The Scramble for Africa was the occupation,
division, and colonization of African territory
by European powers during the period of New
Imperialism, between 1881 and 1914. It is
also called the Partition of Africa and by
some the Conquest of Africa. In 1870, only
10 percent of Africa was under formal European
control; by 1914 it had increased to almost
90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia
(Abyssinia) and Liberia still being independent.
There were multiple motivations including
the quest for national prestige, tensions
between pairs of European powers, religious
missionary zeal and internal African native
politics.
The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated
European colonisation and trade in Africa,
is usually referred to as the ultimate point
of the scramble for Africa. Consequent to
the political and economic rivalries among
the European empires in the last quarter of
the 19th century, the partitioning, or splitting
up of Africa was how the Europeans avoided
warring amongst themselves over Africa. The
later years of the 19th century saw the transition
from "informal imperialism" by military influence
and economic dominance, to direct rule, bringing
about colonial imperialism.
== Background ==
By 1840 European powers had established small
trading posts along the coast, but seldom
moved inland. In the middle decades of the
19th century, European explorers had mapped
areas of East Africa and Central Africa.
Even as late as the 1870s, European states
still controlled only ten percent of the African
continent, with all their territories located
near the coast. The most important holdings
were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal;
the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom;
and Algeria, held by France. By 1914, only
Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent
of European control.Technological advances
facilitated European expansion overseas. Industrialisation
brought about rapid advancements in transportation
and communication, especially in the forms
of steamships, railways and telegraphs. Medical
advances also played an important role, especially
medicines for tropical diseases. The development
of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria,
made vast expanses of the tropics more accessible
for Europeans.
== Causes ==
=== Africa and global markets ===
Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions
of the world largely untouched by "informal
imperialism", was also attractive to Europe's
ruling elites for economic, political and
social reasons. During a time when Britain's
balance of trade showed a growing deficit,
with shrinking and increasingly protectionist
continental markets due to the Long Depression
(1873–96), Africa offered Britain, Germany,
France, and other countries an open market
that would garner them a trade surplus: a
market that bought more from the colonial
power than it sold overall.Surplus capital
was often more profitably invested overseas,
where cheap materials, limited competition,
and abundant raw materials made a greater
premium possible. Another inducement for imperialism
arose from the demand for raw materials, especially
copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds,
tea, and tin, to which European consumers
had grown accustomed and upon which European
industry had grown dependent. Additionally,
Britain wanted the southern and eastern coasts
of Africa for stopover ports on the route
to Asia and its empire in India. However,
in Africa – excluding the area which became
the Union of South Africa in 1910 – the
amount of capital investment by Europeans
was relatively small, compared to other continents.
Consequently, the companies involved in tropical
African commerce were relatively small, apart
from Cecil Rhodes's De Beers Mining Company.
Rhodes had carved out Rhodesia for himself;
Léopold II of Belgium later, and with considerable
brutality, exploited the Congo Free State.
These events might detract from the pro-imperialist
arguments of colonial lobbyists such as the
Alldeutscher Verband, Francesco Crispi and
Jules Ferry, who argued that sheltered overseas
markets in Africa would solve the problems
of low prices and over-production caused by
shrinking continental markets. John A. Hobson
argued in Imperialism that this shrinking
of continental markets was a key factor of
the global "New Imperialism" period. William
Easterly, however, disagrees with the link
made between capitalism and imperialism, arguing
that colonialism is used mostly to promote
state-led development rather than "corporate"
development. He has stated that "imperialism
is not so clearly linked to capitalism and
the free markets... historically there has
been a closer link between colonialism/imperialism
and state-led approaches to development."
=== 
Strategic rivalry ===
The rivalry between Britain, France, Germany,
and the other European powers accounts for
a large part of the colonization.
While tropical Africa was not a large zone
of investment, other overseas regions were.
The vast interior between Egypt and the gold
and diamond-rich southern Africa had strategic
value in securing the flow of overseas trade.
Britain was under political pressure to secure
lucrative markets against encroaching rivals
in China and its eastern colonies, most notably
India, Malaya, Australia and New Zealand.
Thus, it was crucial to secure the key waterway
between East and West—the Suez Canal. However,
a theory that Britain sought to annex East
Africa during the 1880 onwards, out of geostrategic
concerns connected to Egypt (especially the
Suez Canal), has been challenged by historians
such as John Darwin (1997) and Jonas F. Gjersø
(2015).The scramble for African territory
also reflected concern for the acquisition
of military and naval bases, for strategic
purposes and the exercise of power. The growing
navies, and new ships driven by steam power,
required coaling stations and ports for maintenance.
Defense bases were also needed for the protection
of sea routes and communication lines, particularly
of expensive and vital international waterways
such as the Suez Canal.Colonies were also
seen as assets in "balance of power" negotiations,
useful as items of exchange at times of international
bargaining. Colonies with large native populations
were also a source of military power; Britain
and France used large numbers of British Indian
and North African soldiers, respectively,
in many of their colonial wars (and would
do so again in the coming World Wars). In
the age of nationalism there was pressure
for a nation to acquire an empire as a status
symbol; the idea of "greatness" became linked
with the sense of duty underlying many nations'
strategies.In the early 1880s, Pierre Savorgnan
de Brazza was exploring the Kingdom of Kongo
for France, at the same time Henry Morton
Stanley explored it on behalf of Léopold
II of Belgium, who would have it as his personal
Congo Free State (see section below). France
occupied Tunisia in May 1881, which may have
convinced Italy to join the German-Austrian
Dual Alliance in 1882, thus forming the Triple
Alliance. The same year, Britain occupied
Egypt (hitherto an autonomous state owing
nominal fealty to the Ottoman Empire), which
ruled over Sudan and parts of Chad, Eritrea,
and Somalia. In 1884, Germany declared Togoland,
the Cameroons and South West Africa to be
under its protection; and France occupied
Guinea. French West Africa (AOF) was founded
in 1895, and French Equatorial Africa in 1910.
==== Germany's Weltpolitik ====
Germany was hardly a colonial power before
the New Imperialism period, but would eagerly
participate in this race. Fragmented in various
states, Germany was only unified under Prussia's
rule after the 1866 Battle of Königgrätz
and the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. A rising
industrial power close on the heels of Britain,
Germany began its world expansion in the 1880s.
After isolating France by the Dual Alliance
with Austria-Hungary and then the 1882 Triple
Alliance with Italy, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
proposed the 1884–85 Berlin Conference,
which set the rules of effective control of
a foreign territory. Weltpolitik (world policy)
was the foreign policy adopted by Kaiser Wilhelm
II in 1890, with the aim of transforming Germany
into a global power through aggressive diplomacy,
the acquisition of overseas colonies, and
the development of a large navy.
Some Germans, claiming themselves of Friedrich
List's thought, advocated expansion in the
Philippines and Timor; others proposed to
set themselves up in Formosa (modern Taiwan),
etc. At the end of the 1870s, these isolated
voices began to be relayed by a real imperialist
policy, backed by mercantilist thesis. In
1881, Hübbe-Schleiden, a lawyer, published
Deutsche Kolonisation, according to which
the "development of national consciousness
demanded an independent overseas policy".
Pan-Germanism was thus linked to the young
nation's imperialist drives. In the beginning
of the 1880s, the Deutscher Kolonialverein
was created, and got its own magazine in 1884,
the Kolonialzeitung. This colonial lobby was
also relayed by the nationalist Alldeutscher
Verband. Generally, Bismarck was opposed to
widespread German colonialism, but he had
to resign at the insistence of the new German
Emperor Wilhelm II on 18 March 1890. Wilhelm
II instead adopted a very aggressive policy
of colonisation and colonial expansion.
Germany's expansionism would lead to the Tirpitz
Plan, implemented by Admiral von Tirpitz,
who would also champion the various Fleet
Acts starting in 1898, thus engaging in an
arms race with Britain. By 1914, they had
given Germany the second-largest naval force
in the world (roughly three-fifths the size
of the Royal Navy). According to von Tirpitz,
this aggressive naval policy was supported
by the National Liberal Party rather than
by the conservatives, implying that imperialism
was supported by the rising middle classes.Germany
became the third-largest colonial power in
Africa. Nearly all of its overall empire of
2.6 million square kilometres and 14 million
colonial subjects in 1914 was found in its
African possessions of Southwest Africa, Togoland,
the Cameroons, and Tanganyika. Following the
1904 Entente cordiale between France and the
British Empire, Germany tried to isolate France
in 1905 with the First Moroccan Crisis. This
led to the 1905 Algeciras Conference, in which
France's influence on Morocco was compensated
by the exchange of other territories, and
then to the Agadir Crisis in 1911. Along with
the 1898 Fashoda Incident between France and
Britain, this succession of international
crises reveals the bitterness of the struggle
between the various imperialist nations, which
ultimately led to World War I.
==== Italy's expansion ====
Italy took possession of parts of Eritrea
in 1870 and 1882. Following its defeat in
the First Italo–Ethiopian War (1895–1896),
it acquired Italian Somaliland in 1889–90
and the whole of Eritrea (1899). In 1911,
it engaged in a war with the Ottoman Empire,
in which it acquired Tripolitania and Cyrenaica
(modern Libya). In 1919 Enrico Corradini—who
fully supported the war, and later merged
his group in the early fascist party (PNF)—developed
the concept of Proletarian Nationalism, supposed
to legitimise Italy's imperialism by a mixture
of socialism with nationalism:
We must start by recognizing the fact that
there are proletarian nations as well as proletarian
classes; that is to say, there are nations
whose living conditions are subject...to the
way of life of other nations, just as classes
are. Once this is realised, nationalism must
insist firmly on this truth: Italy is, materially
and morally, a proletarian nation.
The Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–36),
ordered by the Fascist Benito Mussolini, would
actually be one of the last colonial wars
(that is, intended to colonise a foreign country,
as opposed to wars of national liberation),
occupying Ethiopia—which had remained the
last independent African territory, apart
from Liberia.
== Crises prior to World War I ==
=== Colonisation of the Congo ===
David Livingstone's explorations, carried
on by Henry Morton Stanley, excited imaginations
with Stanley's grandiose ideas for colonisation;
but these found little support owing to the
problems and scale of action required, except
from Léopold II of Belgium, who in 1876 had
organised the International African Association
(the Congo Society). From 1869 to 1874, Stanley
was secretly sent by Léopold II to the Congo
region, where he made treaties with several
African chiefs along the Congo River and by
1882 had sufficient territory to form the
basis of the Congo Free State. Léopold II
personally owned the colony from 1885 and
used it as a source of ivory and rubber.
While Stanley was exploring Congo on behalf
of Léopold II of Belgium, the Franco-Italian
marine officer Pierre de Brazza travelled
into the western Congo basin and raised the
French flag over the newly founded Brazzaville
in 1881, thus occupying today's Republic of
the Congo. Portugal, which also claimed the
area due to old treaties with the native Kongo
Empire, made a treaty with Britain on 26 February
1884 to block off the Congo Society's access
to the Atlantic.
By 1890 the Congo Free State had consolidated
its control of its territory between Leopoldville
and Stanleyville, and was looking to push
south down the Lualaba River from Stanleyville.
At the same time, the British South Africa
Company of Cecil Rhodes was expanding north
from the Limpopo River, sending the Pioneer
Column (guided by Frederick Selous) through
Matabeleland, and starting a colony in Mashonaland.
To the west, in the land where their expansions
would meet, was Katanga, site of the Yeke
Kingdom of Msiri. Msiri was the most militarily
powerful ruler in the area, and traded large
quantities of copper, ivory and slaves — and
rumors of gold reached European ears. The
scramble for Katanga was a prime example of
the period. Rhodes and the BSAC sent two expeditions
to Msiri in 1890 led by Alfred Sharpe, who
was rebuffed, and Joseph Thomson, who failed
to reach Katanga. Leopold sent four CFS expeditions.
First, the Le Marinel Expedition could only
extract a vaguely worded letter. The Delcommune
Expedition was rebuffed. The well-armed Stairs
Expedition was given orders to take Katanga
with or without Msiri's consent. Msiri refused,
was shot, and the expedition cut off his head
and stuck it on a pole as a "barbaric lesson"
to the people. The Bia Expedition finished
the job of establishing an administration
of sorts and a "police presence" in Katanga.
Thus, the half million square kilometers of
Katanga came into Leopold's possession and
brought his African realm up to 2,300,000
square kilometres (890,000 sq mi), about 75
times larger than Belgium. The Congo Free
State imposed such a terror regime on the
colonised people, including mass killings
and forced labour, that Belgium, under pressure
from the Congo Reform Association, ended Leopold
II's rule and annexed it in 1908 as a colony
of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.
The brutality of King Leopold II of Belgium
in his former colony of the Congo Free State,
now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
was well documented; up to 8 million of the
estimated 16 million native inhabitants died
between 1885 and 1908.
According to the former Irish diplomat Roger
Casement, this depopulation had four main
causes: "indiscriminate war", starvation,
reduction of births and diseases. Sleeping
sickness ravaged the country and must also
be taken into account for the dramatic decrease
in population; it has been estimated that
sleeping sickness and smallpox killed nearly
half the population in the areas surrounding
the lower Congo River.Estimates of the total
death toll vary considerably. As the first
census did not take place until 1924, it is
difficult to quantify the population loss
of the period. Casement's report set it at
three million. William Rubinstein wrote: "More
basically, it appears almost certain that
the population figures given by Hochschild
are inaccurate. There is, of course, no way
of ascertaining the population of the Congo
before the twentieth century, and estimates
like 20 million are purely guesses. Most of
the interior of the Congo was literally unexplored
if not inaccessible." See Congo Free State
for further details including numbers of victims.
A similar situation occurred in the neighbouring
French Congo. Most of the resource extraction
was run by concession companies, whose brutal
methods, along with the introduction of disease,
resulted in the loss of up to 50 percent of
the indigenous population. The French government
appointed a commission, headed by de Brazza,
in 1905 to investigate the rumoured abuses
in the colony. However, de Brazza died on
the return trip, and his "searingly critical"
report was neither acted upon nor released
to the public. In the 1920s, about 20,000
forced labourers died building a railroad
through the French territory.
=== Suez Canal ===
French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained
many concessions from Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive
of Egypt and Sudan, in 1854–56, to build
the Suez Canal. Some sources estimate the
workforce at 30,000, but others estimate that
120,000 workers died over the ten years of
construction due to malnutrition, fatigue
and disease, especially cholera. Shortly before
its completion in 1869, Khedive Isma'il borrowed
enormous sums from British and French bankers
at high rates of interest. By 1875, he was
facing financial difficulties and was forced
to sell his block of shares in the Suez Canal.
The shares were snapped up by Britain, under
its Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who
sought to give his country practical control
in the management of this strategic waterway.
When Isma'il repudiated Egypt's foreign debt
in 1879, Britain and France seized joint financial
control over the country, forcing the Egyptian
ruler to abdicate, and installing his eldest
son Tewfik Pasha in his place. The Egyptian
and Sudanese ruling classes did not relish
foreign intervention.
During the 1870s, European initiatives against
the slave trade caused an economic crisis
in northern Sudan, precipitating the rise
of Mahdist forces. In 1881, the Mahdist revolt
erupted in Sudan under Muhammad Ahmad, severing
Tewfik's authority in Sudan. The same year,
Tewfik suffered an even more perilous rebellion
by his own Egyptian army in the form of the
Urabi Revolt. In 1882, Tewfik appealed for
direct British military assistance, commencing
Britain's administration of Egypt. A joint
British-Egyptian military force ultimately
defeated the Mahdist forces in Sudan in 1898.
Thereafter, Britain (rather than Egypt) seized
effective control of Sudan.
=== Berlin Conference (1884–85) ===
The occupation of Egypt, and the acquisition
of the Congo were the first major moves in
what came to be a precipitous scramble for
African territory. In 1884, Otto von Bismarck
convened the 1884–85 Berlin Conference to
discuss the African problem. The diplomats
put on a humanitarian façade by condemning
the slave trade, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic
beverages and firearms in certain regions,
and by expressing concern for missionary activities.
More importantly, the diplomats in Berlin
laid down the rules of competition by which
the great powers were to be guided in seeking
colonies. They also agreed that the area along
the Congo River was to be administered by
Léopold II of Belgium as a neutral area,
known as the Congo Free State, in which trade
and navigation were to be free. No nation
was to stake claims in Africa without notifying
other powers of its intentions. No territory
could be formally claimed prior to being effectively
occupied. However, the competitors ignored
the rules when convenient and on several occasions
war was only narrowly avoided.
=== Britain's administration of Egypt and
South Africa ===
Britain's administration of Egypt and the
Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation
over securing the source of the Nile River.
Egypt was overrun by British forces in 1882
(although not formally declared a protectorate
until 1914, and never an actual colony); Sudan,
Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda were subjugated
in the 1890s and early 20th century; and in
the south, the Cape Colony (first acquired
in 1795) provided a base for the subjugation
of neighboring African states and the Dutch
Afrikaner settlers who had left the Cape to
avoid the British and then founded their own
republics. Theophilus Shepstone annexed the
South African Republic (or Transvaal) in 1877
for the British Empire, after it had been
independent for twenty years. In 1879, after
the Anglo-Zulu War, Britain consolidated its
control of most of the territories of South
Africa. The Boers protested, and in December
1880 they revolted, leading to the First Boer
War (1880–81). British Prime Minister William
Gladstone signed a peace treaty on 23 March
1881, giving self-government to the Boers
in the Transvaal. The Jameson Raid of 1895
was a failed attempt by the British South
Africa Company and the Johannesburg Reform
Committee to overthrow the Boer government
in the Transvaal. The Second Boer War, fought
between 1899 and 1902, was about control of
the gold and diamond industries; the independent
Boer republics of the Orange Free State and
the South African Republic (or Transvaal)
were this time defeated and absorbed into
the British Empire.
The French thrust into the African interior
was mainly from the coasts of West Africa
(modern day Senegal) eastward, through the
Sahel along the southern border of the Sahara,
a huge desert covering most of present-day
Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Their ultimate
aim was to have an uninterrupted colonial
empire from the Niger River to the Nile, thus
controlling all trade to and from the Sahel
region, by virtue of their existing control
over the Caravan routes through the Sahara.
The British, on the other hand, wanted to
link their possessions in Southern Africa
(modern South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe,
Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zambia), with their
territories in East Africa (modern Kenya),
and these two areas with the Nile basin.
The Sudan (which in those days included most
of present-day Uganda) was the key to the
fulfillment of these ambitions, especially
since Egypt was already under British control.
This "red line" through Africa is made most
famous by Cecil Rhodes. Along with Lord Milner,
the British colonial minister in South Africa,
Rhodes advocated such a "Cape to Cairo" empire,
linking the Suez Canal to the mineral-rich
Southern part of the continent by rail. Though
hampered by German occupation of Tanganyika
until the end of World War I, Rhodes successfully
lobbied on behalf of such a sprawling African
empire.
If one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo
(Rhodes's dream), and one from Dakar to the
Horn of Africa (now Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti
and Somalia), (the French ambition), these
two lines intersect somewhere in eastern Sudan
near Fashoda, explaining its strategic importance.
In short, Britain had sought to extend its
East African empire contiguously from Cairo
to the Cape of Good Hope, while France had
sought to extend its own holdings from Dakar
to the Sudan, which would enable its empire
to span the entire continent from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Red Sea.
A French force under Jean-Baptiste Marchand
arrived first at the strategically located
fort at Fashoda, soon followed by a British
force under Lord Kitchener, commander in chief
of the British Army since 1892. The French
withdrew after a standoff and continued to
press claims to other posts in the region.
In March 1899, the French and British agreed
that the source of the Nile and Congo Rivers
should mark the frontier between their spheres
of influence.
=== Moroccan Crisis ===
Although the 1884–85 Berlin Conference had
set the rules for the Scramble for Africa,
it had not weakened the rival imperialists.
The 1898 Fashoda Incident, which had seen
France and the British Empire on the brink
of war, ultimately led to the signature of
the Entente Cordiale of 1904, which countered
the influence of the European powers of the
Triple Alliance. As a result, the new German
Empire decided to test the solidity of such
influence, using the contested territory of
Morocco as a battlefield.
Thus, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Tangiers on
31 March 1905 and made a speech in favor of
Moroccan independence, challenging French
influence in Morocco. France's influence in
Morocco had been reaffirmed by Britain and
Spain in 1904. The Kaiser's speech bolstered
French nationalism, and with British support
the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé,
took a defiant line. The crisis peaked in
mid-June 1905, when Delcassé was forced out
of the ministry by the more conciliation-minded
premier Maurice Rouvier. But by July 1905
Germany was becoming isolated and the French
agreed to a conference to solve the crisis.
Both France and Germany continued to posture
up until the conference, with Germany mobilizing
reserve army units in late December and France
actually moving troops to the border in January
1906.
The 1906 Algeciras Conference was called to
settle the dispute. Of the thirteen nations
present, the German representatives found
their only supporter was Austria-Hungary.
France had firm support from Britain, the
US, Russia, Italy and Spain. The Germans eventually
accepted an agreement, signed on 31 May 1906,
whereby France yielded certain domestic changes
in Morocco but retained control of key areas.
However, five years later the Second Moroccan
Crisis (or Agadir Crisis) was sparked by the
deployment of the German gunboat Panther to
the port of Agadir on 1 July 1911. Germany
had started to attempt to surpass Britain's
naval supremacy—the British navy had a policy
of remaining larger than the next two naval
fleets in the world combined. When the British
heard of the Panther's arrival in Morocco,
they wrongly believed that the Germans meant
to turn Agadir into a naval base on the Atlantic.
The German move was aimed at reinforcing claims
for compensation for acceptance of effective
French control of the North African kingdom,
where France's pre-eminence had been upheld
by the 1906 Algeciras Conference. In November
1911 a convention was signed under which Germany
accepted France's position in Morocco in return
for territory in the French Equatorial African
colony of Middle Congo (now the Republic of
the Congo).
France and Spain subsequently established
a full protectorate over Morocco (30 March
1912), ending what remained of the country's
formal independence. Furthermore, British
backing for France during the two Moroccan
crises reinforced the Entente between the
two countries and added to Anglo-German estrangement,
deepening the divisions that would culminate
in the First World War.
=== Dervish resistance ===
Following the Berlin Conference at the end
of the 19th century, the British, Italians,
and Ethiopians sought to claim lands owned
by the Somalis such as the Warsangali Sultanate,
the Ajuran Sultanate and the Gobroon Dynasty.
The Dervish movement was a state established
by Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a Somali religious
leader who gathered Muslim soldiers from across
the Horn of Africa and united them into a
loyal army known as the Dervishes. This Dervish
army enabled Hassan to carve out a powerful
state through conquest of lands sought after
by the Ethiopians and the European powers.
The Dervish movement successfully repulsed
the British Empire four times and forced it
to retreat to the coastal region. Due to these
successful expeditions, the Dervish movement
was recognised as an ally by the Ottoman and
German empires. The Turks also named Hassan
Emir of the Somali nation, and the Germans
promised to officially recognise any territories
the Dervishes were to acquire.After a quarter
of a century of holding the British at bay,
the Dervishes were finally defeated in 1920
as a direct consequence of Britain's use of
aircraft.
=== Herero Wars and the Maji-Maji Rebellion
===
Between 1904 and 1908, Germany's colonies
in German South-West Africa and German East
Africa were rocked by separate, contemporaneous
native revolts against their rule. In both
territories the threat to German rule was
quickly defeated once large-scale reinforcements
from Germany arrived, with the Herero rebels
in German South-West Africa being defeated
at the Battle of Waterberg and the Maji-Maji
rebels in German East Africa being steadily
crushed by German forces slowly advancing
through the countryside, with the natives
resorting to guerrilla warfare. German efforts
to clear the bush of civilians in German South-West
Africa then resulted in a genocide of the
population.
In total, as many as 65,000 Herero (80% of
the total Herero population), and 10,000 Namaqua
(50% of the total Namaqua population) either
starved, died of thirst, or were worked to
death in camps such as Shark Island Concentration
Camp between 1904 and 1908. Characteristic
of this genocide was death by starvation and
the poisoning of the population's wells whilst
they were trapped in the Namib Desert.
== Colonial encounter ==
=== Colonial consciousness and exhibitions
===
==== Colonial lobby ====
In its earlier stages, imperialism was generally
the act of individual explorers as well as
some adventurous merchantmen. The colonial
powers were a long way from approving without
any dissent the expensive adventures carried
out abroad. Various important political leaders,
such as Gladstone, opposed colonisation in
its first years. However, during his second
premiership between 1880 and 1885 he could
not resist the colonial lobby in his cabinet,
and thus did not execute his electoral promise
to disengage from Egypt. Although Gladstone
was personally opposed to imperialism, the
social tensions caused by the Long Depression
pushed him to favor jingoism: the imperialists
had become the "parasites of patriotism" (John
A. Hobson). In France, then Radical politician
Georges Clemenceau also adamantly opposed
himself to it: he thought colonisation was
a diversion from the "blue line of the Vosges"
mountains, that is revanchism and the patriotic
urge to reclaim the Alsace-Lorraine region
which had been annexed by the German Empire
with the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt. Clemenceau
actually made Jules Ferry's cabinet fall after
the 1885 Tonkin disaster. According to Hannah
Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),
this expansion of national sovereignty on
overseas territories contradicted the unity
of the nation state which provided citizenship
to its population. Thus, a tension between
the universalist will to respect human rights
of the colonised people, as they may be considered
as "citizens" of the nation state, and the
imperialist drive to cynically exploit populations
deemed inferior began to surface. Some, in
colonising countries, opposed what they saw
as unnecessary evils of the colonial administration
when left to itself; as described in Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899)—published
around the same time as Kipling's The White
Man's Burden—or in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's
Journey to the End of the Night (1932).
Colonial lobbies emerged to legitimise the
Scramble for Africa and other expensive overseas
adventures. In Germany, France, and Britain,
the middle class often sought strong overseas
policies to ensure the market's growth. Even
in lesser powers, voices like Enrico Corradini
claimed a "place in the sun" for so-called
"proletarian nations", bolstering nationalism
and militarism in an early prototype of fascism.
==== Colonial propaganda and jingoism ====
===== Colonial exhibitions =====
However, by the end of World War I the colonial
empires had become very popular almost everywhere
in Europe: public opinion had been convinced
of the needs of a colonial empire, although
most of the metropolitans would never see
a piece of it. Colonial exhibitions had been
instrumental in this change of popular mentalities
brought about by the colonial propaganda,
supported by the colonial lobby and by various
scientists. Thus, the conquest of territories
were inevitably followed by public displays
of the indigenous people for scientific and
leisure purposes. Karl Hagenbeck, a German
merchant in wild animals and a future entrepreneur
of most Europeans zoos, thus decided in 1874
to exhibit Samoa and Sami people as "purely
natural" populations. In 1876, he sent one
of his collaborators to the newly conquered
Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts
and Nubians. Presented in Paris, London, and
Berlin these Nubians were very successful.
Such "human zoos" could be found in Hamburg,
Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York
City, Paris, etc., with 200,000 to 300,000
visitors attending each exhibition. Tuaregs
were exhibited after the French conquest of
Timbuktu (visited by René Caillié, disguised
as a Muslim, in 1828, thereby winning the
prize offered by the French Société de Géographie);
Malagasy after the occupation of Madagascar;
Amazons of Abomey after Behanzin's mediatic
defeat against the French in 1894. Not used
to the climatic conditions, some of the indigenous
exposed died, such as some Galibis in Paris
in 1892.Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director
of the Parisian Jardin d'acclimatation, decided
in 1877 to organise two "ethnological spectacles",
presenting Nubians and Inuit. The public of
the Jardin d'acclimatation doubled, with a
million paying entrances that year, a huge
success for these times. Between 1877 and
1912, approximately thirty "ethnological exhibitions"
were presented at the Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation.
"Negro villages" would be presented in Paris'
1878 and 1879 World's Fair; the 1900 World's
Fair presented the famous diorama "living"
in Madagascar, while the Colonial Exhibitions
in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris
(1907 and 1931) would also display human beings
in cages, often nudes or quasi-nudes. Nomadic
"Senegalese villages" were also created, thus
displaying the power of the colonial empire
to all the population.
In the US, Madison Grant, head of the New
York Zoological Society, exposed Pygmy Ota
Benga in the Bronx Zoo alongside the apes
and others in 1906. At the behest of Grant,
a prominent scientific racist and eugenicist,
zoo director Hornaday placed Ota Benga in
a cage with an orangutan and labeled him "The
Missing Link" in an attempt to illustrate
Darwinism, and in particular that Africans
like Ota Benga are closer to apes than were
Europeans. Other colonial exhibitions included
the 1924 British Empire Exhibition and the
successful 1931 Paris "Exposition coloniale".
=== Countering disease ===
From the beginning of the 20th century onward,
the elimination or control of disease in tropical
countries became a driving force for all colonial
powers. The sleeping sickness epidemic in
Africa was arrested due to mobile teams systematically
screening millions of people at risk. In the
20th century, Africa saw the biggest increase
in its population due to lessening of the
mortality rate in many countries due to peace,
famine relief, medicine, and above all, the
end or decline of the slave trade. Africa's
population has grown from 120 million in 1900
to over 1 billion today.
=== Slavery abolition ===
The continuing anti-slavery movement in Europe
became a reason and an excuse for the conquest
and colonization of the Africa. It was the
central theme of the Brussels Anti-Slavery
Conference 1889-90. During the Scramble for
Africa, an early but secondary focus of all
colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery
and the slave trade. In French West Africa,
following conquest and abolition by the French,
over a million slaves fled from their masters
to earlier homes between 1906 and 1911. In
Madagascar, the French abolished slavery in
1896 and approximately 500,000 slaves were
freed. Slavery was abolished in the French
controlled Sahel by 1911. Independent nations
attempting to westernize or impress Europe
sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression.
In response to European pressure, the Sokoto
Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900 and Ethiopia
officially abolished slavery in 1932. Colonial
powers were mostly successful in abolishing
slavery, though slavery remained active in
Africa even though it has gradually moved
to a wage economy. Slavery was never fully
eradicated in Africa.
== Colonialism leading to World War I ==
During the New Imperialism period, by the
end of the 19th century, Europe added almost
9,000,000 square miles (23,000,000 km2) – one-fifth
of the land area of the globe – to its overseas
colonial possessions. Europe's formal holdings
now included the entire African continent
except Ethiopia, Liberia, and Saguia el-Hamra,
the latter of which would be integrated into
Spanish Sahara. Between 1885 and 1914, Britain
took nearly 30% of Africa's population under
its control; 15% for France, 11% for Portugal,
9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for
Italy. Nigeria alone contributed 15 million
subjects, more than in the whole of French
West Africa or the entire German colonial
empire. It was paradoxical that Britain, the
staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in
1914 with not only the largest overseas empire
thanks to its long-standing presence in India,
but also the greatest gains in the "scramble
for Africa", reflecting its advantageous position
at its inception. In terms of surface area
occupied, the French were the marginal victors
but much of their territory consisted of the
sparsely populated Sahara.
The political imperialism followed the economic
expansion, with the "colonial lobbies" bolstering
chauvinism and jingoism at each crisis in
order to legitimise the colonial enterprise.
The tensions between the imperial powers led
to a succession of crises, which finally exploded
in August 1914, when previous rivalries and
alliances created a domino situation that
drew the major European nations into World
War I. Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia to
avenge the murder by Serbian agents of Austrian
crown prince Francis Ferdinand, Russia would
mobilise to assist allied Serbia, Germany
would intervene to support Austria-Hungary
against Russia. Since Russia had a military
alliance with France against Germany, the
German General Staff, led by General von Moltke
decided to realise the well prepared Schlieffen
Plan to invade and quickly knock France out
of the war before turning against Russia in
what was expected to be a long campaign. This
required an invasion of Belgium which brought
Britain into the war against Germany, Austria-Hungary
and their allies. German U-Boat campaigns
against ships bound for Britain eventually
drew the United States into what had become
World War I. Moreover, using the Anglo-Japanese
Alliance as an excuse, Japan leaped onto this
opportunity to conquer German interests in
China and the Pacific to become the dominating
power in the Western Pacific, setting the
stage for the Second Sino-Japanese War (starting
in 1937) and eventually World War II.
== African colonies listed by colonising power
==
=== Belgium ===
Congo Free State and Belgian Congo (today's
Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Ruanda-Urundi (comprising modern Rwanda and
Burundi, 1922–62)
=== France ===
=== Germany ===
German Kamerun (now Cameroon and part of Nigeria,
1884–1916)
German East Africa (now Rwanda, Burundi and
most of Tanzania, 1885–1919)
German South-West Africa (now Namibia, 1884–1915)
German Togoland (now Togo and eastern part
of Ghana, 1884–1914)After the First World
War, Germany's possessions were partitioned
among Britain (which took a sliver of western
Cameroon, Tanzania, western Togo, and Namibia),
France (which took most of Cameroon and eastern
Togo) and Belgium (which took Rwanda and Burundi).
=== Italy ===
Italian Libya
Italian Eritrea
Italian SomalilandLater, during the Interwar
period, with the Second Italo-Ethiopian War
Italy would annex Ethiopia, which formed together
with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland the Italian
East Africa (A.O.I., "Africa Orientale Italiana",
also defined by the fascist government as
L'Impero).
=== Portugal ===
=== Spain ===
=== United Kingdom ===
The British were primarily interested in maintaining
secure communication lines to India, which
led to initial interest in Egypt and South
Africa. Once these two areas were secure,
it was the intent of British colonialists
such as Cecil Rhodes to establish a Cape-Cairo
railway and to exploit mineral and agricultural
resources. Control of the Nile was viewed
as a strategic and commercial advantage.
=== Independent states ===
Liberia was the only nation in Africa that
was a colony and a protectorate of the United
States. Liberia was founded, colonised, established
and controlled by the American Colonization
Society, a private organisation established
in order to relocate freed African-American
and Caribbean slaves from the United States
and the Caribbean islands in 1821. Liberia
declared its independence from the American
Colonization Society on July 26, 1847. Liberia
is Africa's oldest democratic republic, and
the second-oldest black republic in the world
(after Haiti).
Ethiopia maintained its independence from
Italy after the Battle of Adwa which resulted
in the Treaty of Addis Ababa. With the exception
of the occupation between 1936 and 1941 by
Benito Mussolini's military forces, Ethiopia
is Africa's oldest independent nation.
=== Modern Scramble for Africa ===
The new scramble for Africa began with the
emergence of the Afro-Neo-Liberal capitalist
movement in Post-Colonial Africa. When African
nations began to gain independence during
the Post World War II Era, their post colonial
economic structures remained undiversified
and linear. In most cases, the bulk of a nation’s
economy relied on cash crops or natural resources.
The decolonisation process kept independent
African nations at the mercy of colonial powers
due to structurally-dependent economic relations.
Structural adjustment programs led to the
privatization and liberalization of many African
political and economic systems, forcefully
pushing Africa into the global capitalist
market. The economic decline in the 1990s
fostered democratization by the World Bank
intervening in the political and economic
affairs of Africa once again. All of these
factors led to Africa’s forced development
under Western ideological systems of economics
and politics.
=== Petro-states ===
In the era of globalization, many African
countries have emerged as petro-states (for
example Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Angola).
These are nations with an economic and political
partnership between transnational oil companies
and the ruling elite class in oil-rich African
nations. Numerous countries have entered into
a neo-imperial relationship with Africa during
this time period. Mary Gilmartin notes that
“material and symbolic appropriation of
space [is] central to imperial expansion and
control”; nations in the globalization era
who invest in controlling land internationally
are engaging in neo-imperialism. Chinese (and
other Asian countries) state oil companies
have entered Africa’s highly competitive
oil sector. China National Petroleum Corporation
purchased 40% of Greater Nile Petroleum Operating
Company. Furthermore, Sudan exports 50–60%
of its domestically produced oil to China,
making up 7% of China’s imports. China has
also been purchasing equity shares in African
oil fields, invested in industry related infrastructure
development and acquired continental oil concessions
throughout Africa.
== See also ==
Scramble for Africa portal
Chronology of colonialism
Civilizing mission
Decolonisation of Africa
Economic history of Africa
French colonial empire
Historiography of the British Empire
Impact and evaluation of colonialism and colonisation
International relations (1814–1919)
List of French possessions and colonies
List of former sovereign states#Pre-colonial
Africa
Scientific racism
White African
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Aldrich, Robert. Greater France: A History
of French Overseas Expansion (1996)
Atkinson, David. "Constructing Italian Africa:
Geography and Geopolitics." Italian colonialism
(2005): 15–26.
Axelson, Eric. Portugal and the Scramble for
Africa: 1875–1891 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand
UP, 1967)
Boddy-Evans, Alistair. "What Caused the Scramble
for Africa?" African History (2012). online
Brantlinger, Patrick. "Victorians and Africans:
The genealogy of the myth of the dark continent."
Critical Inquiry (1985): 166–203. online
Chamberlain, Muriel Evelyn. The scramble for
Africa (4th ed. Routledge, 2014) excerpt and
text search
Curtin, Philip D. Disease and empire: The
health of European Troops in the Conquest
of Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Darwin, John. "Imperialism and the Victorians:
The dynamics of territorial expansion." English
Historical Review (1997) 112#447 pp: 614–642.
Finaldi, Giuseppe. Italian National Identity
in the Scramble for Africa: Italy's African
Wars in the Era of Nation-building, 1870–1900
(Peter Lang, 2009)
Gifford, Prosser and William Roger Louis.
France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry
and Colonial Rule (1971)
Gifford, Prosser and William Roger Louis.
Britain and Germany in Africa: Imperial rivalry
and colonial rule (1967).
Gjersø, Jonas Fossli (2015). "The Scramble
for East Africa: British Motives Reconsidered,
1884-95". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History. Taylor & Francis. 43 (5): 831–60.
doi:10.1080/03086534.2015.1026131. Retrieved
4 March 2016.
Hammond, Richard James. Portugal and Africa,
1815–1910: a study in uneconomic imperialism
(Stanford University Press, 1966)
Henderson, W. O. The German Colonial Empire,
1884–1919 (London: Frank Cass, 1993)
Hinsley, F. H. ed. The New Cambridge Modern
History, Vol. 11: Material Progress and World-Wide
Problems, 1870-98 (1962) contents pp 593-40.
Hochschild, Adam (2006) [1998]. King Leopold's
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism
in Colonial Africa. London: Pan Books. ISBN
978-0-330-44198-8.
Klein, Martin A. Slavery and colonial rule
in French West Africa (Cambridge University
Press, 1998)
Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in slavery:
a history of slavery in Africa (Cambridge
University Press, 2011)
Lloyd, Trevor Owen. Empire: the history of
the British Empire (2001).
Mackenzie J. M. The Partition of Africa, 1880–1900,
and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth
Century (London 1983).
Oliver, Roland, Sir Harry Johnston and the
Scramble for Africa (1959) online
Pakenham, Thomas (1992) [1991]. The Scramble
for Africa. London: Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349-10449-2.
Penrose E. F., ed. European Imperialism and
the Partition of Africa (London 1975).
Perraudin, Michael, and Jürgen Zimmerer,
eds. German colonialism and national identity
(London: Taylor & Francis, 2010)
Robinson R,. and J. Gallagher, "The partition
of Africa", in The New Cambridge Modern History
vol XI, pp 593–640 (Cambridge, 1962).
Rotberg, Robert I. The Founder: Cecil Rhodes
and the Pursuit of Power (1988) excerpt and
text search; online
Sanderson G. N., "The European partition of
Africa: Coincidence or conjuncture?" Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History (1974)
3#1 pp 1–54.
Stoecker, Helmut. German imperialism in Africa:
From the beginnings until the Second World
War (Hurst & Co., 1986.)
Thomas, Antony. Rhodes: The Race for Africa
(1997) excerpt and text search
Thompson, Virginia, and Richard Adloff. French
West Africa (Stanford University Press, 1958)
Wesseling, H.L. and Arnold J. Pomerans. Divide
and rule: The partition of Africa, 1880–1914
(Praeger, 1996.) online
== External links ==
"Belgium exhumes its colonial demons". The
Guardian. 13 July 2002.
Gülstorff, Torben (2016). "Trade follows
Hallstein? Deutsche Aktivitäten im zentralafrikanischen
Raum des Second Scramble". Berlin.
