Page 134 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

africa, colonial 19

I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don’t believe in wasting
brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to practice it with me.
Brotherhood is a two-way street. • Malcolm X (1925–1965)

Further Reading malaria),transportation technologies (such as steamships
Bates, R. H. Mudimbe,V.Y., & O’Barr, J. F. (Eds.). (1993). Africa and the and railroads to penetrate the interior), and military tech-
disciplines:The contributions of research in Africa to the social sciences nologies (such as the rapid-repeating Maxim gun).
and humanities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Breasted, J. H. (1938). The Conquest of Civilization (pp. 44–45). New Several factors drove the European scramble for Africa.
York: Literary Guild of America. In the industrial era, competition for the resources of the
Diop, C. A. (1974). The African origins of civilization: Myth or reality.
New York: L. Hill. tropical world, such as rubber and cotton, intensified.The
Maeterlinck, M., & Mukerji, D.G. (Eds.). (1926). What is civilization? rise of the powerful new German state added a political
New York: Duffield.
Eckert, A. (2003). Fitting Africa into world history: A historiographical and strategic dimension:The British now had to work to
exploration. In B. Stuchtey and E. Fuchs (Eds.), Writing world history defend the global trade dominance they had earlier taken
1800–2000 (pp. 255–270). New York: Oxford University Press. for granted, and the French sought new territories in
Ehret, C. (2002). The civilizations of Africa: A history to 1800. Char-
lottesville: University of Virginia Press. Africa partially as compensation for their losses in Euro-
Eze, E. C. (1997). Race and the enlightenment: A reader (pp. 33, 124). pean wars. New nations like Italy and Germany pursued
Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.
Gilbert, E., & Reynolds, J. T. (2004). Africa in world history: From pre- empire as a form of national self-assertion. Christian mis-
history to the present. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. sionaries were another constituency promoting empire,
Manning, P. (2003). Navigating world history: Historians create a global explaining it as a means of bringing “civilization” to what
past. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Miller, J. (1998). History and Africa/Africa and history. American His- Europeans came to regard as a “dark continent.” Similar
torical Review, 104(1), 1–32. factors were at play in other world regions that had
Thornton, J. (1992). Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic heretofore escaped European colonization, such as South-
world, 1400–1680. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Vansina, J. (1994). Living with Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin east Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Press. Alarmed by the aggressive imperialism of King
Waters, N. L. (Ed.). (2000). Beyond the area studies wars:Toward a new
international studies. Hannover, NH: Middlebury College Press. Leopold II of Belgium, other European nations sent del-
egates to the Berlin Conference in 1884 to create ground
rules for their “effective occupation” of African lands.
Leopold’s huge fiefdom in Central Africa, the “Congo
Free State,” was a brutal military-economic empire. As
Africa, Colonial many as 10 million Africans died as the region’s rubber

was plundered to feed industrial and consumer markets
he colonial era in African history was relatively brief, in the West.
Tbut it was decisive in shaping Africa’s relationship African responses to the challenge of European impe-
with the twentieth-century world.The legacies of colonial- rialism were complex, conditioned by the rapidity with
ism are still felt broadly and deeply across the continent. which the colonialist enterprise unfolded. Diplomacy
was a common approach. Particular rulers and societies
Creating a Colonial might benefit from allying themselves with the Euro-
Order, 1880 to 1914 peans, as did the kings of Buganda, north of Lake Victo-
Until late in the nineteenth century, almost all European ria, who expanded their territory at the expense of
interaction with Africa took place along the coasts. An traditional rivals by allying themselves with the British.
exception to this was the area around the Dutch settlement But the Europeans were organized on a scale that African
of Cape Town, where a frontier of European settlements states could not match, and one by one African societies
developed in the late seventeenth century.By the late nine- lost their sovereignty.
teenth century it was an array of technologies that made African wars of resistance to colonial occupation were
European conquest possible: medical technologies (such common in the period from 1890 to 1910, but success-
as the discovery of quinine as a prophylactic against ful only in Ethiopia. King Menelik II (1844–1913) built