10.3 DBQ 4: Imperialism in Africa *Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending rule over peoples and other countries, for extending political and economic access, power and control, often through employing hard power, especially military force, but also soft power, such as brokered influence. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Suggested reading and writing time: 90 minutes It is suggested that you spend 25 minutes reading the documents and 60 minutes writing your response. Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over. AP: The Essay is due at the end of the class period. 100F Rubric Honors: The Essay is due by Sunday night, March 21, at midnight. Use this GoogleForm to self-assess your work after you are finished. 100F Directions: The following documents have been edited for this exercise. In your response you should do the following: •Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes and maintains a line of reasoning. •Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt. •Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the documents) relevant to an argument about the prompt. EBD •For at least three documents, explain how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument. AR. •Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least six documents. E2. •Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt. E1. During the period 1870 to 1915, Western powers began to seek sources of raw materials that could meet the needs of growing industries. The continent of Africa appealed as one available source. To what extent did Western nations apply the ideologies* of Imperialism in their Scramble for Africa? *Remember...if you get stuck on how to group sources for a thesis and your paper, you can always resort to the PIECES. Right? Power, Innovation/Technology, Environment, Culture, Economics, and Society. https://www.neisd.net/cms/lib/TX02215002/Centricity/Domain/4833/Rubrics.pdf https://forms.gle/VHkYXeYChihYtmmM9 Document A The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 marked the climax of the European competition for territory in Africa, a process commonly known as the Scramble for Africa. During the 1870s and early 1880s, European nations such as Great Britain, France, and Germany began looking to Africa for natural resources for their growing industrial sectors as well as a potential market for the goods these factories produced. As a result, these governments sought to safeguard their commercial interests in Africa and began sending scouts to the continent to secure treaties from indigenous peoples or their supposed representatives. Similarly, Belgium’s King Leopold II, who aspired to increase his personal wealt ...

1. 10.3 DBQ 4: Imperialism in Africa
*Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending rule over
peoples and other countries, for extending political and
economic
access, power and control, often through employing hard power,
especially military force, but also soft power, such as
brokered influence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
Suggested reading and writing time: 90 minutes
It is suggested that you spend 25 minutes reading the documents
and 60 minutes writing your response.
Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading
period is over.
AP: The Essay is due at the end of the class period. 100F Rubric
Honors: The Essay is due by Sunday night, March 21, at
midnight.
Use this GoogleForm to self-assess your work after you are
finished. 100F
Directions: The following documents have been edited for this
exercise. In your response you should do the
following:

2. •Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or
claim that establishes and maintains a line of
reasoning.
•Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
•Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence
(beyond that found in the documents)
relevant to an argument about the prompt. EBD
•For at least three documents, explain how or why the
document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation,
and/or audience is relevant to an argument. AR.
•Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least
six documents. E2.
•Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument
that addresses the prompt. E1.
During the period 1870 to 1915, Western powers began to seek
sources of
raw materials that could meet the needs of growing industries.
The continent
of Africa appealed as one available source.
To what extent did Western nations apply the ideologies* of
Imperialism in
their Scramble for Africa?
*Remember...if you get stuck on how to group sources for a
thesis and your paper, you can always resort to
the PIECES. Right? Power, Innovation/Technology,

3. Environment, Culture, Economics, and Society.
https://www.neisd.net/cms/lib/TX02215002/Centricity/Domain/
4833/Rubrics.pdf
https://forms.gle/VHkYXeYChihYtmmM9
Document A
The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885
The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 marked the climax of the
European competition for territory in Africa, a
process commonly known as the Scramble for Africa. During
the 1870s and early 1880s, European nations such
as Great Britain, France, and Germany began looking to Africa
for natural resources for their growing industrial
sectors as well as a potential market for the goods these
factories produced. As a result, these governments
sought to safeguard their commercial interests in Africa and
began sending scouts to the continent to secure
treaties from indigenous peoples or their supposed
representatives. Similarly, Belgium’s King Leopold II, who
aspired to increase his personal wealth by acquiring African
territory, hired agents to lay claim to vast tracts of
land in central Africa. To protect Germany’s economic
interests, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who was
otherwise uninterested in Africa, felt compelled to stake claims

4. to African land.
Inevitably, the scramble for territory led to conflict among
European powers, particularly between the British and
French in West Africa; Egypt, the Portuguese, and British in
East Africa; and the French and King Leopold II in
central Africa. Rivalry between Great Britain and France led
Bismarck to intervene, and in late 1884 he called a
meeting of European powers in Berlin. In the subsequent
meetings, Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and
King Leopold II negotiated their claims to African territory,
which were then formalized and mapped. During the
conference the leaders also agreed to allow free trade among the
colonies and established a framework for
negotiating future European claims in Africa. Neither the Berlin
Conference itself nor the framework for future
negotiations provided any say for the peoples of Africa over the
partitioning of their homelands.
The Berlin Conference did not initiate European colonization of
Africa, but it did “legitimize” and formalize the
process. In addition, it sparked new interest in Africa.
Following the close of the conference, European powers
expanded their claims in Africa such that by 1900, European
states had claimed nearly 90 percent of African
territory.

5. Source: Oxford University Online, 2021 (England), The Berlin
Conference, at site
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/97801953
37709.001.0001/acref-9780195337709-e-0467
Document B
Cutting the Cake of Africa
Source: French caricature, 1885. German Chancellor Bismarck
divides the African continent among the colonial powers.
Document C
The “Cape to Cairo Railway”
Imperialist and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes was instrumental in
securing the southern states of the [African]
continent for the British Empire. He envisioned a continuous
“red line” of British control from north to south which
he named the “Cape to Cairo Railway”. A railway would be a
critical element in this scheme to unify the
possessions, facilitate governance, enable the military to move
quickly to hot spots or conduct war, help
settlement and enable the trade of goods both across Africa and
to other continents. The construction of this
project presented a major technological challenge.

6. British interests had to overcome obstacles of geography and
climate, and regional competition with the French
and Portuguese. In 1891, Germany secured the strategically
critical territory of German East Africa, which along
with the mountainous rainforest of the Belgian Congo precluded
the building of a Cape-to-Cairo railway,
effectively blocking the project’s completion.
The southern section was completed during British rule before
the First World War and had an interconnecting
system of national railways. Construction started from Cape
Town and went parallel to the Great North Road to
the town of Kimberley, through a part of Bechua naland to
Bulawayo. From this junction the link proceeds further
north to the Zambezi crossing. The Victoria Falls Bridge was
completed in 1905.
Source: Journal of the North and South Rhodesia* and
Nyasaland Study Circle, at site
Note: Rhodesia was named for Cecil Rhodes. The name was
formally changed back to its historical African name of
Zimbabwe in 1980.
http://www.rhodesianstudycircle.org.uk/1905-visit-of-the-
british-association-for-the-advancement-of-science/
http://www.rhodesianstudycircle.org.uk/1874-cape-to-cairo-
railway/

7. Document D
Photograph of Congolese Man: Nsala
Source: Alice Seeley Harris. Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey
of Lady Alice Seeley Harris, 1902. A Congolese man named
Nsala
looks at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter
who was killed, and allegedly cannibalized, by the members
of the Belgian-Congolese India Rubber Company militia, also
called the Force Publique.
“He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-
appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s
hand and foot. Her name was Boali. She was five years old.
Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished.
Then they killed his wife too. And because that didn’t seem
quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make
their case, they cannibalized both Boali and her mother. And
they presented Nsala with the tokens, the leftovers
from the once living body of his darling child whom he so
loved. His life was destroyed…”
They had partially destroyed it anyway by forcing his servitude
but this act finished it for him. All of this filth had
occurred because one man, one man who lived thousands of
miles across the sea, one man who couldn’t get
rich enough, had decreed that this land was his and that these
people should serve his own greed. Leopold had
not given any thought to the idea that these African children,
these men and women, were our fully human
brothers, created equally by the same Hand that had created his
own lineage of European Royalty.”
Note: The Congo Free State was a corporate state in Central

8. Africa privately owned by King Leopold II of
Belgium founded and recognized by the Berlin Conference of
1885. In the 23 years (1885-1908) Leopold II ruled
the Congo he was indirectly responsible for the massacre of 10
million Africans by permitting his
state-sponsored Force Publique to cut off hands and genitals,
flog natives to death, starve them into forced labor,
hold children ransom, and burn villages.
Document E
The Belgian Force Publique
Under Leopold II the Force Publique was described as an
"exceptionally brutal army". One major purpose of the
Force was to enforce the rubber quotas and other forms of
forced labor. Armed with modern weapons and the
chicote - a bull whip made of hippopotamus hide—soldiers of
the FP often took and mistreated hostages.
The militia was composed of native Congolese serving under
Belgian and mercenary officers, tasked with
maintaining peace and maximizing rubber production. Any
Congolese soldier who discharged their weapon was
required to provide the hand of their victim as proof when they
had shot and killed someone, as it was believed
that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from
Europe at considerable cost) for hunting or to

9. stockpile them for mutiny.
Source: Belgian Force Publique. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021,
at site.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Force-Publique
Document F
The “White Man’s Burden”
In this poem, Rudyard Kipling taps into the imperialist mindset
and
what he, and others, saw as the “white man’s burden”: to bring
western
“civilization” to the people of nations that were less advanced.
Kipling presents the reader with inherently racist images of
dominance, cast as “help” provided to native people.
Image: Christian Minister in South Africa, London Missionary
Society, 1900.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--

10. Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain...
...Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Poem Source: Rudyard Kipling. White Man’s Burden (excerpt).
England, 1899.
Document G
Source: Gustave Freensen. In the German South African Army,

11. 1903-1904. This story is by a soldier in the German army telling
of his experiences in the campaign against the indigenous
people of southwest Africa in 1903-1904.