Analyzing on the colonial manifestation in Africa from the 19th Century

1. “Whatever happens we have got
the maxim gun and they have not”
—English poet Hilaire Belloc

2.  Europeans partitioned Africa into spheres of
influence, protectorates, colonies, and free-
trade-areas.
 The borders designed in European capitals at
a time when Europeans had barely settled in
Africa and had little knowledge of the
geography and ethnic composition of the
areas whose borders were designing.

3.  Until the 19th century, Britain and the other European
powers confined their imperial ambitions in Africa to
the odd coastal outpost from which they could exert
their economic and military influence.
 British activity on the West African coast was centred
around the lucrative slave trade.
 Between 1562 and 1807, when the slave trade was
abolished, British ships carried up to three million
people into slavery in the Americas. In total, European
ships took more than 11 million people into slavery
from the West African coast, and European traders
grew rich on the profits while the population of Africa's
west coast was devastated.

4.  As late as the 1870s, only 10% of the continent was
under direct European control, with Algeria held by
France, the Cape Colony and Natal (both in modern
South Africa) by Britain, and Angola by Portugal.
 And yet by 1900, European nations had added
almost 10 million square miles of Africa - one-fifth
of the land mass of the globe - to their overseas
colonial possessions. Europeans ruled more than
90% of the African continent

5.  One of the chief justifications for this so-called
'scramble for Africa' was a desire to stamp out slavery
once and for all. Shortly before his death in May 1873
at Ilala in central Africa, the celebrated missionary-
explorer David Livingstone had called for a worldwide
crusade to defeat the slave trade controlled by Arabs in
East Africa, that was laying waste the heart of the
continent.
 The only way to liberate Africa, believed Livingstone,
was to introduce the 'three Cs': commerce, Christianity
and civilisation

6.  This was a period in history when few
Europeans doubted their innate superiority
over the 'lesser' races of the world.
 The theory that all the peoples of Europe
belonged to one white race which originated
in the Caucasus (hence the term 'Caucasian')
was first postulated at the turn of the 19th
century by a German professor of ethnology
called Johann Blumenbach.

7.  Blumenbach's colour-coded classification of
races - white, brown, yellow, black and red -
was later refined by a French ethnologist,
Joseph-Arthur Gobineau, to include a
complete racial hierarchy with white-skinned
people of European origin at the top.
 Such pseudo-scientific theories were widely
accepted at the time and motivated Britons
like Livingstone to feel they had a duty to
'civilise' Africa.

8.  The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885,
convened by Otto von Bismarck to discuss the
future of Africa, had the stamping out
slavery high on the agenda. The Berlin Act of
1885, signed by the 13 European powers
attending the conference, included a
resolution to 'help in suppressing slavery'.
 In truth, the strategic and economic
objectives of the colonial powers, such as
protecting old markets and exploiting new
ones, were far more important.

10.  End of the Slave Trade:
 Britain had had some success in halting the
slave trade around the shores of Africa, but
inland the story was different. Muslim
traders from north of the Sahara and on the
East Coast still traded inland, and many local
chiefs were reluctant to give up the use of
slaves. Reports of slaving trips and markets
were brought back to Europe by various
explorers, such as Livingstone, and
abolitionists in Britain and Europe were
calling for more to be done.

11.  Exploration:
 During the 19th century, barely a year went by
without a European expedition into Africa. The
boom in exploration was triggered to a great
extent by the creation of the African
Association by wealthy Englishmen in 1788,
who wanted someone to 'find' the fabled city of
Timbuktu and the course of the Niger River. As
the century moved on, the goal of the
European explorer changed, and rather than
traveling out of pure curiosity they started to
record details of markets, goods, and resources
for the wealthy philanthropists who financed
their trips.

12.  Capitalism:
 The end of European trading in slaves left a
need for commerce between Europe and
Africa. Capitalists may have seen the light
over slavery, but they still wanted to exploit
the continent. New 'legitimate' trade would
be encouraged. Explorers located vast
reserves of raw materials, they plotted the
course of trade routes, navigated rivers, and
identified population centers which could be
a market for manufactured goods from
Europe.

13.  Military Innovation:
 At the beginning of the 19th century, Europe
was only marginally ahead of Africa in terms
of available weapons as traders had long
supplied them to local chiefs and many had
stockpiles of guns and gunpowder. But two
innovations gave Europe a massive
advantage.Europeans, with an eye to
colonization and conquest, restricted the
sale of the new weaponry to Africa
maintaining military superiority.

14.  Politics:
 After the creation of a unified Germany (1871)
and Italy (a longer process, but its capital
relocated to Rome also in 1871) there was no
room left in Europe for expansion. Britain,
France and Germany were in an intricate
political dance, trying to maintain their
dominance, and an empire would secure it.
Germany, under the management of Chancellor
Bismarck, had come late to the idea of
overseas colonies, but was now fully convinced
of their worth. It would need some mechanism
to be put in place to stop overt conflict over
the coming land grab.

15.  Steam Engines and Iron Hulled Boats:
 In 1840 the Nemesis arrived at Macao, south
China. It changed the face of international
relations between Europe and the rest of the
world. The Nemesis had a shallow draft (five
feet), a hull of iron, and two powerful steam
engines. It could navigate the non-tidal
sections of rivers, allowing access inland, and
it was heavily armed. Livingstone used a
steamer to travel up the Zambezi in 1858, and
had the parts transported overland to Lake
Nyassa. Steamers also allowed Henry Morton
Stanley and Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza to
explore the Congo

16.  Quinine and Medical Advances:
 Africa, especially the western regions, was
known as the 'White Man's Grave' because of
the danger of two diseases: malaria and
yellow fever. In 1817 two French scientists,
Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé
Caventou, extracted quinine from the bark of
the South American cinchona tree.
 It proved to be the solution to malaria;
Europeans could now survive the ravages of
the disease in Africa. Unfortunately yellow
fever continued to be a problem, and even
today there is no specific treatment for the
disease.

17.  Britain was primarily concerned with maintaining its
lines of communication with India, hence its interest
in Egypt and South Africa.
 But once these two areas were secure, imperialist
adventurers like Cecil Rhodes encouraged the
acquisition of further territory with the intention of
establishing a Cape-to-Cairo railway.
 Britain was also interested in the commercial
potential of mineral-rich territories like the
Transvaal, where gold was discovered in the mid-
1880s, and in preventing other European powers,
particularly Germany and France, from muscling
into areas they considered within their 'sphere of
influence

18.  As a result, during the last 20 years of the 19th century, Britain
occupied or annexed
 Egypt
 the Sudan
 British East Africa (Kenya and Uganda)
 British Somaliland
 Southern and Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia)
 Bechuanaland (Botswana)
 Orange Free State and the Transvaal (South Africa)
 Gambia
 Sierra Leone
 Nigeria
 British Gold Coast (Ghana) and
 Nyasaland (Malawi).
 These countries accounted for more than 30% of Africa's population

19.  The other chief colonisers were France,
Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

20.  The improper border partitioning led to ethnic
struggles, patronage politics, and spurred civil
conflict, leading to poverty and
underdevelopment.
 By the end of 1966, 40 countries had gained
independence. Many proposed changing the
colonial borders, African leaders and leaving
Europeans avoided this issue. The leaders of
African independence believed that nation
building would sideline ethnic divisions;
moreover building new states and national
institutions seemed more important than
massive border realignment.

21.  Likewise Europeans’ main objective was to
maintain their special rights and corporate
deals with their former colonies, and as
such, they were reluctant to open the border
issue.
 Thus almost all African countries accepted
the colonial borders when signing the Charter
of the Organization of African Union in 1964.

22.  The three C’s
 The sense of cultural superiority
 Political competition and prestige
 Africa “The Dark Continent”
 Discuss the political, economic, social and
cultural impact of scramble and subsequent
colonization of Africa.
 Review Walter Rodney’s How Europe
underdeveloped Africa and Jared Diamond’s
Guns, Germs and Steel in reflection of the
scramble and colonization of Africa.