CLOSED AFRICA Imperialism

African Trade [15c-17c]

Pre-19c European Trade with Africa

Closed Africa

Escarpments – steep cliffs prevented entry into central Africa

Cataracts – Large waterfalls on many African rivers; Ex. Nile, Congo, Zambezi

Boats cannot sail up many rivers Early Europeans did not explore the land

Disease

Tropical Climate: Breeding Ground for Disease: Malaria (mosquitoes) Sleeping Sickness – Tsetse Fly River blindness – Flies Bilharzia – snails/parasite worms – bladder

infections Guinea Worm Blinding Trachoma Ebola

Imperialism

Imperialism – a policy in which a strong nation seeks to dominate other countries politically, economically, or socially.

Industrial Revolution

Source for Raw

Materials

Markets for Finished Goods

European Nationalism

Missionary Activity

Military & Naval Bases

European Motives

For Colonization

Places to Dump

Unwanted/ Excess Popul.

Soc. & Eco. Opportunities

Humanitarian Reasons

European Racism

“White Man’s

Burden”

Social Darwinism

Motives:

Economic – industrial competition, raw materials. Political – rivalries grew in Europe. Increase

in nationalism in European countries. Religious – spread Christianity.

Industrial Revolution

European countries needed to search for new markets and raw materials. Led to competition for colonies (Africa).

Social Darwinism

• Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution • “survival of the fittest” • Justification for imperialist expansion. • Racism – the belief that one race is superior to

others. • White Man’s Burden

Social Darwinism

The “White Man’s Burden” A poem by Rudyard Kipling

The supposed or presumed responsibility of white people to govern and impart their culture to non-white people, often advanced as a justification for European colonialism.

Missionaries

• Major push by European missionaries to convert people in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands to Christianity.

What Open’s the Heart of Africa?

Reasons Wars!

• Technologically superior Maxim machine gun. Invented (1884) 1st automatic gun

Europeans had built steamboats, railroads, and cables in order to gain control of Africa.

Europeans developed drugs (like quinine) to prevent malaria (1829).

Europeans manipulated rival African groups to fight one another.

European Explorers in Africa

19c Europeans Map the Interior of Africa

Where Is Dr. Livingstone?

Doctor Livingstone, I Presume?

Sir Henry Morton Stanley

Dr. David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa.

European Explorations in mid-19c: “The Scramble for Africa”

Scramble for Africa

King Leopold of Belgium claimed central Africa claiming he was doing it to protect the natives from Arab slavers and to open the heart of African to Christian missionaries and western capitalists

The area he controlled, the Congo River Basin, is now modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo

King Leopold II: (r. 1865 – 1909)

Belgium’s Stranglehold on the Congo • The king unleashed new horrors

on the African continent. • He turned his “Congo Free state”

into a massive labor camp made a fortune for himself from the harvest o rubber.

• He contributed in a large way to death of perhaps 10 million innocent people in the process.

• Congo’s soldiers have never moved away from the role allocated to them by Leopold which was to force, coerce, torment, and rape an unarmed civilian population.

Belgium’s Stranglehold on the Congo (cont.) Soldiers were told to chop of hands

as to prove they were not wasting bullets.

It wasn’t unusual for soldiers to be shooting monkeys and then chopping off laborer’s hands to provide an alibi for their wasted bullets.

Soldier were known to burn down whole villages to force the men into the forests while they held the women captive and if the men did not bring back enough wild rubber they would execute the whole village.

Harvesting Rubber

Punishing “Lazy” Workers

5-8 Million Victims! (50% of Popul.) It is blood-curdling to see them (the soldiers) returning with the hands of the slain, and to find the hands of young children amongst the bigger ones evidencing their bravery...The rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives, and the scenes I have witnessed, while unable to help the oppressed, have been almost enough to make me wish I were dead... This rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if the natives were to rise and sweep every white person on the Upper Congo into eternity, there would still be left a fearful balance to their credit. -- Belgian Official

Berlin Conference

MMMMM…Give Me Some of the Cake

Berlin Conference (1884-1885)

Called by German chancellor Otto von Bismark (at the request of Portugal)

14 nations met in Germany (no African nations invited to conference) to negotiate questions and end confusion over the control of Africa

At the time of the conference, 80% of Africa remained under traditional and local control

The Europeans carved Africa into colonies.

Set future rules on acquiring territories.

Berlin Conference (1884-1885)

What ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into fifty irregular countries. This new map of the continent was superimposed over the one thousand indigenous cultures and regions of Africa. The new countries lacked rhyme or reason and divided coherent groups of people and merged together disparate groups who really did not get along.

Invitees

The 14 attending conference: 1. France. 8. Netherlands 2. Germany 9. Belgium 3. Great Britain 10. Russia 4. Portugal 11. Spain 5. Denmark 12. Sweden-Norway 6. Austria-Hungary 13. Turkey 7. Italy 14. United States

RED / BOLD FACE ARE THE MAJOR

COUNTRIES INVOLVED AT THE TIME

Berlin Conference (1884-1885)

The initial task of the conference was to agree that the Congo River and Niger River mouths and basins would be considered neutral and open to trade. Despite its neutrality, part of the Congo Basin became a personal kingdom for Belgium's King Leopold II

Berlin Conference (1884-1885)

At the time of the conference, only the coastal areas of Africa were colonized by the European powers.

At the Berlin Conference the European colonial powers scrambled to gain control over the interior of the continent.

The colonial powers haggled over geometric boundaries in the interior of the continent, disregarding the cultural and linguistic boundaries already established by the indigenous African population.

Berlin Conference of 1884-1885

Another point of view?

General division

of Africa in 1914

Africa

in

1914

The Legacy of the Berlin Conference

"The Berlin Conference was Africa's undoing in more ways than one. The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent. By the time independence returned to Africa in 1950, the realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily."*