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Example research essay topic: Library Of Congress East Africa - 2,167 words

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... , which meant establishing a colonial government and a river fleet, so in 1886, the National African Company was chartered as the Royal Niger Company, and charged with administering, in the name of the Queen, an area one-hundred times larger than Great Britain itself (Chamberlain 58). In West Africa, Britain had really been trying to keep France, and later Germany, out. The simplest explanation for the rampant European interest in West Africa was trade. In East Africa, which was considerably poorer than the west, the scramble was motivated more by strategic rivalry. East Africa had always had ties to India, and the British government found itself increasingly preoccupied by the threat of a hostile entity coming to power there.

Nevertheless, France forcibly installed a protectorate over Madagascar in 1885. Britain, still embarrassed by the Egypt incident, objected but did not pursue any attempts to remove the French. Germany had, by now displaced France as Great Britains chief rival, and the majority of London's attention was now focused on countering German expansion. The British had always had strong influence in Zanzibar, and by the mid 1880 s there was intense pressure to assert a formal presence there. In March of 1885, Germany laid claim to all the land in Tanganyika. All attempts at moderation were scrapped, and the British government began to act under the aspects of a plan first devised in the 1870 s, whereby Britain would administer vast areas of land in East Africa on behalf of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

In October of 1886 an agreement was reached between Britain and Germany that left the coast under the jurisdiction of the Sultan, but permanently allocated what would become Kenya and Uganda to Britain and Tanganyika to Germany. As far as the actual administration of the new protectorate was concerned, the British resorted to the same device as on the Niger, a chartered company. In late 1886 the Imperial British East Africa Company was chartered and given administrative responsibility for all of British East Africa (Chamberlain 66). Through the 1880 s and in into the 1890 s, France had spread uninterrupted across North and North-West Africa. The French drive into the continent came principally from West Senegal and Algeria eastward, through the Sahel along the southern border of the Sahara, a territory covering modern day Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Morocco remained independent but was under heavy French influence and many French imperialists saw Morocco as the missing piece of their Empire.

The British extended their colony in Sierra Leone to include huge tracts of land as protectorates in 1896. The Gold Coast was the scene of a series of Anglo-Africa wars throughout the 1890 s, but eventually became a Crown Colony in 1901. The region to the north, occupied by a mixture of various tribes, was brought under British jurisdiction between 1896 and 1898. Meanwhile British control of Nigeria was consolidated further (Chamberlain 81). The situation in Southern Africa was entirely different than anywhere else on the continent. Unlike most of Britains western and eastern possessions, her southern lands were heavily populated with Europeans and were effectively self-governing countries.

In the late 1800 s there were four British territories in South Africa, two English colonies on the coast, Cape Colony and Natal, and two Boer Republics inland, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic, or the Transvaal (Library of Congress. gov). Though the Union of South Africa would not be formalized until 1910, all Europeans in the region had anticipated the eventual unification of all the South African lands for decades; the only question that lingered was when, and whether the British or the Afrikaners would be the dominant people. Technically speaking, the entire area was within British control, and while London was mainly concerned with keeping Germany from gaining influence in South Africa, the South Africans themselves were engaged in a power struggle between the English and the Boers (Chamberlain 90 - 91). In the 1880 s the European powers eyes became fixed on the Bechuanaland, a desert-like territory located between German East Africa and the Boer States.

The Cape Colonists felt that if they did not act in good timing, they would loose their rout to the north. The British were apprehensive that the Boers would align themselves with Germany. Unsettled by rampant German activity in South East Africa, the British government claimed the Bechuanaland as a Crown Colony in 1885. Though Britain gained the upper hand by annexing the Bechuanaland, fortunes in Southern Africa changed dramatically when, in 1886, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, in an area called Witwatersrand.

Such vast mineral wealth so close, yet beyond British control was intolerable. To make matters worse, thousands of English settlers began emigrating from Cape Colony to Witwatersrand, where they quickly outnumbered the Boers, though remaining a minority in the Transvaal. Fearful of the English-speaking immigrants, called uitlander's, the Afrikaners restricted their civil rights and denied them suffrage. At the same time, the president of the South African Republic, Paul Kruger, prepared to develop a rail link to Portuguese East Africa.

Such a link endangered British commercial interests and intensified fears that the Boers would gain direct access to the sea and thus to rival European powers. The Witwatersrand mine owners were, without exception, English speakers with no loyalty to the South African Republic and they bitterly resented all attempts to tax the gold industry (Library of Congress. gov). Together with interested parties in Cape Colony and in London, they pressured Westminster to dissolve the Boer governments entirely.

As the New-Imperial spirit spread, the European powers found it increasingly difficult to relinquish land once it had been acquired. For a country to give up territory over which its flag had once flown was an embarrassment within the international community and a very unpopular act in the eyes of the pubic. The period immediately following the Berlin Conference saw France, Germany and Britain preemptively gobbling up territory in an almost random fashion. One countrys maneuvering in one region immediately caused its rivals to begin counter measures, which necessitated further maneuvering by the first country. The mad grab had subsided somewhat by 1890, and that year saw a number of treaties and negotiations made between the European states in an attempt to rectify some of their more foolhardy annexations, and to streamline and define their colonial borders. The most important 1890 treaty was one in which Germany agreed to recognize a formal British protectorate in Zanzibar in return for British concessions in West Africa, most notably the Caprivi Strip, which connected German Southwest Africa with the Zambesi River.

France also recognized the British position in Zanzibar in exchange for official British acknowledgment of French control of Madagascar. Portugal accepted British control of Mashonaland (north-east Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in return for the recognition of boundary claims on behalf of Portuguese East Africa (Chamberlain 67). Meanwhile, tensions continued to mount in South Africa. In the 1890 s, distrustful of the mine owners and the British government, Paul Kruger diligently sought to increase his country's strength. He imported arms from Europe, continued to deny the vote to the uitlander's, engaged diplomatic talks with Germany, and cemented relations with the Orange Free State. In December 1895, Cecil Rhodes escalated matters further by dispatching 500 -armed employees of the British South Africa Company, which ruled the territory of Rhodesia, to occupy the Transvaal.

Rhodes had hoped that the uitlander's would join the invaders to help overthrow the Boer government, however the invasion turned out to be a fiasco. By the second half of the 1890 s, the British had decided that it would be necessary to take direct action to contain Afrikaner power. In September 1899 Westminster issued an ultimatum demanding that Kruger enfranchise all British residents of the South African Republic. Simultaneously, troops were sent from Britain to the Cape.

Kruger, certain that the British had prepared for invasion, took the initiative and, allied with the Orange Free State, declared war on the UK in October 1899 (Library of Congress. gov). British strength prevailed, and after a drawn-out war the Boers surrendered in 1902, thus consolidating all of South Africa into the British Empire. By the turn of the century, a pattern of expansion, North-South for Great Britain and West-East for France, had emerged. France sought to extend her holdings from Senegal to the Sudan, which would enable her empire to span the entire continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Conversely, the British wanted to unite their territories in Southern Africa, modern South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, with their possessions in East Africa, present day Kenya.

Since Egypt was under British mandate, and with it Sudan, joining their southern and eastern lands with the Nile Basin would give the British their legendary red line from Cairo to Cape Town. If one were to draw a line between Cape Town and Cairo, and one from Dakar to the Horn, these two lines would intersect someplace in eastern Sudan near Fashoda, present-day Kodok (Wikepedia. org). The status of Sudan in international law was uncertain after the 1885 occupation of Egypt. The British maintained that the region belonged to Egypt, but that the Egyptians were temporarily unable to exercise jurisdiction there; therefore Sudan was under British protection. The French, on the other hand, held the area to be in res nucleus with no internationally recognized government.

This implied that under the terms of the Berlin Act, the area was open to seizure by the first comer (Chamberlain 83 - 84). The legitimacy of the Anglo-Egyptian arrangement was still disputed between the two powers, and many French still saw Egypt as a necessary part of French North Africa. Conversely, the British government became increasingly paranoid by the prospect of being forced out of Egypt and came to feel that the entire Nile should be secured by force if necessary. In 1896, a French expedition left Brazzaville under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand with orders to secure the area around Fashoda as a protectorate of France.

After an epic fourteen-month trek across the continent they arrived on the July 10 th. On the 18 th of September a British convoy led by Lord Kitchener, traveling under the Egyptian flag, arrived in the area. The British had recently defeated the Sudanese rebel, The Mahdi, and had decided to establish control of the region once and for all (Wikepedia. org). Marchand and Kitchener exchanged courtesies, but both men insisted on their respective governments right to Fashoda (Chamberlain 85). When word of the meeting reached Paris and London, the news insulted the imperial pride of both nations.

Popular indignation followed, with each country accusing the other of naked expansionism and hostility. The predicament dragged on through September and October, and for the last time in their histories, there was talk of war between Britain and France (Wikepedia. org). Realism prevailed, as both governments recognized the absurdity of going to war over a distant village. In March of 1899 an agreement was reached whereby France would officially recognized the British presence in Egypt, and with it Sudan, and Britain would support Frances authority in Morocco (saburchill. com).

Following the resolution of the Fashoda incident, the partition of Africa was complete. Before 1880, Europeans controlled only 10 % of Africa. By 1898 nearly the entire continent had been occupied by European powers. Liberia and Ethiopia were the sole exceptions, as both retained their independence. Even the white Afrikaners Republics in South Africa had been subjugated. France held most of Western, and a piece of Central Africa, as well as well as Madagascar and French Somaliland, modern Djibouti.

British holdings expanded exponentially as they pushed into the interior from their coastal colonies in the West, from South Africa north and east, and from Egypt south. Germany controlled Togoland and the Cameroons in West Africa, as well as holding German Southwest Africa, German East Africa, now Tanzania, and Tanganyika (laredo class. net). Italy made colonies in Libya and Somalia, while Spain kept colonies in coastal West Africa and in the Spanish Sahara.

Portugal lost her claim to most of the African coast, but held territory in Angola and Portuguese East Africa (Wikepedia. org). Congo, though by 1900, no longer property of King Leopold, remained under Belgian control. It would be fifty-nine years until the first African nation became independent of European control (north park.

edu). Chamberlain, M. E. The Scramble for Africa. Hong Kong: Longman Group Ltd. , 1974. The Scramble for Africa.

Wikepedia. org (April 2005): Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia. 9 April 2005 < web for Africa>. The Scramble for Africa. (March 2005): The Open Door Website. 10 April 2005 < web >. The New Imperialism & The Scramble for Africa 1880 - 1914. Nantucket High school. 10 April 2005 < web >.

Country Studies: South Africa. (October, 2004): Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. 17 April 2005 < web >. Keller, David. Decolonization. (1999): North Park University. 20 April 2005 < web >.


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Research essay sample on Library Of Congress East Africa

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