Late 19th Century: (The Scramble for Africa — Legitimate Commerce Requiring Political Control, Industrial and Technological Superiority Making Subjugation Po…

Late 19th Century: (The Scramble for Africa — Legitimate Commerce Requiring Political Control, Industrial and Technological Superiority Making Subjugation Possible, the Scramble as a Largely Uncoordinated Headlong Rush Involving Both Africans and Europeans, African Intellectual Input and Manpower Essential to the Process, and the Groundwork Laid for the Modern African Nation-State): In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, conquest was what happened — the main reason related to legitimate commerce and the growing belief that direct intervention in African society and economy was required if profit was to be realized. Free trade had not brought stability, and political control was deemed necessary. This was linked to racial thought that assumed Africans were childlike and incapable of modernizing themselves — the most extraordinary exercise in objectification. The multitude of European invasions between the 1870s and 1900s were made possible by industrial and technological superiority, most dramatically manifest in military supremacy. Yet the Scramble was no one-way traffic: Africans manipulated European ideas, and African manpower was involved in the process itself. The Scramble was a largely uncoordinated rush from coast to hinterland, a multitude of military advances and diplomatic interactions resulting in the demarcation of some of the most bizarre territorial entities in modern history. Maps were drawn in European capitals, but the process necessarily involved African intellectual input, political ingenuity, and manpower. African responses were diverse — some bent European invasion to their own ends, others fought and died. In the early 1900s, the groundwork was laid for the modern African nation-state, an essentially indigenous entity infused with European imports and impositions. Colonial states aimed to establish territorial hegemony through violence or its threat, using African recruits in colonial armies. The dichotomy of resistance versus collaboration is unhelpful — Africans adapted norms and shaped the colonial system while anti-colonial violence was interspersed with diplomatic overtures. European intrusions were ultimately absorbed into long-term African processes of internal change.