In the 1870s, about ten percent of Africa had been colonised by European countries. But over the next few decades, over ninety percent of the continent was taken, occupied, divided, and partitioned by governments far away in places like London, Berlin, and Paris.
We call this period in history the โScramble for Africa.โ In a remarkably short period of time, countries like Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium claimed vast territories for themselves without any input from African people.
By 1914, only a handful of places remained independent, while most of Africa was ruled as colonies.
How did this happen so quickly? And what were the consequences of dividing an entire continent in this way? These are the questions weโll explore in todayโs episode of Thinking in English!
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Vocabulary
- Colonisation (Noun): The act of taking control of another country and settling people there.
- Colonisation changed the political and cultural structure of many African societies.
- Empire (Noun): A group of territories ruled by one country or leader
- Britain built a large empire that included many parts of Africa and Asia.
- Partition (Verb/Noun): To divide land into parts, often between different powers.
- The partition of Africa was decided by European countries without African input.
- Exploitation (Noun): Using people or resources unfairly for benefit.
- Many colonies suffered from economic exploitation under European rule.
- Resistance (Noun): Opposition or fighting against control or authority.
- African resistance to colonisation took many forms, including war and negotiation.
- Ideology (Noun): A system of ideas or beliefs that influence actions.
- The ideology of the โcivilising missionโ was used to justify colonisation.
- Legacy (Noun): The long-term effects or results of past events.
- The legacy of colonial borders can still be seen in modern African conflicts.
Africa Before Colonization
What was Africa like before European colonization?
First, it’s really important to remember that Africa is massive. Its size is actually not represented properly by most world maps. Africa is larger than China, the USA, India and most of Europe combined.
So talking about the “continent before Europe” is really difficult, probably impossible when we’re talking in general terms.
I think some people have a stereotype that before colonization, before colonialism, Africa [00:04:00] was this empty, undeveloped place, but that’s not the case.
Across Africa, there were major kingdoms and empires, some existing relatively recently and many in the past.
The Mali Empire in West Africa, for example, was incredibly wealthy. It became one of the richest empires in history through its trade in gold and salt.
I actually have an old episode from a few years ago talking about
Mansa Musa, the richest man in history, or potentially the richest man in history. Who was so rich that he caused a recession in Egypt when he tipped so much gold on his journey from Mali to Mecca.
The Asante Kingdom was known for its strong military organized government. In East Africa, the Ethiopian Empire had a long history as an independent Christian state. And in Southern Africa [00:05:00] the Zulu Kingdom had built a powerful military society.
Africa was also connected to the world by trade. The trans-Saharan trade roots, which went across the Sahara Desert, linked West Africa to North Africa and the Mediterranean. And the Indian Ocean trade connected East Africa to the Middle East, India, and parts of Asia.
Politically Africa was, of course, not the same everywhere. Some regions were ruled by centralized states. They had kings or queens or emperors. Other areas were organized around smaller communities, tribes or local leaders.
Explorers and New Technology
Before the 1800s, European involvement in Africa was quite limited.
Europeans mainly stayed along the coast. They built trading ports and they participated in trade, most infamously participating in the trans-Atlantic [00:06:00] slave trade. And they had very little control or knowledge over the middle of the continent, over what happened in central Africa.
But in the 19th century, European interest in Africa began to grow. Explorers and missionaries started traveling deeper into Africa, thanks to some improved technology and new medicine.
One of the most famous figures, famous people, during this time was David Livingston.
David Livingston was a Scottish explorer and missionary. He traveled extensively through southern and central Africa. He created maps of rivers and attempted to spread Christianity.
Another figure was Henry Morton Stanley, who famously searched for Livingston. Livingston had gone missing for a while, and Henry Morten Stanley went to find him. And later Morton Stanley was probably [00:07:00] most famous for his work with Belgium in opening up Central Africa to European trade and control, basically.
Technological advances gave Europeans a much better opportunity or chance to access the center of Africa. They had steamships, which allowed them to travel along rivers into the center.
Quinine was developed, which helps to protect from malaria, and malaria had previously killed many Europeans. Actually, if you enjoy the cocktail “gin and tonic”, that has its origin as an anti-malaria drink used by the British in India, and then other parts of the empire. Tonic water contains quinine.
In 1869, the Suez Canal was opened. This was a manmade waterway, a canal. It connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, basically cutting [00:08:00] through Africa.
It reduced the travel time between Europe and Asia massively. Before the Suez Canal, you had to sail around Africa. But thanks to the Suez Canal, you could take a short trip from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and now you had access to all of Asia.
As a result, places like Egypt and East Africa became far more important for countries like Britain that wanted to protect their routes to India.
Congo and Rising Rivalries
One of the major events in the history of European colonization of Africa began in central Africa.
King Leopold II of Belgium became personally interested in the region around the Congo River. He claimed his goal was scientific research and humanitarian work, but in reality, he wanted to build his own private empire.
With the help of Henry Morton Stanley, [00:09:00] Leopold began to make treaties with local leaders and establish control over the land. Other European powers became nervous.
France began expanding inland from West Africa. Britain was becoming more involved in Egypt. Germany had just unified and also wanted its own colonies to compete with older empires like Britain and France.
This growing competition with France and Germany and Britain and Belgium expanding their control, created tension. People were nervous. European countries were worried that they might lose out. They might miss some of the valuable land in Africa if they didn’t act quickly, and if they didn’t take some of Africa for themselves.
There was also a serious risk that European countries might run into each other, might run into each other’s territories in Africa, and clash.
The Berlin Conference
To [00:10:00] avoid this, the German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck called the Berlin Conference in 1884. European leaders met in Germany to set the rules for how Africa would be divided. And importantly, no Africans were invited.
At the conference, the European leaders agreed on the idea of effective occupation. This meant that a country could only claim territory as a colony if they had some real physical control over it. They couldn’t just say it was their colony from the other side of the world.
This “effective occupation” meant that you had to be on the ground in Africa, maybe having military presence in a place, and then you could claim that as your land.
Now, this was meant to reduce arguments and conflict between European countries, but it actually, I guess [00:11:00] mainly, encouraged the European countries to move quicker. To try and take as much land as quickly as possible, because once you were there, it was your land. And so the faster you could get to different parts of Africa, the more land you could take.
And this was the Scramble for Africa.
Partitioning the Continent
Different European powers took control of different regions.
Britain controlled large areas, including places like Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. The British dream was a continuous empire stretching from Cape to Cairo, so basically from south to north.
France built a massive empire across West Africa, from Senegal to Chad, as well as controlling Algeria in the north.
Belgium, under King Leopold II, took control of the Congo Free State, which was perhaps the most infamous colony for its [00:12:00] extreme violence and exploitation.
Germany took territories such as Tanzania, Namibia, and Cameroon. Portugal held onto Angola and Mozambique. And Italy, which was a relatively new country, and trying to become a new empire, took parts of North and East Africa, including Libya and Somalia.
There were only a few exceptions. Ethiopia was probably the only place in Africa that resisted European colonization. Ethiopia stayed independent. And Liberia was also not part of the Scramble for Africa. Although technically independent, it was basically a colony of the USA.
I have a bonus episode on Patreon about the history of Liberia. It’s, it’s really interesting.
By the early 20th century, the map of Africa was completely different. Countries were created where there had been nothing or where there had been different kingdoms.
The European [00:13:00] countries drew their own borders. They did not think about the ethnic groups or the cultures or the history or the land. They just divided the map into areas they controlled.
And this is why if you look at a map of Africa, there are so many straight lines. Countries normally don’t have straight line borders unless there has been some kind of negotiation or deal.
African Resistance Stories
The Scramble for Africa was not accepted by African people, of course. The Scramble for Africa was met with resistance across the entire continent.
In southern Africa, the Zulu army famously defeated the British army in 1879. The British eventually won the overall war with the Zulus, but the Zulu victory shocked the world and it proved that European armies were not invincible.
In modern day Ghana, the Asante people [00:14:00] fought a series of five wars against the British to protect their independence.
In West Africa, the Mandinka ruler Samori Toure created a professional modern army and used scorched earth tactics to resist French expansion for nearly 20 years.
The most successful example of resistance was Ethiopia. Under the leadership of Emperor Menelik II, Ethiopia did something different to all other African regions. They defeated their European invaders.
Italy, wanting colonies, realized that Ethiopia was one of the only places left in Africa that had not been claimed by the British or the French or the Germans. So Italy tried to invade, tried to take Ethiopia as a colony.
What happened? Well, the Ethiopian army crushed them at the Battle of Adwa. That victory ensured that Ethiopia remained independent, and it was quite embarrassing for [00:15:00] Italy to lose to the Ethiopian army.
Not all resistance happened in military ways, as well.
Many leaders tried to negotiate. King Khama III of Botswana actually went all the way to London to talk with Queen Victoria and successfully prevented his land from falling under the control of Cecil Rhodes’ private company.
Cecil Rhodes was a British businessman, I guess, who basically created private countries in Africa. The most famous was Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. That was owned by a private man.
Why Europe Colonized
I realized I’ve not really talked about why European countries wanted to colonize Africa, so let’s do that now.
There were very strong economic motivations to get territory in Africa. European countries were going through the industrial revolution, which meant they needed huge amounts of resources to keep their factories [00:16:00] running. And Africa had resources like rubber and gold and diamonds.
European businesses were also looking for new places where they could sell their manufactured goods. So colonies had both resources and potential customers.
But economics wasn’t the only factor.
There was also a really intense political competition between the European powers. Britain, France, and Germany, especially, were all competing for influence. And having a big empire was seen as a sign of strength. The more land you controlled, the more powerful you appeared.
Control of locations around the world was also strategic. It helped countries to protect their trade routes and expand their influence. Britain was especially focused on securing the roots to India, which was its most [00:17:00] valuable colony. India was the most important.
So that meant controlling Egypt, controlling the Suez Canal, and also controlling the Cape, which was in South Africa.
Ideologies and Racism
Many European powers also developed a set of ideas to justify what they were doing in Africa, right?
From a modern perspective, we can kind of look back and see colonialism, colonization was not a good thing. There’s not much justification in invading, taking over a country, imposing your own rules, discriminating against people, using violence. That’s not acceptable. Empire is generally a bad thing. In my opinion, it’s always a bad thing.
But, in Europe, in the 19th century, there was a strong ideology that justified colonialism. That said that colonialism wasn’t that bad. It was a good idea.
For example, many Europeans, especially the [00:18:00] British, believed that they had a duty to bring Christianity, education, and modern ways of life to the rest of the world. This was known as the “civilizing mission”, a mission to civilize the world.
It assumed that people in Africa were uncivilized. This ideology presented colonization, colonialism, empire, as a positive thing. It would improve the lives of African people.
Closely connected to this was an idea known as Social Darwinism. This was a distorted, a twisted version of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and it was typically applied to human societies.
Some Europeans argued that nations and races were in competition. And that the strongest would naturally dominate the weakest. And under this idea, European [00:19:00] societies were the strongest, and African societies were the weakest.
Of course, this is deeply racist and deeply flawed ideology, but it was something that people believed.
Racism was also a big part of decisions. Europeans simply believed that they were better than Africans, they were superior. And this was used to justify their empires.
There’s a clear contradiction in some of these arguments. Europeans claim that they were helping Africa, but they colonized the continent using exploitation and violence.
Lasting Colonial Legacies
The Scramble for Africa ended over a century ago. But it fundamentally, completely, changed Africa.
One of the most significant legacies is the borders. I mentioned before, European powers created these new countries. They had no understanding of the people living in Africa. They didn’t know what ethnic groups were there, the [00:20:00] languages spoken, the histories, the conflicts.
They simply had a map. They saw where their troops where, where they wanted to control, and they drew circles and lines. They took out their rulers and drew straight lines across the continent.
The result was that they grouped together different ethnic groups that probably shouldn’t be living together in the same country. They also separated communities that had once been connected. They drew borders where nomadic people used to cross regularly.
And these artificial borders have contributed to political instability and conflict in many parts of Africa.
I did an episode a few weeks ago about the History of Rwanda. Hopefully you’ve listened to it.
Rwanda is an interesting case. Rwanda was colonized by Germany, and then after World War I by Belgium. And underneath European Rule, the Europeans introduced these ID cards that made it fixed and [00:21:00] clear what ethnic group you were part of. And this was one of the factors, not not the main factor, but one of the factors that led to the terrible genocide in 1994.
There was also widespread economic exploitation across Africa. Europe was focused on taking resources. They wanted minerals, they wanted agricultural products, diamonds, gold for their own benefit.
Many African countries became dependent on exporting a small number of raw materials, which is a pattern that still exists today.
In some cases, colonial rule was extremely violent. Perhaps the most infamous example is the Congo Free State. Millions of people suffered under a incredibly brutal system of forced labor and punishment. I won’t talk about it too much in this episode, but Google “Congo Free State” or “Belgian crimes in the Congo [00:22:00] Free State“, and you’ll be shocked at the absolute brutal punishments.
But Belgium wasn’t the only country. Britain, and France, Germany, Portugal, all of them had violent colonial authority in Africa. All of them did things that they should be ashamed of, basically.
Now there are people who argue that colonialism did bring development to Africa.
Yes, railways were built. Roads were built. There were new education systems. Most of Africa now uses a European language as their lingua franca. They have their own native languages, but a lot of Africa uses English or French or even Portuguese, in some parts of Africa.
But these changes were designed to benefit colonial power. This was not designed to benefit local people. Building railways and roads and education systems was mainly so that the European powers [00:23:00] could ship their goods across countries easier, and that they could get a class of educated English speaking or French speaking rulers, leaders, so that they could delegate some responsibilities.
The Scramble for Africa ended in 1914 when basically the entire continent of Africa had been taken. The only two places left at the end of 1914 were Ethiopia and Liberia. And Liberia doesn’t really even count because it was basically an effective colony of the USA.โ
Final Thought
The Scramble for Africa transformed the entire continent. In just a few decades, almost all of Africa was divided and controlled by foreign powers.
The Scramble was motivated by a variety of different factors. There was economic ambition, [00:24:00] political rivalry. They justified it with powerful ideologies. European countries wanted resources and power. They talked about civilization and improvement, development and superiority.
But the consequences were long lasting. In fact, many of the challenges faced by African countries today can be traced back, at least in part, to this period, to the Scramble for Africa.
But what do you think? What is your opinion on this episode? Do you have any thoughts about the Scramble for Africa?
As a British person who studied the empire a little bit at university. I did a history degree. Mainly I studied India, but in my opinion, it’s a deeply shameful period of British history.
Yes, the Empire demonstrated the power of Great Britain. Yes, the Empire brought great benefits for Great Britain. But the use of [00:25:00] violence and the use of exploitation is something I consider shameful.
It should be up to the people living in a place to decide who they are, what they are…. Are they a country? Are they part of a different country? Should they be independent?
But what do you think?
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