The Scramble for Africa

• Where it all began
  • David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and doctor in 1841. He was the 1st European to penetrate Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Livingston is known across Southern Africa, but in 1860 he becomes lost. His story becomes popularized by an American journalist R.M Stanley.
  • RM Stanley writes a few popular serials on Africa in the West. He eventually finds Livingstone.
  • Stanley popularizes the concept of imperialist Africa.
• Most of Africa is a terra nullius, meaning that it doesn't have much of its own political organization
  • Stanley discovered a vast natural resource in the Congo: Rubber Trees, and sells this idea of a commercialized Rubber plantations to King Leopold of Belgium.
  • King Leopold borrows from the Belgian treasury to fund his private venture in the Congo and with Stanley establishes the Congo Association (1879)
  • Between 1879 and 1895 all of Africa is divided and claimed by European imperialists
  • There is a mad dash for land which leads to tensions between European states. The rush to acquire colonies is disorganized so in 1885, Bismarck will convene the Berlin Conference to regulate the colonization of Africa.
• Berlin Conference Results
  • The Congo Association lands are renamed the Congo Free State. Free meaning free trade, open door, and an internationalized Congo river.
  • The same happens for a region of South Africa which had been settled by Dutch farmers in 1840s and established as the Orange Free State.
  • Formally there are three conditions for colonization
    • Colonizing country had to have access to the sea
    • You had to occupy territory with settlers
    • had to inform immediate neighbors of your intention
    • it was an attempt to regulate the partition of Africa
• Great Britain
  • Penetration of the Nile Valley via Egypt in the 1870s led to the colonization of Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.
  • 1870s the Brits established a coaling station at the Cape of Good Hope called the Cape Colony. Capetown was established. The British settlement lead to wars in 1870 with the Zulu people.
  • The British establish a colony at Natal. In the 1880s gold was discovered in South Africa at Kimberley- the largest diamond mine in the world.
  • The English entrepreneur behind the fabulous wealth was named Cecil Rhodes. He was an imperialist racist who had a grandiose plan of a vast African Empire which will rival India in wealth.
  • The key concept to this plan was a transcontinental Railway from Cairo to Capetown, which by the way is still not established.
  • Rhodes faces two obstacles in expanding Northward out of South Africa
    • Germany has a colony on the coast of the Indian ocean. Germany's presence in East Africa in Tanzania which blocks the north-south connections
    • Problem with dutch farmers, the orange free state, and transvaal
  • Rhodes wants to take Orange free state for British rule. In 1895 he organized an irregular military force to invade the OFS and establish a pro-Rhodes regime
  • Was called the Jameson Raid, however it fails and causes international incident.
  • Kaiser Wilhelm II decides to send a congratulatory telegram to Kruger (who is the President of the OFS) for defeating the British and also offering help form Germany if he ever needs it. Eventually the Boers and British go to war 1898-1902 in the Boer War.
  • The British eventually win and consolidate its empires in South Africa and Rhodesia.
• Germany
  • Bismarck despised colonies since he thought they were sources of conflict and financial loss.
  • The Germans have a small navy.
  • Their colonies have Tanzania, German South Africa (Namibia and South Africa), Kamerun (Cameroon) and Togo (Ghana) all lost after World War 1
• France
  • Gained access to Algeria and Tunisia in congress of Berlin in 1878.
  • French claim almost Entire Sahara desrt and move French Equatorial Africa
  • They move SE toward Indian ocean and Madagascar
  • There is a South Eastern french movement that clashes with the British Movement southward at the Sudanese town of Fashoda in 1898. The showdown results in a stalemate. The French and British almost go to war; however, France backs off but resent British colonialism in Africa.
• Italy
  • has a sphere of influence in Tripolitania, Libiya and also control of Somalia and Enitea
  • In 1896 the Italians declare war on Ethiopia. and in the town Adawa the Italians are slaughtered. For 40 years the Italians want "Revenge for Adawa"