Page 135 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

20 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

In this drawing, the Protestant missionary
David Livingstone is shown preaching to
potential African converts. Conversion to
Christianity was a component of European
colonialism.

while the French cultivated an elite of Africans who asso-
ciated themselves with French values. As in Vietnam,
these indigènes evolués (“evolved natives”) could even
aspire to French citizenship. However, for most Africans
such opportunities meant nothing, and forced labor and
authoritarian colonial directives were the norm.
Belgian administration was even more paternalistic
than the others, with the Catholic Church and mining
companies leaving little room for African participation in
state institutions. Portugal, a poor country with few
resources to invest, did even less to prepare Africans for
participation in a modern state.A crucial distinction was
whether the Europeans came to settle. In French Algeria,
Portuguese Angola, British Kenya and Rhodesia, and in
South Africa, it was the settler factor that dominated all
other aspects of political and economic life. Here Africans
were dominated by aggressive European immigrants who
came not just to govern them, but to take their land.
Settler-dominated farming in these regions was one
form of what economic historian Ralph Austen has
called “regimes of competitive exploitation.” To provide
a professional standing army, equipped it with the latest labor for settler farms, mining enterprises, and commer-
rifles, and played European powers off one another.Vic- cial plantations,Africans were often restricted to crowded
tory over the Italians in 1896 allowed Ethiopia to retain “native reserves” (to use the South African term) where,
its status as an indigenous kingdom. But like independ- unable to meet demands for tax payments to the state,
ent Siam (Thailand) in Southeast Asia, it was but a mod- they were forced into a cycle of migrant labor. With the
est exception to the rule of direct imperial control being loss of labor and the overuse of inadequate land in the
imposed by Europe. For Africa as a whole, the period reserves, African agricultural productivity declined.
from the Berlin Conference through World War I (1884– Women were usually left to shoulder the burdens of rural
1918) was a period of instability, violence, and popula- poverty.
tion loss. The second economic pattern identified by Austen is
the peasant-étatiste regime. Here basic factors of pro-
Colonial Political duction—land, labor, and cattle—remained in African
Economy, 1914 to 1940 hands. But peasant life was greatly altered by the man-
During the period from 1918 to 1940, the European date to produce goods for the global economy: Colonial
powers devised a number of strategies to allow them to taxes had to be paid in cash, and that meant growing
govern colonies and benefit from them economically.The commercial crops. In some cases African initiative was
British grafted the colonial state onto existing African evident, as in the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana), where
institutions through a system known as “indirect rule.” African farmers responded to market incentives by mak-
Traditional “chiefs” of African “tribes” administered “cus- ing the colony the world’s largest producer of cocoa. In
tomary law” under the guidance of British officials. Mean- many cases, however, market incentives were so weak that