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Eduvest � Journal
of Universal Studies Volume 2 Number 11, November, 2022 p- ISSN
2775-3735- e-ISSN 2775-3727 |
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IMPERIALISM IN AFRICA |
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Augustus Fisher Department of Political Science,
Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria |
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ABSTRACT |
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Since the
phenomenon of Imperialism is so important for Africa�s political and economic
thought, it is important to begin by understanding it. What is Imperialism?
Imperialism cannot be defined in any generally acceptable way. It means
different things to different people. Let us note some of these differences
as they appear. Because the fruits of imperialism- the subordinate areas
variously called possessions, colonies, protectorates, semi-protectorates,
and dependent states- have long been regarded as valuable to the controlling
state, they have been eagerly sought. Finally, we may ask, is it inherent in
the very nature of underdevelopment that makes development such an impossible
task? Among the many prescriptions, after �flag independence,� that have been
offered- e.g. cultural, social, psychological, even
economic-none has produced any encouraging results. In fact
nearly all of them have had negative result, and made bad situations worse.
Are we to continue with the same experiments at the expense of the people,
who, have borne the whole burden of these experiments throughout the last
decades this is the question to which all the developing countries,
especially those in Africa, must address themselves |
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KEYWORDS |
Imperialism; Africa; economic
thought |
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This
work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
4.0 International |
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INTRODUCTION
Since the phenomenon of Imperialism is so
important for Africa�s political and economic thought, it is important to begin
by understanding it. What is Imperialism? Imperialism cannot be defined in any
generally acceptable way. It means different things to different people. Let us
note some of these differences as they appear (Acemoglu et al., 2013).
Imperialism is a policy which aims at
creating, organizing, and maintaining an empire; that is, a state of vast size
composed of various more or less distinct national units and subject to a
single centralised will (Bonn, 1937).
Imperialism is employment of the engines of government and diplomacy to
acquire territories, protectorates, and/or spheres of influence occupied
usually by other races or peoples, and to promote industrial, trade, and
investment opportunities (Beard, 1946).
Imperialism means domination of non-European
native races by totally dissimilar European nations (Moon, 1926)
It will be seen that Julius imposed a
quantitative measurement and presumably ruled out the possibility of a �small
imperialism.� Beard excluded all except economic motivations, and he made
direct government action an inseparable part of imperialism. Moon injected the
test of racial difference (Barraclough
& Kellett, 1967).
It would be futile to attempt to reconcile
these definitions and a host of others- but it may be possible to make a number
of helpful observations. The first and most obvious one is that �imperialism�
is a highly subjective word- that writers define pretty much as they please (Ocheni
& Nwankwo, 2012). Second, imperialism has become more of an epithet than
anything else: the Russians use it to stigmatise the policies of the Western
states, and the Communist powers use it to blacken Soviet policies, and the
�uncommitted world� use it to condemn the policies of both the Communist and
non-Communist worlds (Palmer & Perkins,
1969). As Raymond Buell remarked many years ago, �every
unjustifiable demand made by one government upon another- every aggressive war-
is called imperialism (Buell, 1929). Imperialism is a word which indeed covers many sins
Third, it seems that if there is any
consensus in common usage certain occasional qualifications ought to be
disregarded. Thus what commonly passes for imperialism seems to warrant these
assertions: 1. It may have powerful non-economic motivations- it may, as a
matter of fact, be without expectation of economic gain; 2. It may pertain to a
very limited operation- a vast empire need not be contemplated at all; 3. It
need not involve a difference of race- they may very well be imperialism within
a single race; and 4. It may be planned or unplanned (Buell,
1933).
The most significant thing about imperialism
and colonialism is not that they cannot be precisely defined or that they
cannot always be distinguished from each other; it is that both terms refer to
a superior-inferior relationship, and that hundreds of millions of people,
particularly in Africa and Asia, have resolved to abandon their historic role
as inferiors and to assert their equality with the people of the former
colonial powers. In current practice the two terms are used almost
interchangeably (Palmer & Perkins,
1969)
RESEARCH
METHOD
Because the fruits of imperialism- the subordinate
areas variously called possessions, colonies, protectorates,
semi-protectorates, and dependent states- have long been regarded as valuable
to the controlling state, they have been eagerly sought. To some extent they
have been the badge of status in international society. Consequently,
imperialistic rivalries have been a fertile source of interstate conflict, they
have figured importantly in the international economy, they have often been an
expression of belligerent nationalism, and they have been a major or a
contributing cause of many of the great wars of the past three centuries (Palmer & Perkins,
1969).
The motives and techniques of modern imperialism were
enormously varied and complex. The leading motives appear to have the
following:
Economic Gain: this includes conquest for the sake of
loot, the quest for competition- free markets and services of raw materials,
the search for virgin fields of investment for the capitalists of imperial
powers, and the urge to secure certain strategic raw materials. At times
imperialism may have provided goods that could not be obtained otherwise; at
other times it merely made it possible to get them at a lower price or with
less likelihood of interruption by war.
National Prestige: many defenders of imperialism have
believed that a state must achieve its �manifest destiny� or its �place in the
sun.� generations of Englishmen gloried in the boast that �the sun never sets
on the British Empire.� Benito Mussolini loved to move his hand over the map of
those expanses of African desert and hill land that he had brought under the
Italian flag. His chest expanded with his dominions. Indiscriminate Americans
applauded the acquisition of territory that at the turn of the century made
their country a world power. More recently we have come to the sober realisation that land for flag-flying may mean
responsibility and expense rather than grandeur, but an analysis of imperialism
shows that the desire for land and still more land has often been a product of
aggressive nationalism.
The White Man�s Burden: in the past, at least, many
members of advanced Western societies believed that their state had a moral
obligation to carry the blessings of their own religion and civilisation
to �backward� peoples. In their view, the white man had a duty to uplift his
less fortunate brothers, usually in the yellow man�s Asia or in the black man�s
Africa. Many of these people were wholly sincere, as is proved by the countless
missionaries, soldiers, and administrators who braved the perils of the strange
and unknown.
Few will question the sincerity of Rudyard Kipling,
the poet of British imperialism, or perhaps of President William Mckinley, who announced that in answer to his prayer for
guidance God told him �to take them all (the
Philippine Islands), and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and christianise them, and by God�s grace do the very best we
could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.� Joseph Chamberlain,
next to Disraeli perhaps Britain�s leading exponent of imperialism, also
declared in 1893 that �it is our duty to take our share in the work of civilisation in Africa� (Palmer & Perkins,
1969)
National Defense: Imperialism may serve national
defense in a number of ways; by providing areas and bases for the defense of
the state or its lines of communication, by providing much-needed markets and
sources of essential raw materials, and by providing populations from which
troops and laborers may be drawn. The acquisition and retention of sources of
raw materials bring economic motivation and military motivation very much
together. One has only to note the importance that some states attached to
their colonial sources of oil, rubber, tin, and other raw materials to be
convinced that certain products play an important role in imperialism. Colonies
may also be valuable as reservoirs of manpower. During WW1 France drew nearly
Five Hundred Thousand troops and more than Two Hundred Thousand laborers from
her colonies, while England drew nearly Four Hundred Thousand troops from
India. Because of the entirely different character of WW2, colonial troops were
used mostly to defend their homelands, when used at all. Nevertheless,
casualties among British colonials exceeded Two Hundred Thousand.
The Marxist-Leninist View: The Communists have their
own interpretations of imperialism. They apply the term to a phase in the
expansion of capitalism, but, of course, not to their own expansionism. There
is thus a sharp distinction between Leninist imperialism, which is a Communist
theory to explain the inherent and progressive iniquity of capitalism, and
Soviet imperialism, which is a term applied by anti-Communists to the pattern
of subversion and subjugation carried on by the Soviet Union.
The Leninist theory of imperialism rests upon the assumption
that all political action springs from economic motives. Consequently, when
capitalistic societies find that they have reached a point where the production
of goods is so great that domestic markets are no longer adequate, they bring
political forces into play in order to achieve the subordination of outside
areas so that these may be held as controlled markets for surplus products and
surplus investment capital. Therefore capitalism is
itself the cause of imperialism.
While some of the Marxists believed that capitalistic
states turned to imperialism more or less as a matter of choice, Lenin held
that capitalism led inevitably to imperialism. �If it were necessary to give
the briefest possible definition of imperialism he wrote, �we should have to
say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.�
RESULT AND
DISCUSSION
Imperialism in Africa
In the centuries
before colonial rule, Europe increased its economic capacity by leaps and
bounds, while Africa appeared to have been almost static, Africa in the late
Nineteenth century could still be described as part communal and part feudal,
although Western Europe had moved completely from feudalism to capitalism.
The European
economy was producing far more goods by making use of their own resources and
labor. There were many qualitative changes in the European economy which
accompanied and made possible the increase in the quantity of goods. For
example, machines and factories rather than land provided the main source of
wealth; and labor had long since ceased to be organised on a restricted family
basis.
Imperialism is a
necessary outcome of capitalism (Ake, 1981); (Rodney & Reipurth, 2008). the
colonisation of Africa occurred mainly in the last three decades of the
nineteenth century. There is a considerable disagreement among historians and
social scientists about the causes of the colonisation of Africa and other
lands in this period. It would be crude to reduce colonialism to a single
motive because several factors contributed to it, but economic factors played the
central role.
To understand the
colonising imperialism of the late-nineteenth century, it is useful to begin by
noting the relation of the industrial revolution to international trade as Ake
rightly noted (Ake, 1981). Why did the
industrial revolution occur in Britain? Why did it happen at the end of the
eighteenth century and not later or even before? The answer lies in the
changing character of the relation of Western Europe, and Britain in
particular, to the wider world economy. The significant change was the growing
scope and greater intensity of commerce. The powerful, growing and accelerating
current of overseas trade which swept the infant industries of Europe with it-
which, in fact, sometimes actually created them- was hardly conceivable without
this change.
It rested on three
things: in Europe, the rise of a market for overseas products for everyday use whose
market could be expanded as they became available in larger quantities and more
cheaply; and overseas the creation of economic systems for producing such
goods; and the conquest of colonies designed to serve the economic advantage of
their European owners.
Phyllis Deane�s
The first Industrial Revolution brings out more clearly the relations between
the industrial revolution and international trade. Deane discusses several ways
in which foreign trade helped to make the industrial revolution possible. It
greatly enhanced the demand for manufactured goods and so encouraged expansion
of production and specialisation. Foreign trade made the requisite raw
materials available, at low prices. Trade enhances the purchasing power of
foreign and less economically developed trading partners of Britain to the
benefit of British industry. Trade generated the economic surplus which helped
to finance the industrial revolution. The institutional base of the industrial
revolution was in part created under the stimulus of foreign trade. The system
of orderly marketing, insurance, quality-control and standardisation of product
which grows up out of the needs of foreign trade were important aids to
improving productivity at home. Finally, foreign trade was a major cause of the
growth of large towns such as Liverpool Manchester, Glascow and Birmingham. The
growth of large towns expressed as well as encouraged the shift of the balance
of the economy from an agricultural base to an industrial base, and it
stimulated the massive investment in transportation, a major aid to industrial
expansion.
This relationship
between industrial revolution and colonialism sheds some light on what happened
in the period 1875-1914 in which a new and virulent wave of colonialism
engulfed Africa. The vigor and fury of the new wave of imperialism was
remarkable. This new vigor in the pursuit of colonies is reflected in the fact
that the rate of new territorial acquisitions of the new imperialism was almost
three times that of the earlier period. Thus, the increase in new territories
claimed in the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century averaged
about 83,000 square miles � a year (Ake). As against this, the colonial powers
added an average of about 240,000 square miles a year between the late 1870s
and WW1 (1914-1918). Hence, in 1914 as a consequence of this expansion and
conquest on top of that of preceding centuries the colonial powers, their
colonies, and their former colonies, extended over approximately 85% of the
earth�s surface (Magdoff, 2007).
This upsurge of
colonising imperialism was fuelled by competition among the European powers for
colonies; the competition was fuelled by a heightened consciousness of the
economic advantages of colonies, and the declining competitive superiority of
Britain relative to other European countries.
The European countries
which entered the industrial revolution after Britain were anxious to reduce
the negative effect of the competitive superiority of Britain on their
economies. They limited the influx of British goods and tried to nurture their
infant industries behind protective tariff barriers. In the face of this
protectionism, Britain doggedly propagated the idea of laissez-faire, but to no
avail; discrimination against British goods by America, France, Germany, Russia
and Austro-Hungary increased, and Britain�s export market contracted. Economic
depression ensued. Against such threats Britain became very anxious to promote
free trade, to find new markets and new outlets for investment, but most
importantly she became very anxious to defend her empire and the commercial
privileges she enjoyed by her connection with them. At the same time Britain�s
competitors were also in an aggressive and expansionist mood. As Hatch points
out, they were convinced that British commercial and industrial power was a
consequence of the existence of a British Empire.
Thus Germany
jumped into the race for colonies. Bismarck, who had rejected the ideas of
colonies, reversed policy, arguing that colonies were necessary for winning new
markets for German industries, the expansion of trade and a new field for
German activity, civilisation and capital. In 1867 Lother Bucher, who was a
colleague of Bismarck, had argued that �colonies are the best means of
developing manufactured export and import trade, and finally a respectable
navy�. By 1880s this was clearly an idea whose time had come. In France, the
mood was the same, where propagandists such as Jules Ferry and Leroy-Beaulien
supported by commercial interest group argued the necessity of colonies for the
development of French industry and French power. Italy too caught the
expansionist fever and proceeded to seize Ethiopia. Belgium jumped into the
fray too, and soon claimed the Congo.
When propaganda
gave way for action, Africa found itself the focal point for the action; the
scramble for Africa began. In 1876 King Leopold II of Belgium formed his
African International Association, to found commercial and scientific stations
across Africa between Zanzibar and the Atlantic, and soon annexed the Congo
basin, designating it the Congo Free State. In 1882 British took Egypt. The
French, infuriated by this, consolidated and expanded their holdings in West
Africa. Between 1883 and 1885 Germany took Cameroons, Togoland and South West
Africa, fearful of the consequences of the colonial gains of Germany and
France. Britain moved to consolidate her hold on Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria
and the Gold Coast and turned to Eastern, Southern and Central Africa, where
she soon established her rule over Bechuanaland, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland,
Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda. Within a few years after King Leopold had triggered
off the scramble for Africa in 1876, Africa was divided among the European
powers and colonised.
Effect of imperialism
Being colonised
has a devastating effect on a people and culture. Foreigners overrun a
territory with force and take it over. They install their own government,
staffed by their own nationals. The inhabitants are forced to speak the
language of the colonisers, to adopt their cultural practices, and to be
educated at schools run under their guidance. The inhabitants are told that
they are racially inferior to the foreigners. The major impact of colonialism
is that it brought about the under-development of African territories in many
different ways.
It is usually
argued in favor of colonisation that the development it brought outweighs its
negative effects on Africa. Following the capitalist rationality of minimum
input for maximum output, they invested only in what they had to, and where
they had to. Not surprisingly the places in which colonialism fostered some
development as rightly noted by Ake were in places which were convenient
collecting centers for commodities, such as Kano; places from where the
commodities could be shipped abroad, such as Lagos, Mombasa, and Dar es Salaam;
place where the climate was to the taste of Europeans and which could be used
as administrative headquarters, such as Nairobi (Ake, 1981). These centers
gradually assumed a character quite different from that of the surrounding
country.
The argument in
favor of colonial education reveals, when subjected to critical analysis, its
hollowness and emptiness. The colonial education was not rooted in African
culture and therefore could not foster any meaningful development within the
African environment because it had no organic linkage (Atakpa et al., 2012) Furthermore,
colonial education was essentially literary; it had no technological base and
therefore antithetical to real or industrial development. Education in the
colonial society is such that it serves the colonialist. In a regime of
slavery, education was but one institution for forming slaves. Therefore the
supposed benefits of colonialism are referred to as the unintended benefits of
colonialism by Rodney (Rodney & Reipurth, 2008).
The poor
technological base of most of the present day African states, which has been
responsible for their underdevelopment stems from their poor foundation of
education laid by the colonialists. Colonial education essentially aimed at
training clerks, interpreters, produce inspectors, artisans, etc., which would
help in the exploitation of the Africa�s rich resources. Colonial education did
not aim at industrialisation of Africa territories or at stimulating
technological development within the African environment. Colonial education
brought about distortion and disarticulation in African indigenous pattern of
education which was rooted in African technology. Before colonial education was
imposed, Africans were good technologists, advancing at their own rates with
the resources within their environment. For example, Africans were good
sculptors, carvers, cloth weavers, miners, blacksmiths, etc.
Another major
effect was the disarticulation of the African economy. The colonial economy was
characterisd by disarticulation or incoherence. In the area of transportation,
it would appear that the building of railways was dictated by the collection of
export commodities. In what is now known as Zaire, there is the Chemin de Fer
de Bas-Congo au Katanga, built to connect the mineral rich Katanga to the sea.
In Congo there is the Congo-Ocean Railway, built expressly to facilitate the
transportation of manganese ore from Gabon, as well as forest products. In
Nigeria the Kano-Apapa railway line was built to facilitate the collection of
cotton, groundnuts and cocoa for export. And the Enugu-Port Harcourt line was
built to serve the oil-palm trade.
The railway
systems of colonial Africa are an excellent example of the disarticulation of
the colonial economy. They did not constitute in any country a coherent system
of communications. Neither did they contribute to the building of a coherent
economy. They were built ad hoc according to the metropolitan interests of the
moment and the availability of funds. The incoherence of the railway system
rendered related ancillary communication facilities chaotic as well. For
instance, the ports tended to be built at the terminals of the railways; since
the location of the desired commodity rather than by the location of the
prospective port of exit, it meant that the ports were not necessarily located
where they would yield the maximum benefit to the development of the country.
Another similar to
the development of railways happened in the development of primary commodities
under colonialism. Colonial capitalism was naturally interested only in the
most profitable commodities. To get an adequate supply of the preferred
commodities it was sometimes necessary to discourage the production of some
other commodities. When this necessity arose it was accepted without too much
thought being wasted on implications of encouraging or discouraging the
production of particular commodities. It was assumed that what was good for
international capital was good for the colony. More often than not colonial
capitalism used persuasion or force to compel a concentration of efforts on the
production of particular export crops.
This upset the
balance of the traditional economy, as was the case in Ghana. It was after the
colonisation of Ghana that cocoa was successfully grown in the colony. But the
production of cocoa grew so rapidly that it soon began to dominate the Ghanaian
economy. Ghana had not started exporting cocoa until about 1885. By 1901 the
country was already the biggest producer of cocoa in the world. By 1939 cocoa
accounted for about 80% of the value of Ghana�s exports. This sort of change
led to disequilibrium, for instance shortages in the supply of traditional food
crops, changes in land use creating changes in land tenure, displacement of
people and shifts in population, the uneven development of different regions,
the dependence of the economy on a few export crops, and associated with all
these, profoundly unbalanced economic growth.
Another important
effect of colonialism in Africa was the emergence and institutionalisation of
classes and class struggle in the socio-economic and political life.
Colonialism aided a clear emergence and development of classes in Africa. These
classes include comprador bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat and the
peasant. The African petty bourgeoisie serve as the conveyor belt through which
the colonialists exploited and siphoned the economy of African countries. There
is a great harmony of interest between the African petty bourgeoisie and the
European comprador bourgeoisie. This was why during the period of political
independence; it was the African petty bourgeoisie that got the mantle of
leadership. The African petty bourgeoisie maintained the same relationship with
the erstwhile colonial masters and this is why they run the economy and
political administration of their states in the same manner as the colonialists
did.
The African petty
bourgeoisie maintained the long exploitation of the proletariat and the peasant
classes. The rampant and complex nature of political instability and
socio-economic malaise being experienced in most Africa states today has
recourse to the nature and character of classes introduced in Africa by
colonialism. The economic and other resources of Africa are shared between the
petty bourgeoisie and their European/American colonial counterparts, even in
the contemporary time. The severe impoverishment of most African petty
bourgeoisie leaders and marginalisation as well as oppression of the masses by
those who have access to state power are offshoot of colonialism and colonial
hang-over among African states
CONCLUSION
By
1885, when Africa was politically and juridically partitioned, the peoples and
polities had already lost a great deal of freedom. In its relations with the
external world, Africa had lost a considerable amount of control over its own
economy, ever since the 15th century. However, the loss of political
sovereignty at the time of the scramble was decisive. By the same reasoning, it
is clear that the regaining of political sovereignty by the 1960s constitutes
an escapable first step in regaining maximum freedom to choose and to develop
in all spheres.
Furthermore,
the period of nationalist revolution gave rise to certain minority ideological
trends, which represent the roots of future African development. Most African
leaders of the intelligentsia and even of the labor movement were frankly
capitalist, and shared fully the ideology of their bourgeoisie masters. Houphouet Boigny was at one time
called a Communist by the French colonisers. He
defended himself vigorously against this false charge in 1948:
We
have good relations with the French Communist Party, that is true. But it is
obvious that does not mean that we ourselves are communists. Can it be said
that I, Houphouet Boigny- a
traditional chief, a doctor of medicine, a big property owner, a catholic- can
it be said that I am a communist?
His
reasoning applied to so many more African leaders of the independence epoch.
The exceptions were those who either completely rejected the world-view of
capitalism or at least stuck honestly to those idealistic tenets of bourgeoisie
ideology such as individual freedom and, through experience, they could come to
realise that the ideals remained myths in a society
based on the exploitation of man by man.
Finally,
we may ask, is it inherent in the very nature of underdevelopment that makes
development such an impossible task? Among the many prescriptions, after �flag
independence,� that have been offered- e.g. cultural,
social, psychological, even economic-none has produced any encouraging results.
In fact nearly all of them have had negative result,
and made bad situations worse. Are we to continue with the same experiments at
the expense of the people, who, have borne the whole burden of these
experiments throughout the last decades this is the question to which all the
developing countries, especially those in Africa, must address themselves. And
the sooner the better, because there is very little time left before our
economies become permanently distorted and probably too damaged for any
meaningful reconstruction in the future.
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