Read the following passages carefully and answer in your own words, as far as possible, the questions that follow.
Passage 1
It is clear that before 1880 the three main agents of the British government, traders, and evangelists – were generally agreed that territorial expansion in Africa was neither desirable nor necessary. It is therefore not surprising that by 1880 Britain’s colonial possessions in Africa were very few. Within the next twenty years, however, all the European nations abandoned their opposition to colonialism and became engaged in a mad rush for colonies in Africa.
The change of attitude towards colonies was the outcome of several factors. The first was the spread of the industrial revolution. Other European nations besides Britain had made rapid progress and were beginning to challenge Britain’s economic leadership. Soon the industrialized nations began to accumulate surplus manufactures because each was unwilling to allow the others’ goods to enter its market without any check. This policy, known as ‘protectionism’, was aimed at assisting domestic industry to grow by controlling the home market for the benefit of local manufactures.
The solution to the problems of surplus manufactures in Europe seemed to lie in the acquisition of markets outside Europe through colonialism. In England, Frederick Lugard launched a campaign in favour of colonies as a solution to the crisis of markets. His ideas appealed to Lord Salisbury, British prime minister from 1885 to 1892. In France, the prime minister, Jules Ferry, urged his countrymen in 1884 to embark upon colonization which he considered to be ‘a necessity like the “market” itself.
Closely linked with the question of markets was the issue of raw materials. British and Belgian industries for example had a great need for cotton and rubber. The former played a key role in the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and the latter in the adventures of king Leopold II (1835 – 1909) in the Congo (Zaire).
The third factor that played a role in the partition of Africa was the desire to find an outlet for surplus capital. From the middle of the nineteenth century, European capitalists began to look for opportunities to invest their surplus capital in overseas countries. Jules Ferry believed that colonies were ‘for rich countries one of the most lucrative methods of investing capital….’
The search for national glory also played a role in the partition of Africa. The second half of the nineteenth century was the era of European nationalism. It was the period that saw Germany and Italy emerge as nation-states. France having lost Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, wanted to secure colonies in Africa to compensate for her loss and restore her national honour. Indeed, a French scholar argued in 1882 that France must become an African power or risk becoming a second-rate European power in the next century.
The sense of racial superiority felt by Europeans also made them want to export their culture and civilization to Africa. They used their self-imposed civilizing mission’ as a powerful argument in support of their colonial ambitions. At the Brussels conference of 1876 the Belgian King, Leopold II, stated that his aim in sponsoring the exploration of the Congo (Zaire) was to open to civilization the only part of the globe which had not been penetrated. The signatories to the General Act of the Berlin conference, dated 26 February 1885, piously declared that the motive in colonizing Africa was ‘to protect the natives in their moral and material well-being, to suppress slavery and the slave trade and to ‘further the education of the natives’.
