CHAPTER 24: AFRICA BETWEEN THE WARS:
THE HIGH TIDE OF COLONIAL RULE
KEY POINTS
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The economic impact of colonial rule
The expansion of white settlement
Cash crops and peasant production
Mining
Labour and taxation
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The nature and impact of colonial administration
French administration
British administration
Portuguese and Belgian administration
 The spread of Islam in tropical west Africa
 Education: from pre-colonial tradition to colonial
reality
 African nationalism and protest movements in the
inter-war years
 Segregation, nationalism and protest in South
Africa
The economic impact of colonial rule
The expansion of white settlement
 Kenya and Southern Rhodesia: most prominent in tropical Africa
 Failures elsewhere more to do with African initiative than European
choice
 Elsewhere: densely populated, already in cash-crop production
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European-run plantations generally couldn’t compete
African opposition to land alienation: Gold Coast, 1898:
Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society petition; similarly in Nigeria
and Bechuanaland (1895)
Algerian white-settler agriculture: heavily subsidised by low-paid
Muslim labour and loans, grants, advice, marketing for white agric.
Only
Similarly Kenya and Rhodesia: subsidised by ‘native’ taxation and
labour laws
Mozambique, Angola, Belgian Congo: large commercial estate
plantations: dependent on high level of force and violence
Cash crops and peasant production
 Most cash-crop production: small-scale peasant:
 Groundnuts (Nigeria, Senegal), Coffee (Côte d’Ivoire, Angola,
Tanganyika, Uganda, eastern Belgian Congo), Coco (Gold Coast, sw Nigeria)
 Cotton (low-priced, usually only under pressure: compulsory in
savannah French West and Equatorial Africa)
 British irrigated cotton project, Djazira plains Sudan [south of
Khartoum]
 Rural self-sufficiency undermined by imported consumer goods and
food (Asian rice)
 Peasants often forced into cash-crop production by taxation and new
need for imports
 Food production neglected
 Marketing in hands of European merchant companies: depressed
prices for African exports, inflated prices for imported European
consumer goods
 Poverty trap: Africans paid less for their products, but charged more
for what they bought + need for cash led to neglect of food crops
 Food crops on exhausted soil, drought = famine (1931: millions
perished in Sahel)
Mining
 Colonial Governments assumed all mineral rights – leased to
European mining companies, e.g. Asante gold,
 Jos (Nigeria) tin – Niger famine (1931) brought migrant labour to
Nigerian mines
 Copper – Katanga (Congo) and Northern Rhodesian ‘Copperbelt’
(BSA Company)
 White settlement Northern Rhodesian line of rail – cattle and maize
to feed Copperbelt labour (migrant labour established: paid only
bachelor wage)
 Skilled jobs for whites (mostly from South Africa), Africans
restricted to unskilled
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Katanga (Union Munière) recruited more stable (family) labour (3year contracts) from within in Congo, and allowed Africans into
skilled jobs
Southern Rhodesia: Hwange coal + small-scale gold, copper,
asbestos
Labour and taxation
 Head tax (equivalent 1 month’s mining wage): (1) to pay for
colonial admin.; (2) to break rural self-sufficiency and force
Africans in cash economy
 African options: cash crops or migrant labour
 Migrant pay – bachelor wage, assumed family in rural home
growing basic food
 Migrancy to areas of cash-crop production, white-owned farms or
mines
 Recruiting agents from all centres of European employment –
mines, farms, plantations – agents had monopolies over certain
areas, so avoiding competition and enabling low wages
 Chiefs commissioned to help labour agents
 Portuguese agents recruited Angolan labour for São Tomé sugar
plantations – scandal: very low pay and no return – little different
from slavery
 French corvée labour (7-14 days a year), compulsory unpaid labour,
most hated
 Liberia: US Firestone Rubber Company: granted huge concession at
nominal rent;
 Liberian Government contracted to supply 50 000 workers a year:
recruits often forced to sign contracts, army raids
The nature and impact of colonial administration
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French ‘Assimilation’, British ‘Indirect Rule’: little difference from
African viewpoint
French ‘assimilation’ in Senegalese ‘Four Communes’ (18thcentury ports [Dakar, St Louis, Gorée, Rufisque]):
Not extended with ‘scramble’ for rest of west Africa – largely false
goal (500 out of 15 million in 1930s)
French broke up large African states
Imposed low-level district chiefs – to collect taxes, provide corvée
labour etc.
‘Chiefs’ had little claim to ‘traditional’ authority – ability to speak
French?
Indigénat, law subjected African sujets to whim of local French
administrators
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Algeria ruled as though part of France, though Muslim majority
having no French rights
Morocco: ‘protectorate’, French ruled through sultan, on-going
military conquest in mountains
British ‘theory’ of ‘Indirect Rule’ stemmed from practice of
Governor Lugard of northern Nigeria – result of compromise with
Sokoto emirs
Cheapest way of running colonies with minimal British
administrators
‘Traditional’ rulers used at local level – imposed co-operative
‘chiefs’, invented ‘chiefs’ (Igbo, Kikuyu)
African ‘customary law’ law used when considered appropriate
Chiefs could ‘soften’ impact of colonial rule
Emphasis on ‘tribal’ differences, invented tribalism, especially in
settler colonies (Kenya, Rhodesia, South Africa) where Africans
restricted to ‘tribal reserves’
Portuguese: theoretical ‘civilisados’ (mostly Afro-Portuguese)
excused demands on majority ‘indigena’
Belgians used mix of French and British policies – tiny minority of
‘évolués’
Education restricted to primary level
Emphasised ‘tribal’ distinctions through ‘indirect rule’ in Rwanda
and Burundi
The spread of Islam in tropical west Africa
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British use of Muslim emirs in Nigerian ‘indirect rule’ strengthened
Islam in north, easing conversion in areas only recently conquered
by Sokoto (e.g. Ilorin)
Trade away from Sahara towards coast brought Islam to major ports
Islam not associated with colonial power
Islam did not prescribe polygamy (unlike Christianity)
Muslim brotherhoods allowed to flourish in Senegal
British barred Christian missions from northern Sudan (likely to
upset the calm of Muslim domination
Education: from pre-colonial tradition to colonial reality
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Pre-colonial Qur’anic schools: north Africa, Sahara, Sahel, Swahili
east coast
Basic literacy in Arabic
Islamic universities: Jenne, Timbuktu (WA), Qayrawan (Tunisia),
al-Azhar (Cairo)
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Pre-literate societies, indigenous education: informal within family,
and formal initiation schools: history, culture, sexual and social
mores, tests of personal character
Some areas both systems overlapped and some attended both
Colonial rule: Muslim education left alone; indigenous education
deliberately undermined by Christian mission schools
From 1920s French subsidised mission schools (William Ponty
School, Senegal, 1903); no state secondary education in Equatorial
Africa until one in Brazzaville, 1930s
Colonial governments not interested in education beyond clerical
needs of state
British, mission schools predominant until 1930s
Sierra Leone, Fourah Bay College, seminary and teacher training,
affiliated to University of Durham 1876, many students from Gold
Coast
Governor Guggiesberg, first state secondary school, Achimota
(Gold Coast)
Nigeria: basic Qur’anic schools predominant, very low mission or
state school availability, proliferation of informal ‘hedge schools’
Phelps-Stokes Commission (1921) assumed only need to cater for
rural subsistence-based society – reality of urbanisation and labour
migrancy: need for secondary and higher education
From 1930, greater state involvement, but restricted to Eurocentric
curricula
1930s-54s Africans abroad for higher education, especially to USA
African nationalism and protest movements in the interwar years
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Rebellions less common, but Mauritania (low level 1905-34); and
French Equatorial Africa, Baya revolt, huge slaughter (1928-31)
Spread of independent Christian Churches:
Kimbangu in Belgian Congo (1921), imprisoned, but
‘Kimbanguism’ persisted
Industrial strikes: mines and railways of Sierra Leone, Guinea,
Gold Coast (1920s); Copperbelt (1935, 1940)
Gold Coast cocoa farmers withheld crops for higher prices (WW I
& 1930s)
1920s-30s: proliferation of self-help welfare associations
Growing education urban ‘elite’, critical of workings of colonial
rule – few considering independence as solution (except in Algeria,
Tunisia, coastal towns of WA)
Diaspora influences: American Pan-Africanism: Du Bois,
Congresses in London, Paris, Lisbon, New York
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Marcus Garvey: Negro World, ‘Africa for the Africans’
Inspiration for nationalist leaders of 1940s and 50s
French Négritude (Caribbean/west Africa), Léopold Senghor
(Senegalese poet) – rejection of French ‘assimilation’ policy.
Egypt: post-WW I, nationalism against British occupation
Wafd party (Sa’ad Zaghul), demonstrations, strikes, riots
British exiled Zaghul and declared Egyptian independence (1922)
Sultan Fu’ad became King of Egypt, British power behind throne
(army remained)
1930s, rise of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic nationalism in
Egypt – aimed at corrupt ‘democracy’: parliament and monarchy
Segregation, nationalism and protest in South Africa
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South Africa: earliest independent Churches, African newspapers,
industrial unions, nationalist party (1912); but last to gain political
freedom
Faced strengthening white domination
1910-1940: white governments strengthened racist laws,
segregation laying foundation for Afrikaner nationalist apartheid
from 1948
See SEGREGATION in Additional Debate for Chapter 24,
p.361
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White mineworker strikes (1913, 1922) – ‘colour bar’ reserved
skilled jobs for whites
Natives Land Acts (1913, 1936) restricted Africans to 13% of land
Africans confined to rural ‘reserves’
‘Pass laws’ controlled movement outside ‘reserves’
1936 limited African voting rights in Cape Province abolished
(affected 11 000)
Violent protests in rural areas, strikes in cities;
1919 anti-pass demonstrations, 1920 black mineworkers’ strike –
broken up with police violence
Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) 1919-1926,
achieved little in practical terms and declined thereafter
1912: South African Native National Congress, renamed African
National Congress (ANC) 1923 –
educated elite seeking justice within the law, submitting petitions,
but to no avail
meetings with Indian and mixed-race groups during this period
prepared ground for later struggle
© Kevin Shillington, 2012