The Building of Global Empires: Africa

1. The Building of Global Empires:Africa 1750 - 1914

2. Imperialism Defined • Any form of control exercised by one group of people over another beyond one group’s own borders. • Political, economic, and cultural imperialism

3. Imperialism in Africa • In 1875 European people had a limited presence in Africa. • There were several small coastal colonies and fortified trading posts: • Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique • French settler colony in northern Algeria. • British and Dutch migrants in south Africa

4. Algeria • The French invaded Algiers in 1830 after they insulted the French King. • The original invasion of Algeria was revenge but soon turned to prestige. • The conquest of Algeria by the French was long and violent. • Over 1/3 of the Algerian population disappeared.

5. Imperialism in Africa • The slave trade was abolished in 1833 in the British Empire. • At the end of the slave trade, commerce developed around the exchange of African gold, ivory, and palm oil for European textiles, guns, and manufactured goods. • This was especially prosperous for west African lands.

6. British ImperialismFrom Cape to Cairo

7. From Cape to Cairo: Cape Town • In 1652 Cape Town established by the Dutch East India Company • Former company employees and settlers from Europe moved into lands beyond control to establish farms and ranches. (Boers – Dutch word for farmers) • Later they became known as Afrikaners (Dutch word for African); they believed God had predestined them to claim the Cape. • During the 18th century, Dutch, Germans, and French Huguenots immigrated to the Cape. • Hostility developed between natives and Europeans. • By the 18th century, warfare, enslavement, and smallpox epidemics had led to the extinction of the native people (Khoikhoi).

8. South Africa • The establishment of British rule in 1806 disrupted Afrikaner society and its use of the institution of slavery. • The Afrikaners took the “Great Trek,” migrating west. • This led to conflicts between the indigenous people and the Afrikaners. • When diamonds and gold were discovered in Afrikaner lands, the South Afrikan War erupted between the Afrikaners and the British (The Boer War or South Afrikan War). • 100,000 black Africans ended up in internment camps.

10. Cape to Cairo: Southern Africa • Dr. David Livingstone, Scottish minister, explored central and southern Africa for mission posts. • He was the first European to see Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls), to which he gave the English name in honor of his monarch, Queen Victoria. • Adventurer and American journalist Henry Morton Stanley undertook an expedition to find Livingstone. • Their meeting in Africa gave rise to the expression, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

13. Livingstone and Stanley

14. Explorations of the Rivers of Africa. • Adventurers exploring southern and Central Africa gathered reliable information about the great rivers: Nile, Niger, Congo, and Zambesi. • These rivers provided access to the interior of Africa.

15. From Cape to Cairo: Central Africa • King Leopold II of Belgium employed Henry Morton Stanley to help develop commercial ventures and establish a colony called the Congo Free State (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the basin of the Congo River. • In fact, the Congo was not a free state at all.

16. From Cape to Cairo Congo • Leopold II made the Congo his private estate, eighty times larger than Belgium. • He was interested in rubber from jungles and minerals, especially copper. • Laborers were forced to work as slaves at gunpoint. • Workers could be killed or have their hands cut off for failing to make quotas. • During Leopold’s rule, some ten million Congolese died. • In 1908, the Belgian parliament took control of the colony, but the cruelties remained in the Congo.

17. Cape to Cairo Northern Africa • Muhammad Ali was in debt to British as a result of its efforts to remove itself from Ottoman rule. • By 1870’s Egypt was forced to impose high taxes which provoked unrest and rebellion. • In 1882, a British army occupied Egypt to protect its financial interests and ensure the safety of the Suez Canal which was critical to British communications with India.

18. Suez Canal

19. Scramble for Africa • Berlin Conference • 14 delegates from fourteen European states and the United States. • Not a single African was present. • An agreement that “any European state could establish African colonies after notifying the others of its intentions and occupying previously unclaimed territory.” • Conference provided European diplomats with the justification they needed to draw lines on maps and carve a continent into colonies.

20. Scramble for Africa

21. Berlin Conference • During the 1890’s, European nations sent armies to impose colonial rule in Africa. • Armed with cannons and machine guns, they rarely failed to defeat African forces. • By the turn of the century, European colonies embraced all of Africa except for Ethiopia, where natives fought off Italian forces and Liberia, a small republic populated by free slaves that was a dependency of the U.S.

22. Imperialism in Africa • The American Civil War and European arms race in the 1860’s and 1870’s revolutionized guns. • In the 1880’s Hiram Maxim invented the machine gun, which was used in the defeat of Africans on African soil. • By 1900, most of Africa had been divided up among a handful of European powers, in particular Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium. • Europeans came in direct competition with each other, so they convened a conference in Berlin to establish rules for fixing borders among European colonies in Africa.

23. Motives for Imperialism • Economic • 15th-18th centuries: Mercantilism closed economic system; establish self-sufficiency • 19th century: Free Trade • Material advantages, extension of trade, increased wealth, rise of standard of living • National security • Civilizing mission: “White Man’s Burden” • Social Darwinism: “survival of the fittest” was used to justify imperialism • Rising tides of nationalism • Acquisition of territory was used as evidence of national strength and superiority