Download The European Conquest of Africa

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C H A P T E R
4
The European
Conquest of Africa
When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Europeans directly controlled only a scattering of outposts on the African coast, Algeria in North Africa, and the southern tip
of Africa. By 1912 several European nations had partitioned nearly all of the continent and incorporated vast areas into their empires.
Only two states in Africa, Liberia and Ethiopia, remained independent after the
partition. Liberia was partly settled by former slaves from the United States and
remained heavily dependent economically on U.S. companies such as Firestone.
Ethiopia had the unique distinction of defeating a European nation when it repulsed
an Italian attempt to conquer it in 1896.
AFRICAN SOCIETIES
EARLY MUSLIM AND
EUROPEAN CONTACTS
WITH AFRICA
42
The African continent in the late nineteenth century was home to many different
ethnic groups that lived in a varied landscape of desert, rain forest, savannah, mountain, and coastal lands. These peoples had adapted their social and economic organizations to their environments; hence, some were hunters, while others were
agriculturalists, nomads, food gatherers, or herders. Their political systems varied
from large empires to tribal groupings, but some of Africa’s greatest empires had
existed centuries earlier. For example, in the early sixteenth century, the kingdom of
Songhai dominated most of western Africa. Under its Muslim ruler the city of
Tombouctou (in modern-day Mali) became a great commercial and cultural center
with its own university.
From the eleventh century onward, Africa south of the Sahara had experienced an influx of newcomers from Islamic Arabicized North Africa and from
western Asia. By the sixteenth century, Europeans were engaging in active trade
with coastal African areas, and it was mainly Europeans who began shipping slaves
to the Americas. Although African slave trading predated the European arrival, the
insatiable demand of European slave traders greatly increased the capture and sale
of slaves. From 1600 to 1870 many millions of Africans were enslaved and sent
to the New World. During this same period some European nations controlled
small portions of coastal African areas, but during the 1870s and 1880s the
pace of European imperialism and its penetration of the African interior rapidly
accelerated.
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ATLANTIC
OCEAN
SPANISH
MOROCCO
TU N I S I A
M OROCCO
Mediterranean Sea
ALGERIA
RIO DE ORO
EGYPT
LIBYA
(British
external control)
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ITALIAN
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Africa to 1935
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BELGIAN
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European Possessions
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ANGLOEGYPTIAN
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British
French
ATLANTIC
Belgian
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League mandates of
former German colonies
ZA
SOUTHERN
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SOUTH
WEST
AFRICA B E C H U A N A LAND
(Prot.)
Italian
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NORTHERN
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Portuguese
Former Boer republics
COM OROS
(Fr.)
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Spanish
NY AS ALAN D
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Instances of unrest or
revolt by indigenous
populations
500
1000 Miles
UNION OF
SOUTH AFRICA
(British Dominion
1909)
BASUTOLAND
INDIAN
OCEAN
[ORANGE FREE STATE}
KENYA
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Chagos
Archipelago
(U.K.)
SEYCHELLES
TANGANYIKA
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(British)
COMOROS
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INDIAN
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MAURITIUS
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(Fr.)
(British)
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Part I The Era of Imperialism
THE PARTITION OF AFRICA
The late-nineteenth-century European penetration of Africa owed much to the scientific and technological advances of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 2). Once convinced that quinine (taken from the bark of the cinchona tree) could defend against
malaria, the Dutch and British empires began producing it in significant enough quantities to reduce the danger malaria had earlier posed for Europeans entering tropical
areas. As technological advances increased industrial development, the demand for
raw materials from Africa and elsewhere grew. Improvements in shipping reduced
transportation costs, and steamships, telegraphs, railways, and superior guns and
other military equipment, despite African resistance, facilitated European imperial
control of the African interior. Besides economic incentives, nationalistic and strategic reasons also motivated the European conquest and competition for African territories. Also, most Europeans believed they were benefiting Africans by exposing them
to European civilization and Christianity.
Leaders of several nations watched with particular interest the activities of a private commercial association organized by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1876 for the
purpose of exploiting the resources of the Congo basin. As Leopold had commented,
“I want my share of this wonderful African cake.” The Congo Free State, the name
given to the area controlled by Leopold’s company, was headed by the king in his private capacity, although his prestige as king of the Belgians was crucial to the success
of the association. The company’s oppressive policies in the Congo Free State and its
exploitation of the people justified accusations that modern colonization by Europeans
was motivated only by economic greed. International outcry against Leopold’s regime
forced him to appoint a Commission of Inquiry in 1904. Its report horrified the world.
Witness Ilange Kunda of M’Bongo: “I knew Malu Malu [Quickly Quickly, the African name
for Force Publique Lieutenant Charles Masard]. He was very cruel; he forced us to bring
rubber. One day, I saw him with my own eyes kill a native named Bongiyangwa, solely
because among the fifty baskets of rubber which had been brought, he found one not
full enough. Malu Malu ordered the soldier Tshumpa to seize [Bongiyangwa] and tie him
to a palm tree. There were three sets of bonds: one at knee height, a second at stomach
height, and a third crushing his arms. Malu Malu had his cartridge-pouch on his belt; he
took his rifle, fired from a distance of about 20 meters, and with one bullet he killed
Bongiyangwa. . . . I saw the wound. The unhappy man gave one cry and was dead.”
EUROPEAN RIVALRIES
AND PARTITION
OF AFRICA
In 1908 the Belgian government replaced the king’s private regime in the Congo,
which it continued to rule until 1960.
Leopold’s early success played a key role in sharpening the mutual suspicions
of European nations about one another’s intentions in Africa; these countries muscled
in after 1880 to get what they wanted. At the Berlin West African Conference in
1884–1885, European colonial powers agreed on “first come, first served” as the basic
rule of dividing Africa. Any power that effectively occupied an African territory and
notified others would be recognized as having established sole possession. After 1884,
the scramble intensified as the older colonial powers—Portugal, Spain, and particularly Great Britain and France—expanded inland from their original coastal outposts.
Newly unified Italy and Germany also gained footholds on the African coast and
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Chapter 4 The European Conquest of Africa
Herero warriors in German captivity.
pushed inland as well. By 1912 almost all of Africa was under European control.
Between 1871 and 1900, Britain added about 4.3 million square miles of territory
and 66 million people to its African empire, and France added about 3.5 million
square miles and 26 million people. The possessions of the other imperial powers
were smaller and less populous. Since Great Britain and France dominated the partition of Africa, their actions will be the focus of this chapter.
As Europeans sought to consolidate their holdings, Africans saw their traditional
ways of life disrupted or destroyed. They resisted bitterly; there were at least 25 conflicts
with Europeans before World War I. Besides the Ethiopians, other key resisters were the
Ashante in present-day Ghana, the Hereros in South West Africa against Germany, and
peoples in Islamic northern Africa. Two groups were most determined and fought for
years. They were the followers of the Mahdi in the Sudan and the Zulus of southern
Africa; both will be discussed later. In the end, all lost except for the Ethiopians, who
skillfully used knowledge of the local terrain and the modern weapons they purchased.
The scramble to divide Africa created a number of intense hostilities among the
imperialist nations, particularly among Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. However, problems were generally settled peacefully at conference tables in European capitals. After partitioning Africa, Europeans found that few areas could produce immediate
wealth without large capital investment. Not surprisingly, most European governments
thus lost some interest in their newly acquired possessions. The following will detail the
partition of Africa by regions by major European powers in the late nineteenth century.
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NORTH AFRICA
North Africa between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert was a land of
ancient civilizations. Since the eighth century C.E., most peoples of this region had
become Muslim. This land was called the Mahgrib, meaning the West in Arabic,
because it was the westernmost extension of Arab culture. North Africa came under
British, French, and Italian control.
THE SUEZ CANAL:
STRATEGIC LINK
BETWEEN EUROPE
AND ASIA
GREAT BRITAIN GAINS
CONTROL OF ENTIRE
NILE VALLEY
British Control of Egypt and the Sudan
Great Britain’s interest in this region was primarily strategic, focused on the Suez
Canal, which shortened the distance between Europe and Asia. Designed by a French
engineer and built by an international company, it was opened in 1869. Because of
their far-flung empire and global trading network, the British were the most interested in the canal. In 1875 Great Britain acquired control of the waterway when the
ruler of Egypt sold his shares in the company to the British government to avert bankruptcy. To protect the canal, Great Britain looked for an opportunity to gain control
over Egypt, making it into a de facto protectorate, in 1882. British advisers supervised all important Egyptian government offices and became the real rulers of the
country, although it nominally remained a province of the Ottoman Empire.
Egypt claimed authority over the Sudan, which controlled the water supply of
the Nile River. The Sudanese, who resented Egyptian and British expansion, rose in
revolt in 1883 under the Mahdi (Rightly Guided One), the leader of a nationalist
Muslim movement. Since Great Britain controlled Egypt, it too became involved in
putting down the Sudanese uprising. Between 1896 and 1898, General Sir Herbert
Kitchener undertook the reconquest of the Sudan. After its conquest, Great Britain
and Egypt established joint rule over the land, which in effect meant British control.
In 1898 when British forces reached Fashoda, a village on the bank of the Nile
in southern Sudan, they found a French expedition, which had arrived overland from
the west, already established there. France hoped to control the Sudan so that its
African empire might extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, and at the
same time put pressure on the British downriver in Egypt by controlling the source
of the Nile. The ensuing standoff was called the Fashoda incident. It ended when
France backed down in 1899 and renounced all claims to the Nile valley in return
for British recognition of its claims in the Sahara. This crisis illustrates the intensity
of rivalries among the colonial powers in Africa.
The French Conquest and Settlement of North West Africa
Outside Egypt and the Sudan, France was the dominant colonial power north of the
Sahara. France had conquered Algeria between 1830 and 1869, which it then used as a
base for further advances into the Sahara. In 1881 the French had made Tunisia (situated
to the east) a protectorate, against a strong claim by Italy, also anxious to build an empire
in Africa. As in Egypt, a facade of native government was allowed to remain in Tunisia.
The French also moved southward across the Sahara and finally westward into Morocco.
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Chapter 4 The European Conquest of Africa
Unlike the British, who made no attempt to send settlers to Egypt, the French
from the start encouraged the immigration of Europeans into Algeria, pushing Algerians off their best agricultural lands. By 1911, out of a total population of 5.6 million people in Algeria, 752,000 were Europeans. Tunisia had a European population
of 130,000. In both Algeria and Tunisia, there was friction between the privileged
European minority and the Arab majority. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a racial problem developed between the Europeans and Muslims. In no
other part of the Islamic world were Muslims confronted with so large a number of
foreigners settled in their midst.
In addition to economic advantages, the privileged European settlers enjoyed
the right of political representation in the legislature of metropolitan France. Under
the French constitution, the colons (French settlers) in Algeria sent six deputies and
three senators to the French legislature in 1900. The Muslims had no representation.
Established in a position of superiority, many colons regarded the Algerians with open
contempt. “The Arab must accept the fate of the conquered,” wrote one colon. “He
must either become assimilated to our civilization or disappear. European civilization
can have no sympathy for the life of the savage.”
Gradually, the abuses of the colonial system became widely known in France,
and a spirited debate on colonial policy ensued in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower
house of the French legislature), which enacted limited reforms early in the twentieth century. Given the tenor of French thought, most reformers sought the assimilation of upper-class Algerian Muslims, who were encouraged to attend French schools
and adopt French ways, for which they would be rewarded with a share in the power
structure of the French empire.
The policy of assimilation failed, however, for three basic reasons. One was the
resistance of most Algerians, who were not prepared to renounce their culture and
Islamic law for those of their masters. Second, not all French opinion supported the
assimilation plan, and it was therefore extremely limited in application. The colons
were the third factor. Unwilling to give up their privileges, they vigorously opposed
measures designed to lessen or dilute their power.
Morocco was the last French acquisition in North Africa. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, it was an independent kingdom beset by internal problems. For a
time, the government of Morocco was able to delay French imperialistic advances by
exploiting the Franco-German rivalry in international affairs and appealing to the
German government for help. Anxious to further its influence in Africa, Germany was
at first happy to comply, but in the face of European opposition it eventually backed
down and recognized Morocco as a French sphere of influence. In 1912, the sultan of
Morocco was forced to sign a treaty that handed his country over to French protection.
WEST AFRICA
The huge territory of West Africa contained grasslands, tropical rain forests, and
some of the harshest desert in Africa. Before European colonization, the peoples
in this area lived in societies that ranged from large empires like that of the
Muslim Hausa-Fulani peoples in today’s northern Nigeria, through well-organized
47
FRANCE SETTLES
EUROPEAN COLONISTS
IN ITS NORTH AFRICAN
TERRITORIES
FRANCE ATTEMPTS
POLICY OF
ASSIMILATION
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Part I The Era of Imperialism
kingdoms like that of the Ashante in today’s Ghana, to small groups who still lived
by hunting and gathering in the equatorial rain forests. Except for those areas
south of the Sahara that had become largely Islamic, traditional religions prevailed
in West Africa.
Indirect Rule in Great Britain’s Scattered Colonies
GREAT BRITAIN APPLIES
“INDIRECT RULE” IN
WEST AFRICA
In West Africa, Great Britain ruled four colonies strung out on the coast and mostly
surrounded by French possessions. The earliest was Sierra Leone, begun in the
eighteenth century for freed slaves in British colonies, just as Liberia was later
established for former slaves from the United States. The British opened mines and
encouraged cash crops grown by African peasants. They made this development
profitable by building railroads to connect the coast with the interior. The Gold
Coast (Ghana) was the best example of a successful and prosperous colony. Here,
the railroad system made it possible to exploit timber, open up cocoa farms, and
develop gold mines in the hinterland. British-owned trading companies and their
shareholders became rich from these operations. This economic process also
provided jobs for some Africans, but it disrupted the previously self-sufficient
economy.
In administering Africa, the British applied no preconceived notions of colonial
government but devised practical solutions to the problems of governing. The policy
Great Britain eventually applied in West Africa was called “indirect rule,” a system
developed by Lord Lugard, governor-general of Nigeria, the largest and most populous British West African colony. Because the British administrative staff was small,
local chiefs and advisers were delegated the task of running the day-to-day matters
of government. They were supervised by a British official who also ensured that British
interests in the area were upheld.
Climatic conditions and an already large population made West Africa unsuitable and unattractive for British immigration. The absence of a British immigrant
group eager to compete for local jobs meant more opportunities for Africans. Many
were anxious to acquire a Western education to qualify them for the new skilled positions opening up in a rapidly changing economy. British official opinion was responsive and sometimes even enthusiastic about West African demands for more schools
and job opportunities. Sir Frederick Guggisberg, governor of the Gold Coast during
World War I, appointed a committee that drew up a new educational plan for the
colony. This plan provided a foundation for the modernization of the Gold Coast,
paving the way for the independent nation of Ghana.
France’s Vast West African Empire
By the twentieth century, France had also acquired a huge block of territory south of
the Sahara that stretched 3,000 miles from the extreme west coast of Africa to the
Congo River deep in central Africa. In Senegal, the oldest French colony in West
Africa, the colonial administration encouraged the population to grow groundnuts as
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a cash crop. The peasants sold the nuts for cash, part of which they used to pay the
head tax that was for many years the chief source of revenue for the government of
Senegal. The French worked hard to implant French culture in Senegal, with some
success. With its boulevards and shops filled with French-speaking Africans and
Europeans, Dakar (the capital of Senegal) came to be called the Paris of Africa. Senegalese soldiers fought in the French army around the world. In France’s other coastal
colonies, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Dahomey, cash crops such as palm oil and
cocoa were introduced and proved profitable.
The French colonies in the interior of West Africa were sparsely populated, limited in resources, and difficult to reach. Formidable rapids made the three major river
systems in this area—the Congo, the Senegal, and the Niger—difficult to navigate.
New cash crops, such as cotton in Niger, were introduced, but until railroads could
be built to penetrate the interior, few products could be brought out. These colonies
were therefore a financial drain on France.
Pending the completion of new railroads to move interior products to market,
the quest for economic efficiency led the French government in 1904 to gather the
West African territories into a single unit, called French West Africa, under a governorgeneral who ruled from Dakar. The economic benefits that emerged from the formation of French West Africa led the French government to follow the same policy in
its territories in the Congo basin, joining them in 1910 into a single colonial unit
called French Equatorial Africa, under a governor-general who ruled from Brazzaville.
In both cases, the greater resources of a consolidated colonial government resulted in
faster economic development.
BRITISH EAST AFRICA: THE ADVENT
OF A MULTIRACIAL SOCIETY
Geographically, East Africa is dominated by mountains and high plateaus that
extend southward from Kenya to the Cape of Good Hope. Although near the equator, the temperate climate of the uplands soon attracted British settlers. To the Colonial Office in search of revenue, the prospect of settlement by British farmers seemed
a good step toward economic development. Up to World War I, the number of
British settlers in East Africa and central Africa remained small—around 3,000 in
what is now Kenya and a few hundred in Uganda. Although some English settlers
congregated in what were previously sparsely populated lands, others took over
lands already settled by Kikuyu tribes, displacing the people or making them tenant farmers. British colonists were a disruptive factor in the region, competing with
Africans for land and exploiting labor. Many Africans were forced to become migrant
laborers on European farms. This development caused political and social problems
in the next generation.
The racial tensions of East Africa were further inflamed when the British government allowed large numbers of emigrants from India to settle as indentured laborers to build railroads or work as clerks in government offices and commercial
companies. Indians settled in towns and villages, and many became traders. In the
early decades, Europeans resented the numerous and resourceful Indians in their
49
FRANCE CONSOLIDATES
ITS WEST AFRICAN
HOLDINGS
ENGLISH COLONISTS
SETTLE IN EAST AFRICA
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Part I The Era of Imperialism
midst. In a later era, as a result of growing African nationalism, Indian British subjects were ousted by African majorities who did not think Indians belonged in Africa.
Thus, in British East Africa, a pluralist society was formed in the early twentieth century that had disturbing consequences in later years.
COMPETITION
FOR LAND IN
SOUTHERN AFRICA
CONFLICTS BETWEEN
THE BRITISH AND
BOERS
SOUTHERN AFRICA
Dutch colonists began settling in southern Africa in the mid-seventeenth century. The
early inhabitants of southern Africa were the San and Khoi; small in number, they
lived by hunting and gathering and were easily subdued by white settlers. Bantuspeaking peoples, who engaged in both herding and agriculture, especially the Zulu,
had been emigrating from the north in large numbers over a long period. Clashes
broke out among the Bantu tribes and between the Bantus and Europeans. Zulu leaders forged their people into a fighting nation that defeated and subjugated other tribes
and fought white colonists in several Zulu wars. Although the white settlers eventually defeated the Zulus, they were not able to prevent the movement of Bantu peoples into southern Africa. As a result of both Bantu and European immigration, South
Africa became a land with a black majority and a white minority, the basis for race
problems in the twentieth century.
The Rise and Fall of the Boer Republics
South Africa attracted large numbers of white colonists because of its benign climate,
good soil, and, in the late nineteenth century, the discovery of large gold and diamond deposits. When Great Britain acquired the Dutch colony located at the Cape
of Good Hope in 1815, it also inherited the Dutch colonists of the land, who called
themselves Boers (farmers). The Boers resented British rule, particularly a law passed
in 1833 that ended slavery in the British Empire and forced the Boers to emancipate
their slaves. To escape British control, many Boers made a mass migration called the
Great Trek into the interior of Africa between 1835 and 1841. There they founded
two independent republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Meanwhile,
British settlers moved into the Cape Province and into Natal, a new colony to the
east. The relationship between the Boer republics and Great Britain became increasingly tense, especially after gold was discovered in the Transvaal. Non-Boer prospectors,
including many British, encountered discrimination at the hands of the Boer government in the Transvaal.
In 1899 war broke out between Great Britain and the two Boer republics. The
Boers were ably led by President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal, and for three years
Boer commandos (guerrillas), using hit-and-run tactics copied from the Zulus, successfully resisted the might of the British Empire. British forces resorted to the same
harsh but effective antiguerrilla measures used in that period by the Spanish in Cuba
and the Americans in the Philippines, burning farms and herding women, children,
and other noncombatants into concentration camps to deprive the commandos of
sanctuary and resources. Hopelessly beaten, the Boers finally surrendered in 1902.
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Chapter 4 The European Conquest of Africa
Modern Boer, or Afrikaner, nationalism emerged out of this resistance. In an
attempt to conciliate the defeated Boers, Great Britain let them decide whether black
and other nonwhite inhabitants should be given the vote; true to their white supremacist tradition, the Boers denied suffrage to all but whites. When the two former Boer
states federated with the two British colonies of Natal and the Cape in 1909 to form
the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion in the British Empire, black
people were denied political rights.
BLACK AFRICANS
DENIED SUFFRAGE
IN UNION OF SOUTH
AFRICA
The Rhodesias: One-Man Imperialism
North of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was an area of high plains and good
soil. In earlier centuries it was the site of an African state called Great Zimbabwe.
Here, empire-builder Cecil Rhodes, an English adventurer who had made a fortune
from diamond mining in South Africa, carved out two new colonies for Great Britain.
At his request Britain annexed the territories and called them Northern and Southern Rhodesia, entrusting the South African Company owned by Rhodes to govern
them. An unabashed imperialist, he once exclaimed, “I would annex the planets if I
could!”
During the 1890s, the company’s army was responsible for winning Portuguese
acquiescence to the British takeover of that area and for the defeat of the local people, who bitterly resented the company’s demands on their land and labor. Fighting
did not stop until 1897, after which the company sponsored European immigrants
who eventually constituted about 5 percent of the total population.
THE IMPACT OF COLONIAL RULE ON AFRICA
The positive and negative effects of colonial rule on Africans varied greatly and differed from society to society. As always under conditions of change, some groups benefited. They were either lucky or farsighted enough to cooperate with the masters and
to take advantage of new circumstances, thereby winning favors, prestige, and sometimes additional land. Among such beneficiaries were the Baganda people of Uganda
and the Igbos in Nigeria, who welcomed chances for a British education and cooperated with the British authorities. They were rewarded with positions in the colonial
bureaucracy.
On the other hand, large numbers suffered from colonial rule, especially in areas
where Europeans sought to settle or to extract minerals. In some instances tribes were
split under different European jurisdictions, while in others several traditionally hostile tribes were grouped under a single administration. In parts of Kenya and the
Rhodesias, for example, hundreds of thousands of Africans lost their land. Many were
forced to live on inferior lands designated as native reserves or became tenants and
laborers on the new white-owned farms.
However, many Africans were at first not directly affected when European countries annexed their lands. Large areas, in fact, remained untouched by white rule.
Until World War I, colonial officials frequently had little control over the local scene
EFFECTS OF
COLONIALISM
ON AFRICANS
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Western cultural impact on Africa: A drawing of missionary Robert Moffat preaching
to the Tswanas.
CHRISTIAN
MISSIONARIES
IN AFRICA
and had to work within the restraints of local kinship groups, village communities,
and tribal ties. In Morocco and Tunisia, European diplomatic entanglements compelled the French to retain native rulers in power.
The indirect effects of imperialism were much more widespread. Europeans
investing in Africa demanded laborers to work in mines and on plantations and to
build roads and railroads. Whether laborers were paid or not, their service was
compulsory. The European attitude toward forced labor was contradictory and
tinged with hypocrisy. Europeans abhorred slavery, but they permitted the forced
labor of Africans. Yet when facts about King Leopold’s methods for exacting labor
services in the Congo Free State were made public, adverse European and American
public opinion forced the Belgian government to take over responsibility for its
administration.
Despite the violence generated by the imposition of colonial rule, some forms
of violence in Africa decreased after colonization. Colonial authorities largely suppressed the tribal wars, cattle rustling, and slave raids that had caused much bloodshed before the European takeover. Peace, better public health programs, development
of cash crops, and agricultural improvements resulted in large increases in population. In some areas, rural peoples moved into the newly established cities for work,
causing new problems of social adjustment.
European control was also accompanied by Christian missionary activity, which
had an important impact. In many inaccessible villages, the missionary teacher and
preacher was much more likely than the colonial administrator to be the first white
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person an African encountered. In the early days, the teachers in the missionary “bush
schools” were Europeans, but soon Africans themselves became teachers and missionaries. By the early twentieth century, Western education and Christian religion
were expanding hand in hand in many parts of Africa. Christian missionaries and
teachers brought with them not only a new religion and education but also medical
care and a general acquaintance with the scientific, technological, and intellectual
bases of Western civilization; however, they also frequently held the same ethnocentric and racist beliefs of Western societies at the time.
In northern Africa, Islam remained the rallying point of the people and Christianity had little impact. Thus, the majority of Algerians resisted conversion to Christianity,
as did the peoples of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and northern Sudan. At the same
time, Muslim missionaries were active in spreading their religion and culture south
of the Sahara.
Early in the twentieth century, a new kind of leadership emerged in Africa
when many European-educated, black Africans rejected the authority of the traditional chiefs and willingly seized the new opportunities created by colonialism.
Some of the new elite received higher education in the West, where they gained
new perspectives for judging the colonial administrations of their lands. They found
that the colonial practices of the European imperialist states invariably fell short of
their professed democratic ideals. Consequently, these modern educated Africans
established anticolonial movements. Even before World War I, these new leaders
were demanding that African Christian churches be placed under black African leadership and that African independent states be established based on modern democratic concepts.
SUMMARY
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European imperialism, based on
a mixture of economic, strategic, cultural, and nationalistic motives, led to the partition of the African continent. The European preeminence in industrial, technical, and
military development enabled Europeans to defeat African societies and seize their
territories. Although nationalism created intense rivalries between the imperialist
states, diplomacy triumphed and they were able to avoid war against each other as
they carved up Africa. Great Britain and France seized the largest amount of African
territory, but Germany, Italy, and Belgium also made extensive acquisitions. Spanish
and Portuguese holdings dating from an earlier century were enlarged. Africans often
resisted European imperialism, but with the exception of the Ethiopians and Liberians, all Africans were eventually subjugated. Many African groups were dislocated or
destroyed in the process.
Europeans in Africa extensively exploited the continent’s mineral and agricultural products, often by means of forced labor and sometimes with imported outside
labor. On the other hand, colonial authorities began to introduce programs for health,
education, and social welfare and suppressed intertribal violence. Although Europeans
ruled some areas of Africa indirectly and allowed the indigenous cultural patterns to
continue, in many cases their colonial administrations eliminated the traditional
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Part I The Era of Imperialism
political leadership and imposed Western systems of government, taxation, and justice. Both Christian and Muslim missionaries worked to win converts from adherents
of local African religions.
SUGGESTED
SOURCES
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1978. Classic novel on the profound effects of British contact on Igbo society in Nigeria.*
Collins, Robert O. Problems in African History: Historical Problems of Imperial Africa, Vol. II. 2004.
Updated account of colonial expansion and rule in Africa.*
Farwell, Byron. The Great Anglo-Boer War. 1971. This book is acclaimed as the best general
history of the war.*
Gilbert, Erik, and Jonathan T. Reynolds. Africa in World History: From Prehistory to the Present.
2004. Excellent section on European influences and Africa’s place in a global historic
context.*
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
1998. Gripping book on the colonization of Africa, with particular attention to the
Congo.
The Horizon History of Africa. 1971. A thoughtful text, with lavish illustrations and maps.
Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya. 1962. A collection of studies by the Kenyan nationalist
leader that favorably depict the customs of Kenya’s Kikuyu tribe before they were altered
by the impact of imperialism.*
Nederveen, Jan. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. 1992. A
thoughtful discussion on how racism toward Africans permeated Western attitudes during the twentieth century.*
Oliver, Roland Anthony, and Anthony Ernest Atmore. Africa since 1800. 5th ed. 2005. A standard survey of Africa and European imperialism.*
Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa; White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from
1876 to 1912. 1992. Highly readable book about the colonization of the entire African
continent.*
Thompson, Leonard. A History of South Africa. Rev. ed. 1995. A well-written and balanced
book.*
WEB
SOURCES
www.fordham.edu/halsall/africa/africasbook.html
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index.shtml.
Two excellent sites, each offering numerous links to materials dealing with Africa,
including a section on European imperialism there.
*Paperback available.