{"id":26726,"date":"2026-10-25T23:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=26726"},"modified":"2026-10-25T23:08:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T13:08:04","slug":"top-tens-history-top-10-types-of-empire-imperialism-special-mention-15-scramble-for-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=26726","title":{"rendered":"Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (15) Scramble for Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Otto von Bsimarck at the Berlin Conference, 1884 – magazine illustration (public domain)<\/p><\/div>\n

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(15) SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Even more so than civilizing mission or gunboat diplomacy, the Scramble for Africa \u2013 the colonization of Africa by seven European powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal) – almost uniquely represents the height of European colonial empires in the so-called Golden Age of Imperialism between the Napoleonic Wars and The First World War.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Scramble for Africa was scrambled even more quickly than that broad century timeframe suggests, as it was effectively concentrated in about thirty years from the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference to the commencement of the First World War in 1914.<\/p>\n

As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts… By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained outside European control, with the former eventually being occupied by Italy in 1936 and the latter having strong connections with the United States.”<\/p>\n

Speaking of the 1884\u20131885 Berlin Conference, it is seen as emblematic of the scramble, but while it did represent to some extent agreement between the European powers to divide Africa up between themselves in an orderly fashion, there remained political rivalries between them that on occasion threatened to bubble over into armed conflict. Armed conflict between Europeans that is \u2013 the European powers were far less squeamish about armed conflict with the Africans being colonized, including the use of machine guns.<\/p>\n

Technological advances paved the way to the Scramble for Africa, notably in transportation and communication such as steamships, railways and telegraphs, but the biggest of all was medical advances for the tropical diseases which had effectively been the great African wall protecting the continent \u2013 invisible and silent but deadly or debilitating.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but compare the Scramble for Africa to the space race, “won” at great expense in an intense burst of time, but the expense of the former was much more of a boondoggle for the imperial powers with little benefit to anyone from it, including the powers themselves \u2013 although at least the space race didn’t have anything on the scale of exploitation to the Belgian Congo.<\/p>\n

I also can’t help but think that the Scramble for Africa was not unique. Indeed, it seems to me that imperial scrambles are relatively common in history, albeit more so for competing imperial powers as throughout European colonialism. European colonialism might be characterized as a series of scrambles, commencing with the Scramble for the Americas, or the Scramble for trade to the Indies. The Great Game between Britain and Russia, as well as the more general competition among Western powers for spheres of influence or concessions in China, might also be characterized as imperial scrambles.<\/p>\n

But really, when you boil it down, the rise or increase of many empires, particularly when meteoric or rapid, might be characterized as a “scramble”, whether against opposing imperial powers or not. Of course, when an empire squares off against competing or opposing empires, it might be more evocative of an imperial scramble. A substantial part of the contest between the Roman and Persian empires might well be characterized as the Scramble for Armenia.<\/p>\n

Even the Scramble for Africa might be argued as not so unique with respect to Africa itself. The Romans had something of a miniature scramble or proto-scramble for Africa, beyond the extent of their north African conquests and trade with sub-Saharan Africa. There were Roman incursions into sub-Saharan Africa, such as expeditions to sub-Saharan Africa west of the Nile, as well as the more famous expedition ordered by Nero to find the source of the Nile \u2013 and potentially to scout out invasion of Nubia or Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

After the Romans came the Arabs with their own incursions into sub-Saharan Africa, most infamously for the Arab slave trade \u2013 equal to or exceeding the subsequent Atlantic slave trade, itself arguably a proto-scramble for Africa, in scale and duration if not in intensity.<\/p>\n

Decolonization also arguably brought further scrambles for Africa as well as the scramble out of it, with the Cold War at times evoking a quasi-scramble or quasi-scrambles for Africa, not to mention the allegations of neo-imperialism extending well beyond the original seven European colonial powers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (15) SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA   Even more so than civilizing mission or gunboat diplomacy, the Scramble for Africa \u2013 the colonization of Africa by seven European powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal) – almost uniquely represents the height of European colonial empires in the so-called Golden Age of Imperialism between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[849],"tags":[902,18,1034,141,1036,1035],"class_list":["post-26726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-tens","tag-empires","tag-history","tag-imperialism","tag-top-10","tag-top-10-types-of-empire-imperialism","tag-types-of-empire-imperialism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65BRB-6X4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26730,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26726\/revisions\/26730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}