Africa Before 1900

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Africa Before 1900
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External Relations

• Portuguese exploration (1400-1500)
• Vasco de Gama
• Limited trade with Africa
• Situation changed in late 17th century
• South America/Caribbean plantations required
  massive amounts of labor
• Europeans made deals with African chiefs and
  began the trans-Atlantic slave trade

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The Slave Trade

• 17th 19th century was decimating to millions of
  Africans
• Between 10 13 millions Africans taken to the
  New World
• Millions more died in the process of capture,
  quarantine, loading and the crossing
• 2/3 were men
• Trade was risky but profitable
• Established trading posts on the coast

Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave
trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered
before a select committee of the House of Commons
in 1790 and 1791
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(No Transcript)
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The Slave Trade

• Europeans traded textiles, firearms, tobacco,
  liquor, paper, crystal for slaves
• Europeans also traded goods acquired in one part
  of Africa to African elites
• Cowries, gold, iron, copper
• Used to show power, reward followers and acquire
  more slaves

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The Nineteenth Century

• Why did slavery end?
• Age of Enlightenment
• Struggle for Independence and liberty
• America/France
• Abolishment took nearly 100 years
• Short period of legitimate trade with Africa

William Wilberforce. The abolition movement's
chief voice in British Parliament.
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The Nineteenth Century

• Scientific Exploration
• So-called discovery of peoples and places
• Missionary Movement
• European view on civilizing the world
• Dr. Livingston
• Industrial Revolution
• Required raw materials to fuel industry
• Technological advances
• Weapons, medicine, transportation

Henry Morton Stanley greeting Dr. David
Livingstone in Ujiji, Tanzania.
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Southern Africa

• Dutch East India Company
• Set up a way station in 1652 at the Cape of Good
  Hope
• Dutch settlers called Boers
• Boers spread into the interior
• Decimated the Khoikhoi mainly through disease
• Series of wars with Xhosa over grazing land
  solidified further land gains

Arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town
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Southern Africa

• British takeover of the cape (1800)
• Led to the Great Trek (1830s 1840s)
• 15,000 Boers moved north and east in covered
  wagons
• British cut off expansion by creating Natal in
  1842
• British claimed the Cape Colony and Natal
• Boers created Transvaal and the Orange Free State

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Southern Africa

• African resistance to menial labor on eastern
  Cape plantations led to contracting tens of
  thousands of Indians
• British instituted a pass system that became
  central to the apartheid system
• British Boers fought all through the last half
  of the 20th Century

Gandhi with the stretcher-bearers of the Indian
Ambulance Corps during the Boer War,
South-Africa, 1899-1900.
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Southern Africa

• Discovery of diamonds (1867) gold (1886) in the
  area controlled by the Boers brought conflict to
  a head
• Boers became powerful
• Led to the Anglo-Boer War (1899)
• Three year war that showed brutality of the
  British
• Boers lost, but biggest losers were the native
  Africans
• Union of South Africa created in 1910

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Southern Africa

• Tensions between British Boers continued
• Moderate Boers made economic deals with the
  British
• Hard-Liners wanted total control of all of South
  Africa
• Won the election in 1948 and dominated the
  white-minority government until 1994

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Southern Africa

• Series of laws restricting native rights
  culminated in apartheid
• African resistance had some successes, but were
  not strong enough militarily to defeat Europeans
• Resistance grew into the African National
  Congress to fight for political power and freedom
  from white minority rule