Imperialism in Africa

[Image source: http://www.bcpl.net/~sullivan/modules/imperial/images/imperialism.gif]

Imperialism

• Latin word from the days of the Roman empire

• domination of a country’s political, economic, and social life by another country

Causes for nineteenth-century European Imperialism

1. Economics

2. Nationalism

3. Balance-of-Power

4. White Man’s Burden

“Take up the White Man’s burden –Send forth the best ye breed –Go bind your sons to exileTo serve your captives’ need;To wait in heavy harnessOn fluttered folk and wild –Your new-caught, sullen peoples,Half-devil and half-child.”

- Rudyard Kipling

[Image source: http://www.usd.edu/honors/HWB/1999/1999f/imperialism%20in%20africa.htm]

Initially, European holdings were limited to coastal areas near the mouths of rivers along the trade routes to Asia.

Missionaries such as David Livingstone

often expanded European

knowledge of the interior of

Africa as a result of their

travels.[Image source: http://www.historicprints.com/hf-17.jpg]

[Image source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/maps-at-anona/davidlivingstone2.gif]

The travels of these

explorers allowed

their respective nations to

lay claim to those lands.

Chancellor Otto von

Bismarck of Germany

convened a conference to

discuss the procedures for

establishing colonies.

[Image source: http://www.museumofworldwarii.com/images/TourPictures/01_Wilhelm1_lge.jpg]

Berlin Conference

• met in late-1884/early-1885• set the criteria for claiming colonies

in Africa• initiated the “Scramble for Africa”

- succeeded in deflecting European attention and aggression outward- resulted in the partitioning of Africa

•Countries at the Conference of Berlin:

Great Britain

France

Spain

Belgium

Italy

Portugal

Germany

•In Africa, only two countries allowed to remain independent:

Ethiopia Liberia

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King Charles X started France on the road to

empire when he ordered his

troops to invade Algeria in 1830.

It took France ten years and 100,000

troops to conquer and occupy all of

Algeria.

France went on to conquer Tunis in 1881

and secure special rights in Morocco in

1904.

[Image source: http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/empires/images/0083.jpg]

Meanwhile, Great Britain was chewing up territory elsewhere in

Africa.

Britain acquiredSouthern Africafrom the Dutchduring the Napoleonic Wars, in an effort to maintain their trade routes to their empire in the Orient.

[Image source

http://www.hydro.com/library/images/about/hydro_worldwide/continent_countries/south-africa.gif]

British interests collided with an expanding Zulu Empire.

[Image source: Into The Fire by Mark Churms ]

After some initial defeats,

the British managed to extend their hegemony

over most of southern Africa.

[Image source: http://www.military-art.com/images/dhm_371_small.jpg]

[Image source: http://www.edinfor.pt/anc/f-lesseps.jpg]

In 1859, the French

entrepreneur, Ferdinand de

Lesseps, set up a company to build the Suez

Canal.

[Image source: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/ralimage/30suez.jpg]

The Suez Canal

provided a more direct route

between Europe

and East Asia.

[Image source: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch1en/conc1en/img/suez.gif]

[Image source

http://www.cc-pays-de-gex.fr/edres01/ecoles/ecsgplio/images/SuezNASA.gif]

Great Britain gained

control of the canal in 1875 when Egypt sold

its shares to pay off some

debts.

Mediterranean Sea

RedSea

[Image source: http://regentsprep.org/Regents/global/themes/imperialism/images/imperialism.gif

Concern over the security of the Suez Canal led Britain to take a greater

interest in the affairs of Egypt.

[Image source:

Egypt became a protectorate of

Great Britain in 1882 after the

defeat of a nationalist

revolt led by Ahmed Arabi.

[Image source: http://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/p-3959.jpg]

[Image source: http://sudanhome.com/cards/cards/el_mahdi.jpg]

During the 1880s, an

Islamic revival, led by a self-proclaimed

deliverer known as the

Mahdi, threatened

British interests in Egypt.

His force swept across the Sudan, re-instituting fundamentalist practices.

[Image source: http://ron.heavengames.com/gameinfo/nations/nubia/nubia.shtml]

Among the practices revived by the Mahdi was slavery.

[Image source: http://mirrormax.i8.com/images/children.gif]

The British ultimately defeated the forces of the Mahdi at the

Battle of Omdurman.

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/images/aa332391.jpg]

“Whatever happens, we have got,the Maxim gun, and they have not.”

[Image source: http://www.uh.edu/engines/maximgun.jpg]

- Hillaire Belloc

[Image source: http://users.westconnect.com.au/%7Eianmac5/choc.jpg]

Many people, such as Britain’s competitors in

colonization, the French, hoped

that Britain would fail miserably in their efforts to

establish a global empire.

British and French interests

collided at Fashoda in 1898, almost resulting

in a shooting war between the two great imperialist

powers.[Image source: http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/empires/0055.html]

The British met opposition in

places like West Africa, when they sought to conquer

and subdue the Ashanti Empire of

Queen Yaa Asantewaa.

[Image source: http://www.ashanti.com.au/Asantewa.jpg]

The French also ran into difficulties when they tried to defeat Samory Touré,

the “Black Napoleon” of the Western Sudan, in the late-nineteenth century.

[Image source: http://www.playahata.com/pages/bhfigures28.html]

King Behanzin of

Dahomey turned out

to be a formidable foe for the French as

well.[Image source: http://shopping.corbis.com/search/details.asp?imageid=11017521]

Relative late-comers to the Scramble for Africa included:

• Belgium

• Italy

• Germany

King Leopold II of Belgium aspired to be the ruler of a large empire like his fellow

European monarchs.

[Image source: http://worldroots.clicktron.com/brigitte/gifs3/leopold2belgium.gif]

He managed to claim

virtually all the land

drained by the Congo River for Belgium.

[Image source: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316kunit3/studentprojects/conrad/congo.jpg]

Leopold was able to claim the Congo for Belgium because he promoted the fiction that his rule would

be benign. In reality, the colony became

one large plantation producing rubber.

[Image source: http://www.historywiz.com/images/africa/snake.gif]

Natives who failed to

harvest their quota of latex

were often punished by having their

hands cut off.[Image source: http://www.me.mtu.edu/~aswaisan/leopold.htm]

Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1911, seizing Tripoli and

renaming it Libya.

Menelik II succeeded in conquering

many smaller kingdoms, creating a reunified Ethiopian Empire. [Image source:

http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/kshively/images/menelik.gif]

An expanding Ethiopia

collided with an expanding

Italian Empire, resulting in a

brief war.

The Italians suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Adowa in 1896.

[Image source: http://www.rastaites.com/images/ithiopianversion.jpg]

As a result of their victory at Adowa, Ethiopia

managed to be one of the only African

nations to maintain it’s

independence.[Image source: http://www.artehistoria.com/historia/jpg/REC12781.jpg]

Much against Chancellor Bismarck’s desire, nationalist groups in Germany succeeded in driving Germany into the ranks of Imperialist powers in Africa.

[Image source: http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/victalb/e13ab3.htm]

[Image source: http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/victalb/kolonie3.jpg]

[Image source: http://www.usd.edu/honors/HWB/1999/1999f/imperialism%20in%20africa.htm]