Definition
The Scramble for Africa was the rush, concentrated between roughly 1880 and 1914, in which European powers seized and divided almost the entire African continent among themselves. In little more than a generation, Africa went from being largely governed by its own peoples and states to being ruled, with very few exceptions, by foreign empires.
The conquest was carried out by force. African states, kingdoms, and communities resisted, and the colonisers responded with wars, the seizure of land, forced labour, and the violent suppression of opposition. The human cost was immense, and in some colonies it amounted to atrocity on a vast scale.
Why it matters
How it works
The Scramble was driven by industrial demand for raw materials, by intense rivalry among European nations each afraid of being left out, and by new technologies — repeating firearms, steamships, railways, and medicines such as quinine — that lowered the cost of conquest. Rather than risk war with one another over the spoils, the European powers met to set rules for the partition, most notably at the Berlin Conference. The borders they agreed there, drawn on maps far from Africa, still shape the continent's political map today.