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Belgium and the Berlin Conference
Historians generally agree that the rushed imperial conquest of the Africa by the major powers of Europe (sometimes called “the Scramble for Africa”) began with King Leopold II of Belgium. After reading a report in early 1876 that the rich mineral resources of the Congo Basin could return an entrepreneurial capitalist a substantial profit, the Belgian king ordered the creation of the International African Association, which, under his personal direction, was to assume control over the Congo Basin region. When Leopold asked for international recognition of his claim on the Congo, Europe gathered at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to create policy on imperial claims.
The conference, after much political wrangling, gave the territory to Leopold as the Congo Free State, and further decreed that for future imperialist claims to garner international recognition, “effective occupation” would be required. In other words, no longer did plunging a flag into the ground mean that land was occupied. The conference also created some definition for “effective occupation,” noting that significant “economic development” was required. Despite this wording, imperialization proved to a one-way street, with the European occupiers reaping the rewards and the populations of the colonized countries being forced to live as second-class citizens in their own countries.
The “Scramble for Africa”
Following King Leopold’s example, the major European powers acted quickly. By 1914, Great Britain dominated the breadth of the African continent from Egypt to South Africa, as well as Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, the French occupied vast expanses of west Africa, the Germans took modern-day Tanzania and Namibia, and the Portuguese exerted full control over Angola and Mozambique. Only Ethiopia and the African-American state of Liberia remained independent. Conquest was relatively easy for the European states, who held the technological and military advantage due to previous agreements not to sell modern weapons to Africans in potential colonial areas. Bands of just a few hundred men and a handful of machine guns could obliterate thousands of Africans in mere hours.
Ethiopian Independence
The only notable exception to this was Ethiopia, a strategically placed state in the horn of Africa. By the early 1880s, Ethiopia was in danger of invasion from the British, French, and Italians, with Britain occupying Egypt in 1882, France taking Djibouti in 1884, and Italy dominating Eritrea in 1885. Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik II hatched a daring plan: he would exploit European rivalries in order to obtain the modern weapons he needed to protect the boundaries of his state. After Menelik II gave minor concessions to France in return for weapons, Italy, growing nervous at growing French interest in the country, offered Menelik Italian weapons as well. Soon, Britain and even Russia joined in.
Throughout the 1880s, Ethiopia grew stronger and stronger as the scramble for Africa went on around it. However, by the early 1890s, Menelik’s plans began to unravel, with war seeming imminent. In 1889, Italy claimed Ethiopia as an Italian protectorate. When Menelik objected, Italy, longing for a glorious victory to enhance its prestige, ordered its troops into battle. Outnumbered and under-equipped, the Italians lost over 8,000 men in the Battle of Adowa on March 1, 1896. Ethiopia remained independent.
