Max,+Joe+and+Daniel

Scramble for Africa: A period of time between the 1880’s and 1914 when multiple European imperialistic countries scrambled to get slaves and colonies established in Africa.
 * ** Sub-Saharan Africa **

Berlin Conference: Took place in 1884 and regulated European trade and colonization in Africa

More on the Berlin Conference: [|http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob45.html]

Leopold II: Was king of the Belgians and was remembered as the owner and founder of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken by the king.

More about Leopold II: []

David Livingstone: Was a Scottish explorer

Zulu: The largest of the South African ethnic groups at around 10.5 million people. Shaka: Was the Chief of the Zulu tribe and has been credited with uniting many of the Northern Nguni. He was called military guinness for his military reforms and innovations.

More about the Zulu Nation and Shaka: []

Boer War : When Dutch colonists went to South Africa in search of colonization. The British then came and tried to colonize them. It ended by Britain getting the taken colonies and the Boer received the Boer republic.

More on the Boer War:

Important dates for the scramble for africa. 1800s european imperial scramble for afica begins 1884-5 berlin confrence: intense rivalries among belgium france germany great britan italy spain and portugal for additional african territory and the ill defined boundaries of their various holdings instigate the berline conference

LINKS:
 * [|http://clem.mscd.edu/~tayljeff/lectures/NewImp.html]
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 * [|http://clem.mscd.edu/~tayljeff/lectures/NewImp.html]
 * [|http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob44.html]

//This led these nations into conflicts with native peoples and with each other.//


 * //Before 1880 only 10% of Africa was controlled by European Powers://** //colonies dotted along the coast of West Africa (from the defunct slave trade), settlements in southern Africa by Dutch, English & (long held) Portuguese, and Algeria in the north, conquered by the French.//


 * //By 1900 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained free of European control.//** //(Even the Afrikaner Republics in South Africa were conquered by the English in the infamous Boer War.)

The Boer War is very important in understanding exactly what happened when Britain attempted to conquer the colonies in the South of Sub-Saharan Africa. THERE WHERE TWO!! Britain lost the first, but one the second after three long years of fighting. in the end the divided the colonies and gave them limited self governing which then created part of the Union of South Africa.

Leopold II organized the Berlin Conference he eventually established the democratic republic of congo which was officially a belgium// colonie he infliceted great explotation and forced labor and worked many natives to death.

Livingstone was assigned to Kuruman by the LMS and sailed in December 1840, arriving at Moffat's mission, now part of South Africa, in July 1841. Upon arrival, Livingstone was disappointed at the unexpectedly small size of the village and an indigenous Christian population, after Moffat's twenty years of work, of only about forty communicants and a congregation of 350. Reasoning that conversions would be more likely if the missionaries were themselves indigenous converts, Livingstone rapidly attached himself to the plans of missionary Rogers Edwards to found a mission farther north in territory increasingly disturbed by traders, hunters, and African settlers.[|[8]] Setting up the new mission at Mabotswa among the Kgatla people in 1844, he was mauled by a lion which might have killed him if it had not been distracted by the African teacher Mebalwe, who was also badly injured. Both recovered but Livingstone's arm was partially disabled and caused him pain for the rest of his life.

TRIGGERS FOR THE SCRAMBLE:


 * The boom in exploration was triggered to a great extent by the creation of the African Association by wealthy Englishmen in 1788 (who wanted someone to 'find' the fabled city of [|Timbuktu] and the course of the Niger River). As the century moved on, the goal of the European explorer changed, and rather than traveling out of pure curiosity they started to record details of markets, goods, and resources for the wealthy philanthropists who financed their trips.
 * **Henry Morton Stanley** -- A naturalized American (born in Wales) who of all the explorers of Africa is the one most closely connected to the start of the Scramble for Africa. He is infamously known for his explorations on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold hired Stanley to obtain treaties with local chieftains along the course of the River Congo with an eye to creating his own colony. Stanley's work triggered a rush of European explorers, such as [|Carl Peters], to do the same for various European countries.


 * - The end of European trading in slaves left a need for commerce between Europe and Africa. Capitalists may have seen the light over slavery, but they still wanted to exploit the continent - new 'legitimate' trade would be encouraged. Explorers located vast reserves of raw materials, they plotted the course of trade routes, navigated rivers, and identified population centers which could be a market for manufactured goods from Europe. It was a time of plantations and cash crops, dedicating the region's workforce to producing rubber, coffee, sugar, palm oil, timber, etc for Europe. And all the more enticing if a colony could be set up which gave the European nation a monopoly.
 * **Medical Advances** -- Africa, especially the western regions, was known as the 'White Man's Grave' because of the danger of two diseases: malaria and yellow fever. During the eighteenth century only one in ten Europeans sent out to the continent by the Royal African Company survived. Six of the ten would have died in their first year. In 1817 two French scientists, Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, extracted quinine from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. It proved to be the solution to malaria; Europeans could now survive the ravages of the disease in Africa. (Unfortunately yellow fever continued to be a problem - and even today there is no specific treatment for the disease.)

Response by africans: Most Africans outside of South Africa were confronted only late in the 19th C; however, in this later period because of the frenzy of the Scramble, intrusion was often sudden, unexpected and overwhelming. In many cases, it must have been difficult for Africans to understand what was happening. With little knowledge of the outside world or of the forces with whom they were contending, they were at a severe disadvantage. As a result, some African responses were undoubtedly naive. - e.g., one thinks of Africans who were approached by someone with a treaty of ‘friendship ’ and agreeing to sign (being illiterate and not knowing what was going on in the scramble, what meaning could these pieces of paper have?). - however, this depiction of the ‘primitive, simple savages’ is frequently overdone. Many Africans were shrewd and news of what had happened to other African peoples often reached Africans before the white intruders did. To a considerable extent, the power disparities, plus the mania and obsessions of European states to acquire territories meant that on some levels African responses were largely irrelevant because subjugation took place regardless of what Africans did or did not do. It can be argued that the problem faced by Africans was analogous to that faced by Neville Chamberlain and others in the confrontation with Hitler and the fascist leaders. In the face of madness, how does one realise that reasonableness and logical approaches may make things worse? - of course, Africans did not know that before hand and many obviously had hopes of staving off conquest. In the end some groups of Africans who knew the fate of other African tribes where violent while others where naive to the Europeans facade of offers of peace treaties.
 * **Politics** -- After the creation of a unified Germany (1871) and Italy (a longer process, but its capital relocated to Rome also in 1871) there was no room left in Europe for expansion. Britain, France and Germany were in an intricate political dance, trying to maintain their dominance, and an empire would secure it. France, which had lost two provinces to Germany in 1870 looked to Africa to gain more territory. Britain looked towards Egypt and the control of the Suez canal as well as pursuing territory in gold rich southern Africa. Germany, under the expert management of Chancellor Bismarck, had come late to the idea of overseas colonies, but was now fully convinced of their worth.

Dates:
 * 1807:** Slavery abolished in British Empire.
 * 1814:** By 1814, the British had taken the Cape Colony from the Dutch East India Company and established a toehold in Southern Africa.
 * 1815:** British declare formal control of Cape Colony and increase British immigration in South Africa. Despite government resistance, Boers began to move inland in search of better land and, after 1815, to escape control by the British government.
 * c. 1816-28:** Shaka, Zulu chief, unifies Nguni peoples and forges an impressive fighting force, launching the //mfecane// (wars of crushing and wandering) against neighboring black Africans and white Europeans throughout southern Africa. Shaka was assassinated in 1828, but Zulu power continued to rise
 * 1822:** The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established on the west coast of Africa a colony that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia
 * 1850:**age of exploartion: Livingstone trekked across the African interior to discover lakes and waterfalls in the name of God and Queen Victoria.
 * 1860s:** In the 1860s, the French began to gain more territory in Africa
 * 1867:** The discovery of diamonds in the British Cape Colony
 * 1872:** Cape Colony in South Africa granted self-government by Britain.
 * 1877:** Britain annexed the Transvaal and enraged its Boer population
 * 1881:** The Boers invaded Natal and forced the British into recognizing Transvaal's independence. The events of 1880-81 are known as the First Boer War.
 * 1885:** The Berlin Conference
 * 1886:** saw the start of the Transvaal gold rush and the founding of Johannesburg. **This was a reminder that Africa's vast mineral wealth was of central importance to the Scramble for Africa.**
 * 1896:** Ethiopians under Emperor Menelik II successfully resist European conquest, annihilating Italians at the Battle of Adwa (or Aduwa). By 1914, only Ethiopia in the east and Liberia in the west remain independent of European colonial control.
 * 1899-1902:** The Second Boer War.
 * 1904:** The Germans drove 50,000 of the Herero people of Namibia into the desert to die.
 * 1910:** The Boers and Afrikaners gained control in the Union of South Africa's first 'general' election. Louis Botha became South Africa's first President.
 * 1912:** The South African Native Congress, later known as the ANC, was established in 1912 as an attempt to resist the white domination of its country. The ANC would finally succeed, 82 years later, in seeing the first democratically elected Black President of South Africa come to power. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated on 10th May 1994.

Boer War Pic: []

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