4 ms·

> an extreme level of institutional instability. My first guess would be colonialism and its consequences.

jandrese 7y ago
Also, the pre-colonial population maybe didn't have a culture of setting up long running businesses? Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs. Also, in some cases there was no system of writing so no reliable records for determining the age of a business.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > the pre-colonial population maybe didn't have a culture of setting up long running businesses This assumption of an entire continent as having a single culture is something that I find cringy at best.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    I don't think the above commenter wrote that all of precolonial Africa had a single culture, only that precolonial cultures evidently did not have cultures with long standing businesses - at least as we understand businesses them today.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      That's still attributing a single negative cultural trait to an entire continent, and using it to shallowly dismiss the effects of centuries of one-sided exploitation, enslavement, massacres, genocides, mass limb removal, debt slavery, literal slavery, etc etc. with "but what if it was their own fault?".
      - dextralt 7y ago
        you mean the same things we did to each other throughout our entire history and yet somehow our civilization had advanced past the stone age? yeah, it is their own fault, lmao.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
        Is not having long lasting business entities really a negative cultural trait? While it's neat that there are businesses that have survived for over a millennia, it's more of a curiosity than evidence of superiority of a culture.
    - vidarh 7y ago
      There's no evidence of this, in large part because the African empires for the most part were wiped out under colonial rule, not just subjugated. Often with extreme prejudice, such as when the British destroyed and burned Benin City to the ground, destroyed large parts of its walls, which were once a single fortification threading through the city measuring four times the length of the Great Wall of China, looted it's art, which then for a long time was "explained away" because the bronze sculptures were a lot more advanced than Europeans liked to think Africans were capable of, ignoring the descriptions of Benin City from those who'd been there. The result was that for a long time the idea of what pre-colonial Africa was like was based on ignoring the things the colonial powers had stolen (the Benin Bronzes were sometimes assumed to have been brought by Portuguese traders, for example; a more comfortable idea than Africans making bronze statues), and looking at the aftermath of colonial destruction as evidence of lack of large structures and cities.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Are there any pre-colonial African nations you would like to name as a counter-example? One that had a tradition of setting up and documenting long running businesses?
    - vidarh 7y ago
      The big problem with finding evidence either way with respect to this is that sheer amount of destruction by colonial powers. E.g. after the third Anglo-Ashanti war, the conquering British noted how impressive the palace was, and called out the number of books in different languages, and then they promptly burned it... So vast amounts of information about the operation of the Ashanti just went up in smoke. Similarly they burned the entire capital city of the Benin empire to the ground. It was not just that these empires ended; they were in many cases close to being erased from history.
    - YawningAngel 7y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire
  - f1refly 7y ago
    Don't act like Africans had great culture and civilisation before being colonized. Be used they didn't. Most of it is documented and can be observed in museums all over Europe, Africans where barely past the stone age.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  > Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs. But a lot of the other examples were informal business at some point, or activities conducted by governments with no formal independent existence till centuries later. It's just a double standard. Facts were not important to the creators of this graph.
crooked-v 7y ago
For a simple example, here's a map of Africa from just before World War I started: https://i.imgur.com/XZU6R0S.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XZU6R0S.jpg It would be pretty hard for, say, people in the Congo at the time to have started or continued lasting businesses when they were still getting over the whole "spend eighteen hours a day tapping rubber or they'll cut off the hands of everyone in your family, and even if you do they'll still kidnap your children and put them in schools where half will die of disease" thing that had been officially ended only six years before, and were still subject to wildly oppressive taxes and labor drafts that made getting out from under the weight of the Belgian overlords impossible.

Also, the pre-colonial population maybe didn't have a culture of setting up long running businesses? Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs. Also, in some cases there was no system of writing so no reliable records for determining the age of a business.

crooked-v 7y ago
> the pre-colonial population maybe didn't have a culture of setting up long running businesses This assumption of an entire continent as having a single culture is something that I find cringy at best.
- manfredo 7y ago
  I don't think the above commenter wrote that all of precolonial Africa had a single culture, only that precolonial cultures evidently did not have cultures with long standing businesses - at least as we understand businesses them today.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    That's still attributing a single negative cultural trait to an entire continent, and using it to shallowly dismiss the effects of centuries of one-sided exploitation, enslavement, massacres, genocides, mass limb removal, debt slavery, literal slavery, etc etc. with "but what if it was their own fault?".
    - dextralt 7y ago
      you mean the same things we did to each other throughout our entire history and yet somehow our civilization had advanced past the stone age? yeah, it is their own fault, lmao.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      Is not having long lasting business entities really a negative cultural trait? While it's neat that there are businesses that have survived for over a millennia, it's more of a curiosity than evidence of superiority of a culture.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    There's no evidence of this, in large part because the African empires for the most part were wiped out under colonial rule, not just subjugated. Often with extreme prejudice, such as when the British destroyed and burned Benin City to the ground, destroyed large parts of its walls, which were once a single fortification threading through the city measuring four times the length of the Great Wall of China, looted it's art, which then for a long time was "explained away" because the bronze sculptures were a lot more advanced than Europeans liked to think Africans were capable of, ignoring the descriptions of Benin City from those who'd been there. The result was that for a long time the idea of what pre-colonial Africa was like was based on ignoring the things the colonial powers had stolen (the Benin Bronzes were sometimes assumed to have been brought by Portuguese traders, for example; a more comfortable idea than Africans making bronze statues), and looking at the aftermath of colonial destruction as evidence of lack of large structures and cities.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Are there any pre-colonial African nations you would like to name as a counter-example? One that had a tradition of setting up and documenting long running businesses?
  - vidarh 7y ago
    The big problem with finding evidence either way with respect to this is that sheer amount of destruction by colonial powers. E.g. after the third Anglo-Ashanti war, the conquering British noted how impressive the palace was, and called out the number of books in different languages, and then they promptly burned it... So vast amounts of information about the operation of the Ashanti just went up in smoke. Similarly they burned the entire capital city of the Benin empire to the ground. It was not just that these empires ended; they were in many cases close to being erased from history.
  - YawningAngel 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire
- f1refly 7y ago
  Don't act like Africans had great culture and civilisation before being colonized. Be used they didn't. Most of it is documented and can be observed in museums all over Europe, Africans where barely past the stone age.
squiggleblaz 7y ago
> Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs. But a lot of the other examples were informal business at some point, or activities conducted by governments with no formal independent existence till centuries later. It's just a double standard. Facts were not important to the creators of this graph.

crooked-v 7y ago

For a simple example, here's a map of Africa from just before World War I started: https://i.imgur.com/XZU6R0S.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XZU6R0S.jpg It would be pretty hard for, say, people in the Congo at the time to have started or continued lasting businesses when they were still getting over the whole "spend eighteen hours a day tapping rubber or they'll cut off the hands of everyone in your family, and even if you do they'll still kidnap your children and put them in schools where half will die of disease" thing that had been officially ended only six years before, and were still subject to wildly oppressive taxes and labor drafts that made getting out from under the weight of the Belgian overlords impossible.