Is it fair to say that, on average, the African colonies of France & UK were money sinks & the Asian were profit-turners?

[raharris1973]

Is it fair to say that, on average, the African colonies of France & UK were money sinks & the Asian were profit-turners?

With perhaps the South Pacific archipelagos being money-sinks as well, but shallower than Africa?

My thinking is that overall the Asia colonies like India, Malaya, Singapore, Indochina, Ceylon, China concessions were more developed, with more developed plantations, wage labor systems, larger markets with more spending power and so on, whereas the African colonies and South Pacific islands were generally much less developed and populous and needed more start up infrastructure and investments to turn up revenue in terms of corporate profits or tax revenue.

Seperate but tangentially related issue:

At the same time, the western empires in Asia weren't built for robust defense against a determined great power assault (see outcome of 1941-1942) maybe funding a robust defense, paying adequate "defense insurance" to repel any attacker, would have cost so much as to negate the profit. Instead, they were more built to defend the imperial power against weak native resistance, and presupposed that first-rate military powers would compete and cooperate like gentlemen in the region (like uniting to fight the Boxers), not have knock-down, drag-out fights to the death (like the Pacific War).

 

[stevep]

Is it fair to say that, on average, the African colonies of France & UK were money sinks & the Asian were profit-turners?

With perhaps the South Pacific archipelagos being money-sinks as well, but shallower than Africa?

My thinking is that overall the Asia colonies like India, Malaya, Singapore, Indochina, Ceylon, China concessions were more developed, with more developed plantations, wage labor systems, larger markets with more spending power and so on, whereas the African colonies and South Pacific islands were generally much less developed and populous and needed more start up infrastructure and investments to turn up revenue in terms of corporate profits or tax revenue.

Seperate but tangentially related issue:

At the same time, the western empires in Asia weren't built for robust defense against a determined great power assault (see outcome of 1941-1942) maybe funding a robust defense, paying adequate "defense insurance" to repel any attacker, would have cost so much as to negate the profit. Instead, they were more built to defend the imperial power against weak native resistance, and presupposed that first-rate military powers would compete and cooperate like gentlemen in the region (like uniting to fight the Boxers), not have knock-down, drag-out fights to the death (like the Pacific War).

There will always be exceptions but as a rule of thumb its a good guide. Exceptions in Africa would include S Africa - a white settler colony - albeit with natives still in the majority - with its good farmlands and great mineral wealth and Egypt with its strategic importance due to the canal. Mind you Egypt was never officially a British colony and until 1914 still technically an Ottoman province so not sure how close the comparison is. In terms of most of Africa I think they were overall loss making, although notoriously Leopold of Belgium made an intensive effort to change that for his personal colony. Plus of course individual people and groups could still make a good profit if the imperial country itself wasn't seeing a net return.

In Asia prior to oil becoming so important I'm not sure anything west of India was a profit for anyone. India and much of SE Asia along with China could produce a lot of wealth but again there were probably exceptions. Also in some areas it would depend on the dates. For instance in the DEI I think initial centuries the prime producers were some of the smaller islands to the east with specific spice production while toward the last century or so the big wealth generator was plantation production on Java. Not sure what the situation was with the American colony in the Philippines?

I think the Pacific colonies of all powers were pretty much losers except probably Hawaii - due to its plantations - and the island that Germany lost to Britain with a lot of phosphate reserves - forget its name.

I wouldn't say that the Asian colonies weren't set up for defence and part of the national costs for navies [especially] for colonial powers was for their defence. Looking at the efforts the Dutch made with many of their big ships planned for deployment to the colony. However by 1941 the Dutch were too small to defend their colony against a great power. France could have put up a tough fight against Japan if it had had any warning and hadn't been occupied/at war with Germany although without other players it would probably have lost. A Britain prepared for conflict with Japan would very likely have won, albeit with some early losses but the war in Europe - along with the Med and Atlantic - meant that it simply didn't have the resources spare. Large numbers of forces were deployed to Malaya but many arrived too late and after a long sea cruise in no position to really fight. Coupled with some crap leadership and prior to the outbreak of war being hamstrung by the demand that commercial activity, to fund the war, be given priority over defence.