The Scramble for Africa, Explained
This video is not sponsored. If you want to support, join the Newsroom ( https://www.patreon.com/johnnyharris ), which is over on Patreon and where you’ll get access to behind-the-scenes vlogs, extended interviews, & to support the channel. See you there!
watch Eps 1 & 2 here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLphcdvnT8lOsBuRylBTXnr2fhIfHjz-z7
In the third and final part of How Europe Stole the World, we explore how industrial imperialism allowed Europeans to carve up Africa with astonishing speed.
Check out all my sources for this video here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cjuWd1SWo7f4K9BIXh2vWVsjfmq9Nz4bozddugmRrp8/edit?usp=sharing
I publish every video a week early on Nebula. Meaning you can watch next week’s video now: https://nebula.tv/videos/johnnyharris-why-i-eat-doritos-for-breakfast
– ways to support –
My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnnyharris
Our custom Presets & LUTs: https://store.dftba.com/products/johnny-iz-luts-and-presets
– where to find me –
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnny.harris/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnny.harris
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnnyHarrisVox
Iz’s (my wife’s) channel: https://www.youtube.com/iz-harris
– how i make my videos –
Tom Fox makes my music, work with him here: https://tfbeats.com/
I make maps using this AE Plugin: https://aescripts.com/geolayers/?aff=77
All the gear I use: https://www.izharris.com/gear-guide
– my courses –
Learn a language: https://brighttrip.com/course/language/
Visual storytelling: https://www.brighttrip.com/courses/visual-storytelling
– about –
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning journalist. He currently is based in Washington, DC, reporting on interesting trends and stories domestically and around the globe. Johnny’s visual style blends motion graphics with cinematic videography to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways.
– press –
NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html
NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007358968/covid-pandemic-us-response.html
Vox Borders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLrFyjGZ9NU
Finding Founders: https://findingfounders.co/episodes/johnny-harris-2esj3-c3pet-2pg4c-xbtwa-5gaaa
NPR Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1072164745
50 Comments
Europeans won Africa by right of conquest, they simply were better technologically than that of others. If they wanted to not get colonized, then they should've developed their own technological advancements up the tech tree first and not start wrangling their own people up for slavery to the very same people who they're trying to fight against. All men are all capable of the same things, a black man has no differences with a white man aside from his skin color, so why did Europeans get the leg up over Africans, who historically have been some of the richest nations in the old world both economically and in national resources? Or even Middle Easterners or Arabs, who have been known to have had the greatest technological advances in history, surpassing that of even China or most of Europe? Europe was a backwater for most of its history, Northern Europe was isolated from the rest of the "Mediterranean" world, the Germanic and Frankish flat lands were covered by rough forestry, the Iberian Peninsula were just cut by harsh and rugged mountains, and Eastern Europe was extremely prone to invasions or raids because of the sprawling flat plains. The only places in Europe that were even remotely prized were Italy and Greece, but even that was just because of the Mediterranean. They didn't have the prosperous river valley civilizations like Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indus, or even the Mesoamericans. Yet, the only civilizations that are remotely comparable to Europe today that are left are the Chinese and Indians. There wasn't anything stopping an African nation from doing the same things Europe did and going to the same level, yet they didn't despite having a much much much older history. Even today, what is exactly stopping African countries from developing when even similar severe backwaters like Singapore and Indonesia, colonized by the very same Europeans, turned their fates around for the better? Maybe if figures like Mansa Musa didn't flaunt his wealth for mostly vanity and put it into technological development, he would've seen his nation gain the same strength as Carthage or the Ottomans. That grit that crippled Europeans translated into how they adapted and expanded better than the rest of the world, but even then, they were still outclassed by India and China. I'm not saying that colonization was all good, but it is clear that Europeans developed the better culture and system for rapid advancement and expansion, and they managed tribal and warlord culture much better than African kingdoms and Chinese dynasties who frequently collapsed in on themselves from the same forces. The blame isn't just to befall Europe. Because we know that the technological advancements of Europeans, Arabs and the Chinese weren't real, because we know that… THEY WERE ALL ALBANIANS, STRONGEST NATION IN THE WORLD. ALL SUCCESSFUL HISTORICAL NATIONS AND PEOPLE WERE ALL ALBANIAN! 🇦🇱🇦🇱💪💪💪💪💪
Europe isn’t one country .. Europe didn’t take over Africa .. a handfull of its most powerful nations colonised, but only after they had already dominated and subjugated the smaller nations .. most European nations never colonised .. you’re peddling a false narrative. You need to amend that video title.
Finally @johnnyharris you covered this King Leopold the Demon. If he had killed white people, he would have been noticed way earlier.
**how Europe steals Africa
shoutout to Ethiopians
The Nation State is a concept imposed on many by a particular demographic many years ago. Is it valid?
I don’t like your attention ❗️are you suggesting ? To do it again ? To stay in top ? You know it will be bloody?!
The last 500 years have been a blight on humanity. When you think that Egypt and Nubia lasted 9000 years, Chinese Civilization and Indus Civilizations lasted 6000 years, this blip of Western hegemonic rule is indeed a hiccup. The Chinese had fireworks for centuries and used gun power for beauty not to savagely murder people. They also traded with Africans along the Swahili coast kingdoms, Somaliland and great Zimbabwe for 2000 years. 1500 year old pottery was found in the palace ruins at Great Zimbabwe. These relationships were mutual respect without the Chinese trying to kill and STEAL all the wealth and land. Europeans had no civilization when Africans and Asians were charting the stars and performing surgeries understanding the anatomy of the human body. The European continent was diseased and unenlightened for most of its history. Europe had 1000 years of Dark Ages, and diseases, infertile land, that wiped out 90% of the population. The technology Europeans amassed was from other people, Egyptian knowledge funneled to Greece and Rome then the MOORS civilzed Europe after the 1000 years of Dark Ages. What should really be studied is this insatiable GREED and violent impulse to TAKE other people's property. To exploit other humans on this scale is not flattering. The BBC did a much better doc about the history of colonialism and it was not pretty. STARVING 100 MILLION South Asians, exterminating 10 MILLION CONGOLESE, exterminating TASMANIANS completely, SLAVERY, Native American GENOCIDE etc..is not erased by penicillin 🙄I think the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Yorubas, Nubians, Chinese , Axumite, Indus Valley civilizations that lasted thousands of years were much more civilized than the barbarian West. Creating a superiority mythology in order to STEAL, knowing that disease and ignorance almost wiped your entire continent out during the PLAGUE is a sign of mental illness. The culture of the West is based on a mental neurosis if we're honest.
i disagree with you . The only good is done to small group of people in Europe .
You should start a Twitter account just for these maps!
This confirms that Europeans created racism, the wealth gap, and the overwhelming suffering of my people.
Stupid title.
But we in africa were living very very healthy before they came so I still don't see the benefits, who got benefits??? For thousand upon thousands of years were healing ourselves with good natural remedies, and even today we are still using and ist working better how much good doctor america still killing and keeping out of the medical profession? So show and prove your remedies only work for a time and not so effective, you mean you guys still won't accept that there always was a cure for chronic illnesses and people today are getting cure every day and where's the media saying??
But that's why we had these animals on our walls! We understand them more? What you don't believe? You people need to get real educated ok!
Your understanding, there's not a doctor in the world today as good as moses was, trust me, many many many men dicks are dead because your ways are not working
Your foolishness also took more lives likely than it gave, don't try to justify your people's fucking wicked ways, we africans were always always very well educated, and why it took a black man to perform the the first heart surgery, cause we did all that and more, for more than five thousand years ago it was in our jeans, genes, look learn some true history ok, google the medical tools of ancient days in egypt, we had everything without polluting the whole world
Interesting that technology and capitalism, mixed in with eugenics sped up the scramble for Africa. However a thousand years earlier the Muslim civilisation did more. What was their motivation? Certainly not capitalism or eugenics. Just an interesting question for you to explore.
Do you know the meaning of science? We already and always had Technology, we just didn't polluted the world and africans never wanted to rule no one else land we would always just push you people back up or must say down, back down north and help your people establish good governments and we would go back stay in our own land we never steal lands
And that's why it's called technically technology, cause it's TaKen, KNoWLeDGe!!!
How dare these evil Europeans invent shoes and clothes and civilisation and stuff and double the life expectancy wherever they go. That is just pure evil and theft. I mean what about the thriving automobile industry and railroad networks that Africa had before Europeans went there. Africa really really needed these "resources" without even knowing they were resources.
It's a sick to believe that European inventions that were used to conquer the world and now offer such great benefits to Modern society would have never been invented. All the science that the Europeans discovered was built upon science from other parts of the world. What @johnnyharris says is kinda trying to make you see the silver lining of all the suffering these savage people have done to the world and keep doing.
As @johnyharris said, they would do whatever it takes to stay on top, can you tell me where are you amazing ideals and values when it comes to giving justice to the peoples of the world while you keep living a life of privilege and comfort?
The winners always win
Europeans and in general Westerners tend to pretend how their states and religion are completely separate but their entire foreign policy philosophy just reeks off Christian Philosophy when Jesus sent out his disciples to go preach to other lands and if they didn't accept it they were to be warned . Over the years this has taken various forms but Western/European foreign policy always has this unique Philosophy and it transcended the capitalism – communist divide.
Normally we often think this is how imperialists justify imperial expansion and this blinds us to the fact that this philosophy is unique to Western imperialism….in most other imperialist powers imperial expansion is hardly ever justified under the banner of spreading religion, civilisation or even values.
i mean with a 1000+ year technological advantage what did you expect.
"stole"
Maaaan, everyone deserves a Hoegaarden after this year.
Good work 👍😎
Do one on China and how they actually stole Africa in the last 30 thirty years. 🤔
I wish we had this channel back when I was in school. It would've made all this crap Europe did so much easier to understand
Europe “stole” Africa… the woke rhetoric continues. Conquests are a part of History, and Europe was the best at it. Deal with it. Had Africa remained managed by Europe, it would undoubtedly be in a better shape that it is now.
That was an amazing production Johnny
I'm a journalist and multimedia student from Kenya. I know he won't read this obscure Youtube comment but Jonny boy gave me the courage to pursue Journalism, I had the grades to go for medicine or law but this guy's dedication and art helped me make up my mind on what sort of career I will submerge my sorry ass in. Wish me luck
Please cite your sources!
Hahaha ! l'Américain qui découvre le monde après tout le monde 😂
I don't agree with you on this they used them as guinea pigs to test their medicine how many people died because of their so called medicine
They had to make medicine for the disease yall brought to Africa as well as the arab and Chinese , we had our own herb and way of living
Impressive. Well analyzed and executed. Many Europeans have long been in denial about how their supremacy over the planet came to be. They use religion and a belief in their own genetic superiority to justify their hegemony over others.
I have a challenge for you. Care to take it on? Such self-serving rationalizations and the defense mechanisms of denial have also been used throughout the ages to create a world where men have hegemony over all women. This ensures male dominance over access to resources, an endless supply of sexual opportunities, and the ability to pass on their genes. While control may be maintained through the firearms of imperialism, more likely it's through the control of resources that limit the financial independence of women, along with the control of their sexuality to restrict their freedom in order to reduce paternal uncertainty and uphold family honor. These tools of control can be self-enforcing through the implied threat of violence associated with size and strength differentials between the sexes that make women more physically vulnerable. Condition society to accept this hegemony as beneficial (even romantic) and the result is an inferior tier of society that willingly perpetuates the status quo while denying the existence of its own chains as a coping mechanism in order to ensure some quality of life.
History really in one video!!!
Where did this numpty get educated, from a Marvel comic, how about you telling the world how post colonial times the "new" Americans decimated the Plains Peoples, the First Nations and confined them to concentration camps politely referred to as "reservations".
Could be my favorite YouTuber. As an African, this is painful
I thought China was stealing the world, right now.
Hey Johnny. Can you create a video of the crazy chaos that occurs in metropolitan cities? I think that will be kinda cool.
Map of 1800 neglected to give Bengal to British, from whence British India started & was ruled from, & where they recruited their sepoys. Also, map neglects to give Central America & Mexico to Spain.
Sorry, I am a little confused here at the end. Is he saying that the ideals of freedom, equality, social justice were spread around the globe by Europeans? That these ideals were developed by the colonizing Europeans? That they discovered these places? I think this is a good example of the difficulty of someone from this cultural background discussing this topic. There is no achnowledgement of the ideas that permeate our world did not all originate in the Global North and Europe.
IQ world map
IQ heritability
Loxist subversion
Kalergi plan
Minimum replacement birth rate: 2.1
Israel birth rate: 3.00
EU birth rate: 1.53
Canada birth rate: 1.47
USA birth rate: 1.70
Australia birth rate: 1.66
Russia birth rate: 1.50
Ukraine birth rate: 1.23
Moldova: 1.28
Belarus: 1.38
Serbia: 1.48
Bulgaria: 1.56
Romania: 1.60
Albania: 1.58
Israel education minister Rafi Peretz on intermarriage.
Israel justice minister Ayelet Shaked on keeping the jewish majority even at the expense of human rights.
CNN: Joe Biden: Im a zionist, you don't have to be a jew to be a zionist.
Angry foreigner: Joe Biden: it's a good thing that whites will be an absolute minority in the USA
I listened to the whole thing curious to see if finally a white man can tell the story of of how Europeans took Africa without being eurocentric. And as I expected your content included messages about the benefits of colonization and no content on the history of Afrian civilization itself. This is disappointing.
The scramble for Africa is not even close to being the most marking moment of this story. There are two major events and at least one of them could have been communicated to you through a map.
The first one was the trip of Mansa Musa to the mecca which was the first time Europeans realized how much good there was in west Africa. This is where the story should start because at that time Africa had strong civilized empires who ended up trading with Europe. You make it sound like there was nothing in Africa and Europeans came to take over. They first acted diplomatically. They build economic relationships and they pulled the strings to foster the collapses of existing powerful structures in Africa that could have fought back more successfully. Which brings me to the second most significant event: the marocan invasion of west Africa. Morocco helped by France and Spain raided the Mali empire and destroyed what was left of it: the songhai empire. But even at that time Africa was only the shadow of itself with prominent empires having been divided and led into centuries of war and decimated by the slave trade.
The assumption that colonization brought human rights values is insulting considering the atrocities Europeans committed in Africa. It's alsmot like assuming Africans did not have these values. The only difference between Europeans and Africans at the time was weaponry. That's it. And this is why Ethiopa was never colonized. Ethiopia benefited from France and Russia to get weapons. But even this episode was really late in the colonization of Africa. It really all started with Mansa Musa in the 14th century, the scramble for Africa was just the conclusion of a long process of deception and resources theft and aggression by Europeans but it took them hundreds of years. So what you said is not factually true. Europeans also learnt a lot from Africans actually and many of this knowledge led Europeans to grow. Things like mathematics were in Africa before they were in Europe. The story is way longer than that. And it actually even started with Africans colonizing Europe. Spain and Portugal were conquered by the moors coming from North Africa and they stayed there for 400 years. They brought positive development like water irrigation systems, fashion, sanitation and waste management, things Europeans did not know at the time. So saying that Europeans brought positive tech in Africa is insulting. We had remedies for our own diseases, and our tech was going to develop on its own path. There is no positives to colonization ever, not for Africa. The world as it is now is not sustainable and if Africans were not colonized we would never have so much pollution and desertification, our resources are still being stolen. So you are wrong white man.
You should say western Europe
We gon need another Revolution
Loved the ending! Well balanced and well thought through. Happy New Year!
Keith Woods: "russian" oligarchs.
Igor Kolomoisky.
Great russian famine, Holodomor, Famine in Khazakhstan, Lazar Kaganovich, Genrikh Yagoda, Aron Solts, Filipp Goloshchyokin, Yakov Yurovsky, Lazar Kogan, Matvei Berman, Naftaly Frenkel, Salomon Morel, Helena Brus.
Balfour Declaration 1917
November Revolution 1918
Germany loses WW1 1918
Spartacist uprising 1919
You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the "Russian Revolution." It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn