6.6: The European "Scramble for Africa"

In 1803, the Dutch were the first to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Britain and the U.S. were next in 1807. By 1836, the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Brazilian governments also abolished the trade. Still, the exploitation of the continent and its peoples did not end. By the end of the nineteenth century, European nations seized most of the continent of Africa as colonial possessions. This scramble was motivated by the desire to secure resources like copper, tin, rubber, cotton, and to create captive markets for its manufactured goods. The Europeans made agreements with many local kings and chieftains and went to war with others, always seeking a pledge of loyalty to their particular empire.

To bring order to the “scramble,” German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck organized the 1884 Berlin Conference to organize and delineate colonial claims. The conference was attended by representatives from 12 European countries as well as a representatives from the United States and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were there with claims to their provinces along the Mediterranean. Figure 6.6.1 depicts Bismarck and European diplomats around a horseshoe-shaped conference table at Bismarck's official residence in Berlin. A European diplomat is pointing to a large map of Africa. No Africans were present at this European conference concerning the partition of their continent.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Drawing of the participants in the 1884 Berlin Conference, Aldabert von Robler, in the Public Domain.

Conference members created administrative boundaries that deliberately cut across existing political and ethnic boundaries. In some cases, these new boundaries forced historically warring groups and enemies to live and work together. Other newly drawn boundaries divided historical allies in order to weaken resistance. The conference focused on connecting European centers of trade rather than considering borders that were the best for the people living in the regions. In later decades, these externally imposed boundaries became a source of continuing civil unrest, separatist movements, and boundary disputes as new African countries were formed in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Belgian Congo

Between 1885-1908, Belgian King Leopold II claimed he was “civilizing” the Congolese, though his system of forced labor included whipping, torture, debt peonage, dismemberment, and outright murder. It was standard practice in the so-called “Congo Free State” to cut off the hands or arms of African workers who did not meet their rubber collection quotas. Figure 6.6.2 shows photographs of mutilated children and adults in the Belgian Congo between 1900-1905. Alice Harris and her husband Rev. John Harris were European missionaries in the Congo Free State in the 1890s. They used the photographs of mutilated victims to document the atrocities against Congolese children and plantation workers. At the bottom of the image in Figure 6.6.2 is a caption that reads "These pictures get sneaked around everywhere." Leopold II's private army, Force Publique (FP), routinely tortured and slaughtered Congolese, and the baskets of severed hands became the dominant symbol of Leopold's atrocities and cruelty.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Photograph of mutilated children and adults in the Belgian Congo, c. 1900-1905, The P.R. Warren Company, in the Public Domain.

During the time that Leopold controlled the Congo as a personal colony, ten million Congolese died from murder or from being worked to death. This was a holocaust of unimaginable proportions. Using wealth from the extraction of rubber in the Congo, King Leopold II financed such monuments as the Parc du Cinquantenaire seen in Figure 6.6.3. Cinquantenaire in French means fiftieth anniversary because it was constructed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence in 1830. Among the many buildings and museums inside this large public park in Brussels stands a monument that honors Belgian pioneers in Congo. Today this has become a controversial topic, and raises questions about the relationship between art and profit, art and colonization, and art and imperialism.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels, Marc Ryckaert, in the Public Domain.

How do we assess wealth and riches that are directly tied to colonial regimes and the era of imperialism? There will be many different answers. Even with the unthinkable amount of torture and suffering that Leopold inflicted, he presented himself as a benevolent king. This story of the Belgian Congo is featured in a 2003 BBC documentary series entitled, "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death." Finally after after thirty years of Leopold's brutal rule, the international outcry over his practices forced the Belgian government to take over his holdings in 1908. The newly named Belgian Congo remained in place until 1960, during the era of post World War II decolonization.

Rwanda

In Rwanda, the Belgians noted the existence of separate castes that lived side-by-side for generations under the same rule. However, the Belgians decided to put the cattle-raising Tutsis, ten percent of the population, in a privileged status and position over the Hutu farmers. Because of more access to animal protein, the Tutsis seemed taller and better-looking to the Europeans and were deemed to be naturally superior to the Hutus. Figure 6.6.3 is a black and white photo of Tutsi Chief Kaware traveling in 1904. Tutsi women specialized in basket weaving. Figure 6.6.3 shows their chief carried in a traditional basket. 

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): c. 1900, Tutsi Chief traveling in Rwanda, Richard Kandts' book, Caput Nili, in the Public Domain. 

After Rwanda gained its independence in 1962, the Hutus took control and subjected the Tutsis to periodic pogroms. In 1994, nearly a million Tutsis were killed by their neighbors in a government-orchestrated genocide, until a largely Tutsi-led guerrilla insurgency took over the government. In the aftermath, up to 2 million Hutu refugees fled Rwanda for the Congo, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and further destabilizing central Africa. 

South Africa

In the case of South Africa, the Dutch established a “settler colony” beginning in the mid-seventeenth century. They formed a community of farmers that could supply the fleets rounding the Cape of Good Hope on their way to the East Indies. Thousands of Dutch and other Europeans were attracted by the relatively cooler climate of southern Africa and plentiful arable land. The Dutch sought to remove the original inhabitants rather than subjugate them. The long history of colonial expropriation of land from the original owners had begun.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): 1809 Map of Cape Colony in southern Africa, John Pinkerton, in the Public Domain.

In 1806, the British imperial government took control of South Africa from the Dutch. Figure 6.6.5 show a map of the British colony in pink color. The Cape Colony was the first European colony in South Africa. During the 1830s, the British began abolishing slavery and requiring English in schools and in legal transactions. In reaction, many Dutch settlers moved farther inland in the “Great Trek,” taking more land from the natives and establishing two republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. At the same time, the descendants of unions between Europeans, Africans, and the Dutch, occasionally established their own autonomous regions.

Also in South Africa in the 1820s, the British faced the independent kingdom of the Zulus led by Shaka Zulu and his well-trained army. When local British commanders decided to attack the Zulus in 1879, they were defeated by Zulu troops in a series of major battles. A second invasion of Zululand led to a Zulu defeat, but the British continued to recognize Zulu autonomy in much of their territory.

The later descendants of the Dutch settlers in Africa called themselves “Boers” (Dutch word for “farmer”) or Afrikaners. They successfully repelled a British invasion of the Transvaal and the Orange Free States in 1881 but were defeated in the 1899-1902 Second Boer War. The latter war included guerrilla warfare and concentration camps for Boer civilians. Figure 6.6.6 shows Boer soldiers in a shallow trench during the Siege of Mafeking in the Second Boer War.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): An 1899 Boer trench during the Second Boer War, Imperial War Museums, in the Public Domain.

A young Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of Great Britain, went to South Africa as a journalist to report on the war, and was instead captured by the Boers. Churchill escaped and his story helped launch his career in British politics. The Germans, who held territory bordering South Africa, supported the Boers in the conflict, adding to mounting tensions between the governments of Great Britain and Germany in the years preceding World War I.

In 1910, the British organized the Union of South Africa. They included the Boers as equal citizens, but denied equality to the native people of South Africa, nearly 85% of the population. South Africa became an autonomous dominion within the British Empire. Racial segregation continued in South Africa all the way up to 1990. Nelson Mandela led changes toward justice and equality.

Review Questions

• What caused Europeans to believe they could meet in Berlin and divide Africa between themselves?
• How did the partition of Africa by European colonial regimes affect the political difficulties faced by African countries into the present?