Archives of Empire: Volume 2. The Scramble for Africa
844
Archives of Empire: Volume 2. The Scramble for Africa
844eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
While focusing on the expansion of the British Empire, The Scramble for Africa illuminates the intense nineteenth-century contest among European nations over Africa’s land, people, and resources. Highlighting the 1885 Berlin Conference in which Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy partitioned Africa among themselves, this collection follows British conflicts with other nations over different regions as well as its eventual challenge to Leopold of Belgium’s rule of the Congo. The reports, speeches, treatises, proclamations, letters, and cartoons assembled here include works by Henry M. Stanley, David Livingstone, Joseph Conrad, G. W. F. Hegel, Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, and Arthur Conan Doyle. A number of pieces highlight the proliferation of companies chartered to pursue Africa’s gold, diamonds, and oil—particularly Cecil J. Rhodes’s British South Africa Company and Frederick Lugard’s Royal Niger Company. Other documents describe debacles on the continent—such as the defeat of General Gordon in Khartoum and the Anglo-Boer War—and the criticism of imperial maneuvers by proto-human rights activists including George Washington Williams, Mark Twain, Olive Schreiner, and E.D. Morel.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822385035 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/31/2003 |
| Series: | Archives of empire ; , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 844 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Barbara Harlow is Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.
Mia Carter is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.
Read an Excerpt
Archives of Empire, vol 2
By Barbara Harlow
Duke University Press
ISBN: 0-8223-3189-6
Chapter One
THE BERLIN CONFERENCE 1885: MAKING/MAPPING HISTORY
It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now:
"When I grow up I shall go there."-Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record, 1913
Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all around the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red-good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1898/99
INTRODUCTION The Scramble for Africa: From the Conference at Berlin to the Incident at Fashoda BARBARA HARLOW
Marlow was meeting with representatives of the Company in Brussels, engaging to pursue their enterprises in Africa, when he observed the colors of that map, colors that had redesigned the map's "blank space," which had been identified by his author in his own childhood. Red marked the spaces claimed by England, blue those of the French,orange those of the Portuguese, and purple those of the Germans. Much of this kaleidoscopic design had been drawn by the European participants in the Berlin Conference convened by Bismarck in November 1884 and concluded in February 1885. But the scramble for Africa was not only a variegated collage; it was also a struggle between black and white.
Early in the century, Hegel's Philosophy of History had excluded the African continent from all existing historical processes: "Africa proper, as far as History goes back," he wrote in the introduction, "has remained-for all purposes of connection with the rest of the World-shut up; it is the Gold-land compressed within itself-the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night" (91). The German philosopher concludes his abbreviated discussion of Africa: "What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World's History" (94). Hegel's displacement of Africa from the world-historical map draws on hues for its outlines and contours to be sure, but imposes on the diagrammatic sketch three other paradigms as well-child/adult, nature/culture, night/day-and instantiates the cultural grounds for a narrative of development that would significantly overdetermine Europe's imperial and imperious relations, as well as the rationales for its territorial claims, with Africa for the next two centuries.
"Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce," according to the legendary missionary David Livingstone, were the bases for the European "mission" across Africa. And each of those agendas had its respective, if not always respectable, proponents: precipitous explorers, zealous missionaries, and opportunistic traders cum administrators. The English occasionally referred to their empire as a "civilizing mission," which the French in turn translated as "la mission civilisatrice": Africa and its African inhabitants had to be taught to "grow up," to enter "history," but on European terms. Race then provided an important additional legitimization to that mission, from the scientific theories of Darwin to their revisions into social Darwinism. The imperial project was, in that regard, a white and black one; the other colors on Marlow's map came from the political and economic competitions among the European powers themselves for control over the resources of the continent. It was, as Conrad maintained, "not a pretty thing when you look[ed] into it too much." For Conrad, and his spokesperson in the very heart of darkness, "What redeems it is the idea only."
The "idea," however, was not necessarily any more coherent-or pretty or redemptive-than the mottled maps: Germans competing with Portuguese, Italians with Belgians, the French against the English, and each against the other-and the African peoples. From the Suez Canal to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Congo River to the Nile, administrators like Rhodes and Lugard, adventurers such as Stanley and Leopold II, soldiers like Gordon and Kitchener, competed in the interests of their national governments in claiming personal status and states' rights. The General Act of the Conference of Berlin, signed on 26 February 1885, was written to adjudicate such disputes of trade, territory, spheres of influence, and the use of "spirituous liquors," but the persistent altercations and tendentious ambitions would be fought out repeatedly in the last decades of the imperial century: at Khartoum, at Omdurman, along the Congo River, in the Transvaal. Crises were continuous, but the statesmanly "conference" of Berlin among the European nations might be said to have culminated in the "incident at Fashoda" and the fateful meeting between French career diplomat Jean-Baptiste Marchand and the British General Sir Herbert Horatio Kitchener. It had been Marchand's plan to proceed east across Africa to confront the British as they moved south from Egypt through the Sudan. If the British, in Rhodes's formulation, designed to map Africa along the Cape-to-Cairo axis, the French would redraw the lines from the Congo to the Nile, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. But it didn't happen that way. And the incident at Fashoda, on 19 September 1898, concluded in a capitulation of French claims to British demands. A century later, however, the map of Africa, albeit colored differently following decolonization, remains drawn along much the same (disputed) lines as those determined at the Berlin Conference of 1885.
Chronology of Events
1807 Slave trade abolished throughout the British Empire 1810 Saartje Bartmann ("The Hottentot Venus") on exhibit in Europe 1834 Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire 1848 Slavery abolished throughout the French colonies 1849-1850 David Livingstone's first expedition 1870-1871 Diamond rush to Kimberley 1871 Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man 1874 18 April David Livingstone buried in Westminster Abbey 1876 Stanley travels down the Congo River 1883 Stanley plants the Belgian flag over Stanley Falls 1884-1885 Berlin Conference 1885 H. Rider Haggard publishes King Solomon's Mines 1885 Relief expedition to Gordon in Khartoum 1886 Gold rush to the Witwatersrand 1898 1 September Kitchener defeats Mahdist forces at Omdurman 1898 19 September Incident at Fashoda 1898 Heart of Darkness published in Blackwood magazine 1889-1902 Anglo-Boer War 1902 Death of Cecil Rhodes 1904 Creation of the Congo Reform Association
Excerpts from Heart of Darkness JOSEPH CONRAD
[Heart of Darkness has become a classic of both the modern British novel and, more recently, of narratives of the scramble for Africa. Conrad (1857-1924) had visited the Congo in 1890 in the service of the Societe Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo. His seafaring ended in 1894 when he settled in England and continued his career as a novelist.]
What saves us is efficiency-the devotion to efficiency.... The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only.
JOURNEY UP THE RIVER
"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands. You lost your way on that river as you would in a desert and butted all day long against shoals trying to find the channel till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-somewhere-far away-in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards. I did not see it any more. I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a look-out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality-the reality I tell you-fades. The inner truth is hidden-luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for-what is it? half a crown a tumble...."
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one listener awake besides myself.
SOURCE: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1898/99), 3rd ed., ed. Robert Kimbrough (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 10, 35-36.
Africa G. W. F. HEGEL
In accordance with these data we may now consider the three portions of the globe with which History is concerned, and here the three characteristic principles manifest themselves in a more or less striking manner: Africa has for its leading classical feature the Upland, Asia the contrast of river regions with the Upland, Europe the mingling of these several elements.
Africa must be divided into three parts: one is that which lies south of the desert of Sahara-Africa proper-the Upland almost entirely unknown to us, with narrow coast-tracts along the sea; the second is that to the north of the desert-European Africa (if we may so call it)-a coastland; the third is the river region of the Nile, the only valley-land of Africa, and which is in connection with Asia.
Africa proper, as far as History goes back, has remained-for all purposes of connection with the rest of the World-shut up; it is the Gold-land compressed within itself-the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night. Its isolated character originates, not merely in its tropical nature, but essentially in its geographical condition. The triangle which it forms (if we take the West Coast-which in the Gulf of Guinea makes a strongly indented angle-for one side, and in the same way the East Coast to Cape Gardafu for another) is on two sides so constituted for the most part, as to have a very narrow Coast Tract, habitable only in a few isolated spots. Next to this towards the interior, follows to almost the same extent, a girdle of marsh land with the most luxuriant vegetation, the especial home of ravenous beasts, snakes of all kinds-a border tract whose atmosphere is poisonous to Europeans. This border constitutes the base of a cincture of high mountains, which are only at distant intervals traversed by streams, and where they are so, in such a way as to form no means of union with the interior; for the interruption occurs but seldom below the upper part of the mountain ranges, and only in individual narrow channels, where are frequently found innavigable waterfalls and torrents crossing each other in wild confusion. During the three or three and a half centuries that the Europeans have known this border-land and have taken places in it into their possession, they have only here and there (and that but for a short time) passed these mountains, and have nowhere settled down beyond them. The land surrounded by these mountains is an unknown Upland, from which on the other hand the Negroes have seldom made their way through. In the sixteenth century occurred at many very distant points, outbreaks of terrible hordes which rushed down upon the more peaceful inhabitants of the declivities. Whether any internal movement had taken place, or if so, of what character, we do not know. What we do know of these hordes, is the contrast between their conduct in their wars and forays themselves-which exhibited the most reckless inhumanity and disgusting barbarism-and the fact that afterwards, when their rage was spent, in the calm time of peace, they showed themselves mild and well disposed towards the Europeans, when they became acquainted with them. This holds good of the Fullahs and of the Mandingo tribes, who inhabit the mountain terraces of the Senegal and Gambia. The second portion of Africa is the river district of the Nile-Egypt; which was adapted to become a mighty centre of independent civilization, and therefore is as isolated and singular in Africa as Africa itself appears in relation to the other parts of the world. The northern part of Africa, which may be specially called that of the coast-territory (for Egypt has been frequently driven back on itself, by the Mediterranean) lies on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; a magnificent territory, on which Carthage once lay-the site of the modern Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This part was to be-must be attached to Europe: the French have lately made a successful effort in this direction: like Hither-Asia, it looks Europe-wards.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Archives of Empire, vol 2 by Barbara Harlow Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xvGeneral Introduction: Readings in Imperialism and Orientalism xvii
Volume Introduction: The Scramble for Africa 1
I. The Berlin Conference 1885: Making/ Mapping History
Introduction: The Scramble for Africa: From the Conference at Berlin to the Incident at Fashoda 13
Chronology of Events 16
Africa in 1886: The Scramble Half Complete [map] 17
Africa after the Scramble, 1912 [map] 18
Africa 1898, with Charter Companies [map] 19
Joseph Conrad, Excerpts from Heart of Darkness (1898/99) 20
G. W. F. Hegel, "Africa" (1822) 21
General Act of the Conference of Berlin (1885) 28
"The Black Baby" (1894) [illustration] 29
Arthur Berriedale Keith, "International Rivalry and the Berlin Conference" (1919) 47
"The 'Irrepressible' Tourist" (1885) [illustration] 59
Hilaire Belloc, Excerpt from "The Modern Traveller" [1898] 60
Winston Churchill, "The Fashoda Incident" (1899) 65
Lord Alfred Milner, "Geography and Statecraft" (1907) 76
"Marchez! Marchand!" (1898) [illustration] 77
Dr. Wilhelm Junker, Excerpt from Travels in Africa during the Years 1882-1886, with etching (1892) 79
"Africa Shared Out" (1899) [editorial with cartoon] 81
II. The Body Politic: Rationalizing Race
Introduction: The Body Politic: Rationalizing Race 85
Slaves 91
William Wilberforce, "The African Slave Trade" (1789) 93
William Pitt the Younger, "William Pitt the Younger Indicts the Slave trade and Forsees a Liberated Africa" (1792) 100
Thomas Carlyle, "The Nigger Question" (1849) 108
Charles Dickens, "The Noble Savage" (1853) [with classified advertisement from the Illustrated London News] 134
Species 141
Count Joseph Arthur Gobineau, "Moral and Intellectual Characteristics of the Three Great Varieties" (1856) 143
Charles Darwin, "Struggle for Existence" (1871) 153
Charles Darwin, "On the Formation of the Races of Man" (1871) 160
Digain Williams, Excerpt from "Darwin" (1922) 167
James W. Redfield, "Comparative Physiognomy" (1852) 169
Ernest Renan, Excerpts from The Future of Science (1893) 178
Self Governance 187
Walter Bagehot, "Nation-Making" (1869) 189
Herbert Spencer, "The Primitive Man---Intellectual" (1906) 195
Benjamin Kidd, "The Principles of the Relations of Our Civilization to the Tropics" (1898) 208
Dudley Kidd, Excerpts from Kafir Socialism (1908) 222
Rudyard Kipling, "How the Leopard Got His Spots" (1902) 232
III. The Political Corps
The Mission 241
Introduction: The Mission: Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce 243
William Booth, Salvation Army Songs (n.d.) 247
David Livingstone, Dr. Livingstone's Cambridge Lectures (1858) 253
Henry M. Stanley, Excerpts from How I Found Livingstone (1872) 278
Livingstone's Journeys, 1841-1856 [map] 279
M.B. Synge, "Preparing the Empire: Livingstone and Stanley in Central Africa" (1908) 300
Elizabeth Rundle Charles (?), "In Memory of Dr. Livingstone" (1874) 304
Sir Bartle Frere, "Dr. Livingstone" (1874) 306
Count Joseph Arthur Gobineau, "Influence of Christianity upon Moral and intellectual Diversity of Races" (1856) 319
Matthew Arnold, "The Bishop and the Philosopher" (1863) 328
International Emigration Office, Excerpts from The Surplus (1909) 350
Excerpts from The Salvation Army British Empire Exhibition Handbook (1924) 358
The Administration: Lugard and the Royal Niger Company 365
Introduction: Inheritors of Empire, Agents of Change: Lord Lugard and Mary Kingsley 367
"Royal Charter Granted to the National African Company, later called the Royal Niger Company" (1884) 372
George Taubman Goldie and Frederick Lugard, Selected Correspondence: The Royal Niger Company (1894) 380
Frederick Lugard, Excerpts from The Diaries of Lord Lugard: Nigeria (1894-1895,1898) 388
Frederick Lugard, "Duties of Political Officers and Miscellaneous subjects" (1913-1918) 402
Frederick Lugard, Excerpts from The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922) 417
Mary Kingsley, "The Clash of Cultures" (1901) 439
Mary Kingsley, "A Letter to the Editor of 'The New Africa'" (n.d.) 457
Flora L. Shaw (Lady Lugard), Excerpts from A Tropical Dependency (1905) 460
The Administration: Cecil J. Rhodes and the British South Africa Company 473
Introduction: Cecil J. Rhodes; Colossus or Caricature? 475
Olive Schreiner, Excerpt from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897) 478
"The Rhodes Colossus" (1892) [illustration] 480
"My Career Is Only Beginning!" (1896) [illustration] 481
"South Africa before and after Cecil Rhodes" (1896) [map] 483
H. Rider Haggard, "We Abandon Hope" (1885) 484
John Buchan, "My Uncle's Gift Is Many Times Multiplied" (1910) 492
Cecil John Rhodes, Excerpts from The Speeches of Cecil Rhodes 1881-1900 (1900) 496
Lord Randolph S. Churchill, Excerpts from Men, Mines, and Animals in South Africa (1895) 529
Dr. L. S. Jameson. "Personal Reminiscences of Mr. Rhodes" (1897) 531
"The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes" (1902) 538
Rudyard Kipling, "The Burial" (1902) 560
IV. Crises of Empire
Gordon at Khartoum 565
Introduction: Gordon at Khartoum: From Cavil to Catastrophe 566
Chronology of Events 569
Charles G. Gordon, Excerpts from The Journals of Major-General C. B. Gordon, G. B. at Kartoum (1885) 569
"At Last!" (1885) [illustration] 572
"Too Late!" (1885) [illustration] 573
Queen Victoria, Letters to Mary Gordon (1890) 578
Lytton Strachey, "The End of General Gordon" (1918) 580
Lord Cromer (Evelyn Baring), "Relief Expedition' (1908) 583
Wilfred S. Blunt, Excerpts from Gordon at Khartoum (1911) 591
Randolph H. S. Churchill, "The Desertion of General Gordon" (1884) 596
Lord Wolseley, Excerpt from In Relief of Gordon (1885) 600
Rudolf C. Slatin Pasha, Excerpt from Fire and Sword in the Sudan (1896) 602
Major F. R. Wingate, "The Siege and Fall of Khartum" (1892) 603
John Buchan, "Act the Fifth: The End" (1934) 616
Rudyard Kipling, "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" (1898) 622
The Graphic, Christmas Number, 1887 624
"Gordon's Dream---The Martyr-Hero of Khartoum" (1887) [illustration] 625
The Anglo-Boer War 627
Introduction: The Boer War: Accusations and Apologias 629
"Across th