What led to the scramble for and partition of Southern Africa

·         What led to the scramble for and partition of Southern Africa

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·         The Industrial Revolution in Europe.

·         The competition for raw materials for their ind~tries intensified the scramble of the region to serve as sources of supply.

·         Need for the investment of surplus capital due to the accumulation of profits in these European countries - 'the need arose for new areas where the surplus capital could be more profitably invested. '

·         Pressure from European merchants and trading companies upon their home governments to give them protection.

·         The prospect for the discovery of large mineral deposits in other areas of South Africa in the wave of the 1867 Diamond discovery.

·         The influence which contemporary European rivalries had on the scramble - Anglo-Boers conflict, Anglo German and Anglo-Portuguese conflicts / rivalries.

·         After the acquisition of Alsace - Lorraine in 1871, Germany was determined to acquire areas in Africa. This worried the British goverhment.

·         Nationalism and prestige among the Dutch and the British.

·         The Boer occupation of the Cape stills the earliest times and the need to set up a permanent settlement and control in South Africa and its interior.

·         Activities of other European powers in the region Belgium. Portugal, German, Britain and the Dutch. The exploration of the region.

·         The strategic importance of Southern Africa and the latter British occupation of Egypt in 1882. This intensified and speeded up the scramble of the area.

·         The 1884-85 Berlin Conference. It created the feeling among the British that more speed was necessary in the Scramble. The growth of nationalism in Europe to the extent of Jingoism. National prestige and economic interests were the driving

·         force for imperial activities of men like Cecil Rhodes, Jameson Leander Starr, and Paul Kruger among others.

·         The reports of explorers and missionaries aroused a new interest in the Sub region.

·         Social conditions in Europe due to the industrial revolution played apart like Mass Unemployment.

·         The Darwin's theory of evolution. Although this was an absurd theory with no basis in truth, it did fire the zeal of many European Empire building nations in Europe to the Sub region.

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·         The actual partition of South Africa and the rise of new imperialism 1795-1886

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·         South Africa was partitioned by the British and the Boers or the Dutch fanners. Of the two, the Dutch were the earlier arrivals, but in 1795 the British took over the Dutch colony at the Cape being of such strategic importance would be too big a risk to expose the occupation by a hostile power or else the control of the Indian Ocean might slip through British fingers.

·         Soon after this takeover, small groups of Dutch settlers began to move further into the hinterland in search of new pastures for their animals and new lands to settle.

·         The greatest exodus of the Boers, (the Great Trek), occurred is 1836, for different reasons to avoid British control. But the Boers had become British subjects since the latter takeover at the Cape, and the exodus put the British in a dilemma, since the government felt it had the obligation to extend its authority to all areas occupied by them.

·         There was also the fear that was left to their own devices; the Boers might cause a racial war in which the British might find themselves involved. Besides the Boers might seize an Indian Ocean port further north, thus undermining the British for colonizing the Cape.

·         Therefore powerful reasons existed for following the Boers northwards, but an equally powerful reason militated against over enthusiasm in pursuing an enlargement of colonial policy - the heavy expenses involved.

·         That was the basic reason for the adoption on the part of Britain of a policy that seemed to move backwards and forward with regard to annexation or no annexation of Boer states - Transvaal and Orange Free State, recognized by the British in 1852 and 1854 respectively.

·         In 1843, the British occupied Natal. This area had earlier in the 1830's been declared the Republic of Natalia (1838) by the Trek Boers. This later occupation was aimed at ctaimiog the Boer threat to the Port of Durban.

·         Once in control in Natal, the supposed policy of liberalism in the Cape was not militated - the British adopted a policy of rigid racial segregation, which the Boers had followed with regard to Africans.

·         This was prompted by the fear of Zulu power. The apartheid (separate development), policy was given shape by Theophilus Shepstone, the Natal secretary for Native Affairs from 1853-1875.

·         In 1840's mercantile-imperialism was replaced with imperialism of Free trade' which by 1880's led to capitalist - imperialism that revived colonial expansion.

·         Britain as the world's only mature industrial power since 1740's was beginning to export surplus capital to invest overseas. Other European nations and the USA were in the middle of their markets for their own industrial revolutions and were looking abroad for markets for their manufactured goods.

·         Capitalist countries challenged British dominance of Free trade, first by protecting themselves from cheaper British goods by high custom duties and secondly by expanding their protected national markets through conquering their neighbours or seizing overseas colonies.

·         Britain responded with its own aggressive nationalism during the Conservative Party Government of 1874-80. The very word imperialism entered the English language at that time.

·         Surplus capital - the profits from Britain's industrialization - was invested in overseas development projects such as railways and mining. These would expand the market for British consumption.

·         British capitalists began investing money in the Cape colony banks in the early 1960s speculating in the hope that local companies would follow it at high interest rates to expand wool production and interior trade.

·         So much money came in and moved from bank to bank in such of greater profit, without sufficient development projects to use it, that 28 of the 31 banks collapsed in bankruptcy during the Cape bank crisis 1863-65 when investor suddenly withdrew their deposits. Only the two London - based imperial banks and one Cape-based local bank survived.

·         There had been a depression in British world trade during the 1870's after the collapse of a boom in American railroad construction. But British capitalists noted that trade and profits did not decline in other colonies unlike the USA and some capitalists therefore began to think of colonizing Africa, which would remain profitable even during world trade depressions.

·         The discovery of gold and diamond made Southern Africa, the most attractive part of the continent for British investment. Gold and other precious metals were needed in increasing quantity for currency as world trade expanded, while diamonds were valued as indestructible reservoirs of wealth by individuals recently grown rich in Europe and America.

·         By 1880's Britain and Portugal were already established colonial powers by also claimed enormous hinterlands from their coastal colonies. The continent was then carved up between the European powers in what was called 'the scramble for Africa. '

·         In Southern Africa, settler capitalists and politicians pressed for the annexation of new colonies in the interior, while the colonial office in London favored the cheaper alternative of Treaty- States (or 'protectorates ').

·         The Exploration of Southern Africa

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·         There are no viable records on the exploitation of South Africa. However the Dutch, Portuguese and British travellers started the discovery of the area.

·         This was because of some discoveries made in science and industry.

·         Geographers and explorers were also eager to share in this age of discovery. Of all the 'unknown' regions of the world, none was more interesting to them than - 'the Dark continent -Africa.

·         What they wanted they particularly wanted to explore were the great rivers, cross mountains and other hidden motives their work.

·         From the late seventeenth and eighteenth century onwards, rave Europeans came usually with very small expeditions try to a map accurately the course of important rivers and landscape and the institutional organization of African socieces

·         In his second expedition in then so called 'journey across Africa' 1852 to 1856, Dr. David Livingstone set out from en Town equipped as well as his scanty funds would permit, and traveled northwards to Inyanti in Central Africa the cme: welcomed him.

·         He suffered the bad climate, malaria fever; he was shocked by the barbarous customs and signs of slave trade. He .. thus convinced than ever of the need to open up the interior to Christianity and commerce and exploitation.

·         Many Dutch militias and travelers who gave reports about land vacuum, geography and the inhabitable lands of the Sot..! Africa interior. Leading Boer-Burghers explored Khoisan and Bantu land in the interior.

·         These journeys took white men into the heart of Africa for the discovered not only the geography of Africa for the discovered not only the geography of the continent but also the wealth of the continent as well. They began to urge the governments and territorial monopolies and traders to send new expeditions into the interior in order to establish friend, relations with powerful chiefs. Traders and missionaries also were seeking official support from Europe and the governments. This led to what came to be called 'the scramble for Africa. '

·         As for Central Africa, leadership explorers were Portuguese nationals - Lacerda e' Almeida, Pedro Baptista and Anasas.a Jose, Monteiro and Camitto, Siva Porto and.the British explorers included-Dr. David Living stone, Thomas Baines and Dr. John Kirk.

·         It's important to note that European exploration activity and interest in South Africa had been limited to the coast an indeed penetration of the interior of Southern Africa was delayed or slow.

·         This was because of British-Boer conflicts opposition of African rulers and middlemen traders, many coastal middlemen in Natal resisted European penetration because they feared that it would result in the loss of their lucrative position. ther were no practical need for explorations, and they were not ready or prepared to bear the expenses of maintaining suc territories.

·         At the same time the mercantile age limited the work of exploration. Above all geography and climate impediments limited their penetration.

·         The urge to penetrate the interior of South Africa was due to British reforms at the cape that led to the Great Trek (1830's), the industrial age in Europe, the prevailing spirit of scientific enquiry in the world, the humanitarian movement (through missionaries, Agriculturalists and traders), and national or imperial rivalries for the acquisition of territories i Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa Rhodesia, Mozambique and the northward movement).

·         The effects of the exploration of Southern African interior were that mush of the mystery of the interior was solved settlement of the Dutch in the north of the cape, expansion of imperial rivalries and Afrikaner nationalism, dealt a blow in slave trade and ground for legitimate trade in central Africa.

·         It also prepared the way for European missionary activity in South Africa and prepared the way for European imperialists' activities, which led to colonial conquest and the partition of the area

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·         scramble and partition of africa

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·         The term Scramble for Africa means the rush by European powers to get as many territories as possible on the African continent. This took place before the last quarter of the nineteenth Century in South Africa.

·         In the whole of Southern Africa, this rush for colonies started before the nineteenth Century, but it did become serious in l880s, which led to sharing of the area with Anglo-Boer tensions.

·         Therefore the term partition of Africa means dividing the African continent among the scrambling European powers. It was also done at the Berlin Conference 1884-85 and finally on land thus victimizing the African continent.

·         Several reasons are put forward to explain why the partition of South Africa did actually take place before 1880 than elsewhere in Africa. Despite this, the area was still considered a white man's grave due to tropical diseases, the Europeans regarded the area as a dark continent, there was a negative attitude towards colonies in the area due to European colonial occupation elsewhere, other Europeans wanted to occupy other areas or parts of the world, industrialization in Europe made the whites expand to other areas and end the British monopoly.

·         Important to note also were internal political problems in Europe, explorers had also not acquired a favorable operational atmosphere, but the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and later gold, pushed more the Scramble for the area.

·         The reasons for the Scramble for and partition of South Africa range from economic, philanthropic, strategic, mineral discovery, racial purity, nationalism, European superiority over the Africa race, imbalance of power in Europe after 1870 and imperial rivalry in the whole of Africa.

·         For the sake of South Africa, the Scramble for and Partition of was precipitated by traders like Cecil Rhodes, the Uitlanders and tbe Boer traders in the interior of South Africa. Other forces or agents included the Missionaries, ixplorers, travelers, collaborators, the industrial revolution in Europe, the 1884-85 Berlin conference, imperialists and European thirst colonialists.

·         The Scramble for South Africa reached the highest peak due to Anglo-Boer tensions in the last quarter of the nineteenth Century, the interference in the area due to German presence in Namibia and the Portuguese hold of Mozambique and Angola.

·         The climax of this was the Union of the whites in 1910 that dashed hopes for African existence and sovereignty and the launch of Apartheid.

·         Note, that the Cape in south Africa was a strategic point, which attracted many European explorers and the Dutch in particular who stayed there until the coming of the British who invaded the area in 1795 and later 1806 in their original land in Cape Province leading to the Great Trek upheaval in 1830's.

·         The Mineral discovery and consequent exploitation was a factor that brought tension among many Europeans in the whole of Africa.

·         The imposition of British and Dutch Colonial rule in South Africa was done through the use of peaceful and violent methods, which included treaty signing, divide and rule policy, use of Missionaries, men onthe spot or the imperialists, chartered companies, deceit and trickery, use of high commissioners and consuls.

·         The violent methods included gunboat diplomacy, deployment method and that of outright military conquest as a last resort.

·         One of the most important political complication in South Africa brought about by the discovery of minerals was theAnglo- Boer wars- 1880-1881, '1895',1899- 1902