The Scramble for Africa is a phrase widely used to refer to the period from the late 19th to the early 20th century in which European imperial powers claimed control of most African territory. It is also used to describe the actions undertaken by those countries, with the goals of expanding strategic territorial claims and securing access to valuable natural resources. The Scramble for Africa was the name given to the division of the African continent into European colonies from about 1880 to the start of World War I (1914-1918). In 1870, 10% of the continent was formally under European control.
Prior to the 1880s, European settlements in Africa were mainly confined to coastal regions and the southern part of the continent. As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts. The most important holdings were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom; and Algeria, held by France. By 1914 about 90 percent of that territory had been incorporated into one European empire or another, including the land of every present-day country on the continent except Ethiopia and Liberia.
The European powers maintained their hold on Africa until after World War II (1939-1945), when growing independence movements ended colonization and paved the way for self-ruling nations.
Map of the Suez Canal, a key strategic waterway that influenced European interest in Africa.
Origins of the Scramble
The origins of the Scramble for Africa can be traced to 19th-century expeditions into the interior of the continent undertaken by European explorers, two of the most famous being David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. These expeditions led to the dissemination of information about the physical geography of the continent, the vast natural resources that remained unexploited by the local populations, and the strategic technological superiority held by industrialized European countries over African polities. Technological advances facilitated European expansion overseas.
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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 completion of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869 and subsequent French-British ownership of the canal’s operating company as well as the victory of Great Britain in the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879 are early examples of non-African countries gaining control over key strategic territory on the continent.
Driven by a combination of scientific curiosity and the desire to profit from the trade in gold, ivory, and slaves, other European powers soon dispatched their own expeditions to Africa.
The Scramble Begins
In the 1880s various European empires began taking steps to secure and expand their territorial control in Africa. For example, France and Italy expanded their holdings in the areas now known as Senegal, Tunisia, and Eritrea, while in 1882 Great Britain began a military occupation of Egypt to protect the imperial power’s financial interests in that country. By 1884, the British had dubbed the sudden rush for land the Scramble for Africa.
France occupied Tunisia in May 1881, which may have convinced Italy to join the German-Austrian Dual Alliance in 1882, thus forming the Triple Alliance. The same year, Britain occupied Egypt (hitherto an autonomous state owing nominal fealty to the Ottoman Empire), which ruled over Sudan and parts of Chad, Eritrea, and Somalia. In 1884, Germany declared Togoland, the Cameroons and South West Africa to be under its protection; and France occupied Guinea.
King Leopold II of Belgium is often considered to be the instigator who nudged the previously piecemeal process of colonization into a competitive multinational enterprise. In 1876, Belgium's King Leopold II, one of the least influential monarchs in Europe, sought to expand his holdings by staking a claim to the Congo River basin in central Africa. Under the cover of securing trade along the Congo River in the interior of Africa, by 1884 Leopold’s agents of the International Association of the Congo had negotiated for territorial control with 450 local peoples and entities.
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Map of Africa showing colonial boundaries established at the Berlin Conference, 1885.
The Berlin Conference
The German chancellor and prime minister Otto von Bismarck is also considered to be an instigator of the Scramble, stemming from his annexation of Togo, Cameroon, and Angra Pequena in 1884 as well as from his proposal for a conference to be held by the European powers regarding their African claims. That proposal resulted in the Berlin Conference (also called the Berlin West Africa Conference), which was held from November 15, 1884, to February 26, 1885. Germany called for a conference of the competing European powers to discuss a solution. The Berlin Conference lasted for several months from late 1884 into 1885.
Representatives from 14 countries from Europe and beyond attended the conference, though only half of them-Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, and Spain-already had, or would go on to have, recognized colonial holdings in Africa. Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal negotiated their claims for land already held. The claims were then finalized and mapped. The conference resolved the immediate issue of Leopold’s claim by recognizing the Congo Free State as being under his control, though he was required to agree to free trade along rivers in his territory.
The conference attendees also agreed on a common framework for the recognition of European “effective occupation” of African territory and on the principle that control of territory could not be claimed until said territory was actually occupied. Spheres of influence were recognized-though not fixed-and both the Niger and Congo rivers were declared free waters. These agreements were formalized in the General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, signed on February 26, 1885.
The conference members also agreed to free trade among the colonies and free access to all major rivers and trade routes. Future land claims were to be based on the ability of a nation to prove occupancy of a region under its "sphere of influence." Britain's administration of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River.
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While the Berlin Conference gave a veneer of legality and orderliness to European actions in Africa over the next decades, historians now view it as a cover for blatant profiteering and the avaricious exercise of imperial ambitions that were at the core of the movement now called the Scramble for Africa.
Motivations Behind the Scramble
A number of factors drove the Scramble after the Berlin Conference legitimized the process of imperial expansion. One was straightforward competition: each country feared that, if it did not participate in the Scramble, another would accrue the benefits of colonization that it could have had. Imperial expansion also played into powerful nationalist movements within European countries.
Germany and Italy had only recently unified, and both sought to demonstrate their status-and implicitly, legitimacy-as great powers through colonial expansion. Perhaps the factor most commonly identified as truly motivating the Scramble for Africa is the monetary profits from colonization. This did play an important role, and in cases such as Leopold’s, it was the main reason for colonization. European industrial countries also wanted to gain access to natural resources that could be refined into more-profitable commodities-a form of exploitation that provoked a key criticism of capitalism in the ensuing decades.
Colonial expansion was also presented as a form of market expansion, in which conquered countries acted as captive markets for exports from the imperial center. However, much of these profits was either concentrated in the hands of those who gained monopolies from colonial governments or largely rhetorical, as the costs of running a colony usually outweighed the profits that accrued to the colonizing power.
Another important impetus for European countries to participate in the Scramble was the complex interplay of nationalism, the growth of social Darwinism and eugenics, and a sense of racial superiority within European societies, all of which led to widespread popular support for imperial expansion. One of the justifications for the Berlin Conference had in fact been to end the international slave trade in Congo territory, and expansion of colonial territory in Africa was championed by social reformers as a “civilizing mission,” through which African populations would be Christianized and therefore “civilized.”
The movement of peoples and information between Africa and Europe triggered by the Scramble formed a rhetorical echo chamber that reinforced Europeans’ ideas of their racial and cultural superiority. Perhaps the pinnacle of this process was the practice of holding exhibitions in which members of Indigenous African groups were displayed like zoo animals. Early practitioners of anthropology also played a key role in fueling public belief in the moral legitimacy of the Scramble for Africa.
Literature too perpetuated the idea of the civilizing mission of European powers in Africa, epitomized by the Rudyard Kipling poem “The White Man’s Burden.” A fourth cause of the Scramble for Africa is the new technologies and innovations that helped the European nations to overpower the different African societies. As stated above, the major European powers had industrialized throughout the 19th century with the events of the Industrial Revolution.
This period of industrialization led to the development of several significant inventions and advancements. For example, the steam engine was an important invention that led to other advancements such as the steamboat, steam train and railroad construction. These allowed the European powers the ability to trek further and faster into the African interior and were major aspects of the Scramble for Africa. However, likely the most significant European advantage came in the form of weaponry.
For example, the development of the Maxim gun played a vitally important role in Europe’s success in Africa. In short, the Maxim gun was a machine gun that was invented by Hiram Maxim and could fire up to 600 rounds per minute. In fact, it was the first recoil-operated machine gun in history and is often considered to be one of the main factors of European dominance in the Scramble for Africa and the Age of Imperialism.
In fact, British poet Hilaire Belloc commented on the importance of the Maxim gun and the military advantage it gave the British in Africa when he wrote: “Whatever happens, we have got/ The Maxim gun, and they have not”.
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Effects and Legacy
The Scramble for Africa resulted in the creation of dozens of polities and innumerable treaties, and from this several events emerged as pivotal in international politics, including the Fashoda incident (1898), the Moroccan crises (1905-06, 1911), and the wars between the British and the Boers in Southern Africa. In the Fashoda crisis, conflicting claims over lines of influence in Africa between British and French troops came to a head near a fort at Fashoda (located in what is now South Sudan).
The standoff raised the specter of a European war as a result of imperial jockeying, and it formed the basis of the Entente Cordiale (1904). In 1905 Germany challenged this treaty and agreements from the Berlin Conference when it tried to exert influence over Morocco, which was recognized by other European powers as falling under French control. This First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06)-and the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911)-cemented ties between Britain and France as well engendering hostility between them and Germany. These international relationships would play a key role in World War I (1914-18).
The effects of the Scramble for Africa on African peoples themselves were devastating, and they continue to be felt to the present day. For instance, it is estimated that as much as half the population of Leopold’s Congo Free State died under his brutal and deadly rule. Indeed, his mismanagement was such that the Belgian government assumed responsibility for the state in 1908. In another example, from 1904 to 1907 the German colonial government undertook the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa (see German-Herero conflict of 1904-07), doing incalculable harm to those societies.
Some studies have shown that the borders put in place by colonial powers that became the basis for national borders in the 20th century have had a measurable negative impact on the stability of various countries. Also, Indigenous languages, traditions, economic models, and modes of administration were typically overshadowed, if not completely replaced, by those of the colonizing countries, the effects of which can still be seen today.
Most sub-Saharan countries have either English, French, or Portuguese as an official language, and countries have had to adapt to or change the economic infrastructure established during the colonial period. Europeans often took direct control of their colonies thus ousting tribal chiefs or kings. Those that resisted were killed or sent into exile. For example, Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe was beheaded for opposing German colonial rule in Tanganyika. This destroyed traditional tribal structures.
European control of African economies meant that Africans were forced to grow goods for export. This limited economic diversity and kept African economies weak. Europeans introduced diseases such as smallpox, measles and cholera to Africa. Africans had no resistance to these diseases. This led to many deaths. Europeans exploited African resources such as precious metals, timber, rubber, oil, ivory and cash crops like cotton and coffee. These raw materials were taken to support European economic growth. This prevented Africa from developing industries of its own and thus, economic growth.
Most of the transportation systems that Europeans built were created to move raw materials to the coast. Therefore, they were built to benefit European merchants rather than the native inhabitants. Europeans introduced Western-style education, clothes, architecture, religion and their own languages. This undermined traditional African culture.
The education provided by Europeans was often based around literacy - reading and writing. It failed to enable Africans to improve their technological skills and, therefore, their technological development. Europeans often treated Africans with alarming levels of inhumanity. For example, King Leopold of Belgium, used forced labour (effectively slavery) on rubber plantations in the Belgian Congo.
Thus, even more than a century after the Scramble for Africa ended, it continues to have an impact on the world.
Table: Colonial Powers in Africa, 1914
| Colonial Power | Number of Colonies |
|---|---|
| Great Britain | 14 |
| France | 7 |
| Germany | 4 |
| Portugal | 3 |
| Italy | 3 |
| Spain | 3 |
Note: This table illustrates the distribution of colonies among European powers by 1914.
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