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Comment by akerro | Hacker News Reader

>So well see if it ever goes beyond diplomats.

Hope not, they will start killing each others very immediately. Every wondered why some borders are straight lines?

A straight line border is usually an indicator that it was artificially imposed by a group of people who had never been to the border being defined and did not give a shit about the existing cultural groupings that they were arbitrarily cutting into sections. Africa has a lot of them because it was colonised and split by European powers. Is that what you were looking for? And why on earth do you think that reducing the power of these artificial groupings would be a negative because of how artificial they are?

Two things to bear in mind: First, most of the straight-line borders in Africa are in the north and cut through very sparsely inhabited desert [1]. Second, and perhaps more importantly, prior to the early 20th century, borders weren't typically controlled in the way they are now, so drawing a straight line though an inhabited area wouldn't affect much beyond taxes and other administrative issues.

[1] http://www.catsg.org/cheetah/07_map-centre/7_1_entire-range/...

You mean like the way us Europeans have been killing ourselves for generations? We even fought two world wars over our differences.

Give Africans a chance to catch up...

Here's more analysis of the impact of Africa's existing borders:

http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2015-01-09-africas-real-border...

Like the Canada-US border ?

If Canada and US are in Africa and their borders where set by Europeans based on shares of diamonds, coal, gas, silver, gold or oil which is now shared by Shell or BP and you don't share ethnic groups, religions, traditions and you have 100x more ethnic groups than countries... then no. Not like in Canada-US. Did you know that some of those borders where made by Stalin just to provoke them, let them kill each other, provide them weaponry, so they could easily use their natural resources?

Stalin drew borders in Africa??? Which ones?:)

Probably the one between East Africa and Atlantis.

OK, the guy was obviously referring to Europe, but just did a bad job of it.

still, mixing up Yalta agreement and colonial borders in Africa... besides, it is not natural resources that Stalin was after.

/angrily glares at plate of poutine

The Canada-US border is straight for the same reason many African borders are straight, actually. It was also drawn by foreign colonialists who neither lived in the area nor cared about the opinion of the people who did live there.

The Canada-US border was not imposed by colonial Britain. It was a compromise between the US and Britain after the American Revolution and War of 1812.

In this context, the distinction between "the US" and "Britain" is entirely immaterial. People of European descent came, had some internal bickering, drew lines on maps, didn't care about the opinion of the people already living there.

By the time the US/Canada border was drawn, the majority of people "already living there" (90%) were of European descent.

He does have a point. The border was straight because the people living there mostly (European descendants, the locals were already disenfranchised by that point) didn't give a crap about the border.

I'm Romanian. Ask a Romanian what he'd think about straightening the border around Timisoara, thus giving it to Hungary. Many of those people would die rather than letting it happen. Those borders represent family possessions, cherished childhood memories, remnants of stories past that bond together people on either side of the border, etc.

Normal, i.e. organic borders, are messy and rarely straight.

Yes, because native populations had been decimated by disease.

And that war started after the native inhabitants had been almost driven into extinction.

I've never wondered why some border are straight lines actually. Care to elaborate?

Colonialism.

http://everything2.com/title/Never+Trust+a+Straight+Line+on+...

tl;dr, straight lines on maps are drawn for the convenience of the map maker, not as a representation of culture on the ground. Africa may be better off ignoring straight lines drawn by colonialists.

Looking at the map linked from that page[1], practically none of the lines are straight (except for in the unpopulated desert in the north). Even countries that are specifically called out as examples in the text (like Nigeria) don't have straight-line borders. What am I missing?

[1]: http://www.africaguide.com/images/africa_map.gif

They are straight, because 19th century colonialism created them.

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