18.5: Africa

While India was the most lucrative part of the British Empire, the conquest of Africa by the European powers stands as the high point of the new imperialism as a whole. Africa represents about a quarter of the land area of the entire world. As of the 1880s, it had about one-fifth of the world’s population spread out over 700 distinct societies and peoples. Europeans knew so little about the African interior that maps generally displayed huge blank spots. Likewise, as of 1850, Europeans only controlled little more than trading posts on the coasts. The most substantial European holdings consisted of Algeria, seized by France in the 1830s, and South Africa, split between British control and two territories held by the descendants of the first Dutch settlers, the Boers. The rest of the continent was almost completely free of European dominance, although the Portuguese did maintain sparsely populated colonies in two areas.

New technology changed all of that. In 1876, roughly 10% of Africa was under European control. By 1900, the figure was roughly 90%. The search for profits, raw materials, the ongoing power struggle between the great powers, and the "civilizing mission" reached their collective zenith in Africa. The sheer speed of the conquest is summed up in the descriptive phrase: “Scramble for Africa.”

In 1884, Otto Von Bismarck organized the Berlin Conference to determine what was to be done with a huge territory in central Africa called the Congo, already falling under the domination of Belgium at the time. At the Congress, the representatives of the European states, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire divided up Africa into spheres of influence and conquest. No Africans were present at the meeting. Instead, the participants agreed on trade between their territories and stipulated which (European) country would get which piece of Africa. Although there were certainly profits to be had in Africa, they were mostly theoretical since no Europeans knew for sure what those resources were or where they were to be found. (Fear of U.S. economic power was a major factor. Europeans thought it necessary to seize more territory, regardless of what was actually in that territory). Thus, in a collective land grab, European states emerged from the Conference intent on taking over an entire continent.

The Berlin Conference was the opening salvo of the Scramble for Africa. In some territories, notably French North Africa and parts of British West Africa, while colonial administrations were both racist and enormously secure in their own cultural dominance, they usually did embark on building at least some modern infrastructure and establishing educational institutions open to the “natives”. However, as in the British Raj, Europeans jealously guarded their own authority everywhere. In other regions, colonization was equivalent to genocide.

Among the worst cases was that of Belgium. In 1876, King Leopold II created a colony in the Congo under the guise of exploration and philanthropy, claiming that his purpose was to protect the people of the region from the ravages of the slave trade. His acquisition was larger than England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy combined. Indeed, the territory was eighty times larger than Belgium itself. The Berlin Conference’s official purpose was to authorize Leopold’s already-existing control of the Congo. As such, the European powers declared the territory to be the “Congo Free State,” essentially a royal fiefdom ruled, and owned, by Leopold directly, not by the government of Belgium.

Leopold's real purpose was personal enrichment. His methods of coercing African labor were atrocious: raids, floggings, hostages, destruction of villages and fields, and murder and mutilation. Belgian agents would enter a village and take women and children hostage, ordering men to go into the jungle and harvest a certain amount of rubber. If they failed to reach the rubber quota in time, or sometimes even if they did, the agents would hack off the arms of children, rape or murder the women, or sometimes simply murder everyone in the village outright. No attempt was made to develop the country in any way that did not bear directly on the business of extracting ivory and rubber. In a period of 25 years, the population of the region was cut in half. After decades of dangerous and incredibly brave work by a few journalists and public outcry, the Belgian Parliament stripped Leopold of the colony and took over direct administration in 1908.

Figure 18.1: A few of the millions of victims of Belgian imperialism in the Congo.

Another comparable example was the treatment of the Herero and Nama peoples of southwest Africa by the German army over the course of 1904 - 1905. When the Herero resisted the German takeover, they were systematically rounded up and left in concentration camps to starve. Survivors were stalked across the desert by the German army, the Germans poisoning or sealing wells and water holes along the way. When the Nama rose up shortly afterward, they were exterminated. In the end, over two-thirds of the Herero and Nama were murdered.

Source: Kids Britannia