I'm British, and my education (up to GCSE History as it existed in 2007, I didn't take History at AS-level or above) just completely glossed over colonialism entirely. There was no “anti-colonialist message” because there was no message on colonialism at all.
I feel that the desire is more to sweep it under the rug, and while it is better than glorifying the past, I think it encourages people to this kind of mindset, as if it was that bad, surely they'd know more? (Parallels to Americans finding out about the Tulsa race massacre recently).
i propose we start by drafting a "Comprehensive International Plan of Action" ("Comintern" for short) and invite the UNSC to join it.
P.S. There's a grain of joke in every joke.
The First Nations here were subjected to overt genocide and then protracted, relentless cultural erosion in the form of systemic racism, resource/opportunity control, and the notorious residential school system. Somehow I made it into my late teens before finding out what really happened.
My kids are having a better experience, but I’ll have to wait until grade 7 or 8 to see how deep our education system is willing to dig into the atrocities that happened here. So far, at least, the school has been very positive and engaged in learning about and experiencing local First Nations culture. It’s an improvement.
I had history classes for years but the only stuff I remember is trivia about the industrial revolution. We were made to memorise vast quantities of detail on things like the exact dates of various Mines Acts (safety for coal miners), who invented some kinds of obsolete farming equipment, etc. There was a lot on medieval agricultural practices as well. It went far too deep on things that impart no wisdom or generalised lessons for the modern world.
There was also a lot of stuff on World War 1 and World War 2. Important, yes, but also incredibly well covered by popular culture.
I suspect the curriculum was designed to be as boring and non-controversial as possible, which is a pity. The only reason to study history is to learn lessons from it, which must inevitably mean drawing conclusions from the events of the past. Attempting to avoid that ends up reducing history to a list of kings and dates.
If I could rewrite the history curriculum, I'd give it a major renewed focus on both the British Empire and also the full history of the 20th century. It would be shallow but broad. And it would include the chaotic state of Britain between 1945 and 1990. Of course the reason it's not taught is that many teachers have very strong ideological views of their own on, in particular, Margaret Thatcher.
Colonialism probably should be one of the topics of the few but we can't teach students everything
In fact, it's hard for me to name something explicitly that the Romans did in Britain other than lay the foundations for some towns and cities, and built some roads. All of this was over 1000 years ago, so I doubt (other than the exceptions that I can think of on the spot; some roads, towns and 'Roman Baths') that anyone from the UK is walking around and interpreting what they see as a result of Roman occupation.
On an objective level as someone who obviously never experienced true Roman Britain, sure, they built some things that were pretty cool at the time, but at the same time you can objectively look back and say "yeah, slavery is really bad, I wish the Romans didn't enslave people and use that slave labour to build the things that they did". I think the real layman answer is "who cares, it was over 1000 years ago, and I don't really understand how the people of the time relate to the world/culture I take part in".
You could no more divorce the History of technology from barbarism and inhumanity than you could Civilization. You could project a better way over human history looking through present-day lens, but that way did not happen, and more than likely it would never have occurred the way we'd idealize. Revisionism is hardly necessary.
Moralizing the past is senseless, whether you argue it was good or bad. It matters not that the colonial era is less old than others. All we can do with our newly calibrated compasses is decide what good means going forward.
Civilization emerged around settled agriculture, not to wage war. Arguably this was a movement away from violence, as compared to nomadic tribes constantly competing over hunting and foraging territories.
> Moralizing the past is senseless, whether you argue it was good or bad. It matters not that the colonial era is less old than others. All we can do with our newly calibrated compasses is decide what good means going forward.
How exactly do we “calibrate our compasses” without reference to our past? It’s entirely valid to judge what in our past immoral in hopes that we can steer our present away from their reoccurrence. It’s hardly senseless, but indicative of our capacity to reflect, change, and not senselessly repeat these horrors.
Is this even true? I remember when I was reading "Seeing like a State" (or possibly this is from "Against the Grain"), the book would talk about how the first settled civilizations were all violent and oppressive, because nobody wanted to engage in agriculture. Why would you, when anyone could walk into nature where there was an abundance of food and life was much easier.
The original movement towards settled civilization was a violent one, where people were forced to work the land, and would try to escape. Nomadic tribes didn't violently compete with each other as much as settled societies. At least, that was the impression I was under.
The view that pre agricultural societies were peaceful was not based in evidence, but based in wishful thinking: if civilization corrupted people then we could fix it by undoing this corruption. This was a popular belief around the 1960s and 1970s when there was little to no hard evidence on the behavior of early human societies.
The point of central agriculture was to produce more bodies, to wage war, if you're to believe the argument in the Origins of Political History, and I do. This necessitated bureaucracy, hence Civilization.
> Arguably this was a movement away from violence, as compared to nomadic tribes constantly competing over hunting and foraging territories.
Well we have a cleaner record of the violence after that point in History, the scale for which got more brutal and concentrated over time. When your population is small, territories over the globe are vast and plentiful; I fail to see an angle where centralization was necessitated for peace, as opposed to conquest.
> How exactly do we “calibrate our compasses” without reference to our past?
To be clear: it's not a question of reference, as the past shaped and developed the morals you and I have today. Though judging it broadly in a detached sense, through our morals, renders most of our past evil, which is banal. It's not a person. Looking to the past can help identify and inform what we deem to be wrong today, which is different than saying the past is evil.
What we take for granted here is consequentialism, which is retrospective. Leading up to WW1, war was widely romanticized and considered virtuous and even the upper classmen partook (see: the War That Ended Peace), likened to skirmishes that ended fairly quickly, and of course it was a different animal by then, war was hellish once more. Colonialism in concept was not considered wrong, though perhaps consequences as a result (e.g. atrocities) would not have been considered good if you quizzed the average person. When we judge colonialism, we largely judge the consequence such that atrocities are unjustifiable no matter the other benefits. Sure. But I say to you: that's all of History, that's all of what led us here today, that led us to be "enlightened" (to be "good" as we understand it to mean today) and type on computers. We'll shift our course to avoid the bad stuff, and I'm sure in the future looking back we'll find evils.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrfjUzYvPo
That does not fit into the anti-colonialist narrative either.
You might find this interesting: https://origins.osu.edu/review/after-abolition-britain-and-s...
Most societies of that time did not even bother to outlaw slavery, let alone enforce those laws. There were contradictions within British society. That was an enormous advance over the many societies and nations that simply accepted slavery in that period.
Societies in Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and elsewhere in Europe were open in their commitment to and acceptance of slavery as an institution. You could say that slavery was the norm historically. Britain was the exception. And as the exception, managing a global empire, it continued to have many interactions with slave-driven economies.
By simply not moving the goal posts.
> so many Westerners keep making these strangely naïve and surface-level readings of history and politics
So they are naive for noticing a good thing in an ocean of evil, and you are keeping it real by thinking that until everything is perfect no progress matters. Got it.
And for the "benefiting", there's nothing anybody can do that you people won't label as benefiting even if it's 2nd, 3rd or 10th party. All the while posting this on devices produced by workers free only in name with materials from the poorest countries with the most horrible work conditions in their mines.
Yikes.
> All the while posting this on devices produced by workers free only in name with materials from the poorest countries with the most horrible work conditions in their mines.
Sweet, so you're obviously an anti-capitalist too right?
Are you saying that a failure to wipe out slavery everywhere simultaneously means the Navy's sacrifices of so many British lives were meaningless?
In the end, what ended mass slavery in the world? The British Empire and the American civil war, fought primarily by the descendents of the British. That's not nothing.
None of these are unique to European colonial powers. So in that sense, the question is "why not?" rather than "why?"
Take away service-based economy, global trade and the internet, and the strong of today (or of any other time) would indeed have more use of a second TV than of world peace.
I hope that thanks to the advancement of technology, people around the world will see this instance of prisoner's dilemma for what it is, and work towards a better world together. Sadly, what I observe in reality is that people who will get the most benefit out of this seem to be its strongest opponents.
* the colonization was a huge net negative and violation of the population at the time
* the colonization arguably could be a net positive for current and future generations
* the latter does not justify the former
?
Take architecture, for example. Traditionally pretty much every ethnic group I know of built with mud brick and thatch. During the colonial era - and afterwards, till today really - such building techniques were derided as backwards savagery. Of course the European way of using concrete was "better" and "modern", even though it's a terrible building material for a hot, humid climate. A mud house can keep quite cool in 35°C plus weather with just vents. A concrete house on the other hand traps so much heat at even lower temperatures that we end up needing fans and air conditioners to be comfortable indoors, which of course drives up individuals' carbon footprints and electricity bills.
The ghost of colonialism still lingers decades later in a whole lot of little things like that. So yes, we may be headed towards a net positive future but in my opinion the way to get there requires even further divesting from the colonial era and its ways of thinking (re: the architecture example, there are new schools of builders who explicitly aim to incorporate precolonial building wisdom in their work).
Seems to me that the typical comparison between european architecture and 'mud huts' is based on a lack of knowledge about european building processes.
So it seems to me that your comment is based on a dire lack of knowledge about how colonialism works. The British straight-up imposed town planning laws that banned using mud to build new houses so that they could build the concrete towns and cities they envisioned - I know precisely what I am talking about.
> It would have also been pretty cutting edge until maybe halfway through the 20th century.
Nah, there have been houses built using concrete blocks since fairly early in the 19th. Using cement in house construction was hardly cutting edge in the 1920s - 1930s.
That's the thing. I don't think that's the case. I think they are a 1900's-earliest, 1930's mainstream kind of thing.
So by the time they became mainstream, the UK was already beginning the second world war, which would mark the end of the time when they were really rich or powerful enough to be an imperial state.
For example, the first concrete built house in the US was built in 1837. Francois Coignet was making significant use of Portland cement as early as the 1850s/1860s.
Even beyond that, I'll ask you yet again - when, exactly, do you think the colonial era I am talking about was? When exactly do you think Britain let go of all its territories in Africa? Come now, this isn't exactly hidden information or difficult to look up.
The question is 'when did Britain lose the kind of involvement you need to get into low-level building regulation?'
Near as I can find, they never had that kind of interest or involvement. Which is why I wanted a source for your claim that they banned traditional building materials.
So my thinking is simple: prior to 1930 is a bit early for concrete blocks to be the logical building material outside of places like New York, and even there, it would be a bit newfangled.
After 1930 is a bit late for the british to be really calling the shots about what gets built and how it gets built, since the period between 1945 and 1960 was characterized by increasing independence and english divestment. Maybe some university buildings?
Anyway, this whole conversation is a bit of a strange digression from your original rather belicose response to my observation that concrete was not by any means the 'European way'. It's my feeling that, aside from some monumental architecture (which it seems nigeria also had) most europeans were also building with brick, wood, plaster and thatch, up until the 19th century.
If you look at a modern timber frame house in the UK, the basic structure would be familiar to a roman architect. The timber structure is laid on brick piles, which are in turn laid on concrete foundations (the only modern addition - victorian houses often wouldn't have these), then a tile roof is fitted on top. It's a ridiculously ancient design.
We are in many ways rediscovering older methods and techniques of building, especially in materials.
Also Consider SuperAdobe [2], which uses nothing but dirt onsite and plastic bags.
1. https://www.dwell.com/article/modern-rammed-earth-homes-723d...
I know in the American southwest adobe construction is popular, but that's about sheer thermal mass moderating the effects of the heat. Small windows also help.
Phase change can get you below zero easily, it certainly works as a poor man's AC. It is incredible how much energy phase change requires compared to just raising the temperature of the medium.
I think this is a misleading statement anyway, because it requires a comparison point. If it was to "no interaction at all with the colonial powers", then maybe? If it was to "free trade with the colonial powers", almost certainly not.
Even in the first case I say maybe, because who knows what their society would have looked like. It may have advanced more slowly, but maybe that would have left them with more natural resources, more culture in tact, different advancements that benefited them in different ways. The trade-off there is very unclear and just saying it would be a "net positive" is a massive leap to me.
Another problem is that settler colonialism exterminated the populations of the Americas and Australasia. The inter-generational comparison in those cases is primarily between two separate populations: the genocide of natives against the wealth of the ancestors of settlers.
I'm not an historian but my impression is that WWI was primarily the result of intra-European conflicts between the great powers with any colonial issues being little more than a sideshow. WWII in Europe then seems to have been a nearly inevitable consequence of unresolved issues from the prior war. The only aspect of the two wars that does look a great deal like a war between competing colonial empires was the Pacific Theater of the Second World War.
As for the Second World War, I would say two things. First, that Nazi ideology was, in many ways, a product of European imperialism: its ideal of a Pan-Germanic state in Central Europe, its virulently racist and extermanist designs, and even its use of concentration camps. Second, one of the main grievances of Germany was that it was stripped of its colonial territories at Versailles, and that its territories were transformed into mandates run by the League of Nations according to principles of free trade, at the same time that France and Britain continued to run their own colonies as protectionist blocs. It was British sympathy for this colonial imbalance that, in part, stood behind the policy of appeasement. As for Japan, it was a classically imperialist power, reacting to the expansion of the US across the Pacific.
As for the Nazis, their primary target was European Jews who had been living in Europe for millenia as well as other European peoples they viewed as inferior to the Germans, such as the Slavic peoples.
There is no possible narrative explanation of the war that does not centre on the scramble for Africa. Would there have been a great power war between Germany and the status quo powers at some point absent the scramble for Africa? It is very difficult to say. Had it occurred, it would have been radically different in shape. This goes back to my initial point about the uncertainty factored into any big counter-factual like this.
As for the Nazis, my point was that the very ideology of racism was a direct product of European imperialism. That it was primarily directed at Jews and Slavs is besides the point. Hannah Arendt - one of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century - famously made the case that the Nazi holocaust was an outgrowth of European imperialism in The Origins of Totalitarianism.
It's worth pointing out that the one of the main rationales of Nazi imperialism was to create a living space in Europe in which to off-load Germany's surplus population. This had long been one of the main justifications for European colonialism, and the expropriation of Germany's colonies at Versailles made it look to Europe again to solve the problem. What are arguably the first two (imperial!) campaigns of the Second World War - Japan's invasion of Manchuria, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia - were both justified as means of creating outlets for their soaring surplus populations. Both of them faced profoundly racist immigration restrictions in the main destinations of migration, namely the United States and Australia.
No, it was simply conquest. For example, the Umayyads did not betray Hispania when they invaded, because they never had any allegiance to Hispania in the first place.
I would therefore term it a betrayal, and for me that is to say the colonizers betrayed Africans but also broader humanity -- their own humanity.
The British were themselves the product of multiple waves of conquest and colonization from the Paleolithic through the Iberian migrations, the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans up until 1066 and beyond.
It’s a constant of human behavior and historical development, so I’m not sure betrayal is really the right way to the think about it.
I would consider any conquest that involved the breaking of a centuries-long cordial relationship to be a betrayal, yes. What exactly is your point?
> Did the Seljuk Turks betray the Byzantines when they conquered Anatolia? Or had Romans previously betrayed the Seclucids, who had previously betrayed the various other people who occupied the area
> The British were themselves the product of multiple waves of conquest and colonization from the Paleolithic through the Iberian migrations, the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans up until 1066 and beyond.
No offence to you personally, but this particular brand of intellectual dishonesty - discussing the British empire as though it is far-flung history and not very recent indeed - is quite annoying. The conquests you bring up were a thousand years ago, two thousand in the case of the Roman-Seleucid war. On the other hand the expedition that subjugated the Benin Kingdom was in 1897, and it (as part of the country now called Nigeria) did not gain its independence from Britain until 1960. My father was born under colonial rule, for crying out loud, and I'm not even thirty yet. People don't make a habit of jumping into discussions of the German invasion of France in WW2 with anecdotes on Charlemagne's conquest of Bavaria - why on earth do they think it's okay to do when talking about the colonial era?
In fact, we're cognitively identical to the Medieval and Roman people. We have different ethical frameworks in the 21st century, but human nature doesn't change so fast. The British in the 19th Century were driven by the same underlying factors as the Romans 2000 years ago and Russia, China, and (arguably) the US today. We can certainly condemn it and trumpet our moral outrage, but that doesn't help us to understand or avoid it.
My motivation is not to minimize the abhorrent behavior of the British during that period, but to ensure that we don't make it out to be something uniquely evil that cannot be repeated in the future.
(And I do think it is important to see WWII in its historical context: the formation of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of Prussian dominance, the Treaty of Versailles, etc. To do so doesn't minimize the responsibility of Germany in the 30s and 40s, but it does help us to understand the complexities behind the simplifying narratives of all sides.)
We are simply asking you to extend the same intellectual grace when discussing and teaching about colonialism, which by-the-by was going on at the same time as the world wars.
It is an unfortunate reality that the victims of colonialism have no more of a monopoly on the truth than the perpetrators.
And as to the point you made about betraying humanity: it's funny how people generally understand that the First and Third Reichs were out of line, understand the ethical reasons for the Allies opposing their takeover of Europe, but make excuses upon excuses upon excuses for European nations executing the very same imperialist agenda in Africa at the very same time.
Japanese government realized that they are behind in development both technological and economical.
Those were the colonized countries. So to avoid being colonized, they did all in their power to become colonizers themselves.
The irony is that out of all colonized countries the Japanese colonies were the one that net benefited from colonization. At the cost of brutal oppression and atrocities, but Japanese considered those their 'land' and instead focusing purely on extraction of wealth (europen model) they were developing infrastructure.
All in all, the whole 'colonization was not so bad' is whitewashing of history. And we should stop putting positive light on it. Just because one slave owner was 'good' it doesn't make slavery justified.
This is a completely inaccurate representation of the various Japanese colonial projects. While some historians might refer to what became Taiwan in these terms, very few would say the same of Korea or the territories in China the Japanese occupied.
In fact, the viciousness and extractive nature of the Japanese colonial projects are what justified to many the corollary anti-colonial violence that eventually escalated into civil war in the Korean peninsula. For example,An Jung-geun, who assassinated the Japanese colonial administrator Ito Hirobumi, is still considered a national hero in both the north and the south.
Eh, you're whitewashing history right there.
Projecting today's morals,values & information on to a past people who did not have those who were raised when the norm was the norm.
Savagery existed throughout mankind and to think otherwise is silly.
Every land had tribes who may have formed an alliance but also would have just as likely killed & enslaved others outside their tribe. _Every_ land.
Of course we can and we do that, that is the only way we progress as a species.
Killing and enslaving is objectively wrong, no matter if you are 15th century peasant or 20 cent soldier.
What next? Ethnic cleansing are/were not so bad as they result in strengthening of national coherence? Eugenics is simply caring for the future generations?
Its a slippery slope argument giving a pass to past actions as they 'didn't know' its bad what they had done.
> Savagery existed throughout mankind and to think otherwise is silly. I have not said that you are building a straw-man here. I advocate not to call the savagery act anything but savagery.
>Every land had tribes who may have formed an alliance but also would have just as likely killed & enslaved others outside their tribe. _Every_ land.
So that gives me a right to kill you and enslave your family?
In other words, some things simply don't need to be defended. We can acknowledge that they happened and discuss them levelly without trying to put bad actors in a better light. To invoke Godwin's Law a bit, we do manage to discuss Nazi Germany without constantly saying "Well actually we are all better off because they did lead to some advances in science and technology". (As an aside, colonialism is arguably more recent than Hitler - Nigeria for one did not gain independence from Britain until 1960. Yet one is considered "too soon" but the other is treated as though it happened in some distant past that we should all have gotten over by now.)
1. Unnecessary. Unnecessary for what? Anything? Cause in that case I do not agree. The rise, expansion and collapse of empires is very necessary for the development and testing of human organizational models. The price for change (not necessarily good) is human life. That's the reality of the entire history of the human race, you can't simply wish it otherwise.
2. Unethical. Morals are highly subjective and debatable, but I do want to mention one thing. Magna Carta originated in evil white Europe and the whole world benefits from it's forceful spread.
Will your next point be about British developing the radar and the radio?
Which attributes are being tested, other than the ability of a society to expand and conquer or destroy other societies?
Preying is part of life. People forget we are animals. Sure, we try to impose some rules on the preying, but who can enforce them but the strongest?
I am not trying to deny our need for liberty and safety. But you have to think about those in the real context of constant conflict. At any time you should look around and chose to support one predator over another, because there are real differences that will impact your needs. And many people from that time and place in the original article chose the white wolves.
Edit to address you question more directly: empires need to provide some things to the ones who are being ruled, otherwise you can't keep order. Lack of order means lack of efficiency, which affects army, which affects their ability to control and expand the empire. So there is a constant quest for balance between taking resources and giving back things. New empires pop up that do it better and they kill everything around until they fall themselves. Evolution.
It gives us European more perspectives to look at and improves the level of the discussion that, in my opinion, has no particular value or chances of persisting new ideas if it takes place exclusively on social networks in the form of slogans and memes.
I'm Italian, I ideally descend from the African born emperor Septimius Severus, who was born in Leptis Magna the modern Al-Khums in Lybia.
I've always been fascinated by the strong bond that the early Roman empire had with northern Africa and Middle East, where all the modern western civilizations were born.
They looked at them in respect, when Septimius Severus became emperor the Egyptians were already older to the Romans than Romans are to us today.
Septimium Severus became emperor defeating his opponent, an usurper of the empire, Gaius Pescennius Niger.
Niger in Latin means black, dark, but also evil and ill-omened, the latter being the ones that described him better.
Niger is also the name of the river that gave name to Nigeria, but the meaning is completely different, yet it sounds exactly the same. When I was a kid studying ancient history at school I was always looking for coincidence like this one, I believed they were magic.
Africa at the time of Septimius Severus was a very advanced country, in every aspect of life: they had some of the largest cities in the World, they were good sailors, they had prosperous markets, they had the largest library in the entire World and let's not forget the monumental buildings - still unarrived today.
Romans were great engineers, they built roads, infrastructures such as bridges and aqueducts, but also thermal baths ran by geothermal energy (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquae_Sulis)
But Gaius Pescennius Niger usurped the empire and Septimius Severus had to fight him until Gaius was defeated and then killed.
I'm fascinated by Roman history and I read a lot about it, but I cannot look the other way when I think at it on a human level: they were constantly killing each other no matter how many advancement they brought to society, engineering, politics, rule of the law, they killed each other, a lot!
What I get from this essay is not that there was a good colonialism but that pre colonialism wasn't that good as well.
My father used to read me "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" when I was a little kid and I will never condone what happened and the devastation it caused and that's why I ultimately believe that "debate should always serve the ultimate purpose of helping build ... rather than tearing things apart"
Also, people tend to forget that Africa is a huge continent, and drastically different from north to south. Specially with regards to the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
Colonisation was wholly inevitable. Japan, as per your example, had a big freak out when Perry forced them open - realised that "dutch studies" were a matter of national security - and modernised at absolute breakneck pace as they happened to have had all the social structures already in place to accomplish this.
And no sooner had they closed the gap that they turned around and became ruthless colonisers themselves. Such was the game for all of human history until the 20th century.
It hasn't stopped, it just stopped being blatant.
See Confessions of an Economic Hitman for the US approach, or the Belt & Road Initiative (and all if it's hidden enforcement measures and implications) for a Chinese implementation.
We have yet to fully step out of barbarism and into modernity as a species.
Your comparison with passwords is apt. In fact, it was less than a decade ago that I would sniff wifi and collect all kinds of passwords. In fact, it was so easy that a browser extension was created specifically to sniff other wifi users' Facebook passwords. That browser extension was the straw that broke the camel: since then there has been a huge push towards HTTPS.
Where does this fit into your analogy? Weakness invites exploitation, exploitation catalyses the push towards improvement. We see it everywhere: car safety, environmental regulations, Arab spring, gay rights. Yes, the colonialism _was_ necessary to get to the standard of living now seen in major African cities. As a Jew, I'll tell you that the Holocaust was a necessary step towards a modern, independent Jewish state.
That does _not_ excuse colonialism, the Holocaust, password sniffing, toxic chemical dumping, or any of the other atrocities that had to occur for the dice to fall where they are today.
Somehow you seem to have missed the entire point of my comment, which is that there were already existing relationships based on trade and exchange that were betrayed because military subjugation was cheaper in the long run.
Where, exactly, did this occur? I suppose one could point to the United States as an example but that's an edge case: a new nation splitting off from an already industrialized nation. Japan might be cited as another example, but they notion that they didn't compromise their sovereignty is not entirely accurately. Japan had contact with Europeans since the 16th century. They didn't industrialize until Western powers used gunboat diplomacy to force favorable trade deals. Furthermore, this was in the 19th century, decades after Europe had fought the first Opium War and colonial conquests in Asia had already begun.
> but that wouldn't be enough for African nations for some reason. What exactly would those reasons be?
Africa isn't being singled out here. The rest of the world didn't industrialize just through commercial contact either.
Europe had been trading with Asia for centuries before colonization occurred, and despite that Asia did not industrialize. These regions had greater centralization, urbanization, and rates of literacy that most other regions of the world. I could flip the question around back to you: what makes you think that trade and exchange would be enough for Africa to industrialize through commercial contact when other regions of the world did not?
As a less morally fraught example, consider the reaction you would have if it was exposed that your browser was secretly sending your passwords in plaintext to some third-party service to check if they were secure enough. It doesn't matter that helping users avoid weak passwords is a noble goal and genuine objective; sharing users' passwords like that is completely unnecessary and thus indefensible.
The question then becomes: was there a better way to achieve the "good" of the colonial era - technological progress, etc - without colonisation itself? And the answer is yes, absolutely 100% yes. Colonisation was a betrayal, not the start of Europe's history with Africa and Asia. To give an example close to home, the Portuguese and later the English had a fairly balanced mercantile relationship with the Benin Kingdom (part of modern-day Nigeria) for centuries before the British colonial expeditions of the very late 19th century. You can even tell from the words of earlier visitors/tourists like Olfert Dapper that there was a respect for the people, their way of life and accomplishments (the Edo people were quite good at architecture, for instance).
The Benin Kingdom could very well have continued its natural technological, economic and social progression with the support of non-violent foreign partnerships and trade while retaining its sovereignty, but for the greed of the British. In fact, colonisation has most likely hampered its development, not accelerated it. Japan for example avoided colonisation entirely and has quite clearly caught up to and surpassed its near and distant neighbours that got that dubious "help". Or consider how quickly Hawaii modernised even before it lost its sovereignty to the United States.