6.2 Africa

WEST AFRICA
Europeans did not hesitate to deceive Africans in order to get their land and natural resources.
Driven by of rivalries among themselves, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal placed almost all of Africa under European rule between 1880 and 1890.
West Africa was particularly affected by the slave trade, but trafficking in slaves had declined after it was declared illegal by both Great Britain and the United States by 1808. By the 1890s slavery was abolished in all the major countries of the world.
As slavery declined, Europe’s interest in other forms of trade increased—for example, trading manufactured goods for peanuts, timber, hides, and palm oil. In the early nineteenth century, the British established settlements along the Gold Coast and in Sierra Leone. The growing European presence in West Africa caused increasing tensions with local African governments, who feared for their independence.
In 1874 Great Britain annexed (incorporated a country within a state) the west coastal states as the first British colony of Gold Coast. Simultaneously, it established a protectorate over warring Nigerian groups.
France controlled the largest part of West Africa, and Germany controlled Togo, Cameroon, and German Southwest Africa (now Namibia).

NORTH AFRICA
Egypt had been part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1805, an officer of the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali seized power and established a separate Egyptian state.
Ali introduced a series of reforms to modernize Egypt. He modernized the army, set up a public school system, and helped create small industries.
The growing economic importance of the Nile Valley along with the development of steamships gave Europeans a desire to build a canal east of Cairo to connect the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps, a Frenchman, signed a contract to build the Suez Canal. The canal was completed in 1869.
Great Britain bought Egypt’s share in the Suez Canal. Britain suppressed an 1881 revolt against foreign influence, and Egypt became a British protectorate in 1915.
The British believed they should control the Sudan, south of Egypt. In 1881 the Muslim cleric Muhammad Ahmad seized control of the Sudan and defeated the British military force under General Charles Gordon. The British army was wiped out at Khartoum; Gordon died in the battle. The British seized the Sudan again in 1898.
The French had colonies in North Africa. In 1879, 150,000 French had settled in the region of Algeria. The French government established control there, along with making protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco.
Italy joined the competition for North African colonies by trying to take over Ethiopia. Ethiopian forces defeated the Italians in 1896. Italy was humiliated and tried again in 1911 to conquer Ethiopia. Italy seized Turkish Tripoli, which it renamed Libya.

CENTRAL AFRICA
European explorers had generated European interest in the dense tropical jungles of Central Africa.
David Livingstone was one such explorer. He arrived in Africa in 1841 and trekked through the unexplored interior for 30 years. When he disappeared for a while, the New York Herald sent the young journalist Henry Stanley to find him. When Stanley found him, he said the now famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
Although he said he hated the place, Stanley stayed in Africa, and in the 1870s he sailed down the Congo River. He encouraged 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. In 1876 he hired Henry Stanley to set up Belgian settlements in the Congo. Belgium’s claim to the vast territories of the Congo worried other European states.
France especially rushed to gain territories in Central Africa. Belgium ended up with the territories south of the Congo River, and France received the territories north of the Congo River.

EAST AFRICA
By 1875 Britain and Germany had become the chief rivals in East Africa. At first Bismarck had downplayed the importance of colonies. He became a convert to colonialism, however, after more and more Germans called for a German empire.
Germany was one of many European nations interested in East African colonies. At the 1884 Berlin Conference, the major European powers divided up East Africa, giving recognition to German, British, and Portuguese claims. No African delegates were present at the conference.

SOUTH AFRICA
The European presence in Africa grew most rapidly in the south. By 1865 close to two hundred thousand white people had moved to the southern part of Africa.
The Boers, also called Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers who occupied Cape Town in South Africa in the seventeenth century. Later, the British seized these lands. In the 1830s the Boers fled British rule, going northward and establishing the independent republics of Transvaal—later the South African Republic—and the Orange Free State. The Boers believed white supremacy was ordained by God; therefore, they put a lot of the indigenous (native) peoples on reservations.
The Boers frequently battled the Zulu, an indigenous people. The Zulu had risen to prominence under their great ruler, Shaka. Later the British defeated the Zulu.
In the 1880s British policy in South Africa was directed by Cecil Rhodes, who had set up diamond and gold companies that had made him fabulously wealthy. He named the territory north of the Transvaal Rhodesia, after himself.
Rhodes’s ambitions led to his downfall in 1896. The British government forced him to resign as prime minister of Cape Colony after finding out he planned to overthrow the Boer government of the South African Republic without British approval. Conflict broke out between the British and the Boers, leading to war.
The Boer War went from 1899 to 1902. Fierce guerrilla resistance by the Boers angered the British, who burned crops and herded more than 150,000 Boer women and children into detention camps, causing 26,000 to die.
In 1910 the British created the independent Union of South Africa, combining the Cape Colony and the Boer republics. This was a self-governing nation within the British Empire. To appease the Boers, the policy was that only whites could vote.

COLONIAL RULE IN AFRICA
By 1914 only Liberia, which had been created by freed United States slaves, and Ethiopia were African nations free of European domination. Native armed forces had been devastated by the superior European forces.
Britain especially relied on existing political elites and institutions to govern its colonies. An advantage of indirect rule for the indigenous peoples is that it interfered much less with their traditions and customs. However, most decisions came from the parent country, and local rulers rubber-stamped and enforced these decisions, maintaining their power. This system sowed the seeds of later class and tribal tensions among native peoples.
The French ideal was to assimilate the African peoples. They did not want to preserve African traditions.

RISE OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM
A new class of African leaders emerged in the early twentieth century. Mostly intellectuals, they knew about the West from their education in colonial and Western schools. The members of this new class often admired Western culture and wanted to introduce Western ideas and institutions to their culture because they saw certain aspects of European culture as superior to their own cultures.
These same people often resented the foreigners and their contempt for Africa. These intellectuals saw the gap between Western democratic theory and Western colonial practice. Africans had little chance to participate in the colonial institutions, and many had lost their farms for terrible jobs in sweatshops or on plantations.
Middle-class Africans also could complain, not just the poor peasants. They usually had only menial jobs in the government or bureaucracy, and they were paid much less than whites. Europeans segregated most of society, and often called adult black males “boy.”
During the first quarter of the twentieth century, resentment turned to action. Educated native peoples began to organize political parties and movements to end foreign rule.