Not Only Eggs and Quarterbacks Scramble
J. Douglas Drushal
Century Club
March 3, 2026
Introduction
I was a History Major in
college and an avid reader of things historical pretty much my entire
life. But until some time after the turn
of the 21st century I had never heard of this remarkable story that played out
toward the end of the 19th century.
A story which impacted millions of people then and which continues to
haunt an entire continent yet today.
In September 1876 a dozen or
so African explorers were convened in Brussels by King Leopold II of Belgium
for the first ever geographical conference on central Africa. No one there suspected that this modest
gathering would lead to a radical reshaping of the landscape of that continent,
much more so than the opening of the Suez Canal some seven years earlier.
The King talked only of
science and philanthropy:
“To open to civilization the
only part of our globe where it has yet to penetrate, to pierce the darkness
which envelops whole populations, it is, I dare to say, a crusade worthy of
this century of progress.
“Needless to say, in bringing
you to Brussels I was in no way motivated by selfish designs. No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small she is
happy and satisfied with her lot. My
only ambition is to serve her.”
The explorers present were
from across Europe and by the time the conference concluded, the European
powers all had their respective assignments from this amazing and fabulously
wealthy King. The high-minded of Europe
read with interest about the plans to end the slave trade. The King, once thought of as dull, was now
seen as a leader of a movement which might actually succeed in opening the Dark
Continent, as explorer and missionary David Livingstone had been widely urging
for decades. Leopold enlisted the aid of
Henry Stanley, the swashbuckling newspaperman who had famously “found”
Livingstone some years earlier.
As late as 1880, the African continent
remained largely unexplored except around the edges in places such as Egypt and
South Africa. A short thirty years
later, virtually the entire continent, some ten million square miles with some
110 million inhabitants had been carved up by the Europeans. Only Liberia and Ethiopia remained
unconquered as a result of this incredible rush for colonization.
I have travelled to Africa on
four occasions, three times to Kenya and once to South Africa. And what jumped out at me, over and over, was
the lingering impact of the British colonization of these two nations.
It hit me as soon as our 747
landed at the fairly modern Nairobi Airport and we saw all the signs were in
English and everyone, black and white, spoke fluent English. It hit me in the middle of the Kakamega rain
forest where we stayed in spectacular colonial era lodging and dined on tea and
scones. It hit me in the Masai Mara, the
Kenyan side of the Serengeti where we took safari trips into the steppes, half
expecting some British big game hunters to appear over the horizon. (They didn’t, hunting in the wild is
prohibited.)
During our overnight stay at the
beautiful Mara Serena Lodge, I spied in the gift shop Thomas Pakenham’s book, The
Scramble for Africa, which tells the story of the three short decades which
completely transformed an entire continent.
I grabbed the book and brought it home and it informs much of the
research for this paper.
All right, let’s look at The
Scramble for Africa.
The Scramble
Much of Africa was colonized
by the British, but the pattern was essentially the same throughout the
continent, whether the colonizers were French, German, Belgian, or others. Indeed, even the term “Scramble” became “Torschlusspanik”
in German and “course de clocher” (literally “steeplechase”) in French.
The word might not have made
it into the German lexicon if Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had stayed with his
initial refusal to participate in what he considered unseemly colonization, but
by 1884 it was evident to all that the Scramble was on and Bismarck
flip-flopped and decreed that Germany simply had to get into the game for the
simple reason that the Scramble was going so fast that there would soon be no African
territory left. So much for principled
opposition.
1884 is a critical date in
our story, but let’s set the stage.
A widespread public
fascination with the interior of Africa was triggered in the 1870s by Henry
Morton Stanley’s “finding” of David Livingstone. Livingstone had left England for Africa in
1866, in search of the source of the Nile River, and had not been heard from
for years. In 1871, Stanley, a roving
reporter for the New York Herald, tracked him down on the shore of Lake
Tanganyika and uttered the famous, if apocryphal, words: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” What Livingstone thought was the source of
the Nile was actually the source of the Congo River. Initiating anther expedition, Stanley
confirmed in 1877 that this theory was correct, while demonstrating that the
Congo was an easily navigable river providing easy access to gold, ivory, and
other valuable raw materials which were already starting to form the basis of
great European fortunes.
Stanley had easy access to
newspapers, the prevailing media of the day, and his flair for
self-aggrandizement saw him promote opportunities in Africa throughout
Europe. His sold-out lectures and
vibrant book sales fed the public fascination, egged on by Stanley’s high moral
ground of hoping to stamp out the last vestiges of the slave trade. This cause especially caught the ear of King
Leopold of Belgium, who convened the 1876 conference mentioned earlier.
Leopold was fabulously
wealthy in his own right and finding himself unable to persuade the Belgian
parliament to act on his colonial desires, he just did it himself with his own
money! He convinced Stanley to return to
the Congo region and establish the infrastructure necessary to exploit the
mineral wealth of that area and thus establish Leopold’s territorial
claims. Stanley was to be amply rewarded
for this work. To make this more
palatable to the heads of state of Europe, Leopold included combatting slavery
in the upper reaches of the Congo, where black marketeers were supplying the
slave markets of the Arab world. Leopold
even suggested to the United States that the Congo would be a good destination
for freed slaves and free-born blacks from the United States.
In short order, Leopold had
laid claim to the entire Congo River basin, an area three times the size of
France and completely out of proportion for the small country of Belgium. By the time the other European powers figured
out what had happened, it was too late to do anything about it. While Leopold’s rule was incredibly brutal,
even sadistic, that was not what led the high minded of Europe to conclude that
they could not allow such de facto colonization to happen again.
Thus, in 1884 Bismarck
brought the plenipotentiaries of all major European powers together in what
became known as the Berlin Conference.
Held at the Chancellor’s residence, the invited guests were seated
around a round table with a large, detailed map of Africa on the wall. Colonization of Africa was a given by that
time, so the point of the conference was to do it in such a manner as to
prevent war between the European nations.
Before 1884, European nations
were active all along the perimeter of Africa, but not the interior. France had a presence in North Africa after
its conquest of Algiers in 1830, eventually considering Algeria not a colony
but a formal part of France. France
established a protectorate over Tunisia in 1881. French West Africa included the coastal area with
eight colonial territories, the area now encompassing Mauritania, Senegal,
Mali, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Burkino Faso, Benin and Niger. Spain and Portugal maintained coastal
enclaves and trading posts as far back as the 15th century.
England has just imposed its
de facto control of Egypt in 1882, largely to protect its interests in the Suez
Canal, a joint French-British commercial project which opened to traffic in
1869.
England already had a strong
presence in South Africa stemming back as early as 1795. Germany had commercial interests in East
Africa dating back to activities of the German East Africa Company as early as
the 1850s and earlier in 1884 “annexed” what is now Namibia, then known as
German South West Africa.
Sandwiched in between were
the Boers, white descendants of Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers who
had established what they considered independent republics such as the
Transvaal and Orange Free State. The
Boers generally hated the British, in large part due to the British abolition
of slavery in 1833 which the Boers took as an insult to what they saw as the
natural order of humanity. Of course,
the Boer Wars between the Boers and the British as early as 1880 confirmed the
real fear of wars between the European powers since the British couldn’t even
leave well enough alone with the white descendants of Europeans whom they
perceived as being in the way of British economic interests.
The so-called Congo question
was one of the main topics of the Berlin Conference, which lasted almost
a year. Leopold’s grip on the Congo was
effectively grandfathered, thus cementing into place what was pitched as a
high-minded endeavor of a nation but which was in reality a cynical and
exploitative private colonial empire.
But the participants wanted to be sure that nothing like that happened
again.
Two fundamental rules emerged
from the Berlin Conference: 1) no
recognition of annexation would be granted without evidence of a practical
occupation and administration; and 2) a practical occupation would be deemed
unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory
by its indigenous leader, which must be in writing in the form of a legal
treaty.
It was also agreed that in
the event of a European war that the territories and colonies acquired under
the terms of the Conference would remain neutral.
There promptly followed a
rush by European commercial interests to penetrate the African interior and to
woo its leaders with guns, trinkets and alcohol, yielding dubious treaties
which established the boundaries of future colonies, which boundaries are largely
intact today. Within roughly one decade,
the Scramble was largely over.
Soon after the publication of
the “General Act” of the Berlin Conference, the Portuguese published
what came to be known as the Pink Map (or Mapa cor-de-rosa) in which
they attempted to formalize their claim to much of the south-central portion of
the continent. The Portuguese were the
senior colonists of Africa but as a maritime trading nation it had tended to
confine itself to its coastal ports and could not legitimately meet the rule of
demonstrating “effective occupation and administration”, but they didn’t
care. Thus, their proposed swath was a
unified belt stretching from their western territory of Angola to their eastern territory of Mozambique,
thus including most of modern-day Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
At the same time, the Germans
held substantive sway over two major territories, German East Africa and German
South West Africa, corresponding today to Tanzania and Namibia,
respectively. They proposed a belt
connecting those two coastal areas, not dissimilar to the Pink Map but larger
and colored Black.
The Germans probably had the
more viable claim, as Portugal was regarded as the “poor man” of Europe and not
taken seriously on this topic. More
importantly, Portugal lacked the resources to enforce its claims. So the real battle for this area came down to
the Germans and the British.
The British were already
concentrated in the South, with well established colonies in the Cape and Natal
provinces, with interests in the gold found in the Transvaal, all now part of
South Africa. This caused the British to
be concerned about the German claims to the central part of the continent.
While there were many
important players in the Scramble, one major character in the drama playing out
in the South was Cecil John Rhodes, the eponym of the Rhodes Scholarships still
given out today and the nation formerly known as Rhodesia, now known as
Zimbabwe, along with what is now Zambia.
His British South Africa Company (do you see a pattern here for naming
companies?) made him fabulously wealthy from the diamond trade, eventually
founding DeBeers. Rhodes firmly believed
that the English speaking races enjoyed a God-given mandate to rule. He said:
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of
the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.” While cringeworthy today, this was a
commonplace view in his time. And he did
mean “English speaking”, believing that the German, Portuguese and French
speakers just didn’t do it right, and stood in the way of his planned rail
connection between the South and British controlled Egypt.
Rhodes held colonial
governmental posts but his main impact was as a business man, consistent with the
importance of business interests driving the Scramble. Indeed, Rhodes was frustrated with the
British government for not being more aggressive in keeping German interests
out of central Africa. His unremitting
persistence did cause the British government to declare Bechuanaland, the
future Botswana, to be a British protectorate.
This was all consistent with
the primary British interest in India being The British East India Company, a
strictly private company but pretty hard for anyone in India to distinguish
from the British government. Similarly,
The Hudson Bay Company held sway in what would become Canada.
Less well known but equally
impactful in Africa were the Royal Niger Company (in today’s Nigeria) and the
Royal East Africa Company (in today’s Kenya and Uganda). They had royal charters that laid out rights
and responsibilities, including a wide prerogative to occupy, annex, settle,
pacify, govern and exploit their respective territories. Formal imperial rule would follow but that’s
not how things got started. Governments
followed businesses.
The French were no less
active but focused primarily on Western and Northern Africa, well north of the
Portuguese, German and British claims.
But the British had to meddle in this area as well, competing for
coastal forts and trade routes as early as the 18th Century.
Recall the Berlin
Conference rule that annexation must be preceded by a plea for protection
issued by treaty by whatever local leadership could reasonably be
identified. This was relatively easy for
the most part since local leadership tended to be very fractured and
susceptible to trading for guns, alcohol, and promises of armed assistance in
one leader’s fights with his rivals. But
in some areas, the local leadership was more powerful, with centralized
monarchies who were not so easily duped or intimidated.
But even the most shrewd
among such leaders realized the folly of armed conflict with the powerful
European military forces, so many made what they considered the best deal that
they could and retained whatever power they could. And in other cases, the colonizers produced
phony documents purporting to be treaties but which were not legitimate. Western arms bridged the gap with reluctant
local chieftains.
The Berlin Conference
did not formally allot control over any area to any particular European nation,
with the exception of acknowledging Belgium’s control of the Congo Basin. Rather, it set forth the protocols which were
largely, but not entirely, honored, and the scramble was somewhat organized and
wars between the colonizers mostly avoided.
In short order, what had been
small possessions only along the coasts were expanded inland to occupy
virtually the entire continent. The area
inland from the Swahili Coast was divided between Germany and England. The French expanded eastward from the West
Coast and southward from the North Coast, aided by an agreement with England in
1890 on certain allocations of territory.
And so forth over the entire
continent, with two interesting exceptions:
Liberia, which maintained independence as an United States backed
settlement for freed American slaves; and Ethiopia, which resisted
invasion through strong local leadership and military successes.
Thus, while in 1870 about 10%
of the continent was formally under European control, by 1914 fully 90% of
Africa was colonized. The scramble was
complete! Whether for good or bad, this
was nothing short of phenomenal!
While impactful yet today,
the colonial period did not last all that long.
South Africa became independent in 1910, albeit with a minority rule
government that did not fall until the 1990s.
Germany’s defeat in World War I caused its colonies to be lost, although
just transferred to other colonizing European nations. The winds of independence blossomed after
World War II, starting with Libya in 1951, and Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana
and Guinea later in the 1950s. 1960 saw
fully 17 newly independent nations, followed by 14 more later in the
1960s. The deck was cleared during the
1970s, ending with Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.
Sometimes independence came
peacefully, after the colonial power realized the inevitable. Examples of negotiated independence included
Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana and Nigeria. In other cases, brutal wars were fought, such
as an 8-year war of independence against the French in Algeria, ending in 1962,
and the Mau Mau uprising, a guerilla war of independence against the British in
Kenya, ending in 1963. Ironically, both
the French and British sometimes surrendered control peacefully and sometimes
only after an armed struggle.
But one way or another, the
colonial period was over less than a century after the Berlin Conference.
The Three C’s
But why did this
happen and why so fast? Why were the Europeans
so keen on colonization? The stated
reason during the Scramble was the Three C’s:
Commerce, Christianity and Civilization.
C Number One, Commerce: Simply put,
Europe wanted to exploit the natural resources of Africa for the benefit of
European economic interests. Despite all
his high-minded talk, this was clearly the prime motivator for King Leopold. He was willing to risk his already
substantial personal fortune in Africa, when his government ministers refused
to permit the government to risk its funds, in order to grow that personal
fortune. Many private citizens and
international companies made a lot of money exploiting African resources while
paying virtually nothing for African labor.
A cynic would say this was the main motivation for the Scramble, and
that cynicism would be warranted. But it
really was not the only motivation.
C Number Three, Civilization: It is hard to
fault the Europeans for wanting to advance the cause of civilization in Africa,
and even a cynic would have to concede that many people with the purest of
motives were not really interested in the money to be made. This was undoubtedly arrogant to some
extent. Indeed, many would characterize
Europe’s attitude toward Africa even today as paternalistic.
But one could hardly quarrel with
goals such as stopping the slave trade, reining in brutal native customs such
as chopping off hands, horrible treatment of women and children, and other
harsh realities of African tribal life. Look
at the genocides in numerous African nations regularly in the news in the
decades since independence and just imagine what it was like a hundred years
ago.
Did it make sense to try to
impose European mores on Africa? Well,
yes, to an extent. Did it make sense to
attempt to do so by means just as brutal and oppressive as those the Europeans
sought to replace? I think not. The cure was not much better than the disease
in many instances, and perhaps worse.
C Number Two, Christianity: We don’t talk
much in churches today about evangelism, but it was a hot topic in the 19th
Century, and certainly a prime motivator of the Scramble. And in the 19th and early 20th
Centuries, the spreading of Christianity was quite distinct from the spreading
of civilization. Yes, it was the
missionaries who taught English and math and science, but the main reason they
were there was to save souls and to introduce Africans to the Good News of the
Gospel. And like the trail of Commerce
and Civilization left by the Europeans, the spreading of Christianity by missionaries
throughout Africa remains evident today.
Exceeding my surprise at the
prevalence of English and tea and scones in Kenya was my total surprise that
the country is overwhelmingly Christian.
The missionaries were and are effective in spreading the Gospel. Kenya is about 85% Christian, with about 10%
Muslim along the Indian Ocean where the Arab traders held sway. This pattern is repeated throughout much of
sub-Saharan Africa, whether the locals speak English, French, German or Afrikaans,
and regardless of whether the missionaries were Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran,
Catholic or Presbyterian.
Lest you doubt the depth of
the Christian commitment, consider the following two simple but instructive examples
I experienced in Kenya.
First, on one of my visits
our group was honored to be invited to a wedding of two of our trip leader’s
good friends from his days of teaching in Kenya in the 1980s. The wedding was held in a Christian church,
presided over by a Christian minister, with music provided by the Salvation
Army brass band playing pretty well on their duct-taped instruments. And this was a real wedding. It lasted some eight hours in a church
with no electricity, light provided by the open windows and additional music
from a boom box powered by a car battery.
We all agreed that it was an interesting experience but not one we felt
any need to repeat any time soon.
But the point is that in
these very remote villages, not far from Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile
River, this was unquestionably a Christian ceremony attracting several hundred
to the church to enjoy what was essentially a worship service. While a lot
longer, hotter and noisier than what we are used to, the wedding was pretty
much the same Christian service that we are used to, complete with meals, a
festive reception, and a beat-up pickup truck full of gifts. Our group gift was a cow, which we led into
the church to the great enjoyment of the bride and groom.
A second example arose from
one of our most interesting stops, a visit to a Masai village. The Masai are the traditional native warriors
whose bright red clothing graces the covers of most Kenyan tour books. Today, the Masai men are herders who
accompany their cattle to and from their villages every day, while the women
stay in the village to attend to business there. Their diet consists largely of cows’ meat,
cows’ milk and cows’ blood. They greeted
us with a ritual dance which included standing jumps with incredible vertical
leaps which would be the envy of any NBA player. Their huts are framed with wood gathered from
the bush and stuccoed with cow dung and roofed with a sod-cow dung mix. The insides of these huts are, not
surprisingly, dank and dark. The center
of the village, where the cattle are returned for protection at night, is
unsurprisingly full of manure.
Fortunately, on the day we visited it was dry and the manure not too
ripe.
Since this was on the way
back to the Nairobi Airport, and we did not change clothes before getting on
our return flight, we were afraid that the bottoms of our shoes might excite
the drug-sniffing dogs at the airport. I
am pleased to report that we got through security without incident.
Our tour of the Masai village
was led by the son of the village chief.
He spoke perfect English and wore a digital display watch. We had a very interesting conversation about
village life. I inquired about their
religion. He unhesitatingly
responded: “We believe in Jesus
Christ.” I thought to myself, Wow, the
missionaries really penetrated into the depths of Kenya if they made it to
these Masai villagers.
Conclusion
While lasting less than a
century after the Scramble, the colonial era effected a transformation of an
entire continent, the effects of which remain obvious today.
This is not all bad. Railroads, highways, court systems,
hospitals, universities, financial markets, and other institutions remain,
mostly for the better. Most African
nations today are democracies, albeit often not as functional as one might
wish. Many of the hardships and
cruelties of tribal life are gone. Even
speaking English probably gives much of Africa a leg up in our 21st
Century world.
But there are also reasoned
arguments that colonization set Africans back more than it advanced them, based
as it was on the inevitable brutality of an outside group imposing its will on
others, effectively destroying long-standing cultures, and delaying the
inevitable modernization by depriving generations of their natural
leaders. Economic exploitation robbed
the continent of much wealth that could have otherwise inured to the local
populations.
In addition, as in the Middle
East, European powers drew political borders that disregarded ethnic, cultural,
and linguistic lines, leading to continued political instability and conflicts.
Which is correct? I don’t think anyone can say with certainty,
and the answer is well beyond our scope today.
But the impacts of the Scramble for Africa remain with us today and will
almost certainly remain with us for the foreseeable future.
