Somalia and the Scramble for Africa

Somalia and the Scramble For Africa

An academic research about the background,

causes, and the consequences of the Scramble

for Africa: Defining the legacies and why

todays Africa is still under the foreign domination.

By Ismail Ahmed Siad

The Scramble For Africa

Background:

Africa, the oldest of the continents, containing the earliest re-mains of man, and the birthplace

of the European civilization,(Jan, 1889, p. 42). As Africa was mostly unexplored since late

nineteenth century, and the most the people in this continent were categorized into hundreds of

ethnic groups with different languages, they were also less developed and usually depended

much on manual ways of production other than using technically advanced machines as that of

the western societies.

In mid eighteenth century, after the industrial revolution, the world has changed a lot,

especially in the western part. Most countries in Europe were undergoing an industrial based

system of production, while people in Africa were still on their way of manual production. In

the history of imperialism, the Scramble for Africa was an important event. Historians of

different kinds have figured out it was because of the poor and the lingering development of the

African societies, (as cited in Turner, 2007).

In Africa it was the tribesman, hunted and gathered, as the people were dependent on the

changes in the environment, they were always on the move in search for better living conditions

(as cited in Denny, 2003). Compared to that of Europe, where people were able to produce their

foods through machines and factories. Moreover, in Europe, there were rapid development in

clothing, agriculture and most importantly the production of weapons and transportation

supplies.

Also Africa has an important geographical location, as there are some places with a highly

strategic importance for sustaining trade routes to Asia and other means. These areas include the


east horn of Africa, northern coast of South Africa, North Africa and so on. As the world was

abolishing the slave trade in the eighteenth century, foreign view of Africa was changing in

consideration with the advancement in economics and technology.

Causes:

As the world was experiencing rapid evolution in economic and technological perspectives, yet

some parts of the world were under very slow development. In European countries, industries

produce lots of products and in return they need row materials, cheap labor and market places

especially overseas markets to export their products, so that the process goes on to the aim of

profit making.

After the end of the Slave trade European countries started competing in the availability of

markets for their readymade products. As cited in Hargreaves, Commercial access to Africa

was the common objective", (1985, p. 21). This was one of the main causes of the Europeans to

expand their overseas markets, which will enable them for their production to continue without

the afraid of overproduction. Furthermore, naturally when there is a market for a product, the

only thing someone waits is that they can make profit for selling their products, and that the

Europeans were of the same kind. They were producing and sending them directly to Africa to

make a vast profit return from Africa.

The second thing which was important in the expansion of the European empires to Africa was

getting cheap labor. After the industrial revolution, Europe had experienced a transformation in

every aspect of life. There were lots of workers coming to the big cities to find a job, and as they

were working under extremely bad and severe working conditions and in order to make the


European workers condition get better they had to find another source of labor which is cheap

and abundant enough to sustain the profit maximization Europeans needed.

Another important factor in the top of the list of the causes of the Scramble for Africa was that

Africa was seen as it can be the source of raw materials, as its people were not involving in

production or exploitation of their natural resources. There are scholars who have adapted this

perspective to the scramble for Africa by stressing the importance of those economic factors

which can be readily documented from the sources, such as the need for new markets or, at a

later stage, for sources of raw materials ( Koponen, 1993, p. 119). This meant that European

states with the their blooming economic, technological and military capabilities and at that time

eager to develop more can go to Africa and take the resources back to Europe with the idea of

that Africa was no mans land.

One more factor which is worth mentioning is the idea that the Europeans were in the time of

the rise of nationalist sentiments or racialist ideologies ( Koponen, 1993, p. 119). At that time

the idea in the main stream was that Europeans were eager to expand their empires to the other

parts of the world especially Africa and also introducing their culture, religion to the people over

there. In this part we can include or mention that the motive behind the expansion of the

European empires to the other parts of the world was that the white man especially the

Europeans are when it comes to the rationality, better, wiser and also more intelligent that the

other men in the rest of the world.


Consequences of the Scramble for Africa:

The inherited political geography of Africa is as great an impediment to independent

development as her colonially based economies and political structures, (Griffiths, 1986, p.

205). The Berlin conference in 1884-85, which the European leaders defined the map for the

todays African borders seem to have an unending problems which are politically or socially

active until right now. The partition of Africa in Berlin conference made nations with the same

language or culture live under the sovereign s of different countries. It is also mentionable that it

created a lingering hostility between neighboring countries (Ethiopia and Eretria for example) as

they have border conflicts.

As it is obvious to everyone around the world that today, many African nations are still under a

dominant and lingering effect of the European imperialism, which seems some local societies

have already adopted and accepted the way Europeans wanted. For example, most of the West

African nations speak French and some countries in that region have already made the French

language as their official language. This makes them but their mother language behind and

mostly can hardly speak with it. The same example can be applied to most countries in East

Africa (apart from Somalia and Ethiopia), use English as an official language and their native

language (Kiswahili) as their second language.

Somalia:

Somalia, in the very east Africa (consisting of the former British Somaliland and Italian

Somaliland) is the only one country that has said no to the imperialist drown borders and also the

legacies of the imperialism. Its people take neither the religion, culture nor the language of the

imperialist Europeans. This country in east Africa, -with relatively a population of less than six

million at that time, as it has approximately 12 million population right now after 54 years of


independence- did show, and can be the best example of the anti-imperialistic resistance in

Africa. Somali army Dervishes led by an Islamic and a nationalist figure Sayid Muhammad

Abdullah Hassan met the colonist troops as they set foot to the Somali soils and surprised them

with attack. The British army experienced lots of

resistance and even lost some influential

members including Richard Corfield. In addition

to that, Dervishes managed to keep the British

army outside the country for twenty years

period. On the other hand, Somalia being the

first nation in Africa, where the British army had

to use air strike against the nationalist Dervishes,

as result of painful confrontations by the

Dervishes, but it yielded no change.

Unfortunately, Sayid Muhammad passed away

21st Dec 1920 from serious Malaria in his age of 60. His passing away became an opportunity for

the colonists to increase the pressure and took the full control of the country, but the Somali

people did not stop there. They fought for thirty years against three aggressive enemies (Italy,

British and the Ethiopians).

Somalia after the independence, tried to help lots of African nations gain their independence, by

training, offering techniques and weapons to the nationalist movements in their countries. These

countries include: Burundi, Uganda, Djibouti and so on.


How do some thinkers feel about the Scramble for Africa?

In the time of imperialism and up until now, Africa had experienced the denial of African

history to establish the necessity of white men to bring innovation and technologies in the

colonies (as cited in Tangie, 2006). The writer believes and as it can be felt from his idea,

Africa had stable government system and it was governed democratically. And that it had a

history before the imperialist European power come.

It was their biased writings about the history of Africa, which completely discourages the

Africas development compared to that Europe or other continents of the world. The writer also

believes that imperialism had posed threats on the peoples moral codes, their tradition and

brought a different one instead. In addition to that, he thinks what made Africa continuously

suffer from political instability corruption in governmental systems and the barrier of the local

developments is that the Legacies (as cited in Tangie, 2006) left by the European imperialists.

As cited in Pakenham (2008), in the Berlin conference, Africa was divided up to fifty countries

with regardless of the local societies, religions and races. It was just a map drown by foreign

man, who do not have any idea about what was really going inside the continent. This has

formed an atmosphere where the local societies are torn apart and as a result, family members,


friends and relatives would live inside the borders of different states. This created endless

conflicts between the local societies as they cannot understand each other because of their

different cultural, religious and societal backgrounds, also differences in language paralyzed the

communication between the societies. Having nations with a very low chance of fitting one

another, that state cannot be able to develop in a way they can catch other states in the world.

Finally, when it comes to my personal thoughts about the Scramble for Africa, it seems to have

effects of different levels and poses threats of different intensities throughout the whole African

continent.

The perspectives of the people may differ from person to person or from place to place, but as an

African, it was unfortunate event in the human history. In that period, it was recorded the worst

genocides in the history of the mind kind. When I am saying in the human history, I mean like

when to societies of the same power, same level of technologies fight and one of them wins,

even if one of them massacres the other society it will sound like that society lost in the war and

it was massacred by the other, but when it comes to massacring innocent people living peacefully

and exploit the people they have formerly weakened and most importantly keeping them up until

today from developing on their own way.

In addition to that, keeping them from deciding on their own and also keeping them from coming

to the stage so that they can speak of themselves and make it clear for the world who they really

are, not with the image blindly drown by the imperialist thinkers.

Lastly, it is even more painful that the domination is still out there; weather it is any means of

humiliation, or embarrassing people by writing their own history from the wrong perspective,

labeling them with bad stereotypes and so on.


References:

Jane. (1889). Africa, Its Past and Future. Science, 13, 42-50. Retrieved December 10, 2013,

from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1763687

Turner, M. (2007). Scramble for Africa . The Gaurdian, p. 1.

Denny, C. (2003). Scramble for Africa. The Gaurdian, p. 1.

Hargreaves, J. D. (1985b). The making of the boundaries focus on West Africa. In A. I.

ASIWAJU (ed.) Partitioned Africans. London.

Koponen, J. (1993). The Partition of Africa: A Scrambel for a Mirage? Nordic Journal of African

Studies, (1): 117135.

Griffiths, I. (1986). The Scramble for Africa: Inherited Political Boundaries. The Geographical

Journal, 152, p. 204-2016.

Tangie, N. F. (2006). The state and development in Africa

Pakenham, T. (1991). The scramble for Africa: white mans conquest of the Dark Continent.

1876-1912. New York: Avon Books.

Documents

Somalia and the Scramble for Africa