In the video, “The Magnificent African Cake” by Basil Davidson, Africa was divided up into new colonies by Europeans. After the end of slavery in Africa, Europeans wanted to expand their empires for industrialization and commerce. This period of time was called the “scramble for Africa” because many European countries were claiming as much land from Africa. In 1884, the Berlin Congress was held and these European countries “sliced” up the African countries like a cake where each country got its portion of land. The opinions and representation of Africans was non existent. In fact, Europeans considered Africans as “helpless children or lazy settlers.” This led to the feeling that Africans were inferior to Europeans and killings of Africans often took place in the European colonies. In the end of the distribution of African land in 1914, there only remained two countries that were not under European control. The main countries involved in the colonization of Africa included France, England, Portugal, Germany, and Denmark. The Portuguese colonization of Africa occurred in Mozambique and the main effects of this colonization were the economic problems for the Africans. For example, “farmers were forced to grow cotton for export to Portugal,” and the price of this cotton was fixed by Portugal creating an unfair market price for the Africans, meaning the “farmers of Mozambique were forced to sell great quantities of cotton at low prices.” Because mo...
... The Economic History Review, by Behrendt, Stephen D. David Eltis, David Richardson that stated, “…second impact of Africans that goes beyond violence on slave ships followed from the natural Africans assumption of equal status in the trading relationship…came in the wake of holding Europeans…”(Source 9). The result of considering the equal status between the Africans and the Europeans from Africa’s point of view was the Atlantic slave trade which millions of African people’s live had been jeopardized and their fate had been seal to work in the fields for the rest of their lives.
During the late 19th century and the early 20th century many of the European nations began their scramble for Africa which caused Many Africans to suffer from violence like wars, slavery and inequality. Although the Europeans felt power as though they were doing a great cause in the African continent during the Scramble for Africa; Africans had many reactions and actions including factors as rebellion for freedom, against the white settlers and violent resistance.
By 1885, little to no independent countries existed throughout the whole African continent. This was due to the imperialism done by strong European countries. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Spain are to blame. There are many possible contributing factors as to why the European countries decided to completely carve up Africa, split it up, imperialize the whole of the continent. Because of the need for resources Africa could supply, the European desire for power, and the European's reaction to the White Man's burden, they took control of almost every square mile in Africa through imperialization.
European imperialism in Africa caused Africans to lose their independence and culture. After a long time, “the wave of Independence across Africa in the 1950s and 1960s brought to the end around 75
Europe, in the late 1800’s, was starting a land grab on the African continent. Around 1878, most of Africa was unexplored, but by 1914, most of Africa, with the lucky exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was carved up between European powers. There were countless motivations that spurred the European powers to carve Africa, like economic, political, and socio–cultural, and there were countless attitudes towards this expansion into Africa, some of approval and some of condemnation. Europe in this period was a world of competing countries. Britain had a global empire to lead, France had competition with Britain for wealth and so did other nations like Germany and Russia.
Every year, more and more money is donated to Africa to promote democracy in order to get rid of the powerful coups in many countries through out the continent. While the coups are declining and democratic governments are being established, the economic growth and development of Africa is not anywhere it should be considering the abundant natural resources and coastline that the continent possesses. Even though countries, like the United States of America, donate millions of dollars they are a large reason why Africa is underdeveloped economically. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade is the most devastating event in the history of the world. Nearly 14,000,000 men, women, and children were displaced, sold into slavery, and killed by the trade routes.(
Economically, Africa paid a large price for British colonial rule because it lost its economic independence. France took control of the largest part of West Africa and in no time Africans became dependent on European textiles. Another reason why Africans suffered from European Imperialism is they were enslaved. They were also tortured in the Congo if they disobeyed in anyway. Those who disobeyed were tied to stakes outside in the scorching heat without food or water for days. African?s who suffered from gangrene had their hands cut off because the soldiers tied it too tightly to the stakes. By 1855, Britain and Germany had become the main chief rivals in East Africa. At the Berlin Conference, the Europeans agreed to how they would claim Africa?
In terms of political changes, European imperialism negatively affected Africa. Firstly, European colonization created enormous conflict between colonists and the African people. African resistance to “The Scramble for Africa” lead to the instability of Africa’s political structure. There was ineffective resistance of the African people against the Europeans. In an attempt to regain their independence, Africans took up arms against their colonial masters as soon as they perceived them to be at a disadvantage. In southern Africa, in The Republic of Namibia, the Herero people rose against German rule in 1904, killing over 100 German settlers and traders. German commander, General von Trotha, retaliated with a war aimed simply at extermination. This resulted in the decline of 70% of the Herero population.1 Nowhere else was colonialism quite so brutal, but almost everywhere it tended towards unrestrained brutality as soon as it was challenged.2 Warfare created considerable unrest among African people. Afterwards, the people of Africa came to the realization that the consequences of resistance against European colonists could be devastating. As well, the Europeans demonstrated that they had the technology and resources to gain control. Secondly, colonial expansion changed the face of Africa’s political structure. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, attended by 13 European nations and the USA, set the ground rules for partition of Africa. When the conferenc...
One major factor in beginning imperialism in Africa was the end of the slave trade because this was how Europe was making most of their money during the 18th century. If revenue was not being brought in through the slave trade, other “products” (formerly humans) had to be traded. Greed was why Europeans could overlook the “disease, political instability, lack of transportation, and the generally unhealthy climate” (Duiker & Spielvogel 620) of Africa. If some of these off-putting factors such as transportation could be changed by the Europeans occupying Africa, then why not occupy it? As commercial trade increased, European interest in Africa did also. Europeans no longer wanted to just trade with Africa, but became interested in “permanent presence along the coast” (Duiker & Spielvogel 621). The first settlements were placed along the Gold Coast and in Sierra Leone. Although the slave trade was ...
In this paper I ask, how did slavery begin in Ghana? What impact did it have on Ghana? How badly is Ghana underdeveloped due to this enslavement that took place? Lovejoy, Northrup, and Rodney argue that the transatlantic slave trade did in fact contribute to the underdevelopment of Africa. I support their arguments and believe the trade didn’t exactly “destroy” Ghana, but it did affect it by not letting the country improve faster, although eventually Ghana was able to depart from that “underdeveloped” category.
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...
The colonization of Africa officially began in 1884 with the Berlin Conference. Western European powers began to split up the land and resources in Africa among themselves. This period of history became known as the Scramble for Africa. The Scramble for Africa occurred because as the slave trade ended, capitalists saw Africa as a continent that they could now exploit through legitimate trade. European capitalists found new ways to make money off of the continent. With greater exploration of the continent even more valuable resources were found. The encouragement of legitimate trade in Africa brought Europeans flocking to colonize Africa. Africa lost their independence, and along with it, their control over their natural resources. Europeans used the term the "White Man's Burden," a concept used by white colonizers in order to impose their way of life on Africans within their colonies, to ...
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, was one of the most controversial books in the world at the time of its release. The book seeks to argue that European exploitation and involvement in Africa throughout history. This is the cause of current African underdevelopment, and the true path to the development is for Africa to completely sever her ties with the international capitalist economy. Rodney describes his goal in writing the book in the preface: “this book derives from a concern with the contemporary African situation. It delves into the past only because otherwise it would be impossible to understand how the present came into being and what the trends are for the near future” (vii). Rodney writes from a distinctly Marxist perspective by arguing that the inequalities inherent in European capitalism and required exploitation of certain countries in order to sustain capitalism.
The Scramble for Africa was a period of time where major European countries fought over and colonized land in Africa, stretching from South Africa to Egypt. The scramble for Africa began shortly after the slave trade, and ended at WW1, and is a strong representation of the ‘New Imperialism’. The first country to act was Belgium, who colonized Congo at 1885, but soon, other countries such as Portugal and Great Britain joined in in order to not miss out. Firstly, the European could not colonize Africa easily, due to Africa’s giant land mass and the diseases that spread throughout the land. But then, came the Steam train, Maxim guns and new cures for diseases that paved the way for the Europeans to control Africa. Since one of the reasons Europeans wanted to colonize Africa was that they wanted to ‘civilize’ the people, the leader of Germany, Otto Von Bismarck, decide that they have a conference to split the land and not fight each other. Soon, in 1914, nearly all African countries were colonized by Europeans except for Ethiopia and Liberia. Different countries had different styles of colonization. For example, France was less eager to let the African chiefs take control of their colonies than Britain, who set up a African Government to their colonies. Basically, the scramble for Africa was a period of time when European countries colonized Africa.
In order to properly understand the effects of colonization, one must look at its history. Most of Africa was relatively isolated from Europe throughout early world history, but this changed during the 17th to the 20th centuries. Colonization efforts reached their peak between the 1870s and 1900 in the “Scramble for Africa” which left the continent resembling a jigsaw puzzle Various European powers managed to colonize Africa including Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. This intense imperialist aggression had three major causes. The primary reason was simply for economic gain. Africa is refuge to vast, unexplored natural resources. European powers saw their opportunity and took it. Another motive was to spread the Christian religion to the non-Christian natives. The last major incentive was to demonstrate power between competing European nations. African societies did try to resist the colonial takeover either through guerilla warfare or direct military engagement. Their efforts were in vain, however, as by the turn of the century, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained not colonized. European powers colonized Africa according to the guidelines established by the Berlin Act (1885). Many of the colonized nations were ruled indirectly through appointed governor...