COLONIZATION OF AFRICA
By Vincent Lyn
The reasons for African colonization were mainly economic, political and religious. During this time of colonization, an economic depression was occurring in Europe, and powerful countries such as Germany, France, and Great Britain, were losing money. In the Modern Era, Western Europeans colonized all parts of the continent, culminating in the scramble for Africa in the late 19th century. The British colonized Africa in about 1870. When they heard of all of Africa’s valuable resources such as gold, ivory, salt and more, they did not hesitate on conquering the land. They wanted these resources because they needed them for manufacturing. Another resource in Africa was rubber which was very helpful and used in making many good-selling items like shoes. Natural rubber is one of the most important polymers for human society. Natural rubber is an essential raw material used in the creation of more than 40,000 products. It is used in medical devices, surgical gloves, aircraft and car tires, pacifiers, clothes, toys, etc.
Great Britain had many colonies in Africa: in British West Africa there was Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Southern Cameroon, and Sierra Leone; in British East Africa there was Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and Zanzibar); and in British South Africa there was South Africa, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (Malawi), Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland. Britain had a strange and unique colonial history with Egypt. The Sudan, formerly known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, was jointly ruled by Egypt and Britain, because they had jointly colonized the area. The joint colonial administration of the Sudan by Egypt and Britain was known as the condominium government. The British system of government affected the type of racial or ethnic problems that all of Britain’s African colonies had during the colonial period, the immediate postcolonial period, and from the 1980s into the twenty-first century. Great Britain used indirect rule to control their colonies. This means that they appointed African tribe leaders to do their work while they safely stayed in Britain. At first that increased relations between the Africans and the British, but when too many rebellions started, they were forced to send British soldiers to the colonies and rule more harshly.
Though as appalling as the British might’ve been no country or person comes close to exacting crimes against humanity as horrifying as King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. Leopold ignored these conditions and ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain. He extracted a fortune from the territory, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of natural rubber in the 1890s, by forced labor from the native population to harvest and process rubber.
Leopold’s administration of the Congo Free State was characterized by atrocities, including torture and murder, resulting from notorious systematic brutality. In 1890, George Washington Williams coined the term “crimes against humanity” to describe the practices of Leopold II of Belgium’s administration of the Congo Free State. The hands of men, women, and children were amputated when the quota of rubber was not met and millions of the Congolese people died. Colonial accounts typically emphasized Leopold’s modernizing changes in the Congo and not the mass death he facilitated. Modern estimates between 10–20 million deaths with a consensus growing around 15 million.
The map on the wall in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin was five meters (16.4 feet) tall. It showed Africa with rivers, lakes, a few place names and many white spots. When the Berlin Conference came to an end on February 26, 1885, after more than three months of deliberation, there were still large swathes of Africa on which no European had ever set foot.
Representatives of 13 European states, the United States of America and the Ottoman Empire converged on Berlin at the invitation of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to divide up Africa among themselves “in accordance with international law.” Africans were not invited to the meeting.
The Berlin Conference led to a period of heightened colonial activity by the European powers. With the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, all the states that make up present day Africa were parceled out among the colonial powers within a few years after the meeting. Lines of longitude and latitude, rivers and mountain ranges were pressed into service as borders separating the colonies. Or one simply placed a ruler on the map and drew a straight line. Many historians, such as Olyaemi Akinwumi from Nasarawa State University in Nigeria, see the conference as the crucible for future inner African conflicts.
“In African Studies, many of us believe that the foundation for present day crises in Africa was actually laid by the 1884/85 Berlin Conference. The partition was done without any consideration for the history of the society,” Akinwumi said.
Traditional boundaries were not considered. New borders were drawn through the territories of every tenth ethnic group. Trade routes were cut, because commerce with people outside one’s colony was forbidden. Studies have shown that societies through which new frontiers were driven would later be far more likely to suffer from civil war or poverty.
“The conference did irreparable damage to the continent. Some countries are still suffering from it to this day,” Akinwumi said.
In many countries, such as Cameroon, the Europeans rode roughshod over local communities and their needs, said Michael Pesek, a researcher in African colonial history at the University of Erfurt. But historians, he explained, were now less inclined than they were to regard the arbitrary redrawing of Africa’s borders as the root cause of conflicts in postcolonial Africa.
“People had learnt to live with borders that often only existed on paper. Borders are important when interpreting Africa’s geopolitical landscape, but for people on the ground they have little meaning.”
Scared to re-open Pandora’s Box. In the 1960s, as African countries gained their independence, African politicians could have changed the colonial borders. But they desisted from doing so.
“A large majority of politicians said around 1960 ‘if we do that we will open up Pandora’s Box’,” Pesek said. They were probably right. Looking at all the problems Africa has had over the last 80 years, there have been numerous conflicts within states but hardly any between states.
When examining African conflicts, the colonial power that occupied a particular tract of land — the Belgians, French, British or Germans — is less relevant than the significance of belonging to specific ethnic groups which colonial powers often pitted against each other. Ethnic allegiances were far more open and flexible in the 19th century than they are today, Pesek said. In pre-colonial Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi were social groups and it was possible to switch from one to the other. It was colonial rule that cemented the division of the population, of which one of the consequences was the 1994 genocide.
African rulers and people had no say in the division of their continent. In 2010 — on the 125th anniversary of the Berlin Conference, representatives from many African states in Berlin called for reparations for the colonial era. The arbitrary division of the continent among European powers, which ignored African laws, culture, sovereignty and institutions, was a crime against humanity, they said in a statement. They called for the funding of monuments at historic sites, the return of land and other resources which had been stolen, the restitution of cultural treasures and recognition that colonialism and the crimes committed under it were crimes against humanity.
But nothing has come of all this. The historians from Nigeria and Germany are not surprised. “There is much talk of reparations for the slave trade and the Holocaust. But little mention is made of the crimes committed by the European colonial powers during the hundred years or more they spent in Africa,” said Pesek. Olyaemi Akinwumi doesn’t believe there will ever be any reparations, of any sort shape or form.
Is history repeating?
Today, China uses diplomacy in Africa instead of brute force, and it does not seem to aspire to formal political control in the region. Yet, African economies are again responding to the rising demand for commodities by a rapidly industrializing power. Chinese investments in land, infrastructure and mines are flowing in. Mineral exports, and especially oil, are again taking a growing share of African exports. History shows that such export booms are unsustainable, but what are the chances that Africa will avoid a renewed cycle of commodity dependency? As we ponder the answer, a major difference with history should be noted. With a projected population of over 3 billion, Africa will be one of the most populous regions of the world in 2050. If African policymakers find ways to invest commodity windfalls in the health and education of the next generations and to increase trade with neighbor countries, export growth may do more to stimulate African economic development than it did a century ago.
Vincent Lyn
CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children
Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization
Economic & Social Council at United Nations
Middle East Correspondent at Wall Street News Agency
Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts