The Sharing of Africa is the name by which the division of the African continent was known during the 19th century and which ended with the Berlin Conference (1884-1885).
With the economic growth of England, France, the Kingdom of Italy and the German Empire, these countries wanted to advance on Africa in search of raw materials for their industries.
How did it happen?
Countries like Portugal have been on the continent since the 16th century. They used Africa as a supplier of slave labor, in a lucrative trade in which England, Spain, France and Denmark participated.
The European expansion to the African continent, in the 19th century, was justified for public opinion as the need to “civilize” this territory.
In the 19th century, there was a belief in the superiority of races and civilizations. Theories such as Auguste Comte’s Positivism and Social Darwinism corroborated this idea.
Thus, it was necessary to do with what the “backward” Africans, according to European standards, were civilized.
News from the African continent reached Europe through reports of expeditions that had different purposes:
- Scientific expeditions : map the terrain, measure the geographical and botanical potential, and detail the many ethnic groups that inhabited the continent.
- Commercial expeditions : getting to know the local raw material and assessing the exploration possibilities.
- Religious expeditions : ending polytheism, anthropophagy and establishing Christianity.
Thus, we realized that economic, religious and cultural aspects influenced the desire for possession of the territory.
For the European, it was necessary to “save” the African from the savagery, backwardness and practices that were seen as reprehensible in the Old World. This kind of imperialist behavior underpinned the myth of the “white man’s burden” and eugenics .
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Simultaneously, the territories were gradually invaded by European nations. See below how was the occupation of Africa by European powers:
Portugal
After Brazil’s independence, Portugal managed to maintain its African possessions such as Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea and Mozambique.
The country will have problems with Belgium, England and Germany that wanted to expand their territories in Africa, over the Portuguese territories.
Spain
Spain occupied the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Western Sahara and Melila. To supply its Caribbean slave colonies, it relied on the trade carried out by the Portuguese, French and Danes. Later, the country would invade Equatorial Guinea (1778).
Belgium
King Leopoldo II of Belgium, established the International Association of Africa, in 1876. This organization aimed to explore the territory corresponding to Congo that would become his personal property.
The country also occupies Rwanda and there it establishes a system of ethnic division, between Hutus and Tutsis that will have disastrous consequences for the future in the Rwandan Genocide (1994).
England
The United Kingdom was the greatest economic power of the 19th century due to the Industrial Revolution . However, it needed more cheap raw materials to keep pace with its growth.
England was occupying territories like present-day Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa. Such was the certainty of English superiority that fueled the idea of building a railway connecting Cairo and Cape Town.
To this end, the country invades areas between these territories such as Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe and will conflict with virtually all other European countries in order to maintain or expand its possessions.
France
France occupied the territory of Senegal in 1624 in order to guarantee the supply of slaves to its colonies in the Caribbean.
Throughout the 18th century, its navigators occupied several islands in the Indian Ocean such as Madagascar, Mauritius, Comoros and Réunion.
However, it was in the 19th century that, between 1819 and 1890, it managed to set 344 treaties with African chiefs. Thus occupied Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Chad, Mali, Togo, Benin, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Burkina Faso and Niger.
In addition to facing the inhabitants who did not accept the invasion, the French fought several wars against the Germans, because they wanted to take their possessions.
Netherlands
Dutch occupation began in today’s Ghana, called the Dutch Gold Coast. There, they remained until 1871 when they sold possession to the English.
Through private investors, the Dutch began to explore the Congo in 1857.
However, it was in South Africa that the Dutch stayed the longest. There, they had established a gas station in today’s Cape Town, in 1652.
When the territory was conquered by the English, the Dutch were expelled in 1805, but they still remained in South Africa and would enter into several conflicts with the English, such as the Boer War (1880-1881 / 1899-1902).
Italy
After Italian Unification , Italy sets out to conquer the world. However, without a powerful army, the country occupies the territories of Eritrea, part of Somalia and Libya.
He tries to conquer the kingdom of Ethiopia, but this was helped by France and Russia. It would only do so in the 1930s under the command of Benito Mussolini .
Germany
Germany wanted to guarantee its share of markets in Africa. After German Unification in 1870, any European decision had to pass through the powerful chancellor Bismarck.
As there were already many border disputes between European powers, Bismarck invites representatives of the main colonial powers to discuss the direction of the African occupation.
This event would be known as the Berlin Conference. Germany occupied the territories corresponding to Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.
Berlin Conference
In order to avoid wars between European powers over African territories, Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck called a meeting with representatives of European countries that had possessions in Africa. No African representatives were invited.
The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) consisted of an agreement that aimed to recognize the borders of the territories already occupied and to establish the rules on future occupations on the African continent.
Among its guidelines was the need for one nation to communicate to another when it took possession of a territory. It was also necessary to prove that he was in a position to manage it.
Consequences
Before the partition of Africa, African kingdoms were within natural boundaries defined according to the ethnic groups that made up these kingdoms.
African states were drawn by artificial borders according to the will of the European colonizer. In this way, enemy ethnic groups had to live within the same territory causing bloody civil wars.
European occupation provoked resistance and uprisings from nations that were massacred in the course of the 20th century.
Likewise, through the European vision, the myth has spread that Africans are cursed for not accepting Christianity and for that reason they are not able to prosper.
Currently, the African continent is the poorest in the world and there is still strong pressure on Africa’s natural wealth, such as oil, gold, phosphate and diamonds.