Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #32 - Colonization

[Chairman Noob]

Looks good, though It's still a shame that a nation can only have a single approach for all it's colonies so France won't be able to have settler colonialism in Algeria but not Western Africa.

 

[Bigsoulja9]

Malaria and other tropical diseases. Same point stands for any carribean nation that gets free....

Which would, theoretically, only abet the process of settler colonialism, not in the extraction colonialism which characterized most activity in Africa (and which was usually done through local intermediaries anyway). Again, in our own timeline, diaspora powers struggled to expand into Africa - African powers struggled to expand into Africa. Cultural differences aside, they lacked political strength/clout, military capability, and economic strength to do so with the "ease" of European powers during the scramble. I don't know why things would be any different in this game.

--
Edit: While digging for sources to respond to another forum user, I recovered this:
"The mortality rates for male emigrants to Liberia appear to be most in line with the mortality for British soldiers serving in the tropical Indian Ocean and the American tropics (see Table 7 and 10). One possible explanation is that many of the Liberian emigrants came from the south where vivax malaria was endemic. This would have given the emigrants some degree of immunity to falciparum malaria of West Africa that was not available to soldiers recruited in Britain. Nevertheless the Liberian society, formed from black people sent from America, could not sustain itself from internal growth alone. The general assumption in the early nineteenth century that black people, by virtue of their race, should have certain advantages for survival in Africa is not supported by the Liberian example." - A quantitative analysis of Liberian colonization from 1820 to 1843, Snick 1971.
I wasn't confident enough to stake this claim earlier, but disease resistance is a complicated phenomenon and isn't as intrinsically tied to genetics as many seem to think it is. One of the most important components of it, as far as I recall, is actually the passing of correct antibodies from mother to child VIA breastmilk. I'd imagine that the lack of pressure for the correct malarial-protection would have severely lessened the percentage of "Black" mothers passing on appropriate protection. Alternatively, there's also the fact that, if the malaria resistance provided by West African heritage was less pronounced in the South, then the genetic pressures to sustain it might have loosened since in many individuals it would have been less useful. Add to this the facts of European and Native American ancestry in many of the migrants and...

 

[dragonluke]

Liberia
Americo-Liberians, "anglicized" to a large extent, saw themselves as superior to many of the muslim and "heathen" peoples around them; they maintained social, political, economic, and cultural dominance in the Liberian state to the detriment of the native populations they began to incorporate. Liberia's policies were despised by many of the groups it took over, prompting revolts including the large-scale Kru war in 1915 and 16, ostensibly over hut taxes but in reality over many of the same issues that were common among other powers' colonies. Liberia claimed massive swathes of West Africa, even entertaining pipe dreams of pushing as far as (if not farther than) Kumasi, yet struggled to actually maintain control over even its core territories on the coast, especially as more powerful European colonizers swept in, because it was militarily weak and lacked diplomatic clout.

is there anywhere I can read more about these territorial claims?
seems like it could be an interesting campaign idea

 

[Revolution 11]

Looks good, though It's still a shame that a nation can only have a single approach for all it's colonies so France won't be able to have settler colonialism in Algeria but not Western Africa.

Agreed. I hope that a medium term change would be to make a chart where you can toggle your colonies to switch between colonial types (with a lengthy implementation period and cost and some blowback politically).

 

[Konq123]

Which would, theoretically, only abet the process of settler colonialism, not in the extraction colonialism which characterized most activity in Africa (and which was usually done through local intermediaries anyway). Again, in our own timeline, diaspora powers struggled to expand into Africa - African powers struggled to expand into Africa. Cultural differences aside, they lacked political strength/clout, military capability, and economic strength to do so with the "ease" of European powers during the scramble. I don't know why things would be any different in this game.

--
Edit: While digging for sources to respond to another forum user, I recovered this:
"The mortality rates for male emigrants to Liberia appear to be most in line with the mortality for British soldiers serving in the tropical Indian Ocean and the American tropics (see Table 7 and 10). One possible explanation is that many of the Liberian emigrants came from the south where vivax malaria was endemic. This would have given the emigrants some degree of immunity to falciparum malaria of West Africa that was not available to soldiers recruited in Britain. Nevertheless the Liberian society, formed from black people sent from America, could not sustain itself from internal growth alone. The general assumption in the early nineteenth century that black people, by virtue of their race, should have certain advantages for survival in Africa is not supported by the Liberian example." - A quantitative analysis of Liberian colonization from 1820 to 1843, Snick 1971.
I wasn't confident enough to stake this claim earlier, but disease resistance is a complicated phenomenon and isn't as intrinsically tied to genetics as many seem to think it is. One of the most important components of it, as far as I recall, is actually the passing of correct antibodies from mother to child VIA breastmilk. I'd imagine that the lack of pressure for the correct malarial-protection would have severely lessened the percentage of "Black" mothers passing on appropriate protection. Alternatively, there's also the fact that, if the malaria resistance provided by West African heritage was less pronounced in the South, then the genetic pressures to sustain it might have loosened since in many individuals it would have been less useful. Add to this the facts of European and Native American ancestry in many of the migrants and...

I was talking specifically about the Caribbean. Precisely Haiti, where malaria exists and is endemic even today. Such was the case for most Caribbean islands, also there was much more slave trade going on there simply because the conditions on the islands were much harsher than in the US south, so as of 1836 part of the people living there were literally born in Africa and brought across the Atlantic, I think Santo Domingo declared independence and ended slavery in 1822, part of the people there should have been born in Africa. Also Cuba, for example ended slave trade in 1867, but if it gains independece before that big part of the population would have been people born in Africa brought there, former Africans that live in Cuba.

 

[Roman97]

Hi so I know this is off topic and maybe you talked about and I missed it but if Greece can defeat the ottomans and retake the same states required in eu4 to reform byz or even just Constantinople and Core could we see a flavorful byz formable if Greece was still some type of monarchy as in king Michael in the late 1800 and ww1 had a dream of restoring the throne and they even called there people hellenas or roman there’s a well known story about them telling a Greek in living under ottomans in ww1 that they were Hellenas Roman here to free are people

 

[Bigsoulja9]

Oh great, I'd been working on a comment for a few days and I've lost it now.

I was talking specifically about the Caribbean. Precisely Haiti, where malaria exists and is endemic even today. Such was the case for most Caribbean islands, also there was much more slave trade going on there simply because the conditions on the islands were much harsher than in the US south, so as of 1836 part of the people living there were literally born in Africa and brought across the Atlantic, I think Santo Domingo declared independence and ended slavery in 1822, part of the people there should have been born in Africa. Also Cuba, for example ended slave trade in 1867, but if it gains independece before that big part of the population would have been people born in Africa brought there, former Africans that live in Cuba.

As I pointed out:

• Malaria has different strains. Resistance against one or some is not resistance against all. African Americans did not seem extra-ordinarily resilient to Malaria as it existed in Africa. Perhaps a better case exists for Haiti in those circumstances where freedmen were more recent imports, but even then we're dealing with a gap of 30 to 40 years from when those slaves arrived to game start, a period in which they would have interacted with others and in which it would have only been the younger imports, who wouldn't have been large in number to begin, who would even be physically fit enough to try this venture (and even they would be up to their 40s and 50s...). A fraction of a fraction... Expanding the scope to include all of the Caribbean makes this worse for your case.
• Political division and military frailty would make colonialism hard, anyway.
• The infrastructure for these powers to even start colonizing would be lacking.

is there anywhere I can read more about these territorial claims?
seems like it could be an interesting campaign idea

Try:
African-American Exploration in West Africa, Four Diaries
Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland
The Drawing of Liberian Boundaries in the Nineteenth Century: Treaties with African Chiefs versus Effective Occupation
UNESCO History of Africa also has an introductory section on this.

I can't find the exact claim about expanding to Asante territory, just Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire. I'll accordingly redact that.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

This honestly might be one of the biggest improvements to this iteration of the game over previous titles in the series. Mods like PDM already had something like this, but this game goes even further.

 

[Victorialism]

Using law to increase colonies is very strange. Some Countrys such as China don't use law to move people. We need the method to move pops from Country to colonial place

 

[Revolution 11]

Using law to increase colonies is very strange. Some Countrys such as China don't use law to move people. We need the method to move pops from Country to colonial place

Can you reword this? I am having trouble understanding what your proposed method would be if not using Laws and Institutions?

 

[TheBeautifulVoid]

Can you reword this? I am having trouble understanding what your proposed method would be if not using Laws and Institutions?

I think they're asking for some means of direct player intervention, allowing manual resettlement of pops like in Stellaris.

 

[Revolution 11]

I think they're asking for some means of direct player intervention, allowing manual resettlement of pops like in Stellaris.

Hmm, maybe allow for financial incentive targets where a nation like France can target Algeria as a preferred state to migrate to, in exchange for more costs to France. In return, Algeria would receive more Migration Attraction from French pops (those who leave from France specifically).

I don't like the idea of forcefully moving 100,000 (or whatever number the player wants) Pops from France to Algeria as a fiat order. It is too easily gamified as a cheese tactic.

 

[dragonluke]

Hmm, maybe allow for financial incentive targets where a nation like France can target Algeria as a preferred state to migrate to, in exchange for more costs to France. In return, Algeria would receive more Migration Attraction from French pops (those who leave from France specifically).

I don't like the idea of forcefully moving 100,000 (or whatever number the player wants) Pops from France to Algeria as a fiat order. It is too easily gamified as a cheese tactic.

I mean that seems to be how it is ingame, they mentioned something to increase migration to a state and they said you can't manually move pops around

 

[TheBeautifulVoid]

I don't like the idea of forcefully moving 100,000 (or whatever number the player wants) Pops from France to Algeria as a fiat order. It is too easily gamified as a cheese tactic.

I wholly agree with you here and I think the devs do too. Victoria 3 can't be all things to all people, there are inevitably going to be parts of it that each of us feel fall short of what we'd imagined it might be, and I suspect this is a case where Victorialism may feel it falls short.

 

[Blindbohemian]

while what yuo say is true, I think yuo are ignoring the fact that it is compared to exploitative colonialism, whose operations depending on the country in question, included slave raids, "Pacification campaigns", and just brutality all round, when compared to settler colonialism, who at least theoretically offers compensation for the land, there is more room for dialogue.

also I would like to point out that the relevant image, show that settler colonialism has an abscence of a penalty, not a specific boost.

Hmm. Exploitation colonialism often consisted of slotting a new colonial official in the place of the old top dog—king or raja or whatever—to collect the taxes or tribute that old elite did. Settler colonialism consists of forcibly ejecting and seizing the wealth of the indigenous people. The type example settler colonies are New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, United States and Israel; I don’t think any of those six countries can reasonably be said to have been colonised with less tension and resistance than others. In fact if anything I’d say they’ve seen more.

 

[Haltin]

Is the rate of colonisation affected by your ports and/or navy? It really should be. Britain and France had much larger colonies than, say, almost-landlocked Austria-Hungary (which actually had no colonies, afaik).

A simple way to represent this would be to treat "colonial points" like an item that needs to be transported from your capital to the colony to make it grow, thus consuming Convoys and forcing a serious investment in merchant (and military) fleet for any would-be colonial power.

 

[colonial_administrator]

Hmm. Exploitation colonialism often consisted of slotting a new colonial official in the place of the old top dog—king or raja or whatever—to collect the taxes or tribute that old elite did. Settler colonialism consists of forcibly ejecting and seizing the wealth of the indigenous people. The type example settler colonies are New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, United States and Israel; I don’t think any of those six countries can reasonably be said to have been colonised with less tension and resistance than others. In fact if anything I’d say they’ve seen more.

I think British settlement isn't that exploitive except to anti-settler political causes. It wasn't close to rubber being sought from the Congo.

In the 18th century, there was a British notion that all societies progressed through four stages: hunting, pasturage, farming and commerce. Pastoralists have property in animals and people in the hunting stage did not have strong sense of property. But agriculture was considered the start of property rights in land. If non-farming native inhabitants could be deadly, the English usually did do treaties with them despite the lack of farming. USA expanded largely on part to treaties, to avoid conflict.

It might've been cool if there were more sub categories to the two colonial affair laws. In case there's not enough depth elsewhere. I also hope the human isn't too overpowered in colonising but the dev diary seems interesting so far.

 

[Blindbohemian]

I think British settlement isn't that exploitive except to anti-settler political causes. It wasn't close to rubber being sought from the Congo.

In the 18th century, there was a British notion that all societies progressed through four stages: hunting, pasturage, farming and commerce. Pastoralists have property in animals and people in the hunting stage did not have strong sense of property. But agriculture was considered the start of property rights in land. If non-farming native inhabitants could be deadly, the English usually did do treaties with them despite the lack of farming. USA expanded largely on part to treaties, to avoid conflict.

It might've been cool if there were more sub categories to the two colonial affair laws. In case there's not enough depth elsewhere. I also hope the human isn't too overpowered in colonising but the dev diary seems interesting so far.

I’m sorry, it’s not very clear what this post is saying.

Attempting to parse what you may have been trying to express, it could be one of these three things (or something else):

Are you telling me that British settlement colonialism (i.e. in New Zealand or Canada) was not intensively exploitative? I know, that’s why I (and the international historical community) expressly distinguish settler colonialism and exploitation colonialism

Do you mean to tell me that British colonialism in general was not exploitative? That’s absurd: tell that to India. Or Jamaica. Most British (and European) colonialism was exploitative by design; it took land in order to exploit the people and natural resources.

Or are you suggesting in disagreement with my post that British settlement colonialism was not violent and did not involve tension and resistance? You’d be wrong. Yes, British imperialism in settler colonies proceeded by the deployment of treaties and agreements, but so did virtually all imperialism. “We have a treaty”, as the history of New Zealand can attest, does not automatically mean “and so there shall be no tension or resistance”. In New Zealand Britain signed a treaty with some of the indigenous Māori saying that New Zealand was annexed. Not long afterward the signatory Māori (and others) realised they’d been played by the British and went to war. And then some others did in another part. And so on—the New Zealand Wars tied up 18,000 British troops at their height and went on until 1916.

The story in other settler colonies is even worse. South Africa? Ever heard of Zulus? Canada and the First Nations? Australia? The very notion that settler colonialism there avoided conflict by using treaties is utterly laughable. One of the few cases in history where the internet’s slapdash use of the word “genocide” is appropriate.

The thing about settler colonialism is that, treaty or no treaty, it’s a situation where People A live on the land and people B want the land. There aren’t a lot of ways that can go. The historians Veracini and Wolfe have noted, incidentally, that a key part of the settler colony playbook is generating a history of themselves which obscures the fact they were born in violence: indigenous Australians “barely even occupied the land”, right? They were just nomads, right? And there were only like 1,000 of them anyway…

This post is quite long. Sorry about that. It wasn’t clear from your post what position you were taking, but I hope I have addressed whatever it was.

 

[grommile]

I think British settlement isn't that exploitive except to anti-settler political causes. It wasn't close to rubber being sought from the Congo.

Please don't whitewash my homeland's sins.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid]

I think British settlement isn't that exploitive except to anti-settler political causes. It wasn't close to rubber being sought from the Congo.

The people of the Kenyan highlands say hello.