Nige Tassell asks Professor Steven Press about the possible shape of Africa had European powers not carved up the continent for their own gain
In the latter decades of the 19th century, the superpowers of Europe were not enjoying cordial relations with each other. Their animosity wasn’t limited to political and military squabbles. Registering poor balances of trade, these empires were economic rivals, too, but they uniformly cast a covetous eye towards mineral-rich Africa.
Between the 1870s and the advent of the 20th century, the European invasion and colonisation of the continent claimed almost every territory in what became known as the Scramble for Africa. Despite their mistrust of each other, the race to carve up Africa was relatively orderly (heavy bloodshed notwithstanding), thanks to the agreements made at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85. But what if the European economies had been buoyant? What if its empires weren’t in direct rivalry? What if the Scramble for Africa had never happened?
Such were the natural riches of the African continent that it’s difficult not to imagine an attempted programme of colonisation by Europeans at some point. “It is highly likely that a later scramble would have taken place,” agrees Professor Steven Press, associate professor of history at Stanford University and author of Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe’s Scramble for Africa (Harvard University Press, 2017). Professor Press notes that these European governments weren’t merely working on their own impulses. Pressure to plunder Africa also came from entrepreneurial individuals, ambitious businesses and even internal public opinion.
“The staggering natural resources of the African continent were enticing to Europeans in the 1870s and 1880s: think of central African ivory, then of southern African diamonds, then of South African gold. More rushes would come along in the following decades, not least rubber in central and west Africa.” A scramble – whether in the closing decades of the 19th century or later – was inevitable.
Certainly, had the Scramble not happened when it did, there may have been serious repercussions for the world stage. Without widespread colonisation to concentrate their efforts on, the European powers may well have turned on each other even more. That is, World War I may have arrived earlier.
FEWER STRAIGHT LINES?
“It would not have been World War I as we know it,” cauti
