essay on european imperialism in africa

European Imperialism in Africa

How it works

During the 1800s, the colonization of Africa was taken over by Europe. The countries gained money, resources, and the power while imperializing the countries of Africa. The Europeans were fascinated by the geography and the resources that Africa had to offer. Although, the imperialism did have an impact on the future of Africa. The European Imperialism in Africa influenced the future of the citizens in Africa and Africa as a whole in three ways, the forced labor or slavery from the countries with valuable rescoures, the forced spread of Christianity, and the decreasing amounts of resources in Africa because of the abundant amount of trade.

All across Africa, Catholic and Protestant missionaries attempted to win people to Christianity. The missionaries believed the African cultures and religions were devalued. They attempted to help Africans reject their own traditions in favor of Western civilization. They also built schools and medical clinics alongside churches. The missionaries saw the Africans as children in need of guidance. Just by the missionaries changing their religious beliefs has already influenced the future of Africa. In the poem The White Man’s Burden states, “Your new-caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half child”. This refers to the belief of the Europeans that Africans resigned to live a life of savergy. The missionaries would degrade the culture and society of the African people.

With all of the natural resources Africa had to offer, slavery came along with it. Countries such as Congo, which had an abundant amount of rubber and ivory, had slavery. Millions of Congolese died because of the forced labor and slavery. This influenced the future of Africa and Africans because all of their resources are now gone and are being used in other countries. While they were slaves, they had no right to any of their own country’s materials. The future of Africa was also changed because of the death toll, economic change, and the environmental destruction resulting from wars. The countries also weren’t able to increase any of their agricultural production because an inudstrialization is needed first before it is even possible to have a stable agricultural production.

The future of Africa was also influenced by the decreasing amounts of resources in Africa because of the abundant amount of trade. The imperialist countries essentially would raid any resources they could find in the African colonies. Africa contained copper, cotton, tea, diamonds, tin, palm oil, and many other resources that made Africa a gold mine. When imperialists came and raided all of Africa’s valuable resources, they would be traded to other countries. European powers created a cash crop agriculture system by building a major trade network. Since the European’s had power of the resources, they were able to create the value of the resource to whatever they wished it to be. Africa is now stripped of their resources and are lacking in many needed materials for the growth of their economy. This completely changes the future of the African citizens and the African countries. They aren’t able to create and sell materials for the help of their economy.

With all of these effects of the future of Africa, proves how much imperialism can change a country. The Africans were forced to change their culture, way of life, jobs, religion, and even their homes were taken from them. When a country changes their whole culture by force, their success rate of the future is going to be questionable. The European Imperialism in Africa influenced the future of the citizens in Africa and the countries in Africa in three ways, the forced labor or slavery from the countries with valuable resources, the decreasing amounts of resources in Africa because of the abundant amount of trade, and the forced spread of Christianity.

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In the late 1800s, European nations were competing fiercely for control of Africa, the only continent (other than Antarctica) that had not yet been colonized by Europeans. Some European imperialists, such as French leader Jules Ferry (see reading, "Expansion Was Everything" ), justified the conquest by claiming that “superior races” had both a right to the territory and a duty to “civilize” the “inferior races” that made up the Indigenous people of Africa. Others claimed no duty at all toward the Indigenous people. Historians David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen explain:

Herero Survivors

After the Germans drove the Herero into the Kalahari Desert in South-West Africa in 1904, the few that survived returned from the desert starving.

The white races had claimed territory across the globe by right of strength and conquest. They had triumphed everywhere because they were the fittest; their triumphs were the proof of their fitness. Whole races, who had been annihilated long before Darwin had put pen to paper, were judged to have been unfit for life by the very fact they had been exterminated. Living people across the world were categorized as “doomed races.” The only responsibility science had to such races was to record their cultures and collect their artifacts from them, before their inevitable extinction. The spread of Europeans across the globe came to be regarded as an almost sacred enterprise, and was increasingly linked to that other holy crusade of the nineteenth century—the march of progress. Alongside the clearing of land, the coming of the railroad, and the settlement of white farmers, the eradication of Indigenous tribes became a symbol of modernity. Social Darwinism thus cast itself as an agent of progress. 1

Along with Belgium, England, France, and Portugal, Germany was one of many European nations deeply influenced by Social Darwinism. It affected the way the nation justified its actions in South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia), where Germans occupied the land of Indigenous groups, including the Herero and Nama, beginning in the 1880s. Within 20 years, German settlers not only occupied much of the land but had also acquired (through confiscation or purchase) more than half of the Herero people’s cattle. Cattle were central to the Herero culture and economy. 2 Theodor Leutwein, the governor of German South-West Africa, explained what had happened to the Herero and Nama from an imperialist point of view when he wrote: “The native who did not care to work, and yet did not want to do without worldly goods, eventually was ruined; meanwhile, the industrious white man prospered. This was just a natural process.” 3

When the Herero, the Nama, and other groups in the region fought to keep their land and resources, German leaders were outraged. The Herero, led by their chief Samuel Maharero, began to revolt in January 1904. Though they had much better weapons than the Herero, German soldiers were unable to quickly end the rebellion. They lost hundreds of soldiers to disease, the unfamiliar desert climate, poor supply lines, and ambush attacks by Maharero’s soldiers. 4 German officials in both Africa and Europe were made furious not only by the uprising but also by the idea that an “inferior” people were challenging their authority.

In August, Kaiser Wilhelm sent German Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha to take control of the colony and to “crush the rebellion by all means necessary.” 5 Von Trotha had been previously stationed in east Africa, where he had a reputation for brutality in his efforts to put down all resistance to German rule. Von Trotha vowed to “annihilate the revolting tribes with streams of blood.” 6

Aware that large numbers of Herero warriors and their families were congregating on the nearby Waterberg Plateau, von Trotha ordered his troops to attack not only the warriors but also their wives and children. They were to take no prisoners. The troops quickly surrounded the Herero on three sides. They left open the fourth side—the Kalahari Desert. To make sure that no one used it to escape, soldiers were ordered to poison all water-holes and set up a chain of guard posts in the desert.

On October 2, long after thousands of Herero had already been murdered, von Trotha issued an “Extermination Order.” It stated:

The Herero people must leave the land. If they do not do this I will force them with [big guns or cannon]. Within the German borders, every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children. I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at. This is my decision for the Herero people. 7

Before von Trotha arrived in South-West Africa, historians estimate the territory was home to between 70,000 and 80,000 Herero. Most of them were killed at the Battle of Waterberg or by trying to escape through the desert. Only 20,000 to 30,000 remained in South-West Africa. Most of them were sent to labor camps and forced to work for German authorities. Conditions in the camps were so brutal that nearly half died. 8

In 1907, following increasing criticism in Germany and abroad, von Trotha's mission was canceled and he was sent back to Germany, where he was honored by the military. The shift in policy came too late for the Herero. Only 15,000 remained alive. It also came too late for the Nama people. After the defeat of the Herero, the Nama also revolted, and they too were swiftly defeated by von Trotha's forces. On April 22, 1905, he ordered them to surrender or “be shot until all are exterminated.” He reminded them that if they continued to rebel, they would be treated in much the way the Herero were. Of an estimated 20,000 Nama, about half were murdered and the rest confined in work camps. Historians have explained the genocide in German South-West Africa as a result of Social Darwinist thinking, embodied especially in von Trotha’s idea of race war, combined with the German military’s institutional culture of extreme violence. 9

The German atrocities against the Herero and Nama were not unique; similar attacks were made by British settlers against Aboriginal Tasmanians in Australia in the nineteenth century and by American settlers against the Yuki in California around the turn of the twentieth century. Contemporary historians call these episodes—in which an imperialist country intentionally tries to annihilate an Indigenous people in order to control their land and resources—frontier genocide. 10

Connection Questions

• Describing the actions of Germans in South-West Africa and other similar historical cases, historian Benjamin Madley writes: Victors write history, and . . . perpetrators create a myth to excuse their crimes. By claiming that so-called “primitive” peoples and cultures are fated to vanish when they come into contact with white settlers, a deadly supposition emerges: the extinction of Indigenous people is inevitable and thus killing speeds destiny. 11
• What myths did Germans use to explain their attempts to annihilate the Herero and Nama? What motives did these myths attempt to excuse?
• What is “the march of progress”? What did progress mean to imperialists?
• In what kinds of situations have you used or heard the word exterminate? What is the significance of the way von Trotha used this word in describing his plans in South-West Africa?
• What questions does the history of imperialist conquest and violence raise for you? In what ways is such brutality unexplainable?
• 1 David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 73.
• 2 Benjamin Madley, "Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia," Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004): 182.
• 3 Ibid.,169.
• 4 Ibid., 185–86.
• 5 Ibid., 186.
• 6 “ The Herero Uprising 11 January 1904 ,” Namibia-1on1.com, accessed March 23, 2016.
• 7 Lothar von Trotha, “Proclamation 2,” October 2, 1904, quoted in Olusoga and Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust , 149–50.
• 8 Benjamin Madley, "Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia," Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004), 188.
• 9 Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 5-6; Jürgen Zimmerer, “Annihilation in Africa: The ‘Race War’ in German Southwest Africa (1904–1908) and Its Significance for a Global–History of Genocide,” GHI Bulletin , no. 37 (2005): 51–57.
• 10 Benjamin Madley, "Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia," Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004), 167–168. 
• 11 Benjamin Madley, "Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia," Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004), 168.

How to Cite This Reading

Facing History & Ourselves, “ Imperialism, Conquest, and Mass Murder ”, last updated August 2, 2016.

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European Imperialism in Africa: The Main Causes

Introduction.

Imperialism ism is referred to as the process through which superior regions exercise power over other less superior regions. Imperialism can be either complete or partial; in partial colonialism, the superior nation only controls a few aspects of the other country, but in whole imperialism, the country has total power over the other. Imperialism was widespread towards the end of the 19 th century due to the increased industrial revolution in Europe. During this period, some of the affected areas include; Asia, Africa, and South America. Colonization of a given region is subject to varying factors that predominantly comprise political, economic, and social factors. It is critical to focus on the various factors that contributed to the colonization of Africa by the different European nations.

Economic Factors

Search for raw materials.

During the 19 th century, Europe was developing rapidly due to the industrial revolution. Therefore, the revolution created many opportunities for European countries to seek expansion in other underdeveloped countries, thus leading to imperialism. Some of these opportunities included; the search for raw materials; due to increased industrialization, many industries and processing companies were established in Europe. Nonetheless, these countries lacked adequate raw materials to satisfy their industries adequately. As such, these countries sought more and cheaper raw materials from other parts of the world. More so, since most European nations were competing to be the most developed, these countries could barely rely on each other, and most of this resulted in sourcing their raw materials from other regions. Most of these materials were found in Africa, so to guard the sources of their raw materials, the respective European countries established settlements which consequently resulted in the colonization of Africa.

Search for Cheap Labor

The industrial revolution created a high demand for manual labor in Europe, which was abundant. Nevertheless, the readily available manual labor was expensive, reducing the profits many company owners earned. Therefore, to maximize their profit, the company owners preferred to seek cheaper labor from Africa because the slave trade had been abolished at the time. Thus, more Africans were available for hire. Correspondingly, this led to the colonization of Africa since most entrepreneurs preferred establishing their industries in Africa as it was cheaper and labor was readily available

Search for Market

The progress of industrialization led to the establishment of more companies all over Europe. However, some companies produced the same commodities, resulting in aggressive competition. Some of these companies had to find alternative markets for their products in other parts of the world to minimize the competition. The companies began transporting their products to Africa, which their competitors had not reached. Additionally, some companies could not get buys in Europe as their products were deemed of poor quality, so they began to sell these products in Africa since they knew very few people would complain of the poor quality. Therefore, these companies established trade centers and settlements and progressively increased their numbers, eventually leading to empire-building.

Investment in Surplus Capital

During the 19 th century, industrialization peaked in Europe, leading to increased growth and profits for many company owners. As such, they began investing in the profits in different industries sectors to facilitate further growth and development. Therefore, these entrepreneurs proceeded to make investments in Africa which had started developing due to the significant trade activities and the establishment of other European companies. This resulted in colonialism in Africa since the investments ensured the development of Africa, thus attracting even more people and governments from Europe.

Strategic Positioning

Africa was strategically positioned regarding the Suez Canal. The canal allowed for easy movement of naval vessels between Europe and Asia, thus providing a shorter and safer route. Britain occupied Egypt, which at the time enabled better control over the canal. Egypt was an area of conflict between Britain and France because Britain had already occupied Kenya and Uganda. France thus tried to occupy Egypt but to no avail; as such, France occupied the even regions on the southern side of Egypt as payback. France planned to divert the river Nile to retaliate against Britain for occupying all regions through which the Nile was passing. The strategic position of Africa attracted more European countries, which began settling and building settlements, which resulted in Africa’s imperialism.

Unemployment

The industrial revolution was characterized by the mechanization of manufacturing and processing processes. Increased machinery usage resulted in massive unemployment because most manufacturers preferred using machines. Machines were cheaper and more efficient than human labor; many people were laid off to pave the way for mechanization. However, the European government developed a strategy to solve unemployment by expanding its territories. Thus, they began establishing new companies in Africa, which required both skilled and unskilled workers.

Consequently, these new manufacturing plants created more employment opportunities for European jobless civilians. Imperialism resulted from settling these new employees since they had to establish communities and settlements. Furthermore, European governments encouraged more citizens to move to Africa to establish farms that would help harness more raw materials for their homeland companies. For instance, countries like Kenya developed farms that provided hide, tea, coffee, and dairy products for European companies. Correspondingly more Europeans settled in Africa and hence colonization.

Development of Naval Machinery

Infrastructural development improved significantly during the 19 th century, and thus most countries in Europe had improved naval vessels. Most countries owned steel steamships, enabling them to travel further to Africa. These vessels became subject to competition among many European countries; each wanted to outdo the other, culminating in Africa’s imperialism. Moreover, these vessels created a high demand for coal which could not be satisfied adequately in Europe. Therefore, the respective countries had to source coal from Africa, which had rich mines. They used coal to power their factories and other machinery and thus established settlements around the mines to protect them from other countries, leading to the imperialism of Africa.

Mineral Speculation

Most Europeans believed that Africa was rich with large mineral reserves, which acted as a pull factor. The speculations of minerals in Africa were reinforced by the fact that most African trade activities were conducted using gold and bronze, among other minerals. The discovery of gold and diamond in Kimberly in South Africa confirmed the speculations, leading to the flocking of African European investors. Since the speculators could not go back home regularly, they established settlements where they resided. Governments built settlements and administrative posts from where they conducted their prospection activities, leading to permanent residences and, thus, colonialism. Besides, some of the minerals they mined had to be processed before being shipped to Europe; thus, industries were built, and more people were brought to provide human resources. More Europeans settled in Africa to facilitate the extraction, processing, and transportation of these minerals, culminating in imperialism.

During the 19 th century, trade was well-developed in Africa, creating a significant market opportunity for European products. European countries were determined to dominate the market. Therefore, they adopted free trade imperialism which advocated for peaceful dominance. Nevertheless, they began using military force to assert dominance over the market; thus, they built military bases which served as command centers for trade activities. Weaker communities were forced to give up their trade routes and rights to European powers. For instance, in West Africa, trade was extensive and was controlled by the local leaders, who, in turn, amassed wealth uncontrollably. This drew the attention of the Europeans, who wanted a share of the profits; as such, they relocated to Africa to maximize trade and eventual dominance. The trade resulted in the gradual settling of Whites in Africa, thus leading to the imperialism of Africa.

Science and Medicine

Africa, a tropical region, had a high prevalence of tropical diseases like Malaria, which was deadly to all Europeans. Most Europeans shunned the regions and only used intermediaries to conduct trade activities. Therefore, the intermediaries controlled all trades, which minimized the Whites’ profits. Nevertheless, during the 19 th century, science was well-developed and thus facilitated the development of proper medical drugs. This allowed more Europeans to travel to Africa without fearing for their health, so to maximize their profits, they established dominance over the trade by moving most of their companies to Africa. For instance, French chemists developed the cure for Malaria, Quinine which was in high demand among the Europeans who sought to explore Africa and trade. Following these discoveries, countries established botanical gardens in their motherland and prospective colonies to ensure a sufficient drug supply.

Political Factors

Nationalism.

Toward the end of the 19 th century, most European countries were well developed with better machinery and improved living standards. The sense of pride culminated in the spirit of nationalism among the people of Europe. Britain nationals used the sun never sets on the British Empire. This meant that the sun was shining on the British Empire at any given time, signifying its vastness. They began to pressure their governments to acquire African territories like their neighboring countries. For instance, German citizens challenged their government to acquire colonies in Africa to achieve a sense of prestige like their neighbors. Germans believed they were a superior race and thus could rule the Africans, presumed to be lesser humans. Nationalism grew to a point where the government could not resist any longer and thus resulted in imperialism.

Public Opinion

More European countries acquired colonies in Africa and other regions worldwide, while others lagged. Citizens from these countries championed for their countries to get colonies like their competing neighboring countries. As such, these countries began to acquire colonies to adhere to public opinion. A perfect example is in Germany and Britain; in Britain, the citizens demanded that their government should not lose its position by letting other countries occupy more colonies than themselves. Its citizens pressured Germany to occupy the West African region.

Power and Superiority

During the 19 th Century, Europe was characterized by competition among the different countries. Most of these countries competed to prove that they were better and superior while their counterparts were inferior. They competed in various capacities; for instance, when one country acquired a colony, the rest would acquire colonies to prove they were not inferior. The competition became stiff as they began to compete on who would have the highest number of colonies. Furthermore, these countries would undermine each other to ensure they emerged at the top. A perfect example of this rivalry was during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Countries like Germany and Russia supplied the Ethiopian emperor with advanced weapons and the necessary resources, which resulted in the defeat of the Italian army. The other countries would then use the opportunity to acquire even more territories while the competitors were engaged in battle. The rivalry resulted in the settling of Europeans in Africa, which in turn ended up in imperialism.

Military Strength and Prowess

Towards the end of the 19 th century, almost all European countries had equipped their armies with advanced weapons. As such, the army commanders from the different armies tested each other’s wits and tactics to see who had better skills and machinery. Furthermore, when a country acquired new territory in Africa, the army was praised, and army officials were promoted. As such, all the officials were focused on outshining their rivals and, at the same time, were promoted for their achievements. Furthermore, countries with well-trained and equipped armies could conquer and acquire territory from the resisting African communities. Britain had equipped its army adequately, which facilitated the royal army’s victory in capturing colonies, even in regions that brought up an uprising. European presence and influence in Africa increased gradually through these conquests, resulting in imperialism.

Unification of Germany

Germany existed as two separate states s, but towards the end of the 19 th , it was united under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The unification of Germany resulted in an imbalance of power in Europe, and this is because another European power had risen when we were only a few earlier before. As such, something had to be done to restore the power balance. Therefore, most European countries began to seek more power by acquiring African colonies. Germany became a more significant power than other smaller countries and thus began amassing European territories by conquering the weaker countries. Germany took over two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, from France, which were rich in coal and iron. France retaliated by acquiring more colonies in Africa. Consequently, more countries acquired more colonies to increase their power, leading to the development of imperialism.

Intercommunity Conflicts

Among African communities, there were those in constant conflict with each other, which resulted in endless wars. These wars weakened many African communities, which made it difficult for them to create significant resistance against the Europeans. Therefore, the European powers exploited these conflicts and enmities to achieve their goals. They employed the tactics of divide and rule on the rivaling Africans; they would support and equip one community and use it to fight the others and dominate all the other communities. This tactic was significant since it enabled Europeans to conquer colonies with little effort. Europeans would also bring gifts for one community and its leaders and promise them even more if they agreed to do their bidding. They enticed them to become collaborators, giving them power over the other communities. Consequently, the whites could settle, extend their power to Africans and exert dominance through their appointed leaders.

Weak Decentralized Communities

Many communities in Africa were decentralized and thus existed independently of each other. They had no armies or advanced weapons to counter the European armies, and calamities weakened them. In addition, the armies employed strategies that guaranteed the weakening of these communities, and an example of these strategies was the use of the scorch earth policy. Through this course of action, the military destroyed all the food, livestock, and property of the target community. These communities ran out of food and resources and thus could not resist the Europeans’ infiltration. The communities could not measure up to the weapons and tactics of European soldiers, which facilitated easy settlement of the Europeans and eventual imperialism.

European Rivalry

Conflicts of interest had created competitiveness between nations in Europe. An example of the intensified enmity was that between Germany and France; upon unification, Germany reclaimed its province, which it had to relinquish to France due to its division. France could not retaliate because it was still recovering from the effect of the Franc-Prussian war. As such, France sought a more peaceful method of regaining its power, and that was through the acquisition of colonies in Africa. Frances’ agility in capturing colonies attracted the attention of other nations, and thus they too began to amass colonies to ensure they could effectively counter whatever France was planning. Further, the activities of King Léopold of Belgium in Congo raised questions among different European states. King Leopold had commissioned Henry Morton Stanley to create a company that would, in turn, establish the king’s empire, eradicate the slave trade and institute free trade in Congo. These activities resulted in the convening of the Berlin conference, which led to the scramble for and partition of the African continent.

Social Factors

Humanitarian intervention.

During the 19 th Century slave trade in Africa had become rampant, raising concerns among many European nations. Many such individuals, governments, and other organizations began campaigns that called for European intervention in the matter. Therefore, different governments intervened to end the slave trade and establish free and legitimate trade. Nonetheless, upon completing the humanitarian activities, some of these organizations chose to remain in Africa to control and promote free trade and enforce anti-slavery legislation. This resulted in the massive occupation of white settlers in Africa hence imperialism. Aside from the slave trade, many Europeans believed that Africans were suffering and leading lives of complete suffering; as such, they formed organizations that provided relief aid and helped them with agriculture and other skills. This led to establishing of white settlements in Africa; Europeans stopped the slave trade and replaced it with colonization.

Furthermore, European civilization played a vital role in facilitating colonialism. This is because most parts of Europe were developed and civilized; thus, they felt it was their responsibility to introduce western culture to the Africans. They viewed Africans as barbaric and uncultured and thus pressured their governments to develop programs that would aid in civilizing Africans. This resulted in the colonization of Africa since these governments began by establishing their rule over various regions of Africa before establishing schools for Africa.

Toward s the end of the 19 th century, European nations had successively put an end to the slave trade along the coast of Africa; nonetheless, the slave trade was continuing in most interior markets of Africa. African chiefs and other leaders were still supporting and conducting the slave trade and raids; as such European nations resulted in complete blown infiltration to ensure the trades were finished. In the process of fighting slave traders and rescuing the captured enslaved people, these European soldiers established command centers from where they conducted their operations and stayed.therefore, after the operation was completed, most of these soldiers chose to remain behind since they had established their livelihood in Africa and this led to the European imperialism in African.

Christian Missionaries

During the 19 th Century, Christianity was the main religion in Europe since almost everybody practiced it. On the other hand, Islam was gaining popularity in Africa, which was a concern for European missionaries. They disregarded African religious practices and aimed to replace these practices with Christianity. Missionaries were focused on ensuring Christianity was accepted by all Africans. They gave Africans gifts and clothes to entice them to accept Christianity. They introduced new practices to Africans, including new plants, farming practices, and education. Missionaries established mission schools where they taught Africans arithmetic, reading, and writing; those who excelled were awarded even more African to the mission stations. However, some regions were not very receptive to the new religion and practices and thus were very hostile toward the missionaries. Therefore, they called for reinforcement from the government to combat the hostile communities, which led to the imperialism of some regions of Africa.

Some Missionaries used the training as a ploy to smooth the entry of their respective European governments. They trained Africans to depend on them so they would always need them and thus not deviate from their teaching. For instance, Africans were only taught manual skills and not cognitive skills. Some missionaries served their government by preparing adequate manual labor, which would be handy upon establishing Settlers’ farms in the European governments. Missionaries introduced western subsistence farming to Africans and reserved cash crop farming for their White counterparts. As missionaries spread the gospel, they also reported what they learned about Africa to their respective governments. Africa was conducted for farming and was rich in minerals. This, therefore, attracted more European settlers into Africa hence colonization.

During the 19 th century, Europeans conducted many expeditions to explore Africa, and in return, they reported what they witnessed during their excursions. Some of the news they delivered raised many questions among the recipients, especially the church. As a result, the church had to send more missionaries to Africa so that they could help the Africans. As per the reports by the voyagers Africans were uncultured and backward, they had no religion and lived like animals. Europeans financed more voyages to help the Africans and see what they had heard firsthand. More Europeans came into Africa and settled through these voyages, impacting imperialism in Africa.

Toward the end of the 19 th century, Africa experienced severe drought, followed by a catastrophic food shortage for both people and livestock. Africans died in large numbers and became too weak to protect themselves from attacks. During the tough times, missionaries arrived in various parts of Africa, claiming they had come to offer help. Most African leaders had to accept the help offered to save their people. Consequently, the Europeans became permanent residents of these regions since they were revered for saving many African lives. They reported their progress to their home nations, which led to an influx of White settlers in Africa hence imperialism. In addition, the famine and smallpox pandemic of 1895 rendered most African communities defenseless, and thus European soldiers could capture those regions without any resistance whatsoever.

Population Growth

Industrial revolutions facilitated better wages, healthcare, and living conditions, promoting increased population growth. The overall population in Europe was overwhelming the available resources; as such, the governments had to find a solution to the problem. These governments resolved the problem by acquiring African colonies and moving the citizens to inhabit these colonies. The settlers were given land which initially belonged to the indigenous people; they were to cultivate the lands and produce raw materials for industries in Europe and provide skilled labor for the industries that had been established in Africa. European governments sent representatives who governed the colonies on behalf of the governments. The establishment of new foreign governments in Africa cemented the reign of colonialism.

Advanced Technology and Weaponry

Europe was more advanced than Africa; thus, they had better weapons and technology. Technology and weapons played a vital role in facilitating imperialism. For instance, explorers relied heavily on technology to ensure their survival in the tropic; they had to take preventive drugs and vaccines to avoid succumbing to tropical diseases. More so, they used navigation tools to draw maps for their governments. Technology enabled easy movement and transportation of raw materials. European soldiers had better, even deadlier, weapons than the African warriors; therefore, the Whites had the upper hand during battles. Thus, they easily won the wars and confiscated African lands. These weapons and advanced technology significantly expedited European imperialism in Africa.

Traders and Explorers

Governments and wealthy individuals financed explorers to prospect uncharted lands, after which they would return and report on what they learned and discovered. The success of an explorer was measured by how beneficial their information was. Nonetheless, explorers played a critical role in facilitating the colonization of Africa, and this is because they would exaggerate what they had seen and learned to ensure continuous funding. The exaggerated information resulted in an influx of White settlers on African lands. Furthermore, explorers frequently requested their governments for protection from hostile African communities; the military would be sent to accompany the explorers. However, upon completion, the military would often remain behind, ending with the colonization of Africa.

On the other hand, European trading companies used force on African traders who disagreed with them. The traders were accompanied by an armed military unwilling to use force. For instance, the Royal Niger Company forced local farmers to supply them with palm oil at a lower price, but their local leader King Jaja refused and only allowed his agents to buy palm oil from his people. In retaliation, they were summoned by the government representative and forced to sign an agreement to ensure the company bought the palm oil at their chosen price, after which King Jaja was exiled. Traders thus facilitated colonialism by deploying military force on traders.

Navigable Rivers and Established Roads

Africa had well-established trade routes that served as roads for the Europeans. Many Europeans traversed the continent quickly since they used the trade routes that most had familiarized with during their trade activities. On the other hand, those who preferred traveling by water could do so since Africa has many navigable rivers like river Nile, Zambezi, and Niger. These roads and rivers made it easy for the European soldiers to combat resisting communities. More so, it was easier for them to transport machinery and other materials wherever needed without any problem whatsoever. The ability to quickly move around the continent was critical in enabling the launch of European expansionism in Africa.

Imperialism of Africa by Europe was stimulated by different factors that influenced European nations individually or as a whole. Two-three main factions can characterize the factors that led to the colonization of Africa by Europe, and they are; social factors, political factors, and economic factors. Political factors relate to the administrative aspect of Europe. It refers to how different European governments and authority figures exercised power and how they related with their counterparts. Some of these political factors included; militarism, European rivalry, and nationalism.

On the other hand, economic factors revolve around the effects of the industrial revolution on individual nations and Europe as a whole. Some of the economic factors that facilitated imperialism comprise; the search for the market, the search for raw materials, the search for cheap labor, and the investment of surplus capital. Social factors of imperialism revolve around the cultural aspect of life and the people’s way of life, including the role of explorers, the increased population in Europe, humanitarian factors, and the role of missionaries. These factors cumulatively facilitated European imperialism of Africa.

Bibliography

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Ali, Merima, Odd‐Helge, Fjeldstad, and Abdulaziz B. Shifa. “European colonization and the corruption of local elites: The case of chiefs in Africa.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 179 (2020): 80-100.

Conway, Stephen. Britannia’s Auxiliaries Continental Europeans and the British Empire 1740-1800 First ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Harms, Robert. Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa . New York: Basic Books, 2019.

Hill, Christopher, Robert. “Britain, West Africa and ‘The new nuclear imperialism’: decolonisation and development during French tests.” Contemporary British History 33, no. 2 (2019): 274-289.

Hobson, Rolf. Imperialism at sea: naval strategic thought, the ideology of sea power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 . Brill, 2021.

Hoffman, Philip T. Why Did Europe Conquer the World? Princeton University Press, 2017.

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Oyeniyi, Bukola A. “Colonialism, Coloniality, and Colonial Rule in Africa.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order , pp. 75-102 (2022). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

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The continuation of the slave trade

Effects of the slave trade, causes of the mfecane, shaka and the creation of the zulu, the mfengu and the mantatee, changes in the status of africans.

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“Legitimate” trade and the persistence of slavery

By the time the Cape changed hands during the Napoleonic Wars , humanitarians were vigorously campaigning against slavery, and in 1807 they succeeded in persuading Britain to abolish the trade; British antislavery ships soon patrolled the western coast of Africa. Ivory became the most important export from west-central Africa, satisfying the growing demand in Europe . The western port of Benguela was the main outlet, and the Ovimbundu and Chokwe , renowned hunters, were the major suppliers. They penetrated deep into south-central Africa, decimating the elephant populations with their firearms. By 1850 they were in Luvale and Lozi country and were penetrating the southern Congo forests.

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The more sparse, agricultural Ovambo peoples to the south also were drawn into the ivory trade. Initially trading in salt, copper, and iron from the Etosha Pan region to the north, and supplying hides and ivory to Portuguese traders, the Ovambo largely had been able to avoid the slave trade that ravaged their more populous neighbours. By the mid 19th century the advent of firearms led to a vast increase in the volume of the ivory trade, though the trade collapsed as the elephants were nearly exterminated by the 1880s. By then, traders from Angola, the Cape Colony, and Walvis Bay sought cattle as well as ivory. With the firearms acquired through the trade, Ovambo chiefs built up their power, raiding the pastoral Herero and Nama people in the vast, arid region to their south.

British antislavery patrols drove the slave trade east, where ivory had been more significant. In the first decades of the 19th century, slave traders for the French sugar plantations in Réunion and Mauritius , who had previously drawn the majority of their slaves from Madagascar , turned their attentions to the coast of Mozambique , while the demand from Cuba and Brazil also escalated . Thus, by the late 1820s Mozambique’s slave exports were outstripping those of Angola, with demand from the French islands rivaling that of Brazil by the 1830s. The flow of slaves was augmented by turmoil in the interior of Southern Africa and by slaves captured by the Chikunda soldiers of the Zambezi warlords; by the 1840s rival Zambezi armies were competing to control the trade routes to south-central Africa.

The most important area of slave raiding appears to have been in Malawi and northeastern Zambia , where predatory overlords devastated a wide area from bases in the Congo. To the east of Lake Nyasa , the Yao —keen ivory traders from the 17th century—turned to slave raiding, obtaining firearms from the Arabs, subjugating the Chewa agriculturalists, and building up powerful polities under new commercial and military leaders. Displaced from northern Mozambique by the Ngoni in the 19th century, the Yao in turn pressured the Manganja peoples of the Shire Highlands . The Bemba also were able to increase their power through the slave and ivory trade, raiding the loosely organized Maravi peoples to the west of the lake from their stockaded villages on the infertile Zambian plateau. Although they never became large-scale slave traders, preferring instead to incorporate their captives, the Ngoni invaders added to the turmoil. While the first European observers probably exaggerated the extent of the depopulation, the political geography of the region was transformed as people moved into stockaded villages and towns and began to raid one another for captive women to work the fields while the men engaged in warfare. Vast numbers of people, especially women, were torn from their social settings, and earlier divisions based on kin came to matter less than new relationships between patron and client, protector and protected.

British pressure on the sultan of Zanzibar to ban the slave trade was easily circumvented , and, though the abolition treaty forced on the Zanzibaris in 1873 was more effective, the reduced coastal demand for slaves led to even more ruthless methods in the interior of east-central Africa; slaves were no longer needed for export and thus were exploited locally. East coast Arabs began to play a much more active role in the interior. Initially operating through local chiefs, they came to exercise wide military and political jurisdiction over the northern routes from strategically placed commercial centres; many of these became slave-based plantations.

It is not possible to compile an exact balance sheet of the devastation caused to Southern Africa by the slave trade, and historians differ in their estimation of the numbers involved and of the extent of the damage inflicted. In the 17th century some 10,000 to 12,000 slaves were exported annually from Luanda. Although this figure includes captives from both north and south of the bay, it does not include those smuggled out to escape official taxation. In the 18th century about a third of the slaves exported to the Americas probably came from Angola. The figure probably represents a relatively small proportion of the total population of a huge area in any one year, but it was a significant proportion of economically active adults. The figure also does not take account of the depopulation and social dislocation resulting from incessant warfare and banditry, resulting famine and disease, and the intensification of slavery within African society, where it was usually the young women who were taken as captive “wives” because of their utility as kinless and therefore unprotected agricultural labour.

The better-watered regions may have recouped their population losses within a couple of generations, supported by the introduction of new food crops such as manioc and corn (maize), which the Portuguese imported from South America . Nevertheless, the effects of the slave trade were, in social terms, incalculable. Accounts of Ndongo as rich and populous in the 16th century gave way to lamentations about its desolation in the 17th. The processes of border raids, wars of conquest, and civil strife, which affected the Ndongo and then the kingdoms of the Kwango River valley in the 17th century, were repeated to the south and east in the course of the 18th century as the slave frontier expanded. The ending of more overt violence as the slave frontier moved on left the weak—women, children, and the poor—vulnerable to innumerable personal acts of kidnapping and betrayal, a process exacerbated by the indebtedness of local traders to coastal merchants and the dependence of the traders on the transatlantic economy.

Neither Portugal’s attempt to ban its nationals from slave trading in 1836 nor even the abolition of slavery in Brazil in the 1880s ended slavery in west-central Africa. Local merchants, chiefs, and elders turned to slaves to produce the tropical products demanded by Europeans and to serve as porters for the growing quantities of wax and ivory from the 1840s and ’50s and rubber from the 1870s. By 1910 wild rubber accounted for more than three-quarters of Angola’s exports by volume. Although the rubber trade was successful in the short term, excessive collection of wild rubber destroyed an irreplaceable natural resource , while new concentrations of population upset the ecological balance of a drought-prone environment .

The “time of turmoil”

Given the turbulence caused by slave raiding in east- and west-central Africa, it is tempting to blame this for the unprecedented warfare in Southern Africa in the second and third decades of the 19th century; the Mfecane, or Difaqane (“Crushing”), as this warfare is known, is currently much debated. As yet, however, there seems little evidence for extensive slave trading south of Quelimane until the 1820s, and the slave trade from Inhambane and Delagoa Bay remained paltry until 1823–44; the trade from these ports thus seems more a consequence than a cause of the wars.

Demand for cattle and ivory at Delagoa Bay seems rather more important in the emergence, by the late 18th century, of a number of larger states in the hinterland of Delagoa Bay . Trade gave chiefs new ways of attracting followers, while elephant hunting and cattle raiding honed military organization. In the early 19th century, however, the number of European ships calling at Delagoa Bay appears to have contracted, and this may have increased competition for the cattle and ivory trade. Together with a series of devastating droughts (in 1800–03, 1812, and 1816–18), this competition may better account for the debilitating wars in which the larger northern Nguni chiefdoms in Zululand were embroiled by the second decade of the century; indeed, oral sources attribute the first battles to conflicts over land. These battles occurred even before the rise of the Zulu king Shaka , whom an early historiography holds almost solely responsible for turmoil as far afield as the Cape Colony, Tanzania , and western Zambia.

Shaka, who until about 1817 was subject to the Mthethwa king, was thus the heir to, rather than the originator of, the intensified warfare in Zululand. Nevertheless, his military brilliance led to the emergence of the Zulu as the most important power in southeastern Africa. Within a few years Shaka had consolidated the numerous chiefdoms between the Tugela and Pongola rivers into a centralized military state. However, divisions within the royal family culminated in his assassination in 1828.

Initially, Shaka’s most formidable rivals were the Ndwandwe , under the leadership of Zwide , who had driven the Ngwane people led by Matiwane onto the Highveld and the Ngwane led by Sobhuza north across the Pongola river, beyond the Zulu orbit. There Sobhuza established the new conquest state of Swaziland (named for his successor, Mswati ). In 1820 and again in 1823 Shaka defeated Zwide’s armies, which broke into several groups. Zwide himself retired, but his generals fled northward. Clashing with one another and with the peoples in their path, the Ndwandwe (or Ngoni, as they became known) eventually established military states in northern Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, while the Ndwandwe general Soshangane established the extensive Gaza kingdom in south-central Mozambique. At its height, the Gaza kingdom stretched between the Zambezi and the Komati rivers; Soshangane engaged in slave trading with the Portuguese and reduced neighbouring Shona to tributary status. Adding greatly to the social dislocation of east-central Africa, Ngoni movements were dictated by the need to avoid more powerful African polities and to find new food resources after local cattle and crops had been exhausted through their raids. Within their military states, the Ngoni aristocracy monopolized cattle, incorporated the women and children of conquered peoples, and exacted tribute from those whom they were unable to permanently subdue.

Increasing violence in other parts of Southern Africa

As in eastern Africa , where violence intersected with the intensifying activities of slave raiders, so in Southern Africa the violence of this period is multifactorial and needs to be more closely analyzed. Warfare among the northern Ngoni preceded the expansion of the Zulu kingdom, and its rise does not sufficiently explain the violence in the hinterland of the Cape Colony . There the destructiveness of the settler presence was increasingly felt from the mid 18th century, as displaced groups of Khoisan and escaped slaves, carrying with them the commando system and the guns—and sometimes also the religion and the genes—of the white man, fled beyond the confines of the colony. In central and northwestern South Africa and southern Namibia these heterogenous groups of people, known variously as Basters , Griqua , Korana, Bergenaars, and Oorlams , competed for land and water with the Tswana and Nama communities and traded for or raided their ivory and cattle in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the 1800s the extension of the firearms frontier was disrupting the Orange River valley and intensifying conflict between the Sotho-Tswana chiefdoms beyond.

The upheaval affected the southern chiefdoms and rebellious tributaries attacked by Shaka as far away as Pondoland. Many of the refugees fled either into the eastern Cape or west onto the Highveld, although their precise number is a matter of dispute. In both areas the arrival of the refugees added to upheavals of very different origin. The Mfengu, as the refugee population was known in the Cape, included in their ranks starving Xhosa victims of the 1834–35 frontier war, while the Mantatee or Fetcani (as the displaced population was known in the interior) were probably largely the product of labour raids by Griqua and Korana allies of frontier farmers.

Others shattered by the dual impact of the wars emanating from Zululand and the activities of labour raiders from the south scrambled to safety in the mountain fortresses of what is now Lesotho. There Moshoeshoe , the Koena leader, built a new kingdom at Thaba Bosiu , defeating and then incorporating his main rivals. Moshoeshoe quickly appreciated the utility of firearms and horses in the new warfare and of missionaries as diplomatic intermediaries. Shrewd diplomatic marriages extended his sway, and by the mid 19th century he had attracted some 80,000 followers, based on his ability to provide them with cattle and protection.

Other dislodged Highveld peoples joined the Griqua polities along the Orange River or continued raiding along the Vaal and into the western Transvaal region, where the disorders prepared the way for the coming of Mzilikazi . Originally one of Shaka’s commanders, Mzilikazi fled from Zululand in 1823 with some 300 of his followers, known as the Ndebele (or Matabele). Over the next 15 years Mzilikazi created a 20,000-strong raiding kingdom in east-central South Africa by absorbing local Sotho-speaking peoples into his regiments. Nevertheless, he was constantly harried by Griqua raiders from the south, Zulu armies from the east, and the Pedi kingdom, which was establishing itself as the most formidable power in the northeastern Transvaal region. In 1837, harassed by his many enemies and defeated by expanding white farmers from the Cape Colony, Mzilikazi retreated across the Limpopo into southwestern Zimbabwe .

There Mzilikazi established himself relatively easily, for the Shona polities were ill-prepared for the new form of warfare and were already weakened by the earlier incursions of the Ngoni and by drought. As in northeastern South Africa, the local populace was absorbed into Ndebele age-set regiments; a castelike society evolved, with the original Ngoni on top, Sotho in the middle, and Shona at the bottom. The relationships that the Ndebele established with groups beyond their immediate settlement ranged from friendly alliances to the regular exaction of tribute and random raiding. Beyond the range of Mzilikazi’s armies, however, many Shona chiefdoms remained independent; by the 1870s they were trading firearms to resist Ndebele incursions.

Yet another group dislodged by the warfare of this time, the composite Sotho group known as the Kololo, made its mark in west-central Africa. Defeated in warfare among the western Tswana, about 1840 Sebetwane led his followers across the Zambezi into northwestern Zambia. There they conquered the Lozi kingdom, which had been built up in the 18th century, and then dominated western Zambia. The Kololo triumph was short-lived, however; by 1864 the ravages of malaria, the accession of a weak and diseased king, and the revival of Lozi royal fortunes put an end to their hegemony . Nevertheless, a variant of Sotho is still the language of the region.

British development of the Cape Colony

Britain occupied the Cape Colony at the turn of the 19th century. During the Napoleonic Wars the Cape passed first to the British (1795–1803), then to the Batavian Republic (1803–06), and to the British again in 1806. The main impulse behind Britain’s annexation was to protect its sea route to India. However, the British demands that the colony pay for its administration, produce raw materials for the metropole, and provide a market for Britain’s manufactures and a home for its unemployed ineluctably drew Britain into defending the colonists, expanding their territory, and transforming the Cape’s mercantile economy. The displacement of Dutch East India Company rule by an imperial state in the early stages of its industrial revolution greatly expanded local opportunities for trade and increased demands for labour, just as the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire.

In its constitutional development the Cape Colony followed the pattern set by Britain’s other settler colonies in the 19th century. It was initially a crown colony governed by an autocratic governor, whose more extreme powers were modified by the presence in Cape Town of an articulate middle class and by the arrival in 1820 of some 5,000 British settlers. These groups demanded a free press, an independent legal system, the rooting out of corruption, and more representative institutions. After intense political struggle, Cape men were granted representative government in 1853, with a nonracial franchise that included a low property threshold , which, it was hoped, would defuse the discontent of both Afrikaners and the rebellious creolized Khoisan/Coloured population.

In 1872 the Cape gained full responsible government. The colour-blind franchise was retained but came under increasing attack. As a strategy for incorporating the more prosperous Black peasants and artisans, it had been supported by white merchants, professionals, and officials. With the annexation of African territories and the creation of a mass Black working class, however, it proved vulnerable , and in 1887 and 1892 the franchise qualifications were changed in order to restrict the number of Black voters.

Initially, imperial protection expanded Cape wheat and wine production, while the British did little to alter existing social and property relations. By the mid 1820s, however, imperial attempts to create a “free market” in labour—including the abolition of preferential tariffs and reform in the system of land tenure—had an explosive effect on the class relations of a colony dependent on slaves and serfs. New regulations ensured standards of treatment and established equality before the law for “masters” and “servants.” Ordinance 50 of 1828, which ensured Khoisan mobility on the labour market, caused an uproar; in 1834 slaves were finally emancipated. Despite their formal equality before the law, however, newly emancipated slaves received only modest protection, from the handful of mission stations, against exploitative and often brutal conditions. By 1841, largely through “ masters and servants ” legislation, settlers had reimposed much of their old authority.

Although the underclass received only limited benefits, the British land and labour policies—together with a restructuring of local government—threatened many Afrikaners. Between 1834 and 1838, in a movement known as the Great Trek , parties of Voortrekkers (“Pioneers”), with their families and dependents, departed the Cape Colony. Their exodus was to become the central saga of 20th-century Afrikaner nationalism . Beyond the confines of the colony, they established separate republics in Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, outflanking the Xhosa along the southeast coast, where the British were confronted by a series of interlocking crises.

Continuing settler- Xhosa wars

The first of these crises had erupted in 1799 shortly after the British first occupied the Cape. This was the third war between settlers and Xhosa in the Zuurveld and coincided with a mass uprising of Khoisan in Graaff-Reinet. Although peace was restored in 1803, the Xhosa remained in the Zuurveld until British troops drove them east of the Great Fish River in 1811–12; subsequent near-constant skirmishing again exploded into war in 1818–l9, 1834–35, and l846. For most of the century the Cape was dependent on British troops for its defense and for the further conquest of African territory.

By mid century the western Xhosa were formidable foes who used firearms and adopted guerrilla tactics. Thus, the eighth war (1850–53) was the most drawn-out and costly of all. As in 1799, a simultaneous uprising of Khoisan/Coloured people at the Kat River settlement in the eastern Cape north of Fort Beaufort (established as a buffer for the colony in 1828) weakened the colonists’ position. In the end, it was not British arms or settler prowess that defeated the Xhosa but internal tensions resulting from the activities of white traders, missionaries, and settlers. These pressures were increased by the confiscation of Xhosa land and cattle, the apportionment after each war of captives as labour to settlers, the arrival of refugees from wars beyond their frontiers, and the expansion of commercial sheep farming, which was the most important sector of the Cape economy by the 1840s. The Cape’s northern frontier was now the Orange River, while in the east the land between the Great Fish and Great Kei rivers was appropriated for white settlement.

In 1857 the internally divided Xhosa, exhausted by years of attrition , in the midst of severe drought and cattle disease, and undermined by the aggressive policies of the British governor Sir George Grey , turned to millenarian prophecies. They slaughtered their cattle and destroyed their crops in the belief that doing so would raise their ancestors from their graves and drive the whites into the sea. When the awaited salvation failed to materialize, some 30,000–40,000 Xhosa streamed across the frontier to seek work in the colony. An equal number died of starvation. Although Xhosa farther east fought the colonists again in 1877 and 1879, the slaughter of the cattle marked the end of Xhosa political and economic integrity . Thereafter the annexation of the remaining African territories proceeded peacefully, if piecemeal. The last of the independent kingdoms to pass into Cape hands was Pondoland , in 1895.

From the end of the 18th century, European missionaries were crucial in the transformation of African society at the Cape. With Christianity came Victorian notions of civilization and progress. Progress meant that Africans produced agricultural products for export and entered into the labour market. The first converts in the Cape were the Khoisan, in the east and north, and the Griqua, who by the 1820s had formed a series of independent if schismatic states in the Vaal-Orange confluence . By the late 1820s these states were seen by the missionaries as destined to have a vast “civilizing” influence in the interior. The neighbouring Sotho-Tswana communities were also early sites of missionary activity. Two of the most famous 19th-century Scottish missionaries to Southern Africa, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone , worked among the Tswana . The most notable of the Tswana converts were the Ngwato , under the king Khama III (reigned 1875–1923), who established a virtual theocracy among his people and was perhaps the most acclaimed Christian convert of his day, while in the eastern Cape the Mfengu were in the forefront of mission activity and peasant enterprise. In the second half of the 19th century, increasing numbers of Xhosa also turned to Christianity. In Zululand and on the Highveld the missionaries both preceded and paved the way for white settlers and were sometimes their fiercest critics.

Initially Christianity tended to advance most rapidly among the disaffected and dispossessed, and especially among women, with those who depended on the slave trade less enthusiastic. It was usually only after a major disaster undermined their belief systems that considerable numbers of men turned to the new religion. By inculcating individualism and encouraging the stratification that was to lead so many of their converts onto the colonial labour markets, the missionaries attacked much that was central to African society and developed an ideology to accompany colonial subordination.

The first European missionaries to south-central Africa, inspired by Livingstone, set up their Universities Mission in 1861. Although this mission ended in tragedy and failure, after Livingstone’s death in 1873 other missionaries followed. In 1875 the Free Church of Scotland established the Livingstonia Mission in his memory, while the established Church of Scotland began work among the Yao at Blantyre the following year. From Lake Nyasa the Scottish missions spread inland to northeastern Zambia and were followed by a large number of representatives of other Christian denominations in the last decades of the century. By the last quarter of the 19th century, European missionaries and African evangelists of almost every denomination were working among the peoples of Southern Africa, eroding chiefly authority and inculcating the new values and practices of the colonial world but also bringing new modes of resistance and educating many Christian Africans who later became outspoken critics of colonialism .

The expansion of white settlement

If the expansion of white settlement under the British led to a vast expropriation of African land and labour, it also led to a rapid expansion of unequal trading relations. Black-white exchange existed in the frontier zone from the early 18th century. British traders soon crossed colonial frontiers and were at Shaka’s court by the early 1820s. They exchanged African cattle and crops for beads and brandy and on occasion may have purchased slaves, although even settlers well beyond colonial boundaries now disguised this as “apprenticeship” and “indenture.” The establishment of republics throughout the 19th century meant that Black Africans continued to lose land and ultimately their independence to white-dominated governments.

The establishment of trekker republics in Natal and on the Highveld greatly expanded the frontiers of white settlement. The Voortrekkers , however, did not display any sense of national unity , and the parties soon fell out and set off in different directions. The trekkers enjoyed some spectacular successes as a result of their firearms, horses, and use of ox-wagons to form laagers (protected encampments), as well as their strategic alliances with African chiefdoms; they found it far more difficult to establish permanent hegemony over the region.

Victory over the Zulu at the Battle of Blood River on December 16, 1838, and divisions in the Zulu kingdom enabled the establishment of the short-lived Republic of Natalia, bounded to the north by the still-powerful Zulu kingdom and to the south by the Mpondo. In 1843, however, the British, anxious to control the sea route to India, fearful of trekker negotiations with foreign powers, and concerned that trekker raids would spread to the eastern frontier, annexed Natal, leaving the Zulu kingdom north of the Tugela River independent until its disintegration in the civil wars that followed its defeat by the British army in 1879.

For most of the 19th century, British Natal was surrounded by powerful African states and was heavily outnumbered by Africans within the colony. Constitutional development in Natal was slower and more erratic than in the Cape; colonists received responsible government only in 1893. Unlike the Cape, Natal never had a viable nonracial franchise: at the century’s end few Africans had the vote, despite the existence of considerable numbers of mission-educated Black Christians. Racial practices in Natal—including the reservation of lands for African communal occupation, recognition of tribal authorities, codification of customary law, and control over urbanization through labour registration and influx control—were born out of the colony’s weakness and provided precedents for 20th-century segregationist policies.

Absentee landowners bought up land claimed and vacated by the Voortrekkers and extracted rent from African producers, hoping increased white immigration would raise land prices. Like the weak colonial administration, the absentees were anxious to avoid the conflict that would have resulted from the expropriation of land occupied by Africans demanded by smaller settler-farmers. When in 1860 sugar was exploited successfully for the first time, indentured labour had to be brought from India to do the arduous work, because Africans—many of whom still had their own land and cattle—refused to work for the low wages offered on the plantations. By the last decades of the 19th century, however, a land shortage and high taxes had forced large numbers of Africans to seek work in colonial labour markets.

With the British annexation of Natal, most of the Voortrekkers rejoined their compatriots on the Highveld, where separate communities had been established in Transorangia (the region across the Orange River) and the western and northeastern Transvaal. Apart from a brief period in the mid 19th century, the British left them alone, controlling external trade and security threats through the coastal colonies. On the Highveld the Voortrekkers entered a vibrant and complex African world. To ensconce themselves in the interior, they fought major wars and established a series of accommodations with those Africans whom they were unable to conquer.

Compared with the British colonies, the racially exclusive republics between the Vaal, Hartz, and Limpopo rivers were weak members of the world economy, dependent on cattle ranching and hunting. Bitterly divided politically and ecclesiastically, these republics were unified in 1860 as the South African Republic , annexed as the British colony of the Transvaal between 1877 and 1881, and reconquered as the Transvaal during the South African War (1899–1902). The trekkers staked a claim to Black lands, provided a framework for speculation and the beginnings of commerce, and established formal legal title to territory, though these claims were as yet barely effective. The incapacity of the settlers to wrest the indigenous inhabitants from their land resulted in the development of several types of labour coercion and control: slavery, clientship, indenture, debt bondage , and various forms of rent and labour tenancy.

The struggle to transform formal claims into actual landownership and control continued well into the 20th century. Money was short, and government officials were paid in land, usually along with its African occupants. The settlers’ accumulation of wealth was often the result of random looting and forcible, though sporadic, extraction of tribute, tempered by the limited physical capacity of the commando system. Surrounded by a horseshoe of powerful African chiefdoms, it was only in the last third of the 19th century, during a period of renewed imperial interest in the interior, that the balance of power shifted decisively in favour of white farmers.

Farther south, in Transorangia, a far greater proportion of the small settler community was tied to Cape and British markets through wool production. Of a population in 1875 of some 125,000, only the 26,000 whites had citizenship, but many European observers considered the Orange Free State , with its parliament and written constitution, a model republic. Despite the Dutch ancestry of the majority of the settlers, English was the language of commerce and education into the 20th century.

The existence of Moshoeshoe’s Basuto kingdom on the settlers’ eastern flank meant constant friction. With the restoration of peace on the Highveld in the 1840s, many Africans attempted to return to their lands, only to find them occupied. Despite Moshoeshoe’s attempts to keep the peace, cattle raiding by his dispossessed subjects, together with increasing demands for land and labour from settler sheep farmers, led to war in 1858 and again in l865–69. On the first occasion, the Orange Free State was forced to sue for peace. On the second, Basutoland, internally divided and starved of arms by the British decision to sell weapons to Afrikaners but not Africans, was beaten. Some chiefs, especially in the north, offered their allegiance to the Afrikaners and, with their followers, became labour-tenants on their farms; others moved into the Transkei. In 1868, in response to repeated appeals from the Sotho, the governor of the Cape annexed Basutoland, leaving the Orange Free State in possession of the fertile Caledon River valley. In 1869 the frontiers of Basutoland were delimited, and shortly thereafter it was handed over to the Cape. In 1881, however, when the Cape government tried to disarm the Sotho, a war that the colony could not control broke out, and in 1884 Basutoland reverted to British rule.

The Orange Free State also constantly encroached on the better-watered land of its western neighbours, the Griqua and southern Tswana states, which were also under frequent attack from the South African Republic. These attacks led to a growing alliance among the Tswana kingdoms and to protest from the missionaries and Cape traders, who feared the Afrikaners would block the main route to the interior. Nevertheless, the area came under colonial rule only after the discovery in 1867 of diamonds in Griqualand West.

Minerals and the scramble for Southern Africa

From the 1860s it was known that there was gold in the interior of Southern Africa. In 1867 diamonds were discovered at Kimberley in Griqualand West to the north of the Cape Colony, followed shortly thereafter by discoveries of outcrop (surface) gold in the Transvaal and deep seams of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886. The conjuncture of speculation in mining futures and land, the imposition of colonial or company rule, and an industrial revolution based on mineral extraction meant that the last third of the 19th century was one of the most traumatic in the history of the region. The language of racial domination, though hardly new, was now buttressed by social Darwinism and was particularly well suited to an era of intensified land and labour exploitation.

The mineral discoveries led to dramatic economic development. Roads, railways, and harbours were built. New coal mines were exploited. Manufacturing, though in its infancy, responded to the new markets, while the creation of an internal market for food was crucial in the commercialization of agriculture and the spread of African cash crop production. Land prices soared, and the demand for labour became insatiable . A working class—consisting of both whites and Blacks—was created out of the preindustrial societies. Colonial conquest subjugated the remaining independent African societies and destroyed the bargaining power of Black workers.

Although most scholarly attention has focused on the gold mines, it was the diamond industry that pioneered many of the characteristics of Southern Africa’s labour control policies. People from all over the world came to Griqualand West to seek their fortune; between 1871 and 1875 more than 50,000 Africans from all over the subcontinent came each year, many of them lured by the prospect of purchasing firearms. Within a few years there was hardly an African chiefdom, from the Transkei to the Limpopo, that was not armed with guns. Combined with the progressive encroachment on African lands and the intensifying demand for their labour, the rearming of Africans was a major source of the instability of these years.

Initially, claims on the diamond fields were limited, technology was primitive, and small-scale Black diggers could compete with whites. In the mid 1870s, however, chaotic production conditions, a flooded world diamond market, and labour shortages made the transition to larger units of production necessary. Joint-stock companies were created, bringing international capital and a transformation of mining technology. By 1888 the thousands of claims of the previous decade had been monopolized by the De Beers Mining Company . For Black and white workers the establishment of the De Beers monopoly was of immense significance. African migrant workers were now more rigorously controlled by pass laws , which limited their mobility, and by confinement to compounds for the duration of their work contracts. Many white miners lost their jobs or became overseers, and wages for all workers were sharply reduced.

With the discovery of the Witwatersrand , attention switched from Kimberley to the South African Republic, which was quickly transformed from a ramshackle and bankrupt agrarian outpost to the most important state in the subcontinent. The coastal colonies competed to control the lucrative Witwatersrand trade, and immigration mounted: in 1870 the total white population of Southern Africa was probably less than 250,000; by 1891 it had increased to more than 600,000; and by 1904 it was more than 1,000,000. When local capital proved inadequate , funds flowed in from Britain, Germany, and France. From the late 1880s gold outstripped diamonds as the region’s most important export, and by 1898 the Witwatersrand produced about one-fifth of world gold output.

In 1889 the Chamber of Mines , an organization of mine owners, was formed to drive down the costs of production. This became even more important once deep-level mines were opened in the mid 1890s, because development costs were high, the ore low-grade, and the price of gold controlled. Skilled, unionized white workers from the mining frontiers of the world were able to protect their high wages, while the chamber formed two major recruiting organizations, the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela) and the Native Recruiting Corporation, to extend, monopolize, and control the Black labour supply throughout the subcontinent.

Throughout the region it was usually young men who were the first migrants , often sent by homestead heads, who tried to control their movement and their wages, or by chiefs who received a recruitment fee or a portion of the labourer’s wages in tribute. For many young men a period of labour migration could bring independent access to bridewealth. Although the process had its roots in the migration of Africans to colonial labour markets earlier in the century, migrant labour expanded after the mineral discoveries and had profound ramifications for the control of senior men over juniors and colonial administrators over taxpayers. Chiefs thus became increasingly anxious over their lack of control over young men and women and struck alliances with colonial administrators and recruiting agents to secure the return of migrants.

The annexation of Southern Africa

The first move in the scramble for Southern Africa came with renewed assertions of British supremacy in the interior. After much dispute, Britain annexed Griqualand West as a crown colony in 1871, transferring it to the Cape Colony in 1881. The multiple crises following the diamond discoveries led during the 1870s to failed imperial schemes to confederate the Southern African territories, but imperial wars between 1878 and 1884 effectively ended the independence of the major African kingdoms. Of these conquests the best-known was the war in 1879 against the Zulu , which included a spectacular defeat of the British army at Isandhlwana; nevertheless, wars against the southern Tswana and Griqua, the Pedi of the eastern Transvaal, the western Xhosa, and the southern Sotho were the essential precondition for the creation of a unified South Africa .

The mineral discoveries whetted German imperial ambitions, and in 1884 Germany annexed the vast, sparsely populated territory of South West Africa (now Namibia). The annexation challenged British hegemony in the region, raised fears of a German-Transvaal alliance, and accelerated the scramble for Southern Africa. The possibilities of mineral wealth in the interior also revived Portugal’s dream of uniting its African colonies. Portugal received short shrift from the other powers, however. At the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884–85, Portugal secured the Cabinda exclave and a portion of the left bank of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast—considerably less than it claimed—and in 1886 the Kunene-Okavango region went to Germany. Portugal gained even less in Mozambique, which remained a narrow coastal corridor.

With the discovery of gold, the remaining independent African polities south of the Limpopo were conquered and annexed, and both within and beyond colonial frontiers concessionaires were spurred by prospects of further discoveries and the availability of speculative capital. The Limpopo constituted no barrier, and between 1889 and 1895 all the African territories south of the Congo territory were annexed. In south-central Africa the British competed with the South African Republic, Portugal, Germany, and Belgium, while in east-central Africa, to the west and south of Lake Nyasa, the thrust from the south encountered the less powerful but still significant antislavery missionary and trading frontier from the east.

For many of the peoples of the subcontinent, the first phase of colonialism may have been overshadowed by the series of disasters that struck rural society in the mid 1890s, including locusts, drought, smallpox and other diseases, and a disastrous rinderpest epidemic that decimated African cattle holdings in 1896–97. Whereas before the colonial period such natural disasters would have killed large numbers in the short term but probably would have had little long-term consequence, the disasters of the 1890s drew considerable numbers of Africans into dependence on colonial labour markets for the first time and thus permanently changed the structure of African society.

From the 1860s it was known that there were “ancient gold workings” beyond the Limpopo, and by the mid 1880s Lobengula , the Ndebele king, was surrounded by concession hunters. In 1887–88 the high commissioner at the Cape, fearful of Transvaal expansion northward, declared the region a British sphere of interest. It was at this point that Cecil John Rhodes entered the arena.

The story of how Rhodes came to South Africa to repair his frail health and stayed to become a millionaire on the diamond fields before he was 30 is legendary. In 1880 Rhodes entered the Cape parliament, and in the 1880s he played a key role in securing the British annexation of the Tswana kingdoms that straddled the road to the interior. One of the leading mine owners in Kimberley, by 1888 he had bought out his rivals and created the De Beers consortium . In 1890, when he became the Cape’s prime minister , he was the most powerful man in Southern Africa.

Rhodes hoped to find in south-central Africa a “second Rand” to outflank the South African Republic. In 1888 his agents secured exclusive mining rights from Lobengula for Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC), which was granted a royal charter by the British government to exploit and extend administrative control over a vast area of south-central and Southern Africa. Across the Zambezi, where the British were anxious to preempt European rivals, Rhodes engaged the newly appointed British consul for Malawi and Mozambique, Harry (later Sir Harry) Johnston , to establish his company’s claims.

A flurry of treaty making in 1888–89 left the BSAC with land and mineral concessions throughout present-day Malawi and Zambia. Despite the dubious legality of the treaties, the chiefs agreed to accept British jurisdiction over non-Africans in their domains and over external relations. In the European chancellories, where the frontiers of Africa were being decided, the treaties played an important role in negotiations. In 1890–91 British, Portuguese, and German conventions established the frontiers of many of the modern states of Southern Africa.

For Britain the BSAC’s great advantage was its promise to make British occupation effective against contending European powers and to bring capitalist development at minimum cost. In 1890 Rhodes sent a “Pioneer Column,” consisting of 200 white settlers and 150 Blacks, backed by 500 police, into Mashonaland; the real goal was the Ndebele kingdom, which was conquered in a deliberately provoked war in 1893. Although Matabeleland ’s conquest brought an anticipated boom in BSAC shares, by the end of 1894 it was clear that there was no “second Rand” in south-central Africa and that the future lay with the new deep-level mines coming into operation farther south.

As their hopes of discovering gold waned, settlers and the BSAC began expropriating African land, labour, and cattle. Settlers who participated in the war were granted lavish farms and mineral claims, both of which soon passed to speculative syndicates. A land commission perfunctorily set aside two reserves for the Ndebele on poor soils. In 1896 the Ndebele rose in revolt and were joined by a number of eastern Shona polities. Only the arrival of imperial troops and the collaboration of other Shona groups saved the company state. The uprising led the British to intervene directly in BSAC affairs by appointing a resident commissioner in Bulawayo responsible to the imperial high commissioner in Cape Town.

These events left few resources for occupation north of the Zambezi until the late 1890s. Opposition from missionaries and the African Lakes Company ensured that the region around Lake Nyasa and the Shire River valley was separated from the BSAC sphere; it was declared the British Central African Protectorate in 1891, with Johnston as commissioner. Even before Johnston’s arrival the British had been embroiled in open warfare with Arab slave traders, and during the early years of the protectorate Johnston engaged in a spate of wars against the Swahili and Yao slave and ivory traders, who feared the loss of their livelihood. Given the fragmentation and social divisions of the region, he found little difficulty in implementing a policy of divide and rule. Johnston’s antislavery wars had the advantage of releasing labour for European employers. Wary of creating a landless proletariat, Johnston, like Rhodes, nevertheless believed that the protectorate’s future development should be based on the marriage of white enterprise and Black labour, assisted by Asian middlemen.

West of the protectorate, Africans were drawn more gradually under colonial rule, despite pleas from the Lozi king Lewanika that the British provide technical and financial assistance in exchange for mineral concessions, as promised in an 1890 treaty. Lewanika’s scramble for protection in the 1890s was dictated by the same circumstances that initially had led him to invite whites into his kingdom in the mid 1880s. The 20 years following the restoration of the Lozi monarchy after the Kololo interregnum had been filled with civil war and succession disputes. By inviting the missionaries, and subsequently the BSAC, to Bulozi, Lewanika, like the Ngwato king Khama III to his south, hoped to bolster his internal position and gain the skills to enable him to deal with the intruders.

In 1897 the BSAC sent an administrator to Bulozi. Contrary to Lewanika’s expectations, this spelled the end of Lozi independence. Despite Lewanika’s “protected” status, over the next decade the powers of the king and the aristocracy were whittled away. British insistence on the abolition of serfdom and slavery in 1906 undermined the cultivation of the floodplain on which Lozi agriculture depended, and Lewanika’s hopes to control the modernization of his state were not fulfilled. Bulozi became a protectorate within a protectorate, tied to the Southern African political economy .

In northeastern Zambia , too, the process of imposing colonial rule came later, but in the end it was swifter and less violent than it had been to the south or east. The natural disasters of the 1890s diminished the ability of the more powerful groups to resist, while weaker peoples at first welcomed the end of Bemba, Ngoni , and Swahili exactions. A lack of resources spared the region major confrontations with colonialism (by contrast, among the Ngoni led by Mpeseni , where gold was believed to exist, the onslaught was as dramatic as in Zimbabwe and the expropriation as brutal). Nevertheless, attempts to impose closer settlement, interfere with local agricultural techniques, and extract forced labour combined with natural disasters to produce extremely high morbidity and mortality rates in the early years of company rule.

Portugal and Germany in Southern Africa

For much of the 19th century, Portuguese colonists in Angola and Mozambique were fewer in number and weaker in authority than those in the interior of South Africa. At the beginning of the century, fewer than 1,000 settlers in each colony huddled on a number of estates around inland forts, along the Bengo and Dande rivers in Angola, and along the lower Zambezi in Mozambique. Most of them had intermarried with local peoples and were independent of Portugal. The metropolitan Portuguese were unable to control either the coastal trade or the activities of the merchants and warlords in the hinterland, who often acted in their name. In the absence of regular taxation or an effective system of customs and tariffs, the economies of the territories were poor and their administrations weak and corrupt. Despite a mythology that held that the Portuguese, unlike the northern Europeans, did not differentiate according to race, from early times it is clear that whites had superior status and prestige—if not always greater power—in Angola and Mozambique. Although both territories gained somewhat from the Napoleonic Wars, it was not until the end of the 19th century that Portugal regained any of its colonizing energy.

From the mid 19th century, Portuguese capital began to enter the colony. The Portuguese made land grants in the Luanda hinterland, and planters experimented with raising coffee, cotton, cacao, and sugarcane, using the slaves who could no longer be exported. In the absence of an adequate administration or communications network, the plantations in Angola were never highly successful, although coffee cultivation spread among African peasant farmers in the region. The appropriation of African land for plantations was resisted, and Portuguese attempts to expand their colonial nucleus led to a series of wars with African peoples, followed by famine and epidemics . The instability of the last decades of the 19th century paved the way for the colonial period that followed.

Portuguese attempts to develop Mozambique met with even less success, given the lack of investment and prevailing disorder, as escaped slaves, soldiers, and porters formed bandit bands in broken country and attacked Portuguese settlements and African villages. In many areas domestic slavery underpinned the migration of young men to the labour markets of the south by the 1850s. Liberal governments in Portugal from mid century were anxious to outlaw the feudal aspects of the prazo system but were unsuccessful, despite four military campaigns and a declaration in 1880 that the prazos were crown property.

Until the 1890s the Portuguese had little authority beyond their coastal enclaves. The only bright spot in their fortunes in southeastern Africa was the growing prosperity of Delagoa Bay , as trade with the Transvaal increased. In 1875 Portuguese rights to Delagoa Bay were recognized internationally. With the discovery of gold in the South African Republic, the bay acquired a new importance as its closest outlet, and in 1888 Lourenço Marques became the capital of Mozambique.

Although Portugal failed in its major territorial ambitions in the late 19th century, it nonetheless acquired about 800,000 square miles (2,000,000 square km) of African territory, of which it controlled about one-tenth. In both Portuguese territories “pacification” became a sine qua non of economic development, and there were military campaigns or police actions in almost every year between 1875 and 1924, a measure of Portugal’s weakness as a colonial power. The greatest resistance came from those people with the longest experience of Portuguese rule and with the necessary firearms. In Angola the major campaigns were against the Kongo, Mbundu, and Ovambo peoples; in Mozambique against peoples of the Zambezi valley, the Islamized Makua and Yao, and the Gaza kingdom, which was finally defeated in 1895.

The majority of Portuguese troops in both territories were Black, a situation that turned every campaign into a potential civil war. Fragmentation of political authority, resistance of traditional elites threatened by colonial rule, and the precipitate introduction of taxes and forced labour policies also made resistance in the Portuguese colonies the most prolonged in early 20th-century Africa.

Colonial markets were of particular importance to Portugal, and tariff barriers were erected to protect its manufactures. Starved of capital and racked by financial crises, Portugal planned to develop the colonies by attracting immigration and foreign capital and by fostering plantation agriculture. In Mozambique, however, local employers could not compete with the Witwatersrand. Since the 1850s, Mozambican migrants had traveled to the farms and sugar plantations of South Africa, while by the 1870s sterling had begun to replace cattle and hoes as bridewealth. By 1897 more than half the mine workers on the Rand came from Mozambique, while thousands worked on South African farms.

The Germans were the last imperial power to arrive in Africa. Their annexation and control of South West Africa was eased by the intense cleavages that had opened up between the local Nama and the Herero chiefdoms, a result of their increasing involvement in the world economy during the 19th century.

Throughout the 19th century, displaced communities of Khoekhoe and Oorlams from the Cape had made their way into South West Africa, competing for the sparse water and grazing land. At first they settled peacefully on land granted them by the local populace, some of them establishing mission communities. The advent in the 1830s of the Oorlam chief Jonker Afrikaner and his well-armed followers significantly altered the regional balance of power. Responding to an appeal from the Nama, who were being driven from their grazing lands by Herero expansion, Afrikaner settled at Windhoek. By gaining control over the all-important trade routes from Walvis Bay and the Cape Colony, he ensured, until his death in 1861, Nama dominance over the Herero. Wars between the Nama and Herero were exacerbated from the mid 19th century by the increasing cattle and ivory trade and the availability of firearms; apart from a breathing space between l870 and 1880, the Nama-Herero wars continued from 1863 to 1892.

Initially Germany hoped to exploit the territory through a concession company, but it could not raise sufficient capital. The government was increasingly forced to intervene in local affairs, especially when settlers appropriated Herero cattle and grazing lands. The most formidable opponent of the Germans was Hendrik Witbooi, a Nama chief who tried unsuccessfully to unite the Herero and Nama against the Germans. After a lengthy guerrilla war, he was defeated in 1894.

The rinderpest epidemic, the alienation of the better-watered highlands, unfair trading practices, and increasing indebtedness led to an uprising by the Nama and Herero peoples in l904–07. They were crushed in a genocidal campaign: the Herero population fell from about 70,000 to about 16,000, with many dying in the desert while attempting to escape. The Nama were reduced by two-fifths. The handful of settlers had to turn for labour to the Cape Colony and Ovamboland, which was formally brought under colonial rule only when the South Africans took over South West Africa during World War I .

Home — Essay Samples — History — Imperialism — The Causes of Imperialism in Africa

The Causes of Imperialism in Africa

• Categories: African American Imperialism

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Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 739 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Hook Examples for Imperialism Essay

• Conquering Nations, Forging Empires: Step into the era of imperialism, where nations extended their dominion across continents, reshaping the world map and altering the course of history.
• The Dark Side of Empire Building: Delve into the hidden atrocities and ethical dilemmas of imperialism, unearthing the untold stories of oppression, exploitation, and cultural erosion.
• Explorers or Exploiters? Challenge the notion of imperial explorers as heroic adventurers, and examine their role as agents of exploitation, transforming indigenous societies in their quest for wealth and power.
• Imperialism’s Legacy: A World Transformed: Trace the enduring impact of imperialism on contemporary geopolitics, economics, and global relations, highlighting the far-reaching consequences of past empires.
• Resisting Imperial Forces: Uncover the narratives of resistance against imperial powers, where marginalized communities and leaders fought for their sovereignty and cultural preservation.

Works Cited

• Gallagher, J., & Robinson, R. (1953). The imperialism of free trade. The Economic History Review, 6(1), 1-15.
• Hobson, J. A. (1902). Imperialism: A Study. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Hochschild, A. (1999). King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Mariner Books.
• Osterhammel, J. (2014). The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton University Press.
• Headrick, D. R. (2010). Technology: A World History. Oxford University Press.
• Conrad, J. (1899). Heart of Darkness. Blackwood’s Magazine.
• DuBois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Cain, P. J., & Hopkins, A. G. (2001). British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914. Routledge.
• MacKenzie, J. M. (1984). The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism. Manchester University Press.
• Davidson, B. (1991). The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. Three Continents Press.

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