>>488232
There were based on treaties as well.
Over the period there were a lot of close calls over fighting over land in which many cases saidl and being fought over was very awful.

>>488232
French West Africa wasn't just one massive colony, it was a federation of eight colonies. French Equatorial Africa was as well, except every colony within the federation existed as an independent colony before it's creation.

Also, this map is confusing. Why is Namibia coloured orange for Germany, but Tanzania, Togo, Rwanda, and Burundi are not? All of them were under German rule at one point. If this is going by who ruled it at the time of independence,it is still wrong because Namibia was under South African rule at the time of independence, as well as both Libya and Eritrea before it was absorbed into Ethiopia.

>>488232
Geographically speaking it would be somewhat difficult to control land masses near the Sahara or Congo (the vastness of it all is just too troublesome). Based on the map it seems Coastal regions were of some importance (think of what's on the other side of the pond). The Nile probably had something to do with it as well, but besides that I have no idea.

good question IMO

>>488254
I just picked it out from google as an on topic centerpiece.
Please take it with a grain of salt
As for the federation, Explain.

>>488232
From what i know it seems like it all went down in a similar fashion to the way the middle east was divided up
tribal boundaries combined with european colonial borders probably had a lot to do with it, but i really dont know.

>>488273

Not the other guy but I'm pretty sure in the case of the French it was mostly for administrative reasons. Earlier on it was all lumped in with Senegal but they started dividing it up to run it better later on. The French micro-managed their colonies a fair bit more than the British (as well as the others I think though I know less about those), who tended to just keep whoever was in charge before doing their thing with the occasional nudge (or shove) in the right direction as needed and a chunk of their treasury.
I think the French favored a structure where you had a concrete chain of command, so each colony had a governor, and they'd all report up the chain to the governor general, who reported to Paris.

>>488292
Huh.
Is that the reason why they decided it was best to draw straight lines, like with Niger, Chad, Mali. and Mauritania?
For that matter, how WERE the British colonies chopped up? I mean, is the local rule thing the only reason they are shaped they way they are?

>>488302

A lot of the straight lines are a consequence of the Berlin conference. Africa was literally divvied up by a bunch of people in Berlin, so you got a few cases where the Europeans just agreed "I'll take this, you take that, let's not have any trouble over this." since before that everyone was getting a little anxious over who was going where and staking claims.
In many cases agreements had to be made with the locals through treaties before you could annex them, but generally the treaties were pretty one-sided anyway. One funny case was when the Italians tried a really bullshit treaty where the one they brought before the other Europeans was completely different to the one they brought to the Ethiopians. The Ethiopian emperor abrogated the treaty and kicked Italy's ass when they tried to take over anyway. Anyway that was a bit of a digression.

While lots of people say the Europeans had zero regard for local ethnic boundaries, I don't think that's 100% the case. It's certainly true to an extent (lots of ethnic groups got divided up / thrown in with different ones) but in many cases the Europeans (especially the British) just walked in and took over what was already there. Sometimes they created new boundaries where convenient, though, and they tended to impose systems of having chiefdoms even where they didn't exist because it was easier to control.

>>488232
general opportunism and negotiation between colonial powers and internal groups to avoid expensive wars "we won't cross this line if you won't"

>>488232
>For an example, why wasn't french Africa just one massive state in the middle of east African instead of some artificially made states with questionable borders?
Because each one needed a different ruling elite of oppressive Western puppets. You can't expect King Motombo to manage to keep all that land in a peaceful state for efficient exploitation.