African History: A Very Short Introduction

by John Parker

how ‘diasporic’ is Africa.

literate African elites, energized by Christianity and by abolitionism, began to reimagine their own identities as well as that of a redeemed Africa.

gradual penetration of European imperialism.

‘Scramble’ of the 1880s–90s.

‘informal imperialism’.

Muhammad Ali (1805–48),

cultural plunder.

British motives were shaped by a mixture of economic self-interest and high-minded humanitarianism.

In the coastal region of West Africa, agricultural commodities such as palm oil and groundnuts gradually replaced slave exports,

abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888,

conquest and partition of the continent.

Jacob Ade Ajayi

described colonialism as an ephemeral ‘episode in African history’, characterized by a fundamental continuity of indigenous institutions.

colonialism was not just about what European rulers did or thought, it was also about what Africans (or Asians, or others) did and thought.

historians are increasingly concerned to trace patterns of continuity and change between all three.

the European ‘Scramble’ for territory

Historical debates about these reasons have turned on a range of intersecting issues:

whether the roots of partition lie in Europe or in Africa;

the extent to which economic motives were ...

whether the shift to territorial conquest represented a distinctly new type of imperialism or continuity from ...

South African (or ‘Boer’) War of 1899–1902

Britain, France, and Portugal (the latter dating back to the 16th century),

Germany, Italy, and, as a private colonial entrepreneur, King Leopold of Belgium. A seventh European state, the waning imperial power of Spain, also secured a few small territories.

Imperialist rhetoric was a heady mix of self-interest, racial arrogance, and missionary zeal

Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884–5,

no two European powers ever came to blows in Africa – until, that is, the First World War.

What happened and why?

Many were ex-slaves who had much to gain from the overthrow of the established order.

‘Senegalese Riflemen’,

Ethiopia

fell to Mussolini’s invading fascist army.

the Maji Maji rebellion

united diverse peoples under the banner of a religious movement that distributed sacred water, or maji, as protection from German bullets.

violence was associated

with a desperate attempt to extract wealth in the form of ivory and rubber from the scattered populations of the equatorial forest.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1901) and his scathing short story, An Out...

Suggested reading

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1901) and his scathing short story, An Out...

Suggested reading

What exactly is

meant by ‘colonialism’ in the African context?

speed of partition

improvised affairs

France

quick to dismantle uncooperative African ruling structures,

At the heart of the notion of assimilation was the distinction between citizen and subject,

British officials,

more inclined to make use of existing rulers

‘indirect rule’.

pretext that Africans were incapable of properly governing themselves;

Sir Apolo Kaggwa (1869–1927),

played a key role in negotiating British overrule in the Buganda kingdom in modern Uganda.

Kaggwa