Imperialism

Europe, Africa Before the 1870s

Old European Settlements in Africa

Slave Trade Outlawed: early 1800s

French conquest of Algeria: 1830-1847

French Algeria: 1847-1965

Map of Africa before the Scramble in 1870

• French Conquest of Algeria
  • Slow process.
    • Complete conquest took 17 years (1830-1847)
    • Continued expansion until 1875.
  • Started over a dispute over trade with French traders owing the Dey of Algiers money.
    • Negotiations led to a perceived slight by the Dey against the French diplomat.
    • French Navy blockade Algiers.
    • Algiers fired on the blockade.
    • France invaded in 1830.
  • It is estimated that by 1875, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians had been killed from disease, starvation and violence.
    • Entire villages were banished or deported.
      • Moorish population of Tlemcen was deported out of Algeria.
  • 1848: French Algeria is officially declared a part of France.
  • Received 4 departments
    • Only small percentage of the population was French settlers who could vote.
• French N. Africa
  • Exception in that much EUR colonized the region. Most EUR did not go to Africa.
  • Conquest made the french feel powerful and in control.
• Upgraded infrastructure
  • Water system, roads, econ infrastructure, schools.
  • French had to resort to slave labor since many natives refused to work in the mines or on the railroads. (276)
• Characterized the brutality of African colonization that would come.

King Leopold II of Belgium (r. 1865-1909)

International African Association (1876)

Henry Morton Stanley & Treaties

Image vs Reality

Leopold II of Belgium

• Leopold II, Belgium, created international African association (1876)
  • Hired Henry Morton Stanley to negotiate rights over the region of the Congo.
  • Lobbied EUR nations for access to Congo’s riches. (Congo Free State).
  • Set precedent:
    • Imperial power must establish intention to provide for the welfare of hte local population before claiming territory and planting a flag. (272)
  • Crisis point comes in 1880s because he gets so many treaties
    • gets Americans to recognize his African Association has sovereignty over this area (1.3 million sq miles)
    • gets FR to recognize them.
    • GER recognize him.
  • Question: who will have sovereignty over these regions?
  • Congo Free State = terrible conditions
    • He claimed he was civilizing the Congo and ending slavery.
    • Africans worked without sufficient food, clothing, shelter.
    • Starvation common
    • Millions died from disease and overwork.
    • Mutilation as punishment for minor offenses

Berlin Conference (1884-1885)

• Motivations for the Conference?
• Otto von Bismarck and the Conference
• Principle of Effective Occupation

• Otto von Bismarck
  • Bismarck just unified Germany, and concerned with maintaining Germany’s place in EUR’s state system
  • Big problem was conflict between FR and BR
  • BR monopolized palm oil along Congo river.
  • FR tries to find backway into central AFrica
  • BR tries to recognize the POrtuguese have everything to edge out FR (1884).
    • BR gets access through alliance with Portuguese.
  • Bismarck made the conference in Berlin, so it would not be in ENG.
  • What he wanted to get out of conference
    • got all the powers there to create counterweight against BR and FR.
• real competition for goods and access to ports
  • palm oil was the major commodity.
• world of pressure politics in which major ports are pushing their gov’t to unwillingly go along with it
  • Hamburg (ship lines tradingin in Palm oil) is driving Bismarck for instance
• Effective occupation
  • because you have trading rights and water rights gained through treaties with locals, it means they are effectively in control.
  • Chiefs get cloth every month, if they give labor and rights to fisheries and other natural resources.
  • old doctrine drawing on roman law.
  • FR pushed really hard.
  • proof of sovereignty is found in government over the region.
  • permits a colonial world in which there are powerful centers (metropole) from which rule takes place with very weak peripheries.
• Agreed to final text in 1885.

Outcome in Africa

Immediate conquests

Artificial boundaries

Center vs Periphery

Hopes vs Reality

Map of Africa in early 1900s

• Immediate Conquests
  • early March 1885 (within days)
    • GER proclaim sovereignty over East Africa
  • Months later
    • BR trying to enforce control over Niger (King of Ngobo)
  • Leopold decrees all unoccupied lands in Congo belong to him
    • Created force publique to force corvee labor.
    • Corvée system enforced unpaid laborers to work on public projects of the ruling elites.
      • Turns peasants into serfs.
  • Every article of the conference was turned upside down.
• Trade Increase?
  • Slavery was the major commodity.
  • Palm oil and palm kernel trade increases.
  • 1880s was break point with discovery of gold in S. Africa
• Increase enslavement of people in Congo
  • Slavery in Congo grew after discovery of inflatable tire to collect rubber vines from the trees to sell to create
  • French had to resort to slave labor since many natives refused to work in the mines or on the railroads. (276)
• Artificial Boundaries:
  • Boundaries drawn by Europeans were arbitrary.
  • King Leopold II drew borders without consideration of ethnic, linguistic, or cultural boundaries of the African peoples.
    • ENG had important colony in Nigeria
      • inhabited by three groups:
        • Hausa, Yoruba, and Ibo (first was Muslim, second two were Christians, all three in conflicts).