hey everybody welcome to the midpoint of this class during the first half of this semester we've looked at Africa before 1800 we spent a lot of time looking at how others have looked at Africa how Africans have looked at themselves the very idea of the word Africa and Africans now we turn to Maude for starting about 1800 this is an era that boa hen calls one of the most important eras in the changing relations of Africa and between Africa and the Western world up until now despite the 200 plus years of the transatlantic slave trade Africa has largely maintained control over its own destiny that's going to begin to change and yet when we talk about the abolition of the slave trade by the British in 1807 the u.s. followed in 1808 we're talking about the era of legitimate trade throughout the 1800s even then according to boa Han the majority of African states were still sovereign they were still in full control of their own affairs as late as 1880 so then we have to ask how do we get from here from the insert here where you see small patches of brown around the corner I'm sorry around the edges marking the European presence to the larger map here which is the European colonization of Africa virtually every inch of African soil has now been claimed by European power apart from Ethiopia and Liberia and all this happened in just a little more than 30 years and then we have to ask how do we get from there to here independent Africa so over the next two weeks we will begin looking at the scram or the era of legitimate trade it's called legitimate because it's a time when the slave trade was now abolished not to say that it ended completely but it was illegal so it's legitimate because it's not a trade in human beings to the Scramble for Africa a period starting around 1885 through the colonial moment and as big of an impact as colonialism had it really still was just a moment maybe about 30 years in time at the very end the last week of class will look at nationalism and decolonization as well so up until 1878 or so Europeans were largely confined to the coastal areas mainly because African kingdoms were stronger because of a disease climate that was not amenable to European health and largely because there was no reason for them to go Inlet throughout the 1800s through this era of legitimate trade Europeans were still able to get the goods they needed because Africans brought them to the coast so what changed with the abolition of the slave trade well first and foremost towards the end of the 1700s and the 1800s we see an influx of explorers mainly Europeans some Americans coming into Africa to begin to learn more and more about the African continent some of those included Mungo Park others such as David Livingstone they began to gain more and more knowledge about Africa just as importantly because of the abolition of the slave trade many of these explorers and many many more missionaries began to come into the African continent largely to atone for the sins of slavery they had to go or they wanted to go and save the souls of Africa this was part of the civilizing mission that began to grow in the Western world largely in the 1800's with the rise in evangelical Christianity and also scientific racism a couple things we'll talk about in just a moment I think boa hen does a very good job talking about many of these issues particularly the era of legitimate trade as well as the activities of the missionaries during the 1800s so I'm gonna leave that to you to read him read in his first chapter what I want to talk about is the Scramble for Africa you have a number of documents you'll be reading in the next week the first set is on the Scramble for Africa and it'll give you some insights into the techniques the Europeans were able to use to conquer African societies or to simply get them to buy into their beliefs all right why and why at that time we Europeans able to conquer Africa those are important questions in any historical event we have to ask why why did that happen and why did it happen at that time boa hen goes into very good detail I think about this so I'm gonna leave the first couple to you Europeans have been nibbling at the continent if you will throughout the 1800s there was this growing competition between Europeans to guarantee the supply of goods from Africa starting in 1876 with the brussels geographical conference and the french also began to make some moves into central africa sending the Explorer de brazza in but also we have to look at some growing ideological trends that occurred in the mid 1800s ultimately those led to this Scramble for Africa and it really scramble with Europeans literally trying to grab land in a short period as fast as they could we ultimately end up with a continent that looks like this alright one of the things that happened in the middle part of the 1800s was the publication of Charles Darwin's the Origin of Species many of you have no doubt heard of this most of you have probably heard of it the idea of natural selection comes to mind and the idea of the strong will survive might is right well when you look at the original publication the subtitle says the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life now clearly race is not being used in the context that we use it today but nevertheless this publication that ultimately led to the ideas of natural selection so important in biology also began to use for another method and we see the rise of social Darwinism the idea that more powerful societies have their right to go in and conquer less civilized advanced societies and I say civilized in the way that they would be using that context then couple that with the rise of evangelical Christianity and we also see the duty to go and help these less fortunate people so they have both a duty and a right now that was a major motivation for Europeans to go in and begin to claim land in Africa another element that we see is this rise in nationalism Europeans in the late 1800s with Italian unification German unification they're beginning to compete with each other on a much larger scale and one of the ways that competed with each other was a struggle for Empire by conquering more lands abroad claiming them for their own power they could increase their own stature in Europe this is a book that was made literally for babies I would read this to my kid before he went to bed I say he could have two cents before he went to bed at night an ABC for baby patriots see is four colonies rightly we boast that all of the great nations Great Britain has most making England Great Britain seemed the greatest this one's even worse k is for Kings once warlike and haughty Great Britain subdued them because they'd been naughty again it's that sign of power of a more advanced civilization and lastly W is the word of an Englishman true and given it means what he says he will do here you see the Englishman very prim and proper pointing to the treaty saying our word is our word don't you worry then of course you see an African King caricature of an African King mind you looking somewhat dumbfounded if you will I'm supposed to trust the Englishman he may be saying so these types of propaganda items fed into this public support for the imperial mission the Scramble for Africa usually it's considered to have started with the advent of the Berlin conference again I think Bowen discusses this in great great detail the things the one the main thing that came out of the Berlin conference was this policy of effective occupation it's the idea that a European country had to claim that it effectively occupied a region before it could then make it into a colony or a territory as Bohen suggests there were two main ways that they did this one was through treaties sometimes they were real and sometimes they were faked and at other times they did it through military conquest you can find specific examples of each in the boa handbook up until now we focused on African agency the fact that European powers were not noticeably stronger than African kingdoms Africans had weapons they had numbers they had the home-field advantage so why then by 1880 where Europeans now able to conquer Africa and again boa hen goes into these but I want to reiterate them for you so you know when you read them to focus more what is knowledge of Africa because of the explorers and because of the missionaries Europeans now had more knowledge of African societies than Africans had of Europeans a second reason certainly is medical technology one of your quiz questions is focused on this the discovery that quinine could be used as a preventive medicine for malaria it meant now that Europeans stationed in Africa had a much better chance at survival than they had previously also technology remember by 1880 the Europeans are eight or nine decades into their industrial revolution well Africa didn't have an industrial revolution they were providing the raw materials that literally lubed the wheels and the cogs of the European industry so during the 19th century the 1800s Africans now began to fall behind one of the big military weapons of course was the maxim gun there's a famous quote whatever we have got the maxim gun and they have not one person with the machine gun such as this could wipe out hundreds of Africans in one battle another important technological development was the invention of the steam ship the steam boat allowed Europeans to now go up rivers so they can go further into the continent to gather their trade items they could live the African middlemen again look to Bohan more closely for details but that Scramble for Africa was a very brutal period for African societies what the three hundred years previous of initial trade and then the slave trade and even the era of legitimate trade couldn't do Scramble for Africa did more people died during the 30 plus years of the Scramble for Africa then did during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade during the period of the Scramble for Africa European campaigns reached into the most inner areas of the African continent oftentimes Europeans were competing against other Europeans to get to a spot so they could effectively occupy it and claim it before another group of Europeans got there that competition between European powers led to the harsh conditions of this rather short period Europeans also began to have these ideas of grandiose empires one of the most famous certainly Cecil Rhodes who went in through the Cape of South Africa Cape of Good Hope at that time capable torments and ultimately began to see a empire that stretched from Cape South Africa Cape Town to Cairo in Egypt the Cape to Cairo railway and these posters with Cecil Rhodes bigger than the continent of Africa stretched out over it shows the ideology that was so prevalent at that time European domination following the brutality of the Scramble for Africa we begin to look at the colonial moment if we include the period from 1880 the beginning of the Scramble until independence or the end of World War two Africans relationship with Europeans underwent a profound change they lost more sovereignty during this short period than they had during the entire period of contact with Europeans more than four hundred years at that point African societies also underwent rapid economic political and socio-cultural change during this period a level of change that again hadn't been seen during the entire four hundred years which preceded it if we operate under the assumption that the main reason Europeans were in Africa was for economic gain then we also have to look at some of the fundamental assumptions of colonial rule for Europeans number one was they had to establish peace and order after the very brutal period of the Scramble for Africa it was important to what they called pacify the Africans because in order to reap the most economic gain one would have to have peace two Europeans had to guarantee the primary means of production that means guarantee the flow of resources using natural resources and even crops export crops to the coast they had to guarantee the availability of land labor and capital in order to move products more efficiently Europeans had to create a new infrastructure this included a railroad it included roads Telegraph's port facilities later on airports harbours they had to improve medical facilities because there would be more Europeans in these colonies than there had been previously and they had to create at least a minimal education system to create a class of Africans who could work with the colonial system accountants sometimes lawyers even doctors and other occupations as well the main guideline the overriding philosophy was colonialism on the cheap they Europeans wanted to make sure that African colonies would as much as possible pay for themselves the goal was economic exploitation extraction of resources the goal was not to develop African societies the goal was not to invest money into Africa it was to extract resources from Africa if we look at some of the economic structures here we have to ask how do we get Africans to work on these projects political structures the overriding issue of paternalism father knows best different types types of colonial rule including direct rule more prevalent with the French at least early on an indirect rule something created by Sir Frederick Lou guard and one of the articles you'll be reading for today we talk about social and religious change under colonial rule we're talking about education and we're talking about missionaries let me just go through some of these slides rather quickly again this is all discussed in BO ahem particularly in Chapter three you have two documents one by Canisius which deals with economics and another by Lord Lou guard which deals with the policy of indirect rule your three documents from earlier in this video will also be relevant to the reaction paper that you're writing for this class all right there's a number of words that'll pop up in your reading that you should be aware of some dealing with African resistance some dealing with politics I'm dealing with economics and some dealing with cultural events here's a slide of the Congo the end of the snake is King Leopold of Belgium who had a personal possession this wasn't even a Belgian colony it was King Leopold's personal possession and one of the most ruthless and atrocious colonial areas in all of Africa the extraction of rubber here you see the importance of railroads when you look at the railroads here you see how they lead from somewhere in the interior straight to the African coast that somewhere in the interior was usually a place of production a gold mine a palm nut farm a cotton field or cotton plantation these railroads were not established to connect Africans to each other they were established solely for the reason to extract and exploit Africa's natural resources how did they get Africans to work on these railroads well forced labor it was certainly one way to do it another way to do it was to establish taxation Africans had to pay taxes in the colonial currency how they gonna get that colonial currency except for working on some colonial project or raising export crops that they could sell to the colonial traders either way the Africans were working for the colonial system politically speaking Europeans also didn't want to invest a lot of Europeans in Africa one because there was still a danger to health and two because that would cost a lot of money they came up with a way to rule many African colonies but it started in West Africa particularly in Nigeria and it was created by the author of one of your readings Sir Frederick lugar he was a soldier in East Africa first eventually became the governor of Nigeria and created a policy called indirect rule indirect rule was this idea that Africans could not be disturbed to a great degree because their society would fall apart it's this idea this paternalistic idea treating them like children so the idea was simply to leave the structure in place but place a colonial administrator at the top of them again Bowen discusses this it worked in some areas far better than it worked in other areas where it was very very ineffective and it caused a disintegration in many African societies lastly I want to talk a little bit about the social and cultural effects of colonialism you're reading two documents for next week that deal with these issues the psychological impact the social effects education of course plays a key role as does religion one is from a colonial perspective fairly liberal colonial governor at that Sir Frederick gugus birth and the other is from three writers one from Senegal the other two from Martinique who talk about the need to reclaim their souls they're all educated individuals living in Paris and they have very different tones and different messages but ultimately they have the same need to find their African roots again obviously Christianity in Africa played a huge role in dividing societies literally dividing those who converted from those who maintain traditional religions they were not often allowed at even the same rites of passage or social events if you read too much a base things fall apart you know that simply converting to sometimes caused a tear in that social fabric that was so instrumental to politics and economics and everything else and the entire society might then begin to disintegrate colonial education very much like missionary education relied on the ideas that everything Western was good and everything African was bad imagine being told to open your textbook to page 36 and repeat after me our ancestors were the Gauls they had red hair and green eyes our ancestors were the Gaul some young child in the back raises his hand and he says no no my ancestry was the great King and founder of the Mali Empire Sujata you come and the teacher brings the kid up front and he keynesian whips him you go back and next time you read pitch 36 again other ancestors with a Gaul so they had red hair and green eyes after doing this over and over and over again one begins to believe that in fact the Europeans were the founders of civilization that everything European was good music food dance dress and everything African was bad and savage of course the books that were used in colonial classrooms came directly from Europe Walter Rodney who was from Guyana which is in South America experienced a very similar education and wrote colonial schooling was education for subordination exploitation the creation of mental confusion and the development of under development the creation of mental confusion a very very prominent and important aspect and something that we all need to understand when we talk about the colonial legacy the psychological impact of colonialism