Role of Colonial Agents in the Colonisation of Africa
Senior 4 · History (Languages)
Role of Colonial Agents in the Colonisation of Africa
Lesson 4 of 4
25 min
On 3 January 1885 the French magazine L'Illustration printed the cartoon below. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, stands at a table with a knife, cutting a cake labelled "Afrique"; the diplomats of the other powers sit round it and watch. The conference he had called in Berlin was still meeting. Not one African was in the room.
The cartoonist was mocking the conference, but the image became the best-known picture of the scramble for Africa. In the 1870s Europeans controlled about a tenth of the continent, almost all of it on the coasts. By 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained outside European control. This lesson analyses why the scramble happened, how Africa was partitioned, how Rwanda's own borders were drawn, and what the partition did to Africa.
Definition
Scramble for Africa: the rapid competition among European powers, roughly from the 1870s to 1914, to claim African territory. Partition: the dividing up of Africa into colonies and spheres by treaties among those powers. Sphere of influence: an area where one power claimed the right to act, recognised by the others, before it actually ruled there.
Effective occupation: the principle agreed at Berlin that a claim to African coastal territory needed real presence and authority, and notice to the other powers. General Act: the final agreement signed at the end of the Berlin Conference.
| Cause | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Economic | Industrial Europe wanted raw materials, markets and places to invest; rivals hurried to secure regions such as the Congo Basin before others could build monopolies there. |
| Political and national rivalry | Newly united Germany and Italy wanted colonies to show they were great powers; France occupied Tunisia in May 1881; colonies became a measure of prestige. |
| Strategic | The Suez Canal (completed 1869) became a vital route to Asia; in 1882 Britain occupied Egypt. Powers also wanted bases to protect sea routes. |
| Humanitarian and religious | Livingstone's call for "commerce, Christianity" and civilisation against the slave trade gave conquest a moral justification. |
| Technology | Quinine, against malaria, made the tropics more accessible; steamships, railways and telegraphs speeded transport and communication, and modern guns gave small forces victory, as at Shangi in 1896. |
| Colonial agents | Explorers' maps and reports, missionaries' appeals and companies' treaties (Lessons 1 to 3) created claims that governments then defended. |
| Leopold II and the Congo | Stanley's treaties along the Congo for King Leopold, and de Brazza's for France in 1881, made the Congo Basin the first great prize, and the question that brought the powers to Berlin. |
The conference did not draw the whole map of Africa. It set the rules by which the powers would divide it, and so speeded up the scramble.
Rwanda was not divided at Berlin. But the boundary of King Leopold's Congo Free State, defined in 1885, ran as a straight line from the northern end of Lake Tanganyika to the 30th meridian east at 1° 20′ south, then north along that meridian. Lake Kivu was not seen by a European until Götzen reached it in 1894, so on paper the lake and the western half of today's Rwanda lay inside the Congo Free State.
The real borders took a quarter of a century to settle. The Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 placed the region in the German sphere; Belgium and Germany signed a protocol on their frontier on 10 April 1900; and after a tense stand-off between Belgian, British and German forces around Lake Kivu in 1909 to 1910, a Uganda–Congo convention (14 May 1910) and an Anglo-German agreement signed in Berlin (26 August 1910) fixed the lines. The boundaries followed natural features and took no account of the people living there, except that they were allowed to harvest their crops and move, with their herds and goods, to the territory that had previously governed them. As a result, Kinyarwanda-speaking communities found themselves in the Belgian Congo and in British Uganda as well as in German Rwanda.
DW News: "Why the conference that divided Africa still matters today", about 16 minutes, filmed in Berlin in 2024, 140 years after the conference. Note the reasons the video gives for why the conference was called, and the effects it says Africa still lives with.
| Area | Impact |
|---|---|
| Political | African states lost their independence; by 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained outside European control. Borders drawn in Europe became the frontiers of today's states. |
| Peoples divided and combined | Borders split communities, as the Kivu settlement split Kinyarwanda speakers between three colonies, and joined rival groups inside one colony. |
| Economic | Colonies were organised to supply raw materials and buy European goods; land, labour and taxes were controlled from Europe. |
| Social and cultural | Missions and colonial schools spread Christianity and European languages; African institutions were weakened or reshaped. |
| Conflict | Resistance and wars of conquest followed (Unit 3). Rivalries between the powers produced crises such as the Kivu stand-off of 1909 to 1910, and in the First World War fighting reached Rwanda in 1916 (Unit 4). |
| Long term | At independence, African states kept the colonial borders: in 1964 the Organisation of African Unity decided to keep them, for fear of civil wars and instability. Kinyarwanda speakers still live on both sides of lines drawn between 1885 and 1910. |
Warning
Two common errors. (1) "Africa was divided at the Berlin Conference": the conference set the rules; most borders were fixed later, in bilateral agreements such as those of 1890 and 1910 that shaped Rwanda. (2) "The scramble had one cause": historians weigh economic, political, strategic, humanitarian and technological causes, and the actions of agents and of Africans themselves.
Tip
Causes of the scramble: "PESTH". Political rivalry and prestige, Economic needs, Strategic routes (Suez), Technology (quinine, steamships, guns), Humanitarian and religious claims. Add the agents and Leopold's Congo as the spark.
Important
Discuss. The Kivu settlement of 1910 let border communities harvest their crops and then move to "their" colony. What does this rule tell you about how the European powers saw the people of the region? How do the borders of 1910 still affect Rwanda and its neighbours?
Practice
Key points
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the sketch map, the tables, PESTH and the exercises. This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Quick check
African rulers took part in the Berlin Conference to defend their territories.
