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Comment by a3voices | Hacker News Reader

So you're saying Africa would've been better off without colonization? I bet life would be much worse in Africa if it was never colonized. Did you know the homicide rate was 10-20% in prehistoric societies, and the life expectancy was only 30-40 years or so?

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Are you suggesting without colonisation that Africans would still be living in a per-historic society?

Yes, much closer to one. Somewhere on a scale between what it currently is and a prehistoric society. Why do you think it wouldn't be? Africans wouldn't just magically absorb Western culture without exposure. I'm not sure if 1% were even aware of Western civilization, trade, and such until colonization happened. Do you think Africans would learn how to read and write if the Europeans didn't alter things?

I don't really know what to say to that. The depth of your ignorance is new to me, regarding the history of African societies.

Can I suggest a few books for you to read?

> The depth of your ignorance is new to me

Please don't be personally rude, even when someone else is ignorant.

I'm not the person you are replying to, but do you have a recommendation for a book on the Songhai Empire?

I wish you would just post the books you have in mind, rather than writing a snarky response like this.

I wish some of these could be translated to English. Would probably help clarify some huge misunderstandings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts

> Do you think Africans would learn how to read and write if the Europeans didn't alter things?

That seems like a point the arguments for which would not stand well under scrutiny. Can you decompress your thoughts in this regard, because it seems like the obvious answer is "yes" (for starters)...

And who would teach them? If a society lives in extreme poverty for all of history, with zero economic and technological growth, what would make them become more developed and educated without external influences?

“That one can survey the length and breadth of sub-Sahara Africa and find not even one work of visual or written art worthy of the name” - David Hume, 18th century historian

> And who would teach them?

The Arab world?

Through colonization?

Really? Using 18th century arguments about art? Would Hume have approved dadaism or postmodernism?

I think the bigger problem is using 18th century opinions of Africa.

So your position is that 18th century intellectuals didn't have an accurate perspective of 18th century Africa?

Please stop.

> “That one can survey the length and breadth of sub-Sahara Africa and find not even one work of visual or written art worthy of the name” - David Hume, 18th century historian

Somehow, I suspect you'd find a lot of inaccuracies in the writings of 1700s historians.

This particular one is demonstrably false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_literature#Precolonial...

> African masks were an influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction. Since the late 19th century there has been an increasing amount of African art in Western collections, the finest pieces of which are now prominently displayed.

That 'quote' sounds bogus to my ear—so much that I'd be shocked if it were real.

Like any 18th century thinker, Hume had views that we would now regard as racist, but let's not pin things on the fellow that he didn't say.

I can't give you an exact number, but when Europeans were starting the Industrial Revolution, most Europeans couldn't read or write.

Really? "The literacy rate in England in the 1640s was around 30 percent for males, rising to 60 percent in the mid-18th century." - Wikipedia

There's more to Europe than England, and if England's rate was 60% at the beginning of it, I'd suspect the more feudal parts of Europe were a lot lower.

Add on top of it the "for males" tidbit and things looked even bleaker overall.

Well, I do not know nothing about Catholic part of Europe, but there was a man named Martin Luther who lived between 1483 and 1546. The whole point (or cover story at least) of European protestant movement (in contrast to the English one) was to make the word of God accessible to the people (i.e. remove the Church monopoly of scripture reading).

Printing press was already invented in 1440 to print all the bibles necessary.

> Do you think Africans would learn how to read and write if the Europeans didn't alter things?

Uh...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa#Indi...

And what do you think the adult literacy rate was in Africa before the Europeans arrived? It most likely started with 0.00....%

Colonization isn't required for that, trade works well.

That's usually how colonization begins, a series of trading posts.

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