The Partition of Africa
Europe in Africa
Africa in the Early 1800s
Africa is three times the size of Europe.
People in Africa speak hundreds of
languages.
Varied governments were developed.
Some people lived in large centralized
states, and others in village communities.
Four Regions of Africa
North Africa
West Africa
East Africa
Southern
Africa
Boer War
Shaka of the Zulu Nation
European Contact Increases
Medical advances and river steamships
allowed Europeans to travel inland to interior
regions of Africa.
Many European explorers were fascinated
with African geography, but they had little
understanding of the peoples they met.
Missionaries Follow Explorers
Catholic and Christian missionaries followed the
explorers into Africa.
They were sincere in their desire to help Africans.
They built schools, medical clinics, and churches.
Missionaries took a paternalistic view of Africans,
meaning, they saw them as children in need of
guidance.
To them African cultures and religions were
degraded.
They urged Africans to reject their own traditions in
favor of Western civilization.
Livingstone Blazes a Trail
The greatest known explorer and
missionary was Dr. David Livingstone.
He explored Africa for 30 years.
He was more sympathetic towards
Africans than most Europeans.
He opposed the slave trade, which
remained profitable for some African
rulers and foreign traders.
He felt to end slavery, African must
open its interior to trade and Christianity.
Was imperialism advantageous
for Africans?
Quickwrite: What is your opinion on
imperialism in Africa? Did Africans
benefit from European imperialism?
Why or Why not?
A Scramble for Colonies
King Leopold of Belgium hired
Henry Stanley to explore the
Congo basin and arrange trade
treaties with African leaders.
Leopold’s activities in the
Congo set off a scramble by
other nations, such as Britain,
France, and Germany were
pressing for claims to the same
region, where rubber was in
abundance.
Berlin Conference
To avoid European nations fighting in a war
over African territories, European powers met
in a conference in Berlin, Germany (1884).
No Africans were invited to the conference.
They agreed that a European power could not
claim any part of Africa unless it had set up a
government office there.
This caused a massive rush to colonize all of
Africa.
In 20 years, after the Berlin Conference,
European powers partitioned almost all of
Africa.
King Leopold II
King Leopold II turned his
“Congo Free State” into a
massive labor camp.
He made a fortune for
himself from the harvest of
its wild rubber.
He was responsible for the
death of 10 million innocent
Congolese.
Congolese Victims
Men who failed to bring in enough rubber to agents
were killed.
Even children were tortured and had their hands
and legs chopped off.
Britain and France
France took control of Algeria, Tunisia, and colonies in
West and Central Africa which equaled the size of the
United States.
Britain took control of the Cape Colony from the Dutch in
1814.
The Boers fled north from British rule, where gold and
diamonds were discovered.
The Boer War (1889-1902) involved bitter guerilla
fighting, but the British won in the end.
In 1910, the British united the Cape Colony and the former
Boer republics into the Union of South Africa.
The new constitution set up a government run by whites
and laid the foundation for a system of complete racial
segregation (apartheid), which remained in force until
1993!
Witness History Video
The Scramble for African Colonies
Africans Resist Imperialism
Europeans met armed resistance across the
continent of Africa.
Queen Yaa
Asantewaa
Ethiopia Survives
Ethiopia is an ancient Christian kingdom in
East Africa.
Ethiopia managed to resist European
colonization and maintain its independence.
In the late 1800s, a reforming ruler, King
Melenik II, began to modernize his country.
He hired European experts to plan modern
roads, bridges and set up a Western school
system.
He imported the latest weapons and
European officers to train his army.
King Menelik II
King Menelik II claimed
to be a direct descendant
of King Solomon of Jerusalem
and Queen Makeda of Sheba
(Ethiopia)
He stunned the world by
defeating Italy who invaded
in 1896 at the Battle of Adowa.
The Ethiopians smashed the
Italian invaders
Jah Rastafari - Haile Selassie
The last emperor of the
Solomonic Dynasty.
Believed to be the
personification of God by
Rastafarians in Jamaica.
Title: Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the
Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His
Imperial Majesty, Jah Rastafari!
A New African Elite Emerges
During the Age of Imperialism,
a Western-educated African elite,
or upper class, emerged.
Some rejected their own culture,
while others valued their African
traditions.
By the early 1900s, African leaders
were forging nationalist movements
to pursue self-determination and
independence.
On Trial for My Country
by Stanlake Samkange
Read: pg 297
Answer: Thinking Critically (#1-2)