Lecture 20 PDF

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These lectures cover the module World Empires and essentially are about an overview of world history. They pick out some of the most important and overarching events of the last 2000 years....

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HIS1025 – lecture 20 – The Scramble for Arica 19th century Africa: From slavery to ‘legitmate commerce’ - Impact of Islamic Revivalism (new Sufi orders, Uthman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, the Mahdi in Sudan) - Abolitionism + the shift from slavery to legitimate commerce: Decrease in slave exports, increase in internal slavery - Ongoing East African slave trade to Indian Ocean, Middle East - Rise of merchant rulers (Mirambo, Tippu Tip, Jaja of Opobo) - Shaka of the Zulu in South Africa – innovate military tactics not influenced by Europeans (Reid) - Environments often adapted to local contests. - British and French merchants demanded that African merchants shifted to legitamte commerce – move from people to commodities. These commodities were still draining on Africa’s resources. - Christian abolishonists actually increased slavery – move from external to internal slavery. - East African slave trade booms in the late 18th century as the atlantic slave trade is declining. - Zanzibar was a centre for eastern slave trade. Exploiter of slave trade. Continued throughout the 19th century. It ended towards the end of the 19th century. - State formation in 19th century Africa was often tied in with the process of internal and external slave trade and legitmate commerce. - Power came from the ability to monopolise resources.

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Rise of diaspora pan-Africanism 19th century; emancipated intellectuals in Britain, America, West Indies develop principle of Africa as an united continent home to ‘Negro’ race. (Oloudah Equiano, Wilmot Blyden) Rise of pan-African movements, W.E. Du Bois writes The Negro (1915), they condemned the denigrating language of European racism in its day. Ancient Egypt was a place of a united ratially defined African history. In the French colonial empire you maintaining unity of Africa history. 1930s: Rise of Negritude movement in French West Indies/Paris – maintaining civilisation – cultural unity and essence to civilisation. Essentialism – a culture can be boiled down to an essence. Colonialism in Africa: European racialism and divide and rule European racialism, rewriting histories and staticizing ethnicity Colonial settlement (French in Algeria, Italians in Libya, Portuguese in Angola/Mozambique, British in Kenya, South Rhodesia, South Africa) Distinction between ‘Citizen and Subject’ (see Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject) – separate legal systems for both Rise of the ‘Native Administration’ (British Africa)/Indigenat (French Africa) + the ‘Invention of Tradition’

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Identity is much more fluid in the modern world. Categorisation is not as popular. However post enlightenment this is very popular. The 19th century European belief that societies are divided into competing races. Historically german and Belgium focused on stratercising two tribes in Rwanda. The idea of hooto and tootsy. Something that was economically and politically divide. The tootsy were the aristocrats. The hooto were enslaved by them. Going from one to the other could be quite easy and fluid. With this racial ideology the germans and bekgians decided that the tootsy were racially superior to the hootos. They established a very strict biological/racial distinction. This was reinforced by the introduction of identity cards. The long term consequence of this was the Rwandan civil war. Believing that is was there destiny to rule of lesser races they distanced themselves from non-europeans. Creation of major divisions between the settlers and indigenious people. Each have different legal codes to different communities in different territory. An example of the liberalism of colonial governance in Africa. Europeans invented African traditions with whom they wanted to create a pedigree. Mamdani ‘In the main, however, the colonial state was a double-sided affair. Its one side, the state that governed a racially defined citizenry, was bounded by the rule of law and an associated regime of rights. Its other side, the state that ruled over subjects, was a regime of extra-economic coercion and administratively driven justice (19)…first, more than any other colonial subject, the African was containerized, not as a native, but as a tribesperson. Every colony had two legal systems: one modern, the other customary. Customary law was defined in the plural, as the law of the tribe, and not in the singular, as a law for all natives (22)’ - Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) Terrence Ranger and invented traditions The invented traditions of nineteenth-century Europe had been introduced into Africa to allow Europeans and certain Africans to combine for ‘modernizing’ ends. But there was an inherent ambiguity in neo-traditional thought. Europeans belonging to one or other of the neo-traditions believed themselves to have a respect for the customary. They liked the idea of age-old prescriptive rights and they liked to compare the sort of title which an African chief possessed with the title to gentlemanliness which they laid claim themselves. A profound misunderstanding was at work here...[t]hese societies had certainly valued custom and continuity but custom was loosely defined and infinitely flexible (247)’. Terence Ranger, ‘The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa’, in Hobsbawm, Eric & Ranger, Terence, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Projecting their idea of what nobility was meant to be on to the peoples of Africa.

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The extent to which European colonial rule adapted and changed African culture is much debated. Some argue that it erased the real African past. Some scholars are a lot less pessimistic and that pre-colonial Africa did manage to survive. Western Colonialism: Economic Exploitation Early colonialism = rule by private commercial companies, ‘Red Rubber’ in the Congo Free State Cash crops (cotton, cocoa) Mineral exploitation (diamonds, gold, tin, copper) Africa as economic periphery? Early colonies run by private companies – eager to get rich quick by exporting African resources. These companies often employed ruthless methods to aid in the methods of extraction. The worst being the congo free state under the Belgian King leopold. He leased large tracts of territory to large companies who employed their own mercenaries to make locals provide en mass red rubber. They would chop off hands and burn whole villages. A campaign was led by irish nationalist – led to the surrendering of the state to the Belgian parliament - hence the change of name to the Belgian congo. The handing over of private governments to state governments. Mineral exploitation is particularly relevant. Independent Africa Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism vs territorial nationalism - Shift from ‘race’ to ‘place’ (Manning) Reliance on colonial boundaries/colonial elites – ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ (Basil Davidson) Emergence of ‘African socialism’ pursued by, eg., Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah ‘Third wave’ liberation movements + struggle against white settler rule in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa Ongoing ‘Extraversion’ (Jean Francois Bayart, Politics of the Belly) – cash crops, exportation of mineral resources European model of the territory bound nation state – became a tool to use against colonialism. The early African nationalists did not focus as much on getting the rights of a nation state. The colonial state model was focused on extracting resources from Africa....