Imperialism in Africa

In 1877 a plan was drawn up in Berlin by the monarchs of England, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy to split the continent of Africa into “spheres of influence” thus ushering in the “New Imperialism”. The main economic arguement given for the advent of this imperial movement was the need to get rid of excess capital created by the Industrial Revolution, but this seems like somewhat simplistic arguement when European actions are viewed as a whole. Stories of fabulous wealth had been told regarding the “Dark Continent” but Europeans, even at the height of slavery a century earlier, had yet to penetrate the interior. In Berlin the leading powers drew lines through the map without regard for the actual Africans who were split into hundreds of tribes and kingdoms. The Europeans then set about to make the natives conform to their lines. Only one territory in Africa was independant by the time of the First World War, the ancient kingdom of Ethiopa.

Regardless of the methods they used to secure their kingdoms (some colonial powers preferred direct rule while others, like Britain, found it more economical to work with or create indigenous governments under their control) many voices in Europe up to the present day insist that the European colonial mission was to “civilise” Africa:

“In 1998, on the 100th anniversary of the battle of Omdurman, the British ambassador to Sudan was asked if he planned to apologise to his hosts for that butchery of their Mahdist forefathers resisting invasion. ``Why not?'' he said, ``as long as we also apologise for the roads, hospitals, schools and university; indeed for creating a country called Sudan.''(2)

Apologists for the colonialists often speak of the institutions built in Africa at the behest of the Colonial Powers and it is always as if they built these “Roads, hospitals, schools etc.” themselves. Even within the continent itself, Africans are not to be given credit for their labour or for the fact that these institutions, most often of little use to the majority of people, were built with a small percentage of what had been stolen from them.

The institutions built at the behest of the European conquerors did not take root in Africa as they did in other places for two main reasons. First, there is the issue of how short-lived European domination actually was and how often these colonies changed hands (after World War I for example) as opposed to say, British domination of India which slowly advanced over several hundred years. Those Imperialist powers who tried to graft a European society over an indigenous African one in so short a time were doomed to failure by the excessiveness of their vanity and their belief that Africans were "savages". Second, in order to secure their somewhat tenuous positions many colonial administrations were minimal, relying on local elites (whether indigenous or created) often educated by them to enforce their rule. In a sense, much of the tragedy of contemporary African history is drawn from these policies. For proof we need only look at Rwanda where the majority Hutu eventually turned on the Tutsi elite that had benefitted from its associations with the Belgian conquerors.

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