HISTORY CAMBRIDGE AS - PAPER 2MODULE 1871-1918

PRESENTATION 2

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONAS A REASON FOR

SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

REASONS FOR SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA• Despite centuries of European interaction on the coasts and decades of

exploration into the interior of Africa, in 1875, 80% of Africa was still ruled by native African rulers.

• Why did the European imperial powers suddenly conquer Africa starting in the 1880s?

• Like most complex events in history, there was a confluence of political, economic, and cultural causes that worked in concert.

SETTING THE STAGE• Industrialization stirred ambitions in many European nations. They

wanted more resources to fuel their industrial production. They competed for new markets for their goods.

• Many nations looked to Africa as a source of raw materials and as a market for industrial products. As a result, colonial powers seized vast areas of Africa during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

• This seizure of a country or territory by a stronger country was called imperialism. As occurred throughout most of Africa, stronger countries dominated the political, economic, and social life of the weaker countries.

IDEOLOGICAL MOTIVATIONS• Some historians focus on ideological motivations in the late 19th century, that

Europeans and Americans increasingly believed that they were destined to extend their culture abroad.

• These historians look for evidence of an upswing in European and American chatter about how their race and civilization was superior. For example, Josiah Strong, an American Congregationalist minister, explained in 1885 why he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to rule the world:

“The Anglo-Saxon is the representative of two great ideas, which are closely related. Nearly all of the civil liberty in the world is enjoyed by Anglo-Saxons: the English, the British colonists, and the people of the United States. . . The other great idea is that of pure spiritual Christianity… That means that most of the spiritual Christianity in the world is found among Anglo-Saxons and their converts; for this is the great missionary race…”

COMPETITION FOR WHAT?• While evidence of ideological motivations abound in poems and cartoons,

many of the best examples occur after 1880 and so could just as easily be read as justifications rather than causes. Still, the sense of cultural superiority worked in concert with aggressive political positions. Historians also point to political competition between increasingly powerful European countries as a key underlying cause for the Scramble for Africa.

• Once one nation conquered a territory abroad, others felt compelled to respond or they would lose power and prestige. Although political rivalries were an important factor in causing the Scramble, these same European countries had competed for centuries to tip the balance of power in Europe. So, what was different this time? The short answer is industrialization.

INDUSTRIALISATION• As industrialization spread and matured in the 19th century throughout

western and central Europe, it gave countries the wealth, technology, and motivation to look beyond their homelands. Nations competed with each other for access to raw materials, markets, and cheap labor. As European industrial production increased and spread, raw materials became harder to come by.

• A sure way to control raw materials and markets would be to create colonial monopolies. Lenin viewed imperialism as the last stage of industrial exploitation. Industrialization, according to socialists like Lenin, led inevitably to imperialism because the capitalist system was always on the look out to take advantage of the weak and defenceless.

AFRICA’S RAW MATERIALS• As industries in Europe competed, they searched for the cheapest and

easiest access to raw materials. Certainly, the dream of gold and silver treasure in Africa existed long before the 19th century.

• Two thirds of the world’s gold supply in the Middle Ages came from West Africa. Perhaps the most influential discovery of raw materials was in the British colony of South Africa.

• In 1867, Europeans discovered the largest diamond mine in the world. The Kimberly Diamond mine sparked European imaginations of what other raw materials might be hidden in Africa. An adventurer could become rich. Vast gold mines were then discovered in South Africa twenty years later.

VAST RESOURCES• Lieutenant Cameron, the British explorer, wrote a letter to the Royal

Geographic Society, after a three year journey across Africa in 1876, capturing the sense that raw materials might abound in the continent:

“The interior is mostly a magnificent and health country of unspeakable richness. I have a small specimen of good coal; other minerals such as gold, copper, iron and silver are abundant, and I am confidant that with a wise and liberal (not lavish) expenditure of capital, one of the greatest systems of inland navigation in the world might be utilized, and from 30 to 36 months begin to repay any enterprising capitalist that might take the matter in hand…” .

FUTILE MILITARY RESISTANCE• The rapid-fire machine gun became the supreme weapon and symbol of

European conquest. At the Battle of Omdurman, in the year 1898, British artillery and rapid-fire weapons killed 10,000 Sudanese with only a few dozen European casualties.

• By the end of the 19th century, military resistance to European conquest was futile.

• And so, underlying political, ideological, and economic tensions all mounted and accelerated in the late 19th century. One of the most important waving flags that set off the race for territory in Africa was the British conquest of Egypt in 1882.

FORCES DRIVING IMPERIALISM• The motives that drove colonization in Africa were also at work in other

lands. Similar economic, political, and social forces accelerated the drive to take over land in all parts of the globe.

• The Industrial Revolution in particular provided European countries with a reason to add lands to their control.

• As European nations industrialized, they searched for new markets and raw materials to improve their economies.