The Colonization of
Africa
Between the 1870s and 1900, Africa faced European imperialist
aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual conquest and
colonization. At the same time, African societies put up various forms of
resistance against the attempt to colonize their countries and impose foreign
domination. By the early twentieth century, however, much of Africa, except
Ethiopia and Liberia, had been colonized by European powers.
The European imperialist push into Africa was motivated by three
main factors, economic, political, and social. It developed in the nineteenth
century following the collapse of the profitability of the slave trade, its
abolition and suppression, as well as the expansion of the European capitalist
Industrial Revolution. The imperatives of capitalist
industrialization—including the demand for assured sources of raw materials,
the search for guaranteed markets and profitable investment outlets—spurred the
European scramble and the partition and eventual conquest of Africa. Thus the
primary motivation for European intrusion was economic.
The Scramble for
Africa
But other factors played an important role in the process. The
political impetus derived from the impact of inter-European power struggles and
competition for preeminence. Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy,
Portugal, and Spain were competing for power within European power politics.
One way to demonstrate national preeminence was through the acquisition of
territories around the world, including Africa. The social factor was the third
major element. As a result of industrialization, major social problems grew in
Europe: unemployment, poverty, homelessness, social displacement from rural
areas, and so on. These social problems developed partly because not all people
could be absorbed by the new capitalist industries. One way to resolve this
problem was to acquire colonies and export this "surplus population."
This led to the establishment of settler-colonies in Algeria, Tunisia, South
Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and central African areas like Zimbabwe
and Zambia. Eventually the overriding economic factors led to the colonization
of other parts of Africa.
Thus it was the interplay of these economic, political, and
social factors and forces that led to the scramble for Africa and the frenzied
attempts by European commercial, military, and political agents to declare and
establish a stake in different parts of the continent through inter-imperialist
commercial competition, the declaration of exclusive claims to particular
territories for trade, the imposition of tariffs against other European
traders, and claims to exclusive control of waterways and commercial routes in
different parts of Africa.
This scramble was so intense that there were fears that it could
lead to inter-imperialist conflicts and even wars. To prevent this, the German
chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened a diplomatic summit of European powers in
the late nineteenth century. This was the famous Berlin West African conference
(more generally known as the Berlin Conference), held from November 1884 to
February 1885. The conference produced a treaty known as the Berlin Act, with
provisions to guide the conduct of the European inter-imperialist competition
in Africa. Some of its major articles were as follows:
1. The Principle of
Notification (Notifying) other powers of a territorial annexation
2. The Principle of
Effective Occupation to validate the annexations
3. Freedom of Trade in
the Congo Basin
4. Freedom of Navigation
on the Niger and Congo Rivers
5. Freedom of Trade to
all nations
6. Suppression of the
Slave Trade by land and sea
This treaty, drawn up without African participation, provided
the basis for the subsequent partition, invasion, and colonization of Africa by
various European powers.
The
African Resistance
The European imperialist designs and pressures of the late
nineteenth century provoked African political and diplomatic responses and
eventually military resistance. During and after the Berlin Conference various
European countries sent out agents to sign so-called treaties of protection
with the leaders of African societies, states, kingdoms, decentralized
societies, and empires. The differential interpretation of these treaties by
the contending forces often led to conflict between both parties and eventually
to military encounters. For Europeans, these treaties meant that Africans had
signed away their sovereignties to European powers; but for Africans, the
treaties were merely diplomatic and commercial friendship treaties. After
discovering that they had in effect been defrauded and that the European powers
now wanted to impose and exercise political authority in their lands, African
rulers organized militarily to resist the seizure of their lands and the
imposition of colonial domination.
This situation was compounded by commercial conflicts between
Europeans and Africans. During the early phase of the rise of primary commodity
commerce (erroneously referred to in the literature as "Legitimate Trade
or Commerce"), Europeans got their supplies of trade goods like palm oil,
cotton, palm kernel, rubber, and groundnut from African intermediaries, but as
the scramble intensified, they wanted to bypass the African intermediaries and
trade directly with sources of the trade goods. Naturally Africans resisted and
insisted on the maintenance of a system of commercial interaction with foreigners
which expressed their sovereignties as autonomous political and economic
entities and actors. For their part, the European merchants and trading
companies called on their home governments to intervene and impose "free
trade," by force if necessary. It was these political, diplomatic, and
commercial factors and contentions that led to the military conflicts and
organized African resistance to European imperialism.
African military resistance took two main forms: guerrilla
warfare and direct military engagement. While these were used as needed by
African forces, the dominant type used depended on the political, social, and
military organizations of the societies concerned. In general, small-scale
societies, the decentralized societies (erroneously known as
"stateless" societies), used guerrilla warfare because of their size
and the absence of standing or professional armies. Instead of professional
soldiers, small groups of organized fighters with a mastery of the terrain
mounted resistance by using the classical guerrilla tactic of hit-and-run raids
against stationary enemy forces. This was the approach used by the Igbo of
southeastern Nigeria against the British. Even though the British imperialists
swept through Igboland in three years, between 1900 and 1902, and despite the
small scale of the societies, the Igbo put up protracted resistance. The
resistance was diffuse and piecemeal, and therefore it was difficult to conquer
them completely and declare absolute victory. Long after the British formally colonized
Igboland, they had not fully mastered the territory.
Direct military engagement was most commonly organized by the
centralized state systems, such as chiefdoms, city-states, kingdoms, and
empires, which often had standing or professional armies and could therefore
tackle the European forces with massed troops. This was the case with the
resistance actions of the Ethiopians, the Zulu, the Mandinka leadership, and
numerous other centralized states. In the case of Ethiopia, the imperialist
intruder was Italy. It confronted a determined and sagacious military leader in
the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II. As Italy intensified pressure in the 1890s to
impose its rule over Ethiopia, the Ethiopians organized to resist. In the
famous battle of Adwa in 1896, one hundred thousand Ethiopian troops confronted
the Italians and inflicted a decisive defeat. Thereafter, Ethiopia was able to
maintain its independence for much of the colonial period, except for a brief
interlude of Italian oversight between 1936 and 1941.
Another example of resistance was the one organized by Samory
Touré of the emergent Mandinka empire in West Africa. As this new empire spread
and Touré attempted to forge a new political order he ran up against the French
imperialists who were also trying extend their territories inland from their
base in Dakar, Senegal. This brought the parties into conflict. Touré organized
military and diplomatic resistance between 1882 and 1898. During this
sixteen-year period, he used a variety of strategies, including guerrilla
warfare, scorched-earth programs, and direct military engagement. For this last
tactic he acquired arms, especially quick-firing rifles, from European merchant
and traders in Sierra Leone and Senegal. He also established engineering
workshops where weapons were repaired and parts were fabricated. With these
resources and his well-trained forces and the motivation of national defense he
provided his protracted resistance to the French. Eventually he was captured
and, in 1898, exiled to Gabon, where he died in 1900.
A Period of Change
It is quite clear that most African societies fought fiercely
and bravely to retain control over their countries and societies against
European imperialist designs and military invasions. But the African societies
eventually lost out. This was partly for political and technological reasons.
The nineteenth century was a period of profound and even revolutionary changes
in the political geography of Africa, characterized by the demise of old
African kingdoms and empires and their reconfiguration into different political
entities. Some of the old societies were reconstructed and new African
societies were founded on different ideological and social premises.
Consequently, African societies were in a state of flux, and many were
organizationally weak and politically unstable. They were therefore unable to
put up effective resistance against the European invaders.
The technological factor was expressed in the radical disparity
between the technologies of warfare deployed by the contending European and
African forces. African forces in general fought with bows, arrows, spears,
swords, old rifles, and cavalries; the European forces, beneficiaries of the
technical fruits of the Industrial Revolution, fought with more deadly
firearms, machines guns, new rifles, and artillery guns. Thus in direct
encounters European forces often won the day. But as the length of some resistance
struggles amply demonstrates, Africans put up the best resistance with the
resources they had.
By 1900 much of Africa had been colonized by seven European
powers—Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. After the
conquest of African decentralized and centralized states, the European powers
set about establishing colonial state systems. The colonial state was the
machinery of administrative domination established to facilitate effective
control and exploitation of the colonized societies. Partly as a result of
their origins in military conquest and partly because of the racist ideology of
the imperialist enterprise, the colonial states were authoritarian,
bureaucratic systems. Because they were imposed and maintained by force, without
the consent of the governed, the colonial states never had the effective
legitimacy of normal governments. Second, they were bureaucratic because they
were administered by military officers and civil servants who were appointees
of the colonial power. While they were all authoritarian, bureaucratic state
systems, their forms of administration varied, partly due to the different
national administrative traditions and specific imperialist ideologies of the
colonizers and partly because of the political conditions in the various
territories that they conquered.
Colonial Domination:
Indirect Rule
In Nigeria, the Gold Coast in West Africa, and Kenya, Uganda,
Tanganyika in East Africa, for example, Britain organized its colonies at the
central, provincial, and regional or district levels. There was usually a
governor or governor-general in the colonial capital who governed along with an
appointed executive council and a legislative council of appointed and selected
local and foreign members. The governor was responsible to the colonial office
and the colonial secretary in London, from whom laws, policies, and programs
were received. He made some local laws and policies, however. Colonial policies
and directives were implemented through a central administrative organization
or a colonial secretariat, with officers responsible for different departments
such as Revenue, Agriculture, Trade, Transport, Health, Education, Police,
Prison, and so on.
The British colonies were often subdivided into provinces headed
by provincial commissioners or residents, and then into districts headed by
district officers or district commissioners. Laws and policies on taxation,
public works, forced labor, mining, agricultural production, and other matters
were made in London or in the colonial capital and then passed down to the
lower administrative levels for enforcement.
At the provincial and district levels the British established
the system of local administration popularly known as indirect rule. This
system operated in alliance with preexisting political leaderships and
institutions. The theory and practice of indirect rule is commonly associated
with Lord Lugard, who was first the British high commissioner for northern
Nigeria and later governor-general of Nigeria. In the Hausa /Fulani emirates of
northern Nigeria he found that they had an established and functional
administrative system. Lugard simply and wisely adapted it to his ends. It was
cheap and convenient. Despite attempts to portray the use of indirect rule as
an expression of British administrative genius, it was nothing of the sort. It
was a pragmatic and parsimonious choice based partly on using existing functional
institutions. The choice was also partly based on Britain's unwillingness to
provide the resources required to administer its vast empire. Instead, it
developed the perverse view that the colonized should pay for their colonial
domination. Hence, the choice of indirect rule.
The system had three major institutions: the "native
authority" made up of the local ruler, the colonial official, and the
administrative staff; the "native treasury," which collected revenues
to pay for the local administrative staff and services; and the "native
courts," which purportedly administered "native law and custom,"
the supposedly traditional legal system of the colonized that was used by the
courts to adjudicate cases.
In general, indirect rule worked fairly well in areas that had
long-established centralized state systems such as chiefdoms, city-states,
kingdoms, and empires, with their functional administrative and judicial
systems of government. But even here the fact that the ultimate authority was
the British officials meant that the African leaders had been vassalized and
exercised "authority" at the mercy of European colonial officials.
Thus the political and social umbilical cords that tied them to their people in
the old system had been broken. Some astute African leaders maneuvered and
ruled as best they could, while others used the new colonial setting to become
tyrants and oppressors, as they were responsible to British officials
ultimately.
In the decentralized societies, the system of indirect rule
worked less well, as they did not have single rulers. The British colonizers,
unfamiliar with these novel and unique political systems and insisting that
African "natives" must have chiefs, often appointed licensed leaders
called warrant chiefs, as in Igboland, for example.
Colonial Domination:
Assimilation
The French, for their part, established a highly centralized
administrative system that was influenced by their ideology of colonialism and
their national tradition of extreme administrative centralism. Their colonial
ideology explicitly claimed that they were on a "civilizing mission"
to lift the benighted "natives" out of backwardness to the new status
of civilized French Africans. To achieve this, the French used the policy of
assimilation, whereby through acculturation and education and the fulfillment of
some formal conditions, some "natives" would become evolved and
civilized French Africans. In practice, the stringent conditions set for
citizenship made it virtually impossible for most colonial subjects to become
French citizens. For example, potential citizens were supposed to speak French
fluently, to have served the French meritoriously, to have won an award, and so
on. If they achieved French citizenship, they would have French rights and
could only be tried by French courts, not under indigénat, the French colonial
doctrine and legal practice whereby colonial "subjects" could be
tried by French administrative officials or military commanders and sentenced
to two years of forced labor without due process. However, since France would
not provide the educational system to train all its colonized subjects to speak
French and would not establish administrative and social systems to employ all
its subjects, assimilation was more an imperialist political and ideological
posture than a serious political objective.
In terms of the actual administrative system in its various
African colonies—Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco in North Africa, and Senegal,
French Guinea, French Sudan, Upper Volta, Dahomey, and others in West Africa,
and Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Ubangi-Shari in Central Africa—the French used a
system of direct rule. They also created federations in West Africa and Central
Africa. In the colonial capitals the governors were responsible to the minister
of colonies in Paris. Most laws and policies were sent from Paris, and the
governors who ruled with general councils were expected to enforce them in line
with France's centralist traditions. The colonies were also subdivided into
smaller administrative units as follows: cercles under commandant du Cercles,
subdivisions under chef de subdivisions, and at the next level, cantons were
administered by African chiefs who were in effect like the British warrant
chiefs.
While France tried to maintain this highly centralized system,
in some parts of its colonies where it encountered strongly established
centralized state systems, the French were compelled to adopt the policy of
association, a system of rule operating in alliance with preexisting African
ruling institutions and leaders. Thus it was somewhat like British indirect
rule, although the French still remained committed to the doctrine of
assimilation. In the association system, local governments were run with
African rulers whom the French organized at three levels and grades: chef de
province (provincial chief); chef de canton (district chiefs), and chef de
village (village chief). In practice, the French system combined elements of
direct administration and indirect rule.
In general, the French administrative system was more
centralized, bureaucratic, and interventionist than the British system of
colonial rule. The other colonial powers— Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium,
and Italy—used varied administrative systems to facilitate control and economic
exploitation. However, no matter the system, they were all alien,
authoritarian, and bureaucratic, and distorted African political and social
organizations and undermined their moral authority and political legitimacy as
governing structures.
Ekechi, Felix. "The Consolidation of Colonial Rule,
1885–1914." In Colonial Africa, 1885–1939, vol. 3 of Africa,
ed. Toyin Falola. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002.
Iweriebor, Ehiedu E. G. "The Psychology of
Colonialism." In The End of Colonial Rule: Nationalism and
Decolonization, vol. 4 of Africa, ed. Toyin Falola. Durham:
Carolina Academic Press, 2002.
Oyebade, Adebayo. "Colonial Political Systems." In Colonial
Africa, 1885–1939, vol. 3 of Africa, ed. Toyin Falola. Durham: Carolina
Academic Press, 2002.
Stilwell, Sean. "The Imposition of Colonial Rule." In Colonial
Africa, 1885–1939, vol. 3 of Africa, ed. Toyin Falola. Durham: Carolina
Academic Press, 2002.
Social Plugin