The Scramble for Africa & the Boer War
From Trade to Conquest, 1800-1914
In 1800, European powers controlled around 10% of Africa — mostly coastal forts for the slave trade and a few Cape settlements. By 1914, they controlled 90% of the continent. Britain ruled Egypt, the Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The Scramble for Africa was driven by economic resources, ideas, and the personal ambitions of empire-builders — among them Cecil Rhodes, who summed up the era’s confidence with the line ‘I would annex the planets if I could.’
The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, chaired by Bismarck of Germany, set rules for European partition of Africa. No African leaders were present. The conference established that any power claiming African territory had to demonstrate ‘effective occupation’ — sparking a rush to plant flags and sign treaties with African chiefs.
Trade, Missionaries and the Anti-Slavery Cause
The earlier 19th century saw three British presences in Africa expand alongside each other. Trade: West African palm oil (used for soap and lubrication) replaced the slave trade as the main British export from the region. Missionaries: figures such as David Livingstone (active 1841-73) combined exploration with Christian conversion and anti-slavery campaigning. The Royal Navy West Africa Squadron: from 1808 it patrolled to suppress the Atlantic slave trade. These three strands gave Britain a moral self-image — the ‘civilising mission’ — that justified later territorial seizure. Critics at the time, and historians since, have pointed out that the same mission delivered profit to British exporters and political control to British administrators.
Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-1898
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made Egypt strategically vital to Britain’s route to India. When Egyptian financial collapse and the Arabi Revolt threatened British investments and the canal in 1882, Gladstone (despite his reputation as an anti-imperialist) ordered the bombardment of Alexandria and a military occupation. Officially temporary, the occupation lasted 70 years. Sudanese resistance under the Mahdi killed General Gordon at Khartoum in 1885, and was eventually crushed by Kitchener at Omdurman in 1898 — a battle in which Maxim machine guns destroyed Mahdist cavalry, killing around 10,000 in a few hours.
Rhodes arrived in Cape Colony as a teenager in 1870, made his fortune in the Kimberley diamond fields and by 1888 controlled De Beers, which still mines around a quarter of the world’s diamonds today. As Cape Colony Prime Minister from 1890, he pushed the British South Africa Company north into present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia — territories that took his name (Rhodesia, until 1980). His ‘Cape to Cairo’ ambition was a continuous British strip of railway, telegraph and rule from southern to northern Africa. The 1895 Jameson Raid — an attempt to overthrow the Transvaal government — was a Rhodes-backed disaster that helped trigger the Boer War.
The Second Boer War, 1899-1902
Tensions between the British Cape Colony and the Boer republics (Transvaal and Orange Free State) erupted into war in October 1899. The Boers were Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Dutch settlers; the war was over gold (discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886), the political rights of British settlers in the Transvaal, and rival imperial ambitions. The Boers’ early successes — the sieges of Mafeking, Kimberley and Ladysmith — humiliated Britain. By mid-1900 a much larger British force had captured Pretoria, but Boer commandos kept fighting a guerrilla war for two more years.
Britain responded by burning Boer farms and corralling civilians into concentration camps. Conditions were horrific: poor food, contaminated water, no medical care. Around 28,000 Boers (mostly children) died of disease, and at least 20,000 Africans died in separate camps held in even worse conditions. Emily Hobhouse’s 1901 visit and the Fawcett Commission report exposed the camps in Britain. The war ended in May 1902 with the Treaty of Vereeniging: the Boer republics joined the British Empire but with their language and culture protected. The cost in lives, money and reputation made many in Britain question the moral case for empire.
Imperial Propaganda and Social Darwinism
Empire was sold to the British public through a vast propaganda industry. Cigarette cards, music hall songs, Boys’ Own Paper, Girls’ Own Paper, Mr Bovril, the 1924 Empire Exhibition at Wembley, school textbooks — all told one story: empire was good for both ruler and ruled. The intellectual scaffolding for this was social Darwinism: the misuse of Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution to argue that ‘fitter’ races would inevitably rule ‘weaker’ ones. This was bad biology — Darwin himself rejected the idea — but politically convenient. Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ framed empire as a moral duty to ‘civilise’.
The Second Boer War (1899-1902) cost Britain 22,000 dead, £200 million and damaged its imperial reputation. The use of concentration camps killed around 28,000 Boer civilians and at least 20,000 Africans. Emily Hobhouse’s exposure of the camps was a turning point in British public opinion about empire.
Linking to the Factor Essay
The Scramble for Africa is the test case for ideas as a factor in empire. Without social Darwinism, the ‘civilising mission’ and the propaganda that sold them, the political support for African expansion would have been thinner. Economic resources drove the practicalities — gold, diamonds, palm oil, cotton, rubber. The role of individuals was visible everywhere: Rhodes in southern Africa, Lugard in Nigeria, Kitchener in Sudan, the Mahdi and Cetshwayo on the African side. A 16-mark factor essay on Africa needs to weigh ideas against economic resources, and the strongest answers note that they reinforced each other — ideas justified what economic resources made profitable.