Colonialism
Congress of Berlin has reached some mythological dimensions; it is often said that Africa was divided there. What was actually settled was that Leopold got the Congo river on the condition of free trade. They also mainly agreed on the principles for how the colonisation of Africa was to take place. Not the actual territories themselves.
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you could claim land and inform other europeans, you could take it if no one else is there.
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if other europeans had claimed territory but were not doing anything there, you could take it.
The conference was not the end point but the starting point for the scramble of Africa.
Cape town
Initially just a waypoint for traders, the dutch farmers started moving further and further north and east. This went together with several wars. ’Kafir wars’.
Would eventually grow to become the only white settler colony in Africa. They becacame knows as boers, or afrikaners. They speak a variant of dutch now called Afrikaan.
Cape colony became a british colony, and the afrikaners decided to leave the colony by moving further north-east. die Groot Trek. Has been very central to boer identity. They had to leave the region they had colonised and colonise another region.
They didn’t end up in empty land, it was occupided by Zulu people, which they defeated in 1838 by the battle of blood river. Following this victory they created multiple boer-republics: Transvaal, Orangje Vrijstaat, and Natal.
In 1843 Natal was annexed by the british. Transvaal remained independent until 1852, with its capital in Pretoria. Orange free state free until 1854. However they were not annexed until later, they just grew economically independent.
Cape town grew into a large city. Eventually the cape colony receives responsible government 1872.
This led to more frontier wars.
The Zulu-king Shaka gained legendary reputation during some of these wars due to being quite strong. They made a bunch of bad movies about this.
In 1867 diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, at the Vaal river. This region was then immediately annexed to ensure the diamonds.
British PM Disraeli thought that the cape colony should include all the boer republics. He wanted to recreate a Canada in south africa. The boers did not want to be ruled by the british. The boers had created their republics specifically as a reaction to british rule. They resisted and a first war broke out, which ended in a victory for the Orange free state with Paul Kruger.
In 1884 gold was discovered near witwaterstrand. This sparked a gold rush in the boer republic. Transvaal ended up in a situation in which it stood for 20% of global production. This made Transvaal a multi-ethnic society in which people from all over the world moved in. Transvaal was then on slowly modernised. For now all the trade went via Natal which the britished controlled, and so because the british feared that the boers would stop this trade route and find another one through German colonies.
Adolf Lüderitz purchased a lot of land in South West Africa, Namibia in 1885. After the conference of Berlin, the colony received Reichschütz. The first Reichkommissar was Ernst Göring, the father of Hermann Göring.
So the british started annexing a lot of land north of Natal, like Zululand and basutuland/Lesotho. And then they annexed Bechuanaland so that there could be no border with German south africa. Initially this was seperate colony but after 10 years and some development it was absorbed into BSA. By turning Bechuanaland into a protectorate of the empire, Transvaal and Orange Free state were being surrounded. This was all organised by Cecil Rhodes. He moved to South Africa and made a fortune on the diamond trade, after which he became a politician and prime minister. He is especially well-known now as a conqueror. He concluded a treaty to Lobengula, in which Rhodes tricked king Lobengula to sell off all his territory for nothing. Lobengula committed suicide in 1893.
This later led to the annexation of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, and Nyasaland/Malawi in the late 1880s.
This put an end to Portugals ambition to have a cost-to-cost empire in south africa. Their two colonies remained at each coast only. Instead, the british had the amibiton to unite cape town with Cairo. Famous picture of Cecil Rhodes with one foot in south africa and one in Cairo.
Second boer war then broke out in 1899. It lasted for 3 years. It was one of the first modern wars. In many ways it was the culmination of century-long competition between the boers and the brits.
Empire had 35 000 troops in the beginning, eventually they had brought in over 500 000. The boer republic had about 100 000 troops throughout the war. The boers may have been smaller in number, but they knew the area well and were well-organised.
Initially the boers saw success at the battle of Spion Kop near Natal. The British troops were exposed to boer artillery and were killed.
Churchill was there in boer war. Gandhi was also there after having studied at Cambridge – he was only back in India in 1950.
The boers received great sympathy from the european continent because of the linguistic historical ties. However, this sympathy was limited to words.
The siege of Mafeking by the boers was a loss for the boers. It was not conquered due to a well-organised defense in which Robert Baden-Powell, the guy who created scouts.
The boer republics were defeated and were annexed as colonies.
This was not really the end of the war though. The boers continued their resistance as guerilla fighers. They developed a series of tactics to crush this boer resistance. They made use of extreme violence in order to defeat the boers. They invented the rail-way gun in order to do this. They captured women and children and put them onto train carriages in order to make the boers unable to attack them. They also invented electrical barbed wire to kill them. There were also great use of concentration camps. What was new about this was that they imprisoned civillians in the camp.
This violence itself led to violence in Britain also. There was a british solidarity movement with the war victims. Emily Hobouse used a picture of Lizzie Van Zyl to denounce the british attrocities. It was one of the first wars in which media was used for mobilisation.
In 1902 Peace of Pretoria.
The cape colony quickly involved the former boer republics in the governance of south africa. Years after their defeat they received responsible government themselves, and in 1910 a union of south africa was established. It ended up in many ways being dominated by the boers. The boers had at that point ended up being incredibly racist and conservative. This is how the apartheid system eventually develops.
In 1931 South africa becomes independent, and in 1948 they establish the apartheid system constitutionally.
In the 1930s the Voortrekkers movement was an early example of this kind of apartheid desire. Boer identity was fundamentally founded at this point on seperating with the rest of south africa, and mainly the blacks. Hendrik Verwoerd was a leading boer politician for apartheid.
East Africa.
There were a vast amount different states on the coast. The portugese wanted to control the entirety of the kiswahili old empire. Some of these portugese settlements were reconquered by the Omani arabs, like Mombasa. These areas became part of the Omani empire, and this empire was ruled from Zanzibar. It became a hub of trade like that of Singapore today.
Carl Peters settled German east-africa in 1884. Twelve treaties of ’eternal friendship’. In 1885 they received the schutzbrief.
Emin Pasha, a swizz guy, searching sudan following the mahdi-rebellion. Emin Pasha remained in Equatoria and was isolated. His presence led to several expeditions, and it was Stanley who eventually found him.
Tensions grow about who will eventually get control over the east-african region. This is a prime example of how diplomacy solved problems. Here they actually drew a line. North of the line became Kenya, south would be Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. It is a completely straight line except for kilimanjaro which was given to the Kaiser as a present by queen Victoria.
Following tension about equatoria and uganda, there was the zanzaibar helgoland treaty. Uganda went to Britain. This made it so that the Cape to Cairo would never be achieved. They hoped that the Congo Free state would eventually collapse so that they could take it. After ww1 they end up taking German East Africa anyways. Zanzibar went to Britain. The sultan of zanzibar was not involved. He had simply to accept the gunboat diplomacy of the british and germans. The Germans received Helgoland. They wanted a canal between kiel and the north sea, and had been seized by the british under napoleon. They wanted to control helgoland in order to control the trade at the canal. Madagascar east of this went to France, since they already had the surrounding islands of the seychelles and reunion.
Things were not peaceful just because the europeans agreed on things diplomatically. Much warfare and violence were used to control these regions. The germans carried out major military operations until 1902 after which the maji-maji rebellion broke out. The Germans used incredible violence to repress this.