Before 1800, European statesmen did not consider African continent as a fascinating continent and did not find it a challenging filed for “civilizing missions” but instead a relatively simple configuration on the world map, then commonly referred to “the dark continent,” although some parts were of specific major strategic interest. Ever since the latter half of the 15th century, the trading-posts set-up along African coastlines had been involved in the conflicts between rival European powers.
But it was not until towards the end of the 18th century that certain African territories came to be seen by imperialists and politicians in Europe as areas of interest. Two interdependent signs of progress, neither of which had anything to do with Africa, can be attributed to the change in perception towards Africa. In Asia, the British were finding their stake in India increasingly profitable and were therefore prepared to accept a steady expansion of their responsibilities.
In Britain and France, the emergence of the Revolutionary war in 1793 intensified the already bitter relationship between Britain and France. In this situation, the sea routes, which connected Africa to Asia became the British routes important for the sustenance of their nation’s economic prosperity and for the obvious French targets in time of war (Haslett 461).
Looking at history, it is evident that the expanding foreign trade was a major ingredient of the British to developing an interest in Africa, which was potential for commercial expansion of the European industries. The protection of British merchants and the creation of new commercial opportunities could thus be regarded as important aspects of overall British strategy.
Thus, Britain trade with Africa grew tremendously during the 19th century, as British merchants developed an interest in the novel commodities offered by their old customers in West and South Africa, found new openings such as that offered by Zanzibar, and broke into the markets of Egypt and Morocco from which they had been virtually left out by local limitations during the 18th century.
Towards the end of the 19th century, trade with African territories formed an insignificant percentage of the total British economy, and Africa was longer expeditious in commercial terms.
Remarkably, as according to Ades (154), France was the only other European country to make a major impact on Africa during this period change the attitude of other European countries towards Africa. Cases like the conquest of Algeria, the expansion in Senegal under Faidherbe, the creation of close ties with Egypt, and the growth of a vigorous settler population in Reunion, greatly changed the perception of Africa.
However, the French interests were less of commerce, though French investors in Tunis and Egypt were becoming influential imperialist lobbies. European countries now had other knowledge and information about Africa than what they knew before, their interests in the continent had grown more diversified and more widely diffused, and the wave of their activities, which were often harsh, but sometimes bracing in its influence on African communities, was gradually, inexorably increasing.
Now it was prestige and superiority that provided the most convincing argument for irredentism and the so-called “missions.” As for the other European nations soon to participate aggressively in the “scramble and partition” for African territories, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Belgium, already before 1875 had started occupying positions of influence and authority, and shown intention to continue and pursue their interests.
The European scramble and partition of Africa gained pace in the colonial competition and the diplomatic bargaining of the “age of imperialism,” occurring towards the end of the ninetieth century, although it began very much earlier.
This change in mode was evident, for instance, the racial arrogance, the conviction of a ‘civilizing mission,’ the awareness of technological superiority, the vision of natural resources waiting to be developed by the industry and expertise of Europe, and the intense suspicion of fellow-European rivals among others. From since then till the 1960s, everything changed, and whenever a group of Europeans spoke up in disfavor of some vigorous initiative in an African context, they invariably provoked argument and controversy.
This led to the abolition of slavery, French policy over Algeria, and many questions were raised: were the civilizing missions necessary? Was the trade viable? Nevertheless, these questions were met with a negative answer by the budding imperialists (Adi 268).
Although Asians, Arabs, had already come and established trading practices in Africa, it was the arrival and presence of the Europeans that changed the way trade was done. The presence of the Europeans encouraged the flourishment of trade between the Africans, Arabs, and the European Continent. Nevertheless this trade affected the Africans as it was majorly centered in the slave trade, thus affecting the Africans in contradictory ways. To some, the slave trade was the direct cause of desolation and decline.
Disastrous, too, for many of the trading communities of the East African coast had been the century and a half of Portuguese hegemony, a period that saw the destruction of many of the commercial ties that had previously bound the peripheral lands of the Indian Ocean so fruitfully together.
Therefore, from the above Africans reacted differently to the arrival and influence of the Europeans, for instance there those who found the ways and influences of the Europeans positive as it seemed to serve their interests instead of power in the continent, while to some the Europeans presented a negative and destructive influence to the Africans’ culture since there rights and interests were not observed as was the case before the Europeans arrived on the African Continent.
Therefore with the migration of Africans to other western countries and subsequently to Europe, as time went by and colonization came to an end, the Africans who were sons and daughters of Slaves adopted the European way of life just as the Europeans perceptions of the Africans also changed. Therefore in this light of the change of perception, the Africans began adopting new cultures and way of life (Baker & Colin 925).
Thus, African residents of the eighteenth century are generally seen as Africans of the diaspora, credited with contributing to the creation of the early ideologies of resistance to slavery, colonialism, and racism that were necessarily developed throughout Africa and the diaspora.
They were less often seen as West Africans from the continent, exiles residing in Britain, or seen in terms of their original national identities. More important, Africans who were in Europe and other western countries were viewed as sojourners abroad, who would be able to play a pivotal role in the development of the politics of resistance to slavery, colonialism, and European imperialism that had developed since the eighteenth century (Berliner 167).
The history of Africans in Britain shows that there has been a very important relationship between the growing political consciousness of Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britain those Africans who sojourned abroad, even if only temporarily a part of the diasporas, and the development of the political consciousness of their compatriots in Africa. It was often while they were in Britain, or because they were in Britain, that their political awareness was sharpened and their political training began.
Important networks were established linking those overseas in Britain and those in the continent with the wider diasporas, and there has been a dialectical transfer of ideas and influence (Lorimer 423). West Africans in Britain, whether we consider them part of the diasporas or not, have certainly been influenced by their experiences in Britain, and their contact with other Africans and those of African origin.
It should not be forgotten that they have also made their contributions to the development of radical, working-class, and anti-imperialist politics in Britain. However, as time went by, Europeans started to view the Africans in a different light and even begun to adopt some of their cultures into their way of life, for instance, African art, drama, and literature.
Works cited
Ades, Micheal. Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology. New Jersey, NY: Rutgers University, 2004. Print.
Adi, Hakim. Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britain. African Studies Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, Special Issue on the Diaspora, April 2000: 69-82. Print.
Baker, Josephine & Colin, Paul. “African American Dance Seen through Parisian Eyes.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 4, Summer, 1998: 903-934. Print.
Berliner, Brett. “Mephistopheles and Monkeys: Rejuvenation, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture in Interwar France.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2004: 306-325. Print.
Cambridge Histories Online. Changing European Attitudes to Africa. New York , NY: CUP 2008. Print.
Lorimer, Douglas. Theoretical racism in late-Victorian Anthropology 1870-1900. Victorian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 Spring, 1988: 405-430. Print.