West Africa and North Africa

• European countries exercised increasing control over West Africa  and North Africa, especially once the Suez Canal was completed. 

West Africa
Europeans had a keen interest in Africa’s raw materials, especially those of West Africa—peanuts, timber, hides, and palm oil. Earlier in the nineteenth century, Europeans had profited from the slave trade in this part of Africa. By the late 1800s, however, trade 
in enslaved people had virtually ended. As the slave trade declined, Europe’s interest in other forms of trade increased. The growing European presence in West Africa led to increasing tensions with African governments in the area.

For a long time, most African states were able to maintain their independence. However, in 1874 Great Britain annexed (incorporated a country within a state) the west coastal states as the first British colony of Gold Coast. At about the same time, Britain established a protectorate in Nigeria. By 1900, France had added the huge area of French West Africa to its colonial empire. This left France in control of the largest part of West Africa. In addition, Germany controlled Togo, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa, and German East Africa.

North Africa
Egypt had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but as Ottoman rule declined, the Egyptians sought their independence. In 1805  an officer of the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali seized power and established a separate Egyptian state.

During the next 30 years, Muhammad Ali introduced a series of reforms to bring Egypt into the modern world. He modernized the army, set up a public school system, and helped create small industries that refined sugar, produced textiles and munitions, and built ships.

The growing economic importance of the Nile Valley in Egypt, along with the development of steamships, gave Europeans the desire to build a canal east of Cairo to connect the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1854 a French entrepreneur, Ferdinand de Lesseps, signed a contract to begin building the Suez Canal. The canal was completed in 1869.

The British took an active interest in Egypt after the Suez Canal was opened. Believing that the canal was its “lifeline to India,” Great Britain tried to gain as much control as possible over the canal area. In 1875 Britain bought Egypt’s share in the Suez Canal. When an Egyptian army revolt against foreign influence broke out in 1881, Britain suppressed the revolt. Egypt became a British protectorate in 1914.

The British believed that they should also control the Sudan, south of Egypt, to protect their interests in Egypt and the Suez Canal. In 1881 Muslim cleric Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi (in Arabic, “the rightly guided one”), launched a revolt that brought much of the Sudan under his control.

Britain sent a military force under General Charles Gordon to restore Egyptian authority over the Sudan. However, Muhammad Ahmad’s troops wiped out Gordon’s army at Khartoum in 1885. General Gordon himself died in the battle. Not until 1898 were British troops able to seize the Sudan.

The French also had colonies in NorthAfrica. In 1879, after about 150,000 French people had settled in the region of Algeria, the French government established control there. Two years later, France imposed a protectorate on neighboring Tunisia. In 1912 France established a protectorate over much of Morocco.

Italy joined the competition for colonies in North Africa by attempting to take over Ethiopia. In 1896, however, the Italian invading forces were defeated. Italy now was the only European state defeated by an African state. This humiliating loss led Italy to try again in 1911. Italy invaded and seized Turkish Tripoli, which it renamed Libya.

The Suez Canal Opens for Business
The Suez Canal, built by the French using Egyptian labor, was completed in 1869. This 
waterway linked the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea. Instead of sailing around Africa, 
European ships could now pass through the canal to reach eastern Asia in much less time. 
At this time, demand for Egyptian cotton made Egypt’s economy strong. Egypt’s ruler, 
Khedive Isma‘-il, spent large sums on modernizing his country, building roads, railways, and factories. By the 1870s, however, economic conditions had worsened, forcing Egypt to borrow from foreigners to pay for these projects. To help pay the debt, Isma‘-il sold Egypt’s share of the Suez Canal to Britain in 1875.

Why did the British set up settlements in Africa?
 

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Central and East Africa

• European powers competed for colonies in Central Africa and East Africa.

David Livingstone was one such explorer. He arrived in Africa in 1841 as a 27-year-old medical missionary. During the 30 years he spent in Africa, Livingstone trekked through uncharted regions. He sometimes traveled by canoe, but mostly Livingstone walked and spent much of his time exploring the interior of the continent.

During his travels through Africa, Livingstone made detailed notes of his discoveries. He sent this information back to London whenever he could. The maps of Africa were often redrawn based on Livingstone’s reports. A major goal of Livingstone’s explorations was to find a navigable river that would open Central Africa to European commerce and to Christianity.

When Livingstone disappeared for awhile, an American newspaper, the New York Herald, hired a young journalist, Henry Stanley, to find the explorer. Stanley did find him, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Overwhelmed by finding Livingstone alive if not well, Stanley greeted the explorer with these now-famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

After Livingstone’s death in 1873, Stanley remained in Africa to carry on the great explorer’s work. Unlike Livingstone, however, Henry Stanley had a strong dislike of Africa. He once said, “I detest the land most heartily.”

In the 1870s, Stanley explored the Congo River in Central Africa and sailed down it to the Atlantic Ocean. Soon, he was encouraging the British to send settlers to the Congo River basin. When Britain refused, Stanley turned to King Leopold II of Belgium.

King Leopold II was the real driving force behind the colonization of Central Africa. He rushed enthusiastically into the pursuit of an empire in Africa. “To open to civilization,” he said, “the only part of our globe where it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which envelops whole populations, is a crusade, if I may say so, a crusade worthy of this century of progress.”

Profit, however, was equally important to Leopold. In 1876 he hired Henry Stanley to set up Belgian settlements in the Congo. Leopold’s claim to the vast territories of the Congo aroused widespread concern among other European states. France, in particular, rushed to plant its flag in the heart of Africa. Leopold ended up with the territories around the Congo River. France occupied the areas farther north.

East Africa
By 1885, Britain and Germany had become the chief rivals in East Africa. Germany came late to the ranks of the imperialist powers. At first, the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck had downplayed the importance of colonies. As more and more Germans called for a German empire, however, Bismarck became a convert to colonialism. As he expressed it, “All this colonial business is a sham, but we need it for the elections.”

In addition to its West African holdings, Germany tried to develop colonies in East Africa. Most of East Africa had not yet been claimed by any other power. However, the British were also interested in the area because control of East Africa would connect the British Empire in Africa from South Africa to Egypt. Portugal and Belgium also claimed parts of East Africa.

To settle conflicting claims, the Berlin Conference met in 1884 and 1885. The conference officially recognized both British and German claims for territory in East Africa. Portugal received a clear claim on Mozambique. No African delegates, however, were present at this conference.

What effect did King Leopold II have on European colonization of the Congo River basin?
 

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South Africa

• European powers quickly came to dominate the region of South Africa.

The Boers, or Afrikaners—as the descendantsof the original Dutch settlers werecalled—had occupied Cape Town and surroundingareas in South Africa since the seventeenth century. During the NapoleonicWars, however, the British seized these lands from the Dutch. Afterward, the British encouraged settlers to come to what they called Cape Colony.

The Boer Republics
In the 1830s, disgusted with British rule, the Boers moved from the coastal lands and headed northward on the Great Trek. Altogether one out of every five Dutchspeaking South Africans joined the trek. Their parties eventually settled in the region between the Orange and Vaal (VAHL) Rivers and in the region north of the Vaal River. In these areas, the Boers formed two independent republics—the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (later called the South African Republic).

The Boers believed that white superiority was ordained by God. They denied non-Europeans any place in their society, other than as laborers or servants. As they settled the lands, the Boers put many of the indigenous peoples, those native to a region, in these areas on reservations.

The Boers had frequently battled the indigenous Zulu people. In the early nineteenth century, the Zulu, under a talented  ruler named Shaka, had carved out their own empire. Even after Shaka’s death, the Zulu remained powerful. Finally, in the late 1800s, the British military became involved in conflicts with the Zulu, and the Zulu were defeated.

Cecil Rhodes
In the 1880s, British policy in South Africa was influenced by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes had founded diamond and gold companies that had made him a fortune. He gained control of a territory north of the Transvaal, which he named Rhodesia after himself.

Rhodes was a great champion of British expansion. He said once, “I think what [God] would like me to do is to paint as much of Africa British red as possible.” One of Rhodes’s goals was to create a series of British colonies “from the Cape to Cairo”—all linked by a railroad.

Rhodes’s ambitions eventually led to his downfall in 1896. The British government forced him to resign as prime minister of Cape Colony after discovering that he planned to overthrow the Boer government of the South African Republic without his government’s approval. The British action was too late to avoid a war between the British and the Boers, however.

The Boer War
This war, called the Boer War, dragged on from 1899 to 1902. Fierce guerrilla resistance 
by the Boers angered the British. They responded by burning crops and herding about 120,000 Boer women and children into detention camps, where lack of food caused some 20,000 deaths. Eventually, the vastly larger British army won. A peace treaty was signed in 1902.

In 1910 the British created an independent Union of South Africa, which combined the old Cape Colony and the Boer republics. The new state would be a selfgoverning nation within the British Empire. To appease the Boers, the British agreed that only whites, with a few propertied Africans, would vote.

What were the causes of the Boer War?
 

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Effects of Imperialism

• Using direct or indirect rule, European nations exploited Africa, and their governance stimulated African nationalism.

Colonial Rule in Africa
As was true in Southeast Asia, most European governments ruled their new territories in Africa with the least effort and expense possible. Indirect rule meant relying on existing political elites and institutions. The British especially followed this approach. At first, in some areas, the British simply asked a local ruler to accept British authority and to fly the British flag over official buildings.

The concept of indirect rule was introduced in the Islamic state of Sokoto, in northern Nigeria, beginning in 1903. This system of indirect rule in Sokoto had one good feature: it did not disrupt local customs and institutions. However, it did have some unfortunate consequences.

The system of indirect rule was basically a fraud because British administrators made all major decisions. The native authorities served chiefly to enforce those decisions.

Another problem was that the policy of indirect rule kept the old African elite in power. Such a policy provided few opportunities for ambitious and talented young Africans from outside the old elite. In this way British indirect rule sowed the seeds for class and tribal tensions, which erupted after independence came in the twentieth century.

Most other European nations governed their African possessions through a form of direct rule. This was true in the French colonies. At the top was a French official, usually known as a governor-general. He was appointed from Paris and governed with the aid of a bureaucracy in the capital city of the colony.

The French ideal was to assimilate African subjects into French culture rather than preserve native traditions. Africans were eligible to run for office and even serve in the French National Assembly in Paris. A few were also appointed to high-powered positions in the colonial administration.

Rise of African Nationalism
As in Southeast Asia, a new class of leaders emerged in Africa by the beginning of the twentieth century. Educated in colonial schools or in Western nations, they were the first generation of Africans to know a great deal about the West.

The members of this new class admired Western culture and sometimes disliked the ways of their own countries. They were eager to introduce Western ideas and institutions into their own societies. Still, many of these new leaders came to resent the foreigners and their arrogant contempt for African peoples. These intellectuals recognized the gap between theory and practice in colonial policy. Westerners had exalted democracy, equality, and political freedom but did not apply these values in the colonies.

There were few democratic institutions. Native peoples could have only low-paying jobs in the colonial bureaucracy. To many Africans, colonialism had meant the loss of their farmlands or employment on plantations or in factories run by foreigners. Some lost even more, as Lobengula, a southern African king, told Britain’s Queen Victoria in this letter:
 

“Some time ago a party of men came to my country, the principal one appearing to be a man called Rudd. They asked me for a place to dig for gold, and said they would give me certain things for the right to do so. I told them to bring what they could give and I would show them what I would give. A document was written and presented to me for signature. I asked what it contained, and was told that in it were my words and the words of those men. I put my hand to it. About three months afterwards I heard from other sources that I had given by the document the right to all the minerals of my country.”

—The Imperialism Reader, Louis L. Snyder, ed.

Middle-class Africans did not suffer as much as poor African peasant plantation workers. However, members of the middle class also had complaints. They usually qualified only for menial jobs in the government or business. Even then, their salaries were lower than those of Europeans in similar jobs.

Europeans expressed their superiority over Africans in other ways. Segregated clubs, schools, and churches were set up as more European officials brought their wives and began to raise families. Europeans were also condescending in their relationships with Africans. For instance, Europeans had a habit of addressing Africans by their first names or calling an adult male “boy.”

Such conditions led many members of the new urban educated class to feel great confusion toward their colonial rulers and the civilization the colonists represented. The educated Africans were willing to admit the superiority of many aspects of Western culture. However, these intellectuals fiercely hated colonial rule and were determined to assert their own nationality and cultural destiny. Out of this mixture of hopes and resentments emerged the first stirrings of modern nationalism in Africa.

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, resentment turned to action. Across Africa, native peoples began to organize political parties and movements seeking the end of foreign rule. They wanted to be independent and self-governed.

Why were many African intellectuals frustrated by colonial policy?
 

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