Essay 6 3 pages long

Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonization and Exploitation In my previous lecture on Sub-Saharan Africa’s underdevelopment, I talked about the physiographical challenges. However, Sub-

Saharan Africa’s soil and climate cannot be the only source of the region’s poverty and other sufferings. We must turn to the history of colonization and exploitation of Sub-Saharan Africa by European colonizers, going back to the 15

th century.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the cradle of humanity and home to ancient civilizations. In the current day Mali and Sudan, great ancient civilizations sprung up and flourished. In West Africa, there is a country named Ghana, another home to ancient civilization. Ghana means, a land of gold. To you right is the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in the eastern cost of Africa where it is clear that once there stood a majestic city. (You want to know more about the ancient African civilizations? Click right here. In the 15

th century the Portuguese merchants arrived in the west coast of Africa and

established trading posts. Portuguese merchants shipped out of Africa mostly gold and silver, but some slaves. In the following century, other Europeans, including the British, Dutch and French arrived in Africa and intensified trading in gold and ivory, as well as slaves that the Portuguese had first exported out of Africa in much smaller scale. There is a good reason why the trading in human cargo became the mainstay of European commerce in Africa. Unlike in Americas, Europeans failed to establish permanent

immigrant settlements. The inhospitable and disease prone climate, for one, discouraged the influx of Europeans settling to live in Africa for generations to come. Also, constant battles between rival clans and nations produced prisoners of war that were sold to European merchants by their captors. This is the reason why some argue that slave trade was essentially African-initiated tragedy. In any event, Europeans, Arabs, and collaborating Africans forced perhaps thirty million persons out of their homeland in bondage.

In the 19 th

century, Europeans’ imperial conquest intensified. Many factors contributed to what was later called “Scramble for Africa.” Leading to European penetration into inland regions where white settlers occupied the lands and converted them into farms and plantation, thereby making European exploitation more permanent. First, the discovery and wide use of quinine, the anti-malaria drug that is quiet effective when taken daily. This allowed Europeans to defeat armed resistance from Africans. Second, the invention of rapid firing machines gun and other modern weapons overwhelmed Africans who had successfully repelled European military encroachments in the past. There was also a cultural force that energized European expansion into Africa. Europeans had at this point convinced themselves that colonization is a natural manifestation of the law of nature: the survival of the fittest. In other words, according to Charles Darwin’s observation, the fittest (Europeans) had natural right to conquer the not-fitting (Africans). In the process, as Darwin argued, the unfitting will would learn (or struggle) to be more fit, in the image of Europeans. In the final analysis, they felt that colonization was ultimately their mission of civilizing the Africans, therefore, making them more fit to survive. To do this, one British poet wrote was the

“White Men’s Burden.” Oh well…. (Mr. Darwin to your right.) In 1884, European powers finally got together in Berlin, Germany, and partitioned Sub-Saharan Africa into their respective colonies and spheres of influence. As one student of the history of European imperialism wrote, “Sub-Saharan Africa was carved up and traded like properties in a game of Monopoly.” In many cases, drawing of boundaries was arbitrary at best. Sometimes people of a single community was divided into two or more entities, for no other reason than that what the European colonial masters had agreed on. Also, rival groups were forced to live in the same colony, thereby, sowing the potential for clan or sectarian conflict. A geographer writes that such an arbitrary partition of Africa by the Europeans left a “legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily….African politico-geographical map is thus a permanent liability that resulted from…ignorant, greedy acquisitiveness…search for minerals and markets” by European colonizers. (I will have more to say about fragmentation of Africa and

its consequences in the following lecture.) Interestingly, Liberia, a nation established by freed African slaves in North America, and Ethiopia were spared from colonization. However, by 1900, rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was colonized completely by European powers. Down in the south, the Dutch settlers, who were known as Afrikaners, established two white republics after battling the African tribes, namely the famously resistant and resilient Zulus, with the help of the British armed forces. These Afrikaner republics were sitting on one of the richest mineral basins in the world. Lured by these rich mineral deposits and fertile land of southern Africa, Great Britain moved to colonize the domain and imposed restrictions on the Afrikaners of the Dutch origin. The Boers, as Afrikaners were known, rebelled and there ensured a brutal guerrilla war known as the Boer War, which was met by equally violent counter insurgency by the British. (To your left is a rather heroic image of the British soldiers in the Boer War.) By

1905 the Boers, or Afrikaners relented to the British rule, but the Afrikaners sought to reinforce their rule over the black majority by formalizing and systematizing policy of racial segregation and separation known as apartheid, or “separateness.” A partheid had three levels of discriminatory measures designed to insure white supremacy. First, segregation of public facilities -- toilets, roads, buses, water fountains and more -- as was the case in America’s own Jim Crow. Second,

dividing of cities and towns into white and non-white residential areas. Third, and most grand of the three, the creation of “homelands” for Africans who became legally independent nations in the likeness of American Native reservations in the U.S. These homeland for blacks were “rural, overcrowded, and on marginal land.” Millions of blacks were forcibly relocated to these miserable places. Apartheid will last nearly a century, in the process pushing the lives of the black majority of South African into poverty, degradation, and anger, as well as armed resistance. At the same time, British imported cheap South Asian laborers (from the Indian Subcontinent) into South Africa who were called “colored,” the racial category right above the blacks. In so doing, British authorities had sown the seed of another tension, this time between blacks and decedents of South Asian, mostly merchants by profession, whom blacks consider as an exploiting class. One of the most bizarre cases of exploitation of Africans by European colonizers was the Congo Free State under the rule of Leopold II, the king of Belgians. Beginning in the 1880s, Leopold, who held the colony almost as his private property, cultivated natural rubber plantation in the Congo Free State. He imposed rubber quota, which meant that individuals had to collect certain amount of rubber. People who could not meet the quota, were punishable by death. So, what happened was that enforcers of Leopold’s rules went out to the village and, instead of killing those who had failed to collect enough rubber, which is unsavory thing to do, they cut their hands as a proof that they were actually killed. I guess that was considered more humane than killing the villagers. Here is one testimony of this cruel and bizarre practice:

The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber... They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publiquesoldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected.

What benefits did Africa offer to European colonizers and white settlers? Plenty. The 19

th century was a time when Europe was going through the

Industrial Revolution, and Sub-Saharan African colonies provided industrialized countries of Europe with cheap natural resources, agricultural products, labor, markets, and investment opportunities, for their colonizers’ economic development. Let us look at a couple of examples. In terms of natural resources, Africa has most of everything, including precious metals to diamond, and crude oil. Agriculturally, lush plains of east Africa offer such cash crops as coffee, tea, rubber, palm oil, peanuts, and cotton, and more. (Left is is an early African gold mine, owned by European, but worked by Africans, as usual. To the right is a female work in Kenya’s coffee

plantation mostly developed and owned by European settlers.) There is another harmful effect of western colonialism in Africa – authoritarian political tradition. Here is how de Blij discusses this issue: “In many countries, the elites that gained advantage and prominence during the colonial period also have retained their preeminence. This has led to authoritarianism in some postcolonial African states… and to violence and civil conflict in others.

Military takeovers of national governments have been a byproduct of decolonization, and hopes for democracy in the struggle against colonialism have too often been dashed.” In other words, Europeans planted ugly weeds that chock the green grass of democracy. (To your left is the British-supported Idi Amin of Uganda who brutalized his population for many years with his monstrosity before being driven to exile by rebellious Ugandans.)

In the final analysis, Europeans turned Africa into a more productive economic base, by transforming its subsistence farming to plantation economy, and introducing mechanized mining in Africa. In the process, Africa became an integral part of worldwide capitalism. Who benefited from this history of colonization and human and resource exploitation? The industrialized world as a whole did. What about the Africans? Well, Sub-Saharan Africa stands for poverty, backwardness and conflict. Also, it is the most disease-stricken place in the world. The answer is clear; in the last two centuries, Africans have been the victims of their own richness of physiography. To the left is an obvious image of how European colonial legacy still remains in present-day African life. Before we move to the next lecture, I would like to suggest that we

read the poem, Africa, written by Maya Angelou.

Thus she had lain

sugercane sweet

deserts her hair

golden her feet

mountains her breasts

two Niles her tears.

Thus she has lain

Black through the years.

Over the white seas

rime white and cold

brigands ungentled

icicle bold

took her young daughters

sold her strong sons

churched her with Jesus

bled her with guns.

Thus she has lain.

Now she is rising

remember her pain

remember the losses

her screams loud and vain

remember her riches

her history slain

now she is striding

although she has lain.