this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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There's also an element of luck. Gunpowder had been around for hundreds of years, but europeans were able to quickly develop it for military use and basically pulled off a timing attack.
well look what europe had in africa before 1880, if america hadn't been fucked with disease the europeans would've been stuck with coastal forts, some islands probably. the europeans carved africa up with machine guns
Don't forget advances in medicine like Euros learning quinine can treat malaria, before that they kept getting owned by diseases that they had no defence against
this is a popular misconception, malaria is not an african disease. it was almost everywhere, and eliminated in the first and second world in the 1950's. Quinine was also known and produced for malaria in the 17th century. the big medical advances in the understanding and treatment of the disease were contemporary to the scramble for africa, and not implemented/efficacious at the time