External colonies were first founded in Africa during antiquity. Ancient Greeks and Romans established colonies on the African continent in North Africa, similar to how they established settler-colonies in parts of Eurasia.
Early Colonial Presence
Under Egypt's Pharaoh Amasis (570-526 BC), a Greek mercantile colony was established at Naucratis, some 50 miles from the later Alexandria. Greeks colonised Cyrenaica around the same time. There was an attempt in 513 BC to establish a Greek colony between Cyrene and Carthage, which resulted in the combined local and Carthaginian expulsion two years later of the Greek colonists. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) founded Alexandria during his conquest of Egypt.
Phoenicians established several colonies along the coast of North Africa. Some of these were founded relatively early. For example, Utica was founded c. 1100 BC. Carthage, which means New City, has a traditional foundation date of 814 BC. It was established in what is now Tunisia and became a major power in the Mediterranean by the 4th century BC. The Carthaginians sent out expeditions to explore and establish colonies along Africa's Atlantic coast. Carthage encountered and struggled with the Romans. After the third and final war between them, the Third Punic War (150-146 BC), Rome completely destroyed Carthage.
Scullard mentions plans by such as Gaius Gracchus in the late 2nd century BC, Julius Caesar and Augustus in the 1st century BC to establish a new Roman colony near the same site. This was established and under Augustus served as the capital city of African continent Roman province of Africa. Gothic Vandals briefly established a kingdom there in the 5th century, which shortly thereafter fell to the Romans again, this time the Byzantines. The whole of Roman/Byzantine North Africa eventually fell to the Arabs in the 7th century.
The Roman Empire in the time of Hadrian, c. 125 AD.
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The Scramble for Africa
How was an Entire Continent Annexed in 1 year? - The Scramble of Africa
The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, conquest, and colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century in the era of "New Imperialism". In 1870, 10% of the continent was formally under European control. 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. As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts.
The principal powers involved in the modern colonisation of Africa were Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and Italy. Established empires-notably Britain, France, Spain and Portugal-had already claimed coastal areas but had not penetrated deeply inland. A significant early proponent of colonising inland was King Leopold of Belgium, who oppressed the Congo Basin as his own private domain until 1908. The 1885 Berlin Conference, initiated by Otto von Bismarck to establish international guidelines and avoiding violent disputes among European Powers, formalised the "New Imperialism", driven by the Second Industrial Revolution.
The Berlin Conference transformed Africa's colonization from informal economic penetration to systematic political control through its 'effective occupation' principle. No nation was to stake claims in Africa without notifying other powers of its intentions. No territory could be formally claimed before being effectively occupied.
Map of the Partition of Africa in 1913.
The European scramble for Africa culminated in the Berlin West African Conference of 1884-85. The conference was called by German Chancellor Bismarck and would set up the parameters for the eventual partition of Africa. In the end, the European powers signed The Berlin Act (Treaty). This treaty set up rules for European occupation of African territories. The treaty stated that any European claim to any part of Africa, would only be recognized if it was effectively occupied. The Berlin Conference therefore set the stage for the eventual European military invasion and conquest of African continent.
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This allowed the imperialists to move inland, with relatively few disputes among themselves. The only serious threat of inter-Imperial violence came in the Fashoda Incident of 1898 between Britain and France; It was settled without significant military violence between the colonising countries. Between 1870 and 1914 Europe acquired almost 23,000,000 sq. Imperialism generated self-esteem across Europe.
Key Colonial Powers and Their Territories
- Britain: Controlled territories such as Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
- France: Dominated French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, including Algeria.
- Germany: Possessed Southwest Africa (Namibia), Togoland (Togo), the Cameroons (Cameroon), and Tanganyika (Tanzania).
- Portugal: Held Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé, Principe, and Cape Verdes.
- Belgium: Ruled the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo).
- Italy: Acquired parts of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, and Italian Libya.
Administrative Styles
In terms of administrative styles, "[t]he French, the Portuguese, the Germans and the Belgians exercised a highly centralised type of administration called 'direct rule.'" The British by contrast sought to rule by identifying local power holders and encouraging or forcing them to administer for the British Empire. This was indirect rule.
Impacts of Colonial Rule
European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies and the suppression of communal autonomy disrupted local customary practices and caused the irreversible transformation of Africa's socioeconomic systems. Colonies were maintained for the purpose of economic exploitation and extraction of natural resources.
Vincent Khapoya notes the significant attention colonial powers paid to the economics of colonisation. This included: acquisition of land, often enforced labour, the introduction of cash crops, sometimes even to the neglect of food crops, changing inter-African trading patterns of pre-colonial times, the introduction of labourers from India, etc.
Khapoya notes the significant resistance of powers faced to their domination in Africa. Technical superiority enabled conquest and control. Pro-independence Africans recognised the value of European education in dealing with Europeans in Africa. Some Africans established their own churches. Africans also noticed the unequal evidence of gratitude they received for their efforts to support Imperialist countries during the world wars.
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Resistance to Colonial Rule
Local groups in German East Africa resisted German enforced labour and taxation. In the Abushiri revolt, the Germans were almost driven out of the area in 1888. A decade later the colony seemed conquered, though, "It had been a long-drawn-out struggle and inland administration centres were in reality little more than a series of small military fortresses." In 1905, the Germans were astonished by the widely supported Maji Maji Rebellion. This resistance was at first successful. However, within a year, the insurrection was suppressed by reinforcing troops armed with machine guns.
The British found few people as difficult to subdue as the Asante of Ghana in their quest to build their West African colonial empire. The Asante Wars against the British, which began in 1805, lasted a hundred years. To understand the Asante wars, one has to look at role of King Prempeh I, who firmly resolved not to submit to British protection. When pressured in 1891 to sign a protection treaty which implied British control of Asante, Prempeh firmly and confidently rejected idea.
Decolonization
The main period of decolonisation in Africa began after World War II. Growing independence movements, indigenous political parties and trade unions coupled with pressure from within the imperialist powers and from the United States and the Soviet Union ensured the decolonisation of the majority of the continent by 1980. Some areas (in particular South Africa and Namibia) retain a large population of European descent. Only the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are still governed by a European country.
While European-imposed borders did not correspond to traditional territories, such new territories provided entities to focus efforts by movements for increased political voice up to independence. Among local groups so concerned were professionals such as lawyers and doctors, the petite bourgeoisie (clerks, teachers, small merchants), urban workers, cash crop farmers, peasant farmers, etc.
The granting of independence in March 1956 to Morocco and Tunisia allowed a concentration on Algeria where there was a long (1954-62) and bloody armed struggle to achieve independence. When President Charles de Gaulle held a referendum in 1958 on the issue, only Guinea voted for outright independence.
Farmers in British East Africa were upset by attempts to take their land and to impose agricultural methods against their wishes and experience. In Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere exerted influence not only among Africans, united by the common Swahili language, but also on some white leaders whose disproportionate voice under a racially weighted constitution was significant. He became the leader of an independent Tanganyika in 1961. In Kenya, whites had evicted African tenant farmers in the 1930s; since the 1940s there has been conflict, which intensified in 1952. By 1955, Britain had suppressed the revolt, and by 1960 Britain accepted the principle of African majority rule.
Even when contemporary African borders have been modified, as in the case of Eritrea’s separation from Ethiopia or South Sudan’s independence from Sudan, much of the contestation has revolved around the accurate demarcation of colonial borders rather than primordial claims about ethnic or communal homelands.
Critical Perspectives on Colonization
Guyanese historian and activist Walter Rodney proposes in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that Africa was pillaged and plundered by the West through economic exploitation. Using a Marxist analysis, he analyses the modes of resource extraction and systematic underdevelopment of Africa by Europe. He concludes that the structure of present-day Africa and Europe can, through a comparative analysis be traced to the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. He includes an analysis of gender and states the rights of African women were further diminished during colonialism.
Mahmood Mamdani wrote his book Citizen and Subject in 1996. The main point of his argument is that the colonial state in Africa took the form of a bifurcated state, "two forms of power under a single hegemonic authority". The colonial state in Africa was divided into two. One state for the colonial European population and one state for the indigenous population. The colonial power was mainly in urban towns and cities and were served by elected governments. The indigenous power was found in rural villages and were ruled by tribal authority, which seemed to be more in keeping with their history and tradition. Mamdani mentions that in urban areas, native institutions were not recognised.
Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian historian, political theorist, and philosopher who has written and theorised extensively on life in the colony and postcolony. His 2000 book On the Postcolony critically examines postcolonial life in Africa and is an important work within the field of postcolonialism. It is through this examination of the postcolony that Mbembe reveals the modes through which power was exerted in colonial Africa. By comparing power in the colony and postcolony, Mbembe demonstrates that violence in the colony was exerted on African bodies largely for labor and submission.
Stephanie Terreni Brown is an academic in the field of colonialism. Brown describes abjection as the process whereby one group others or dehumanises another. Those who are deemed abject are often avoided by others and seen as inferior. Abjectivication is continually used as a mechanism to dominate a group of people and control them. Abjectivication through discourses of dirt and sanitation are used to draw distinctions between the Western governing figures and the local population. Dirt being seen as something out of place, whilst cleanliness being attributed to the “in group”, the colonisers, and dirt being paralleled with the indigenous people.
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