Civilisation Before Civilisation

Between the 1870s and 1900, Africa faced European imperialist aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual conquest and colonization. During the Berlin Conference of 1884, chaired by Otto von Bismarck of Germany, the Scramble for and partition of Africa was formalized. The diplomats in Berlin laid the rules of competition by which the great powers were to be guided in seeking colonies. The theory of effective occupation barked by evidence, was applied. European countries sent out agents to sign so-called treaties of protection with the leaders of African societies, states, kingdoms, decentralized societies, and empires. The differential interpretation of these treaties by the contending forces often led to conflict between both parties and eventually to military encounters. For Europeans, these treaties meant that Africans had signed away their sovereignties to European powers; but for Africans, the treaties were merely diplomatic and commercial friendship treaties. After discovering that they had in effect been defrauded and that the European powers now wanted to impose and exercise political authority in their lands, African rulers organized militarily to resist the seizure of their lands and the imposition of colonial domination. The European imperialist push into Africa was motivated by three main factors, economic, political, and social. It developed in the nineteenth century following the collapse of the profitability of the slave trade, its abolition and suppression, as well as the expansion of the European capitalist Industrial Revolution. The imperatives of capitalist industrialization including the demand for assured sources of raw materials, the search for guaranteed markets and profitable investment outlets spurred the European scramble and the partition and eventual conquest of Africa.