The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonization of the African continent by the great powers of Europe, chief among them the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the German Empire, Portugal, Belgium, and Italy. Starting with the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, the Europeans gradually conquered almost the entirety of Africa, with only Liberia and Ethiopia resisting colonization during the 19th century.
Background[]
In the early 1800s Africa consisted of European trading posts and a few colonies around the coast and African-led empires and kingdoms in the interior.
In the 15th century the Portuguese set up a number of trading stations down the west coast of Africa as they made their way south round the tip of Africa to India. The French, Dutch, and English followed in the 1600s, setting up trading and slaving stations on the West African coast. The only substantial settlements were those established by the Portuguese after 1505 in what is now Mozambique, and after 1652, by the Dutch in the Cape Colony.
Powerful African peoples that opposed European incursions on their territory included the Ashanti in the gold-producing region of West Africa and the Zulus in the south. There were also a number of powerful Islamic states that emerged in sub-Saharan West Africa during the 19th century. The most important were the Sokoto Caliphate, established in northern Nigeria in 1820, and the Tukulor Empire in the Niger Valley, founded in 1863.
History[]
The first major European invasion of Africa took place in 1830, when the French drove out the Dey, the ruler of Algiers, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, and began the occupation of Algeria. The coastal regions were swiftly subdued, but a determined resistance movement grew up around the figure of Abd al-Qadir. As France continued its conquests he proclaimed a holy war against the invading infidels. The French retaliated with a brutal scorched earth policy and eventually occupied his headquarters at Mascara. In 1844 the Sultan of Morocco intervened but was defeated by the French. Al-Qadir eventually surrendered in 1847. Algeria soon became an important source of troops for the French Army, notably the zouaves, who served as light infantry.
Further European incursions[]
In West Africa, British trading posts on the Gold Coast came into conflict with the gold-rich Asante kingdom. Asante efforts to regain their coastline led to war in 1823-31 and then again in 1873-74. A British expedition led by Sir Garnet Wolseley halted an Asante advance in November 1873 and then moved into the interior,a rmed with artillery. Wolseley defeated the Asante in January at Amoafu and then burmed down their capital, Kumasi, forcing their king, Kofi Karikari, to make peace. Further wars in the 1890s led to the establishment of a British protectorate in 1897.
Elsewhere, the establishment of a colony at Lagos in 1861 brought the British into conflict with the Sokoto Caliphate, while the French establishment of a protectorate in Senegal in 1854 led to conflict with the Tukulor empire. In southern Africa Boer colonists came into conflixt with Bantu tribes in 1834 and then the Zulus in 1838, defeating them at the Battle of Blood River.
In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium and his International African Association began to set up trading stations on the Congo River, establishing a personal empire in the region. In 1881 France established a protectorate over Tunisia, while the Germans grabbed Namibia, Cameroon, and Togo in 1884. A "Scramble for Africa" broke out, in which European powers competed for African resources, markets, investments, peoples, and territories. Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, convened a conference in Berlin in 1884-85 to control the situation. It established a framework for expansion that largely avoided conflicts between the powersr, opening the way for the total European colonization of Africa.
The British in Egypt and Sudan[]
Although technically part of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt had been autonomous since 1807. Isma'il Pasha, who had permitted the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, had modernized the country, but had run up huge debts in the process. Demands by creditos for repayment in 1881 led to riots in Alexandria that killed several British citizens. In July 1882 British gunboats bombarded the port while a British army under Wolseley defeated a 38,000-strong Egyptian force at Tel el-Kebir in a 30-minute battle in spetember. Britain then occupied Egypt and established a protectorate.
Control of Egypt brought with it Sudan, which the Egyptians had conquered. In 1881 Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi ("Expected One") and waged a holy war against Egyptian rule, annihilating a British-led Egyptian army of 10,000 men in 1883. The British government dispatched General Charles Gordon to evacuate citizens from the capital, Khartoum, but he chose to stay and after a lengthy siege was killed by the Mahdi's troops on 26 January 1885. Gordon's death was avenged in 1898, when an Anglo-Egyptian army led by General Herbert Kitchener set out to reconquer Sudan. On 2 September, his 26,000-strong army met 50,000 men under the command of the Mahdi's successor at Omdurman. The battle was one-sided, the British artillery decimating the Mahdists even before they came within range of the deadly Maxim guns or the British trenches.
European superiority[]
The technological gap between well-armed, well-trained European armies and primitively armed native peoples mostly ensured European victory, although the invaders often needed to enlist local allies and recruit large numbers of local troops to win. Technological superiority did not, however, always guarantee peace.
Aftermath[]
The colonization of Africa continued in the 20th century, with the French and Spanish takeover of Morocco in 1912 and the Italian invasions of Libya and Ethiopia.
Of the European colonial powers, the only one to suffer a lasting military setback was Italy, defeated by Ethiopia at the Battle of Adowa in 1896. In 1935-36 Italy finally conquered the country, uniting it with its other East African colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. In 1911 Italy had also seized Libya from the Ottoman Empire.
Many parts of Africa saw years of fierce resistance to European rule. In 1926, it took a combined Franco-Spanish force of 250,000 men to put an end to the successful guerrila campaigns of Abd el-Krim in Morocco. After World War II independence movements gained strength all over Africa. In some countries the European colonizers relinquished control peacefully; in others, such as French Algeria and Portugal's various colonies, long brutal wars of independence were fought.