33.1 Africa: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 7/7)

The scramble for land in Africa by European powers became so intense that in November, 1884 Otto von Bismarck and the French premier called a Berlin Conference in which 14 nations took part. In addition to agreeing to work for the further suppression of slavery, the nations agreed to complete liberty of commerce in the Congo basin and adjacent coasts and the Congo and Niger rivers were to have free navigation.

Deep in the rain forest, however, pygmies and negroids still ruled unmolested by whites. In Katanga, Msiri, with Yeke followers, established himself as chief and initiated a reign of terror. Fortress grounds were littered with skulls of people he had tortured and murdered. That empire disappeared by the 1880s. (Ref. 83 , 8 , 140 )

East africa and great lake area

In 1850, through the genius of Sultan Sayyid Said of Oman, Zanzibar was made into an influential center, with a small army and navy. By 1860, however, it was under some British influence and by 1873 the British navy had stopped the sultan from trading in slaves. (Ref. 213 ) Buganda, now a province of modern Uganda, launched great raids under Mutesa I between 1854 and 1883 to obtain slaves, cattle and ivory. For this purpose Mutesa had a large army and a navy of canoes for use on Lake Victoria. That country also fell under British protection in the 1890s.

In Kenya the basic Kikuyu people had no chiefs and were ruled by a senior elders' council. They were repeatedly terrorized by- the Masai, who dominated an area of 80,000 square miles and who had two passions in life - war and cattle. Because of these warriors, when white explorers such as Burton, Speke, Grant, and Stanley went in to central Africa they went from the south over dry bush country infested with many tropical diseases.

Even the Masai, themselves, were decimated in the 1880s, but that was from small-pox. The great days of the Masai ended in the 1890s as the British occupied the Kenya highlands. Many of the large game animals were already becoming limited and a few, such as the quagga

Savannah south of the congo basin

It has been noted previously that Portugal had an early lead in Angola and then she took Mozambique. Actually there were very few whites in those two areas, including only about a dozen priests. The white men did intermarry with the natives and kept some measure of control in that way. Germany, not to be outdone, wedged into areas on the Indian Ocean coast north of Mozambique and Cameroun and in Togo (German Southwest Africa) in the west. In the second phase of European partition of Africa, after 1895, there was increasing bitter, local African resistance. The colonial governments had turned to raising money by direct local taxation and corvee, or forced labor systems, had become widespread. This, along with the expropriation of land, led to more destructive, bitter and longer wars, with the superior weaponry of the invading Europeans winning in all areas

The cape area

One region where war occurred with white against white, rather than against black, was in South Africa. By 1856 the Cape population was roughly 267,000, including 119,000 Europeans with a Dutch majority. Natal had about 6,500 people, chiefly English; the Orange Free State had 12,000 Europeans and the Transvaal some 18,000. Both of those were soon free of English control. By 1857 there were 8 separate governments in South Africa - 5 Boer republics and 3 British colonies. Intermittent fighting continued and when the Boers of Transvaal attacked blacks led by Khama the Great, in Boswana, the British protected the latter.

Map taken from Reference 97

Two great mineral discoveries began to effect tremendous changes in the area. First, diamonds were discovered in an old volcano chimney along the Vaal River and at the site of present day Kimberly, bordering English and Boer states. Within 10 years $100,000,000 worth of diamonds had been mined. The British, who negotiated themselves into annexing this Kimberly region into the Cape Colony about 1870 and two Englishmen, Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato, gained most from the diamonds. Secondly, gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886 and by 1900 some 100,000 men were employed in the gold fields. The gold rush made the original mining camp into the city of Johannesburg, which then had 237,000 people by 1911 and more than 1,000,000 at this writing. The gold was deep in the earth, requiring costly machinery and capital to recover it. Rhodes, with a dream to make all Africa British, got involved only politically in the gold industry as the British attempted to take this over. Conflicts inevitably followed with eventually a full-scale war. Many British at home were actually pro-Boer, including Lloyd George, but most of the people were staunchly imperialist. Paul Kruger, who had taken part in the Great Trek, headed the recalcitrant Dutch, who were unwilling to make common cause with the British. They opposed any advance of industry, although ready to feed on its profits.

In spite of long drawn out negotiation, actual war started October 9, 1899 when Boer groups moved over the border. The latter started with 35,000 men and artillery derived from German sources. Almost all were mounted. The German presence in the region was actually the main factor which had activated Britain to move north again. Suddenly in 1883 the Germans had run up their flag in Luederitz Bay on the Atlantic and proclaimed the whole of southwest Africa as a protectorate and began to survey a route for a railroad to the east, linking up with Paul Kruger in the Transvaal and then on to the east coast. The danger to Britain's holdings was obvious and so they moved, annexing Pondoland, Zululand and Tongaland, cutting off the only possible outlet of the Transvaal to the sea and then they took part of Bechuanaland. The countryside and world opinion was with the Dutch, but the British poured in men and arms and by autumn of 1900 both Boer capitals had been occupied and it seemed that the war was over. But the rebels fought on and were only finally subdued sufficiently to sue for peace in March 1902 after thousands of men, women and children had been swept into concentration camps. The total cost in money to the United Kingdom of the Boer War was reckoned at over 220,000,000 pounds. The British lost five times as many men from disease as from battle and left a legacy of mistrust and bitterness. (Ref. 8 , 160 , 175 , 322 , 140 )

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