Scramble for Africa



The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or the Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by a series of big and minor Western European (conting also the Kingdom of Egypt, ruled by an Armenian elite) powers during a short period known as New Imperialism (between 1878 and 1920). The 10 percent of Africa that was under formal European control in the middle of XIX century increased to almost 80 percent by 1914, with only some minors native countries remaining independent, althought greatly influeced by the colonizating powers.

The Chambery Conference of 1878, which regulated European colonization and trade in Africa, is usually accepted as its beginning. In the last quarter of the 19th century, there were considerable political rivalries among the empires of the European continent, leading to the African continent being partitioned without wars between European nations.

The later years of the 19th century saw a transition from "informal imperialism" — military influence and economic dominance — to territorial annexation and direct rule.

Background
By 1841, businessmen from Europe had established small trading posts along the coasts of Africa, but they seldom moved inland, preferring to stay near the sea. They primarily traded with locals. Large parts of the continent were essentially uninhabitable for Europeans because of their high mortality rates from tropical diseases such as malaria.

As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts.

After its last successfull crusade, the Papal States conquered a large part of Northern Africa, from Tunisi to the east coast of Morocco, even if during and after the Zuaves Revolution its controll to this region was tenous at best. On the other hand, Carolingian Germany has established a prosperous colony in Karlshaven, which exterded a strong influence on the rest of the southern part of the Continent.

Scotland, Anatolia and other maritime powers have established some trading post along the coast, but they were lightly manned and mostly worked in partnership with local rulers.

Technological advances facilitated European expansion overseas. Industrialization brought about rapid advancements in transportation and communication, especially in the forms of steamships, railways and telegraphs. Medical advances also played an important role, especially medicines for tropical diseases, which helped control their adverse effects. The development of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria, made vast expanses of the tropics more accessible for Europeans.

Africa and global markets


After the Croatian Wars, Sub-Saharan Africa, was one of the last regions of the world largely untouched by "informal imperialism" and therefore attractive to business entrepreneurs. During a time when Scotland's balance of trade showed a growing deficit and the country was still recovering from its civil war and the subsequent losing of its American Empire, with shrinking and increasingly protectionist continental markets during the Long Depression (1873–96), Africa offered the European countries an open market that would garner them a trade surplus: a market that bought more from the colonial power than it sold overall.

Surplus capital was often more profitably invested overseas, where cheap materials, limited competition, and abundant raw materials made a greater premium possible. Another inducement for imperialism arose from the demand for raw materials, especially ivory, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin. Additionally, Scotland wanted control of areas of southern and eastern coasts of Africa for stopover ports on the route to Asia and its prosperous relationship with Persia and India.

But, excluding Karlshaven in the Southern Part of the Continent, European nations invested relatively limited amounts of capital in Africa compared to that in other continents. Consequently, the companies involved in tropical African commerce were relatively small, apart from Ivaylo Subotic's Alexandros Mining Company.

Pro-imperialist colonial lobbyists argued that sheltered overseas markets in Africa would solve the problems of low prices and overproduction caused by shrinking continental markets.

Old and new imperialisms
While tropical Africa was not a large zone of investment, other overseas regions were. The vast interior between Egypt and the gold and diamond-rich Southern Africa had strategic value in securing the flow of overseas trade. The European powers were under political pressure to build up lucrative markets with the huge but instable Persian and Chinese Empires, the Indian thalassocracies, Malaya, and the newly explored Australia and New Zealand. Thus, they wanted to secure the key waterway between East and West – especially after the Suez Canal, was completed by Americans in 1880.

The Sudan region become a dangerous flashpoint region, as the Egyptians as a shaking controll of this part of their empire, and the different european powers could not tolerate that one of them could be the total controller of the area.

The Conference of Chambery tried to accomodate all the involved parties: the Suez Channel, built with American but also European capitals, was put under US protection (as it was the farest power involved in the region); the Egypt, renouncing in some claimed territories in the Gulf of Guinea and in Sudan itself and promising to definitively abolishing slavery, was confirmed as the controller of the region and thus helped economically and militarly in stabilize it; Venezia, Scotland and Anatolia were compensated with territories from Egypt or exchanged between themselves and finally Germany has the possibility of heavy investement in the Egyptian economy and infrastructure.

In this sense the scramble for African territory also reflected concern for the acquisition of military and naval bases, for strategic purposes and the exercise of power. The growing navies, and new ships driven by steam power, required coaling stations and ports for maintenance. Defence bases were also needed for the protection of sea routes and communication lines, particularly of expensive and vital international waterways such as the Suez Channel.

Colonies were seen as assets in balance of power negotiations, useful as items of exchange at times of international bargaining. Colonies with large native populations were also a source of military power; Anatolia and Venice, in particular, used large numbers of African soldiers, respectively, in many of their colonial wars (and would do so again in the coming World Wars). In the age of nationalism there was pressure for a nation to acquire an empire as a status symbol; the idea of "greatness" became linked with the "White Man's Burden", or sense of duty, underlying many nations' strategies.

In the early 1880s, Jaan Kroon was exploring the Kingdom of Kongo for Venice, at the same time Rudolf Haas explored it on behalf of the Alexandros Mining Company, which would have it as its Company State.

At the height of the Zuaves Revolution, the newly indipendent France occupied Tunisia in 1906, both to protect the numerous French population in the region and both to assert its place as a "new" regional power.

The same year, Germany and Great Britain officially recognized the indipendence of Gambia, althought the young kingdom has to cede large swapts of its territory to the two colonial powers.

In 1908, the Bavarians intervened in the civil war that plagued the Merina Kingdom in Madagascar, de facto abolishing its monarchy and creating a colony, even if the "pacification" of the big island required numerous years.

Germany's Festung


Germany, already a master of a huge continental empire in Europe, was not a real colonial power before its change of national politics in the beginning of the 1880s. Chancellor Ludwig Stanislavski personally disliked colonies but have to give in to popular and elite pressure. He was one of the main sponsor of the 1884–85 Chambery Conference, which set the rules of effective control of African territories, and reduced the risk of conflict between colonial powers.

These new imperialist thrusts, blending with the feeling of encirclement that permeated German society at the time, argued that a great overseas Empire was fundamental to the survival of the Carolingian state itself.

Karlshaven, jewel of the crown and magnificent first stone of this grandiose project, was thus to be considered as an integral part of the Germanic nation and therefore safeguarded at all costs by an increasingly large group of hostile nations.

In parallel, Germany had firmly established itself in the Indo-Pacific area: in addition to the presence in the islands of Melanesia, German merchants had supplanted the Bavarians in the volume of business with the Jin Empire, Japan, and Korea.

It was of paramount importance, particularly to the new and increasingly powerful merchant elite, that the routes connecting these territories to Germany remain safe.

The policy of the new Emperor Gunzelin VI, the so-called Weltpolitik, thus married the concept of Festung: to concentrate its military and financial investments on two territories, in this case Karlshaven and Melanesia, and shore up the routes between these and the Motherland with small fortified "islands".

The Zulu Coast and the Zambezi were so heavily fortified, like the Ludwigsinseln archipelago (which became an important base in the Indian Ocean), the portions of Moroccan and Gambian territory purchased (under diplomatic pressure) from their respective countries and finally the Pathein delta itself, an ideal hinge between the African and Oceanic Empires.

This ambitious project would, however, have turned out, if not a torn in the side, at least one of the weaknesses of the Old Empire during the Great War: colonial competition, despite conciliatory attempts, would have ended up worsening relations with other powers and, in fact, isolating the empire even more at the world level.

In addition, the fortification of the different Festung, ended up consuming huge resources, both material, financial and human (with several army divisions effectively frozen in South Africa), which would have been more efficiently used in Europe and / or for the strengthening of the Imperial Fleet.

Last but not least, what had been the center of gravity of this project, Karlshaven, turned out to be a "treacherous and unfaithful" colony (as Kaiser Gunzelin called it): it had also become a "penal" colony, with many leaders and intellectuals close to Spartacism and Jacobinism exiled here for more or less long periods,  and, following the extremization of the policy of the En Reich – En Volk,  a colony of "forced" population, with different minorities, such as Poles and French, here forcibly moved from their native territories.

The same settlers of the oldest generation felt far from the closed and isolated policy of the last Kaiser, which in fact limited the economic growth of the region.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, the colony would prove to be a powder magazine ready to explode in revolt, which happened as soon as the homeland found itself seriously occupied elsewhere.

France's expansion and the proletarian nationalism


After the end of American-Anatolian War in 1890, France was again an independent nation, although more than 1/3 of the country remained under foreign rule.

Not having the resources to challenge the great German Empire and with its protectors, the United States in the first place which would have advised against such an action, the Bordeaux Government soon needed to find an expedient to increase its popularity and at the same time also increase its prestige on the international level.

The region called Tunisia had been part of the papal territories for about two centuries, along with other territories in northern Africa, but it too, since the outbreak of the Zouave revolution, was in the grip of anarchy and the control of the new revolutionary government of Orano was limited to the coastal strip.

A large and prosperous French-speaking community, the so-called tunesiens, was present in the north of the region since the Middle Ages, invited by the various Muslim emirs to increase trade with the northern part of the Mediterranean and which had become, under the papal government, the basin from which to recruit the growing bureaucratic class.

This community enjoyed important political and economic advantages and in fact, except in the last period of direct papal control, lived separately from the rest of the population of Berber and Arab origin.

With the outbreak of the Zouave Revolution, the Tunesiens found themselves increasingly discriminated against by the new government, which identified them as a legacy of the old European rule, and little protected by local brigands, which thrived in the power vacuum into which the region had fallen.

When rumors began to circulate that the triumvirate of Oran wanted to start a campaign of expulsion towards the French-speaking community, the representatives of the latter went to Europe to ask for protection: the government of Mathieu Ferry seized the situation and without informing its allies, who again would surely oppose such an adventure, sent an expeditionary force to Banzart, in the northern part of Tunisia and where the French-speaking community was concentrated.

The Zuave government, isolated internationally since the Pope’s flight from Rome, and already having a precarious control of the region, could only put up a weak resistance, standing in the way of the French the guerrilla warfare of the local population and the scarce garrisons of the coastal cities. The French, whose original plan was only to occupy the northern part of the country, were thus able to push also towards Egyptian Tripolitania and the innermost Tunisian regions.

After a year of low-intensity clashes, the Government of Oran, fearful that the French could also attempt an attack on Algeria or Rome, asked for peace: France, on the verge of bankruptcy and under the growing diplomatic pressure of the protecting powers, would receive Tunisia in administration for 30 years, at the end of which the population could decide its own destiny; the Zouaves also undertook to pay the damages that the French-speaking community had received during the war and in the previous 5 years.

In 1907, with Tunisia partially pacified and provided with a military government of occupation, Louis Damierez developed the concept of Proletarian Nationalism, which was supposed to legitimise French's imperialism by a mixture of socialism with nationalism:

"We must start by recognizing the fact that there are proletarian nations as well as proletarian classes; that is to say, there are nations whose living conditions are subject...to the way of life of other nations, just as classes are. Once this is realised, nationalism must insist firmly on this truth: France is, materially and morally, a proletarian nation."

Congo


David Livingstone's explorations, carried on by Henry Morton Stanley, excited imaginations with Stanley's grandiose ideas for colonisation; but these found little support owing to the problems and scale of action required, except from Leopold II of Belgium, who in 1876 had organised the International African Association. From 1869 to 1874, Stanley was secretly sent by Leopold II to the Congo region, where he made treaties with several African chiefs along the Congo River and by 1882 had sufficient territory to form the basis of the Congo Free State.



While Stanley was exploring the Congo on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium, the Franco-Italian marine officer Pierre de Brazza travelled into the western Congo Basin and raised the French flag over the newly founded Brazzaville in 1881, thus occupying today's Republic of the Congo. Portugal, which also claimed the area because of old treaties with the Kingdom of Kongo, made a treaty with Britain on 26 February 1884 to block off the Leopold's access to the Atlantic.

By 1890 the Congo Free State had consolidated control of its territory between Leopoldville and Stanleyville and was looking to push south down the Lualaba River from Stanleyville. At the same time, the British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes was expanding north from the Limpopo River, sending the Pioneer Column (guided by Frederick Selous) through Matabeleland, and starting a colony in Mashonaland.

Tippu Tip, a Zanzibari Arab based in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, also played a major role as a "protector of European explorers", ivory trader and slave trader. Having established a trading empire within Zanzibar and neighboring areas in East Africa, Tippu Tip would shift his alignment towards the rising colonial powers in the region and at the proposal of Henry Morton Stanley, Tippu Tip became a governor of the "Stanley Falls District" (Boyoma Falls) in Leopold's Congo Free State, before being involved in the Congo–Arab War against Leopold II's colonial state.

To the west, in the land where their expansions would meet, was Katanga, site of the Yeke Kingdom of Msiri. Msiri was the most militarily powerful ruler in the area and traded large quantities of copper, ivory and slaves—and rumors of gold reached European ears. The scramble for Katanga was a prime example of the period. Rhodes sent two expeditions to Msiri in 1890 led by Alfred Sharpe, who was rebuffed, and Joseph Thomson, who failed to reach Katanga. Leopold sent four expeditions. First, the Le Marinel expedition could only extract a vaguely worded letter. The Delcommune expedition was rebuffed. The well-armed Stairs expedition was given orders to take Katanga with or without Msiri's consent. Msiri refused, was shot, and his head was cut off and stuck it on a pole as a "barbaric lesson" to the people. The Bia River expedition finished the job of establishing an administration of sorts and a "police presence" in Katanga. Thus, the half million square kilometres of Katanga came into Leopold's possession and brought his African realm up to 2300000 km2, about 75 times larger than Belgium. The Congo Free State imposed such a terror regime on the colonized people, including mass killings and forced labour, that Belgium, under pressure from the Congo Reform Association, ended Leopold II's rule and annexed it on 20 August 1908 as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.



The brutality of King Leopold II in his former colony of the Congo Free State was well documented; up to 8 million of the estimated 16 million native inhabitants died between 1885 and 1908. According to Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat of the time, this depopulation had four main causes: "indiscriminate war", starvation, reduction of births and diseases. Sleeping sickness ravaged the country and must also be taken into account for the dramatic decrease in population; it has been estimated that sleeping sickness and smallpox killed nearly half the population in the areas surrounding the lower Congo River. Estimates of the death toll vary considerably. As the first census did not take place until 1924, it is difficult to quantify the population loss of the period. The Casement Report set it at three million. William Rubinstein writes: "More basically, it appears almost certain that the population figures given by Hochschild are inaccurate. There is, of course, no way of ascertaining the population of the Congo before the twentieth century, and estimates like 20 million are purely guesses. Most of the interior of the Congo was literally unexplored if not inaccessible."

A similar situation occurred in the neighbouring French Congo, where most of the resource extraction was run by concession companies, whose brutal methods, along with the introduction of disease, resulted in the loss of up to 50% of the indigenous population according to Hochschild. The French government appointed a commission headed by de Brazza in 1905 to investigate the rumoured abuses in the colony. However, de Brazza died on the return trip, and his "searingly critical" report was neither acted upon nor released to the public. In the 1920s, about 20,000 forced labourers died building a railroad through the French territory.

Suez Canal
In order to construct the Suez Canal, French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained many concessions from Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan in 1854–56. Some sources estimate the workforce at 30,000, but others estimate that 120,000 workers died over the ten years of construction from malnutrition, fatigue, and disease, especially cholera. Shortly before its completion in 1869, Khedive Isma'il borrowed enormous sums from British and French bankers at high rates of interest. By 1875, he was facing financial difficulties and was forced to sell his block of shares in the Suez Canal. The shares were snapped up by Britain, under Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who sought to give his country practical control in the management of this strategic waterway. When Isma'il repudiated Egypt's foreign debt in 1879, Britain and France seized joint financial control over the country, forcing the Egyptian ruler to abdicate and installing his eldest son Tewfik Pasha in his place. The Egyptian and Sudanese ruling classes did not relish foreign intervention.

Mahdist War
During the 1870s, European initiatives against the slave trade caused an economic crisis in northern Sudan, precipitating the rise of Mahdist forces. In 1881, the Mahdist revolt erupted in Sudan under Muhammad Ahmad, severing Tewfik's authority in Sudan. The same year, Tewfik suffered an even more perilous rebellion by his own Egyptian army in the form of the Urabi revolt. In 1882, Tewfik appealed for direct British military assistance, commencing Britain's administration of Egypt. A joint British-Egyptian military force entered in the Mahdist War. Additionally the Egyptian province of Equatoria (located in South Sudan) led by Emin Pasha was also subject to an ostensible relief expedition of Emin Pasha against Mahdist forces. The British-Egyptian force ultimately defeated the Mahdist forces in Sudan in 1898. Thereafter, Britain seized effective control of Sudan, which was nominally called Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

Berlin Conference (1884–85)
The occupation of Egypt and the acquisition of the Congo were the first major moves in what came to be a precipitous scramble for African territory. In 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened the 1884–85 Berlin Conference to discuss the African problem. While diplomatic discussions were held regarding ending the remaining slave trade as well as the reach of missionary activities, the primary concern of those in attendance was preventing war between the European powers as they divided the continent among themselves. More importantly, the diplomats in Berlin laid down the rules of competition by which the great powers were to be guided in seeking colonies. They also agreed that the area along the Congo River was to be administered by Leopold II as a neutral area in which trade and navigation were to be free. No nation was to stake claims in Africa without notifying other powers of its intentions. No territory could be formally claimed prior to being effectively occupied. However, the competitors ignored the rules when convenient, and on several occasions war was only narrowly avoided. The Swahili coast territories of the Sultanate of Zanzibar were partitioned between Germany and Britain, initially leaving the archipelago of Zanzibar independent until 1890, when that remnant of the Sultanate was made into a British protectorate with the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty.

Britain's administration of Egypt and South Africa
Britain's administration of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River. Egypt was taken over by the British in 1882, leaving the Ottoman Empire in a nominal role until 1914, when London made it a protectorate. Egypt was never an actual British colony. Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda were subjugated in the 1890s and early 20th century; and in the south, the Cape Colony (first acquired in 1795) provided a base for the subjugation of neighbouring African states and the Dutch Afrikaner settlers who had left the Cape to avoid the British and then founded their own republics. Theophilus Shepstone annexed the South African Republic in 1877 for the British Empire, after it had been independent for twenty years. In 1879, after the Anglo-Zulu War, Britain consolidated its control of most of the territories of South Africa. The Boers protested, and in December 1880 they revolted, leading to the First Boer War. British Prime Minister William Gladstone signed a peace treaty on 23 March 1881, giving self-government to the Boers in the Transvaal. The Jameson Raid of 1895 was a failed attempt by the British South Africa Company and the Johannesburg Reform Committee to overthrow the Boer government in the Transvaal. The Second Boer War, fought between 1899 and 1902, was about control of the gold and diamond industries; the independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic were this time defeated and absorbed into the British Empire.

The French thrust into the African interior was mainly from the coasts of West Africa (present-day Senegal) eastward, through the Sahel along the southern border of the Sahara. Their ultimate aim was to have an uninterrupted colonial empire from the Niger River to the Nile, thus controlling all trade to and from the Sahel region by virtue of their existing control over the caravan routes through the Sahara. The British, on the other hand, wanted to link their possessions in Southern Africa with their territories in East Africa and these two areas with the Nile basin.



The Sudan (which included most of present-day Uganda) was the key to the fulfillment of these ambitions, especially since Egypt was already under British control. This "red line" through Africa is made most famous by Cecil Rhodes. Along with Lord Milner, the British colonial minister in South Africa, Rhodes advocated such a "Cape to Cairo" empire, linking the Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South Africa by rail. Though hampered by German occupation of Tanganyika until the end of World War I, Rhodes successfully lobbied on behalf of such a sprawling African empire.

If one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes's dream), and one from Dakar to the Horn of Africa (the French ambition), these two lines intersect somewhere in eastern Sudan near Fashoda, explaining its strategic importance. In short, Britain had sought to extend its East African empire contiguously from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope, while France had sought to extend its own holdings from Dakar to the Sudan, which would enable its empire to span the entire continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

A French force under Jean-Baptiste Marchand arrived first at the strategically located fort at Fashoda, soon followed by a British force under Lord Kitchener, commander in chief of the British Army since 1892. The French withdrew after a standoff and continued to press claims to other posts in the region. The Fashoda Incident ultimately led to the signature of the Entente Cordiale of 1904, which guaranteed peace between the two.

Moroccan Crisis
Although the Berlin Conference had set the rules for the Scramble for Africa, it had not weakened the rival imperialists. As a result of the Entente Cordiale, the German Kaiser decided to test the solidity of such influence, using the contested territory of Morocco as a battlefield. Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Tangier on 31 March 1905 and made a speech in favour of Moroccan independence, challenging French influence in Morocco. France's presence had been reaffirmed by Britain and Spain in 1904. The Kaiser's speech bolstered French nationalism, and with British support the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, took a defiant line. The crisis peaked in mid-June 1905, when Delcassé was forced out of the ministry by the more conciliation-minded premier Maurice Rouvier. But by July 1905 Germany was becoming isolated, and the French agreed to a conference to solve the crisis.

The 1906 Algeciras Conference was called to settle the dispute. Of the thirteen nations present, the German representatives found their only supporter was Austria-Hungary, which had no interest in Africa. France had firm support from Britain, the U.S., Russia, Italy and Spain. The Germans eventually accepted an agreement, signed on 31 May 1906, whereby France yielded certain domestic changes in Morocco but retained control of key areas.

However, five years later the Second Moroccan Crisis (or Agadir Crisis) was sparked by the deployment of the German gunboat Panther to the port of Agadir in July 1911. Germany had started to attempt to match Britain's naval supremacy—the British navy had a policy of remaining larger than the next two rival fleets in the world combined. When the British heard of the Panther's arrival in Morocco, they wrongly believed that the Germans meant to turn Agadir into a naval base on the Atlantic. The German move was aimed at reinforcing claims for compensation for acceptance of effective French control of the North African kingdom, where France's pre-eminence had been upheld by the 1906 Algeciras Conference. In November 1911 a compromise was reached under which Germany accepted France's position in Morocco in return for a slice of territory in the French Equatorial African colony of Middle Congo.

France and Spain subsequently established a full protectorate over Morocco on 30 March 1912, ending what remained of the country's formal independence. Furthermore, British backing for France during the two Moroccan crises reinforced the Entente between the two countries and added to Anglo-German estrangement, deepening the divisions that would culminate in the First World War.

Dervish resistance
Following the Berlin Conference, the British, Italians, and Ethiopians sought to claim lands inhabited by the Somalis. The Dervish movement, led by Sayid Muhammed Abdullah Hassan, existed for 21 years, from 1899 until 1920. The Dervish movement successfully repulsed the British Empire four times and forced it to retreat to the coastal region. Because of these successful expeditions, the Dervish movement was recognized as an ally by the Ottoman and German empires. The Turks named Hassan Emir of the Somali nation, and the Germans promised to officially recognise any territories the Dervishes were to acquire. After a quarter of a century of holding the British at bay, the Dervishes were finally defeated in 1920 as a direct consequence of Britain's use of aircraft.

Herero Wars and the Maji-Maji Rebellion


Between 1904 and 1908, Germany's colonies in German South West Africa and German East Africa were rocked by separate, contemporaneous native revolts against their rule. In both territories the threat to German rule was quickly defeated once large-scale reinforcements from Germany arrived, with the Herero rebels in German South West Africa being defeated at the Battle of Waterberg and the Maji-Maji rebels in German East Africa being steadily crushed by German forces slowly advancing through the countryside, with the natives resorting to guerrilla warfare.

German efforts to clear the bush of civilians in German South West Africa resulted in a genocide of the population. In total, as many as 65,000 Herero (80% of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Namaqua (50% of the total Namaqua population) either starved, died of thirst, or were worked to death in camps such as Shark Island concentration camp between 1904 and 1908. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros, 10,000 Nama, and an unknown number of San died in the genocide. Characteristic of this genocide was death from starvation, thirst, and possibly the poisoning of the population's wells, whilst they were trapped in the Namib Desert.

Colonial lobby


In its earlier stages, imperialism was generally the act of individual explorers as well as some adventurous merchantmen. The colonial powers were a long way from approving without any dissent the expensive adventures carried out abroad. Various important political leaders, such as William Gladstone, opposed colonization in its first years. However, during his second premiership between 1880 and 1885 he could not resist the colonial lobby in his cabinet, and thus did not execute his electoral promise to disengage from Egypt. Although Gladstone was personally opposed to imperialism, the social tensions caused by the Long Depression pushed him to favour jingoism: the imperialists had become the "parasites of patriotism." In France, Radical politician Georges Clemenceau was adamantly opposed to it: he thought colonization was a diversion from the "blue line of the Vosges" mountains, that is revanchism and the patriotic urge to reclaim the Alsace-Lorraine region which had been annexed by the German Empire with the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt. Clemenceau actually made Jules Ferry's cabinet fall after the 1885 Tonkin disaster. According to Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), this expansion of national sovereignty on overseas territories contradicted the unity of the nation state which provided citizenship to its population. Thus, a tension between the universalist will to respect human rights of the colonized people, as they may be considered as "citizens" of the nation state, and the imperialist drive to cynically exploit populations deemed inferior began to surface. Some, in colonizing countries, opposed what they saw as unnecessary evils of the colonial administration when left to itself; as described in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899)—published around the same time as Kipling's The White Man's Burden—or in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (1932).

Colonial lobbies emerged to legitimise the Scramble for Africa and other expensive overseas adventures. In Germany, France, and Britain, the middle class often sought strong overseas policies to ensure the market's growth. Even in lesser powers, voices like Enrico Corradini claimed a "place in the sun" for so-called "proletarian nations", bolstering nationalism and militarism in an early prototype of fascism.

Colonial propaganda and jingoism
A plethora of colonialist propaganda pamphlets, ideas, and imagery played on the colonial powers' psychology of popular jingoism and proud nationalism. A hallmark of the French colonial project in the late 19th century and early 20th century was the civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice), the principle that it was Europe's duty to bring civilisation to benighted peoples. As such, colonial officials undertook a policy of Franco-Europeanisation in French colonies, most notably French West Africa and Madagascar. During the 19th century, French citizenship along with the right to elect a deputy to the French Chamber of Deputies was granted to the four old colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyanne and Réunion as well as to the residents of the "Four Communes" in Senegal. In most cases, the elected deputies were white Frenchmen, although there were some black deputies, such as the Senegalese Blaise Diagne, who was elected in 1914.

Colonial exhibitions
By the end of World War I the colonial empires had become very popular almost everywhere in Europe: public opinion had been convinced of the needs of a colonial empire, although most of the metropolitans would never see a piece of it. Colonial exhibitions were instrumental in this change of popular mentalities brought about by the colonial propaganda, supported by the colonial lobby and by various scientists. Thus, conquests of territories were inevitably followed by public displays of the indigenous people for scientific and leisure purposes.

Carl Hagenbeck, a German merchant in wild animals and a future entrepreneur of most Europeans zoos, decided in 1874 to exhibit Samoa and Sami people as "purely natural" populations. In 1876, he sent one of his collaborators to the newly conquered Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts and Nubians. Presented in Paris, London, and Berlin these Nubians were very successful. Such "human zoos" could be found in Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York City, Paris, etc., with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors attending each exhibition. Tuaregs were exhibited after the French conquest of Timbuktu (visited by René Caillié, disguised as a Muslim, in 1828, thereby winning the prize offered by the French Société de Géographie); Malagasy after the occupation of Madagascar; Amazons of Abomey after Behanzin's mediatic defeat against the French in 1894. Not used to the climatic conditions, some of the indigenous died from exposure, such as some Galibis in Paris in 1892.

Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation, decided in 1877 to organise two "ethnological spectacles", presenting Nubians and Inuit. Ticket sales at the Jardin d'Acclimatation doubled, with a million paying entrances that year, a huge success for these times. Between 1877 and 1912, approximately thirty "ethnological exhibitions" were presented at the zoo. "Negro villages" were presented in Paris' 1878 World's Fair; the 1900 World's Fair presented the famous diorama "living" in Madagascar, while the Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931)displayed human beings in cages, often nudes or quasi-nudes. Nomadic "Senegalese villages" were also created, thus displaying the power of the colonial empire to all the population.

In the U.S., Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society, exposed Pygmy Ota Benga in the Bronx Zoo alongside the apes and others in 1906. At the behest of Grant, a scientific racist and eugenicist, zoo director William Temple Hornaday placed Ota Benga in a cage with an orangutan and labeled him "The Missing Link" in an attempt to illustrate Darwinism, and in particular that Africans like Ota Benga are closer to apes than were Europeans. Other colonial exhibitions included the 1924 British Empire Exhibition and the 1931 Paris "Exposition coloniale".

Countering disease
From the beginning of the 20th century, the elimination or control of disease in tropical countries became a driving force for all colonial powers. The sleeping sickness epidemic in Africa was arrested through mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk. In the 1880s cattle brought from British Asia to feed Italian soldiers invading Eritrea turned out to be infected with a disease called rinderpest. Rinderpest continued to infect 90% of Africa's cattle. African cattle was severely damaged, destroying the African livelihood, forcing them to work as labour for their colonizers. In the 20th century, Africa saw the biggest increase in its population because of lessening of the mortality rate in many countries through peace, famine relief, medicine, and above all, the end or decline of the slave trade. Africa's population has grown from 120 million in 1900 to over 1 billion today.

Slavery abolition
The continuing anti-slavery movement in Western Europe became a reason and an excuse for the conquest and colonization of Africa. It was the central theme of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90. During the Scramble for Africa, an early but secondary focus of all colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. In French West Africa, following conquest and abolition by the French, over one million slaves fled from their masters to earlier homes between 1906 and 1911. In Madagascar, the French abolished slavery in 1896, and approximately 500,000 slaves were freed. Slavery was abolished in the French controlled Sahel by 1911. Independent nations attempting to westernize or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression. In response to European pressure, the Sokoto Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900, and Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932. Colonial powers were mostly successful in abolishing slavery, though slavery remained active in Africa, even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy. Slavery was never fully eradicated in Africa.

Aftermath
During the New Imperialism period, by the end of the 19th century, Europe added almost 9000000 mi2 – one-fifth of the land area of the globe – to its overseas colonial possessions. Europe's formal holdings included the entire African continent except Ethiopia, Liberia, and Saguia el-Hamra, the latter of which was eventually integrated into Spanish Sahara. Between 1885 and 1914, Britain took nearly 30% of Africa's population under its control; 15% for France, 11% for Portugal, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy. Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire. In terms of surface area occupied, the French were the marginal leaders, but much of their territory consisted of the sparsely populated Sahara.

Political imperialism followed the economic expansion, with the "colonial lobbies" bolstering chauvinism and jingoism at each crisis in order to legitimise the colonial enterprise. The tensions between the imperial powers led to a succession of crises, which exploded in August 1914, when previous rivalries and alliances created a domino situation that drew the major European nations into World War I.

Belgium

 * Congo Free State and Belgian Congo (today's the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
 * Ruanda-Urundi (comprising modern Rwanda and Burundi, 1922–62)

France




Germany

 * German Kamerun (now Cameroon and part of Nigeria, 1884–1916)
 * German East Africa (now Rwanda, Burundi and most of Tanzania, 1885–1919)
 * German South-West Africa (now Namibia, 1884–1915)
 * German Togoland (now Togo and eastern part of Ghana, 1884–1914)

After the First World War, Germany's possessions were partitioned among Britain (which took a sliver of western Cameroon, Tanzania, western Togo, and Namibia), France (which took most of Cameroon and eastern Togo) and Belgium (which took Rwanda and Burundi).

Italy



 * Italian Eritrea
 * Italian Somalia
 * Oltre Giuba (annexed into Italian Somalia in 1925)
 * Libya
 * Italian Tripolitania
 * Italian Cyrenaica
 * Italian Libya (from the unification of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in 1934)

During the Interwar period, Italian Ethiopia formed together with Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland the Italian East Africa (A.O.I., "Africa Orientale Italiana", also defined by the fascist government as L'Impero).

United Kingdom


The British were primarily interested in maintaining secure communication lines to India, which led to initial interest in Egypt and South Africa. Once these two areas were secure, it was the intent of British colonialists such as Cecil Rhodes to establish a Cape-Cairo railway and to exploit mineral and agricultural resources. Control of the Nile was viewed as a strategic and commercial advantage.

Independent states
Liberia was the only nation in Africa that was regarded as a colony and a protectorate of the United States. Liberia was founded, colonised, established and controlled by the American Colonization Society, a private organisation established in order to relocate freed African American and Caribbean slaves from the United States and the Caribbean islands in 1822. Liberia declared its independence from the American Colonization Society on July 26, 1847. Liberia is Africa's oldest republic and the second-oldest black republic in the world (after Haiti). Liberia maintained its independence during the period as it was viewed by European powers as either a colony or protectorate of the United States.

Ethiopia maintained its independence from Italy after the Battle of Adwa which resulted in the Treaty of Addis Ababa in 1896. With the exception of Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941 by Benito Mussolini's military forces, Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent nation.

Connections to modern-day events


Anti-neoliberal scholars connect the old scramble to a new scramble for Africa, coinciding with the emergence of an "Afro-neoliberal" capitalist movement in postcolonial Africa. When African nations began to gain independence after World War II, their postcolonial economic structures remained undiversified and linear. In most cases, the bulk of a nation's economy relied on cash crops or natural resources. These scholars claim that the decolonisation process kept independent African nations at the mercy of colonial powers by structurally dependent economic relations. They also claim that structural adjustment programs led to the privatization and liberalization of many African political and economic systems, forcefully pushing Africa into the global capitalist market, and that these factors led to development under Western ideological systems of economics and politics.

Petrostates
In the era of globalization, several African countries have emerged as petrostates (for example Angola, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Sudan). These are nations with an economic and political partnership between transnational oil companies and the ruling elite class in oil-rich African nations. Numerous countries have entered into a neo-imperial relationship with Africa during this time period. Mary Gilmartin notes that “material and symbolic appropriation of space [is] central to imperial expansion and control”; nations in the globalization era who invest in controlling land internationally are engaging in neocolonialism. Chinese (and other Asian countries) state oil companies have entered Africa's highly competitive oil sector. China National Petroleum Corporation purchased 40% of Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company. Furthermore, the Sudan exports 50–60% of its domestically produced oil to China, making up 7% of China's imports. China has also been purchasing equity shares in African oil fields, invested in industry related infrastructure development and acquired continental oil concessions throughout Africa.