3. Industrial Europe and the Imperial Drive

The content published on this webpage is protected by copyright. It may be used for academic, educational, and research purposes, provided that the original source is properly acknowledged and cited. Any reproduction, distribution, modification, or commercial use of the material without prior authorization is prohibited. Users are responsible for ensuring that any use of this content complies with applicable copyright laws and academic integrity standards. ISBN: 978-1-956760-65-1.

This brief guide is intended as an introductory resource. The questions posed are not central to the debates in this course, but rather serve as basic points of departure. I seek to present the material with objectivity, while acknowledging that the approach is, and cannot be, neutral. Prof. Jorge Majfud.

“Fundamental to Jacksonville University’s mission is support for an environment where divergent ideas, theories, and philosophies can be openly exchanged and critically evaluated. Consistent with these principles and the concept of Academic Freedom, this course may involve the discussion of ideas that you find uncomfortable, disagreeable, or even offensive. These ideas are intended to be presented in an objective manner, they are not intended to persuade and are not an endorsement of what you should personally believe.”

Capitalism, technology, race theory, and why Africa became “necessary” after 1850

Why did Africa become strategically and economically important to European powers after 1850, and how did industrialization contribute to the «Scramble for Africa»?
How did technological advances (such as quinine, steamboats, railroads, and modern weapons) change the balance of power between European empires and African societies?
What role did ideology and race theory play in justifying European colonization, and how were terms like «civilizing the savages» used to legitimize imperial expansion?
Why was Ethiopia able to resist permanent European colonization when most of Africa could not? What political, military, geographic, and diplomatic factors contributed to its success?
In the early nineteenth century, anti-imperialist movements were followed by European cooperation in dividing the world. What political and economic changes may explain this shift from revolutionary ideals to overseas imperialism?

Table of Contents

Capitalism, Technology, Race Theory, and Why Africa Became «Necessary» After 1850

The Industrial Revolution

Until the early nineteenth century —roughly 300 years after the birth of capitalism— the standard of living of most Europeans had changed little over the course of several centuries. In many respects, it remained well below the standards of living that had existed in parts of the Arab world and among many Native American societies centuries earlier.

In the first centuries, capitalism and the (European) Industrial Revolution did not “advance humanity”; they supercharged colonization, mass destruction, and the systematic exploitation of much of the planet. A key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the deliberate European destruction of advanced workshops and manufacturing industries in Asia, fueled by piracy, looting, war, drug trafficking, markets imposed literally at gunpoint, and mass killings. Even in Europe, life expectancy declined in many rapidly industrializing populations. People’s health deteriorated. Average life expectancy and height declined. Hygiene worsened. Workloads increased dramatically. Crime and social violence surged. This was not progress —it was organized plunder dressed up as civilization.

The exploitation of children, women, and the working classes intensified dramatically in the Imperial countries and even more dramatically in the colonies. Systems of labor exploitation reached unprecedented levels, first through chattel slavery and indentured servitude, and later through wage slavery, particularly in colonial territories and banana republics, like in most of Latin America.

Africa in the 19th Century

Unlike Asia and Latin America, by the 1850s almost 90 percent of Africa was not under direct European rule yet. The remaining ten percent consisted of coastal areas where international commerce was most intense. There, a small elite of settlers accumulated most of the wealth, while the rest of the population enjoyed far less freedom and independence than people across the rest of the continent.

At the same time, while Europe was rapidly developing due to the Industrial Revolution and imperialism, living conditions for most Europeans had been extremely low for centuries and would remain so for a few more generations. Without colonization, American, Asian, and African societies most likely would have continued their own path of freer development —rooted in their own cultures, their own political practices, and their own definition of development— and joined global development on their own terms using their immense riches. Instead, this natural trajectory was violently interrupted in the 19th century, leaving behind chains that persist today in different forms.

European colonialism didn’t step into an economically frozen Africa and single-handedly jumpstart its progress. Instead, European powers arrived on a continent made up of distinct societies —each with its own political and economic rhythms— and systematically reshaped those systems to serve European needs.

That shift left a mixed, often contradictory legacy. Colonial authorities did build railways, ports, schools, and civic systems. But these projects weren’t designed to connect local communities or build self-sustaining domestic economies; they were laid out to haul commodities off the continent as efficiently as possible. Roads and tracks ran from inland mines and farms straight to the coast for export, while vital investments in local food security, healthcare, and community education were largely sidelined.

When economic historians look at the bigger picture —comparing colonial reality to what African development might have looked like on its own trajectory— the consensus leans negative. While the long-term impacts varied wildly depending on the region and the style of colonial rule, the overall system prioritized foreign extraction over local prosperity, leaving structural scars that reshaped the continent’s economic future.

Africa as a source of material resources

By the second half of the 19th century, Africa had become strategically and economically essential to Europe’s rapidly industrializing economies. The rubber of the Congo Free State became indispensable for tires, electrical cables, and industrial machinery. Copper from Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) and neighboring Katanga became critical for electrification. At the same time, industrialization generated enormous surpluses of capital that sought profitable investment opportunities abroad. As argued by John A. Hobson in Imperialism: A Study (1902), the search for new markets, raw materials, and investment outlets became one of the major economic forces behind modern imperialism.

The white man's grave: a visit to Sierra Leone (1834), by Rankin, F. Harrison — *The white man’s grave: a visit to Sierra Leone* (1834), by Rankin, F. Harrison

"The White Man's Burden" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling — *The white man’s grave: a visit to Sierra Leone* (1834), by Rankin, F. Harrison

Some historians have suggested that the great wave of European colonial expansion was not inevitable, and that countless lives and communities might have followed very different paths. At the beginning of the 19th century, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial revolutions spread across Europe and the Americas, fueled by the suffering of those facing exploitation and foreign domination. The Revolutions of 1848, known as the “Springtime of Nations,” were a wave of uprisings across Europe driven by economic crisis, poverty, political repression, liberalism, and nationalism, as ordinary people risked everything to claim a more dignified future. Beginning in France, revolts spread to the German states, the Austrian Empire, Hungary, and Italy, as people demanded constitutions, political rights, national autonomy, and social reforms that might ease hardship and affirm their humanity. Although most revolutions were suppressed by 1849, often at great human cost, they weakened the old aristocratic order and helped lay the foundations for later Italian and German unification and the expansion of constitutional government, keeping alive hopes for more just and representative societies.

During the second half of the century, however, European rivalries increasingly shifted outward. Rather than fighting one another directly, the major powers began competing through the division of overseas territories, especially in Africa.

Until then, one of the greatest barriers to European penetration of the African interior had been disease, particularly malaria. Although Europeans believed that the continent possessed vast natural resources, tropical diseases made large-scale occupation extremely difficult. For centuries, much of sub-Saharan Africa had been known in Europe as the «White Man’s Grave» because of the high mortality rates among European travelers and soldiers.

One discovery changed history: quinine, derived from the bark of the Cinchona tree, whose medicinal properties had long been known to Indigenous peoples of the Andes, particularly in present-day Peru and Bolivia in South America. In 1820, French chemists Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou isolated quinine from Cinchona bark, making it possible to produce the drug on a larger scale. Its widespread use as a preventive treatment and medicine against malaria dramatically changed the conditions Europeans faced in tropical regions. Quinine was taken in powdered or pill form and was also mixed with sugar to produce tonic water; the bitter quinine tonic was eventually combined with gin, giving rise to the famous gin and tonic.

Around 1880, King Leopold II recognized an opportunity for the young Belgian state —created only forty years earlier— to establish an overseas empire. In 1884-1885, the European powers met at the Berlin Conference to coordinate the partition of Africa. The United States also sent an official representative.

Technological innovations further transformed the balance of power. Steamboats made navigation along previously inaccessible rivers far easier, while railroads, machine guns, and modern firearms enabled European armies to penetrate and occupy vast territories. These technologies of conquest and domination were frequently presented as instruments of the «civilizing mission,» an ideology rooted in racial theories that portrayed Africans as inferior peoples in need of European rule.

Ethiopia was the only major African state to avoid permanent colonization during the Scramble for Africa, although Liberia also maintained its formal independence under different historical circumstances. Emperor Menelik II (r. 1889–1913) recognized the danger posed by European imperialism. While many African states still relied primarily on traditional weapons, Menelik purchased thousands of modern rifles, acquired artillery, built and trained a large army, and skillfully exploited the rivalries among France, Russia, and Great Britain to obtain weapons without becoming dependent on a single power. Ethiopia’s mountainous terrain also made invasion exceptionally difficult.

In 1936, Fascist Italy occupied Ethiopia and incorporated it into Italian East Africa. However, the occupation lasted only about five years. In 1941, during the Second World War, British and Ethiopian forces expelled the Italians, and Emperor Haile Selassie returned to the throne. For this reason, historians generally regard Ethiopia as the only major African state to have escaped permanent European colonization during the partition of Africa, despite its temporary occupation between 1936 and 1941.

Commodities in the 19th and 20th centuries

Africa

The colonial economy in Africa was heavily oriented toward the export of raw materials to European industries. The principal commodities included:

Gold (South Africa, Ghana)
Diamonds (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana)
Copper (Northern Rhodesia/Zambia and Belgian Congo)
Rubber (Congo Free State)
Palm oil (Nigeria)
Cocoa (Gold Coast/Ghana)
Cotton (Egypt and Sudan)
Tea (Kenya)
Sisal (Tanganyika)
Uranium (Belgian Congo, Niger)
Oil (Nigeria, Angola, Libya)

Latin America

Latin America remained largely independent politically after the early nineteenth century but became economically dependent on Britain and, increasingly after 1898, the United States. Major export commodities included:

Silver (Mexico, Peru, Bolivia)
Copper (Chile, Peru)
Tin (Bolivia)
Coffee (Brazil, Colombia, Central America)
Sugar (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic)
Bananas (Central America, Colombia, Ecuador)
Rubber (Brazilian Amazon)
Oil (Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador)
Iron ore (Brazil)
Nitrates (Chile, before synthetic fertilizers)

Commodities most associated with U.S. economic dominance (1900–1970)

The United States became particularly influential in sectors tied to multinational corporations:

Bananas — dominated by companies such as the United Fruit Company, giving rise to the term «banana republic.»
Sugar — Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
Copper — Chile and Peru.
Oil — Venezuela, Mexico (before nationalization), and Ecuador.
Coffee — Central America and Colombia.
Bauxite — Jamaica and Guyana.

Commodities that generated the greatest foreign wealth

Across both continents, the commodities that produced the largest profits for European and U.S. capital were:

Gold
Oil
Diamonds
Copper
Rubber
Sugar
Coffee
Bananas
Cocoa
Silver

These commodities were central to the export-oriented economic systems established under colonialism and later under informal economic influence, shaping infrastructure, labor systems, and international trade throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.