Documents and Debates The Scramble for Africa Documents and Debates General Editor: John Wroughton M.A., F.R.Hist.S. The Scramble for Africa Robin Brooke-Smith B.A., M.sc. Shrewsbury School pal grave macmillan © Robin Brooke-Smith 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by MACMillAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Phototypeset by Styleset Limited Warminster, Wiltshire Transferred to Digital Printing 2005 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brooke-Smith, Robin The scramble for Africa.-(Documents and debates) 1. Mrica-Colonization-History I. Title II. Series 960'.23 DT31 ISBN 978-0-333-42491-9 ISBN 978-1-349-08995-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08995-6 Contents General Editor's Preface Vl1 Acknowledgements Vlll The Scramble for Africa 1 I Egypt 5 11 West Africa 22 III The Berlin West Africa Conference: 1885 38 IV East Africa 51 v South Africa 69 VI The Fashoda Crisis 87 VII African Viewpoint 101 VIII Historiography and Statistics 116 General Editor's PreFace This book forms part of a series entided Documents and Debates, which is aimed primarily at sixth formers. The earlier volumes in the series each covered approximately one century of history, using material both from original documents and from modem historians. The more recent volumes, however, are designed in response to the changing trends in history examinations at 18 plus, most of which now demand the study of documentary sources and the testing of historical skills. Each volume therefore concentrates on a particular topic within a narrower span of time. It consists of eight sections, each dealing with a major theme in depth, illustrated by extracts drawn from primary sources. The series intends partly to provide experience for those pupils who are required to answer questions on documentary material at A-level, and partly to provide pupils of all abilities with a digestible and interesting collection of source material, which will extend the normal textbook approach. This book is designed essentially for the pupil's own personal use. The author's introduction will put the period as a whole into perspective, highlighting the central issues, main controversies, available source material and recent developments. Although it is dearly not our intention to replace the traditional textbook, each section will carry its own brief introduction, which will set the documents into context. A wide variety of source material has been used in order to give the pupils the maximum amount of experience - letters, speeches, newspapers, memoirs, diaries, official papers, Acts of Parliament, Minute Books, accounts, local documents, family papers, etc. The questions vary in difficulty, but aim throughout to compel the pupil to think in depth by the use of unfamiliar material. Historical knowledge and understanding will be tested, as well as basic comprehension. Pupils will also be encouraged by the questions to assess the reliability of evidence, to recognise bias and emotional prejudice, to reconcile conflicting accounts and to extract the essential from the irrelevant. Some questions, marked with an asterisk, require knowledge outside the immediate extract and are intended for further research or discussion, based on the pupil's general knowledge of the period. Finally, we hope that students using this material will learn something of the nature of historical inquiry and the role of the historian. John Wroughton Vll Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: East African Publishing House Ltd for an extract from Kenya Historical Documents by G. H. Mungeam; Hodder and Stoughton Ltd for an extract from The &J Soldier by Frank Emery {1977}; Hoover Institu tion Press for extracts from From Protest to Challenge: a documentary History ofA frican Politics in South Africa 1882-1964 Vol. 1, by T. Karsi and G Carter (1972}; Longman Group UK Ltd for extracts from Safaga: 11le Struggle for Power byJ . A. Braimah and J. R. Goody ( 1967}; The Scramble for Africa by M. E. Chamberlain {1974), The British in Egypt by W. F. Ritchie (1973), and The Theory of Capitalist Imperialism by D. K. Fieldhouse (1967}; Macdonald & Co. Ltd for an extract from Wilfed Scarwen Blunt by the Earl of Lytton, 1961; Oxford University Press for extracts from 19th Century Africa by P. J. M. McEwan (1963}, 111e Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act by A. D. Keith (1919}, and Capital Investment in Africa by S. H. Frankel (1938); Public Record Office for material sourced to the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Office and the Public Records Office; George Weidenfeld & Nicholson Ltd for an extract from 11le Zulu ffilr by R. Furneaux {1963). Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. V1l1 The Scramble for Africa . The 'scramble for Africa' is a metaphor applied by historians to the period of very rapid annexation of the African continent by the European Powers in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. It is a much debated historical process upon which strong opinions and diverse views are held. The scramble was indeed a truly remarkable episode representing, perhaps, the most rapid period of imperial expansion in history and the pinnacle of European power and self confidence; yet hardly more than twenty years later Europe suffered the disastrous calamity ofWorld War I followed shortly by World War II. These two global conflicts were to precipitate the European powers into an equally rapid period of decolonisation. The causes of imperial expansion, especially of the scramble, remain very much a matter of debate. In 1883 Sir John Seeley, Professor of History at Cambridge, referring to imperialism in the widest context, made the disingenuous comment, 'we seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind'. Well, the phenomenon of the scramble, which of course Seeley could not as yet have been referring to, was so rapid and sudden and often brutal that we are obliged to look for explicit motivations which some of the evidence to be studied in this book suggests were both potent and conscious. The causes of the scramble include a mixture of economic, industrial, strategic, cultural and domestic. Bismarck explained his reluctant indulgence in colonial acquisition as resulting from the fear that his opponents would capitalise in the polls on the wave of enthusiasm for empire. He did also make his celebrated remark that his map of Africa lay in Europe. Britain occupied Egypt to protect the Suez canal in the face of the rising tide of an indigenous and zealous nationalist movement and of a deteriorating financial situation in Egypt. On the one hand, therefore, domestic considerations appear uppermost, on the other developments in Africa precipitated occupation. It is, however, necessary for the historian to eschew simplistic conclusions and acknowledge that different combinations of motives may have been at work in different parts of Africa and for different European Powers. In Rhodesia commercial factors were strong as in parts of West Africa; in THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA 1 Egypt and South Africa strategic factors were more imp?rtant, though how important is a matter of debate. o~~rarching all . these considerations is the stark fact of European military, econormc and technological superiority which enabled European powers to achieve an easy hegemony. A useful starting point is the 'Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Africa (West Coast)' 1865 (Chapter 2), which recommended a halt to Britain's colonial expansion and the beginning of a withdrawal. Many questions arise from this (which you should be better able to answer when you have worked through the book); how and why was this policy so comprehensively reversed during the following 30 years? How important were the actions of other powers? How important were commercial considerations? Given the very poor showing of most of tropical Africa economically from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth century, why was so much money and effort invested in the panoply and machinery of empire when the returns appear so meagre? Was the Parliamentary Committee Report perhaps right and Britain had little to gain from a continent with such bleak economic prospects? The book ends (Chapter 8) with a collection of writings and statistics on the historiography of the scramble, considering the works of Lenin, Hobson, Ferry, Lord Cromer, Robinson and Gallagher, Frankel and others. These interpretations range from the contemporary belief that European rule was a great benefit willingly and consciously transferred, bringing civilisation and good government to inferior peoples, to the Marxist view that imperialism was an inevitable and rapacious outcome of capitalist greed and expansionism leading inevitably to communist revolution. A major controversy has surrounded the more recent work of Robinson and Gallagher who identify strategic imperatives as the main determinants ofBritish colonial policy. Thus they emphasise the importance of the Cape and Egypt; other British acquisitions were primarily to secure these vital military/commercial seaways. The 'mid Victorians', to use their term, had maintained control of these areas through 'influence' and 'pressure'. The growth of French and German rivalry forced British decision makers into formal imperial control; and thus the argument is developed. Ranged against this view are those who see a more complex picture of commercial, cultural, psychological, domestic as well as strategic forces. At the Berlin West Mrica Conference 1884-85 (Chapter 3) the European Powers laid down rules and procedures for the annexation of territory in Africa. This was, in effect, a way of ensuring that the partition of the continent should be carried out without serious conflict between the powers. The very fact of laying down rules and procedures under which powers could 'legitimately' lay claim to Mrican territory by means of effective occupation lent a dynamic and rationale to European 2 THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA expansion. There was now nothing 'absent minded'-in Seeley's words - about European imperialism. The conference was also a forum in which Bismarck played out his diplomatic manoeuvres, in this case seeking a rapprochement - abortive as it turned out - with France. In West Mrica (Chapter 2) we are confronted by the commercial pressures behind the forming of the Royal Niger Company and the government's use of it as an agent of control. There was also a great increase in interest in the area from France in the late 1870s partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. In East Mrica (Chapter 4) the greater proximity to India, the importance of the East coast ports, the Nile Headwaters and the so-called 'Egyptian lever' gave strategic considerations a greater importance. Here also the new Germany pressed for her 'place in the sun' with colonial adventurers Carl Peters, Hans Meyer and others leading the way. South Africa (Chapter 5) is different again and in many ways unique. A good climate, long-standing European settlement by Dutch and British, mounting commercial pressure as its fabulous mineral wealth was revealed, the well-organised military and expansionist nation of the Zulus all combined to create a special mix of circumstances. And over all this South Mrica was dominated at this time by the larger-than life figure of Cecil Rhodes and his special brand of private enterprise colonialism. The astonishing events of the Zulu War of 1879 were to send shock waves through the Empire. Throughout South Africa in the late 1870s and early 1880s there were threatened and actual uprisings of Africans against the white intruders. In this atmosphere Britain decided to pre-empt such risings by taking the war to the Zulus and after an obviously incompetent campaign in which the British camp at lsandhlwana was destroyed, the Zulus were finally decimated at Ulundi. The Fashoda incident (Chapter 6) with the clash of Britain and France over claims in the lower Sudan illuminates the relations between the two countries as they came to the brink of war. It also highlights the impact of domestic politics on the policies of European governments towards Africa. It is the nearest that two powers came to blows over colonial issues in Africa. The effects of the scramble upon the continent itself, though not within the scope of this book, should not be forgotten. The national boundaries of modern African states are the legacy of this period, often dissecting tribes and nations with imperial disdain. The economies and cultures of Africa experienced the trauma of rapid and enforced change which often tied Africa with inescapable bonds of dependence. The scramble, therefore, completed the bondage of the continent begun 200 years before with the brutal and savage Atlantic slave trade. The main sources used fall into the following broad categories: Official documents, e.g. Public Record Office, Commonwealth THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA 3