Causes of the European colonisation of Africa

1Why this matters

In the 1870s European powers controlled about a tenth of Africa, mostly on the coasts: French Algeria, the British Cape Colony, and Portuguese Angola and Mozambique. By 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia were still independent. This rapid seizure of almost a whole continent in about thirty years is called the Scramble for Africa. Rwanda's own colonial history, which you will study next, is one part of it.

Colonisation means one country taking political control of another territory and its people, ruling them and exploiting their resources. Imperialism is the wider policy of building an empire in this way.

2Economic causes

• Raw materials. Industrial Europe needed palm oil, rubber, cotton, cocoa, copper, gold and diamonds.
• Markets. Factories produced more than Europeans could buy. A long economic slump in Europe (about 1873–1896) and rising trade barriers made protected colonial markets attractive.
• Investment. Wealthy Europeans looked for profitable places to invest surplus capital in mines, plantations and railways.
• Minerals. The discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) in South Africa showed how rich African land could be.

3Political and strategic causes

• National prestige. Colonies were a sign of power. Newly united Germany (1871) and Italy wanted empires to match Britain and France.
• Rivalry and balance of power. Each power rushed to claim land before its rivals could. France, having lost territory to Germany in 1871, sought prestige in Africa.
• Strategic routes. The Suez Canal (opened 1869) became Britain's route to India. Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, and controlling the Nile and the East African coast was seen as vital to protecting it.
• Bases for coal-burning steamships and navies.

4Social and ideological causes

• Surplus population and unemployment in Europe; some leaders saw colonies as places for settlers.
• Missionary pressure to protect and extend missions.
• Humanitarian claims. Ending the slave trade became a reason, and often an excuse, for conquest.
• Racism and the "civilising mission". Many Europeans believed in their own superiority and claimed a duty to rule Africans. This was a justification, not a real benefit to Africans.

5Why it became possible

Explorers had mapped the interior; quinine protected Europeans against malaria; steamships, railways and the telegraph moved soldiers quickly; and the Maxim gun gave small European forces overwhelming firepower.

6The Berlin Conference (1884–1885)

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called a conference in Berlin from November 1884 to February 1885. Fourteen states attended. No African was invited. The conference:

• agreed that a power claiming African coastline must notify the others;
• set the principle of effective occupation: a claim counted only if backed by real control on the ground;
• declared free trade and navigation on the Congo and Niger rivers;
• recognised King Leopold II's claim to the Congo;
• promised to suppress the slave trade.

The conference did not draw most of Africa's borders itself. It set the rules for the race, and the principle of effective occupation made the race faster and more violent, because every claim now had to be enforced.

Worked example: classifying and ranking causes

Question: Which was the most important cause of the Scramble for Africa?

Economic causes were fundamental: industrial Europe wanted raw materials, markets and places to invest. But economics alone does not explain the speed of the Scramble after 1880. That came from political rivalry: once Britain occupied Egypt (1882) and Leopold II and France competed for the Congo, each power feared being left out. The Berlin Conference's rule of effective occupation turned this rivalry into a race. So economic interest supplied the motive, but political rivalry explains the timing. The strongest answer names both and explains how they worked together.

Practice

Solution. The rapid invasion, conquest and colonisation of almost all of Africa by European powers between about 1880 and 1914.

Solution. Agreed at the Berlin Conference, it said a European power's claim to African territory would be accepted only if that power actually controlled the area, for example through officials, soldiers or a company. It pushed powers to occupy land quickly, often by force.

Solution. The canal (1869) was Britain's shortest route to India. To protect it Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, and it then wanted to control the Nile's sources in Uganda and the East African coast.

Solution. Ethiopia and Liberia.