What made the US successful in inheriting their Colonial Borders and whats preventing Africa?

[KingSlime]

This thread was in part inspired by @MansaMusa 's comments in the Biafra thread and my general curiosity.


Back in 1776, the original 13 colonies that would later become the United States had very litte in common with each other. In terms of ethnic makeup, those living in New England were primarily second or third generation British/Welsch immigrants. Elsewhere inland into the northeast were well established communities of Quakers and Puritans of fringe religious beliefs and customs. New York had a lot Dutch Descendants, and the South/Appalachias had people mainly of Scots-Irish heritage and a completely different economic system and culture on top of that.



This isn't to mention Louisiana and Florida that were added soon after but where still culturally French and Spanish respectively. A lot of these ethnic groups had heavy beef with each other from the old world and the concept of US nationalism wouldn't really be embraced by the public until much later.



Despite all that, there was relative cohesion between them and no movements of ethnic nationalist secession movements or civil wars occurred. What circumstances have made it hard for some African countries to do the same?

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

80 percent of the 13 colonies were inhabited by Anglo white Protestants

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

- Freedom of religion was established early on to avoid sectarian conflicts in the new America

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

- Anglo whites had to unite to prevent African rebellion and to defeat native tribes

 

[KingSlime]

What African Countries have come closest or arrived at homogenization/ post colonial Nationalistic Identity and how did they get there? @MansaMusa

 

[JahFocus CS]

- Anglo whites had to unite to prevent African rebellion and to defeat native tribes

biggest factor IMO.

The U.S. was not just a colony, but also a settler state. It therefore isn't really a good comparison for other countries that overthrew formal colonialism. Its peers are Israel, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, not Nigeria and other similar countries.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

What African Countries have come closest or arrived at homogenization/ post colonial Nationalistic Identity and how did they get there? @MansaMusa

Tanzania came close. The old leader of Tanzania, Nyerere, forced his people to adopt Swahili as a national language and did other things to enforce Tanzanian nationalism with a dollop of socialism.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Are you seriously comparing the colonial history of Africa and America which are DISTANT????

 

[Bawon Samedi]

What African Countries have come closest or arrived at homogenization/ post colonial Nationalistic Identity and how did they get there? @MansaMusa

Mostly Southern African nations.

 

[mbewane]

80 percent of the 13 colonies were inhabited by Anglo white Protestants

And a common language was already in use, as well on being on a "virgin land" (for the settlers, after killing off local populations).

biggest factor IMO.

The U.S. was not just a colony, but also a settler state. It therefore isn't really a good comparison for other countries that overthrew formal colonialism. Its peers are Israel, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, not Nigeria and other similar countries.

People always seem to "forget" that those countries are settler colonies that evolved in independent states. Basically, they came with a "clean slate" (after exterminating the local population) and so the newcomers could create a whole new society with the added factor of having common enemies. Absolutely not comparable to Africa, where tribes and nations existed prior to the colonization and ended up stuck in boundaries that do not reflect their pre-colonization realities.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I'm agreeing that the OP be off in his comparison because settler states are different. But have issues with some of the counterarguments too...

80 percent of the 13 colonies were inhabited by Anglo white Protestants

And 80% of the Middle East is inhabited by Arab brown Muslims, but they still at each other. This isn't an explanation.

The people who inhabited America were EXTREMELY different from each other. The Puritans who inhabited the Northeast and the Quakers who went to Pennsylvania were both fringe religious groups (not the Anglicans which dominated English religion), while the Cavaliers who went to Virginia were the very people who had persecuted those groups. The Scots-Irish who went to Appalachia were from the war borders between the British and the Scots and were seen as different and rejected by everyone.

Basically, the Quakers were social justice warriors, the Puritans were hard-core religious right, the Cavaliers were conservative royalty who didn't give a shyt about religion, and the Scots-Irish were violent rednecks.

The different groups who settled America had at least as many cultural and religious differences as the various cultural/religious groups within any particular African nation.

- Anglo whites had to unite to prevent African rebellion and to defeat native tribes

Except that the Quakers that settled Pennsylvania practiced nonviolence, rejected slavery, and made peace treaties with their local Native American tribes.

Nearly all of the battles with Native Americans were extremely local in origin anyway.

- Freedom of religion was established early on to avoid sectarian conflicts in the new America

That's probably a piece of it...I'm thinking there's other pieces but not certain what they are.

 

[Free White & 21]

The difference is The Whites wanted it and The Africans dont.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Except that the Quakers that settled Pennsylvania practiced nonviolence, rejected slavery, and made peace treaties with their local Native American tribes.

Pennsylvania was not settled by only Quakers.

Slavery did not start getting phased out in Pennsylvania until 1780.

Pennsylvania was a key site in the French and Indian War to snatch Western Pennsylvania from Native nations.

Beyond that, Pennsylvania is one state. The experience of Quakers and their comparatively decent relations with Native nations and opposition to slavery had little to no impact on the development of white identity. White identity was forged to divide poor laborers and cement African subjugation and to unify colonists to secure stolen Native land. Those twin pillars identified by @MansaMusa are correct.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Pennsylvania was not settled by only Quakers.

Slavery did not start getting phased out in Pennsylvania until 1780.

Pennsylvania was a key site in the French and Indian War to snatch Western Pennsylvania from Native nations.

Beyond that, Pennsylvania is one state. The experience of Quakers and their comparatively decent relations with Native nations and opposition to slavery had little to no impact on the development of white identity. White identity was forged to divide poor laborers and cement African subjugation and to unify colonists to secure stolen Native land. Those twin pillars identified by @MansaMusa are correct.

Slavery COULDN'T get phased out legally in Pennsylvania until 1780 because until then it was legally a British colony and the British wouldn't allow it. But it had already been shamed socially by the Quakers and a huge proportion of non-Quakers who lived in the area followed suit. The first recorded Quaker anti-slavery demonstration was way back in 1682. When it got phased out almost the moment it became legally possible, the Quaker influence was so widespread that the ban occurred despite the fact that Quakers were now a minority in the area.


Eastern Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania two different things culturally. The Quakers settled eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and southern New Jersey back in the 1600s. Western Pennsylvania got settled by Scots-Irish and others, not Quakers or other eastern Pennsylvanians. That's why even today eastern Pennsylvania is more like the Northeast, while western Pennsylvania is more like the Rust Belt, and the two halves of the state can't stand each other.


The French and Indian War was an extension of the Seven Years' War between Britain and France that started in Europe, so you can't possibly claim that the primary motive was anti-Native American. And 1/3 of the Native Americans (including the Iroquois, Catawba, and Cherokee) involved fought on the BRITISH side. That being said the French obviously were more favorable to the Native Americans than the British were, and the American colonists (most especially the Scots-Irish) were even worse.


I agree with what you're saying to the degree that fear of the Black man was used as a tool to manipulate poor Whites in the South. But I don't think there is justification for the claim that it unified the colonies as a whole, especially when so many prominent leaders from the North were anti-slavery in order to SPITE the South.



Someone sent this link to me a couple months ago to explain all this cultural shyt in the early colonies. It gets into how incredibly different the different colonies were and how they often had objectives at odds with each other, but still managed to influence each other something serious:

Book Review: Albion’s Seed

 

[Misreeya]

What African Countries have come closest or arrived at homogenization/ post colonial Nationalistic Identity and how did they get there? @MansaMusa

This is so dumb you are comparing a continent, however to answer the question most of the north african countries has a national identity. I reckon a good example is countries like egypt, Tunisia, and places like algeria.