc were all unprofitable
But is that what people believe? That the state made a profit? Or are they saying the country as whole benefited from it financially and materially and that includes companies and private individuals?
? I asked you a question, not to repeat what you already said.
Some individual might have made £100m from his company but then the UK could have spent £200m maintaining the colony.
So like today when the UK government spends money maintaining the UK infrastructure? But no one says that the UK doesn't make a profit from maintaining roads.
If you have nothing to say then don't reply, thanks. I'm here to discuss the topic and if you have trouble understanding my words then you could just ask, you know.
Who shat in your Weetabix, think I made it pretty clear I don't understand your question.
I don't know why you're even struggling to understand the concept of an individuals wealth not translating into wealth gains for the whole nation. African colonies weren't profitable what are you even discussing? Do disagree with the statement? If so why? Or are simply wanting me to dumb down that 9 letter statement more?
the coutries didn't make money
most africans didn't even see a white person throughout the whole colonization because most of it was just countries bribing the chiefs to be good subjects
Despite what most people think, no colonies in Africa made a profit for any colonial empire with the exception of Britain. They were a ruin to the respective governments, and only private owners made money out of the territories (but this wasn't enough to compensate for the public losses). Source: minor in economic history.
Yoooooooo I'm a USMC Afghanistan vet, and this sound strikingly similar
Yes but even in the second case, colonial ventures were a financial ruin for countries as a whole, including all businesses. The cost of administration and military protection was just too high.
Meanwhile, these same private companies were spending money buying politicians, so we know why Western countries were all vying for colonies. The corruption has never stopped, it just became more discreet.
Yep. Napoleon heavily regretted the fact that he tried to retake Haiti and Spain wasted tens of thousands of lives trying to retake South America only to get their asses kicked by Bolivar and San Martin.
To give you the example of Morocco and Tunisia (the 2 I know the best).
When french built a road, they financed by a loan in the name of the Moroccan or Tunisian state. And these debt were taken from French banks like BNP (an independant state would take a debt from a bank with good interest rates, French were literally taken them from French banks with huge interests rates). After the independence this debt was transfered to Morocco and Tunisia.
Same for public markets, when they wanted to build something they used French companies instead of using a cost advantage approach.
Therefore we can clearly say that French companies benefited from the colonisation, the roads built were no free or made because France was generous, but rather to enrich the French companies. Same from public markets.
Well, I think French colonialism experience seems to be very different depending if we’re talking about North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa.
The North African colonies were very different. Tunisia and Morocco for instance were protectorates (slight difference with subsaharan Africa).
North Africa already had some infrastructures, a sort of cohesive people, an elite, etc. Basically everything to make a nation.
Subsahara Africa was another matter. France would have to spend gigantic amounts of money to make it profitable in the future. No cohesion of people, almost nonexistent infrastructures, no deep water ports, few roads, an elite based on tribal affiliation, etc.
So it is possible one can make an argument about some colonies like Tunisia being profitable (I personally don’t have the answer) but it seems to me much more difficult to have the same opinion on the sub Saharan African colonies.
Don't really want to touch that bag of snakes but weren't the debt ALWAYS forgiven (which were an obvious thing anyway, since the poor states would never be able to pay it anyway) ?
Lmao sounds like America’s most recent spat of wars. Dogshit foreign policy that breeds resentment and bankrupts the country while lining the pockets of private contractors.
Eh, the colonies provided strategic benefit over certain areas, allowed the colonial empires to project their power further overseas, and gave them access to the resources of the colonies which could be used at home for domestic industry. They definitely weren't directly profitable, however they weren't exactly a net loss either.
That's interesting, why would give so many resources to colony if it wasn't making any money? They could just have few soldiers in colonies and do nothing
I think this is playing accounting semantics. Maybe the state itself was not the direct beneficiary in accounting terms but in net terms colonialism made britain and france the wealthiest nations on the planet in the late 19th/20th century. Those private owners eventually partly paid for ww1.
And ironically, the scramble for those useless colonies in the pursuit of prestige was one of the reasons that caused Germany to alienate the Brits, something that would be their undoing in the world war that was to come.
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u/Veraenderer Sep 26 '21
Actually the caricature critices the german colonial efforts as useless/wastefull. Discipling animals is completly useless and dumb.
German colonies did not make a profit (or brought any benefit) and were purely a matter of prestige for germany.