Interesting; I follow a motovlogger (Itchy Boots), and she is currently travelling across many African countries. After a while my wife and I noticed that there was a clear tendency of countries where she spoke French being the dirtiest, poorest, having the worst infrastructure and corruption.
Same with Haiti (French colony) vs Dominican Republic (Spanish colony).
Way to go, France!
Compared to Haiti, every country in Latin America is like paradise (fuck, some of the most racist comments I’ve heard came from Latin Americans talking about Haitian immigrants in their countries)
Haiti might be the most fucked over country in history, and that is saying a lot.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was
That’s sad. I hope these comments are not from fellow Brazilians.
The comparison with the Dominican Republic is even more emblematic, because they started as equals (same island, divided between France an Spain in 1697). There has been no charitable colonizer, but there really seems to be a trend of France being the worst.
Is there a “colonizer” rank, ordered by average HDI of colonized countries?
My guess would be England, Spain, Portugal, then France far behind. (only the longest colonization period counts)
Edit: I found this: https://www.nber.org/papers/w12546
It is based only on islands though (which includes Hispañola - Haiti/Dominican).
At least for islands, despite the huge GDP gap in Hispañola, the study ranks France above Spain and Portugal!
French colonization of Haiti was particularly horrible because of the mass importation of slaves and extremely poor treatment of slaves on plantations. But Haiti’s poor development is also the result of many post-independence events. France forced Haiti to pay massive reparations. The US intervened in Haiti several times to prop up US-backed leaders who did little to develop Haiti.
That’s probably because they still own the islands and maybe use France’s GDP. Like there’s no way former french colonies are better off
That’s a cool channel, thanks!
This is truly some cheap geopolitical analysis, the article attempts to redeem itself towards the end but, Jesus, talk about clickbait. They’re literally reducing half of a continent to a monolith, disregarding the specific reality and conditions of the individual countries. Africa is indeed a country for the BBC, it appears.
