Colonisation
Africa
The colonisation of Africa especially takes place in the last part of the 19th century and early 20th century, but Europeans settled in Africa already prior to the 19th century. The portguese, while exploring new trade routes to India, created trade posts and established limited settlements on the African coast, like the Congo estuary, Mombasa, and West Africa. The portugese colonial empire declined from the 16th century but remained until the 1960s. Some of their settlements were early on taken over by Arab kingdoms.
The Cape Colony was created as a way station for the ships travelling over Africa in 1652. It became British during the napoleonic wars.
In West Africa Gambia & Senegal were colonised by British and French. There aren’t necessarily big settlements, but they are mainly used for the slave trade.
Mainland Africa was not colonised by Europeans until the late 19th century. This is mainly because there were no navigable rivers, and rivers were the highways of European colonisation. In north America the Mississippi worked in the same manner. It was too difficult to travel without navigable rivers – rivers without rapids and waterfalls. African mainland was also a kind of white man’s grave due to malaria.
North Africa
Algeria hade been part of the Ottoman empire, but was at the far outskirts of it. It became due to this more or less autonomous from the 18th century onwards. It became a kind of semi-autonomous state. It fell into the interest of the French in the early 19th century. Initially traders arrived in Algers, and later they fortified their trade post. This did not please the ruler of Algier, the Dey. He invited the French consul, and the discussion heated up. This led to the so-called ’fan affair’ when the Dey smacked the French consul with his fan. This was the trigger for the French invasion of Algier in June 1830.
Charles X who returned to power after Napoleon was interested in invading Algiers in order to increase his own prestige. It became a way to mobilise the French people in order to draw attention from their real problems. This led to a revolution instead where the Orlean dynasty takes over. He continued occupying Algier though, so in regards to this not much changed. The colony ends up constituting the northern coastal strip. Not the Sahara which is economically inert at this point.
During occupation Algeria saw consistent resistance against the French. Abd al-Qadir fought several wars against the French. In 1839, he occupied 2/3 of the Algerian territory. It took decades to occupy it consistently. In 1840 1/3 of the French army had to be sent to Algeria to quell the rebellion.
During the Regime de Sabre with Napoleon III there were continued rebellions, even up until the third republic. Algeria was after this not considered a colony but an integral part of France. Algeria was divided into provinces just like any other provinces in mainland France. Algiers, Oran & Constantine. As such France would always resist leaving Algeria fervently. Many French, because of this, would settle there. Sometimes it is even called a white settler colony in the same league as Australia. Of course the French were always in minority. Though Algeria saw way more Europeans than other parts of Africa. On the eve of independence 10% of the population were French, pied noirs – black-boots wearing soldiers.
Tunisia
Became largely autonomous in similar ways as Algiers. Tunisia was awared to France in 1878; during the Berlin conference, not to be confused with the Congress of Berlin 1884-1885. It came after a war with the ottoman empire and Russia. It was won by Russia, and led to a peace treaty that the russians imposed on the Sultan, the treaty of San Stefano, in which a new Bulgarian state was created out of former ottoman territory. The state stretched from the black sea to the agean sea. It included all of Macedonia. It was slavic and orthodox and functioned as a vassal state of the russians. This allowed the other european states to start partitioning the ottoman empire. 20 years earlier they had supported the ottoman empire, but now saw the beginning of its complete destruction.
The russians were trying to increase influence in the Bosporus. They wanted to avoid Russia becoming too dominant in the region. The Russians were naming cities in the newly conquered areas after antique names. They wanted to reestablish the east-roman empire. It would however never go that far.
In the conference of Berlin they imposed on the Russians to accept a minor Bulgaria rather than the big Bulgaria initially stipulated. Instead they all claimed a part of the ottoman empire. Austria-Hungary received Bosnia. Russia as a compensation for accepting this reduction of Bulgaria received Basarabia and parts of the Caucusus. Britain received Cyprus, which became a british colony. Italy sadly got nothing. This made them very angry because they identified themselves wth ancient Rome. France got Tunisia, but they didn’t initially do much with it. They had had a bad experience in Mexico when Napoleon III intervened by putting Maximillian and Empress Charlotte on the Mexican throne, so they were uncertain what they could feasibly do in Tunisia at this time. Emperor Maximillian was executed.
In 1881, Tunisia was forced to become a French protectorate by Germany and Britain, they didn’t want the Italians to try to get a colony there.
Egypt
Would become a colony of Britain. From 1830 onwards Egypt had seen growing independence, and at the same time started seeing economic dependence on European trade.
After the French napoleonic campaign, Muhammad Ali fills the governmental vacuum in the area, a local official instead of an appointed ottoman governor. He was albanian. He proclaimed himself Viceroy of Egypt, and ruled it through the first half of the 19th century. Tried establishing a dynasty. He was succeeded by his heir Pasha Said, and Khediv Ismail. Their names are still present in parts of the Suez canal.
Muhammad Ali wanted to modernise Egypt. So he introduced cotton, replacing the standard economy with a cash-crop economy. This made the economies reliant on the Europeans for survival.
The Suez canal was initially built by both France and Britain. The britons were suspicious because it brought Asia closer in terms of travel time, so it may have jeopardised their position of control of Asia. The British objected. The French received a concession from Pasha Said, and Ferdinand De Lesseps completed the canal in 1869, with a lot of local casualties.
Parts of Cairo today are quite similar to the Paris boulevards, they had the same architects.
The Egyptian government started having growing debt, so sold their share of the canal to the British. In 1867, the year after, they went bankrupt anyways because of the drop of the price of cotton.
Paris and London then created a foundation for Egyptian public debt. This means that they took control of all of the Egyptian finances, and increasingly got involved in Egyptian politics. They more or less ruled together at that time, a condominium. European politicians were taking control over the Egyptian state. They even interfered in the dynastic politics and Khediv Ismail was dismissed and succeeded by his son Taufik. This growing interference in Egypt together with the economic crisis led to an insurrection led by Ahmed ’Arabi. It was an insurrection against foreign interference. The insurrection was defeated by the British army. After this, they proclaimed a proper protecorate over Egypt. They presented it as something temporary in order to arrange the finances and stabilise the government. However, in the following years, this provisional character becomes more and more ingrained. In the end Egypt was controlled until its proper independence.
All of Sudan, which means black in arabic, was conquered by the local arab rulers at this time too. The Brits then went furthe rand established the province of Equatoria, the southernmost part of south sudan.
Prior to the insurrection of Ahmed ’Arabi, the sudanese were protesting the British presence in their country. This led to a third insurrection. This is the so-called Mahdi. Mahdi is a title meaning redeemer of the islamic faith. Muhammad Ahmed proclaimed himself Mahdi in 1881. The Mahdi succeds in taking control of the whole of what is now Sudan, and establishes a momentary kingdom – the Mahdi Empire. The brits react by sending a military officer with prior reputation, Charles Gordon – who is also called Chinese Gordon, because he dressed like Chinese and had crushed a major rebellion in China. In 1884 he went Khartoum to destroy the Mahdi rebellion, but failed and died. He became a martyr of British imperialism. He is remembered as a hero in British collective memory. At the same time they were fighting a war in Afghanistan. They leave the Mahdi in control until slightly later.
Congo
David Livingstone was a british missionary who went to South Africa in the 1840s. He was obsessed with exploration to such an extent that his wife left him. He especially explored the region of the Zambezi river. This is the period during which he was the first white to see the Victoria falls, named after his queen. The Zambezi river turned out to be innavigable. So Livingstone found a new purpose and went on the search for the source of the Nile. This had intrigued Europeans for ages. Livingstone instead fell ill and had to return to Ujiji near lake Tanganyika. People didn’t know if he was still alive. Newspapers funded another journalist to find him. This is the famous encounter between Stanley and Livingstone in Ujiji. They then continued exploring until Livingstone died two years later. Some years later he embarked on a second voyage, which would take 1002 days. Henry Morton Stanley would trace the cours eof the Congo river to the sea.
His travel account was read widely in Europe and the US. Some years later he embarked on a second voyage, which would take 1002 days. From Zanzibar to the Congo Estuary. He was hired by the Belgian king.
Belgium had previously had few colonial interest. He thought that Belgians were provincial and stupid and so lacked imperial ambitions. Belgium was not a trading country, but an industrial country. It lacked a navy with which to imperialise with. Leopold II tried to colonise a lot of different areas with his own capital, like Borneo and the Phillipines. He had also made a kind of Belgian communities in Guatemala in order to colonise it. These attempts failed.
In order to convince other european states of Congo, he presented his ambitious in Congo as being for science and philanthropy. First international conference of philanthropy in central africa took place in 1876.
A 4th important individual: Savorgnan de Brazza. He explores central africa in the same years. The north of the Congo estuary, Ogoué and Alima. Later he moves to the upper Congo which alarms Leopold because he wants to claim this area. De Brazza began concluding treaties with local leaders in the upper Congo in which those local leaders were ceding their territory to France. As such it was no longer about exploration but territorial claims. Because France agreed with De Brazza, in 1882 they ratified the treaties which led to French colonies in Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville.
This alarmed Leopold II, which made him apply the same tactics as the French on a larger scale with the AIC, no longer scientific but an international organisation. He wanted still to hide his personal ambitions.
The British followed the situation, and actually recognised Portugal’s claim to the estuary, since they had been present there since the late 16th century, they were also an ally of Britain.
Leopold II had to convince the other countries through the idea of a Free State. He convinced London to get control of the entire Congo river by promising Free trade on it. No taxes.