Grade 8 History Assessment
Grade 8: Term 3 - The scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa
Overview
This is the first half of term 3 for Grade 8 History, The Scramble for Africa: European Colonisation of Africa in the late 19th Century. There are 4 lessons included and the main foucs is on explaining, sholwing and listing. The learners will gained understadinging, memorising, application and appreciation of Africa in the past.
Introduction
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Link |
| Africa pre-colonisation 1800 | Task 1 |
| The Berlin Conference 1884 | Task 2 |
| Causes and Factors | Task 3 |
| Resources (Powerpoint, Activities and) | Resources |
Introduction
We will be looking at the European Colonisation of Africa from the 19th Century, It is important to note that:
Europeans began to explore the world, but they also began to colonise and conquer
Colonialism is the occupation and control of one nation by another.
Scramble means to compete frantically in order to get something others want
- By 1914- 7 countries (Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain) had helped themselves to the whole of Africa
Pre-Colonization Africa
- Pre-Colonization Africa
The European exploration and colonization of sub-Saharan Africa began only in the later 15th century with the Spanish and Portuguese voyages of discovery. In the 1490’s, Spanish explorers launched voyages across the Atlantic Ocean to the “New World”. The first voyage of Christopher Columbus to America was in 1490. At the same time, Portuguese explorers focused on sailing down the West African coast in hope of finding a sea route to India. The most famous and successful Portuguese explorers were Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama.
Around Africa, A.D. 1418-1498
Most pre-colonial African people lived relatively small clan or family units. There were a small number of African Empires where energetic rulers had united numerous clans into significant and powerful political units (Empires). Those Empires included the West African Empires like Ashanti, Old Oyo and Songhai; further south the Congo Empire and the Shona Empires of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe were dominant.
Map showing Africa 1590-1800. Showing the way in which Africa was divided before colonization.
The arrival of European traders after 1490 would significantly alter Africa as those traders because ambitious and turned to colonization. Thus the Empires identified above were all destroyed by the influence of European powers. Colonization of foreign territories required significant force destroy the local political structures. The European powers thus tried to avoid too much conflict between themselves (they did not want to fight each other and the colonized populations at the same time). The new Scramble for Africa of the 1880’s could have created massive conflict between the major European powers. The Berlin Conference of 1884 was thus convened to help avoid an open war between the European colonial powers.
The Berlin Conference 1884
2. The Berlin Conference
By the 1880’s there was growing trade between Europe and Africa. There was also more competition between Britain, France, Germany and Belgium to control this trade. In order to control this trade, in some parts of Africa, Euorpean countries were:
- Building railway lines to link trading posts to inland areas
- Signing treaties with African chiefs to gain control over trade sending troops to protect their trading interests
- Starting to take over some areas of land.
Some European leaders began to think that the competition over Africa might lead to war between them. To prevent this, Bismark, the leader of Germany, invited the European countries with interests in Africa to conference in Berlin in 1884. The aim of the conference was to discuss ways of dividing up Africa peacefully.
Source A: Cartoon of Bismarck cutting up a cake that represents Africa
https://static.dw.com/image/18277179_401.jpg
Representatives form 15 countries attended the Berlin Conference but not a single African leader was invited to attend. The leaders who were there decided that certain European countries could control parts of Africa.
The first meeting of the Berlin Conference 1884
http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/article/file%20attachment/wpe1.gif
The initial task of the conference was to agree that the Congo River and Niger River mouths and basins would be considered neutral and open to trade. Despite its neutrality, part of the Kongo Basin became a personal Kingdom (private property) for Belgium’s King Leopold II and under his rule, over half of the region’s population died. At the time of the conference, only the coastal areas of Africa were colonized by the European powers. At the Berlin Conference the European colonial powers scrambled to gain control over the Interior of the Continent. The conference lasted until February 26, 1885 – a three month period where colonial powers haggled over geometric boundaries in the interior of the continent, disregarding the cultural and linguistic boundaries already established by the Native Indigenous African population. What ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into fifty irregular countries.
Map of Africa representing European colonization of Africa
https://worldhistoryleverett.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/africaafterthescramble.jpg
The Causes and Factors of Colonization
- The Causes of Colonization:
Some of the reasons why European countries wanted colonies in Africa were linked to the Industrial Revolution:
1 | Africa was place where Europe could see products | Factories in Europe were producing so much that the people in Europe could not buy all of it. Factory owners saw Africa as a place where they could sell the products from their factories. The colonies became a large new market for the manufactured goods.
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2 | Africa was a place where Europe could get raw materials | Many of the raw materials needed by the new factories did not grow in Europe. Europeans hoped to find them or grow them in Africa. The products they wanted were things like vegetable oils for soap, sisal for making rope, rubber, tea, coffee, cocoa, groundnuts, cotton and sugar.
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3 | Africa was a place where Europe could get mineral wealth | After the discovery of diamonds and gold in the Southern Africa, Europeans hoped to find valuable minerals in other parts of Africa as well.
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4 | Investors could make money in Africa | Business people in Europe thought that colonies were good places to invest money. They believed they would make more profits by investing in new developments in Africa rather than in Europe. Investment in an area often led to colonization.
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5 | Colonies could provide food and space | One of the results of the Industrial Revolution was a big increase in the population of Europe. There was not enough food or jobs for all of them. European governments wanted colonies to that they could grow more food supplies. They also wanted to encourage people from Europe to go and live in these colonies. This would help with the overcrowding and unemployment in Europe. |
http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/article/file%20attachment/africa-powerpoint-map-natural-resources.png
Other reasons for colonisation:
The Industrial Revolution was not the only cause of the partition of Africa into colonies:
- At the time, European countries were proud of their growth and achievements. They competed for colonies, as a colonial empire was another way of showing their power. Sometimes they took over parts of Africa as colonies simply to prevent their rivals from doing so.
- European countries wanted some areas because of their strategic importance. This means that their position made them very valuable. An example is Egypt, after the Suez Canal was built, because it made it easier to reach Africa and Asia from Europe.
- Some colonies were established because of the actions of explorers and empire builders. An example is Cecil John Rhodes who wanted British control in Africa from the ‘Cape to Cairo’.
- Missionaries wanted to convert people to Christian religion. They thought that it would be easier to do this if there was law and order, so sometimes they encouraged their governments to take over an area.
(Bottaro et al p.119-121)
Source B
https://erenow.net/common/illustrated-history-of-railway/illustrated-history-of-railway.files/image190.jpg
- Factors Promoting the European Colonization of Africa;
The European countries were able to colonise African countries rapidly because there were rivalries between African leaders. These kings and chiefs were competing with each other to be the richest and most powerful within their tribes. During these rivalries, European leaders would take advantage of the situation and persuaded some leaders to be on their side to fight against other leaders. Natural disasters also played a big role in the rapid and easy colonisation of Africa. In 1895, a serious drought reached many regions in Africa which was caused by a sudden decline in rainfall. Hardly any crops were produced, and the food shortage which followed caused the death of many people and animals. The little crops that were produced were destroyed by a plague of locusts. In addition to this plague, the cattle plague broke out during the 1890’s which killed cattle, sheep and goats. This led to even more deaths of animals and people, and due to their physical and mental weakness, they were unable to fight against European powers.
European powers could easily take control of any source of land by using force and violence. They accomplished this by using more powerful weapons, and had the advantage of the newly invented machine gun called the Maxim gun which was invented in the 1880’s. This gun could fire eleven bullets per second, and outdid the weapons that the African forces had. African armies did not manage to get hold of European weapons because it was not sold to them. Thus Africans were at a military disadvantage. An outbreak of new diseases made an appearance during the late 1890’sand the first one was a range of smallpox epidemics. The Europeans who were already in Africa had developed immunity to these diseases due to past experiences of these outbreaks in Europe. The indigenous African population had no immunity or resistance to these diseases and thus weakened the African population. A large number of the African population thus died out, or became too weak to fight back.
Steam Boat showing better transport made colonisation possible
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Hermann_von_Wissmann_1910.jpg/450px-Hermann_von_Wissmann_1910.jpg
Maxim Machine Gun – a better more powerful weapon that gave them an advantage.
https://pdjeliclark.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/the-maxim-gun-the-explorer-h-m-stanley.jpg
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Resources
The answers are there to see if the learners have understood the work, and can be answered through the notes in each section and the powerpoint.
You can use the Powerpoint for each section. Then there an activity sheet that needs to be done for each section.
Below are the attached resources: