BACKGROND TO

EXPASION:
THE SCRAMBLE
AND PARTITION
OF AFRICA

SIT DOLOR AMET

The European interest in the African
interior was heighted in the middle of
the nineteenth century. Europeans were
not content to let Africans to know and
exchange the terms of trade because
their intention was to control and
dominate legitimately the trade,
especially the groundnuts and palm oil.
To secure African markets for their
manufactured products, the French
and Germans decided to establish
protected zones in Africa. And with
this ideology, the European nations
began a “”scramble” in 1880, for
the richest parts of Africa.
BERLIN CONFERENCE- 1884 AND 1885

With the scramble for African territories well

underway, the major European powers
gathered at the Berlin West Africa Conference
between 1884 and 1885. In this meeting,
principles of effective occupation were
established to reduce international conflict and
competition.

The influence was initially extended y signing

treaties with African rulers and by negotiating
between the various European powers.
INTERNAL COLONIAL BOUNDERIES
In 1885 immediately after the conference, Otto
von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany,
declared a German protectorate over Tanga-
nyika in Eastern Africa. The colonial
boundaries were established via the Anglo-
German Treaties of 1890 and 1893. (Whereby
upper Nile went to Britain), and other colonies
took other parts of Africa. Example of Anglo-
Portuguese treaty of 1891, which recognized
Angola and Mozambique.
The objective of the European policy makers was to
secure markets and trade with African interior states.
But the African rulers did not agree to extension of
formal European control into the interior because they
wanted the lucrative trade. And this resulted in the
European nations impose direct control by force. A
process which was long, bloody and never complete
until the beginning of the World War I.
Nevertheless, each European power launched military
campaigns on the ground in Africa. And by 1900,
Liberia and Ethiopia were the only states in Sub-
Sharan Africa that managed to retain independence.