Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

For Britain, the Scramble meant that the era of informal anti-slavery imperialism on the coast of Africa was over, and the phase of annexation and control of the interior began. In the minds of a number of statesmen and colonial theorists, Africa’s new role was to act as a safety valve for Europe. It was to be an outlet for Europe’s energies, ambitions and manufactured goods and an arena in which Europe’s internal rivalries could also be played out at a safe distance. In effect, the freedoms of one continent and its people were to be forgone in the economic and security interests of another. To protect peace in Europe, Africa was to be divided and colonized. She was to provide new markets and raw materials. Where her climate was appropriate she was to offer up her soil to white settlers. In Africa, those new colonists would find what German theorists were, in the late nineteenth century, already beginning to call ‘Lebensraum’ – living space. In those regions that were habitable to Europeans the local Africans were to be divested of their ancestral lands and forcibly converted into a class of landless labourers. The exploration, conquest and colonization of Africa – the last continent to hold