Imperialism

Part II: Scramble for Africa

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

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.

International African Association (1876)

Henry Morton Stanley & Treaties

Image vs Reality

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

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.

Immediate conquests

Artificial boundaries

Center vs Periphery

Hopes vs Reality

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).