What caused the "Scramble for Africa"? By ThoughtCo.com, adapted by Newsela staff on 01.16.18 Word Count 978 Level 1220L

Image 1. Askari colonial troops in German East Africa in 1906. An askari was an African soldier serving in the armies of the European colonial powers in Africa. Photo by: Wikimedia/German Federal Archive

The Scramble for Africa (1880 to 1900) was a period of rapid colonization of the African continent by European powers.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 1 At the beginning of the 1880s, only a small part of Africa was under European rule. Just 20 years later, virtually the entire continent was under European control.

What Caused The Scramble?

There were several factors which led to the Scramble for Africa, most of which had to do with developments in Europe rather than in Africa.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 2 Exploration: During the 19th century, barely a year went by without a European expedition into Africa. The boom in exploration was triggered to a great extent by the creation of the African Association by wealthy Englishmen in 1788. The Association's members wanted someone to "find" the fabled city of Timbuktu and the course of the Niger River. As the century progressed, the goals of exploration changed, and rather than traveling out of pure curiosity, explorers started to record details of markets, goods and resources for the wealthy businessmen who financed their trips.

Henry Morton Stanley: The explorer most closely connected to the start of the Scramble for Africa was Henry Morton Stanley, a Welshman who later became an American citizen. Stanley had crossed the continent and located the "missing" missionary and explorer David Livingstone, but he is more infamously known for his explorations on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold had plans to create his own personal African colony in the Congo, and asked Stanley to lay the groundwork. Stanley mapped the Congo River and succeeded in forcing various African chiefs to hand over control of their territory to Leopold, often by using very brutal methods.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 3 Stanley's work triggered a rush of European explorers, eager to do the same for various European countries.

Commerce: By the 1880s, the European trade in slaves, once a source of great wealth, had ended. Its disappearance created a desire for new types of commerce between Europe and Africa. Explorers located vast reserves of raw materials, plotted the course of trade routes and identified new markets in Africa in which to sell manufactured goods from Europe. It was a time of

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 4 plantations and cash crops, and Africans were paid little, or sometimes even forced, to produce rubber, coffee, sugar, palm oil, timber and other goods for Europe. Europeans also wanted diamonds, gold and ivory.

Many soon came to understand that the commercial rewards would be even greater if a colony could be set up. A colony would give the European nation in control a monopoly over the production and sale of certain goods.

Other Factors Played A Role

Steam Engines: By the 1850s, many European ships had iron hulls and powerful steam engines that allowed them to easily travel upstream. Livingstone used a steamer to travel up the Zambezi River in 1858, and Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza and Stanley both used steamers to explore the Congo.

Quinine: Africa, especially the western regions, was known as the "White Man's Grave" because of the danger of two diseases — malaria and yellow fever. During the 18th century, only 1 in 10 Europeans sent out to the continent by the Royal African Company survived. In 1817, two French scientists, Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, extracted quinine from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. It proved to be the solution to malaria, and Europeans in Africa could now survive if they contracted the disease.

Unfortunately, yellow fever continued to be a problem, and even today there is no specific treatment for it.

Politics: After the creation of a unified Germany (1871) and Italy (1815–1871), there was no room left in Europe for expansion. Britain, France and Germany were each trying to maintain their strong position in Europe, and an overseas empire seemed the best way to secure and expand their strength and wealth. France, which had lost two provinces to Germany in 1870, looked to Africa to gain more territory. Britain looked toward Egypt, and gold-rich southern Africa. Germany had come late to the idea of overseas colonies, but was now fully convinced of their worth.

Military Innovation: At the beginning of the 19th century, Europe was only slightly ahead of Africa in terms of available weapons, as traders had long supplied guns to local African chiefs. However, two innovations gave Europe a massive advantage: improved bullets and the breech- loading rifle. The older musket guns most Africans owned were front loaders, which were slow to use and had to be loaded while standing. Breech-loading guns, in comparison, had between two to four times the rate of fire, and could be loaded even while lying on the ground. Europeans restricted the sale of the new weaponry to Africa in order to maintain military superiority.

The Mad Rush

The start of the 1880s saw a rapid increase in European nations claiming territory in Africa.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 5 France claimed the region to the north of the river Congo in 1880, and then Tunisia in 1881, and Somaliland in 1884. Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, and created British Somaliland in 1884. Italy began its colonization of Eritrea in 1882, and in 1884, Germany created the colonies of South West Africa, Cameroon, German East Africa and Togo.

Europeans set the rules for dividing up the continent

The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 laid down ground rules for the further partitioning of Africa. Navigation on the Niger and Congo rivers was to be open to all, and before establishing a colony, a European power had to prove it already had a substantial presence in the area.

Once these ground rules were established, the floodgates of European colonization opened wide. By 1900, European colonization of the continent was virtually complete, with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining free of European control.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 6