The Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa

The Scramble for Africa • The Scramble for Africa (or the Race for Africa) was the proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880 s and the start of World War I. • The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the transition from the "informal" imperialism of control through military influence and economic dominance to that of direct rule • Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely untouched by "informal imperialism" and "civilization, " was also attractive to Europe's ruling elites for economic and racial reasons. • During a time when Britain's balance of trade showed a growing deficit, with shrinking and increasingly protectionist continental markets due to the Long Depression (18731896), Africa offered Britain, Germany, France, and other countries an open market that would garner it a trade surplus: a market that bought more from the metropole than it sold overall. • Britain, like most other industrial countries, had long since begun to run an unfavorable balance of trade (which was increasingly offset, however, by the income from overseas investments).

The Scramble for Africa • European nations saw Africa as ripe for the taking. • Some Europeans argued that by colonizing Africa, they were also exporting civilization to a continent which they regarded as evolutionary backward and undeveloped. • It was a European responsibility to act as trustees of Africa until Africans were mature enough to govern themselves. However, colonization was in reality driven by commercial interests. • Europe would benefit enormously from its exploitation of Africa. The decolonization process would reveal the one-sidedness of colonial rule. • The departing colonial powers left behind economies that were designed to benefit themselves. Crops grown, for example, required processing in Europe. • The departing powers left behind few Africans equipped to lead their newly independent nations.