Towards a History of the Partition of Africa

Abstract

The partition of Africa is one of those historical processes which have been more discussed than studied. Everybody knows that between 1884 and 1898 the soil of Africa was very largely apportioned to the sovereignty of European powers; the results are written on the modern map, the details of the various agreements are not too difficult to check. Most writers on the subject, moreover, have clear views about the historical significance of the whole process; whether they regard it as a beneficent extension of the institutions and values of West European civilization or as an intolerable imposition of alien power, their evaluations derive from prior convictions rather than from empirical study. Despite the importance in contemporary African politics of polemical statements about Imperialism, for coherent accounts of the territorial partition of the continent it is still necessary to look to books written by public men before European archives were available, and indeed before the process itself was complete.

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