an essay about imperialism in africa

From Imperialism to Postcolonialism: Key Concepts

An introduction to the histories of imperialism and the writings of those who grappled with its oppressions and legacies in the twentieth century.

Imperialism, the domination of one country over another country’s political, economic, and cultural systems, remains one of the most significant global phenomena of the last six centuries. Amongst historical topics, Western imperialism is unique because it spans two different broadly conceived temporal frames: “Old Imperialism,” dated between 1450 and 1650, and “New Imperialism,” dated between 1870 and 1919, although both periods were known for Western exploitation of Indigenous cultures and the extraction of natural resources to benefit imperial economies. Apart from India, which came under British influence through the rapacious actions of the East India Company , European conquest between 1650 and the 1870s remained (mostly) dormant. However, following the 1884–85 Berlin Conference, European powers began the “ Scramble for Africa ,” dividing the continent into new colonial territories. Thus, the age of New Imperialism is demarcated by establishment of vast colonies throughout Africa, as well as parts of Asia, by European nations.

These European colonizing efforts often came at the expense of other older, non-European imperial powers, such as the so-called gunpowder empires—the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires that flourished across South Asia and the Middle East. In the case of the Ottomans , their rise coincided with that of the Old Imperialism(s) of the West and lasted until after World War I. These were not the only imperial powers, however; Japan signaled its interest in creating a pan-Asian empire with the establishment of a colony in Korea in 1910 and expanded its colonial holdings rapidly during the interwar years. The United States, too, engaged in various forms of imperialism, from the conquest of the tribes of the First Nation Peoples, through filibustering in Central America during the mid-1800s, to accepting the imperialist call of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” which the poet wrote for President Theodore Roosevelt on the occasion of Philippine-American War. While claiming to reject naked imperialism, Roosevelt still embraced expansionism, promoting the creation of a strong US Navy and advocating for expansion into Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the Philippines to exert American influence .

The Great War is often considered the end of the new age of imperialism, marked by the rise of decolonization movements throughout the various colonial holdings. The writings of these emergent Indigenous elites, and the often-violent repression they would face from the colonial elite, would not only profoundly shape the independence struggles on the ground but would contribute to new forms of political and philosophical thought. Scholarship from this period forces us to reckon not only with colonial legacies and the Eurocentric categories created by imperialism but also with the continuing exploitation of the former colonies via neo-colonial controls imposed on post-independence countries.

The non-exhaustive reading list below aims to provide readers with both histories of imperialism and introduces readers to the writings of those who grappled with colonialism in real time to show how their thinking created tools we still use to understand our world.

Eduardo Galeano, “ Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane ,” Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (NYU Press, 1997): 1 –8.

Taken from the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic text, Eduardo Galeano’s introduction argues that pillaging of Latin America continued for centuries past the Old Imperialism of the Spanish Crown. This work is highly readable and informative, with equal parts of impassioned activism and historical scholarship.

Nancy Rose Hunt, “ ‘Le Bebe En Brousse’: European Women, African Birth Spacing and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo ,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies  21, no. 3 (1988): 401–32.

Colonialism affected every aspect of life for colonized peoples. This intrusion into the intimate lives of indigenous peoples is most evident in Nancy Rose Hunt’s examination of Belgian efforts to modify birthing processes in the Belgian Congo. To increase birth rates in the colony, Belgian officials initiated a mass network of health programs focused on both infant and maternal health. Hunt provides clear examples of the underlying scientific racism that underpinned these efforts and acknowledges the effects they had on European women’s conception of motherhood.

Chima J. Korieh, “ The Invisible Farmer? Women, Gender, and Colonial Agricultural Policy in the Igbo Region of Nigeria, c. 1913–1954 ,” African Economic History No. 29 (2001): 117– 62

In this consideration of Colonial Nigeria, Chima Korieh explains how British Colonial officials imposed British conceptions of gender norms on traditional Igbo society; in particular, a rigid notion of farming as a male occupation, an idea that clashed with the fluidity of agricultural production roles of the Igbo. This paper also shows how colonial officials encouraged palm oil production, an export product, at the expense of sustainable farming practices—leading to changes in the economy that further stressed gender relations.

Colin Walter Newbury & Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstner, “ French Policy and the Origins of the Scramble for West Africa ,” The Journal of African History  10, no. 2 (1969): 253–76.

Newbury and Kanya-Foster explain why the French decided to engage in imperialism in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. First, they point to mid-century French engagement with Africa—limited political commitment on the African coast between Senegal and Congo, with a plan for the creation of plantations within the Senegalese interior. This plan was emboldened by their military success in Algeria, which laid the foundation of a new conception of Empire that, despite complications (Britain’s expansion of their empire and revolt in Algeria, for instance) that forced the French to abandon their initial plans, would take hold later in the century.

Mark D. Van Ells, “ Assuming the White Man’s Burden: The Seizure of the Philippines, 1898–1902 ,” Philippine Studies 43, no. 4 (1995): 607–22.

Mark D. Van Ells’s work acts as an “exploratory and interpretive” rendering of American racial attitudes toward their colonial endeavors in the Philippines. Of particular use to those wishing to understand imperialism is Van Ells’s explication of American attempts to fit Filipinos into an already-constructed racist thought system regarding formerly enslaved individuals, Latinos, and First Nation Peoples. He also shows how these racial attitudes fueled the debate between American imperialists and anti-imperialists.

Aditya Mukherjee, “ Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain,” Economic and Political Weekly  45, no. 50 (2010): 73–82. 

Aditya Mukherjee first provides an overview of early Indian intellectuals and Karl Marx’s thoughts on the subject to answer the question of how colonialism impacted the colonizer and the colonized. From there, he uses economic data to show the structural advantages that led to Great Britain’s ride through the “age of capitalism” through its relative decline after World War II.

Frederick Cooper, “ French Africa, 1947–48: Reform, Violence, and Uncertainty in a Colonial Situation ,” Critical Inquiry  40, no. 4 (2014): 466–78. 

It can be tempting to write the history of decolonization as a given. However, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the colonial powers would not easily give up their territories. Nor is it safe to assume that every colonized person, especially those who had invested in the colonial bureaucratic systems, necessarily wanted complete independence from the colonial metropole. In this article, Frederick Cooper shows how conflicting interests navigated revolution and citizenship questions during this moment.

Hồ Chí Minh & Kareem James Abu-Zeid, “ Unpublished Letter by Hồ Chí Minh to a French Pastor ,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies  7, no. 2 (2012): 1–7.

Written by Nguyễn Ái Quốc (the future Hồ Chí Minh) while living in Paris, this letter to a pastor planning a pioneering mission to Vietnam not only shows the young revolutionary’s commitment to the struggle against colonialism, but also his willingness to work with colonial elites to solve the system’s inherent contradictions.

Aimé Césaire, “ Discurso sobre el Colonialismo ,” Guaraguao 9, no. 20, La negritud en America Latina (Summer 2005): 157–93; Available in English as “From Discourse on Colonialism (1955),” in  I Am Because We Are: Readings in Africana Philosophy , ed. by Fred Lee Hord, Mzee Lasana Okpara, and Jonathan Scott Lee, 2nd ed. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 196–205.

This excerpt from Aimé Césaire’s essay directly challenges European claims of moral superiority and the concept of imperialism’s civilizing mission. He uses examples from the Spanish conquest of Latin America and ties them together with the horrors of Nazism within Europe. Césaire claims that through pursuing imperialism, Europeans had embraced the very savagery of which they accused their colonial subjects.

Frantz Fanon, “ The Wretched of the Earth ,” in Princeton Readings in Political Thought: Essential Texts since Plato , ed. Mitchell Cohen, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 2018), 614–20.

Having served as a psychiatrist in a French hospital in Algeria, Frantz Fanon experienced firsthand the violence of the Algerian War. As a result, he would ultimately resign and join the Algerian National Liberation Front. In this excerpt from his longer work, Fanon writes on the need for personal liberation as a precursor to the political awaking of oppressed peoples and advocates for worldwide revolution.

Quỳnh N. Phạm & María José Méndez, “ Decolonial Designs: José Martí, Hồ Chí Minh, and Global Entanglements ,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political  40, no. 2 (2015): 156–73.

Phạm and Méndez examine the writing of José Martí and Hồ Chí Minh to show that both spoke of anticolonialism in their local contexts (Cuba and Vietnam, respectively). However, their language also reflected an awareness of a more significant global anticolonial movement. This is important as it shows that the connections were intellectual and practical.

Edward Said, “ Orientalism ,” The Georgia Review 31, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 162–206; and “ Orientalism Reconsidered ,” Cultural Critique no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 89–107.

As a Palestinian-born academic trained in British-run schools in Egypt and Jerusalem, Edward Said created a cultural theory that named the discourse nineteenth-century Europeans had about the peoples and places of the Greater Islamic World: Orientalism. The work of academics, colonial officials, and writers of various stripes contributed to a literary corpus that came to represent the “truth” of the Orient, a truth that Said argues reflects the imagination of the “West” more than it does the realities of the “Orient.” Said’s framework applies to many geographic and temporal lenses, often dispelling the false truths that centuries of Western interactions with the global South have encoded in popular culture.

Sara Danius, Stefan Jonsson, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “ An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ,” boundary 20, No. 2 (Summer 1993), 24–50.

Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” shifted the postcolonial discussion to a focus on agency and “the other.” Explicating Western discourse surrounding the practice of sati in India, Spivak asks if the oppressed and the marginalized can make themselves heard from within a colonial system. Can the subordinated, dispossessed indigenous subject be retrieved from the silence spaces of imperial history, or would that be yet another act of epistemological violence? Spivak argues that Western historians (i.e., white men speaking to white men about the colonized), in trying to squeeze out the subaltern voice, reproduce the hegemonic structures of colonialism and imperialism.

Antoinette Burton, “ Thinking beyond the Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the Domains of History ,” Social History 26, no. 1 (January 2001): 60–71.

In this article, Antoinette Burton considers the controversies around using the social and cultural theory as a site of analysis within the field of imperial history; specifically, concerns of those who saw political and economic history as “outside the realm” of culture. Burton deftly merges the historiographies of anthropology and gender studies to argue for a more nuanced understanding of New Imperial history.

Michelle Moyd, “ Making the Household, Making the State: Colonial Military Communities and Labor in German East Africa ,” International Labor and Working-Class History , no. 80 (2011): 53–76.

Michelle Moyd’s work focuses on an often-overlooked part of the imperial machine, the indigenous soldiers who served the colonial powers. Using German East Africa as her case study, she discusses how these “violent intermediaries” negotiated new household and community structures within the context of colonialism.

Caroline Elkins, “ The Struggle for Mau Mau Rehabilitation in Late Colonial Kenya ,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies  33, no. 1 (2000): 25–57.

Caroline Elkins looks at the both the official rehabilitation policy enacted toward Mau Mau rebels and the realities of what took place “behind the wire.” She argues that in this late colonial period, the colonial government in Nairobi was never truly able to recover from the brutality it used to suppress the Mau Mau movement and maintain colonial control.

Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel, “Decolonization as Moment and Process,” in  Decolonization: A Short History , trans. Jeremiah Riemer (Princeton University Press, 2017): 1–34.

In this opening chapter of their book, Decolonization: A Short History , Jansen and Osterhammel lay out an ambitious plan for merging multiple perspectives on the phenomena of decolonization to explain how European colonial rule became de-legitimized. Their discussion of decolonization as both a structural and a normative process is of particular interest.

Cheikh Anta Babou, “ Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa ,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science  632 (2010): 41–54.

Cheikh Anta Babou challenges decolonization narratives that focus on colonial policy-makers or Cold War competition, especially in Africa, where the consensus of colonial elites was that African colonial holdings would remain under dominion for the foreseeable future even if the empire might be rolled back in South Asia or the Middle East. Babou emphasizes the liberation efforts of colonized people in winning their independence while also noting the difficulties faced by newly independent countries due to years of imperialism that had depleted the economic and political viability of the new nation. This view supports Babou’s claim that continued study of imperialism and colonialism is essential.

Mahmood Mamdani, “ Settler Colonialism: Then and Now ,” Critical Inquiry  41, no. 3 (2015): 596–614.

Mahmood Mamdani begins with the premise that “Africa is the continent where settler colonialism has been defeated; America is where settler colonialism triumphed.” Then, he seeks to turn this paradigm on its head by looking at America from an African perspective. What emerges is an evaluation of American history as a settler colonial state—further placing the United States rightfully in the discourse on imperialism.

Antoinette Burton, “S Is for SCORPION,” in  Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times , ed. Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani (Duke University Press, 2020): 163–70.

In their edited volume, Animalia, Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani use the form of a bestiary to critically examine British constructions of imperial knowledge that sought to classify animals in addition to their colonial human subjects. As they rightly point out, animals often “interrupted” imperial projects, thus impacting the physical and psychological realities of those living in the colonies. The selected chapter focuses on the scorpion, a “recurrent figure in the modern British imperial imagination” and the various ways it was used as a “biopolitical symbol,” especially in Afghanistan.

Editor’s Note: The details of Edward Said’s education have been corrected.

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5 (page 91) p. 91 Colonialism in Africa

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The period of colonial rule in Africa came late and did not last very long. Africa was conquered by European imperial powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the 1960s, it was mostly over. ‘Colonialism in Africa’ considers how this period shaped African history. For some Africans, colonial rule was threatening; for others, an opportunity. Reconstructing the complicated patterns of this time is a massive challenge for historians of Africa. Interest in Africa' colonial past has waxed and waned, and resurged recently. Colonialism was not just about the actions of the Europeans, it was also about the actions of the Africans and what they thought.

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European Imperialism in West Africa

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• First Online: 26 June 2020
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• Mark Omorovie Ikeke 3  

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The imperialist venture in West Africa was vast and spanned many years and epochs, and hence, cannot be covered in any chapter comprehensively. It will give a brief definition of imperialism, highlight some aspects of imperialism in West Africa, look at some reasons for imperialism in West Africa, examine the effects of imperialism in West Africa, present some of the responses to imperialism, and thereafter conclude. The study is done from a critical anti-imperialist point of view.

Introduction

It is important to note from the outset that an essay on European imperialism in West Africa cannot be comprehensive as the imperialist venture in West Africa was vast and spanned many years and epochs. No doubt the topic is the subject of entire textbooks and university courses. Because of this, this essay is by its nature skeletal and selective. It will give a brief definition of imperialism, highlight some aspects of imperialism in West Africa, look at some reasons for imperialism...

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Aghalino, S. O. (2006). Dynamics of constitutional development in Nigeria, 1914–1999. Indian Journal of Politics, 40 (2–3), 49–62.

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Akinyeye, Y. (2012). West Africa in British and French geo-politics, 1886–1945. In L. E. Otoide (Ed.), History unlimited: Essays in honour of professor Abednego Ekoko (pp. 145–161). Benin City: Mindex Publishing Co. Ltd..

Asiwaju, A. I. (1977). Migration as an expression of revolt: The example of French West Africa up to 1945. Tarikh, 5 (3), 36–37.

Babatunde, O. O. (2014). Constitutional development: Clifford constitution of 1922. https://profseunoyediji.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/constitutional-development-clifford-constitution-of-1922/ . Accessed 27 May 2015.

Chaturvedi, A. K. (2006). Academic’s dictionary of political science . New Delhi: Academic (India) Publishers.

Chikendu, P. N. (2004). Imperialism & nationalism . Enugu: Academic Publishing Company.

Chilsen, S. (2009). Light in the dark continent: British imperialism in West Africa. www.Minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/35478/Chilsen.doc?sequence . Accessed 9 Dec 2013.

Dutt, A. K. (2010). Imperialism and war. In N. J. Young (Ed.), The Oxford international encyclopedia of peace (pp. 393–397). New York: Oxford University Press.

Fanon, F. (1968). The wretched of the earth . New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

Hobson, J. A. (1902). Imperialism: A study . New York: James Pott and Co.

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Lenin, V. I. (1917). Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism . Petrograd: Znaniye Publishers.

Nkrumah, K. (1965). Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism . London: Thomas Nelson & Sons.

Okoduwa, A. I., & Ibhasebhor, S. E. (2005). European imperialism and African reactions . Benin City: Borwin Publishers.

Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa . London: Bogle-Ouverture Publications.

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Mark Omorovie Ikeke

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Ikeke, M.O. (2020). European Imperialism in West Africa. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_206-1

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Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa

When international media were broadcasting live video footage of Tunisians gathering in hundreds of thousands in front of the central office in Tunis of the long-terrifying ministry of home security, chanting in one voice “the people want to bring down the regime,” something had already changed: ordinary people realized they could make huge changes. 2 Weeks later, the Egyptian uprising removed the Mubarak regime that had been entrenched in power for over thirty years. Fearmongering, police violence, exploitation, and rigged electoral systems could not stop the wave of protests. The neoliberal forms of imperial rule that had destroyed the hopes of the liberation movements were under attack. In order to counter the possibilities for a massive breakthrough at the popular level, the Western forces mounted an invasion of Libya using the mantra of humanitarianism to disrupt, militarily, political and economic life in Africa. Later in collusion with the counter-revolutionary forces in the Egyptian military, Western imperialism sought to roll back the gains of people in the streets of Tunis and Cairo. NATO, as the force for the defense of the financial oligarchs, sought to squash all forms of anti-imperialism in Africa, but the NATO intervention and its catastrophic aftermath only strengthened the resurgence of anti-imperialist ideas among the peoples of Africa. 3

What developed on the streets of Cairo could not readily emerge into an agreed program for social change because for decades neoliberal ideas about making societies safe for markets and foreign direct investment had polluted the official intellectual spaces. Imperialism in Africa had matured from the cruder colonial forms and worked through the Bretton Woods institutions while unleashing divisive ideas on cultural and religious levels. At the base, fundamentalist religious formations were the vanguard of penetration—spewing ideas about the subordination of women and disrespect for peoples of different faiths.

For the educated, authorities on colonialism such as Geoffrey Kay and Anne Phillips have led to a rejection of the scholarship of Walter Rodney’s book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . 4 Rodney had argued that capitalism and imperialism blocked the economic transformation of Africa. Figures like Kay and Phillips joined with colonial apologists such as Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan, who claimed that colonialism was beneficial for Africans, and that capitalism created underdevelopment in Africa because it was not exploitative enough. 5 Even those who disagreed with the outright colonial apologists adopted the balance-sheet approach to European penetration in Africa. They argued that while there may have been excesses and unfortunate incidents, on balance, colonialism brought education, health, and sanitation to Africa. 6 The barbarism of today’s imperialism is often neglected in the left scholarship of figures like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire . 7

Yet, Africa remains the space of the worst forms of exploitation of the capitalist system and has inspired continuity in anti-imperialism from colonial times to the present. Today, in the twenty-first century, the older forms of class mobilization of the national liberation era have exhausted their potential and there are new social forces that have arisen that are fighting for reparative justice, peace, life, health, and the repair of the natural environment. These movements, and their anti-imperialist ideas, had kept the flames of African freedom burning. The uprisings of 2011 served to counter the pessimistic notions of Africa that had become an accepted part of Western imperial culture, and with the phrase “failed states,” repeated ad nauseam. The application of Marxist anti-imperialist thought in the work of Amilcar Cabral and Rodney now re-emerges as guide to a new wave of African anti-imperialism.

Piracy on Dry Land

We will simply state that imperialism can be defined as a worldwide expression of the search for profits and the ever-increasing accumulation of surplus value by monopoly-financial capital centered in two parts of the world; first in Europe, and then in North America. And if we wish to place the fact of imperialism within the general trajectory of the evolution of the transcendental factor, which has changed the face of the world, namely capital and the process of its accumulation, we can say that imperialism is piracy transplanted from the seas to dry land. It is piracy reorganized, consolidated, and adapted to the aim of exploiting the natural and human resources of our peoples.

When Cabral, the African freedom fighter, wrote that imperialism was “piracy on dry land,” he was continuing a debate that had started in the early twentieth century about monopoly capital and the export of capital. 8 Lenin had written in the midst of the First World War and had been very clear on the relationship between imperialism and war. However, what was disputed in his analysis was the question of whether there had been the export of capital to Africa similar to the massive export of capital to places such as Argentina, Eastern Europe, or the United States. An important book to propagate the idea of a non-economic, humanitarian impulse behind Britain’s imperial policies is entitled Africa and the Victorians by Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher. The book supposedly challenged Lenin’s theory about the export of capital by drawing attention to the fact that there had been no major export of capital to Africa by the time of the great war between the imperial powers. Robinson and Gallagher were not Marxists, but some Marxists like Bill Warren of the United Kingdom argued, on what were purportedly Leninist grounds, that capitalist imperialism, even in the form of direct colonial rule, performed a historically highly progressive role in non-European societies, economically, culturally, and politically: through capital exports it laid the foundation for a development of the productive forces and of a vibrant, indigenously rooted capitalism. 9

Rodney answered these criticisms of Lenin’s analysis with respect to imperialism as early as 1970, in his little-known essay “The Imperial Partition of Africa.” Lenin, Rodney pointed out, had never argued that the export of capital applied in his time to Africa, which still occupied a marginal role—since the imperialist partition and penetration of Africa was so recent. As Rodney said of the supposed inapplicability of the export of capital to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century capitalism in Africa, “This is a contradiction of Lenin only for those who have not read Lenin.” 10 It had its basis in a confusion of the partition of Africa with the full development of imperialism in the continent, rather than simply its necessary condition. In his historically based analysis, Rodney did not present imperialism as a uniform process but as a general historical process or tendency that took different forms in distinct regions based on varying circumstances, combining a myriad of economic, political, and cultural factors.

Nonetheless, such questions do serve to highlight that Africa was not historically an object of the export of capital, nor integrated directly into the system even in terms of economic dependency, until well into the twentieth century. Rather it was relegated to the position of a natural resource and labor reserve, subject from the beginning to a particularly extreme form of extractivism. This was later developed more fully in the late twentieth century in the context of the emergence of independent African states, without, however, altering the essential relation. Moreover, this was invariably tied to cultural imperialism that was imposed in the form of a hegemonic racism, rooted in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Political, economic, and cultural forces imposed by the penetration of imperialism into Africa therefore all contributed to the historical process that Rodney described as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa .

The interpretation of capitalist imperialism as a force for cultural and economic progress in Africa is an element in the neoliberal darkness that descended in the last decades, erasing the history of European imperialism in Africa and eluding the reality of imperialism today. In contrast, Cabral’s conception of “imperialism as piracy on dry land” drove home the point that the looting and plunder, both during and after the notorious scramble for Africa, must constitute the beginning of all meaningful analysis in this area. The origins of this system of pillage, and that of industrial capitalism itself, can be found in the European establishment of outposts for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Karl Marx had grasped the importance of Africa to global capitalist accumulation when he wrote in Capital that the “discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.” 11

By the end of the nineteenth century, European capitalism had accumulated enough military and economic power to impose Western economic domination over most of Asia and the Pacific islands. The notorious scramble for Africa was formalized in the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 that divided Africa among the European powers. Rodney pointed out that the imperial partition of Africa was merely the preface to its exploitation, which was soon interrupted by war. Indeed, the increasing tensions between the major powers, often over African territory, eventually led to the world war: this had been recognized before Lenin by W.E.B. Du Bois who had written on “The African Roots of War” in 1915. 12 While Du Bois and Lenin grasped the importance of the partitioning of Africa, during the twentieth century the relevance of Lenin’s thesis to Africa was much disputed, with a focus on the export of capital question. In a little known essay, Rodney explained:

Lenin is generally said to have professed an “economic” theory of imperialism. This gave rise to the criticism that his theory was one sided, because Europeans carved up Africa for several reasons, including economic, political, social-humanitarian, and psychological. Of course, Marxism does not concern itself solely with some so-called “economic” aspect of society. It is a world view which perceives the presence of multiple variants within the complexity of human society, and seeks to unravel their relationship with reference to the material conditions of existence. Lenin did not have to spell out this elementary Marxist position in everything he wrote. His essay on imperialism dealt with the question of the expansion of the capitalist economy. The non-economic dimensions were known to exist, and were regarded as secondary. 13

Rodney then quotes Lenin to zero in on the point of the non-economic dimensions of imperialism: “The non-economic superstructure which grows up on the basis of finance capital, its politics and its ideology stimulates the striving for colonial conquest.” 14 The importance of Rodney’s intervention was his highlighting of the deep ways that imperialism affected all the regions of Africa. Rodney excavated the pseudoscientific, religious, and cultural basis of racism, inseparable from the smug self-justified looting of resources in land and minerals. He added that in the period of imperialism, South Africa was the laboratory where the virus of white racism was cultivated. Up to today the two most important non-economic dimensions that connect colonial and post-colonial imperialism are those of military force and racism . Military engagement is still very much present, with the French interventionist forces deployed in places such as Chad, the Central Africa Republic, Mali, and Côte d’Ivoire. The racism of the European Union’s complicity, indifference, and hypocritical response to the ongoing Mediterranean mass drownings needs no comment.

Racism, Sexism, and Imperialism

In his refutation of the bourgeois scholars who had written on the humanitarian motives for colonialism, Rodney was drawing attention to the fact that the rise of Western European racism had an economic base in society. That is, the time around the trans-Atlantic slave trade inspired a new conception of the hierarchy of human beings. The breakthroughs in science and technology in Western Europe during the nineteenth century contributed to ideas about scientific racism and modern eugenics. By the start of the twentieth century, the eugenics movement had refined concepts of white supremacy that polluted all aspects of social and economic life in Western Europe and North America. Lenin had written in Imperialism that, “the receipts of high monopoly capital … makes it economically possible for them to corrupt certain sections of the working class, and for a time a fairly considerable minority and win them to the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or nation against all others.” 15 Lenin had drawn attention to how imperialism served to split the working-class movement in Europe by creating opportunism and jingoism among the workers. The two linked aspects go together: imperialism creates the surplus that can be distributed to upper sections of the working classes, and racism directed against the primary victims of imperialism, above all Africans, gives a psychological/cultural benefit to the entire European working class. In order to capture the hearts of the German working classes—and win them away from ideas about revolution and international solidarity—the Nazis stressed cultural principles about family, race, and how the Volk were the foundation for German values. It was in Africa, against the rebellious Herero peoples of Namibia, that the Imperial German military carried out the dress rehearsal for the genocidal policies that were to explode after the capitalist depression of 1929.

Nor were the British much better. The African massacres they perpetrated were many, and the racist system they instituted gave rise eventually to apartheid. 16 John Mackenzie’s book Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 detailed the instruments of ideological manipulation that bound the British working classes to imperial adventures, and motivated workers in Britain to fight against other workers in Europe in the meaningless bloodbaths of the First World War.

Both imperialism and colonialism were supported and even impelled by impressive ideological formations that include notions that certain people, often with no more in common than as inhabitants of a certain territory, require and welcome domination as well as forms of knowledge affiliated with domination. We now know that imperialism projected masculinist thinking about power, violence, and male supremacy. Since the end of the last century feminist scholars have enriched our understanding of the masculinist and militarist components of imperial domination. 17 Edward Said’s The Culture of Imperialism helps us to understand the intricate relations between imperialism, race, patriarchy, and some of the most extreme cultural forms of exploitation. 18 Britain was the forerunner of cultural imperialism making Rudyard Kipling (famous for his notion of “the white man’s burden”) its poet laureate.

Both Germany and Britain stood at the apex of the hierarchy of Western imperialism and clashed in wars to dominate the planet. 19 U.S. scholars drew from the intellectual cultures of Germany and Britain in their search for anchors for their own liberalism. Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden,” subtitled “The United States and the Philippine Islands,” was written specifically to urge on the U.S. war on the Philippines. 20

For the oppressed peoples of the world, those now called peoples of color, imperialism was refined by deepening a linear conception of human transformations that placed Europe and capitalism as emerging out of an evolutionary process. White supremacy codified ideas about social Darwinism (“survival of the fittest”), rugged individualism, sexism, the inviolability of the market, private property, and the credo that “Everyone can make it.” The linear view of progress and modernity was also internalized by some Marxists in North America, who believed that revolutions in Africa and other colonized spaces required the leadership of the advanced (mostly white) workers in capitalist countries. Linkages between class and anti-imperialist struggles were slow to develop in such circumstances. Capitalist competition, jingoism, and chauvinism not only precipitated one war, but the ideas of racism and genocidal violence exploded across the world in the Second World War (which was an imperialist war, the expansive nature of which was prefigured by such events as the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia).

The emergence of the United States as the dominant imperial power after the Second World War further exposed the racist basis of capitalism and imperialism, because within the United States resided a large population that suffered from the superexploitation similar to that suffered by Africans in Africa. Even today the growing anti-racist movement in the United States lacks the breadth of the movement against the Vietnam War. In fact the enemy in both cases is exactly the same. The relevant point for an understanding of imperialism today is the reality that war situations emanate directly from acts of resistance to U.S. imperialist domination. Africa in the modern imperium has become a deeply racialized continent, integral to the maintenance of the essential culture of imperialism.

Said, a Palestinian scholar, wrote about the culture of imperial rule and the impact of imperialism on people’s consciousness. He joined Cabral in distinguishing imperialism from colonialism while at the same time linking capitalism and imperialism. Said had defined imperialism as “thinking about, settling on, controlling land that you do not possess, that is distant, that is lived on and owned by others.” 21 He did not expend time on the financial and corporate forms of imperial domination as this work had been done for decades by Marxist and non-Marxist scholars such as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Bukharin, Rudolf Hilferding, and John A. Hobson. At the start of the twentieth century these writers had recognized the end of the old forms of competitive industrial capitalism and the emergence of financial and monopolistic capitalism. The concentration and centralization of capital throughout the twentieth century transformed capitalism and by the end of the twentieth century there were scholars writing about super imperialism and the New Imperialism. 22

The specific contribution of Said was the way that he brought out the deeply racist culture of capital which later exploded in the twenty-first century, in what I term the global armaments culture. This armaments culture connects the barons of Wall Street and financialization of the world economy to the arms manufacturers, the media and image managers, information and communication managers, military entrepreneurs, defense contractors, congressional representatives, policy entrepreneurs, university funding, and humanitarian experts. In this way modern imperialism represents itself in racialized forms that are represented to the citizens of imperialist states as agencies for doing good or “aiding Africa.”

U.S. Imperialism, the Military Management of the International System, and Africa

During the period of the Cold War, the United States managed the capitalist international system through anti-Communist ideology (such as “totalitarianism versus democracy”) and, in Said’s sense, culture. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the prior ideological management of U.S. dominance became even less coherent, but military resistance was no longer a major obstacle. In the post-Cold War era, the United States was now clearly willing to use military force to achieve political and economic goals. George H.W. Bush had launched a New World Order in the context of the Persian Gulf War, aimed at achieving geopolitical objectives (i.e., control of the pivotal oil region of the world). A little over a decade later, his son George W. Bush invaded Iraq, in what is known in the United States as the Iraq War, to further these same objectives and to impress upon the subordinate imperial states such as Germany and Japan that the United States was more than ever the dominant force among global capitalists. The Persian Gulf War was made possible precisely by the absence of the Soviet Union from the scene—and was prosecuted almost simultaneously with the Soviet demise. For Samir Amin this new imperial domination was set on creating conditions for global apartheid. 23

The emerging international financial system now extended U.S. global dominance in disguised and indirect ways, as well as cruder direct forms. U.S. treasury officials and agents who control the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank dictated “restructuring” interventions into the internal affairs of supposedly sovereign nations. The resulting unstable system was so rigged that the U.S. dollar benefited from crises that emanated from the skullduggery of U.S. and British bankers. 24 In these moments of crisis, the dollar benefited as a safe haven for international capitalists.

The barons of Wall Street now exercised direct control over the investment portfolios of the countries with large reserves of natural resources. The example of the wide-ranging activities of Goldman Sachs and its dalliance with the Libyan Investment Authority was one of the most recent examples of speculation and scamming, using complex new packages of debt obligations and interest-rate derivatives to appropriate the wealth of what had been the richest of the African states. Predatory capitalism has been most explicit throughout Africa with looting, plunder, massive violence, and the destruction of the natural environment. 25

For Africa, the pre-history of these last disastrous decades was the age of national liberation struggles, evanescent victories, and painful defeats. From the point of view of the anti-imperialist forces, the struggles in Indochina, southern Africa, and Latin America have shaped the politics of the international system since 1945. 26 Vijay Prashad agrees with Amin in placing the volatile relationship between the North and the South from the period of the Bandung conference of 1955 up to the global financial crisis of 2008. In this period, the role of imperial military and economic force underwent substantial change. What has remained constant has been the centrality of African resources for the European states. Belgium, Britain, and France had planned to maintain colonial territories in Africa and link African resources to the British Sterling and the French Franc. The Cold War had dictated that in spite of the post-colonial/neo-colonial basis of U.S. political logic, the United States assisted the remaining European colonialists to suppress freedom fighters in Africa. The United States had opted to leave European military forces to police the African economies. It was in this period that the United States established unified military command structures such as the European Command, the Pacific Command, the Southern Command, the Northern Command, and Central Command. Each command covers an area of responsibility.

When this global command structure was being refined, Africa was an afterthought. Hence, Africa fell under the European Command with its headquarters in Germany. Africa had not been included in the geographic combatant commands because it was expected that France, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other colonial powers would retain military forces to guarantee Western interests and keep “peace” in Africa. However, the collapse of the Portuguese colonial forces in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea, and Sao Tome, and the collapse of the white racist military forces in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), gradually led to a rethinking of this strategy. During this period the United States had labeled all African freedom fighters as terrorists; there was not one African independence struggle that the United States supported. After Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, for thirty-five years the West supported the brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every credible liberation leader—whether Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, Felix Moumie, or Chris Hani—was killed. In fact, in the days when the United States was allied with Osama Bin Laden and Jonas Savimbi, Nelson Mandela had been branded a terrorist. This branding of freedom fighters as terrorists, and the propping up of apartheid and destabilization in Africa, is better understood against the background of the global politics of the Cold War.

The special relationship between the dollar and sterling that had emerged out of the “Atlantic alliance” was eventually to see British financial institutions and the former British colonial territories fall under the domain of U.S. capitalism, as most African states now kept their reserves in the U.S. dollar instead of the pound sterling. In South Africa, Britain’s most valuable sphere of economic dominance in Africa, developmental elements under apartheid were removed along with the regime itself, and replaced by a neoliberal model that forced Britain to share control with U.S.-based corporations and creditors. The case of subjugating French capital was less straightforward. Under de Gaulle, France had let go of Algeria and Guinea but clung on to the remaining African colonial areas with such tenacity that well into the twenty-first century the CFA (Central African Franc) still subjects fourteen former colonies to the monetary control of the French treasury, while a dominating influence is maintained over military, cultural, and economic affairs. France has acted like a gendarme of today’s imperialism, intervening more than thirty times in Africa and most recently leading the charge in the NATO destruction of Libya.

Lessons from the NATO Intervention in Africa

Facing deep popular resistance to its dominion, the United States has promoted the view that Africa was a space for instability and a recruiting ground for international terrorists. Despite this propaganda, leaders such as Mandela and Desmond Tutu had opposed the U.S. Africa Command. Imperial forays into selected African societies on the grounds of “humanitarian intervention” have both promoted and utilized instability, and kept Africa in the Western imagination as a space for the legitimate pacification of uncivilized barbarians. Joseph Nye had used the formulation of “soft power” to disguise the crude militarism of the United States, and some scholars have elaborated “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect” as useful ideological weapons to justify imperial military force against supposedly sovereign states. 27 This can be seen as psychological warfare against Western citizens who are invited to disengage with Africa outside of a patriarchal-philanthropic (tragedy of Africa) form, which serves to justify each and every Western invention. The emphasis on humanitarian intervention (the new “White Man’s Burden” philosophy) was intensified after the Wall Street crash and the rise of economic insecurity in Europe. The Libyan leadership had long shown an ambivalence to the West and their persistent economic nationalism threatened Western imperialism, especially when Muamar Gaddafi began a discussion about harnessing the financial reserves of Libya to be the foundation for a proposed common African currency. NATO invaded Libya under the pretext of protecting Libyans, but in the invasion and post-invasion enormous numbers of Libyans were killed—by the invading forces and then by those forces that succeeded Gaddafi—and the society is now impoverished and overrun with marauding militias. The invasion was ideologically justified under the “responsibility to protect” rubric, to the applause of various liberals and even some Western “leftists.”

Africa has been a weak front for NATO because, although there were many authoritarian leaders in Africa, the anti-imperialist traditions were so deep that no major African state could offer the U.S. military a base for the Africa Command. Although the preferred form of intervention and control have been the hundreds of thousands of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a minority actually spending their resources on useful projects, preparations for the use of military force have grown steadily. As a part of Pentagon capitalism, and the promotion of high-priority military spending, a massive intelligence and surveillance system was perfected under the National Security Agency to control all forms of information, including the fabrication of terrorism to justify the deployment of military resources in Africa. Jeremy Keenan has documented the fabrication of terrorism by U.S. strategic planners and how U.S. counter-terrorism initiatives yielded more instability in the Sahel. 28

Even with the presence of some 5,000 U.S. troops, Africa is the least militarized of the continents. Melvin Goodman, in National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism , offers estimates of the numbers of U.S. military bases, lily pads, and forward positions, as well as numbers of troops on land and sea, that are outside of U.S. borders. 29 In East Asia, there are more than 80,000 U.S. military personnel. In Europe, there are more than 80,000 military personnel overall, with 40,000 in Germany alone, 11,000 in Italy, and over 9,000 in Britain. In the Persian Gulf, there are over 15,000; 11,000 are in Kuwait, while the Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain, has over 3,000 military personnel. This does not include the numbers of U.S. military personnel from the Central Command in the Middle East or those in Afghanistan. The two areas where the United States is weak militarily are in Africa and South America.

Modern imperialism counters the persistent anti-imperialism in Africa by the deployment of NGOs and private military contractors. Recent exposures of the role of NGOs in subversion in Africa and Latin America (Cuba and Venezuela) exposed the role of nonmilitary personnel in work with a decided intelligence and military aspect. These NGOs are clearly deemed to be force multipliers for U.S. imperialism. 30

Inter–Imperialist Rivalry in Africa?

Inter-imperialist rivalry between the Europeans and the United States was subdued but persisted even after the Second World War. However it has now been submerged in the profound global changes that followed the breakdown of the Western financial system in September 2008. 31 In the emerging global order, there is an incipient shift in the locus and configuration of economic power from Western Europe and the Atlantic powers that have dominated the international political system since the eighteenth century. This evolving international system is part of the rise to prominence of societies in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) formation and in Latin America. Prior to this period, Western imperialism, effectively unopposed after the demolition of the USSR, pressured African states through structural adjustment programs imposed through the IMF. When the U.S. Africa Command was being formed, J. Peter Pham wrote for the World Defense Review in the United States that one of the objectives of the new militarization of Africa was “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.” 32

With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy there has been an outcry that there is a new scramble for Africa, and that the Chinese are the new imperialists in Africa. The appearance of books such as Howard French’s China’s Second Continent: How A Million Migrants Are Building A New Empire in Africa is indicative of the changing balance of power. 33 The argument of this book has undertones of “Yellow Peril” and threats from swarms of Orientals. Mention is made of land grabbing, Chinese investments, and the massive use of Chinese labor in Africa. This debate on “Chinese imperialism” in Africa has brought about a new challenge to progressives to grasp the nature of Chinese society itself and the future of China’s relationship with Western capitalism. 34 This debate has been in the main superficial, without reference to the dynamic changes in the modes of expansion of capitalism in the period of financialization. It was earlier noted that Lenin wrote that in the imperialist stage one of the distinguishing features of capitalism is that there is the export of capital. Yet it would be simplistic to argue that China is imperialist because there are large-scale Chinese investments in Africa. In reality, the levels of Chinese investments in Africa lag behind the volume of Chinese investments in Europe, North America, or in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the emphasis of many of these criticisms is on investments by Chinese state companies, while the much larger, and more clearly exploitative, role of Western multinational corporations is rendered invisible in this accounting due to their private nature. Ironically, questions of Chinese imperialism in Africa have been coming primarily from the West and not from Africa, where Chinese involvement and quite different ways of doing business are generally viewed as a counterpoint to the collective imperialism of the triad.

Where the Chinese state can be legitimately criticized is in relation to the exploitation of Chinese and African workers alike, and for its history of lack of respect for environmental standards. Indeed, the crisis of the natural environment in China itself has pointed to the fallacy of one-sided focusing on the “development of the productive forces.” China has been so successful in opening its economy as a cheap labor reservoir for Western corporations that the future of Chinese workers now rests on an alliance with African and other workers to transcend capitalism. Chinese investment in African infrastructure has at best created an imperfect alternative for Africa to the existing forms of U.S.-dominated international financial control, but is seen by the United States as a threat and challenge. It is in a new anti-imperialist (particularly South-South) alliance across the planet that one can situate the call by Amin for the radical left to chart a new course beyond obsolete capitalism.

The call for a new anti-imperialist alliance is even more pertinent in the context of the pressures towards global war from the imperialist centers. One hundred years after the start of the first imperialist war in 1914 there is great danger of another major international conflagration in a world where the United States, through its control of the dollar, has been able to capture value on a global scale and dominate the international political system, and now sees its dominant position under threat. One of the challenges of the present moment is to strengthen the anti-imperialist and peace forces in the United States to break the power of those sections of the U.S. ruling class who are willing to go to war to maintain U.S. imperial power. In this challenge the African population in the United States has a strategic role to play in concert with the global anti-imperialist forces; an advanced section of this population has long been in alliance with the anti-imperialist and national liberation forces in Africa. It is in this sense that the Black Lives Matter campaign becomes part of the global anti-imperialist chain and seeks to mobilize young citizens to counter the kind of manipulation by the U.S. military and intelligence forces who mobilized millions for the pro-intervention Kony 2012 campaign.

At the beginning of this paper we drew attention to the changed international situation and the ways in which the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt brought to the fore new forms of political struggles. These struggles built on the long traditions of political organizing in Africa from the period of the youth of Soweto, who fought against apartheid, to the massive demonstrations that removed Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. These struggles called for international solidarity at a moment when the new forms of capitalist exploitation were leading to the globalization of apartheid. From the anti-apartheid struggles, a new conception of humanity emerged, that is the concept of Ubuntu , or linked humanity. Both Mandela and Tutu articulated the ideals of Ubuntu which was a direct challenge to the racist conceptions of the hierarchy of human beings. Tutu summed up its meaning when he stated, “It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong.” It is this juxtaposition of being against the ontology of imperialist and racist domination that provides the foundation for the new kind of anti-imperialist solidarity.

It is not by accident that it is the same energy—of the need to humanize the planet—that inspires the environmental justice movements in Africa. Tutu took the principles of Ubuntu into the struggles for climate justice and worked with those who are seeking to heal the planet. These struggles merge with the international struggles for reparative justice. Out of these struggles for climate justice have emerged new global alliances, especially from the South where there is now a common language of struggle. Activists from the global South are calling for the anti-imperialist forces internationally to make common cause against war in this moment of capitalist crisis. Experiences of the citizens of Nigeria, especially the Niger Delta, has expanded the global understanding of the rapacious activities of the oil companies. African activists have used the experiences of the Niger River Delta to indict global capitalism in its destruction of the planet earth.

One of the major areas of new international solidarity has been in the mobilization over environmental justice. However, in the areas of peace and reconstruction the traditional left movements have not yet grasped the machinations of contemporary imperialism. Because of the information and psychological warfare against the citizens of Western Europe and North America there is very little understanding of the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism. Hence, in the example of so-called humanitarian intervention in Africa the traditional left was basically silent, or worse, when NATO intervened in Libya, and then supported jihadists in Syria.

Pan-African solidarity of the kind originally promoted by Du Bois and the struggles for reparative justice link the future conditions of struggles in the United States to the struggles for peace and transformation in Africa. Progressives from the global South have been drawing lessons from the interventions in Africa and there is a clear understanding among African intellectuals of the nature of imperialist machinations in Iraq, Syria, and the Ukraine. From the time of the League against Imperialism in 1927 through the Bandung project and the nonaligned movement, the peoples of Africa have been in the forefront of anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and the struggles against apartheid. These traditions of struggle are maturing at a moment when the imperialists are ready and willing to foment warfare to save their social system. One of the many challenges for the global anti-imperialist forces will be to rise above the chauvinism and racism that pits workers against workers based on religion, race, sex, or nationality. The struggles for peace, reconstruction, and a secular Africa in the twenty-first century are part of a larger struggle to develop the audacity to make another world possible.

A central conception in Cabral’s philosophy of revolution was that in Africa resistance was a permanent reality that constantly reasserted itself, and he insisted on “the indestructible character of the cultural resistance of the mass of the people when confronted with foreign domination.” He argued that, “Culture plunges its roots into the environmental hummus in which it develops, and … reflects the organic structure of society.” The indigenous-based resistance struggles growing throughout the world, and notably in the African continent, help to explain the growing interventionism of imperial NATO in its renewed effort to control Africa and its resources. African peoples, despite being exposed to the most barbaric forms of imperial penetration, have shown enormous resilience in turning cultural resistance again and again into renewed political struggles which speak to the world at large, threatening the stability of the entire system of global apartheid. African anti-imperialism thus has a pivotal role to play in determining the framework of history in the twenty-first century—and the possibility of a new world revolution. 35

• ↩ Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 49.
• ↩ Nouri Gana, ed., The Making of the Tunisian Revolution (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2013). See also Esam Al Amin, The Arab Awakening Unveiled (Washington, DC: American Educational Trust, 2013).
• ↩ Horace G. Campbell, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).
• ↩ Anne Phillips. The Enigma of Colonialism (London: Curry, 1989).
• ↩ Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan. Burden of Empire (London: Pall Mall, 1968).
• ↩ Patrick Manning, “ Imperial Balance Sheets Revisited: African Empires of France and Britain 1900-1960 ,” n.d., http://lse.ac.uk .
• ↩ Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). For a critique see Abu-Manneh Bashir, “ The Illusions of Empire ,” Monthly Review 56, no. 2 (June 2004): 31-47. For one of the clearest examples of the exposure of genocidal violence in the imperial domination of Africa, see Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
• ↩ Amilcar Cabral, “The Weapon of Theory,” in Revolution in Guinea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), 90­–111.
• ↩ Ronald Edwards Robinson, John Galager, and Alice Denning, Africa and the Victorians (New York: Anchor, 1968); Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso Books, 1980).
• ↩ Walter Rodney, “ The Imperialist Partition of Africa ,” Monthly Review 21, no. 11 (April 1970): 104–5.
• ↩ Karl Marx, Capital , vol. 1 (London; Penguin, 1976), 915.
• ↩ W.E.B. DuBois, “The African Roots of war,” Atlantic Monthly , 115, no. 5, May 1915, 707–14.
• ↩ Rodney, “The Imperialist Partition of Africa,” 103.
• ↩ V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 84; Rodney, “The Imperialist Partition of Africa,” 104.
• ↩ Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism , 126.
• ↩ See Sven Linqvist, Exterminate all the Brutes (New York: New Press, 1997).
• ↩ Cynthia H. Enloe, Globalization and Militarism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
• ↩ Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).
• ↩ Anne McLintock’s book on Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995) centralized the consumer culture of capitalism where citizens no longer saw themselves as producers but as consumers of exotic products.
• ↩ See Rudyard Kipling, Kipling’s Verse (New York: Doubleday, 1940).
• ↩ Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1993), 7.
• ↩ Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1972); David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Robert Biel, The New Imperialism (London: Zed Books, 2000).
• ↩ Samir Amin, The Law of Worldwide Value (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010). See also Amin, The Liberal Virus (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004).
• ↩ Matt Taibbi, “ Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Financial Scandal Yet ,” Rolling Stone , May 15, 2013, http://rollingstone.com .
• ↩ Nimmo Bassey, To Cook a Continent (Cape Town: Pambazuka Books, 2012).
• ↩ Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations (London: Verso Books, 2012).
• ↩ See the analysis of this in Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006).
• ↩ Jeremy Keenan, The Dying Sahara (London: Pluto Press, 2013).
• ↩ Melvin Goodman, National Insecurity (San Francisco: City Lights, 2013).
• ↩ See James Petras, “NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 29, no. 4 (1999): 429–39.
• ↩ Paul Krugman, End This Depression Now (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012).
• ↩ J. Peter Pham, “ Africom Stands Up ,” World Defense Review , October 2, 2008, http://worlddefensereview.com .
• ↩ Howard French, China’s Second Continent (New York: Doubleday, 2014).
• ↩ Alison Ayers, “Beyond Myths, Lies and Stereotypes: The Political Economy of a ‘New Scramble for Africa,'” New Political Economy 18, no. 2 (2013): 227–57.
• ↩ Cabral, Return to the Source , 39–69.

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The Impact of 19th Century Imperialism in Africa: A Historical Analysis

Table of Contents

The Impact of 19th Century Imperialism on Africa: A Comprehensive Analysis

The impact of 19th-century imperialism on Africa was immense. European powers, driven by a desire for resources, markets, and prestige, exploited and colonized the African continent. This period witnessed significant changes in African societies, economies, and political structures.

One of the most notable effects of imperialism was the economic exploitation of Africa’s resources. European powers established mines, plantations, and other extractive industries to gain access to valuable commodities such as gold, diamonds, rubber, and palm oil. This led to the extraction of vast amounts of wealth from Africa, often leaving local populations impoverished and marginalized.

Furthermore, European powers imposed a new economic system in Africa, based on cash-crop agriculture and the export of raw materials. This disrupted traditional subsistence farming practices and distorted local economies, making them dependent on the global market. Africans were often forced to abandon their own food production to cultivate crops for export, resulting in food shortages and famines.

Imperialism also had a profound impact on African societies. European powers imposed their cultural and religious beliefs upon Africans, seeking to reshape their identities and values. The introduction of Christianity and Western education disrupted traditional belief systems and social structures, leading to cultural disintegration and conflicts.

Moreover, the enforced labor systems established by European colonizers had dire consequences for African communities. Forced labor, such as the notorious Belgian Congo’s rubber regime, caused immense suffering and loss of life. African men, women, and children were subjected to harsh working conditions, violence, and brutality.

Politically, imperialism led to the displacement and marginalization of African leaders and institutions. European powers carved up the continent through the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, ignoring existing African boundaries and ethnic groups. This artificial division of Africa created tensions and conflicts that persist to this day.

19th-century imperialism had a profound and lasting impact on Africa. It led to economic exploitation, cultural disruption, forced labor, and political instability. The scars of this period can still be felt in modern Africa, highlighting the need for a comprehensive understanding of its historical context.

Africa is Not Poor Because of Colonization

How johnny harris rewrites history, what events occurred in africa during the 19th century.

During the 19th century , Africa experienced significant historical events that shaped its future. European imperialism played a major role in shaping the continent during this century. The Scramble for Africa, which took place between the late 1800s and early 1900s, saw European powers carving up Africa into colonies and spheres of influence.

The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade also had a profound impact on Africa. European nations, along with the United States and others, enacted legislation to ban the transatlantic slave trade. This had both positive and negative consequences for Africa, as it led to the decline of the slave trade but also disrupted societal structures in some regions.

One of the most significant events in African history during the 19th century was the period of resistance against European colonization . Some notable examples include the Zulu Kingdom’s resistance against British colonization in Southern Africa, led by figures like King Shaka and later King Cetshwayo. In East Africa, the Maasai tribe also resisted European colonization efforts.

Another crucial event was the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 , where European powers gathered to discuss the partitioning of Africa. This conference effectively formalized the colonization process and established the rules for European control over African territories.

Additionally, the spread of Christianity and the establishment of missionary activities across Africa had a significant impact during the 19th century. Missionaries from Europe and North America sought to convert Africans to Christianity and often played a role in educational and healthcare initiatives.

Lastly, the 19th century witnessed the exploration and discovery of Africa’s interior . Explorers like David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley ventured into unexplored regions, mapping rivers, mountains, and resources. These expeditions fuelled further European interest in Africa and contributed to the eventual colonization.

These events collectively shaped the trajectory of Africa during the 19th century and set the stage for further political, social, and economic developments in the subsequent decades.

What occurred during the era of imperialism in Africa?

During the era of imperialism in Africa in the 19th century , there were significant events and developments that shaped the continent’s history. European powers, primarily Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal, sought to expand their empires and exert control over African territories.

One important aspect of this era was the scramble for Africa, which refers to the rapid and intense colonization of African territories by European powers. European countries viewed Africa as a source of valuable resources, such as rubber, diamonds, gold, and ivory, and also as potential markets for their manufactured goods.

European powers employed various tactics to establish control over African territories, including military force, diplomacy, and the use of local collaborators. They signed treaties with African leaders, often under duress or coercion, in order to legitimize their claims to land and resources.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 played a pivotal role in the partitioning of Africa among European powers. During this conference, European nations agreed to divide Africa into spheres of influence, disregarding existing African political, social, and cultural structures. This division led to arbitrary borders that still pose challenges and conflicts in present-day Africa.

European colonization brought about significant changes to African societies. Indigenous political systems were disrupted, and traditional economic activities were undermined. Europeans introduced cash-crop agriculture, leading to the displacement of subsistence farming and the exploitation of African labor for their own economic benefit.

The imperial powers also imposed their own legal and administrative systems on African societies. Indigenous customs and traditions were often marginalized or suppressed, and European languages, religions, and education systems were promoted.

Resistance movements emerged across Africa in response to colonial rule. Prominent examples include the Xhosa Wars in South Africa, the Mahdist uprising in Sudan, and the Maji-Maji rebellion in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania). These movements sought to defend African sovereignty and culture, but were often met with brutal repression.

By the end of the 19th century, the majority of Africa had been colonized by European powers. This marked a significant shift in African history, as European control and exploitation continued well into the 20th century, leading to independence movements and the eventual decolonization of Africa in the mid-20th century.

The era of imperialism in Africa during the 19th century involved the scramble for Africa, the partitioning of the continent by European powers, the imposition of colonial rule, and resistance movements against foreign control. These events have had lasting impacts on the political, social, and economic landscape of Africa.

What impact did European imperialism have on Africa in the 19th century?

European imperialism had a significant impact on Africa in the 19th century. Strong> During this period, European powers, primarily Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal, sought to expand their empires and colonize African territories.

One major consequence of European imperialism was the extensive exploitation of Africa’s natural resources. Strong> European countries established plantations, mines, and infrastructure projects that were primarily geared towards extracting valuable resources such as rubber, diamonds, gold, and ivory. This led to the depletion of Africa’s natural wealth and the impoverishment of its people.

Another significant impact of European imperialism was the imposition of European political systems and control over African societies. Strong> European powers established colonial administrations, often with the assistance of local collaborators, to govern African territories. Traditional African political structures were dismantled, and African leaders were marginalized or replaced by European-appointed administrators.

The economic impact of European imperialism was also profound. Strong> European powers introduced cash-crop agriculture, which disrupted local subsistence economies and forced Africans into a dependency on European markets. This led to economic instability, increased poverty, and unequal trade relations.

Furthermore, European imperialism contributed to social and cultural changes in Africa. Strong> European missionaries arrived in large numbers, spreading Christianity and European cultural values. Indigenous African cultures and traditions were suppressed, and African languages were often sidelined in favor of European languages. This resulted in the erosion of indigenous identities and the loss of cultural heritage.

Lastly, European imperialism had long-lasting and detrimental effects on Africa’s political landscape. Strong> Arbitrary borders were drawn, often disregarding ethnic and tribal divisions, leading to conflicts and tensions that continue to this day. Additionally, the legacy of colonial rule created a foundation for post-independence challenges, including corruption, instability, and ethnic rivalries.

European imperialism in Africa during the 19th century had a profound impact on the continent. Strong> It resulted in the exploitation of resources, the imposition of European political systems, economic disruption, cultural transformation, and long-lasting political challenges. The repercussions of this period continue to shape Africa’s development and its relationships with the rest of the world.

What were the causes for imperialism in Africa?

Imperialism in Africa during the 19th century was primarily driven by a combination of economic, political, and social factors. The following are some of the key causes for imperialism in Africa during this period:

Economic Factors: 1. Need for raw materials: European nations sought to acquire new sources of raw materials to fuel their industrial revolution. African countries were rich in valuable resources such as rubber, diamonds, gold, copper, and palm oil. 2. Desire for new markets: As industrial production increased, European powers needed new markets to sell their goods. Africa, with its vast population and potential consumers, presented a lucrative opportunity for trade expansion. 3. Search for investments: European capitalists were eager to invest in Africa, hoping to establish profitable enterprises, such as mining, plantations, and infrastructure development.

Political Factors: 1. Competition among European powers: European nations engaged in a race to colonize Africa, driven by a desire to outdo rival powers and expand their territories. 2. Nationalism: Imperialism was seen as a symbol of national pride and strength. Acquiring colonies in Africa, especially in the scramble for Africa that occurred in the late 19th century , demonstrated a nation’s power and influence on the global stage. 3. Strategic interests: European powers established colonies in Africa for strategic military purposes, such as securing naval bases or gaining control over key trade routes.

Social Factors: 1. Missionary zeal: European missionaries sought to spread Christianity and convert Africans to their faith. This missionary zeal became intertwined with colonialism, providing a moral justification for European powers to intervene and establish control over African territories. 2. Social Darwinism: The prevalent belief in Social Darwinism, which emphasized the superiority of Western civilization, fueled a sense of racial and cultural superiority among Europeans. This ideology provided a justification for imperialistic endeavors in Africa as a means to “civilize” and “tame” African societies.

Imperialism in Africa during the 19th century was driven by economic ambitions, political rivalries, and ideological beliefs of European powers. The exploitation of African resources, establishment of trade markets, and assertion of control were all key motives for imperialism in this era.

Frequently Asked Questions

What were the main motivations behind 19th century european imperialism in africa.

The main motivations behind 19th century European imperialism in Africa were:

1. Economic Factors: European powers saw Africa as a source of valuable natural resources, such as rubber, diamonds, gold, and timber. They also wanted access to new markets to sell their goods and increase their profits.

2. Strategic Interests: European nations sought to establish colonies in Africa to secure strategic naval bases and trading posts. This would enable them to control important sea routes and protect their interests in other parts of the world.

3. Competition between European Powers: There was intense rivalry among European nations during the 19th century. Acquiring colonies in Africa became a way to assert their dominance over other European powers and expand their empires.

4. Cultural and Civilizing Mission: Some Europeans believed that it was their duty to bring civilization, Christianity, and modernity to what they perceived as “backward” societies in Africa. This notion of a “civilizing mission” served as a justification for imperialistic actions.

5. National Prestige and Pride: Owning colonies in Africa gave European nations a sense of national pride and enhanced their status on the global stage. It was seen as a measure of power and influence.

6. Scientific Exploration and Adventure: The 19th century was also marked by a spirit of exploration and adventure. European explorers and scientists viewed Africa as a continent full of mysteries and untapped knowledge, leading to expeditions to study its geography, flora, fauna, and cultures.

It is important to note that these motivations were often intertwined and varied among the different European powers involved in Africa at the time.

How did European colonial powers justify their control and exploitation of African territories during the 19th century?

During the 19th century, European colonial powers justified their control and exploitation of African territories through various justifications. One major argument put forth was that they were bringing civilization and progress to the supposedly “backward” African societies. European powers claimed that they were introducing modern technology, education, and infrastructure to improve the lives of Africans.

Another justification was the idea of religious and moral superiority. European colonial powers often portrayed themselves as bearers of Christianity and believed that it was their duty to spread their faith to other parts of the world. They saw African societies as heathen and in need of salvation, which further legitimized their imperialistic actions.

Economic factors also played a significant role in justifying European control over Africa. The continent was rich in natural resources such as diamonds, gold, rubber, and ivory, which the colonial powers sought to exploit for their own economic gain. They argued that their presence was essential for tapping into these resources and promoting international trade.

Racial beliefs and theories of the time further contributed to the justification of European control over Africa. Many Europeans held racist views, considering themselves superior to Africans based on notions of white superiority and African inferiority. These views were used to justify the subjugation and exploitation of African people.

Lastly, international competition among European powers fueled the drive for colonial expansion. As European nations vied for dominance and sought to expand their empires, they claimed control over African territories to secure strategic advantages and assert their global influence.

Overall, European colonial powers justified their control and exploitation of African territories in the 19th century through claims of bringing civilization, religious and moral superiority, economic motives, racial beliefs, and international competition.

What were the economic, social, and political impacts of 19th century imperialism on African societies?

The economic, social, and political impacts of 19th-century imperialism on African societies were profound and far-reaching.

Economically, African societies experienced significant exploitation and plundering of their resources by imperial powers. European countries sought to extract valuable minerals, such as gold and diamonds, as well as agricultural products like rubber and palm oil from Africa. This extraction of resources led to the depletion of local economies and disrupted traditional industries, as the colonizers often prioritized exporting raw materials over developing local manufacturing and trade. The unequal trade practices imposed by the imperial powers further exacerbated economic inequalities and hindered the development of sustainable economic growth in Africa.

Socially, imperialism had a devastating impact on African societies. The forced labor and harsh working conditions imposed by the colonizers led to the loss of lives and the destruction of communities. Additionally, the imposition of colonial rule disrupted traditional social structures and undermined indigenous cultural practices. Many indigenous populations faced discrimination, segregation, and marginalization in their own lands, and their social fabric was torn apart.

Politically, imperialism reshaped the political landscape of Africa. Colonial powers established direct rule or exerted indirect control through puppet governments, effectively stripping Africans of their self-governance and autonomy. The imposition of foreign political systems disregarded local institutions and traditions, often resulting in widespread resistance and conflicts. The arbitrary drawing of colonial borders without regard for ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions created long-lasting political tensions and conflicts, which persist to this day.

19th-century imperialism in Africa had immense economic, social, and political impacts. It exploited African resources, disrupted traditional industries, and created economic inequalities. Socially, it caused loss of life, cultural erosion, and societal fragmentation. Politically, it dismantled indigenous governance structures, imposed foreign rule, and sowed the seeds of ongoing conflicts. These legacies continue to shape the realities faced by African societies today.

The 19th century witnessed a significant wave of imperialism in Africa. This period marked a crucial turning point in the history of Africa as European powers sought to expand their empires and exploit the vast resources and potential markets that the continent had to offer. The Scramble for Africa , characterized by colonial rivalries and aggressive conquests, led to the carving up of the continent and the imposition of European control over African territories.

Imperialism in Africa during the 19th century had far-reaching consequences for both the colonizers and the colonized. European powers, such as Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium, established colonies and protectorates across the continent, exploiting Africa’s natural resources and establishing profitable trade routes. This imperial expansion also resulted in the introduction of Western cultural, social, and political influences, which would shape the future trajectory of African societies.

However, it is important to acknowledge the detrimental effects of 19th century imperialism on Africa. The imposition of colonial rule disrupted existing socio-political structures and traditional economies, leading to the exploitation and impoverishment of African populations. Moreover, the legacy of imperialism can still be felt today, with issues such as border conflicts, ethnic tensions, and economic disparities being direct consequences of this era.

As we reflect on the 19th century imperialism in Africa, it is crucial to recognize the complex nature of this historical period. While European powers may have viewed their actions as driven by notions of progress and civilization, it is imperative to remember the human cost that was incurred in the pursuit of colonial domination.

In studying the impact of 19th century imperialism in Africa, we are reminded of the importance of understanding historical events within their specific contexts. The legacy of colonialism continues to shape contemporary Africa, and recognizing this historical dimension is essential for fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the region’s present challenges and opportunities.

Ultimately, the era of 19th century imperialism in Africa remains a pivotal chapter in global history, with profound implications for both the colonizers and the colonized. It serves as a reminder of the power dynamics that shaped the world during this period and the lasting effects that continue to influence Africa’s development today.

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Imperialism and socialism in the context of Africa

Please note: This topic's content was written in 2003 and is part of the old curriculum content, we have modified it slightly to fit the new curriculum but we will be further updating the content in the coming months.

Many countries in the world experienced imperialism when they were taken over and ruled by a more powerful country. The main motive for imperialism was to obtain and control a supply of raw materials for industries. This meant that a weaker country with abundant natural resources would be colonised. Imperialists were often brutal in the way they treated the indigenous population. Sometimes they chose a less aggressive approach, obtaining the co-operation of the local people and working with their traditional rulers and social and political structures and practices.

This section is quite long so we have broken it into two pages: Defining Imperialism

In the late 18th century, life in Europe and America changed dramatically. Revolutions in America and France ushered in a new political order. The Industrial Revolution in Britain modernised farming, the processing of raw materials and manufacturing of goods. Later industrialisation spread to Europe and to the USA. Economic progress came at the cost of rapid urbanisation and social problems. Industrialisation also influenced political change. Britain developed into a democracy as a result. Industrialisation created a huge demand for raw materials and led to the colonisation of Africa and Asia for these resources. Industrialisation and technological progress boosted European and American confidence, and national pride. They became convinced that they were superior. Their lust for power climaxed in the two World Wars of the 20th century.

The word imperialism comes from the term empire. Imperialism refers to the practice of domination of one country by another in order to expand territory, power and influence. It usually carries with it the idea of cultural superiority on the part of the imperialist, judging the way of life, traditions and beliefs of those colonised as inferior and worthy of replacement:

"Imperialism, as distinct from colonialism, refers to political/cultural/economic rule over indigenous people transforming their ideas, institutions, and material culture (i.e., goods)." - Source: www.bu.edu

Imperialism takes the form of political control and creating economic dependence. In Europe, the period of imperialism coincided with growing nationalism and unification when previously divided political units were united under a single monarchy. Unification allowed for empire building because people were gathered under a monarchy that claimed the right to rule them. Examples are German and Italian unification. Towards the end of the 19th century, imperialism became a policy of colonial expansion pursued by different European powers. The Prime Minister of France, Jules Ferry in his justification of this policy told his parliament that:

"I repeat that the superior races [European] have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races [non Europeans]...." Source: www.fordham.edu

France and Britain saw imperialism as a way of carrying out their responsibility to civilise non-European societies. Other imperialists believed imperialism was necessary for their country's economic growth. They argued that Europe's high import tariffs (government fees allowing foreign traders to bring in goods for sale) made it difficult to access customers and markets there. They had no choice but to look for other markets outside Europe. Lord Lugard of Britain said that:

"It is sufficient to reiterate here that, as long as our policy is one of free trade, we are compelled to seek new markets; for old ones are being closed to us by hostile tariffs, and our great dependencies, which formerly were the consumers of our goods, are now becoming our commercial rivals." Source: www.fordham.edu

Lugard further justified the policy of colonial expansion by saying that the benefits were not limited to Britain. Colonies would gain access to superior European goods and influence. The Scramble for Africa in the 1880s to 1900 was motivated by these ideas.

Imperialist ambitions in Africa were boosted by the expansion of competitive trade in Europe. The main aim was to secure commercial and trade links with African societies and protect those links from other European competitors. Europe established trade relations with African rulers and encouraged them to trade with them exclusively. European traders were at first not interested in expanding into the interior of Africa. As long as African rulers assured them of a supply of slaves from the interior, they felt no need to expand into the interior. The rapid expansion of industries made European countries look to African for a supply of cheap raw materials and (slave) labour. West Africa was particularly important for the development of industries in Europe. The production of African palm oil used as industrial oil was in high demand for European industries. Greed for ever-greater profits meant intensifying and expanding industrial production. European countries realised that by taking control of African territories they could secure a very cheap supply of raw materials that would ensure industrial success and overall economic prosperity. Colonial governments organised agricultural production in the colonies to match the demand for raw materials in Europe.

Imperial expansion of Europe into the African interior saw many African farmers forced off their land and turned into farm labourers on white-owned plantations, where they were usually subject to cruel exploitative practices. European governments encouraged their citizens to become permanent settlers in their African colonies, providing them with farming land. The loss of land caused much resentment among African people. Those who remained on their land and plantations found themselves forced to farm cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, coffee and sugar that were important for European industries instead of their traditional staple foods in order to survive. The price they were paid for these harvests was also very low especially when compared with the selling price of it after processing in Europe. It is not surprising then that early resistance to colonial rule in Africa revolved around the use of land and its restoration to its traditional owners.

Not all European countries had imperial ambitions for Africa. It was only the major powers in Europe that competed for the control of Africa. These were Britain, France, and Germany and the weaker powers of Spain, Portugal and Italy who had very small possessions in Africa. Britain and France were at the forefront of imperialism in Africa. These two countries were in competition with each other to dominate European politics and economics. They each aimed to beat the other through vying for greater control of Africa and thus her natural resources and labour supply. They also claimed exclusive trading rights with their colonies. These practices guaranteed them markets outside Europe for the sales of surplus goods and led to the practice of dumping. Dumping refers to the practice of offloading goods at very low prices to crush local competition for customers. African producers could not match these prices especially in the absence of similar government support and so they were unable to withstand European competition. This undermined the development of African industries and wealth and locked the continent into an unfair economic relationship with Europe in which African producers were barely able to survive by supplying cheap cash crops and primary goods. Moreover, African countries became dependent on European aid and loans, a state of affairs that remains today. Many African countries have been crippled by the burden of repayment of these loans.

The map shows how major imperialists, England and France used Africa to extend their competition for dominance in Europe. As the map shows, England came to be a dominant power in southern Africa, with only two Portuguese and French colonies in the region. France took control of most parts of West Africa.

Colonial Rule

Colonial rule was the result of competition among European countries for control of African resources. In the beginning, control was limited to colonial authorities securing the loyalty of African chiefs and kings. This meant that African chiefs would trade only with their colonial government. Towards the end of the 19th century colonial governments began to play a more active role in the affairs of African societies. Different colonial governments adopted different methods of rule.

Towards the end of the 19th Century and during the early 20th Century most African countries were under colonial rule except for Liberia and Ethiopia. Colonial rule refers to the conquest and capture of foreign territories in order to expand power. Colonisation of African countries by European powers, like Britain and France was used to protect their trade ambitions and led to exploitation of Africa. European countries used colonies to supply their industries with raw materials. Britain charged other European countries taxes for trading in their colonies as part of its economic competition. Colonial rule also ensured that European manufactured goods would have a ready market in Africa. Countries that had colonies in Africa were:

In terms of governing their colonies, these countries developed different systems of rule. The British government was famous for its indirect rule system that it introduced in many of its colonies. The French and other European governments like Portugal and Belgium practised direct colonial rule. The two systems were very different and as a result had different effects on African societies.

British Colonial Rule

The British system of indirect rule simply meant that power over colonies would be exercised through indigenous political structures. These structures which is related to a customary law were preserved and allowed to continue. In the early years of colonial rule, local rulers were still powerful and they were able to maintain the integrity of their political structures and system of government. To a large extent ordinary people did not suffer or feel the impact of colonial rule, and for many there was a little change.

This did not mean that African rulers were free to behave as if nothing had changed with colonisation. The British government introduced policies to limit local rulers power to govern their societies. For example, chiefs lost their authority to sentence anyone to death. Crimes requiring a death penalty were given to the magistrate who applied British law to judge the merits of the case. Chiefs were also forced to give up their support by a military unit made up of volunteers.

Chiefs were only allowed to rule in accordance with customary laws. However, in some cases the British government introduced new laws and forced chiefs to pass them as customary laws. For example, they introduced a Hut Tax to increase revenues to colonial governments. This tax was charged on every one who owned a hut, poor or rich. The tax was not a customary law, but it was portrayed as a customary practice by the British colonial governments.

French Colonial Rule

French and Portuguese colonies were ruled differently. Unlike the British system, the French and Portuguese gave a role to local African leaders preferring to adopt a system of direct rule. Colonies were treated as if they were extensions of the two European states. For example, French colonies were treated as French departments. The French government did not include any African rulers. They were stripped of all their powers and the people were ruled directly by French colonial officers often with a military background. These colonial officers replaced African rulers because most areas were divided into districts and departments. The division of French colonies into districts and departments did not take into consideration existing boundaries of different ethnic groups.

Whereas the British policy was based on the separation of races and preserving the culture or identities of African societies, the French policy was based on inclusion. Their policy was to encourage Africans to become French in every sense of the word. This policy was part of expanding French civilization to African people. However, this policy did not mean that African people in French colonies were treated with equality. Their inclusion into French societies was based on inequality between the French people and colonised Africans.

Portuguese Colonial Rule

The Portuguese introduced the prazo system. The prazo is a Portuguese system of land grants that was introduced in the colonies. It was a mixture of local political structures and a Portuguese political system. It was not an indirect rule system because land was taken from African rulers and given to Portuguese settlers. The control of land gave Portuguese the power to control African people. Because Portuguese rule was very weak, Portuguese holders of these land grants (prazo) legitimised their control of land by marrying into African royal families. These Portuguese rulers called themselves chiefs (like African chiefs) and ruled like African chiefs.

The prazo system was adopted largely because the Portuguese government was a weak colonial power as compared to other colonial powers. The Portuguese did not have the wealth required to administer their colonies. As a result, Portuguese colonies were the least developed colonies in Africa. They had to adapt their colonial rule to the African context.

Belgian Colonial Rule

In Rwanda, the Belgians used an indirect rule system. Instead of accommodating all traditional authorities within their colonial system, they favoured one group, the Tutsis. They used the Tutsis to control other groups in Rwanda. The Congo was ruled as the personal property of King Leopold II. Belgian colonial rule was characterised by the most cruel and exploitative treatment of the local people. People were forced to work and those who refused to carry out their duties had their hands chopped off.

German Colonial Rule

German colonial rule was also based on direct rule. However, there was no attempt to turn Africans into Germans. German colonial rule lasted for a brief period as Germany lost her colonial possessions after the First World War. Her colonies were mandated to British and French colonies.

Italian Colonial Rule

Italy was the latecomer in the colonisation of Africa, becoming involved only after the Italian unification of 1870. By this time other European countries had already claimed most parts of Africa. The Italian government developed a centralised administration with the aim of sending Italians to live in the colonies. The other reason for Italian colonialism was to show old European countries that Italy was also a strong nation. In an attempt to prove this, Italy attempted to colonise Ethiopia. The Ethiopians defeated and humiliated the Italians in the Battle of Adowa.

Spanish Colonial Rule

Spain had only two colonies in Africa, Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara. These colonies were underdeveloped as compared to those of the European powers.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Imperialism — The Causes of Imperialism in Africa

The Causes of Imperialism in Africa

• Categories: African American Imperialism

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Words: 739 |

Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 739 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Hook Examples for Imperialism Essay

• Conquering Nations, Forging Empires: Step into the era of imperialism, where nations extended their dominion across continents, reshaping the world map and altering the course of history.
• The Dark Side of Empire Building: Delve into the hidden atrocities and ethical dilemmas of imperialism, unearthing the untold stories of oppression, exploitation, and cultural erosion.
• Explorers or Exploiters? Challenge the notion of imperial explorers as heroic adventurers, and examine their role as agents of exploitation, transforming indigenous societies in their quest for wealth and power.
• Imperialism’s Legacy: A World Transformed: Trace the enduring impact of imperialism on contemporary geopolitics, economics, and global relations, highlighting the far-reaching consequences of past empires.
• Resisting Imperial Forces: Uncover the narratives of resistance against imperial powers, where marginalized communities and leaders fought for their sovereignty and cultural preservation.

Works Cited

• Gallagher, J., & Robinson, R. (1953). The imperialism of free trade. The Economic History Review, 6(1), 1-15.
• Hobson, J. A. (1902). Imperialism: A Study. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Hochschild, A. (1999). King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Mariner Books.
• Osterhammel, J. (2014). The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton University Press.
• Headrick, D. R. (2010). Technology: A World History. Oxford University Press.
• Conrad, J. (1899). Heart of Darkness. Blackwood’s Magazine.
• DuBois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Cain, P. J., & Hopkins, A. G. (2001). British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914. Routledge.
• MacKenzie, J. M. (1984). The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism. Manchester University Press.
• Davidson, B. (1991). The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. Three Continents Press.

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The US Plan to Outsource Its Imperialism in Haiti to Kenya

The us has long outsourced meddling in haiti to global south countries. recently kenya has agreed to take over leading a us-backed multinational police intervention there — justifying its own “stabilization” mission with pan-africanist rhetoric..

O n May 23, President Joe Biden will host Kenyan president William Ruto at the White House for a state visit that marks the sixtieth anniversary of US-Kenyan diplomatic relations. This gathering (the first such visit by an African head of state since 2008 ) is expected to coincide with the formal launch of the US-backed, Kenyan-led multinational police intervention in Haiti, signaling — in the words of White House press secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre — that “ African leadership is essential to addressing global priorities .”

As far as the plan to “stabilize” Haiti is concerned, the US-Kenya alliance represents a convergence of strategic interests between the United States as an imperial power and Kenya as an increasingly assertive player in the Global South. Given the widely criticized history of imperial meddling in Haiti, the Biden administration has sought to avoid being seen to play a direct role in the most recent plan to intervene in the country (a plan that is dominated by US concerns about migration rather than the well-being of Haiti’s people).

By outsourcing the mission to Kenya, the Biden administration hopes to convince the American public that the United States is not committing itself in yet another foreign military occupation, and to persuade Haitian citizens — much as it did in 2004 when Brazil agreed to lead the UN stabilization mission known as MINUSTAH — that the interveners are comrades rather than colonizers. Strategically downplayed is the fact that (along with at least $300 million in financial backing ) the United States will be providing logistical support to the mission in Haiti, including intelligence sharing, communications, and air power — meaning that this is as much a US-led mission as it is a Kenyan-led one.

The Biden administration has already rewarded Kenya with a five-year defense cooperation agreement designed to bolster the country’s security capabilities in East Africa, including its ongoing military campaign against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab. But Kenya’s calculations extend beyond crass materialism and a desire to please its more powerful ally. Like other Global South leaders, including his own predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta, President Ruto has recognized that security is a terrain on which to showcase Kenyan leadership more broadly.

In 2021, for example, the Kenyan military established an office of strategic communications with the explicit goal of shaping public opinion of the Kenya Defence Forces, whose collusion with al-Shabaab in the illicit trade of charcoal and sugar had garnered critical scrutiny . That same year, Kenyan visual production company Foxton Media released its first full-length feature film, a military action thriller called Mission to Rescue . In line with the company’s objective of highlighting the successes of the country’s security bodies, the film extols the bravery and sacrifice of Kenyan special operations forces in this fictionalized account of a mission to rescue a group of hostages from the hands of al-Shabaab. Garnering millions of online viewers in Kenya and beyond, the film won the ZIFF (Zanzibar International Film Festival) award as the best feature film in East Africa and was Kenya’s submission to the Academy Awards in 2022.

Kenya’s rise as the nominal leader of the Haitian mission therefore constitutes part of a wider effort to brand itself as an exceptional black nation that stands poised to help others rather than the more stereotypical “failed” state that exists at the mercy of (white) liberal interventionism. It is also symbolically suggestive of a less hierarchical, racially stratified world order wherein the image of the Euro-American “savior” is replaced with that of the black African “comrade.” Noteworthy here is that Kenyan leaders frame their decision to become involved in Haiti in the language of Pan-African solidarity rather than as a charitable offer of support — a reminder that invocations of Pan-Africanism, particularly when wielded by state officials, often work to obfuscate rather than center questions of power.

Kenya has been keen to “help” since at least September 2021, when Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta chaired the first ever Africa–Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit. Soon thereafter, during Kenya’s tenure as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, it hosted an Arria Formula meeting on the situation in Haiti. At that gathering, Kenya offered to train up to two thousand Haitian security personnel, health workers, teachers, and any other professions deemed vital to efforts to rebuild the country’s institutions.

Hidden behind the Kenyan government’s Pan-Africanist rhetoric is what will soon be the direct subjugation of the Haitian population at the hands of the Kenyan state, aided and abetted by the United States. Meanwhile, President Ruto is hoping to sideline growing frustrations among his own citizenry about spiraling debt and the skyrocketing costs of fuel and food, which in 2023 triggered mass protests where police arrested hundreds of protestors and killed thirty. Going forward, outside observers who might otherwise draw critical attention to the Kenyan state’s excessively violent attempts to manage the country’s troubling economic situation are likely to be more preoccupied with its new role in Haiti.

It is precisely the embrace of militarized solutions at home in Kenya that should inform our understanding of what to expect in Haiti. In the past two decades, the Kenyan state has capitalized on its role as a key US partner in the “war on terror” to train and equip — with US support — elite paramilitary units that are both ideologically oriented and materially equipped for war. The mainstream media’s generalized references to “the Kenyan police” when discussing the planned Haiti deployment entirely obscures Kenya’s ties to US empire. More concretely, it glosses over the turn to counterinsurgency strategy in places where the United States has not officially declared war. Analysts who have questioned whether the Kenyan police are capable of defeating Haiti’s “fearsome gangs” must also ask what constitutes success, given the large number of Kenyan Muslim families who have lost relatives to the deadly practices of Kenya’s combat-trained “rapid response” units in Somalia and within Kenya itself.

Indeed, in the context of ongoing efforts to quell al-Shabaab in East Africa, US military strategists conceive of Kenya — much like Haiti itself — as a “gray zone,” or a complex, volatile political environment that is in need of “stabilization.” It is precisely because the US military command for Africa (AFRICOM) has invested years of time and money to cultivate trusted partners within the Kenyan security establishment that the US Institute of Peace proclaimed that the country “has extensive experience in these kinds of gray-area operations and their personnel will be a quick study on what is required to succeed.” Put simply, Kenya’s brutal policing at home and in its own backyard has served as an apprenticeship for its interventions abroad.

Let us be clear: the seemingly innocuous language of “stabilization” is designed to distract our attention from the fact that Kenyan police (likely in direct communication with US military and intelligence operatives) will soon launch mass pacification efforts with potentially deadly consequences for the people of Haiti. Strategic analysts following the situation on the ground speak openly about the need for a militarized response to combat what they characterize as a full-blown insurgency.

Much like the ongoing — undeclared — war against al-Shabaab in East Africa, the human impact of this intervention will undoubtedly extend beyond the geography of Haiti itself. Indeed, given the very real economic challenges that Ruto faces back home in Kenya along with his continued thirst for international support and acclaim, there is a very real possibility that the Kenyan state — like Brazil before it — intends to use Haiti as a laboratory for its own future pacification efforts at home and abroad.

Global South states like Haiti have historically served as laboratories for Euro-American imperial powers to test new techniques of control. But the United States’ cynical embrace of Kenya as the purported Pan-African “face” of intervention is a sign of the changing nature of imperialism. To understand these transformations, we must be attentive to both the domestic politics of countries in the Global South, and the transactional relationships they are able to form with the United States in order to advance their own agendas.

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There’s a New Covid Variant. What Will That Mean for Spring and Summer?

Experts are closely watching KP.2, now the leading variant.

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By Dani Blum

For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases . But now, an offshoot variant called KP.2 is taking off. The variant, which made up just one percent of cases in the United States in mid-March, now makes up over a quarter.

KP.2 belongs to a subset of Covid variants that scientists have cheekily nicknamed “FLiRT,” drawn from the letters in the names of their mutations. They are descendants of JN.1, and KP.2 is “very, very close” to JN.1, said Dr. David Ho, a virologist at Columbia University. But Dr. Ho has conducted early lab tests in cells that suggest that slight differences in KP.2’s spike protein might make it better at evading our immune defenses and slightly more infectious than JN.1.

While cases currently don’t appear to be on the rise, researchers and physicians are closely watching whether the variant will drive a summer surge.

“I don’t think anybody’s expecting things to change abruptly, necessarily,” said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago. But KP.2 will most likely “be our new norm,’” he said. Here’s what to know.

The current spread of Covid

Experts said it would take several weeks to see whether KP.2 might lead to a rise in Covid cases, and noted that we have only a limited understanding of how the virus is spreading. Since the public health emergency ended , there is less robust data available on cases, and doctors said fewer people were using Covid tests.

But what we do know is reassuring: Despite the shift in variants, data from the C.D.C. suggests there are only “minimal ” levels of the virus circulating in wastewater nationally, and emergency department visits and hospitalizations fell between early March and late April.

“I don’t want to say that we already know everything about KP.2,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System. “But at this time, I’m not seeing any major indications of anything ominous.”

Protection from vaccines and past infections

Experts said that even if you had JN.1, you may still get reinfected with KP.2 — particularly if it’s been several months or longer since your last bout of Covid.

KP.2 could infect even people who got the most updated vaccine, Dr. Ho said, since that shot targets XBB.1.5, a variant that is notably different from JN.1 and its descendants. An early version of a paper released in April by researchers in Japan suggested that KP.2 might be more adept than JN.1 at infecting people who received the most recent Covid vaccine. (The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.) A spokesperson for the C.D.C. said the agency was continuing to monitor how vaccines perform against KP.2.

Still, the shot does provide some protection, especially against severe disease, doctors said, as do previous infections. At this point, there isn’t reason to believe that KP.2 would cause more severe illness than other strains, the C.D.C. spokesperson said. But people who are 65 and older, pregnant or immunocompromised remain at higher risk of serious complications from Covid.

Those groups, in particular, may want to get the updated vaccine if they haven’t yet, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. The C.D.C. has recommended t hat people 65 and older who already received one dose of the updated vaccine get an additional shot at least four months later.

“Even though it’s the lowest level of deaths and hospitalizations we’ve seen, I’m still taking care of sick people with Covid,” he said. “And they all have one unifying theme, which is that they’re older and they didn’t get the latest shot.”

The latest on symptoms and long Covid

Doctors said that the symptoms of both KP.2 and JN.1 — which now makes up around 16 percent of cases — are most likely similar to those seen with other variants . These include sore throat, runny nose, coughing, head and body aches, fever, congestion, fatigue and in severe cases, shortness of breath. Fewer people lose their sense of taste and smell now than did at the start of the pandemic, but some people will still experience those symptoms.

Dr. Chin-Hong said that patients were often surprised that diarrhea, nausea and vomiting could be Covid symptoms as well, and that they sometimes confused those issues as signs that they had norovirus .

For many people who’ve already had Covid, a reinfection is often as mild or milder than their first case. While new cases of long Covid are less common now than they were at the start of the pandemic, repeat infections do raise the risk of developing long Covid, said Fikadu Tafesse, a virologist at Oregon Health & Science University. But researchers are still trying to determine by how much — one of many issues scientists are trying to untangle as the pandemic continues to evolve.

“That’s the nature of the virus,” Dr. Tafesse said. “It keeps mutating.”

Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times. More about Dani Blum