Involvement in Africa before 1884

28.1.2: Involvement in Africa before 1884

Before the Berlin Conference, European colonization of Africa was present but limited, with only 10% of Africa under European control in 1870. In the 1870s the “Scramble for Africa” began in earnest, with 90% of Africa under European control by World War I.

Learning Objective

Describe the ways Europe was already involved in Africa prior to the Berlin Conference

Key Points

  • Before the conference, European diplomacy treated African indigenous people in the same manner as the New World natives, forming trading relationships with the indigenous chiefs.
  • With the exception of trading posts along the coasts used to trade goods and slaves around the world, the continent was essentially ignored until the second half of the 19th century.
  • Even as late as the 1870s, European states still controlled only 10% of the African continent; by WWI, Europe controlled 90% of Africa.
  • Prior to the Berlin Conference of 1884, which formalized the “Scramble for Africa,” colonies had been formed throughout Africa on a smaller scale.
  • Most notably, King Leopold II explored and colonized the Congo as a private venture with the aid of explorer Morton Stanley.
  • Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo through forced labor of ivory and rubber production, causing the deaths of 1 to 15 million Congolese people.
  • With the dismissal of the aging Chancellor Bismarck (who had plans to colonize Africa) by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the relatively orderly colonization became a frantic scramble. This led to the Berlin Conference, initiated by Bismarck to establish international guidelines for the acquisition of African territory.

Key Terms

Scramble for Africa
The invasion, occupation, division, colonization, and annexation of African territory by European powers during the period of New Imperialism, between 1881 and 1914. It is also called the Partition of Africa and the Conquest of Africa. In 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under European control; by 1914 it had increased to 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia (Abyssinia), the Dervish state (present-day Somalia) and Liberia still independent.
King Leopold II of Belgium
The second King of the Belgians, known as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants.
colonialism
The establishment of a colony in one territory by a political power from another territory and the subsequent maintenance, expansion, and exploitation of that colony. The term is also used to describe the unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous peoples.

Early European Colonization in Africa

Early European expeditions concentrated on colonizing previously uninhabited islands such as the Cape Verde Islands and São Tomé Island, or establishing coastal forts as a base for trade and supporting the Cape Route between Europe and Asia. These forts often developed areas of influence along coastal strips, but with the exception of the Senegal River, the vast interior of Africa was little-known to Europeans until the late 19th century.

Even as late as the 1870s, European states still controlled only 10 percent of the African continent, with territories concentrated near the coast. The most important holdings were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom; and Algeria, held by France. By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia were independent of European control.

Technological advancement facilitated overseas expansionism. Industrialization brought about rapid advancements in transportation and communication, especially in the forms of steam navigation, railways, and telegraphs. Medical advances also were important, especially medicines for tropical diseases. The development of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria, enabled vast expanses of the tropics to be accessed by Europeans.

Around the 1870s, the growing trend of colonization in Africa began to take off. The term “imperialism” is often conflated with “colonialism,” but many scholars argue that each has a distinct definition. Historian and philosopher Edward Said noted that “imperialism involved ‘the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory,’ while colonialism refers to the ‘implanting of settlements on a distant territory.'”

 

African Colonization in the 19th Century

Before the Berlin Conference, European diplomacy treated African indigenous people in the same manner as the New World natives, forming trading relationships with their chiefs. By the mid-19th century, Europeans considered Africa to be disputed territory ripe for exploration, trade, and settlement by colonists. With the exception of trading posts along the coasts, the continent was essentially ignored.

In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium, who had previously founded the International African Society in 1876, invited Henry Morton Stanley to join him in researching and civilizing the continent. In 1878, the International Congo Society was also formed, with more economic goals but still closely related to the former society. Léopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, which turned to imperialistic goals, while the African Society served primarily as a philanthropic front.

From 1878 to 1885, Stanley returned to the Congo, not as a reporter but as an envoy from Leopold with the secret mission to organize what would become known as the Congo Free State. French intelligence discovered Leopold’s plans, and France quickly engaged in its own colonial exploration. French naval officer Pierre de Brazza was dispatched to central Africa, traveled into the western Congo basin, and raised the French flag over the newly founded Brazzaville in 1881, in what is now the Republic of Congo. Portugal, which had a long but essentially abandoned colonial empire in the area through the mostly defunct proxy state Kongo Empire, also claimed the area. Its claims were based on old treaties with Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. It quickly made a treaty on February 26, 1884, with its former ally, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to block the Congo Society’s access to the Atlantic.

By the early 1880s, due to many factors including diplomatic maneuvers, subsequent colonial exploration, and recognition of Africa’s abundance of valuable resources such as gold, timber, land, and markets, European interest in the continent increased dramatically. Stanley’s charting of the Congo River Basin (1874–77) removed the last terra incognita from European maps of the continent, delineating the areas of British, Portuguese, French, and Belgian control. The powers raced to push these rough boundaries to their furthest limits and eliminate any local minor powers which might prove troublesome to European competitive diplomacy.

France moved to take over Tunisia, one of the last of the Barbary Pirate states, under the pretext of another piracy incident. French claims by Pierre de Brazza were quickly solidified, with France taking control of today’s Republic of the Congo in 1881 and Guinea in 1884. Italy became part of the Triple Alliance, upsetting Bismarck’s carefully laid plans with the state and forcing Germany to become involved in Africa. In 1882, realizing the geopolitical extent of Portuguese control on the coasts and penetration by France eastward across Central Africa toward Ethiopia, the Nile, and the Suez Canal, Britain saw its vital trade route through Egypt and its Indian Empire threatened.

Under the pretext of the collapsed Egyptian financing and a subsequent riot in which hundreds of Europeans and British subjects were murdered or injured, the United Kingdom intervened in nominally Ottoman Egypt. The UK also ruled over the Sudan and what would later become British Somaliland.

A photo of slaves captured from the Congo aboard an Arab slave ship intercepted by the Royal Navy (1869).

Slave Trade in Africa: Photograph of slaves captured from the Congo aboard an Arab slave ship intercepted by the Royal Navy (1869). One of the chief justifications for the colonization of Africa was the suppression of the slave trade.

 

Berlin Conference

This rapid increase in the exploration and colonization of Africa eventually led to the 1884 Berlin Conference. Established empires, notably Britain, Portugal and France, had already claimed vast areas of Africa and Asia, and emerging imperial powers like Italy and Germany had done likewise on a smaller scale. With the dismissal of the aging Chancellor Bismarck by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the relatively orderly colonization became a frantic scramble, known as the “Scramble for Africa.” The Berlin Conference, initiated by Bismarck to establish international guidelines for the acquisition of African territory, formalized this “New Imperialism.” Between the Franco-Prussian War and the World War I, Europe added almost 9 million square miles—one-fifth of the land area of the globe—to its overseas colonial possessions.

Attributions