The colonial cast of Africa by the European powers was the product of the imperialism generated after the industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century. The distribution and appropriation of African lands was made, at first in disorder, and then, at the end of the nineteenth century, arbitrarily.
When you pay a little attention to the political map of Africa it is not difficult to feel that there is something strange, something too orderly, in the border disposition of the countries.
The boundaries they determine regions of roughly similar sizes, and similar shapes. The reason for this is not a coincidence, or some romantic agreement between the nations that today make up the continent.
The political map of Africalike so many others in the world, is the product of colonization European. But in the African case, the colonial cast it was done without considering any type of cultural, social, or economic factors of the region.
Africa it was divided geographically: it was distributed as if the European colonizers were cutting a cake.
Exploration
In the last years of the seventeenth century until approximately 1880, a large number of scanspromoted, on the one hand, by individual initiatives based on scientific curiosity, by the concern to make a methodical inventory of the planet, by the romantic taste for adventure or missionary vocation.
On the other hand, the explorations were carried out due to the action of societies made up of a few but select members, such as the African Association, the Royal Geographical Society of London, or that of Paris.
Depiction of the construction of a large canoe during Stanley’s expedition
The exploration it remained for a long time the heritage of the old colonial nations.
Portugal he took the initiative in southern and central Africa, when the installation of the English in the Cape (1795) made him fear an intrusion into his coastal possessions of Angola and Mozambique. At the same time he began exploration of the Niger River Basin and the central region of Sudan.
The german expeditions British explorations continued in the second half of the century. They recognized the region between Niger and Chad. Later, between 1860 and 1875, other voyages were directed more towards the Sahara and Eastern Sudan.
Shortly before 1850, Dr. Krapf he explored the region of the Kilimanjaro mountains and Kenya, and several English trips multiplied to explore the area of the great lakes, and the origin of the Nile River.
further south, Livingstone went through the Africa austral, and extensively explored the region before dying. His travels began to interest the great European public.
A newspaper hired the journalist Stanley to look for Livingstone, whom he finally found, but not before confirming that the Nile originated in what they called Lake Victoria. In addition, he continued to explore the Congo region.
Victoria Falls, the largest in the world, explored by Livingstone
Occupation
But once European curiosity about the geography of Africabegan the first political attempts to colonize the new explored land.
In 1877, Stanley put himself at the service of the king Leopold II of Belgiumand over time they formed the idea of an African state in the Congo Basin, of which Leopold would be sovereign.
This initiative aroused the mistrust of Englandand even more than Francewho had just commissioned the exploration of the Ogoué valley, after his long presence on the coasts of Senegal and Gabon.
Thus, without transition, the era of travel was passed to that of territorial rivalries between the European powers.
In the 1860s, the occupation of the interior took its first steps in the west of the Africa black.
Representation of King Leopold devouring the Congo (credit: Linley Sambourne)
The english Two official colonies had been created since the turn of the century: Sierra Leone in 1808 and Gambia in 1816. But around the third, Gold Coast, colonization slowly began to expand.
The colonizers they began to intervene in the internal affairs of African tribal confederations, annexing regions and towns.
In addition, the English merchants began to replace the locals of organizing the circuit of the products at their convenience.
In Africa center, the situation was becoming more and more tense. Leopold II maintained his colonialist ambitions, and France he imposed his protectorate at the same time on the king of Tunisia and Makomo, king of the batekes.
While, England intervened in Egypt, and Germany in the Africa tropical, equatorial and southern.
Distribution
This situation caused the need for the European imperialists to reach agreements to avoid a war for the new lands they appropriated.
In 1885, it was convened in berlin an international conference that managed to defer the conflicts between the various powers, although imposing German arbitration (and the conduct of bismarck), both in the colonies and in Europe.
The African Mediterranean coast remained in the hands of France and the United Kingdom. The eastern coast was divided between the germans south and the British to the north. The West African coast remained in the hands of the belgian, French Y British.
The Spanish people took over Western Sahara, the Italians got Somalia and the Portuguese extended or strengthened their control over Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe and Mozambique while the germans they get Namibia.
The colonial distribution of Africa before the Great War broke out (credit: José Manuel Roás Triviño)
The fever subsided for a time: Britain staunchly defended its dominance in the lower Niger region, seeming to abandon the rest to French influence.
was proclaimed the freedom of trade and navigation in the Niger and the Congo, and the conditions for the effective occupation of the colonial territories were defined.
Although the Europeans avoided for some years (until 1914) entering into a warthe native populations and cultures of Africa they were totally destructured, if not annihilated, by imperialist intervention and the intrusion of their governments and economies.