Why if large parts of Africa were owned by the British or French did they eventually spilt up wouldn't they be stronger united why not the united French African or something like that and why did the democratic republic of the Congo stay together was it that Belgium had better colonial skills and for South America most of South America was unified except for Brazil by the Spanish and they all had similar cultures and why did Brazil just stay as one country maybe there would be the independent rio republic
I can speak for Latin America, though I would believe the same is true elsewhere. (Probably even more so in Africa, which didn't have a somewhat unified, interregional state before colonization) The local folk are not just "similar cultures." Each has their own regional pride, history, conflicts, rivalries, alliances, and identies. Take for instance Bolivia. There are 37 official indigenous languages between it's 10.5 million people. Some, yes, might not be terribly distinguished, but the two that account for the most people, Quechua and Aymara, share nothing more than a few loan words. And this is after homogenizing conquest by Inca and Spanish empires. Or take Evo Morales, Bolivia's current president. He is from an Aymara family, the prominenet indegenous group of the highlands. He is an active supporter of native movements and "decolonization." But he has a lot of critics from lowland native groups calling him an Aymara favoitist.
There's plenty of modern examples of diverse peoples resisting unification with neighbors. Look at Pakistan and India, or Ukraine in the past year, or the former country of Yugoslavia. The fact that the U.S. has lasted so long as a conglomerate of so many different people is more of a historic anomaly than anything.
hi! regarding South America, you'll find several posts in this section of the FAQ