   #copyright

Scramble for Africa

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1750-1900

   Cecil Rhodes: Cape-Cairo railway project. Founder of the De Beers
   Mining Company, one of the first diamond companies, Rhodes was also the
   owner of the British South Africa Company, which carved out Rhodesia
   for itself. He wanted to "paint the map [British] red", and once
   famously declared: "all of these stars... these vast worlds that remain
   out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets".
   Enlarge
   Cecil Rhodes: Cape-Cairo railway project. Founder of the De Beers
   Mining Company, one of the first diamond companies, Rhodes was also the
   owner of the British South Africa Company, which carved out Rhodesia
   for itself. He wanted to "paint the map [British] red", and once
   famously declared: "all of these stars... these vast worlds that remain
   out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets".

   The Scramble for Africa (or the Race for Africa) was the proliferation
   of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New
   Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the start of World War I.

   The latter half of the 19th century saw the transition from the
   "informal" imperialism of control through military influence and
   economic dominance to that of direct rule. Attempts to mediate imperial
   competition, such as the Berlin Conference ( 1884 - 1885) among the
   United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the French Third Republic
   and the German Empire, failed to establish definitively the competing
   powers' claims. Disputes over Africa was one of the factors leading to
   the First World War.

Opening of the continent

   David Livingstone, early explorer of the interior of Africa who
   discovered in 1855 the Mosi-oa-Tunya waterfall, which he renamed
   Victoria Falls. He failed however in locating the source of the Nile.
   Enlarge
   David Livingstone, early explorer of the interior of Africa who
   discovered in 1855 the Mosi-oa-Tunya waterfall, which he renamed
   Victoria Falls. He failed however in locating the source of the Nile.
   Henry Morton Stanley, discoverer of the 'lost' Livingstone and founder
   of the Congo Free State on behalf of Léopold II of Belgium.
   Enlarge
   Henry Morton Stanley, discoverer of the 'lost' Livingstone and founder
   of the Congo Free State on behalf of Léopold II of Belgium.

   The opening of Africa to Western exploration and exploitation had begun
   in earnest at the end of the 18th century. By 1835, Europeans had
   mapped most of northwestern Africa. Among the most famous of the
   European explorers was David Livingstone, who charted the vast interior
   and Serpa Pinto, who crossed both Southern Africa and Central Africa on
   a difficult expedition, mapping much of the interior of the continent.
   Arduous expeditions in the 1850s and 1860s by Richard Burton, John
   Speke and James Grant located the great central lakes and the source of
   the Nile. By the end of the century, Europeans had charted the Nile
   from its source, the courses of the Niger, Congo and Zambezi Rivers had
   been traced, and the world now realized the vast resources of Africa.

   However, on the eve of the New Imperialist scramble for Africa, only
   ten percent of the continent was under the control of Western nations.
   In 1875, the most important holdings were Algeria, whose conquest by
   France had started in the 1830s — despite Abd al-Qadir's strong
   resistance and the Kabyles' rebellion in the 1870s; the Cape Colony,
   held by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and Angola,
   held by Portugal.

   Technological advancement facilitated overseas expansionism.
   Industrialization brought about rapid advancements in transportation
   and communication, especially in the forms of steam navigation,
   railroads, and telegraphs. Medical advances also were important,
   especially medicines for tropical diseases. The development of quinine,
   an effective treatment for malaria, enabled vast expanses of the
   tropics to be penetrated.

Causes of the scramble

Africa and global markets

   European claims in Africa, 1913
   Enlarge
   European claims in Africa, 1913

   Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely
   untouched by "informal imperialism" and "civilization", was also
   attractive to Europe's ruling elites for economic and racial 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 (1873-1896), Africa offered Britain, Germany,
   France, and other countries an open market that would garner it a trade
   surplus: a market that bought more from the metropole than it sold
   overall. Britain, like most other industrial countries, had long since
   begun to run an unfavorable balance of trade (which was increasingly
   offset, however, by the income from overseas investments).

   As Britain developed into the world's first post-industrial nation,
   financial services became an increasingly important sector of its
   economy. Invisible financial exports, as mentioned, kept Britain out of
   the red, especially capital investments outside Europe, particularly to
   the developing and open markets in Africa, predominantly white settler
   colonies, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

   In addition, surplus capital was often more profitably invested
   overseas, where cheap labor, limited competition, and abundant raw
   materials made a greater premium possible. Another inducement to
   imperialism, of course, arose from the demand for raw materials
   unavailable in Europe, especially copper, cotton, rubber, tea, and tin,
   to which European consumers had grown accustomed and upon which
   European industry had grown dependent.

   However, in Africa — exclusive of what would become the Union of South
   Africa in 1909 — the amount of capital investment by Europeans was
   relatively small, compared to other continents, before and after the
   1884-85 Berlin Conference. Consequently, the companies involved in
   tropical African commerce were relatively small, apart from Cecil
   Rhodes' De Beers Mining Company, who had carved out Rhodesia for
   himself, as Léopold II would exploit the Congo Free State. These
   observations might detract from the pro-imperialist arguments of
   colonial lobbies such as the Alldeutscher Verband, Francesco Crispi or
   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. However, according to the classic thesis
   of John A. Hobson, exposed in Imperialism (1902), which would influence
   authors such as Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
   (1916), Trotsky or Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism
   (1951), this shrinking of continental markets was a main factor of the
   global New Imperialism period. Later historians have noted that such
   statistics only obscured the fact that formal control of tropical
   Africa had great strategic value in an era of imperial rivalry, while
   the Suez Canal has remained a strategic location. The 1886
   Witwatersrand Gold Rush, which lead to the foundation of Johannesburg
   and was a major factor of the Second Boer War in 1899, accounted for
   the "conjunction of the superfluous money and of the superfluous
   manpower, which gave themselves their hand to quit together the
   country", which is in itself, according to Hannah Arendt, the new
   element of the imperialist era.

Strategic rivalry

   Poster for the 1906 Colonial Exhibition in Marseilles (France).
   Enlarge
   Poster for the 1906 Colonial Exhibition in Marseilles (France).

   While tropical Africa was not a large zone of investment, other regions
   overseas were. The vast interior — between the gold- and diamond-rich
   Southern Africa and Egypt, had, however, key strategic value in
   securing the flow of overseas trade. Britain was thus under intense
   political pressure, especially among supporters of the Conservative
   Party, to secure lucrative markets such as British Raj India, Qing
   Dynasty China, and Latin America from encroaching rivals. Thus,
   securing the key waterway between East and West — the Suez Canal— was
   crucial. The rivalry between the UK, France, Germany and the other
   European powers account for a large part of the colonization. Thus,
   while Germany, which had been unified under Prussia's rule only after
   the 1866 Battle of Sadowa and the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, was hardly
   a colonial power before the New Imperialism period, it would eagerly
   participate in the race. A rising industrial power close on the heels
   of Great Britain, it hadn't yet had the chance to control oversea
   territories, mainly due to its late unification, its fragmentation in
   various states, and its absence of experience in modern navigation.
   This would change under Bismarck's leadership, who implemented the
   Weltpolitik (World Policy) and, after putting in place the bases of
   France's isolation with the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary and then
   the 1882 Triple Alliance with Italy, called for the 1884-85 Berlin
   Conference which set the rules of effective control of a foreign
   territory. 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 Great
   Britain. By 1914, they had given Germany the second largest naval force
   in the world (roughly 40% smaller than the Royal Navy). According to
   von Tirpitz, this aggressive naval policy was supported by the National
   Liberal Party rather than by the conservatives, thus demonstrating that
   the main supports of the European nation states' imperialism were the
   rising bourgeoisie classes.

Bismarck's Weltpolitik

   Behanzin, eleventh king of Dahomey in 1894, year of its conquest by
   France.
   Enlarge
   Behanzin, eleventh king of Dahomey in 1894, year of its conquest by
   France.

   Germany began its world expansion in the 1880s under Bismarck's
   leadership, encouraged by the national bourgeoisie. Some of them,
   claiming themselves of Friedrich List's thought, advocated expansion in
   the Philippines and in Timor, other proposed to set themselves in
   Formosa (modern Taiwan), etc. In the end of the 1870s, these isolated
   voices began to be relayed by a real imperialist policy, known as the
   Weltpolitik ("World Policy"), which was backed by mercantilist thesis.
   In 1881, Hübbe-Schleiden, a lawyer, published Deutsche Kolonisation,
   according to which the "development of national consciousness demanded
   an independent oversea 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.

   Germany thus became the third largest colonial power in Africa,
   acquiring an overall empire of 2.6 million square kilometers and 14
   million colonial subjects, mostly in its African possessions (Southwest
   Africa, Togoland, the Cameroons, and Tanganyika). The scramble for
   Africa led Bismarck to propose the 1884-85 Berlin Conference. Following
   the 1904 Entente cordiale between France and the UK, Germany tried to
   test the alliance 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 others territories, and then to the
   1911 Agadir Crisis. Along with the 1898 Fashoda Incident between France
   and the UK, this succession of international crisis proves the
   bitterness of the struggle between the various imperialisms, which
   ultimately led to World War I.

The clash of rival imperialisms

   Francesco Crispi, Italian prime minister (1887-1891;1893-96). Crispi
   opposed himself to Radical Felice Cavallotti over the Triple Alliance
   and the abandon of the Eritrean colony. He resigned after the 1896
   defeat at Adowa during the First Italo-Abyssinian War.
   Enlarge
   Francesco Crispi, Italian prime minister (1887-1891;1893-96). Crispi
   opposed himself to Radical Felice Cavallotti over the Triple Alliance
   and the abandon of the Eritrean colony. He resigned after the 1896
   defeat at Adowa during the First Italo-Abyssinian War.

   While de Brazza was exploring the Kongo Kingdom for France, Stanley
   also explored it in the early 1880s on behalf of Léopold II of Belgium,
   who would have his personal Congo Free State ( See below).

   France occupied Tunisia in May 1881 (and Guinea in 1884), which partly
   convinced Italy to adhere in 1882 to the German-Austrian Dual Alliance,
   thus forming the Triple Alliance. The same year, Great Britain occupied
   the nominally Ottoman Egypt, which in turn ruled over the Sudan and
   parts of Somalia. In 1870 and 1882, Italy took possession of the first
   parts of Eritrea, while Germany declared Togoland, the Cameroons and
   South West Africa to be under its protection in 1884. French West
   Africa (AOF) was founded in 1895, and French Equatorial Africa (AEF) in
   1910.

   Italy continued its conquest to gain its " place in the sun". Following
   the defeat of the First Italo-Abyssinian War (1895-96), it acquired
   Somaliland in 1899-90 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). Enrico Corradini, who fully
   supported the war, and later merged his group in the early fascist
   party (PNF), developed in 1919 the concept of Proletarian Nationalism,
   supposed to legitimize Italy's imperialism by a surprising 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
   realized, nationalism must insist firmly on this truth: Italy is,
   materially and morally, a proletarian nation." The Second
   Italo-Abyssinian War (1935-36), ordered by Mussolini, would actually be
   one of the last colonial wars (that is, intended to colonize a foreign
   country, opposed to wars of national liberation), occupying Ethiopia
   for 5 years, which had remained the last African independent territory.
   The Spanish Civil War, marking for some the beginning of the European
   Civil War, would begin in 1936.

   On the other hand, the British abandoned their splendid isolation in
   1902 with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which would enable the Empire of
   Japan to be victorious during the war against Russia (1904-05). The UK
   then signed the Entente cordiale with France in 1904, and, in 1907, the
   Triple Entente which included Russia, thus pitted against the Triple
   Alliance which Bismarck had patiently made up.

The American Colonization Society and the foundation of Liberia

   Even the United States took part, marginally, in this enterprise,
   through the American Colonization Society (ACS), established in 1816 by
   Robert Finley. The ACS offered emigration to Liberia ("Land of the
   Free"), a colony founded in 1820, to free black slaves; emancipated
   slave Lott Cary actually became the first American Baptist missionary
   in Africa. This colonization attempt was resisted by the native people.
   James Monroe, first president of the American Colonization Society and
   US president (1817-1825). He invented the Monroe Doctrine, base of the
   US isolationism during the 19th century. Enlarge
   James Monroe, first president of the American Colonization Society and
   US president (1817-1825). He invented the Monroe Doctrine, base of the
   US isolationism during the 19th century.

   Led by Southerners, the American Colonization Society's first president
   was James Monroe, from Virginia, who became the fifth president of the
   United States from 1817 to 1825. Thus, one of the main proponents of
   American colonization of Africa was the same man who proclaimed, in his
   1823 State of the Union address, the US opinion that European powers
   should no longer colonize the Americas or interfere with the affairs of
   sovereign nations located in the Americas. In return, the US planned to
   stay neutral in wars between European powers and in wars between a
   European power and its colonies. However, if these latter type of wars
   were to occur in the Americas, the U.S. would view such action as
   hostile toward itself. This famous statement became known as the Monroe
   Doctrine and was the base of the US' isolationism during the 19th
   century.

   Although the Liberia colony never became quite as big as envisaged, it
   was only the first step in the American colonization of Africa,
   according to its early proponents. Thus, Jehudi Ashmun, an early leader
   of the ACS, envisioned an American empire in Africa. Between 1825 and
   1826, he took steps to lease, annex, or buy tribal lands along the
   coast and along major rivers leading inland. Like his predecessor Lt.
   Robert Stockton, who in 1821 established the site for Monrovia by
   "persuading" a local chief referred to as "King Peter" to sell Cape
   Montserado (or Mesurado) by pointing a pistol at his head, Ashmun was
   prepared to use force to extend the colony's territory. In a May 1825
   treaty, King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return
   for 500 bars of tobacco, three barrels of rum, five casks of powder,
   five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other
   items. In March 1825, the ACS began a quarterly, The African Repository
   and Colonial Journal, edited by Rev. Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797-1872),
   who headed the Society until 1844. Conceived as the Society's
   propaganda organ, the Repository promoted both colonization and
   Liberia.

   The Society controlled the colony of Liberia until 1847 when, under the
   perception that the British might annex the settlement, Liberia was
   proclaimed a free and independent state, thus becoming the first
   African decolonised state. By 1867, the Society had sent more than
   13,000 emigrants. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), when many
   blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had
   waned. During its later years the society focused on educational and
   missionary efforts in Liberia rather than further emigration.

A succession of international crises leading to World War I

The colonization of the Kongo Empire (early 1880s)

   Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in his version of "native" dress,
   photographed by Félix Nadar.
   Enlarge
   Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in his version of "native" dress,
   photographed by Félix Nadar.

   David Livingstone's explorations, carried on by Henry Morton Stanley,
   galvanized the European nations into action. But at first, his ideas
   found little support, except from Léopold II of Belgium, who in 1876
   had organized the International African Association. From 1879 to 1884,
   Stanley was secretly sent by Léopold II to the Congo region, where he
   made treaties with several African chiefs and by 1882 obtained over
   900,000 square miles (2,300,000 km²) of territory, the Congo Free
   State. Léopold II, who personally owned the colony starting in 1885 and
   exploited it for ivory and rubber, would impose such a terror regime on
   the colonized people that Belgium decided to annex it in 1908.
   Including mass killings and slave labour, the terror had made between 3
   to 22 million victims. This prompted Belgium to end Leopold II's rule,
   under influence from the Congo Reform Association, and to annex the
   Congo in 1908 as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.

   While Stanley was exploring Congo on behalf of Léopold II of Belgium,
   the French marine officer Pierre de Brazza traveled into the western
   Congo basin and raised the French flag over the newly founded
   Brazzaville in 1881, thus occuping 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 Great Britain on February 26,
   1884 to block off the Congo Society's access to the Atlantic.

The Suez Canal

   Nott's and Gliddon's Indigenous races of the earth (1857) used
   misleading imagery to suggest that "Negroes" ranked between whites and
   chimpanzees. Note the different angles at which the "white" and "negro"
   skulls are positioned. Such works were instrumental in the legitimation
   of colonialism.
   Enlarge
   Nott's and Gliddon's Indigenous races of the earth (1857) used
   misleading imagery to suggest that " Negroes" ranked between whites and
   chimpanzees. Note the different angles at which the "white" and "negro"
   skulls are positioned. Such works were instrumental in the legitimation
   of colonialism.

   As a result, the important developments were taking place in the Nile
   valley. Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained concessions from Isma'il
   Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, in 1854-56, to build the Suez Canal. During
   the decade of work, over 1.5 million Egyptians were forced to work on
   the canal, 125,000 of whom perished due to malnutrition, fatigue and
   disease, especially cholera. Shortly before its completion in 1869,
   Isma'il Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, borrowed enormous sums from French
   and English 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 the Prime Minister of the
   United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli, who sought to give his country
   practical control in the management of this strategic waterway. When
   Isma'il Pasha repudiated Egypt's foreign debt in 1879, Britain and
   France assumed joint financial control over the country, forcing the
   Egyptian ruler to abdicate. The Egyptian ruling classes did not relish
   foreign intervention. The Urabi Revolt broke out against the Khedive
   and European influence in 1882, a year after the Mahdist revolt.
   Muhammad Ahmad, who had proclaimed himself the Mahdi, redeemer of
   Islam, in 1881, led the rebellion and was defeated only by Kitchener in
   1898. Britain then assumed responsibility for the administration of the
   country.

The 1884-85 Berlin Conference

   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 Africa 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 occupation of Egypt and South Africa

   Boer women and children in a concentration camp during the Second Boer
   War (1899-1902).
   Enlarge
   Boer women and children in a concentration camp during the Second Boer
   War (1899-1902).

   Britain's occupations of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a
   preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River. Egypt was
   occupied by British forces in 1882 (although not formally declared a
   protectorate until 1914, and never a colony proper); Sudan, Nigeria,
   Kenya and Uganda were subjugated in the 1890s and early 1900s; 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. In 1877, Theophilus Shepstone annexed the South
   African Republic (or Transvaal — independent from 1857 to 1877) for the
   British. The UK consolidated its power over most of the colonies of
   South Africa in 1879 after the Anglo-Zulu War. The Boers protested and
   in December 1880 they revolted, leading to the First Boer War
   (1880-1881). The head of the British government Gladstone ( Liberal)
   signed a peace treaty on March 23, 1881, giving self-government to the
   Boers in the Transvaal. The Second Boer War was fought between 1899 to
   1902; the independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and of
   the South African Republic (Transvaal) were this time defeated and
   absorbed into the British empire.

The 1898 Fashoda Incident

   The 1898 Fashoda Incident was one of the most crucial conflicts on
   Europe's way of consolidating holdings in the continent. It brought
   Britain and France to the verge of war but ended in a major strategic
   victory for Britain, and provided the basis for the 1904 Entente
   Cordiale between the two rival countries. It stemmed from battles over
   control of the Nile headwaters, which caused Britain to expand in the
   Sudan.
   Jules Ferry, French Republican who, as prime minister, directed the
   negotiations which led to the establishment of a protectorate in Tunis
   (1881), prepared the December 17, 1885 treaty for the occupation of
   Madagascar; directed the exploration of the Congo and of the Niger
   region; and organized the conquest of Indochina. He resigned after the
   1885 Tonkin incident. Enlarge
   Jules Ferry, French Republican who, as prime minister, directed the
   negotiations which led to the establishment of a protectorate in Tunis
   (1881), prepared the December 17, 1885 treaty for the occupation of
   Madagascar; directed the exploration of the Congo and of the Niger
   region; and organized the conquest of Indochina. He resigned after the
   1885 Tonkin incident.

   The French thrust into the African interior was mainly from West Africa
   (modern day Senegal) eastward, through the Sahel along the southern
   border of the Sahara, a territory covering modern day Senegal, Mali,
   Niger, and Chad. Their ultimate aim was to have an uninterrupted link
   between the Niger River and 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. Sudan (which in those days included modern day Uganda) was
   obviously 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 by rail the Suez Canal to the
   mineral-rich Southern part of the continent. Though hampered by German
   occupation of Tanganyika until the end of World War I, Rhodes
   successfully lobbied on behalf of such a sprawling East African empire.

   If one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes' 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.

The Moroccan crisis

   Although the 1884-85 Berlin Conference had set the rules for the
   scramble for Africa, it hadn't weakened the rival imperialisms. The
   1898 Fashoda Incident, which had seen France and the UK on the brink of
   war, ultimately led to the signature of the 1904 Entente cordiale,
   which reversed the influence of the various European powers. As a
   result, the new German power decided to test the solidity of the
   influence, using the contested territory of Morocco as a battlefield.

   Thus, on March 31, 1905, the Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Tangiers and
   made a speech in favour 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 to 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,
   Russia, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. The Germans eventually accepted an
   agreement, signed on May 31, 1906, where 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 July 1, 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 Algerisas
   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 subsequently established a full protectorate over Morocco (
   March 30, 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 which would
   culminate in World War I.

The colonial encounter

The production of cash crops

   Capitalism, an economic system in which capital, or wealth, is put to
   work to produce more capital, revolutionized traditional economies,
   inducing social changes and political consequences that revolutionized
   African and Asian societies. Maximizing production and minimizing cost
   did not necessarily coincide with traditional, seasonal patterns of
   agricultural production. The ethic of wage productivity was thus, in
   many respects, a new concept to supposedly 'idle natives' merely
   accustomed to older patterns of production. Balanced, subsistence-based
   economies shifted to specialization and accumulation of surpluses.
   Tribal states or empires organized along precarious, unwritten cultural
   traditions also shifted to a division of labor based on legal
   protection of land and labor — once inalienable, but now commodities to
   be bought, sold, or traded.

The colonial consciousness and colonial exhibitions

   Pygmies and a European explorer. Some pygmies would be exposed in human
   zoos, such as Ota Benga displayed by eugenicist Madison Grant in the
   Bronx Zoo.
   Enlarge
   Pygmies and a European explorer. Some pygmies would be exposed in human
   zoos, such as Ota Benga displayed by eugenicist Madison Grant in the
   Bronx Zoo.

The "colonial lobby"

   In its early stages, imperialism was mainly the act of individual
   explorers and some adventurous merchantmen. The metropoles were a long
   way from approving without any dissent the expensives adventures
   carried out abroad, and various important political leaders opposed
   themselves to the colonization in its first years. Thus, William
   Gladstone ( Liberal), British premier between 1868–1874, 1880–1885,
   1886 and 1892–1894, opposed it. However, during his second ministry, he
   could not resist the colonial lobby, 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 favour jingoism: the imperialists had
   become the "parasites of patriotism" ( Hobson). In France, then Radical
   politician Georges Clemenceau also adamantly opposed himself to it: he
   thought colonization 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 1871 Treaty of
   Frankfurt. Clemenceau actually made Jules Ferry's cabinet fall after
   the 1885 Tonkin disaster. According to Hannah Arendt's classic The
   Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), this unlimited expansion of national
   sovereignty on oversea 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
   colonized people, as they may be considered as "citizens" of the
   nation-state, and the imperialist drives to cynically exploit
   populations deemed inferior began to surface. Some rare voices in the
   metropoles opposed what they saw as unnecessary evils of the colonial
   administration, left to itself and described in Joseph Conrad's Heart
   of Darkness (1899) — contemporary of Kipling's The White Man's Burden —
   or in Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (1932).

   Thus, colonial lobbies were progressively set up to legitimize the
   Scramble for Africa and other expensives oversea adventures. In
   Germany, in France, in Britain, the bourgeoisie began to claim strong
   oversea policies to insure the market's growth. In 1916, Lenin would
   publish his famous Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism to
   explain this phenomenon. Even in lesser powers, voices like Corradini
   began to claim a "place in the sun" for so-called "proletarian
   nations", bolstering nationalism and militarism in an early prototype
   of fascism.

Colonial propaganda and jingoism

   However, by the end of World War I, the colonized empires had become
   very popular almost everywhere: public opinion had been convinced of
   the needs of a colonial empire, although many 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
   scientifics. 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 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, Anvers, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York, Warsaw,
   etc., with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors attending each exhibition.
   Tuaregs were exhibited after the French conquest of Timbuktu
   (discovered by René Caillé, disguised as a Muslim, in 1828, who thus
   won 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 organize 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, approximatively
   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 pigmy 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
   were closer to apes than were Europeans.

   Such colonial exhibitions, which include the 1924 British Empire
   Exhibition and the successful 1931 Paris Exposition coloniale, were
   doubtlessly a key element of the colonisation project and legitimized
   the ruthless Scramble for Africa, in the same way that the popular
   comic-strip The Adventures of Tintin, full of clichés, were obviously
   carrier of an ethnocentric and racist ideology which was the condition
   of the masses' consent to the imperialist phenomenon. Hergé's work
   attained summits with Tintin in the Congo (1930-31) or The Broken Ear
   (1935).

   While comic-strips played the same role as westerns to legitimize the
   Indian Wars in the United States, colonial exhibitions were both
   popular and scientific, being an interface between the crowds and
   serious scientific research. Thus, anthropologists such as Madison
   Grant or Alexis Carrel built their pseudo-scientific racism, inspired
   by Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55).
   Human zoos provided both a real-size laboratory for these racial
   hypothesis and a demonstration of their validity: by labelling Ota
   Benga as the "missing link" between apes and Europeans, as was done in
   the Bronx Zoo, social darwinism and the pseudo-hierarchy of races,
   grounded in the biologization of the notion of "race", were
   simultaneously "proved", and the layman could observe this "scientific
   truth".

   Anthropology, the daughter of colonisation, participated in this
   so-called scientific racism based on social darwinism by supporting,
   along with social positivism and scientism, the claims of the
   superiority of the Western civilization over " primitive cultures".
   However, the discovery of ancient cultures would dialectically lead
   anthropology to criticize itself and reevalue the importance of foreign
   cultures. Thus, the 1897 Punitive Expedition led by the British Admiral
   Harry Rawson captured, burned, and looted the city of Benin,
   incidentally bringing to an end the highly sophisticated West African
   Kingdom of Benin. However, the sack of Benin distributed the famous
   Benin bronzes and other works of art into the European art market, as
   the British Admiralty auctioned off the confiscated patrimony to defray
   costs of the Expedition. Most of the great Benin bronzes went first to
   purchasers in Germany, though a sizable group remain in the British
   Museum. The Benin bronzes then catalyzed the beginnings of a long
   reassessment of the value of West African culture, which had strong
   influences on the formation of modernism.

   Several contemporary studies have thus focused on the construction of
   the racist discourse in the 19th century and its propaganda as a
   precondition of the colonization project and of the Scramble of Africa,
   made with total disconcern for the local population, as examplified by
   Stanley, according to whom "the savage only respects force, power,
   boldness, and decision." Anthropology, which was related to
   criminology, thrived on these explorations, as had geography before
   them and ethnology — which, along with Claude Lévi-Strauss' studies,
   would theorize the ethnocentric illusion — afterwards. According to
   several historians, the formulation of this racist discourse and
   practices would also be a precondition of " state racism" ( Michel
   Foucault) as incarnated by the Holocaust (see also Olivier LeCour
   Grandmaison's description of the conquest of Algeria and Sven
   Lindqvist, as well as Hannah Arendt). The invention of concentration
   camps during the Second Boer War would also be an innovation used by
   the Third Reich.

The extermination of the Namaka and the Herero

   A 19th century caricature of the "Hottentot Venus". Saartje Baartman, a
   Namaka woman, was exhibited naked and in a cage as a sideshow
   attraction in England, fueling the African Association's indignation.
   After her death, her genitals were dissected and cast in wax. Nelson
   Mandela formally requested France to return her remains, which had been
   kept at the Parisian Musée de l'Homme until 1974.
   Enlarge
   A 19th century caricature of the " Hottentot Venus". Saartje Baartman,
   a Namaka woman, was exhibited naked and in a cage as a sideshow
   attraction in England, fueling the African Association's indignation.
   After her death, her genitals were dissected and cast in wax. Nelson
   Mandela formally requested France to return her remains, which had been
   kept at the Parisian Musée de l'Homme until 1974.
   Surviving Herero, emaciated, after their escape through the Omaheke
   desert.
   Enlarge
   Surviving Herero, emaciated, after their escape through the Omaheke
   desert.

   In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report recognized Germany's turn
   of the century attempt to exterminate the Herero and Namaqua peoples of
   South-West Africa as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the
   20th century. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total
   Herero population), and 10,000 Namaqua (50 percent of the total Namaqua
   population) were killed between 1904 and 1907. Characteristic of this
   genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of wells for the
   Herero and Namaqua population who were trapped in the Namib Desert.

Conclusions

   During the New Imperialism period, by the end of the century, Europe
   added almost 9 million 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, to 15% for
   France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and only 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 most of their empire was covered by desert.

   The political imperialism followed the economic expansion, with the
   "colonial lobbies" bolstering chauvinism and jingoism at each crisis in
   order to legitimize the colonial enterprise. The tensions between the
   imperial powers led to a succession of crisis, which finally exploded
   in August 1914, when previous rivalries and alliances created a domino
   situation that drew the major European nations into the war.
   Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia to avenge the murder by Serbian agents
   of Austrian crown prince Francis Ferdinand, Russia would mobilize to
   assist its slav brothers in 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 realize the well prepared Schlieffen Plan to
   invade France and quickly knock her 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 Great 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 the First World War. 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 Western Pacific, setting the stage for
   the Second Sino-Japanese War (starting in 1937) and eventually the
   Second World War.

African colonies listed by colonizing power

Belgium

          Congo Free State and Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of
          Congo)

France

          Algeria
          Tunisia
          Morocco
          French West Africa

                Mauritania
                Senegal
                French Sudan (now Mali)
                Guinea
                Côte d'Ivoire
                Niger
                Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso)
                Dahomey (now Benin).

          French Equatorial Africa

                Gabon
                Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo)
                Oubangi-Chari (now the Central African Republic)
                Chad

          French Somaliland (now Djibouti)
          Madagascar
          Comoros

Germany

          German Kamerun
          German East Africa (now Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania)
          German South-West Africa (now Namibia)
          German Togoland

Italy

          Italian North Africa (now Libya)
          Eritrea
          Italian Somaliland (now Somalia)

Portugal

          Angola
          Portuguese Cabinda
          Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique)
          Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau)
          Cape Verde Islands
          São Tomé and Príncipe

Spain

          Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara, composed of:)

                Río de Oro
                Saguia el-Hamra

          Spanish Morocco

                Ceuta
                Melilla
                Tarfaya Strip
                Ifni

          Rio Muni (now part of Equatorial Guinea)

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.

          Egypt
          Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (now Sudan)
          British East Africa

                Kenya
                Uganda

          British Somaliland
          Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
          Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)
          Bechuanaland (now Botswana)
          Orange Free State
          British South Africa
          The Gambia
          Sierra Leone
          Nigeria
          British Gold Coast (now Ghana)
          Nyasaland (now Malawi)

Independent states

          Liberia, founded by the United States' American Colonization
          Society in 1847
          Ethiopia (Abyssinia), had its borders re-drawn with Italian
          Eritrea and French Somaliland (modern Djibouti), briefly
          occupied by Italy from 1936-41 during World War II's Abyssinia
          Crisis

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
