Scramble for Africa
I | INTRODUCTION |
Scramble for
Africa, phrase used to describe the sometimes frenzied claiming of
African territory by half a dozen European countries that resulted in nearly all
of Africa becoming part of Europe’s colonial empires. The Scramble began slowly
in the 1870s, reached its peak in the late 1880s and 1890s, and tapered off over
the first decade of the 20th century. Between 1885 and 1900, European powers
were, at times, racing each other to stake claims in Africa. Most Africans
resisted being taken over and ruled by foreigners. Thus, much of the latter part
of the Scramble involved European armies using modern weapons to crush
opposition and install authority over the continent’s inhabitants.
By the mid-19th century Europeans had only
claimed selected areas of Africa, mainly along the coasts. High death rates from
malaria and yellow fever kept Europeans from bringing armies and conquering
large areas of Africa; nor were they inclined to do so in this period. Aware of
the cost of maintaining colonies, the most powerful European nations preferred
either to keep trade open to all, relying on their commercial advantage, or to
reserve small, productive areas for the trade of their own citizens. Britain
possessed its Cape Colony, strategically located at the southern tip of Africa.
It also protected a few West African commercial enclaves and held a colony of
Sierra Leone, which was populated by descendants of slaves rescued from the
Atlantic slave trade. France had annexed Algeria in 1834 and protected trade
along the Sénégal River and at two ports east of the Gold Coast (present-day
Ghana). It also held an outpost at Gabon in west central Africa. Portugal
claimed territory in Angola and Mozambique. The foreign power with the largest
African territory was the weakening Ottoman Empire, which clung to lands
bordering the Mediterranean Sea from Tunisia through Egypt, up the Nile, and
down the west coast of the Red Sea.
Still, through the 1870s Africans controlled 90
percent of the continent. The largest African states were Muslim—the growing
Mahdist state of the Sudan, the Mandinka state of Samory Touré and the Tukolor
Empire along the upper Niger River, and the Sokoto caliphate east of the middle
Niger. East Africa was dominated by the slave and ivory trade, with the
Swahili-Arab sultanate of Zanzibar competing with African warlords well into the
interior. Beyond British-controlled areas in southern Africa were several
African states and two republics of the Afrikaners (descendants of 17th-century
Dutch settlers).
On the eve of the Scramble, Western Europe was
a century into the Industrial Revolution and clearly the most powerful and
technologically advanced portion of the globe. Firearm, transportation, and
communications technologies were developing at an astonishing pace, and national
pride was growing in each European country. Furthermore, advances in medicine
enabled Europeans to spend longer periods in the tropics free of illness.
Industrial production was reaching such high levels that Europeans worried about
over-production and finding consumers for all the goods that European industries
were turning out. An economic downturn in the early 1870s brought some Europeans
to look toward the nonindustrial world. They viewed these countries as both
markets for their products and as suppliers of natural resources to fuel the
industries. In addition, the strongest European countries began fearing what
would happen to the balance of power if their rivals acquired colonies in
Africa. National pride was at stake. So was Christianity: famous Scottish
missionary/explorer David Livingstone had whet the public appetite for a
Christian “civilizing” mission in this continent full of non-Christians and torn
by slave trading. Livingstone’s death in the wilds of Africa in 1873 called
attention again to the cause.
All of this resulted in the Scramble for
Africa. It began with slow territorial acquisition through the early 1880s,
followed by a competitive rush to claim African lands after the Berlin West
Africa Conference (1884-1885). The final stage of the Scramble was characterized
by slower occupation of territories and overcoming of African resistance through
the first decade of the 20th century. By 1912 all of Africa was in European
hands except Liberia and Ethiopia. The period of colonial rule that followed
brought social, political, and economic change across the continent. The African
colonies would only slowly gain their independence, most doing so between 1955
and 1965. Some did not achieve self-rule or majority rule until the 1980s or
1990s.
II | FIRST STEPS (1876-1884) |
European competition over African territory in
the 1870s heightened once Belgian king Leopold II got involved. Merchants under
French government protection had been advancing up the Sénégal River with an eye
toward connecting that river with the Niger by rail. This connection would open
a vast market in West Africa’s interior. At the same time, British palm oil
merchants were pushing up the Niger River by steamer, and Anglo-American
explorer Henry Morton Stanley was journeying down the Congo River. In his
journeys, Stanley had discovered that the river’s upper reaches were open to
trade. However, it took Leopold to raise the stakes. For 20 years the wealthy
ruler had dreamt of creating a Belgian colonial empire. In 1876 he established
the International African Association, an organization that had stated
scientific and humanitarian goals but was truly a front to further Leopold’s
imperial design. Then, in 1879, when Britain ignored Stanley’s offer to open
Central Africa and funnel its trade to the mouth of the Congo, Leopold employed
Stanley to do just that. By 1880 the explorer was back in the lower Congo,
building road and river access to connect the Atlantic Ocean with Stanley Falls,
located about 2300 km (about 1400 mi) upstream. Across the river in the early
1880s, French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was exploring and negotiating
treaties for France, forcing Stanley to obtain treaties for Leopold. Their
claims appeared to overlap near the mouth of the Congo, a land area claimed by
Portugal as well.
Events in North Africa raised tensions
further. In 1881, France occupied Tunisia to prevent Italy from gaining land on
Algeria’s border. A year later Britain occupied the bankrupt Ottoman possession
of Egypt to guarantee repayment of its huge foreign debt. France, which also had
a significant financial stake in Egypt and had shared “dual control” of Egypt’s
finances with Britain since the mid-1870s, was left without influence. Neither
France nor Germany approved of Britain taking over Egypt, but each expressed
approval to gain British support for its own colonial actions. It was fast
becoming a game of European diplomatic wrangling with African territories as
pawns.
III | THE SCRAMBLING BEGINS (1884-1891) |
While Britain, France, and Leopold were
advancing their aims in Africa, Europe’s fastest-rising military and industrial
power, Germany, was biding its time. Its leader, Otto von Bismarck, appeared
content to allow the others to expend diplomatic energy on African initiatives
while Germany concerned itself with domestic issues. However, as pressures
mounted from German merchants wanting a share of any potential African market,
Bismarck realized German interests might best be served by his taking control of
the diplomatic struggles involving Africa. Thus, in the summer of 1884 Bismarck
declared German protectorates over three African territories—Togoland
(comprising present-day Togo and eastern Ghana), Cameroon, and South-West Africa
(present-day Namibia). Then, he joined France in calling for a conference of
colonial powers in Berlin. The stated goals of the conference were to be the
settling of Congo claims between Britain, France, and Portugal, and of
Anglo-French rivalries along the Niger River. In addition, however, European
powers recognized that rules and rationalizations were needed for the seizing of
African territories, especially for seizures that held potential for European
conflict.
The Berlin West Africa Conference (November
1884-February 1885) involved representatives of 14 European countries and the
United States. The Ottoman Empire, facing the loss of territory on all sides,
was not represented at the conference. Much of the conference work took place
outside Berlin, as envoys moved between London, Paris, and Brussels negotiating
which European power could rightfully claim lands inhabited by Africans. By the
time the conference ended, Leopold had secured ownership of the Congo Free
State, a state 50 times the size of Belgium; France saw acceptance of its claims
to French Congo; Portugal lost most of its Congo claims; and European powers
recognized Germany’s new protectorates. (The day following the conference,
Bismarck declared another protectorate in East Africa.) The European nations
declared free trade along the Congo and free navigation on the Niger, stated
lofty goals as their mission in African colonies, and set out rules for
additional territorial grabs. The most significant of these rules stated that
colonial powers were obligated to notify each other when they claimed African
territory. Further, subsequent “effective occupation” of the claimed area was
necessary for the claim to remain valid. Through it all, as Europeans negotiated
their rights to African territory, not a single African was present. Once the
conference was over, it was clear that a European Scramble for African
territories was underway.
Southern Africa became a much more important
element in the Scramble a year after the Berlin Conference. At that time, word
spread of the world’s largest known deposits of gold in the Afrikaner-controlled
South African Republic (or Transvaal). Western miners and industrialists flocked
into southern Africa to profit. Among those involved in finance and operation of
the mines was British magnate Cecil Rhodes, a leader of diamond mining in the
Cape Colony. Rhodes was a believer in the “civilizing” mission of British
colonialism—he dreamed of a British African empire stretching from the Cape of
Good Hope to Cairo, Egypt. Thus, hoping to find still more gold north of
Transvaal in 1890, he led a “pioneer column” of settlers north. These
prospectors overcame African opposition and carved out the new British colonies
of Southern and Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia).
Most European powers were not content to let
a chance at claiming further territory slip. France may have had the grandest
territorial desires of any nation. Its major advances were eastward from the
Sénégal River and down the Niger from its headwaters. French armies slowly
overcame opposition from the powerful Tukolor Empire and advanced on the ancient
city of Tombouctou (Timbuktu). Italy, too, laid claim to Eritrea, on the Red
Sea, and then announced a protectorate over a large portion of Somaliland along
the Indian Ocean.
IV | FINAL STAGES (1891-1912) |
The early years of the Scramble were
accomplished with minimal bloodshed, but that would not be the case in the 1890s
and afterward. Some of the most powerful African states put up strong
resistance, requiring Europeans to send in well-armed forces. Massed African
armies with outdated weapons defeated European forces on occasion, but more
frequently modern weaponry won out, producing some of the most one-sided battles
in the history of warfare.
France and Britain speeded their conquests in
West Africa. France united footholds on the coast with vast holdings of interior
grasslands and desert by the century’s end. The major delay for the French was
caused by the Mandinka hero Samory Touré. Touré united peoples around the
headwaters of the Niger and Volta rivers and fought a guerrilla war until he was
captured and exiled in 1898. The British overcame the Ashanti Kingdom in the
Gold Coast by 1896 and established protectorates in western and eastern Nigeria.
They also allowed the chartered Royal Niger Company to administer northern
Nigeria until the company’s forces encountered the advancing French on the
middle Niger and came into conflict with the powerful northern Sokoto caliphate.
In 1900 the British government took over the control of the territory of Nigeria
from the company. By 1903, Britain had conquered the Sokoto caliphate.
Across the rest of the Sudan and into East
Africa, resistance was greater and tensions higher. French forces occupied the
rest of the central Sudan. These forces met resistance in present-day Chad from
Muslim forces of Rabih al-Zubayr until Rabih was killed in 1900. Britain had its
hands full taking the upper Nile because of the large Sudanese state created by
the Muslim holy leader, Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi. In 1885 the Mahdi’s
forces had taken Khartoum and killed British general Charles George Gordon. By
the 1890s the Mahdist state was among the strongest in Africa. The British sent
in troops under General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, and in 1898 they met the
Mahdist forces at Omdurman, near Khartoum. Kitchener won a decisive victory,
killing almost 11,000 Africans and wounding 16,000 while the British forces
suffered only 430 casualties. In the battle’s wake, Kitchener learned of a
French force at Fashoda, about 600 km (about 400 mi) south of Khartoum, which
was claiming French possession of the Upper Nile. The Upper Nile was nominally
Egyptian territory, and since Britain occupied Egypt, it had been considered
British. However, France claimed that Britain had failed to achieve “effective
occupation” in the Upper Nile as required by the Berlin Conference. Kitchener
and a contingent of British troops immediately traveled down the Nile for a
standoff that brought the countries to the brink of war. However, the French
government, struggling with internal political problems, backed down rather than
start a war, and Britain took control of the entire Sudan. In the meantime, the
Sultanate of Zanzibar, a former slave and ivory trading power, saw much of its
mainland territory seized by Britain and Germany. In 1890 the sultanate
submitted to a British protectorate over Zanzibar. The British declared a
protectorate over Uganda in 1894, over Kenya in 1895, and completed a railroad
from the Indian Ocean coast to Lake Victoria in 1901. The only resistance to
European takeover that was successful over the long run occurred in Ethiopia.
Here the forces of Emperor Menelik II soundly defeated an invading Italian army
at the Battle of Ādwa in 1896.
Two events in the early 1900s served to
stifle enthusiasm for colonial takeover in Africa. One was the exposure of
atrocities in Leopold’s Congo Free State. Here, colonial agents and private
companies were forcing Africans to gather raw rubber without payment and killing
or maiming those who failed to meet quotas. In the end, international pressure
forced Leopold to cede his private colony to Belgium, and in 1908 the Congo Free
State became the Belgian Congo. The other event was the Boer War (1899-1902) in
southern Africa, which pitted whites against whites. Discovery of gold in the
Transvaal in the mid-1880s had brought wealth to the Afrikaner republics in
southern Africa. When Afrikaner governments taxed foreigners heavily and stifled
foreign profit-taking, British imperialists sought to take over the region.
Cecil Rhodes’s 1895 plot to stage a revolt in the Transvaal failed. Tensions
between the mighty British government and the small, white-ruled republics
escalated until war broke out in 1899. Following early Afrikaner success, the
war settled into a brutal guerrilla struggle, putting off ultimate British
victory until 1902. In 1910 the various British colonies at Africa’s southern
tip were joined into the Union of South Africa, a dominion of Britain.
North Africa was the scene of the Scramble’s
final events. After years of rivalry that sometimes verged on open hostilities,
Britain and France signed the Entente Cordiale in 1904. This “friendly
agreement' quietly gave France a free hand to take Morocco while it officially
removed the obsolete Egyptian “dual control” system and left Egypt to Britain.
France, Spain, and Germany quarreled over Morocco until 1912, when France and
Spain divided the territory. The same year, Italy seized what is now Libya, the
last vestige of Ottoman territory in Africa. (The Italians were opposed by
Muslim groups in the interior until 1931.)
V | EFFECTS OF THE SCRAMBLE |
Africa on the eve of World War I (1914-1918)
was nothing like the Africa of 40 years earlier. What had been a largely
independent continent with some foreign control of its coasts was now almost
entirely in European hands. Britain and France held the lion’s share. The
British had almost fulfilled Cecil Rhodes’s dream of an unbroken line of
colonies from the Cape to Cairo. Their colonies held promising economic
potential, with gold in South Africa and cash crops in East and West Africa. The
French controlled huge amounts of territory in North and West Africa, but much
was desert and only a few colonies were productive. Germany would lose its
African colonies in losing World War I, as would Italy in World War II
(1939-1945). Britain and France would give up most of their colonies in the
1950s and 1960s. Spain would remain longer but be a less-significant participant
in the colonial picture. Portugal would entrench itself and become, in the
mid-1970s, the last European power to begin to relinquish its claims.
The Scramble and its aftermath held great
irony. While the conquest was going on, events in Africa were of the greatest
importance throughout Europe. European competition for African territory
dominated headlines, brought down governments, and nearly drove nations to war.
But once the conquest was complete, Africa was largely forgotten and not
considered again until the movement for African independence of the 1950s and
1960s.
Effects of the European takeover on Africans
were considerable. In the short term, the Scramble obviously led to Africans’
loss of control of their own affairs. But it also brought enormous hardship to
most Africans. In addition to the deaths caused by the conquest itself, many
Africans died as a result of disrupted lifestyles and movement of people and
animals among different disease environments. Africa’s population did not begin
to recover from the devastation caused by the Scramble and its aftermath until
well into the 20th century. In the long term, the Scramble was part of a larger
process of bringing non-Western peoples into the world economy—in most cases as
exporters of agricultural products or minerals and importers of manufactured or
processed goods. Colonial governments taxed their African subjects and used the
revenues to improve the colony’s infrastructure: building roads, bridges, and
ports that connected distant locales to the outside world. Meanwhile,
institutions to improve people’s lives, such as hospitals and schools, appeared
more slowly. Colonial rule also brought elements of Western culture—from the
French and English languages and Western political models to Coca-Cola and
automobiles. It was in reaction to European rule that Africans developed a sense
of nationalism that would help them gain independence in the second half of the
20th century.
For Europeans, the Scramble for Africa helped
set the stage for World War I. Competition for African territory raised
nationalist feelings and kept relations tense and combative. It also gave
Europeans a sense that war was good for “national character” and not so taxing
on budgets and manpower. World War I would soon destroy these illusions.
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