The European colonization of Africa brought racism, civil unrest, and insatiable greed; all of which have had lasting impacts on Africa. The Scramble for Africa in the s to was motivated by these ideas. Imperialist ambitions in Africa were boosted by the expansion of competitive trade in Europe. The main aim was to secure commercial and trade links with African societies and protect those links from other European competitors.
The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, Conquest of Africa, or the Rape of Africa, was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during a short period known to historians as the New Imperialism between and Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Sociology What was the motive for the 19th-century European imperialism? Ben Davis May 20, What was the motive for the 19th-century European imperialism?
Colonies were treated as if they were extensions of the two European states. For example, French colonies were treated as French departments. The French government did not include any African rulers. They were stripped of all their powers and the people were ruled directly by French colonial officers often with a military background. These colonial officers replaced African rulers because most areas were divided into districts and departments.
The division of French colonies into districts and departments did not take into consideration existing boundaries of different ethnic groups. Whereas the British policy was based on the separation of races and preserving the culture or identities of African societies, the French policy was based on inclusion.
Their policy was to encourage Africans to become French in every sense of the word. This policy was part of expanding French civilization to African people.
However, this policy did not mean that African people in French colonies were treated with equality. Their inclusion into French societies was based on inequality between the French people and colonised Africans. The Portuguese introduced the prazo system. The prazo is a Portuguese system of land grants that was introduced in the colonies. It was a mixture of local political structures and a Portuguese political system.
It was not an indirect rule system because land was taken from African rulers and given to Portuguese settlers. The control of land gave Portuguese the power to control African people.
Because Portuguese rule was very weak, Portuguese holders of these land grants prazo legitimised their control of land by marrying into African royal families. These Portuguese rulers called themselves chiefs like African chiefs and ruled like African chiefs. The prazo system was adopted largely because the Portuguese government was a weak colonial power as compared to other colonial powers.
The Portuguese did not have the wealth required to administer their colonies. As a result, Portuguese colonies were the least developed colonies in Africa. They had to adapt their colonial rule to the African context.
In Rwanda, the Belgians used an indirect rule system. Instead of accommodating all traditional authorities within their colonial system, they favoured one group, the Tutsis. They used the Tutsis to control other groups in Rwanda. Belgian colonial rule was characterised by the most cruel and exploitative treatment of the local people. People were forced to work and those who refused to carry out their duties had their hands chopped off.
German colonial rule was also based on direct rule. However, there was no attempt to turn Africans into Germans. German colonial rule lasted for a brief period as Germany lost her colonial possessions after the First World War. Her colonies were mandated to British and French colonies.
Italy was the latecomer in the colonisation of Africa, becoming involved only after the Italian unification of By this time other European countries had already claimed most parts of Africa. The Italian government developed a centralised administration with the aim of sending Italians to live in the colonies. The other reason for Italian colonialism was to show old European countries that Italy was also a strong nation.
In an attempt to prove this, Italy attempted to colonise Ethiopia. The Ethiopians defeated and humiliated the Italians in the Battle of Adowa. These colonies were underdeveloped as compared to those of the European powers. This section is quite long so we have broken it into two pages: Defining Imperialism In the late 18th century, life in Europe and America changed dramatically. The Prime Minister of France, Jules Ferry in his justification of this policy told his parliament that: "I repeat that the superior races [European] have a right because they have a duty.
Lord Lugard of Britain said that: "It is sufficient to reiterate here that, as long as our policy is one of free trade, we are compelled to seek new markets; for old ones are being closed to us by hostile tariffs, and our great dependencies, which formerly were the consumers of our goods, are now becoming our commercial rivals.
Colonial Rule Colonial rule was the result of competition among European countries for control of African resources. Countries that had colonies in Africa were: Britain France Portugal Germany Belgium Italy Spain In terms of governing their colonies, these countries developed different systems of rule. British Colonial Rule The British system of indirect rule simply meant that power over colonies would be exercised through indigenous political structures.
French Colonial Rule French and Portuguese colonies were ruled differently. Portuguese Colonial Rule The Portuguese introduced the prazo system. German Colonial Rule German colonial rule was also based on direct rule. Italian Colonial Rule Italy was the latecomer in the colonisation of Africa, becoming involved only after the Italian unification of Imperialism and socialism in the context of Africa.
Impact of World War II: how the nature of political quest for independence in Africa changed after In the nineteenth century, the Russian and German empires embarked upon large-scale programs of cultural assimilation and standardization, both in the territories they had conquered and at home. The Kulturkampf has a very specific beginning and end; it began in earnest in , after the completion of German unification, and fizzled out after some success by the end of the century.
Before this, however, the German state had been cobbled together since the early nineteenth century out of the ashes of the Holy Roman Empire. In basic terms, the German culture that Bismarck attempted to impose included the German language and the particular religion of Lutheranism.
The Kulturkampf is considered something of a hybrid, however, because its program of nationalization also extended to a large Polish minority who lived in territories Prussia had conquered in the late eighteenth century. The Poles resisted Prussification fiercely; as part of the wider European nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Poles had developed a strong national culture that they defended against the Germans.
A similar program had already been attempted in Russia, where Emperor Nicholas I r. Like other nationalizing projects in Europe and like cultural imperialism in the European overseas empires, Official Nationality attempted to bind citizens and subjects to an identity based on a common language, religion, and culture. It was also based on a feeling among Russian intellectuals that their nationality was superior to that of the peoples they had conquered.
The attempt to Russify the subjects of the vast empire was accompanied by an effort to centralize government; the loss of regional autonomy was viewed as one way to assure the eventual victory of Russian culture. The program was only partly successful and became less so the further one moved from the capital at St. The Polish provinces of Russia, for instance, where the Polish people had established their own national identity, were minimally affected. The people of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine, who lived closer to St.
Petersburg, were more affected. Nonetheless, the desire to assimilate foreign cultures and replace them with the culture of the dominant nationality shows that the Russification programs of the nineteenth century fit neatly into the wider pattern of European empires that attempted to do the same overseas. Imperialism was a matter of national pride as well as a means of economic exploitation, and this first reason helps to explain Italian imperialism.
Italy was reunified in and wanted to show that it was the equal of the other European powers. Since Britain and France had obtained large empires and Germany was beginning to do the same, at the end of the nineteenth century Italy began to seek an empire of its own in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia was a special case in many ways, however. Much like ancient Egypt and, to some extent, ancient Greece has been de-Africanized in European literature, Ethiopia held a similar place. There are several reasons for this. First, Ethiopia had a long-standing Christian civilization. Second, the country had maintained ties with European countries in the late medieval and early modern periods. Ethiopia was not actually isolated; the leaders of its church were always Coptic Christians from Egypt, and for centuries Arab slavers had decimated the population.
Partly for these reasons, Ethiopia had not been a target of European imperialism in the nineteenth century until Italy began to create its overseas empire. Another major reason why Ethiopia is different is because when the Italians first attempted to take the country by force in the late s, they failed. At the critical Battle of Adwa in , Ethiopian forces routed the Italians, who had attempted to launch a surprise morning attack but did not realize that the Ethiopians had already awoken for church services.
This was a major embarrassment for the Italians but a source of pride for Ethiopia. In the twentieth century, Ethiopia accepted a status on the world stage that other African and Asian countries did not have.
Italy, under Mussolini, attempted to retake Ethiopia in ; the Italians were eventually successful in The conflict is best known as one example of the weakness of the League of Nations; Italy and Ethiopia were both members, but the League took no action to stop the war or save Ethiopia.
The Italian imperial experiment in Ethiopia is notable because it does not accord with the general trend in which European powers overwhelmed and then exploited Asian and African subject peoples.
The experience of interacting with non-Europeans changed European culture, and exposure to non-European values changed European values as well. Moreover, an empire was a source of national pride; in an era of strong nationalism in all European countries, this cannot be discounted. In Britain, for instance, the possession of an overseas empire was one of few things that could reliably unite the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish who lived under the British flag.
Stories of imperial adventure interested those back home. Romantic paintings of the death of General Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec in , or of the life of explorer Captain Cook, were popular items in the decades following. So too were stories of explorers like David Livingstone, the British man who travelled much of the interior of Africa. Popular novels, plays, and songs also drew heavily on the imperial experience.
This allowed the Orient to serve as a setting for many types of adventure stories or as a way to introduce an imaginative plot. Not only did contemporary literature work in favour of imperialistic agendas, it also became a means through which authors criticized European imperialism. Much later, in , renowned Algerian-born French author Albert Camus died while working on an autobiographical novel that he hoped would depict the negative aspects of French imperialism in Algeria. At home, therefore, empire was also an important part of life for Europeans.
Though the European empires have disintegrated, their legacy remains in the home culture in various ways, from the prevalence of African and Asian immigrants in European capitals to the popularity of Indian cuisine in British restaurants.
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