🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if the Scramble for Africa had gone differently?
1884 · west-africa
European powers partition almost the entire continent at a conference in Berlin.
If it had gone differently: Africa is not carved up at a table in Europe; its 20th century, and much of the world's, takes a very different shape.
What it made possible
Later turning points that leaned on the Scramble for Africa. Change it in the game and the ripples reach all of these.
- 1870The first globalisation. Without it, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.
- 1914The First World War. Without it, The old European empires are never shattered; the century's borders, grievances and revolutions all run another way.
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