The Scramble for Africa: late 19th century
Africa was colonized as part of a worldwide European project that encompassed all continents.
The world underwent a significant transformation as a result of European colonization and dominance.
Historians contend that King Leopold II of Belgium’s involvement with European powers to secure Belgium’s recognition marked the beginning of the European powers’ hurried imperial invasion of the African continent.
Between 1881 and 1914, during the New Imperialism, there was a scramble for Africa.Â
This lesson will concentrate on the reasons and effects of European colonization of Africa, with a particular emphasis on the Ashanti kingdom, which the British colonized as the Gold Coast and is now the independent nation of Ghana in Africa.
Africa before European colonization
The size and capabilities of Africa as a continent were severely underestimated and oversimplified as a result of the general lack of understanding of the world.
Africa was known for its extensive freedom of movement, democratic systems of government, and everyday ways of living before colonization.
The continent was made up of more flexible communities that were willing to accept outsiders as long as they adhered to their customs, and where the sense of duty and camaraderie extended beyond the boundaries of the nuclear family, rather than closed, reproducing entities with distinct, immutable cultures.
There was great diversity in pre-colonial society; they may be ruled by kingdoms, the state, or neither.
The idea of communalism was generally embraced and put into reality; whereas other items, like livestock, were owned individually, the land was held in common and could not be purchased or sold.
The chiefs and one or more councils oversaw the day-to-day operations of the tribe in those cultures that were not stateless.
Several of the political structures that Europe brought to Africa during its colonization are still in place today.
However, Africa had a wide variety of political structures before colonization, from strong empires to dispersed communities of pastoralists and hunters.
African civilization saw a major shift with the invention of iron tools. Iron tools improved armament, helped communities clear and manage dense woods, plowed fields for cultivation, and generally made life easier.
Africans were able to dwell in greater groups as a result of the iron implements, which allowed them to thrive in their natural habitat and eventually build kingdoms and governments.
Modern civilizations, shared languages, belief and value systems, art, religion, way of life, and culture all emerged from this creation.
The preference for oral tradition in pre-European African societies was another distinctive feature of these cultures. Narratives were passed down orally via the generations.
This puts these stories’ continued existence in jeopardy because some details might be lost to time or conveyed differently.
Before colonization, national borders were also not a major concern. The primary reason European nations battled over African nations was their natural resources.
After many years of existence, African groups were divided along lines that are now recognized as national borders.
Berlin Conference 1884
The “Congo conference,” also known as the meeting of Berlin and British “New” Imperialism, got underway.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismark convened the world’s leading Western countries in 1884 to resolve disputes and clarify the status of Africa, at Portugal’s request.
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (united from 1814–1905), Turkey, and the United States of America were among the nations represented at the time.
With the majority of colonial Africa under their control at the time, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the conference’s main participants out of these fourteen countries.
Within European power politics, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were vying for dominance.
A means of exhibiting national supremacy was the annexation of regions globally, encompassing Africa.
The industrialization that followed the emergence of significant social issues in Europe, such as homelessness, unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation from rural areas, is another factor contributing to European interest in Africa.
The fact that not everyone could be employed by the emerging capitalist enterprises contributed to the development of these social issues.
Settler colonies were established because Europe perceived the colonization of Africa as a chance to acquire a surplus population.
Following this invasion, several European nations believed they could take control of Africa.
Still, there were several disagreements over which European nation would settle in a particular African nation.
As a result, Portugal suggested in 1884 that 14 European nations gather in Berlin to discuss the partition of Africa, even though Africa would not be there.
The conference’s primary goal was to reach a consensus on the mouths and basins of the Congo and Niger Rivers being open to trade and regarded as neutral.
Despite its neutrality, a portion of the Kongo Basin was turned into King Leopold II of Belgium’s kingdom, or private property, during which time more than half of the region’s people perished.
Only the coastal regions of Africa were under European power colonization at the time of the meeting.
The European colonial powers fought for control of the continent’s interior during the Berlin Conference.
The colonial powers negotiated about geometric borders in the interior of the continent during the three months of the conference, which ended on February 26, 1885, ignoring the cultural and linguistic boundaries already set by the Native Indigenous African population.
In the end, Africa was split into fifty irregular countries by a patchwork of geometric borders.
Causes of colonisation
African colonization was primarily carried out for political, religious, and economic reasons.
During this period of colonization, Europe was experiencing an economic slump, and wealthy nations like France, Germany, and Great Britain were suffering financial losses.
Africa appeared to be safe and had a wealth of raw resources that Europe could exploit to generate income.
Europeans could easily purchase goods like oil, ivory, rubber, palm oil, wood, cotton, and gum because Africans provided inexpensive labor.
The advent of the Industrial Revolution increased the relevance of these products.
European rivalries, which have existed since the Hundred Year’s War between Britain and France, also contributed to the colonization of Africa.
These nations got embroiled in a competition to seize additional land on the African continent, which was open to all European nations.
In certain cases, Britain had been successful in stopping the slave trade off the coast of Africa.
However, the situation was different inland; many local leaders were hesitant to give up the use of slaves, and Muslim traders from the East Coast and north of the Sahara continued to trade inland.
Barely a year in the nineteenth century passed without a European expedition reaching Africa.
Rich Englishmen founded the African Association in 1788, which set off a chain reaction of exploration that resulted in a boom in travelogues and the documentation of resources, goods, and markets by travelers for the benefit of affluent donors funding their expeditions.
As colonization spread throughout Africa, morality became a more pressing concern.
The Three C’s: Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization—were intended to be implemented by the Europeans since they were unable to understand the presence of the Muslim Swahili trade.
First, the 19th century saw a Christian revival in Europe.
Barely a year in the nineteenth century passed without a European expedition reaching Africa.
To offer spiritual salvation to the laboring class and their families, missionaries started concentrating on this enormous population.
The Bible was provided for the employees. After seeing significant success, missionaries started to search outside of Europe. There were missions set up throughout Africa.
Despite not acting as direct agents of European imperialism, missionaries helped European governments expand their influence throughout Africa.
Missionaries frequently felt endangered by fighting within Africa as they worked to spread Christianity, introduce Western-style education to Africa, and establish monogamy in African society.
Missionaries therefore urged European governments to step in and provide safety.
Second, to map the African continent and make fresh discoveries, European explorers have been traveling across it for centuries.
Trade would be well-established, as the Suez Canal Company’s construction at Africa’s northeastern tip was finished in 1869.
Finally, Livingstone thought that effective governance and education may lead to civilization.
Livingstone thought that when these three factors were combined, human suffering in Africa would come to an end and the continent would reach the pinnacle of civilization.
Therefore, Africans would be guided by Christian morality, and they would be encouraged to make their items for exchange with Europeans through education and business.
To protect citizens’ civil rights, a legitimate and effective political system was required.
Patterns of colonization: which countries colonized which parts of Africa
By 1900, seven European powers—Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy—had conquered a sizable portion of Africa.
Following their defeat of fragmented and centralized African nations, European powers proceeded to build colonial state structures.
The administrative dominance apparatus known as the colonial state was set up to enable efficient rule and exploitation of the conquered societies.
In part because of their roots in military conquest and the racist ideology of the imperialist enterprise, colonial states were autocratic, bureaucratic institutions.
The French focused on the thriving economies of the Gold Coast, the Lagos Hinterland, and the Niger Delta.
Why were European countries able to colonize Africa so quickly?
Due to rivalry among African leaders, European nations were able to colonize African nations quickly.
Within their tribes, these kings and chiefs were vying with one another to be the wealthiest and most influential.
European leaders would take advantage of the situation during these rivalries and convince other leaders to fight alongside them.
Natural catastrophes were also a major factor in the quick and simple colonization of Africa.
Due to an abrupt drop in rainfall, several parts of Africa experienced a severe drought in 1895.
There were hardly any crops grown, and the ensuing food scarcity killed a great deal of humans and animals.
The locust outbreak decimated the meager crops that were produced.
In addition to this epidemic, sheep and goats were also slaughtered by the cattle disease that erupted in the 1890s.
They were unable to resist European powers as a result of their physical and mental limitations, which resulted in even more animal and human deaths.
With violence and force, European countries could readily seize control of any land source.
They used increasingly potent weaponry to achieve this, and they benefited from the invention of the Maxim gun, a machine gun that was developed in the 1880s.
With its eleven rounds per second rate of fire, this gun was more powerful than anything the African army had. Because European weaponry was not offered to African armies, they were unable to obtain them.
Africans were therefore disadvantaged in the military.
The late 1890s saw the introduction of a new wave of diseases, the first of which was a series of smallpox epidemics.
Because of their prior experiences with similar outbreaks in Europe, the Europeans who were already in Africa had gained immunity to these diseases.
The African population was weakened because the native African population lacked immunity or resistance to these illnesses.
As a result, a sizable portion of the African people either vanished or became too helpless to resist.
Results of colonization
There are positive and negative effects of colonization on Africa.
All of the colonizing nations have comparable practices when it comes to European political behavior in Africa.
Law and Order as well as Peace were the main goals of colonial administrations; these governments lacked the ability and engaged in “divide and rule.” Colonial political systems were anti-democratic.
First of all, popular engagement was strictly prohibited by colonial regimes, and the African populace had little to no influence over political decisions made by the small political elite.
Second, the colonial authority made maintaining peace under the African population a top priority since the African population was not happy with how Europeans imposed their governing system without providing them with adequate representation.
Thirdly, because the majority of colonial administrations were not wealthy, they were unable to properly finance the administration of their territories.
Even though they had to raise the funds for their colonies, they lacked the resources to effectively create and preserve an effective political structure.
This meant that fundamental social services like housing, healthcare, and education as well as basic infrastructure like roads and communication networks could not be provided by colonial governments.
Finally, the application of the “divide and rule” theory resulted in the deliberate implementation of measures that undermined indigenous power structures and networks.
Promoting social growth or transformation received less attention in the colonies due to the lack of income.
Even though social change did not occur in all colonies to the same degree, these colonies all had similar social change features.
First, there was a significant migration of individuals as a result of political and colonial acts.
Migrations in certain places were mostly from one rural region to another. In some locations, there was a migration from rural to urban areas.
People were uprooted as a result of these movements, which affected society and culture.
These migrations put social and cultural norms and values to the test.
It was necessary to modify and perhaps completely forsake long-standing customs to accommodate the new colonial conditions.
Second, and somewhat as a result of the first outcome, families were also uprooted.
For the most part, men abandoned their wives and kids to work in plantations and mines.
Women and teenagers were consequently compelled to assume new roles and learn to live without their spouses and fathers.
The African family structure had been drastically altered by colonization.
Most African societies had extended families (families that go beyond the immediate family) before colonialism, but by the end of the colonial era, many African nations had shifted to nuclear families, which are made up of two adults or parents and their offspring.
Thirdly, as colonization was enforced, urbanization developed. In many African colonies during colonialism, urbanization happened rather quickly.
There were towns and minor cities in several pre-colonial African nations. But even in these civilizations, the majority of people lived on homesteads or in rural settlements and were employed in agriculture.
Living in an urban environment changed people’s lifestyles, economic pursuits, and vocations.
These modifications frequently posed a challenge to prevailing social norms, values, and beliefs.
Fourthly, Africans’ religious beliefs were modified or adjusted. Historically, just a small portion of Africans identified as Christians; currently, over half of Africans identify as Christians.
Many regions of Africa experienced the expansion of Christianity in various forms thanks to the conditions created by colonial control.
Even while Islam was already widely practiced in Africa when colonialism arrived, it nonetheless profited from it.
Christian outreach activities in Muslim areas were deliberately opposed by British and French colonial authorities.
Finally, there were changes made to the African public school system.
Most colonial administrations did little to assist educational institutions. The majority of formal education in African colonies was brought about by missionaries.
Missionaries believed that schools and education were vital to carrying out their work.
The conversion of people to Christianity was their main priority.
The capacity of Africans to read the Bible in their tongue, according to missionaries, was crucial to the conversion process.
Nevertheless, because most mission societies were not well-off, they were unable to finance as many schools as they had wished.
Due to a lack of government funding, the majority of African children did not attend school throughout the colonial era.
Upon the end of colonial control, hardly a single colony could boast that over half of its children completed elementary school, and even fewer pursued secondary education.
The Scramble for Africa: late 19th century
