These Social Studies Africa Worksheets are great for any classroom. Engage your students with these Social Studies Africa Worksheets. Members receive unlimited access to 49,000+ cross-curricular educational resources, including interactive activities, clipart, and abctools custom worksheet generators. The Scramble for Africa 6th - 8th In this world history worksheet, middle schoolers complete 2 graphic organizers to elaborate on the forces of imperialism and the division of Africa.
. The Portuguese had been the first post-Middle Ages Europeans to firmly establish settlements, trade posts, permanent fortifications and ports of call along the coast of the African continent, from the beginning of the Age of Discovery, in the 15th century. There was little interest in, and less knowledge of, the interior for some two centuries thereafter. So Africa was called “Black Continent”.
European exploration of the African interior began in earnest at the end of the 18th century. By 1835, Europeans had mapped most of northwestern Africa. In the middle decades of the 19th century, the most famous of the European explorers were David Livingstone and H. Stanley, both of whom mapped vast areas of Southern Africa and Central Africa. Arduous expeditions in the 1850s and 1860s by Richard Burton, John Speke and James Grant located the great central lakes and the source of the Nile. By the end of the 19th century, Europeans had charted the Nile from its source, traced the courses of the Niger, Congo and Zambezi Rivers, and realized the vast resources of Africa. Even as late as the 1870s, European states still controlled only ten percent of the African continent, all their territories being near the coast and a short distance inland along major rivers such as the Niger and the Congo.
(3) Capitalism:. The end of European trading in slaves left a need for commerce between Europe and Africa. Capitalists wanted to exploit the continent so that new ‘legitimate’ trade would be encouraged.
Explorers located vast reserves of raw materials,upon which European industry had grown dependent. They plotted the course of trade routes, navigated rivers, and identified population centers which could be a market for manufactured goods from Europe. It was a time of plantations and cash crops, dedicating the region’s workforce to producing rubber, coffee, sugar, palm oil, timber, etc for Europe. And all the more enticing if a colony could be set up which gave the European nation a monopoly. As Britain developed into the world’s first post-industrial nation, financial services became an increasingly important sector of its economy.
Invisible financial exports, especially capital investments outside Europe, particularly to the developing and open markets in Africa such as to the white settler colonies, the Middle East, South Asia and South-east Asia benefited Britain. In 1840 the Nemesis arrived at Macao, south China. It changed the face of international relations between Europe and the rest of the world. The Nemesis had a shallow draft, a hull of iron, and two powerful steam engines. It could navigate the non-tidal sections of rivers, allowing access inland, and it was heavily armed.
Livingstone used a steamer to travel up the Zambezi in 1858, and had the parts transported overland to Lake Nyassa. Steamers also allowed Stanley and Brazza to explore the Congo. (6) Medical Advances:. Africa, especially the western regions, was known as the ‘ White Man’s Grave‘ because of the danger of two diseases: malaria and yellow fever.
During the eighteenth century only one in ten Europeans sent out to the continent by the Royal African Company survived. In 1817 two French scientists, Pelletier and Caventou, extracted quinine from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. It proved to be the solution to malaria; Europeans could now survive the ravages of the disease in Africa.
(Unfortunately yellow fever continued to be a problem)(7) Politics and Strategic rivalries. (8) Military Innovation:.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Europe was only marginally ahead of Africa in terms of available weapons as traders had long supplied them to local chiefs. But two innovations gave Europe a massive advantage. In the late 1860s percussion caps were being incorporated into cartridges – what previously came as a separate bullet, powder and wadding, was now a single entity, easily transported and relatively weather proof. The second innovation was the breach loading rifle. Older model muskets, held by most Africans, were front loaders, slow to use and had to be loaded whilst standing. Breach loading guns, in comparison, had between two to four times the rate of fire, and could be loaded even in a prone position.
Europeans restricted the sale of the new weaponry to Africa maintaining military superiority.(9) Colonial exhibitions. The colonial empires had become very popular almost everywhere in Europe gradually: public opinion had been convinced of the needs of a colonial empire. Colonial exhibitions had been instrumental in this change of popular mentalities brought about by the colonial propaganda, supported by the colonial lobby and by various scientists. Thus, the conquest of territories were inevitably followed by public displays of the indigenous people for scientific and leisure purposes.
Karl Hagenbeck, a German merchant in wild animals and future entrepreneur of most Europeans zoos, thus decided in 1874 to exhibit Samoa and Sami people as “purely natural” populations. In 1876, he brought from newly conquered Egyptian Sudan some wild beasts and Nubians people. Presented in Paris, London and Berlin, these Nubians were very successful. Such “ human zoos” could be found in many European and American cities. Not used to the climatic conditions, some of the indigenous exposed died.(10) Colonial lobby, their Propaganda, and Jigoism:. In its earlier stages, imperialism was generally the act of individual explorers as well as some adventurous merchantmen. The colonial powers were a long way from approving without any dissent the expensive adventures carried out abroad.
Various important political leaders such as Gladstone (British Liberal politician) opposed colonisation in its first years. David Livingstone‘s explorations, carried on by Stanley, excited imaginations.
But at first, Stanley’s grandiose ideas for colonisation found little support owing to the problems and scale of action required, except from King Leopold II of Belgium, who in 1876 had organised the International African Association ( the Congo Society). From 1869 to 1874, Stanley was secretly sent by Leopold II to the Congo region, where he made treaties with several African chiefs along the Congo River and by 1882 had sufficient territory to form the Congo Free State. Germany was hardly a colonial power before the New Imperialism period. Fragmented in various states, it was only unified under Prussia’s rule after the 1866 Battle of Sadowa and the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. A rising industrial power close on the heels of Britain, Germany began its world expansion in the 1880s.
Italy took possession of parts of Eritrea in 1870 and 1882. Following its defeat in the First Italo–Ethiopian War (1895–1896), it acquired Italian Somaliland in 1889–90 and the whole of Eritrea (1899). In 1911, it engaged in a war with the Ottoman Empire, in which it acquired Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya). In 1919 Enrico Corradini — who fully supported the war, and later merged his group in the early fascist party (PNF) — developed the concept of Proletarian Nationalism, supposed to legitimize Italy’s imperialism by a mixture of socialism with nationalism.First Italo-Ethiopian War. The First Italo-Ethiopian War was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from 1895 to 1896.
It originated from a disputed treaty which, the Italians claimed, turned the country into an Italian protectorate. Much to their surprise, they found that Ethiopian ruler Menelik II, rather than opposed by some of his traditional enemies, was supported by them, and so the Italian army, invading Ethiopia from Italian Eritrea in 1893, faced a more united front than they expected. In addition, Ethiopia was supported by Russia with military advisers and the sale of weapons for Ethiopian forces during the war. Full-scale war broke out in 1895. Italian defeat came about after the Battle of Adwa, where Ethiopian army delivered the Italians a heavy loss and forced their retreat back into Eritrea.
This was not the first African victory over Western colonizers, but it was the first time such a military put a definitive stop to a colonizing nation’s efforts. “ In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia alone had successfully defended its independence“Second Italo-Ethiopian War or Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–36). Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–36) was an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia’s subjection to Italian rule.
Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers. The Second Italo-Abyssinian War would actually be one of the last colonial wars, occupying Ethiopia — which had remained the last independent African territory, apart from Liberia. Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was in 1934 one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa.
A border incident between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland that December gave Benito Mussolini an excuse to intervene. Rejecting all arbitration offers, the Italians invaded Ethiopia on October 3, 1935. After the defeat, the Ethiopia’s leader, Emperor Haile Selassie, went into exile.
In Rome, Mussolini proclaimed Italy’s king Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia and appointed Badoglio to rule as viceroy. In response to Ethiopian appeals, the League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion in 1935 and voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor. The sanctions remained ineffective because of general lack of support. Although Mussolini’s aggression was viewed with disfavour by the British, who had a stake in East Africa, the other major powers had no real interest in opposing him.
The war, by giving substance to Italian imperialist claims, contributed to international tensions between the fascist states and the Western democracies. It also served as a rallying point, especially after World War II, for developing African nationalist movements.Britain’s administration of Egypt and South Africa. The British were primarily interested in maintaining secure communication lines to India, which led to initial interest in Egypt and South Africa. Once these two areas were secure, it was the intent of British colonialists such as Cecil Rhodes to establish a Cape-Cairo railway and to exploit mineral and agricultural resources. Britain’s administration of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River.