The “New Imperialism” and the Scramble for Africa 825A British foreign minister recalled in 1891, “When I left the Foreign
Office in 1880, nobody thought about Africa. When I returned to it in
1885, the nations of Europe were almost quarreling with each other as to
the various portions of Africa which they should obtain.” Another British
foreign official would ask incredulously if his country sought to “take pos
session of every navigable river all over the world, and every avenue of
commerce, for fear somebody else should take possession of it?” The colo
nial race extended even to the North Pole, first reached by the American
Robert E. Peary (1856—1920) in 1909.
British and French Imperial Rivalry
A French colonial enthusiast assessed the “scramble for Africa”—the term
was first used by a London newspaper as early as 1884—that began in the
1880s: “We are witnessing something that has never been seen in history:
the veritable partition of an unknown continent by certain European coun
tries. In this partition France is entitled to the largest share.” Africa
included about a fourth of the world’s land area and a fifth of its popula
tion. Explorers plunged almost blindly into the uncharted and unmapped
African interior. The source of the Nile River, the lifeline of Egypt, had
been located in modern-day Uganda in 1862; most Western maps still
showed blank spots for much of the continent’s interior. Europeans discov
ered the bewildering complexity of a continent that included about 700
different autonomous societies with distinctive political structures.
France’s imperial aspirations reveal some of the motives that fueled the
new imperialism. After its humiliating defeat by Prussia during the Franco
Prussian War of 1870—1871, the gnawing loss of Alsace-Lorraine hung
over France. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck subtly encouraged the
French government to pursue an interest in distant colonies, hoping it
would forget about trying to retake Alsace-Lorraine. Indeed, French colo
nialism during the “new imperialism” was closely tied to a nationalist spirit
that was linked with the idea of revenge against Germany.
At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, France agreed to abandon its claims
to the island of Cyprus, while the British gave up claims to Tunisia. The
French ambassador to Germany warned his own government in 1881 that if
it failed to order bold action in Tunisia, France risked decline as a power,
perhaps even “finding itself on a par with Spain.” In March 1881, the
French government claimed that raiders from Tunisia were harassing their
troops in Algeria. French troops invaded Tunisia, which became a French
protectorate two months later. Between 1895 and 1896, France also seized
the island of Madagascar off the coast of East Africa and made it a colony
(see Map 21.2).
French merchants and nationalists dreamed of an empire that would
stretch across Africa. Railroads had begun to reach across continental Eu
rope in the 1840s and 1850s. They became a symbol of modernity, but also