SCRAMBLE OF AFRICA

I

INTRODUCTION

Scramble for Africa, phrase used to describe the sometimes frenzied claiming of African territory by half a dozen European countries that resulted in nearly all of Africa becoming part of Europe’s colonial empires. The Scramble began slowly in the 1870s, reached its peak in the late 1880s and 1890s, and tapered off over the first decade of the 20th century. Between 1885 and 1900, European powers were, at times, racing each other to stake claims in Africa. Most Africans resisted being taken over and ruled by foreigners. Thus, much of the latter part of the Scramble involved European armies using modern weapons to crush opposition and install authority over the continent’s inhabitants.

By the mid-19th century Europeans had only claimed selected areas of Africa, mainly along the coasts. High death rates from malaria and yellow fever kept Europeans from bringing armies and conquering large areas of Africa; nor were they inclined to do so in this period. Aware of the cost of maintaining colonies, the most powerful European nations preferred either to keep trade open to all, relying on their commercial advantage, or to reserve small, productive areas for the trade of their own citizens. Britain possessed its Cape Colony, strategically located at the southern tip of Africa. It also protected a few West African commercial enclaves and held a colony of Sierra Leone, which was populated by descendants of slaves rescued from the Atlantic slave trade. France had annexed Algeria in 1834 and protected trade along the Sénégal River and at two ports east of the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). It also held an outpost at Gabon in west central Africa. Portugal claimed territory in Angola and Mozambique. The foreign power with the largest African territory was the weakening Ottoman Empire, which clung to lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea from Tunisia through Egypt, up the Nile, and down the west coast of the Red Sea.

Still, through the 1870s Africans controlled 90 percent of the continent. The largest African states were Muslim—the growing Mahdist state of the Sudan, the Mandinka state of Samory Touré and the Tukolor Empire along the upper Niger River, and the Sokoto caliphate east of the middle Niger. East Africa was dominated by the slave and ivory trade, with the Swahili-Arab sultanate of Zanzibar competing with African warlords well into the interior. Beyond British-controlled areas in southern Africa were several African states and two republics of the Afrikaners (descendants of 17th-century Dutch settlers).

On the eve of the Scramble, Western Europe was a century into the Industrial Revolution and clearly the most powerful and technologically advanced portion of the globe. Firearm, transportation, and communications technologies were developing at an astonishing pace, and national pride was growing in each European country. Furthermore, advances in medicine enabled Europeans to spend longer periods in the tropics free of illness. Industrial production was reaching such high levels that Europeans worried about over-production and finding consumers for all the goods that European industries were turning out. An economic downturn in the early 1870s brought some Europeans to look toward the nonindustrial world. They viewed these countries as both markets for their products and as suppliers of natural resources to fuel the industries. In addition, the strongest European countries began fearing what would happen to the balance of power if their rivals acquired colonies in Africa. National pride was at stake. So was Christianity: famous Scottish missionary/explorer David Livingstone had whet the public appetite for a Christian “civilizing” mission in this continent full of non-Christians and torn by slave trading. Livingstone’s death in the wilds of Africa in 1873 called attention again to the cause.

All of this resulted in the Scramble for Africa. It began with slow territorial acquisition through the early 1880s, followed by a competitive rush to claim African lands after the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885). The final stage of the Scramble was characterized by slower occupation of territories and overcoming of African resistance through the first decade of the 20th century. By 1912 all of Africa was in European hands except Liberia and Ethiopia. The period of colonial rule that followed brought social, political, and economic change across the continent. The African colonies would only slowly gain their independence, most doing so between 1955 and 1965. Some did not achieve self-rule or majority rule until the 1980s or 1990s.

II

FIRST STEPS (1876-1884)

European competition over African territory in the 1870s heightened once Belgian king Leopold II got involved. Merchants under French government protection had been advancing up the Sénégal River with an eye toward connecting that river with the Niger by rail. This connection would open a vast market in West Africa’s interior. At the same time, British palm oil merchants were pushing up the Niger River by steamer, and Anglo-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley was journeying down the Congo River. In his journeys, Stanley had discovered that the river’s upper reaches were open to trade. However, it took Leopold to raise the stakes. For 20 years the wealthy ruler had dreamt of creating a Belgian colonial empire. In 1876 he established the International African Association, an organization that had stated scientific and humanitarian goals but was truly a front to further Leopold’s imperial design. Then, in 1879, when Britain ignored Stanley’s offer to open Central Africa and funnel its trade to the mouth of the Congo, Leopold employed Stanley to do just that. By 1880 the explorer was back in the lower Congo, building road and river access to connect the Atlantic Ocean with Stanley Falls, located about 2300 km (about 1400 mi) upstream. Across the river in the early 1880s, French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was exploring and negotiating treaties for France, forcing Stanley to obtain treaties for Leopold. Their claims appeared to overlap near the mouth of the Congo, a land area claimed by Portugal as well.

Events in North Africa raised tensions further. In 1881, France occupied Tunisia to prevent Italy from gaining land on Algeria’s border. A year later Britain occupied the bankrupt Ottoman possession of Egypt to guarantee repayment of its huge foreign debt. France, which also had a significant financial stake in Egypt and had shared “dual control” of Egypt’s finances with Britain since the mid-1870s, was left without influence. Neither France nor Germany approved of Britain taking over Egypt, but each expressed approval to gain British support for its own colonial actions. It was fast becoming a game of European diplomatic wrangling with African territories as pawns.

III

THE SCRAMBLING BEGINS (1884-1891)

While Britain, France, and Leopold were advancing their aims in Africa, Europe’s fastest-rising military and industrial power, Germany, was biding its time. Its leader, Otto von Bismarck, appeared content to allow the others to expend diplomatic energy on African initiatives while Germany concerned itself with domestic issues. However, as pressures mounted from German merchants wanting a share of any potential African market, Bismarck realized German interests might best be served by his taking control of the diplomatic struggles involving Africa. Thus, in the summer of 1884 Bismarck declared German protectorates over three African territories—Togoland (comprising present-day Togo and eastern Ghana), Cameroon, and South-West Africa (present-day Namibia). Then, he joined France in calling for a conference of colonial powers in Berlin. The stated goals of the conference were to be the settling of Congo claims between Britain, France, and Portugal, and of Anglo-French rivalries along the Niger River. In addition, however, European powers recognized that rules and rationalizations were needed for the seizing of African territories, especially for seizures that held potential for European conflict.

The Berlin West Africa Conference (November 1884-February 1885) involved representatives of 14 European countries and the United States. The Ottoman Empire, facing the loss of territory on all sides, was not represented at the conference. Much of the conference work took place outside Berlin, as envoys moved between London, Paris, and Brussels negotiating which European power could rightfully claim lands inhabited by Africans. By the time the conference ended, Leopold had secured ownership of the Congo Free State, a state 50 times the size of Belgium; France saw acceptance of its claims to French Congo; Portugal lost most of its Congo claims; and European powers recognized Germany’s new protectorates. (The day following the conference, Bismarck declared another protectorate in East Africa.) The European nations declared free trade along the Congo and free navigation on the Niger, stated lofty goals as their mission in African colonies, and set out rules for additional territorial grabs. The most significant of these rules stated that colonial powers were obligated to notify each other when they claimed African territory. Further, subsequent “effective occupation” of the claimed area was necessary for the claim to remain valid. Through it all, as Europeans negotiated their rights to African territory, not a single African was present. Once the conference was over, it was clear that a European Scramble for African territories was underway.

Southern Africa became a much more important element in the Scramble a year after the Berlin Conference. At that time, word spread of the world’s largest known deposits of gold in the Afrikaner-controlled South African Republic (or Transvaal). Western miners and industrialists flocked into southern Africa to profit. Among those involved in finance and operation of the mines was British magnate Cecil Rhodes, a leader of diamond mining in the Cape Colony. Rhodes was a believer in the “civilizing” mission of British colonialism—he dreamed of a British African empire stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo, Egypt. Thus, hoping to find still more gold north of Transvaal in 1890, he led a “pioneer column” of settlers north. These prospectors overcame African opposition and carved out the new British colonies of Southern and Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia).

Most European powers were not content to let a chance at claiming further territory slip. France may have had the grandest territorial desires of any nation. Its major advances were eastward from the Sénégal River and down the Niger from its headwaters. French armies slowly overcame opposition from the powerful Tukolor Empire and advanced on the ancient city of Tombouctou (Timbuktu). Italy, too, laid claim to Eritrea, on the Red Sea, and then announced a protectorate over a large portion of Somaliland along the Indian Ocean.

IV

FINAL STAGES (1891-1912)

The early years of the Scramble were accomplished with minimal bloodshed, but that would not be the case in the 1890s and afterward. Some of the most powerful African states put up strong resistance, requiring Europeans to send in well-armed forces. Massed African armies with outdated weapons defeated European forces on occasion, but more frequently modern weaponry won out, producing some of the most one-sided battles in the history of warfare.

France and Britain speeded their conquests in West Africa. France united footholds on the coast with vast holdings of interior grasslands and desert by the century’s end. The major delay for the French was caused by the Mandinka hero Samory Touré. Touré united peoples around the headwaters of the Niger and Volta rivers and fought a guerrilla war until he was captured and exiled in 1898. The British overcame the Ashanti Kingdom in the Gold Coast by 1896 and established protectorates in western and eastern Nigeria. They also allowed the chartered Royal Niger Company to administer northern Nigeria until the company’s forces encountered the advancing French on the middle Niger and came into conflict with the powerful northern Sokoto caliphate. In 1900 the British government took over the control of the territory of Nigeria from the company. By 1903, Britain had conquered the Sokoto caliphate.

Across the rest of the Sudan and into East Africa, resistance was greater and tensions higher. French forces occupied the rest of the central Sudan. These forces met resistance in present-day Chad from Muslim forces of Rabih al-Zubayr until Rabih was killed in 1900. Britain had its hands full taking the upper Nile because of the large Sudanese state created by the Muslim holy leader, Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi. In 1885 the Mahdi’s forces had taken Khartoum and killed British general Charles George Gordon. By the 1890s the Mahdist state was among the strongest in Africa. The British sent in troops under General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, and in 1898 they met the Mahdist forces at Omdurman, near Khartoum. Kitchener won a decisive victory, killing almost 11,000 Africans and wounding 16,000 while the British forces suffered only 430 casualties. In the battle’s wake, Kitchener learned of a French force at Fashoda, about 600 km (about 400 mi) south of Khartoum, which was claiming French possession of the Upper Nile. The Upper Nile was nominally Egyptian territory, and since Britain occupied Egypt, it had been considered British. However, France claimed that Britain had failed to achieve “effective occupation” in the Upper Nile as required by the Berlin Conference. Kitchener and a contingent of British troops immediately traveled down the Nile for a standoff that brought the countries to the brink of war. However, the French government, struggling with internal political problems, backed down rather than start a war, and Britain took control of the entire Sudan. In the meantime, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, a former slave and ivory trading power, saw much of its mainland territory seized by Britain and Germany. In 1890 the sultanate submitted to a British protectorate over Zanzibar. The British declared a protectorate over Uganda in 1894, over Kenya in 1895, and completed a railroad from the Indian Ocean coast to Lake Victoria in 1901. The only resistance to European takeover that was successful over the long run occurred in Ethiopia. Here the forces of Emperor Menelik II soundly defeated an invading Italian army at the Battle of Ādwa in 1896.

Two events in the early 1900s served to stifle enthusiasm for colonial takeover in Africa. One was the exposure of atrocities in Leopold’s Congo Free State. Here, colonial agents and private companies were forcing Africans to gather raw rubber without payment and killing or maiming those who failed to meet quotas. In the end, international pressure forced Leopold to cede his private colony to Belgium, and in 1908 the Congo Free State became the Belgian Congo. The other event was the Boer War (1899-1902) in southern Africa, which pitted whites against whites. Discovery of gold in the Transvaal in the mid-1880s had brought wealth to the Afrikaner republics in southern Africa. When Afrikaner governments taxed foreigners heavily and stifled foreign profit-taking, British imperialists sought to take over the region. Cecil Rhodes’s 1895 plot to stage a revolt in the Transvaal failed. Tensions between the mighty British government and the small, white-ruled republics escalated until war broke out in 1899. Following early Afrikaner success, the war settled into a brutal guerrilla struggle, putting off ultimate British victory until 1902. In 1910 the various British colonies at Africa’s southern tip were joined into the Union of South Africa, a dominion of Britain.

North Africa was the scene of the Scramble’s final events. After years of rivalry that sometimes verged on open hostilities, Britain and France signed the Entente Cordiale in 1904. This “friendly agreement' quietly gave France a free hand to take Morocco while it officially removed the obsolete Egyptian “dual control” system and left Egypt to Britain. France, Spain, and Germany quarreled over Morocco until 1912, when France and Spain divided the territory. The same year, Italy seized what is now Libya, the last vestige of Ottoman territory in Africa. (The Italians were opposed by Muslim groups in the interior until 1931.)

V

EFFECTS OF THE SCRAMBLE

Africa on the eve of World War I (1914-1918) was nothing like the Africa of 40 years earlier. What had been a largely independent continent with some foreign control of its coasts was now almost entirely in European hands. Britain and France held the lion’s share. The British had almost fulfilled Cecil Rhodes’s dream of an unbroken line of colonies from the Cape to Cairo. Their colonies held promising economic potential, with gold in South Africa and cash crops in East and West Africa. The French controlled huge amounts of territory in North and West Africa, but much was desert and only a few colonies were productive. Germany would lose its African colonies in losing World War I, as would Italy in World War II (1939-1945). Britain and France would give up most of their colonies in the 1950s and 1960s. Spain would remain longer but be a less-significant participant in the colonial picture. Portugal would entrench itself and become, in the mid-1970s, the last European power to begin to relinquish its claims.

The Scramble and its aftermath held great irony. While the conquest was going on, events in Africa were of the greatest importance throughout Europe. European competition for African territory dominated headlines, brought down governments, and nearly drove nations to war. But once the conquest was complete, Africa was largely forgotten and not considered again until the movement for African independence of the 1950s and 1960s.

Effects of the European takeover on Africans were considerable. In the short term, the Scramble obviously led to Africans’ loss of control of their own affairs. But it also brought enormous hardship to most Africans. In addition to the deaths caused by the conquest itself, many Africans died as a result of disrupted lifestyles and movement of people and animals among different disease environments. Africa’s population did not begin to recover from the devastation caused by the Scramble and its aftermath until well into the 20th century. In the long term, the Scramble was part of a larger process of bringing non-Western peoples into the world economy—in most cases as exporters of agricultural products or minerals and importers of manufactured or processed goods. Colonial governments taxed their African subjects and used the revenues to improve the colony’s infrastructure: building roads, bridges, and ports that connected distant locales to the outside world. Meanwhile, institutions to improve people’s lives, such as hospitals and schools, appeared more slowly. Colonial rule also brought elements of Western culture—from the French and English languages and Western political models to Coca-Cola and automobiles. It was in reaction to European rule that Africans developed a sense of nationalism that would help them gain independence in the second half of the 20th century.

For Europeans, the Scramble for Africa helped set the stage for World War I. Competition for African territory raised nationalist feelings and kept relations tense and combative. It also gave Europeans a sense that war was good for “national character” and not so taxing on budgets and manpower. World War I would soon destroy these illusions.