chapter 25 africa and the middle east, 1800–1914slave trade. mirambo (1840 –1884), a nyamwezi...

25 Africa and the MiddleEast, 1800–1914

C H A P T E R

3

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the countries of

Africa and the Middle East underwent a radical restructuring;

they faced internal political struggles, the transformation of the

world economy, and the military, commercial, and cultural incur-

sions of the Europeans. The economic, technological, and military

superiority of certain European states challenged the diverse, com-

plex civilizations of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and made

them targets in the competition for empire.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the diversity of kingdoms and societies

made a unified political response to the Europeans impossible. By

the beginning of the twentieth century, Africans found themselves

living within political boundaries imposed by the Europeans, without

regard for the existing ethnic distribution of peoples. They began the

painful process of altering their lifestyles to survive in the industri-

alized world.

In the Middle East, politicians and intellectuals discussed ways

to keep their empires strong and proposed reforms to enable them to meet the challenges of moder-

nity. The Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century was still large and powerful, but

by the end of the century, it had faced bankruptcy, territorial losses, and national separatist move-

ments. The Qajar Empire in Persia was similarly weakened by foreign loans and by the military ambi-

tions of Britain and Russia. From North Africa to central Asia, the citizens of these traditional, polyglot,

multiethnic empires found themselves caught up in the great power rivalries of the new imperialists

in Europe.

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C H A P T E R C O N T E N T S

• State Formation and the End of the Slave Trade in Africa

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS: The Myth

of the Empty Land

• European Conquest of Africa

DOCUMENT: That Was No Brother

• European Technology and the AfricanResponse to Conquest

• The Ottoman Empire Refashioned

DOCUMENT: A Middle Eastern Vision

of the West

DOCUMENT: Halide Edib: Education,

Generation, and Class in the Late

Ottoman Empire

• Persia and the Great Power Struggle

1784 Usman danFodio launches jihadagainst Hausa rulers

1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900

1808–1839 Mahmud II,reformer, janissary corps destroyed

1884 Europeancolonizers meet inBerlin to set groundrules for claimingcolonies

1801 Muhammad Ali arrivesin Egypt and seizes power

1879 Britain seizes KhyberPass, dominates Afghanistan

1843 Sanusi Sufi orderestablished inpresent-day Libya

1908 SecondOttomanconstitutionalrevolution

1821 Greek revoltagainst Ottoman rule

1867 Diamondsdiscovered inSouth Africa

1869 Openingof Suez Canal

1835–1848 Boers'Great Trek into interiorof South Africa

1839–1876 OttomanTanzimat reform period

1847 French finalizetakeover of Algeria

1834 Great Britain endsslavery in British colonies

1876 First Ottomanconstitutionalrevolution

1905–1906Beginning of Persianconstitutionalrevolution

1896 Ethiopianarmy defeatsItalians at Aduwa

1899–1902Anglo-Boer War

1907 Britainand Russiadivide Persiainto spheresof influence

1848–1896 Reign of Nasir al-Din Shah inPersia

4 PART 5 ■ The Century of Western Dominance

STATE FORMATION AND THE END OF THESLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA

West AfricaIn West Africa the political map of the interiorsavanna dramatically changed in the eighteenth cen-tury as Fulani Muslim holy men in the western Sudanlaunched a series of jihads. Their efforts inspiredFulani Muslims in the eastern Sudan—the mostnotable being Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817), son of aMuslim teacher and himself a scholar of some repute.He criticized Muslim Hausa leaders for ignoringSharia law and for their lax morality. When a Hausaruler lifted the exemption of Muslims from taxes,Usman mobilized his students, Fulani pastoralists,and Hausa peasants and declared a holy war againstHausa rulers in 1804. Usman’s movement succeededin uniting most of the Hausa states into the central-ized Sokoto Caliphate, with a capital at Sokoto on thelower Niger, that encompassed several hundred thou-sand square miles.

Usman remained a religious leader while hisbrother Abdullahi and son Muhammad Bello(1781–1837) consolidated the caliphate. Although aHausa aristocracy was replaced by a Fulani nobility,the latter allowed Hausa political and religious elitesin the emirates a measure of local autonomy as longas they paid an annual tribute and recognized thecaliph’s political and religious authority.

Usman dan Fodio’s revolution brought mixedresults for women. He encouraged education amongelite women and supported women who disobeyedhusbands who did not educate them. His wives anddaughters were educated and became noted for theirwritings. However, women were expected to remain inseclusion and were excluded from meaningful roles inelite decision making. The queen mother (magajiya)lost her power to veto decisions by male rulers andfound her influence restricted to ritual matters.

The creation of the Sokoto Caliphate made littledifference to the Hausa peasantry and slaves whoserved in households and tilled the fields. Althoughelite women were freed up from agricultural produc-tion and expanded their production of indigo-dyedcloth, they were replaced in the fields by female slavesimported into the Caliphate. On the other hand,Hausa traders maintained their prosperous links withTripoli to the north and the Atlantic coast. Their tradeitems included kola nuts, grain, salt, slaves, cattle, andcloth, which made their way to countries as far awayas Egypt and Brazil.

On the West African coast, African societies wereadapting to the tapering off of the Atlantic slave trade.Britain, which was responsible for more than half of

the slaves exported from Africa, had abolished theslave trade in 1807. Other European nations followedsuit in subsequent decades. A British antislaverysquadron patrolled the West and East African coasts,intercepting slave ships. Although the antislaverysquadron managed to free about 160,000 slaves, it wasa fraction of the overall slave trade. Between 1807 and1888, close to 3 million more Africans were enslavedand shipped overseas, largely to sugar, coffee, and cot-ton plantations in Cuba and Brazil.

Britain and France established colonies in SierraLeone and Gabon for freed slaves, while the AmericanColonization Society (ACS) created a settlement forfree African Americans who wished to return volun-tarily to Africa and for blacks captured on slave shipsby the American antislavery squadron. The ACSselected a strip of territory in the Cape Mesurado areaand pressured local Africans into ceding them theland. However, the black settlers who landed after1821 had a difficult time adjusting. They were sus-ceptible to diseases and looked down their noses atagriculture. When they declared themselves indepen-dent from the ACS and founded Liberia (from theLatin word, liber, for “free”) in 1847, their populationnumbered only a few thousand.

The Americo-Liberians (as the settlers came to becalled) patterned themselves on the United States,adopting the English language and a constitutionbased on the American States model and namingtheir capital Monrovia (after President James Mon-roe). Although their official motto was “Love of Lib-erty Brought Us Here,” they did not extend freedomto indigenous Africans, who were regarded as unciv-ilized and backward. A caste system developed inwhich Americo-Liberians dominated politics andexploited the labor of indigenous Africans, who werenot allowed to qualify for citizenship until 1904.Although Liberia’s economy sputtered in the face ofintense competition with European traders and thecivil service was riddled with corruption, Liberiamanaged to survive the European scramble for Africaand to remain an independent republic through thecolonial period.

African societies involved in the transatlantic slavetrade adjusted to its winding down in various ways.Some societies were so dependent on slave exportsthat they found it difficult to cope. Other societiesshifted from exporting slaves to trading for moredomestic slaves. The Asante kingdom in the GoldCoast acquired more domestic slaves to increase goldand kola nut production for trading with Europeansand the West African interior.

For many societies, the slave trade had been anegligible part of their overall trade, and African entre-preneurs and European merchants expanded theirtrading links. One African export sought in Europewas gum arabic, extracted from acacia trees and used

CHAPTER 25 ■ Africa and the Middle East, 1800–1914 5

for dyes in European textile factories. Another waspalm oil, a key ingredient in candles and soap and themain lubricant for Europe’s industrial machinerybefore the discovery of petroleum oil.

Along the coast east of the Niger delta, where palmoil was a major export, palm oil production was orga-nized on gender lines: men cut down the nuts fromtrees, and women extracted the oil. Although the maleheads of households were the main beneficiaries ofpalm oil production, they gave women the proceedsfrom palm kernels. The demand for palm kernel oilescalated in the 1880s when William Lever began sell-ing Sunlight, a sweet-smelling soap made from palmkernel oil and coconut oil, to a mass market in England.

However, the most important beneficiaries of thetrade were not the producers but the rulers and mer-chants. In the Niger River delta, states vying for con-trol of the trade fought a series of wars.

East and Central AfricaEast and central Africa were also increasingly drawninto the world economy through long-distance trade.Gold and ivory had long been exported to China andIndia, but now it was in demand by European middleclasses for luxury items such as billiard balls, pianokeys, and cutlery handles. Elephant herds paid anenormous price; 33 elephants were slaughtered forevery ton of ivory exported. The scourge of slavery alsoravaged the region. During the nineteenth century,several million people were enslaved. Half of themwere sent to southern Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia,while the rest ended up on French sugar plantationson the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Réu-nion; on Brazilian sugar plantations, whose ownersfound West African slaves too highly priced; and onArab-run clove plantations on Zanzibar and nearbyislands. Zanzibar had become so important to OmaniArabs on the southeastern coast of the Arabian penin-sula that Sultan Sayyid Said (1791–1856) transferredmost of his court and government there in 1840.

The long-distance trade opened up opportunitiesfor middlemen trading groups. The Yao, Nyamwezi,Afro-Portuguese, Kamba, and Swahili Arabs con-trolled routes in different parts of the region andrecruited thousands of porters for their caravans. TheSwahili language increasingly became the linguafranca along trading routes. With imported firearmsand slave armies, some of the leading warlords estab-lished conquest states based on their control over theslave trade. Mirambo (1840–1884), a Nyamwezi chief,and Tippu Tip (c. 1830–1905), who was of Arab andNyamwezi parentage, carved out domains east andwest of Lake Tanganyika, respectively.

Many African kingdoms such as Rwanda were notdependent on the long-distance trade for their sur-vival. Rwanda was composed of three main groups:

the Twa, who were hunter-gatherers; the Hutu, Bantu-speaking farmers; and the Tutsi, a pastoral Nilotic peo-ple who were the latest to immigrate into the area.Over the centuries Tutsi clans had established apatron-client relationship with Twa and Hutu clans,but the lines between the groups were not clearlydrawn. Hutu and Tutsi intermarried and shared acommon language, religious beliefs, and cultural insti-tutions, and the distinctions between Tutsi patronsand Hutu clients were often blurred.

However, in the late nineteenth century the Nyi-ginya, a Tutsi clan led by King Rwabugiri, conqueredother Tutsi and Hutu clans. Rwabugiri’s state washighly centralized and favored the Tutsi minority, whoserved as administrators, tax collectors, and armycommanders and controlled grazing land. Hutu chiefswere in charge of agricultural lands but tended Tutsicattle and paid tribute to their Tutsi overlords.

Born of Arab and Nyamwezi parents, Tippu Tip was a warlordwho established a state west of Lake Tanganyika to exploit theslave trade.


Southern AfricaIn the first decades of the nineteenth century, Africansocieties in southeastern Africa were swept up in aperiod of political transformation known as the Mfe-cane (“the scattering”). Its origins can be traced toincreased competition by chiefdoms for grazing landfollowing a series of severe droughts and for controlof first the ivory and then the cattle trade with the Por-tuguese at Delagoa Bay. However, it was the Zulu clan,a minor actor when the Mfecane began, that becamethe region’s most formidable military power.

The Zulu owed their rise in prominence to theirking, Shaka (c. 1786–1828). When he was born about1786, his father was chief of the Zulu clan, which waslater part of the Mthethwa confederacy ruled byDingiswayo (c. 1770s–1816). When Shaka’s fatherrejected his mother, Shaka was forced to spend hischildhood among his mother’s people. As a youngman, he enrolled in one of Dingiswayo’s fighting regi-ments. Young men of about 16 to 18 traditionally wentto circumcision schools for a number of months toprepare themselves for manhood. Because Dingis-wayo needed soldiers who could be called into battleon short notice, he abolished the circumcision schoolsand enrolled his young men directly into regiments.

Shaka soon distinguished himself as a warrior,and he rose rapidly in Dingiswayo’s army. On hisfather’s death in 1815, Shaka assumed the chieftaincyof the Zulu. Several years later, when Dingiswayo’senemies lured him into a trap and killed him, Shakaasserted his leadership of the confederacy. Heregrouped his followers and won over others; eventu-ally, he vanquished his opponents. He then began con-structing, primarily by cattle-raiding, a majorkingdom between the Phongolo and Tugela Rivers thatdominated southeastern Africa.

Shaka was best known for adopting new weaponsand battle strategies that revolutionized warfare. Hearmed the Zulu army with a stabbing spear that wasnot thrown but used in close fighting. He introducedthe buffalo horn formation, which allowed his soldiersto engage an opponent while the horns or flanks sur-

African Societies and European Imperialism

1816 Shaka becomes king of Zulu

1824 Basotho king Moshoeshoe moves to mountainfortress Thaba Bosiu

1840 Omani Sultan Said establishes rule in Zanzibar

1876 King Leopold II of Belgium founds Interna-tional African Association

1879 Zulu army defeats British force at battle ofIsandhlwana

1881 Muhammad Ahmad proclaims himself Mahdiin Sudan

1886 Opening of Witwatersrand gold fields

1888 Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato found De Beers Diamond Company

1895 Cecil Rhodes launches Jameson raid to over-throw Transvaal government

1898 Confrontation of British and French forces atFashoda in southern Sudan

Print of Shaka, King of the Zulus. Shaka established a major king-dom based on innovations in battle tactics and weaponry.

rounded them. He drilled his soldiers so that they couldmarch long distances on short notice. He also trans-formed his clan into a major kingdom of about 25,000people by assimilating large numbers of war captives.He created a new hierarchy in which power was cen-tered in his kingship and status was based not ondescent but on achievement in the military regiments.

Shaka’s repeated raids for cattle and captivesthroughout the area proved to be his downfall, as hisregiments tired of constant campaigns. Several of hishalf-brothers and one of his generals conspiredagainst him and assassinated him in 1828.

During the Mfecane, refugee groups escapedShaka’s domination by migrating to other parts of theregion. Some headed much farther north, adoptingShaka’s fighting methods and establishing kingdomson the Shakan model in Mozambique, Zimbabwe,Malawi, and Tanzania. Still other peoples survived bycreating new kingdoms that knit together clans andrefugees. One kingdom forged in this way wasMoshoeshoe’s Basotho kingdom.

The son of a minor chief, Moshoeshoe (c.1786–1870) gained a reputation as a cattle raider as ayoung man. Moshoeshoe succeeded his father asrefugee groups began streaming into his area.To escape their raids, in 1824 Moshoeshoemoved his small following to animpregnable, flat-topped mountaincalled Thaba Bosiu. Over the nextseveral decades, he creativelybuilt a kingdom that becameone of the most powerful in

the region. Moshoeshoeaccumulated vast cattleherds through raiding, and hewon the loyalty of many desti-tute men by lending them cattleto reestablish their homesteads.Moshoeshoe married many times tobuild up political alliances with neigh-boring chiefs. He also armed his warriors


with battle-axes and formed a cavalry using poniesbred for the rugged mountain terrain.

Moshoeshoe is best remembered for his diplo-matic skills. He was prepared to fight if necessary, buthe preferred to negotiate whenever possible. On manyoccasions he managed to salvage difficult situationsby engaging in diplomacy and exploiting divisionsamong opponents, especially the rivalry between theBoers and the British. In 1868, toward the end of hislife, as Boers were on the verge of destroying his king-dom, Moshoeshoe successfully appealed to the Britishgovernment for protection.

The Great Trek and British-Afrikaner RelationsAs African kingdoms in southern Africa were under-going a period of transformation, groups of Boerswere preparing to escape British control by migratinginto the interior of southern Africa. Prompted by theNapoleonic wars, Britain had resumed control overthe Cape Colony in 1806 to protect the sea lanesaround the Cape of Good Hope. The British were

intent on expanding commercial opportuni-ties through wine and wool production;

the Boers resented any interferencewith their pastoral way of life.

Relations between the twogroups deteriorated in the next

decades. At first the Britishwon Boer approval for a lawthat tied Khoikhoi servantsto white farmers, but aftera humanitarian outcryfrom missionaries overabuses of servants, theBritish instituted anordinance giving Khoi-khoi farm laborersequal rights. Britainalso abolished the slavetrade in 1807, driving upthe price of slaves, andin 1834 it emancipatedthe slaves. However, this

action did not improvethe conditions of former

slaves as most of them,unskilled and uneducated,

ended up as free but servilelabor on white farms. The last

straw for the Boers came in 1836when the British handed back land

to Xhosa groups whose land had beenconquered in a recently completed war.

Moshoeshoe photographed in1860, during the visit of PrinceAlfred to South Africa. Althoughhe liked to wear Europeandress on formal occasions withwhites, he preferred traditionaldress among his own subjects.Renowned for his diplomaticskills, he was able to maintainhis kingdom’s independence formany decades from Afrikanerand British colonizers.


Seeing their way of life threatened, many Boersdecided to escape further British interference by head-ing for the interior. In the mid–1830s bands ofmigrants, known as voortrekkers (numbering about15,000 in all) undertook an epic journey in their ox-drawn wagons to a new country where they couldrestore their way of life. This Great Trek was compa-rable to the covered-wagon epic of the American West.

On the high plateau, or veld, the Boers establishedtwo republics: the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.For the rest of the century they solidified their controlby engaging in wars of land conquest against Africankingdoms. In the meantime, the British prevented theBoers from having direct access to the Indian Ocean byextending their own settlement along the eastern coastnorth of the Cape and founding the colony of Natal.

AFRICA, c. 1830

French possessions

Ottoman and Egyptian possessions

0 1000500

MILES

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N I N D I A N

O C E A N

Congo R.

Za

mbezi R.

PORTUGUESEGUINEA

SIERRALEONE LIBERIA

GOLD COAST N i g e rD e l t a

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CAPECOLONY

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M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A

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SuezCanal

EGYPT

LakeChad

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LakeVictoria

British possessionsAfrican states

Portuguese possessions

ALGERIA

KONGO

MOROCCO

FUTA TORO

Spanish possessions

LakeNyasa

LakeTanganyika

East African slave trade routes,c. 1830—76

S a h a r a D e s e r t

C o n g o B a s i n

FUTA JALLON

ASHANTI DAHOMEY

SOKOTO

BORNU

DARFUR

ILORIN

CHOKWE

OVIMBUNDU

LOZI PORTUGUESEEAST AFRICA

OMAN

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ETHIOPIA

BUNYORO

BUGANDA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

TUNIS

SPAINPORTUGAL

ARABIA

MazaganFez

TangierCeuta

OranTunis

TripoliAlexandria

Cairo

Aswan

SUDAN

Khartoum

Gondar

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St. Louis

Bissau

Freetown

MonroviaAccra

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Timbuktu

Loanda

Benguela

K a l a h a r iD e s e r t

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XHOSA

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Mozambique

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Mombasa

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Before the European conquest of Africa in the late nineteenth century, Africans in all parts of the continentwere establishing new kingdoms or expanding old ones.


The Great Trek did little to resolve the Boers’ dif-ficulties. In 1877 Britain created a confederation ofthe white-ruled states in the region and took over theTransvaal with little resistance from the Afrikaners(the name taken by the Boers about this time). TheBritish attempted to win Afrikaner acceptance bylaunching offensives against their main African rivals,the Pedi and Zulu kingdoms. Although the Zulus hadcoexisted peacefully with British and Afrikaners formany decades, the British now perceived them as anobstacle to white control and manufactured a waragainst the Zulu kingdom. The war started disas-trously for the British when, in January 1879, thearmy of King Cetshwayo (c. 1832–1884) caught aBritish column by surprise at Isandhlwana and over-whelmed them. A handful of British soldiers survivedthe battle. Cetshwayo hoped the British would endtheir aggression following the disaster, but theyrenewed their efforts and, six months later, put an end

to the Zulu kingdom by carving it into 13 small piecesand exiling Cetshwayo.

This victory did not improve British relations withTransvaal Afrikaners. In 1881 they rebelled againstBritish rule and scored a series of military successes.The British agreed to pull out of the Transvaal,although they still claimed to have a voice in its for-eign affairs.

The Mineral Revolution and the Anglo-Boer WarThe discovery of diamonds in 1867 on the borders ofthe Cape Colony and the Orange Free State and ofgold in 1886 in the Transvaal were to transform thewhole of southern Africa economically and politically.

When the diamond fields were opened up, thou-sands of black and white fortune seekers flocked to thearea. The mining town of Kimberley sprang up almostovernight. In the first years of the digs, there were norestrictions on who could stake claims. But in 1873,European diggers, resentful of competition fromblacks, successfully lobbied British officials for a lawprohibiting Africans from owning claims. This law setthe tone for future laws governing who controlledmineral rights and ownership of the land.

Although Africans were excluded from owningclaims, there were few restrictions on their move-ments and where they lived around the mines.Africans typically came to mine for three to sixmonths and left at a time of their own choosing. This

Light and strong, voortrekker wagons were ideally suited to therough terrain they were forced to cross. Despite their maneuver-ability, they could carry a surprising amount of household andother goods. This picture shows a wagon crossing a particularlydifficult river.

THE GREAT TREK ANDSOUTH AFRICA IN THENINETEENTH CENTURY

0 250

MILES

Boer Great Trek

INDIAN OCEANATLANTICOCEAN

Orange R.

Limpopo R.

C A P E C O L O N Y

N A T A L

BECHUANALAND

O R A N G EF R E ES T A T E

PORTUGUESE

EAST

AFRICA

B A S U T O -L A N D

T R A N S V A A L

SOUTH–WESTAFRICA

SWAZILAND

Tswana

Xhosa

Zulu

Durban

Ladysmith

JohannesburgPretoria

East London

PortElizabeth

Cape Town

Graaff Reinet

Bloemfontein

Kimberley

Mafeking

In the 1830s bands of Afrikaners migrated from the Cape into theinterior of South Africa. Through the conquest of African lands,they established two republics, the Transvaal and the OrangeFree State.

European settlement in various parts of the world wasusually accompanied by the conquest of land from

indigenous peoples. Because the settlers did not have a his-toric claim to the land, they often constructed their own ver-sions of the past to justify their right to be there. In SouthAfrica, one myth that white settlers created was that Dutchsettlers arrived in southern Africa about the same time asBantu-speaking peoples, the ancestors of most present-dayAfricans—in the mid-seventeenth century. Hence, white set-tlers could claim that, as they migrated from the westernCape into the interior of South Africa, they were moving intoan unpopulated land that was up for grabs. Europeans couldlay claim to the land, and they had just as much right to it asAfricans did.

A variation of the “myth of the empty land” was basedon a late nineteenth century map drawn by George McCallTheal, a Canadian who settled in the Cape in 1861. Theal’smap shows the South African interior virtually depopulatedbecause many Africans had been displaced by the wars of theZulu king Shaka in the 1820s and 1830s. Thus, the Boerswho trekked into the interior in the 1830s were settling onland no longer occupied by Africans. In a speech deliveredto a Cape Town audience in 1909, Theal clearly revealed hismotives for the way he drew his map. “We must…prove,” hedeclared, “to these people [Africans] that we were no moreintruders than they were, and that they enjoyed as much asthey were entitled to.” He added, “In reality this country was

not the Bantu’s originally any more than it was the whiteman’s, because the Bantus were also immigrants…most oftheir ancestors migrated to South Africa in comparativelyrecent times.”

Theal’s “myth of the empty land” became an article offaith for many white South Africans until late in the twen-tieth century. His interpretation was a standard feature inSouth African history textbooks used in both white andblack schools, and South African government propagandarelied on it to justify the apartheid system to the interna-tional community.

The Myth of the Empty LandDiscovery Through Maps

Questions to ConsiderThe ownership of disputed land has been a thorny issue inmany countries.

1. Are there myths that settler groups have devised in otherparts of the world to justify their conquests and domi-nation of indigenous peoples and the land?

2. How accurate is the claim of Theal’s map that “ZuluWars” had depopulated the interior of South Africabefore Afrikaners set out on the Great Trek?

From Christopher Saunders, The Making of the South AfricanPast: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town, DavidPhilip, 1988), p. 39; Marianne Cornevin, Apartheid Power andHistorical Falsification (Paris: UNESCO, 1980), p. 79.


freedom changed as European mine owners sought toprevent diamond thefts and to control black workersby preventing desertion and holding down theirwages. In 1885 the mine owners began erecting com-pounds to house black workers. Throughout their stayat a mine, black workers stayed in the compounds andwere allowed out only to work in the mine. The com-pound system was so effective at controlling blacklabor that it became a fixture in other mining opera-tions throughout southern Africa.

In the early years of the diamond diggings, severalthousand people held claims, but by the 1880s, own-ership of the mines was falling into the hands of fewerand fewer people. In 1888 the two leading magnates,Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) and Barney Barnato(1852–1897), pooled their resources to found DeBeers, a company that controlled 90 percent of dia-mond production. Over a century later De Beers con-tinues to dominate the diamond industry not only inSouth Africa but also around the world.

In 1886, gold discoveries on the Witwatersrand(“ridge of the white waters”) sparked off another rush.The Witwatersrand gold veins were distinctivebecause they sloped at sharp angles beneath the earthand required shafts to be sunk at depths of up to twomiles. The exorbitant costs of deep-level mining aswell as of importing skilled labor, mining engineers,and the latest technology required enormous infusionsof foreign capital. Profits were hard to sustain, and themain mining houses targeted black wages for cuttingcosts. They restricted competition for black workersby imposing ceilings on their wages and creatingrecruiting organizations that eventually developed net-works as far north as Zambia and Malawi. The resultwas a migrant labor system in which tens of thou-sands of black men came to the mines for six to ninemonths, while black women stayed home to raise fam-ilies and look after crops. Another consequence of themineral discoveries was the extension of railways intothe interior of southern Africa.

From 1886 to the end of the century, SouthAfrica’s share of world gold production increasedfrom less than 1 percent to over 25 percent. The cen-ter of power in the region shifted from Cape Town toJohannesburg, renewing British interest in control-ling the Transvaal. Afrikaner leaders were resoluteabout protecting their independence, but they fearedthey would be outnumbered when tens of thousandsof uitlanders (foreigners), mainly English immi-grants, flocked to the gold mines. The Transvaal’spresident, Paul Kruger (1825–1904), was determinedthat the uitlanders would not gain control. As a boyhe had joined in the Great Trek. As a young man, heled Boer commandos conquering African lands. Ashead of the Transvaal, he was passionately devoted topreserving its independence and the Afrikaners’agrarian way of life.

Kruger’s main adversary was Cecil Rhodes, whoin 1890 had become prime minister of the CapeColony. An avowed imperialist, Rhodes now set hissights on bringing down Kruger’s republic. He plottedwith uitlanders in Johannesburg to stage an insurrec-tion. In late 1895 Rhodes’s private army, led by Lean-der Starr Jameson, invaded the Transvaal fromneighboring Bechuanaland, but they were quicklycaptured by Afrikaner commandos. The Jameson raidhad dire consequences. Rhodes was forced to resignas prime minister, Afrikaners in the Cape were alien-ated from the British, the Orange Free State formedan alliance with the Transvaal, and the Transvaalbegan modernizing its army by importing weaponsfrom Europe.

Transvaal leaders were deeply suspicious that theBritish had been behind Rhodes’s reckless actions.Their fears were heightened when in 1897 the Britishselected Alfred Milner (1854–1925) as the highcommissioner for South Africa. He shared Rhodes’s

A bitterender, an Afrikaner guerrilla who vowed to fight to the “bit-ter end” against the British during the Anglo-Boer War.


imperialist convictions with a passion. He pressuredKruger to reduce the length of time for uitlanders toqualify for citizenship in the Transvaal. Although Mil-ner thought Kruger would make significant conces-sions under pressure, Kruger was unwilling to meetall of Milner’s demands.

War broke out in late 1899. Most observersexpected the British army to roll over the heavily out-numbered Afrikaner forces. But Afrikaner soldierswere crack shots and expert horsemen. Knowing everyinch of ground on which they fought, they frequentlyoutmaneuvered the British troops by resorting toguerrilla tactics. The British countered by conductinga scorched-earth campaign, burning Afrikaner farmsand placing Afrikaner women and children andAfricans who worked on their farms in unsanitaryconcentration camps. About 30,000 Afrikaners (half ofthem children) and 15,000 blacks perished in the

camps from disease and starvation. Among Afrikanersthe memory of the deaths fueled animosity against theBritish for generations.

EUROPEAN CONQUESTOF AFRICAIn 1870 the European nations controlled only 10 per-cent of the continent. The two most important holdingswere at Africa’s geographical extremes: French-admin-istered Algeria in the north and the Boer republics andBritish colonies in the south. Most of the other Euro-pean holdings were small commercial ones along theWest African coast.

One of the first European leaders to acquire newAfrican territory was King Leopold II of Belgium,

That Was No Brother

When we heard that the man with the white fleshwas journeying down the Lualaba (Lualaba-

Congo) we were open-mouthed with astonishment. Westood still. All night long the drums announced thestrange news—a man with white flesh! . . . He musthave got that from the river-kingdom. He will be one ofour brothers who were drowned in that river. All lifecomes from the water, and in the water he has foundlife. Now he is coming back to us, he is coming home….

We will prepare a feast, I ordered, we will go tomeet our brother and escort him into the village withrejoicing!… We assembled the great canoes. We lis-tened for the gong which would announce ourbrother’s presence on the Lualaba. Presently the crywas heard: He is approaching the Lualaba. Now heenters the river!… We swept forward, my canoe lead-ing, the others following, with songs of joy and withdancing, to meet the first white man our eyes hadbeheld, and to do him honor.

But as we drew near his canoes there were loudreports, bang! bang! and fire-staves spat bits of iron atus. We were paralyzed with fright; our mouths hungwide open and we could not shut them. Things suchas we had never seen, never heard of, never dreamedof—they were the work of evil spirits! Several of mymen plunged into the water…. What for? Did they fly

to safety? No—for others fell down also, in the canoes.Some screamed dreadfully, others were silent—theywere dead, and blood flowed from little holes in theirbodies. “War! that is war!” I yelled. “Go back!” Thecanoes sped back to our village with all the strengthour spirits could impart to our arms. That was nobrother! That was the worst enemy our country hadever seen.

And still those bangs went on; the long staves spatfire, pieces of iron whistled around us, fell into thewater with a hissing sound, and our brothers contin-ued to fall. We fell into our village—they came after us.We fled into the forest and flung ourselves on theground. When we returned that evening our eyesbeheld fearful things: our brothers, dead, bleeding, ourvillage plundered and burned, and the water full ofdead bodies….

Now tell me: has the white man dealt fairly by us?Oh, do not speak to me of him! You call us wickedmen, but you white men are much more wicked! Youthink because you have guns you can take away ourland and our possessions. You have sickness in yourheads, for that is not justice.

From Heinrich Schifflers, The Quest for Africa (New York:Putnam, 1957), pp. 196–197.

Europeans and Africans usually had very different perceptions of the same event. These documents recounttwo versions of a battle on the Congo River in the 1870s. The first comes from an African chief, Mojimba—recorded by a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Fraessle, several decades after the battle—and the second is bythe famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley written for European and American audiences.

Document


who had long dreamed of creating an empire mod-eled on Dutch holdings in Asia and the Pacific. Whenthe Belgian government was reluctant to acquirecolonies, Leopold took the initiative. In 1876 he orga-nized the International African Association (IAA) andbrought the explorer Henry Stanley (1841–1904) intohis service. The association, composed of scientistsand explorers from many nations, was ostensiblyintended to serve humanitarian purposes. But thecrafty king had less noble motives. As he put it, he didnot want to lose a golden opportunity “to secure…aslice of this magnificent African cake.”1 He sent Stan-ley to central Africa on behalf of the association.Stanley brought along hundreds of blank treatyforms and concluded agreements with variousAfrican chiefs, few of whom understood the implica-tions of granting sovereignty to the IAA. By 1882 theorganization had laid claim to over 900,000 square

miles of territory along the Congo River, an area 75times the size of Belgium.

Britain’s occupation of Egypt and Leopold’sacquisition of the Congo moved Chancellor Otto vonBismarck to overcome his indifference to coloniesand acquire an African empire for Germany. Begin-ning in February 1884, Bismarck took just a year toannex four colonies: South-West Africa, Togoland,Cameroon, and German East Africa. However, Bis-marck’s imperial grab was still firmly rooted in hisreading of European power politics. He wanted todeflect French hostility to Germany by sparkingFrench interest in acquiring colonies and to put Ger-many in a position to mediate potential disputesbetween France and Britain.

While Bismarck was busy acquiring territory, hewas also concerned about preventing clashes betweencolonizers. In 1884 he called the major European

A t 2 P.M. we emerged out of the shelter of the deeplywooded banks and came into a vast stream, nearly

2,000 yards across at the mouth. As soon as weentered its waters, we saw a great fleet of canoes hov-ering about in the middle of the stream…. We pulledbriskly on to gain the right bank, when lookingupstream, we saw a sight that sent the blood tinglingthrough every nerve and fiber of our bodies: a flotillaof gigantic canoes bearing down upon us, which bothin size and numbers greatly exceeded anything we hadseen hitherto!

Instead of aiming for the right bank, we formed aline and kept straight downriver, the boat taking posi-tion behind…. The shields were next lifted by the non-combatants, men, women and children in the bows,and along the outer lines, as well as astern, and frombehind these the muskets and rifles were aimed.

We had sufficient time to take a view of themighty force bearing down on us and to count thenumber of the war vessels. There were 54 of them! Amonster canoe led the way, with two rows of upstand-ing paddles, 40 men on a side, their bodies bendingand swaying in unison as with a swelling barbarouschorus they drove her down toward us….

The crashing sounds of large drums, a hundredblasts of ivory horns, and a thrilling chant from 2,000human throats did not tend to soothe our nerves or toincrease our confidence…. We had no time to pray orto take sentimental looks at the savage world, or evento breathe a sad farewell to it….

The monster canoe aimed straight for my boat, asthough it would run us down; but when within fiftyyards off, it swerved aside and, when nearly opposite,the warriors above the manned prow let fly their spearsand on either side there was a noise of rushing bodies.But every sound was soon lost in the ripping, cracklingmusketry. For five minutes we were so absorbed in fir-ing that we took no note of anything else; but at theend of that time we were made aware that the enemywas reforming about 200 yards above us.

Our blood was up now. It was a murderousworld, and we felt for the first time that we hated thefilthy, vulturous ghouls who inhabited it. We there-fore lifted our anchors and pursued them upstreamalong the right bank until, rounding a point, we sawtheir villages. We made straight for the banks andcontinued the fight in the village streets with thosewho had landed.

From Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. 2(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1878), pp. 268–273.

Questions to ConsiderYou are a journalist covering the skirmish and you arerelying on the accounts of Mojimba and Stanley foryour story.

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each source?

2. What would your account be? How would it differ fromeither source?


Representatives of 14 nations, including the United States, met in Berlin in 1884 to set new rules to governtheir “scramble for Africa.” No representative from Africa was invited to participate.

powers together in Berlin to discuss potential prob-lems of unregulated African colonization. The con-ference paid lip service to humanitarian concerns bycondemning the slave trade, prohibiting the sale ofliquor and firearms in certain areas, and ensuringthat European missionaries were not hindered fromspreading the Christian faith. Then the European par-ticipants moved to much more important matters.

Seeking to avoid competition for territory thatcould lead to conflict, they set down the ground rulesby which the colonizers were to be guided in theirsearch for colonies. They agreed that the area alongthe mouth of the Congo River was to be administeredby Leopold of Belgium but that it was to be open tofree trade and navigation. Drawing on precedentsbeginning in the sixteenth century, when Europeannations were creating seaborne empires, they decidedthat no nation was to stake out claims without firstnotifying other powers of its intention. No territorycould be staked out unless it was effectively occupied,and all disputes were to be settled by arbitration. Inspite of these declarations, the competitors oftenignored the rules. On several occasions, war wasbarely avoided.

The humanitarian guidelines were generally dis-regarded. The methods used to acquire lands contin-ued in many instances to involve deception of theAfricans. European colonists got huge land grants bygiving chiefs treaties they could not read and whosecontents they were not permitted to understand. Inreturn, African chiefs were plied with bottles of gin,red handkerchiefs, and fancy red costumes. The com-parison between the European treaty methods and

those of the Americans in negotiations with NativeAmerican tribes is all too apparent.

The cultural differences between Africans andEuropeans were especially vast regarding their concep-tions of land ownership. To most African societies, landwas not owned privately by individuals but was vestedin their chiefs, who allocated it to their people. Whenchiefs allocated land or mineral rights to Europeans,they had no idea they were disposing of more than itstemporary use. When the Europeans later claimed own-ership of the land, Africans were indignant, claimingthat they had been cheated. In 1888 Charles Rudd, arepresentative of Cecil Rhodes, signed a treaty with theNdebele king, Lobengula (c. 1836–1894), in which hewas given a monthly stipend and 1000 Martini-Henryrifles in exchange for a concession over minerals andmetals. Lobengula was told that the treaty gave Rhodes’scompany the right to dig a hole in one place, but thetreaty actually gave Rhodes unlimited powers.

African leaders who questioned treaty provisionswere treated cavalierly. King Jaja (c. 1821–1891) ofOpobo, a prosperous trading state in southeasternNigeria, refused to sign a British treaty unless thewording of clauses on protection and free trade wasaltered or scrapped. The British agreed to changes, butwhen the British Consul invited the chiefs to sign thetreaty on a ship, they were detained and sent into exile.

The Scrambling of AfricaFrom the Berlin conference to World War I, Europeanimperialists partitioned the African continent amongthemselves, with two exceptions—Liberia, which had


EUROPEAN IMPERIALISMIN AFRICA, c. 1880

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Until the 1880s only a few European countries held colonies in Africa, mostly enclaves on the coast. How-ever, following the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, European nations moved rapidly to conquer and parti-tion Africa. By World War I, all of Africa, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was under Europeandomination. Because Europeans were largely ignorant of Africa’s interior regions, they drew the boundarylines of their colonies without regard for preexisting states, trading relations, or ethnic ties. This has left anenduring legacy of ethnic strife.

been established for freed American slaves, andEthiopia, which fended off Italian invaders. The colo-nizers were woefully ignorant about the geography ofthe areas they colonized. Europeans had knowledge ofcoastal areas, but nineteenth-century explorers hadlargely concentrated on river explorations and knewlittle beyond that. Thus, when European statesmendrew boundaries, they were more concerned withstrategic interests and potential economic develop-ment than with existing kingdoms, ethnic identities,topography, or demography. About half the bound-aries were straight lines drawn for simple conve-nience. As Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister,admitted: “[We] have been engaged in drawing linesupon maps where no white man’s foot ever trod, wehave been giving away mountains and rivers and lakesto each other, only hindered by the small impedimentthat we never knew exactly where the mountains andrivers and lakes were.”2

France and Britain were by far the two leadingcompetitors for African territory. The French vision

was to create an empire linking Algeria, West Africa,and the region north of the lower Congo River. Toachieve their goal, the French relied on their militaryto drive eastward from Senegal and northward fromthe lower Congo. In West Africa the British concen-trated on their coastal trading interests and carved outcolonies in Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast(Ghana), and Nigeria. But they also scooped up pos-sessions elsewhere. In East Africa they laid claim toKenya and Uganda, and by 1884, they gained controlover a stretch of African coast fronting on the Gulf ofAden. Because it guarded the lower approach to theSuez Canal, this protectorate (British Somaliland) wasof great strategic value.

Equally important to British control of Egyptwere the headwaters of the Nile, situated in the areaknown as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The French alsohad their designs on the area as a bargaining chip toforce the British to reconsider their exclusive controlover Egypt. The French commissioned Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand to march a force 3000 miles from


central Africa to Fashoda on the White Nile south ofKhartoum. In July 1898, several months after Marc-hand planted a French flag at Fashoda, General H. H.Kitchener successfully led an Anglo-Egyptian forceagainst Muslim forces in control of the Sudan. ThenKitchener turned his attention to Marchand, and theirforces faced off nervously at Fashoda. The showdownnearly ended in war. To the British, control of the Nilewas a strategic necessity. To the French, it was a mat-ter of national prestige, but they were not prepared togo to war over it, and they withdrew Marchand.

Britain was the principal colonizer in southernAfrica. British influence expanded northward from theCape Colony largely through the personal efforts of thediamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, who dreamed of anuninterrupted corridor of British territory from theCape of Good Hope to Cairo. When the British gov-ernment hesitated to claim territory north of theLimpopo River, Rhodes took the initiative. Rhodeshad heard the stories that King Solomon’s mines werelocated there, and he thought the area had even morepotential than the Witwatersrand goldfields. Lured bya mirage of gold, he poured his personal fortune intofounding the British South Africa Company. In 1890he dispatched a column to settle and, if need be, con-quer the area that eventually bore his name, Rhodesia.

Both Portugal and Italy had grandiose visions ofempire, but they had to settle for territories the majorEuropean powers did not covet. Although the Por-tuguese had been involved in Africa longer than any ofthe other European colonizers, their ambition to uniteMozambique and Angola through a central Africancorridor was thwarted by Rhodes and British inter-ests. Italy emerged from the scramble for colonieswith very little territory. The Italians gained a piece ofthe Red Sea coast and a slice of barren and desolateland on the Indian Ocean. But these areas were of lit-tle value without the rich plateau of Ethiopia in thehinterland. However, their bid to conquer the interiorwas soundly rebuffed by the Ethiopian army.

EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGYAND THE AFRICANRESPONSE TO CONQUESTThe European conquest of most of Africa was facili-tated because of advances in technology and medi-cine. Until quinine was perfected, Europeans settingfoot in Africa died in droves from illnesses such asmalaria. Advances in military technology gave Euro-pean armies a decisive advantage in their encounterswith African forces. The gunboat allowed Europeanarmies to dominate lake and river regions, while the

introduction of breechloading rifles and machine gunsmade it possible for European soldiers to defeat muchlarger African armies that possessed outmoded mus-kets. However, technology was not the sole reasonEuropeans succeeded. Because European soldierswere still susceptible to African diseases and expensiveto maintain, European armies recruited Africans tofight on their behalf. And Africans, who typically madeup the vast majority of European-led units, did thebulk of the fighting.

African states were also at a disadvantage becausethey did not rethink outmoded battle tactics andbecause they did not put up a united front. In the faceof European expansion, African states sought to pre-serve as much of their own autonomy and sovereigntyas possible. This response usually prevented themfrom entering into alliances with other African statesto confront a common enemy.

Most African societies resisted European con-quest at some point, but they first weighed the costsand benefits of European rule and considered whetherthey should resist, make accommodations, or negoti-ate with Europeans. They queried European mission-aries in their midst for information on the colonizers.They watched developments in neighboring states tosee the results of resistance, and they sought advice onthe implications of European protection. Theyassessed their rivalries with neighboring states and thepossibility of profit from an alliance with Europeans.They also calculated whether they had the support oftheir own people. In the East African kingdom ofBuganda, a Protestant ruling faction sought Britishallies to maintain an advantage over Muslim, Catholic,and traditionalist rivals.

African states often changed tactics over thecourse of time. Moshoeshoe’s Basotho kingdomfought the Boers in the Orange Free State on twooccasions, appealed for British protection in 1868 toshield it from Afrikaner rule, fought a war against theCape government in 1880 after the Cape tried to dis-arm Sotho warriors, and then invited the British toreestablish colonial rule in 1884.

Despite the disparity in firearms, African statesvaliantly sustained resistance to European colonizersuntil World War I. One of the most durable and inno-vative resistance leaders was Samori Touré (c.1830–1900), who came from a Dyula trading family inthe region of the upper Niger River in West Africa. Hebuilt up an army to protect his family’s trading inter-ests and then, between 1865 and 1875, created a pow-erful Islamic kingdom among the Mandinke peoplethat stretched from Sierra Leone to the Ivory Coast.Samori’s army could field over 30,000 soldiers andcavalry armed with muskets and rifles, some home-made and some imported from Freetown on theSierra Leonean coast.


Samori’s forces were a formidable opponent whenthey first clashed with French soldiers probing westfrom Senegal in 1881. However, the French superior-ity in weaponry eventually forced Samori to wage ascorched-earth campaign as he moved his kingdomeastward. He then had to deal with internal revoltsfrom his new subjects and also with the British, whorefused to declare a protectorate over his kingdom.Squeezed between the French and the British, hefought as long as he could before he was captured andexiled by the French in 1898.

Because of their ability to inspire and unite fol-lowers, religious leaders often led the resistance toEuropean invaders. In Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad(1844–1885), a Muslim shaykh from a village north ofKhartoum, proclaimed himself a Mahdi (“guidedone”) in 1881. Muslims believe that in times of crisisa redeemer appears whose mission it is to overthrowtyrannical and oppressive rulers and install just gov-ernments in their place. Declaring himself a successorto the prophet Muhammad, Muhammad Ahmadcalled on people to join him in a jihad against theunbelievers, the Egyptian-appointed administratorswho were levying taxes and suppressing a profitableslave trade.

From a base 300 miles southwest of Khartoum,Mahdist forces scored numerous successes againstEgyptian forces and laid siege to Khartoum in 1884.Despite last-ditch efforts by British officer CharlesGordon to negotiate with the Mahdi, the Mahdistsswept into Khartoum in early 1885, killing Gordonand setting up an administration at Omdurman,across the Nile from Khartoum. The Mahdi died ashort time later, but his successors founded a Muslimstate that lasted until an Anglo-Egyptian force invadedthe Sudan in 1898.

A Shona spirit medium by the name of Charwealso inspired resistance against the British SouthAfrica Company’s (BSA) colonization of Rhodesia inthe 1890s. Shona peoples believed that a person couldcommunicate with God through a dead person’s spirit.This spirit can possess a living person who becomes aspirit medium. People especially consulted mediumswho were possessed by important figures of the past.These mediums were thought to be guardians of thepeople and able to ensure good luck in hunting, pro-ducing rainfall, and controlling diseases. In the caseof Charwe, she claimed to have been possessed by thespirit of Nehanda, a woman who had lived four cen-turies before.

In 1896, many Shona and Ndebele rose upagainst the BSA’s exploitative policies. Company offi-cials were expropriating African land, seizing theircattle, levying taxes, and forcing Africans to work onthe mines. Some Shona chiefdoms were inspired torevolt by prominent spirit mediums such as Ambuya

Nehanda and Kagubi, who secretly spread the mes-sage of revolt and urged people to take up arms. Theirinspirational leadership sustained the ShonaChimurenga (uprising) for a year. Although the whiteswere nearly expelled, they eventually defeated therebels. Nehanda and Kagubi were captured and sen-tenced to hang in March 1898. But Nehanda was defi-ant to the end. She refused to be converted toChristianity at the last minute and she denounced thewhites until the moment she was executed. Herprophecy that “my bones will rise” to recapture free-dom was remembered by guerillas fighting in thestruggle against white domination in the 1970s.3 They,too, consulted spirit mediums, including an elderlywoman who claimed she had been possessed byNehanda’s spirit.

Religious leaders played a leading role in inspiring Shona resis-tance against white settlers in Zimbabwe in 1896–1897. This pho-tograph is of the spirit mediums Nehanda and Kagubi awaitingtrial after they were captured.


Crowned emperor of Ethiopia in 1889, Menelik II carried out cam-paigns of conquest in his region while maintaining his kingdom’sautonomy in the face of European imperialism. When Menelik’sefforts to keep the Italians restricted to the Red Sea coast failed, hewas forced into a military confrontation. Menelik’s army routedthe Italian forces at Aduwa in 1896.

Although African armies scored some victoriesagainst European forces, only one African state,Ethiopia, successfully repulsed European invaders. Inthe second half of the nineteenth century, several kingshad revived a unified kingdom of Ethiopia, but nonewas as impressive as Menelik II (1844–1913), the kingof Shewa, who was crowned emperor of Ethiopia in1889. He moved the capital to Addis Ababa and mod-ernized his kingdom by constructing the first railwayline and laying telephone lines for communication withprovinces. He aggressively expanded Ethiopia’s bound-aries, more than doubling the size of his kingdom.

At the same time, he kept a wary eye on British,French, and Italian intrigues in the region. “I have nointention,” he wrote Queen Victoria, “of being anindifferent spectator if the distant Powers hold theidea of dividing up Africa.”4 In 1889 Italy and Ethiopia

signed the Treaty of Wuchale, in which Italy recog-nized Menelik as emperor of Ethiopia in return forgiving the Italians a free hand in a region controlledby one of his rivals. However, the treaty’s Italian ver-sion stated that Ethiopia had to conduct foreign rela-tions through the Italians, while the Amharic versionmerely stated that Ethiopia could consult with Italy onforeign matters. When Menelik learned through diplo-matic exchanges with Britain and France that Italywas claiming a protectorate over Ethiopia, hedenounced the treaty and prepared for an eventualshowdown with Italy by importing massive quantitiesof weapons, many of them from Italy.

When the Italians mounted an offensive in Tigréprovince in 1896, Menelik called on his nation to resistthem: “Enemies have come who would ruin our coun-try.…With God’s help I will get rid of them.”5 Menelik’sarmy of 100,000 soldiers was more than a match forthe 20,000-strong Italian army. At the battle of Aduwa,the Italians suffered a humiliating defeat. The Italianswere forced to recognize Ethiopia’s independence andcontent themselves with their enclave on the Red Seacoast, Eritrea.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIREREFASHIONEDAt the beginning of the nineteenth century, the MiddleEast consisted primarily of two large and loosely struc-tured empires, the Qajar Empire in Persia and theOttoman Empire, which included Anatolia, the Arabprovinces, and most of North Africa. The OttomanEmpire stretched from the Balkans to Sudan and fromthe Maghreb to Arabia; and the Ottoman sultan couldstill claim a certain preeminence in the Islamic worldbased on his position as Protector of the Holy Cities.For centuries the Islamic world had extended wellbeyond the Middle Eastern heartlands. United by theirworship of one god, devotion to the Prophet Muham-mad, and adherence to the Sharia Islamic law, Mus-lims looked to Mecca as the sacred site of pilgrimage.Every year the number of believers traveling to Meccagrew, and by 1900 it is estimated that more than 50,000Indians and 20,000 Malays were making the hajj eachyear. But the Islamic world had been politically dividedsince the early centuries of Islam, and Muslim statesfrom Southeast Asia to Morocco pursued their ownpolitical agendas with little or no reference to the sov-ereign who controlled the Islamic heartlands.

Challenges to Ottoman PowerIn the sixteenth century, the Ottoman administrationhad been a model of effectiveness. The Ottoman navy


The Era of Ottoman Reform

1808–1839 Reign of Ottoman reformer Mahmud II

1839–1876 Tanzimat, Ottoman reform period

1876 First constitutional revolution

1876–1909 Reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II

1908 Young Turk Revolution reinstates Ottomanconstitution

dominated the eastern Mediterranean, and Ottomanarmies continued to expand the territories of the sul-tan. The balance of trade was markedly in favor ofAsia, with European merchants sending precious cointo procure the goods they wanted from the OttomanEmpire, Persia, and South and Southeast Asia. By theeighteenth century, however, that balance of militaryand economic power had begun to shift in favor ofEurope, where some states were benefiting fromindustrialization and new military technologies. Inthis era the Ottoman Empire faced the challenges ofdecentralizing forces within and vigorous pressurefrom rivals beyond its boundaries.

Internally, central government power had beenweakened by the increasing autonomy of regional gov-ernors (ayan) in the provinces. These notables mobi-lized their own provincial forces and resisted orevaded the authority of the central government inIstanbul. They gathered bands of men armed as irreg-ular soldiers in Ottoman military campaigns to serveas their own personal armies. In North Africa the locallords had long enjoyed relative autonomy, and by theend of the eighteenth century, the Ottomans had littlereal power in the Maghreb.

The ranks of the janissary corps, the premierOttoman fighting force, had also become grosslyinflated. Thousands possessed papers which entitledthem to collect military pay and rations but performedno military service; others were forced to take secondjobs because inflation had drastically reduced thevalue of their pay. So the janissaries, once the frontline of Ottoman defense, became a source of rebellionand a drain on the government treasury.

Indeed, the most evident signs of Ottoman weak-ness were military. The Russians defeated theOttoman armies, and the empire had to sign thehumiliating treaty of Küchük Kaynarca in 1774. Notonly did the empire lose territory, but the Russiansdemanded the right to intervene in the affairs of theOrthodox Christian community in the empire. Thisconcession for the first time granted a foreign state thepower to meddle directly in Ottoman affairs. In 1798

Napoleon invaded Ottoman Egypt, and although hisstay there was short, his easy victory illustrated thetenuousness of Ottoman control over the NorthAfrican provinces.

The capitulations, treaties that granted specialtrade privileges to European states, also weakenedboth Ottoman and Qajar Empires. In the sixteenthcentury the Ottoman and Persian sovereigns had dic-tated the terms of foreign trade. But as theireconomies weakened, they granted more and moreextensive privileges to European traders, which gavestates like Britain and France increasing leverage incommercial affairs. These concessions harmed thebusinesses of local Ottoman traders who could notcompete. As the nineteenth century progressed, Euro-pean states would extend their influence by grantinglarge loans to Middle Eastern rulers.

Ottoman ReformTo counter these challenges, Sultan Selim III(1789–1806) launched a series of reforms, focusing onthe military. He created a new infantry corps com-posed of Turkish peasants. Selim also opened chan-nels of communication with the European capitals bysetting up embassies in London, Paris, Berlin, andVienna. The janissaries, however, were hostile toSelim’s reforms and unwilling to relinquish their cen-turies-long position of prominence. They deposed thesultan. Still, Selim’s reign marks the start of an era ofOttoman reform that would last into the early twenti-eth century (see Chapter 20).

A much more successful reformer was SultanMahmud II (1808–1839). Mahmud restored centralauthority in the provinces to some degree and clearedthe way for military reform by annihilating the janis-sary corps. He then established a new army, modeledon successful European armies and trained by Pruss-ian and French officers. Mahmud also reformed pro-fessional education by opening medical and militaryschools. The language of instruction was French; this,of course, gave an advantage to a new class of youngmen who were educated in French. Beyond the mili-tary sphere, Mahmud’s reforms included a restructur-ing of the bureaucracy, the launching of an officialnewspaper, and the opening of a translation bureau.

Men trained in the new professional schools andtranslation bureau would form a new nineteenth-cen-tury elite, sometimes called the “French knowers.” Ableto deal with the European powers on their own terms,these men would both challenge and reform the oldOttoman institutional order. Whereas French-style uni-forms were the symbol of the new military, the frockcoat was a symbol of the Europeanization of the civilbureaucracy. Mahmud II’s reforms were not designedto cast off Ottoman culture and ideology but rather to


create systems that would enable the empire to com-pete with Europe and recoup its status as a worldpower. Some people resented these changes, preferringthe status-quo; others saw the new schools and newpositions as an opportunity for upward mobility thathad been denied them under the old system of elites.

Challenging Ottoman Sovereigntyin EuropeOttoman territorial integrity was challenged in thenineteenth century by a series of separatist move-ments in the Balkans. The rise of nationalism inEurope and Great Power meddling in Ottoman affairswere both factors in the emergence and evolution ofthese movements. The Serbs rose in revolt in 1804, fol-lowed by the Greeks in 1821, the Romanians in the1850s, and the Bulgarians in the 1870s.

The Serbs achieved autonomy in 1830 after a longstruggle. The Greek Revolt, however, more directlyengaged the energies of the Great Powers, who inter-vened to ensure its success. The Ottomans hadcrushed the Greek insurrection in its early stages. ButBritain, Russia, and France all viewed the rebellion asa focal point in what came to be called the “EasternQuestion”—whether the Ottoman Empire would bedismembered, and if so, who would get what (seeChapter 27).

The Greek Revolt captured the imaginations ofEuropean intellectuals who were enamored of theGreek classical tradition and saw the revolt as aromantic instance of the forces of freedom triumph-ing over the forces of despotism. Although that roman-ticism had little to do with the ground-level realities ofthe revolt, it did fuel support for the Greeks in thecities of western Europe. Educated Europeans sawthemselves as inheritors of the classical Greek tradi-tions and ideals of liberty; conversely, they portrayedthe Ottomans as barbarians. In the end a predomi-nantly British fleet sank the Ottoman navy at Navarinoin 1827, and Britain, Russia, and France engineered atreaty to establish an independent Greece.

Russia and Britain would encounter each otheragain over Ottoman territory, but on opposite sides, inthe Crimean War (1854–1856). Britain saved Istanbulfrom Russian conquest, thereby preserving the bal-ance of power. But by the end of the nineteenth cen-tury, Europeans were referring to the empire as the“sick man of Europe,” and the Ottomans had lost con-trol over most of their Balkan provinces. The nationstates carved out of the Balkans have had a compli-cated history since that time. Borders have beendrawn and redrawn (such as those of Yugoslavia in thetwentieth century) and ethnic and religious tensionshave been exacerbated, as they were in Africa andIndia for example, by the demands of contendingnations for independence.

CORSICA(Fr.)

SARDINIA

SICILY

CRETE

CYPRUS

THE OTTOMAN EMPIREc. 1900

0

MILES

500 1000

Ottoman Empire, 1878Territory lost, 1878–1913Ottoman Empire, 1914

S A H A R A

CAUCASUS MTS.

ATLAS MTS.

SPAIN

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

MONTE-NEGROALBANIA

SERBIA

ROMANIABOSNIA

BULGARIA

GREECE

OMAN

AFGHANISTAN

I N D I A

ALGERIA(Fr.)

TUNIS

TRIPOLI

FEZZANEGYPT

FRANCERUSSIAN EMPIRE

PERSIA

ANATOLIA

ARABIA

ITALY

POR

TUG

AL

MACEDONIA

CYRENAICA

MOROCCO

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

I N D I A N

O C E A N

BLACK SEA

CA

SPIA

NS

EA

PERSIAN

GULF

RE

D SE

A

TigrisR

.

Nil

eR

.

Euphrates R.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Alexandria

Damascus

Tunis

Tripoli

Navarino

Istanbul

Algiers

Aden(Br.)

Baghdad

Jerusalem

Mecca

Medina

Military defeats and nationalist rebellions diminished the size of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenthcentury. However, it still controlled a significant amount of territory in 1914 when the region was engulfedin the conflicts of World War I.

Eugène Delacroix, Massacre at Chios (1824). Euro-pean liberals and Romantics such as Delacroixsupported the Greeks in their struggle for indepen-dence from the Turks, whom they depicted as crueloppressors.


Egypt and the Rule of Muhammad AliEgypt had been a province of the Ottoman Empiresince its conquest by Sultan Selim the Grim in 1517. Bythe late eighteenth century, however, Ottoman rule waslittle more than nominal as Egypt was controlled in factby local leaders, the heads of Mamluk households. Inthe nineteenth century Egypt was conclusivelydetached from Ottoman rule, first by a highly success-ful Ottoman military commander named MuhammadAli and then by the British, who seized Egypt as astrategic link to their colonial empire in India.

Muhammad Ali came to power in Egypt in theaftermath of Napoleon’s invasion. The French occu-pation of Egypt was short-lived, although it served tostimulate European interest in Egyptian civilization.When a joint British-Ottoman expedition arrived inEgypt in 1801 to end the French occupation, Muham-mad Ali was one of the Ottoman commanders. Heestablished himself as the dominant military leader,filling the power vacuum left by the French departure.

Muhammad Ali destroyed the Mamluks (as Mah-mud II had destroyed the janissaries), organized his

military along European lines, and built upa new, conscripted peasant army. This wasa radical change for the rural peoplessince, traditionally, peasants had not beenemployed in the military. Muhammad Alifounded new professional schools and agovernment printing press, reorganizedthe agricultural and taxation systems ofEgypt, sent men to study in France, andlaunched an ambitious program of indus-trialization. He also undermined the powerof the religious establishment, the ulama.Unlike religious leaders (like the Mahdi)elsewhere in Africa, the ulama in Egypt(and in the Ottoman empire in general)

were generally subordinated to the state and did notlead jihads or religious revolts.

Muhammad Ali’s reforms were more extensivethan those of Sultan Mahmud II, but these two con-temporaries were both major symbols of Middle East-ern reform. Once Muhammad Ali consolidated hispower, he moved to challenge the Ottoman statedirectly. Initially, he had defended Ottoman interestsby defeating the Wahhabis (a puritanical movement inArabia that aimed to cleanse Islam of innovations likeSufism) and helping put down the Greek Revolt. Butin 1831 he sent his son Ibrahim to invade Syria andAnatolia; Ibrahim marched his armies to within 150miles of Istanbul.

Here again, Russia, Britain, and France inter-vened to preserve the Ottoman Empire. MuhammadAli ultimately established an autonomous dynasticstate in Egypt where his descendants occupied thethrone until the 1950s. His career illustrates the weak-ness of the Ottoman Empire and its tenuous controlover its more distant provinces. European states cap-italized on the disruptions caused by Muhammad Alito negotiate more advantageous commercial agree-ments with the beleaguered Ottoman sultan, thusundermining the economic foundations of the empireeven further.


The Suez CanalMuhammad Ali’s successors pursued parts of hisreform programs, with little military or economic suc-cess. Egypt benefited from the American Civil Warwhen Egyptian cotton was used to replace the South’scotton exports, which were cut off when the Unionblockaded southern ports. But foreign loans and theuncontrolled spending of its rulers left Egypt bankruptby the 1870s.

The idea of a canal linking the Mediterranean tothe Red Sea was not new. The Mamluks, rulers ofmedieval Egypt, had planned such a canal but lackedthe technology to accomplish it. In 1854 the Egypt-ian ruler, Said, granted a Frenchman, Ferdinand deLesseps, a concession to build a canal. De Lessepswas only one among many European entrepreneursand concessionaires pouring into Egypt at this timeto take advantage of building opportunities and

commercial privileges. Some Middle Eastern peoplegained employment from these concessionaires butothers lost out as more advanced European trans-port and communication technologies (telegraph,steamship, railroads) began to replace more tradi-tional modes and those who provided them. Thebuilding and completion of the Canal itself radicallydisrupted patterns of labor as peasants were forciblyseized from their villages and forced to provideunpaid labor digging the canal. Families were tornapart, women left their farm-plots to follow and carefor their drafted husbands, and thousands died inthe course of the digging.

The Suez Canal was completed in 1869 during thereign of Khedive Ismail (1863–1879). Ismail was com-mitted to the European-style transformation of hisrealm. But his lavish spending, particularly on hisopening ceremonies for the canal, threw Egypt into afinancial crisis. The opening ceremonies were a world

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was an international event attended by numerous heads of state. Lavish spending for this event helped bankrupt Egypt.


event. Ismail commissioned the operaAïda (which was not completed in time)and built special pavilions to house visit-ing dignitaries. His extravagance dazzledeven the jaded aristocrats of Europe. Theempress Eugénie of France, a notorious“clothes horse,” was said to have taken250 dresses with her to the affair.

Plagued by financial troubles, Ismailsold Egypt’s shares in the canal to Britainfor 4 million pounds sterling in 1875. Thestock shares were snapped up by Disraeli,the astute prime minister of Great Britain,while the French dithered over whether tobuy them. This sale gave Britain virtualcontrol of this essential water link to itsSouth Asian empire. The following year(the same year the Ottoman Empiredefaulted on its loans), Egypt was unableto pay the interest on its foreign loans.Britain and France then forced Egypt toaccept European control over its debtsand hence its economy.

This assertion of foreign controlpaved the way for a British invasion ofEgypt. The British and French forcedIsmail to abdicate in 1879; in 1881 anarmy officer named Colonel Urabi, ofpeasant origins, led a military and pop-ulist revolt against foreign control inEgypt. He aimed to limit the power of thekhedive and to form a national assembly.There was antiforeign rioting in Alexan-dria, where many Europeans lost theirlives. The British, claiming they wereacting in the best interests of the Egypt-ian people, then shelled Alexandria andtook Cairo in 1882. Although their occu-pation was supposedly temporary, theyremained until the Egyptian Revolt of1952 and kept control of the Suez Canaluntil 1956. Thus, as elsewhere in Africa, the Euro-pean imperial states used a combination of economicincentive, military force, and treachery to seize con-trol of African empires.

Lord Cromer and the DinshawayIncidentWhen the British conquered Egypt, they appointed SirEvelyn Baring, later named Lord Cromer, to reorga-nize Egyptian finances, eliminate corruption, improvethe cotton industry, and oversee the country’s affairsfrom 1883 to 1907. Cromer was an able administratorwho stabilized the Egyptian economy, but his harshpolicies and contempt for the Egyptian people earned

him the hatred of many and helped galvanize theEgyptian nationalist movement.

Those sentiments are symbolized by an episodein 1906 that came to be called the Dinshaway Inci-dent. The affair began simply with British officers ona pigeon shoot in the countryside. The officers, heed-less of the fact that Egyptian villagers kept pigeonsfor food, pursued their hunt and wounded a villagerin Dinshaway, in the Nile delta. In the ensuing scuf-fle, two officers were wounded, and one subse-quently died.

What made this episode famous was the Britishresponse. Determined to make an example of Dinsh-away, the British punished the whole village. Theytried dozens of villagers and publicly hanged four. Thisincident provoked anger throughout Egypt, prompted

Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 350 years. Although theBritish conquered Egypt in 1882, the Ottomans still thought of it as their own ter-ritory. This Ottoman cartoon, published in Istanbul in 1908, expresses bonds ofbrotherhood between the Ottoman constitutionalist and the Young Egyptian nation-alists who were trying to throw off British imperial rule. As the giant symbol of Eng-land leans lazily against the pyramids, the tiny Egyptians do not seem to have muchof a chance.


the penning of patriotic songs, and gave force to thenationalist movement. The Dinshaway Incidentshowed that the people in the Middle East, and notjust the elites, could be mobilized to protect their owneconomic security and to resist the inroads of Euro-pean states.

North Africa West of EgyptThe appellation “North Africa” suggests a radical sep-aration between Mediterranean and sub-SaharanAfrica. But these two areas have long been linked bynetworks of trade. North Africa is grouped here withthe Middle East because it was Islamized during theearly Arab conquests and because it was loosely con-trolled by the Ottoman Empire during the premodernera. West of Egypt, North Africa contained the state ofMorocco, ruled by the Filali dynasty since 1631, andthree coastal states based on Tunis, Algiers, and Tripolithat were established under Ottoman rule. These lat-ter three dominated the western Mediterranean forthree centuries, remaining nominally under Ottomancontrol. Semi-autonomous governors, however, exer-cised the real power in the coastal states, attempting,with limited success, to subordinate tribal leaders intheir hinterlands.

Algiers, Tripoli, and, to a lesser extent, Tunis werecorsairing states that collected revenues from pirateactivity off their coasts. In the eighteenth century theybenefited from treaties with various European statesthat were willing to pay tribute and gifts in exchangefor security for their merchant shipping. That ship-ping was part of a vast web of seaborne trade thatreached from Southeast Asia and China to the Amer-ican colonies.

When the American colonies gained their inde-pendence from Britain, they, too, negotiated treatieswith these “Barbary States” in order to protect thelucrative American trade with North Africa. SidiMuhammad (1757–1790) of Morocco granted thefledgling United States its first official trading privi-leges in 1786. The U.S. Congress authorized $40,000for a treaty and $25,000 annual tribute for Algiers in1790 and, shortly thereafter, provided for the buildingof a navy to gain leverage against the corsair state.

In the nineteenth century, however, European pow-ers began to look to North Africa as an area ripe for con-quest. Like Egypt, the rest of North Africa experiencedEuropean economic penetration before it sufferedactual invasion. That penetration took the form of capit-ulations, reflecting commercial concessions granted toEuropean states by the Ottomans and the exploitationof North Africa as a market for European goods.

The first target was Algiers. In the 1820s the ruler ofAlgiers (called the Dey) sent ships to aid the Ottomansin putting down the Greek Revolt; he also dealt withinternal revolt as Algiers’s Berber tribesmen foughtagainst his janissary troops. Meanwhile, the Frenchwere enmeshed in conflicts with the Dey over fishingrights, piracy, and a debt the French owed Algiers.

In 1827, using the pretext that the Dey hadinsulted the French consul by publicly hitting himwith a fly whisk, France blockaded Algiers. PursuingFrance’s imperialist agenda, King Charles X theninvaded Algiers in 1830. He sent a large army of occu-pation, but only after 17 years of fierce resistancecould Algeria be directly incorporated as an integralpart of the French state. (Over one hundred years later,the Algerians would fight just as long and fiercely tofree themselves from French rule.)

Algiers then became a base for France to extendits influence in North Africa. Tunis remained singu-larly autonomous of Ottoman rule and in 1861 estab-lished its own constitution. An insurrection, whichunited tribal and urban elements in 1864, led to thebankrupting of Tunis in 1869. Its French, Italian, andBritish creditors then gained control of the Tunisianeconomy. Italy coveted the coastal state with its richagricultural hinterland, but the French stayed thoseambitions by invading in 1881 and making it a pro-tectorate. After that time, much of the country’s wealthwas siphoned off into French coffers, and most of thepopulation lived in desperate poverty.

From the 1840s to the end of the century, Frenchinterests also dominated in Morocco. But Germanywas emerging as a significant power in the late nine-teenth century and also cast its eye on African terri-tory, including Morocco. France, however, used itsestablished bases in North Africa and its alliance withthe British to win this particular standoff. Theypromised the Germans territory elsewhere in Africaand took over Morocco in 1912. The French left theMoroccan dynasty in place but did not relinquish theirhold on the country until 1956.

The Italians were latecomers in the scramble forAfrica. Frustrated by the Ethiopians in their ambitionsfor East Africa, they decided to seize a piece of theNorth African pie. Capitalizing on the disruptionscaused by the Ottoman constitutional revolution, theydeclared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1911 andinvaded the area around Tripoli, annexing it in theface of a failed Ottoman defense. The Sanusi order ofsufis, which had great influence in the region, vigor-ously resisted Italian (and French) expansionism. Thisorder, established in the area in 1843, worked as bothan Islamic reform movement and a political force. It


The people of Paris, men and women alike, aretireless in their pursuit of wealth. They are never

idle or lazy. The women are like the men in thatregard, or perhaps even more so…. Even thoughthey have all kinds of amusements and spectacles ofthe most marvelous kinds, they are not distractedfrom their work…. Nor do they excuse someone forbeing poor, for indeed death is easier for them thanpoverty, and the poor man there is seen as vile andcontemptible.

Another of their characteristics is a hot-tem-pered and stubborn arrogance, and they challengeeach other to a duel at the slightest provocation. Ifone of them slanders or insults another, the chal-lenged one has no choice but to respond, lest he bebranded a despicable coward for the rest of his life.Then they decide the conditions of the combat—what weapons they will fight with, how it will bedone, and the place—and no one in authority inter-feres with them.

You should know that among the customs of thesepeople is that they sit only in chairs and they knownothing of sitting directly on the floor…. Another oftheir customs is that they do not touch food with theirhands, nor do they gather around a single platter….Two people may share one pitcher but each has hisown glass from which no one else may drink, for theyregard that as the height of uncleanliness…. At the endof every course, the servant removes the dishes andother things, and brings fresh ones. The number ofdishes piles up, because they change them at everycourse and no dish is ever eaten from twice. This isdue to their excessive concern for cleanliness…. theylinger at table for more than two hours, because it is

their custom to stretch out the talk during the meal sothey can overindulge in food. The Arabs say that per-fect hospitality is friendliness at first sight andleisurely talk with one’s table companions. But wedetested the arrival of mealtimes because of the end-less waiting, nor did we understand their conversa-tion. Moreover, much of the food did not agree withus, and we got tired and irritated with the long sittingand waiting.

[At dinner as-Saffar noted the free mingling of thesexes and commented on the women’s dress.] Theirclothing covered their breasts, which were hiddenfrom view, but the rest of their bosom, face and neckwere bare and exposed. They cover their shouldersand upper arms in part with filmy, closefitting sleevesthat do not reach the elbow. They bind their waistsbeneath their dresses with tight girdles which givethem a very narrow middle. It is said they are trainedinto this [shape] from earliest childhood by means ofa special mold…. In the lower part they drape theirclothing in such a way that the backside is greatlyexaggerated, but perhaps this is due to something theyput underneath [bustles]….

Questions to Consider

1. Why do you think as-Saffar commented on French eat-ing habits? What do you think eating habits and dressstyles reveal about a people and their culture?

2. What aspects of a diplomat’s life might be enjoyable?What aspects might be unpleasant?

From Susan G. Miller, trans. and ed., Disorienting Encoun-ters: Travels of a Moroccan Scholar in France in 1845–1856(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 153, 158,163–65.

A Middle Eastern Vision of the West

Middle Easterners traveled to Europe for a variety of reasons in the nineteenth century. Some went for plea-sure or educational purposes, others went for medical treatments or business. As European states gainedmilitary advantages over Middle Eastern states, more Middle Eastern rulers sent diplomats to gather infor-mation on the newly prominent powers. In 1844 France bombarded Moroccan ports and forced a treaty onthe Moroccan sultan, Mulay Abd ar-Rahman. The following year, interested in studying the sources ofFrench power, Morocco sent an embassy to France. One of its members was the scholar Muhammad as-Saf-far, who later recorded his impressions of French society. As a distinguished visitor, as-Saffar tended totravel in elite circles, and he certainly did not get to see all aspects of French life. But he was intensely inter-ested in French society—from its business practices, to its roads, its printing presses and even its eatinghabits. Muhammad as-Saffar expressed admiration for French efficiency and military organization, recom-mending that his ruler imitate these traits in order to ensure Morocco’s survival. He also enjoyed the specta-cle of men and women dancing together at balls, although he found the French arrogant and uncharitableand their long, drawn-out dinners annoying. All in all, he was an astute observer of French culture, as theseexcerpts show.

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One type of European penetration into the Ottoman Empire was the opening of textile factories in westernAnatolia. The young girls and women who worked in these factories often made relatively good wages, buttheir work in factories raised moral issues about “unsupervised” women, much as it did in the factories ofEurope. These young women workers in a silk-thread factory pose for the camera in 1878.

had enormous support among the people both in thecities and in the rural areas. The order would latergain power in the new state of Libya when the colo-nial powers withdrew. For the time, however, the earlytwentieth century saw North Africa, like sub-SaharanAfrica, divided among the European imperial powersand incorporated into European empires.

Young Ottomans andConstitutional ReformThe challenges to Ottoman sovereignty, combinedwith the prospect of a newly emerging “modern”world order, prompted a period of reform known asthe Tanzimat (reorganization) from 1839 to 1876.New professional schools were opened in the empire,

the class of “French knowers” expanded, and a moremodern and secular civil bureaucracy was estab-lished. The power of the ulama was diminished bythe legal and educational reforms. As new, more sec-ular schools opened, the ulama lost their monopolyon education. The government also tried to ward offseparatist sentiments by emphasizing the ideology ofOttomanism, the notion that all Ottoman subjectswere equal and should be committed to the preser-vation of the empire, regardless of ethnicity or reli-gion. Of course, not everyone accepted this ideology,but it did hold sway in the government until the endof the empire.

Out of the reforms of the Tanzimat emerged anew civil and military elite, some of whom favoredelements of European culture and more democraticforms of government. Among them, a group of intel-


lectuals and bureaucrats, sometimes called theYoung Ottomans, revitalized Ottoman literature andcalled for a new synthesis that would combine thebest elements of traditional Islamic culture withEuropean ideas and technology. These reformersdebated issues such as constitutional freedoms,changing the Ottoman calendar and clocks to Euro-pean time schemes, “modern” schools, and the“woman question,” the rights and education of the“modern” woman.

The reformers also considered the question ofslavery. Britain had been trying to force the Ottomanempire to end the slave trade for some time, but theYoung Ottomans tended to conclude that slavery inMuslim countries was fundamentally different fromthat found in European colonies and in the Americas.Indeed, there were fundamental differences from theAtlantic slave trade. Ottoman slavery included the elite

kul system, and was primarily domestic rather thanagricultural. It was characterized by a predominanceof female slaves (rather than the Atlantic slave trade’s2–3:1 male to female ratio), the use of both white andblack slaves, and the provisions of Islamic law whichstated that the children of a slave female and her mas-ter were free and entitled to inherit.

In 1876 a group of Ottoman reform-minded elitesspearheaded a drive to depose Sultan Abdülaziz andinstall Western-style constitutional government in theOttoman Empire. They did not wish to eliminate themonarchy, and the new constitution they proposed leftconsiderable power in the hands of the sultan. Butthey did want an elected assembly, freedom of thepress, and equality for all Ottomans. The constitu-tionalists installed a new sultan, Abdülhamid II(1876–1909). But once Abdülhamid consolidated hispower, in 1878, he abrogated the constitution and sus-pended the parliament.

Abdülhamid II and the Young TurkRevolutionAbdülhamid, paradoxically, was both a reformer andan autocrat. He continued many of the trends set in theTanzimat era but controlled opposition through spies,censorship of the press, exile, and imprisonment.

The sultan faced severe challenges on all fronts.Russia declared war on the empire in 1877, resultingin the loss of more Ottoman territory and the creationof a large refugee population fleeing newly acquiredRussian lands. Britain occupied Egypt and the islandof Cyprus. Meanwhile, the empire, hampered by hugedebts that it could not pay, was engaged in trying toredeem its Balkan territories.

Abdülhamid tried to control the centrifugalforces at work on the empire by enhancing centralgovernment control, bolstering the military, andestablishing closer relations with an increasinglypowerful Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm made two state

Abdülhamid II. Photography was all the rage in the empire duringAbdülhamid’s reign, and the sultan supported several court photogra-phers. He sent commemorative volumes documenting his reforms andOttoman progress to heads of state in the United States and Britain.Widespread discontent with his oppressive rule lent strength to theconstitutional movement of the Young Turks, who ultimately deposedthe sultan in 1909.


[A fter her divorce Halide took a house in Istanbulwhere she lived with her two sons and her

beloved grandmother, an elderly woman of the eliteclass.] Granny was living with me as usual, but I hadlost the old sense of nearness to her for the moment. Iwas constantly out for lessons and lectures; the [Turk-ish nationalist] club demanded much of my time andmy circle of friends had a great deal happen to it. Mywriting I had to do after ten o’clock at night when thenoisy little house slept and left me quiet in my room.Granny also enjoyed those quiet hours; she came tome for talks then. She was much shocked by the newwomen. Their talk, their walk, their dress, and theirgeneral aspect hurt her. She felt lonely, like a strangerin a world where she felt she had stayed too long, likea visitor who has outstayed his welcome; it was as ifthe newly arrived guests had taken all the room andthey looked ever so different from her. She sufferedbecause they shook their arms when they walked,looked into men’s eyes, had loud voices, and smokedin public; above all they did not iron their clothes asshe did every morning.

[One afternoon Halide took a short cut through apoor section of town, Arasta Street, on the way homefrom the school where she taught.]

I had on the fashionable [tight] black charshaf[long overgarment] and veil of my class.…. up anddown the street walked a series of little girls…. theyhad print dresses of the poorest sort, and bare feetshod with wooden clogs which they dragged painfully,but they had a saucy and aggressive way of walking inspite of this impediment. One had a dirty baby in herarms, half her own size, and the baby’s nose was run-ning all the time. Another had a broken silk umbrella,which must have had a prosperous past and was evi-dently stolen property. All lifted their dresses in mockimitation of the chic women of the city; all strutted ina make-believe promenade of great ladies. I must

admit they made me ashamedly conscious of howridiculous our class could be…. “Oh, oh, look at her!”shouted the girl with the umbrella—there was neitherrain nor sunshine. “On her head she has a cauldron, asilk shawl around her belly has she. She has a well-ring around her throat and wrists [white collar andcuffs] and her shoes are bath clogs [high heels].” Aunanimous shout of laughter, accompanied by savageand significant movements, inimitable imitations butopenly hostile to me, greeted her speech…. I wouldhave given anything to throw off the offending gar-ments, which displayed my class, at whose expensethey were laughing, and join in their play. As it was, Iwas in real danger of being badly stoned, or of havingmy dress torn in a way that would have been worsethan inconvenient. I immediately lifted my veil andjoined in the conversation. The human face, especiallythe human eyes, have their force among their kind. Ahuman being whose eyes and face are invisible is eas-ier to attack…. I disarmed the little crowd for amoment. But the moment I made the slightest showof movement, they all bent down, picked up stonesfrom the old pavement and got ready in case I shouldescape. [Edib was rescued by a shopkeeper who drovethe children off. In the future she took care to let herdress “resemble that of the other women of the neigh-borhood” and not to cover her face when she traveledabout Istanbul’s poorer districts.]

Questions to Consider

1. Why did Halide’s grandmother feel like a stranger in herown home?

2. What does the children’s attack on Halide suggest aboutclass and fashion?

From Halide Edib (Adivar), Memoirs of Halide Edib. NewYork: Century Co., n.d. (approximately 1926), pp. 352,362–365.

Halide Edib: Education, Generation, and Class in the Late Ottoman Empire

Halide Edib, born into an elite family in Istanbul in 1883, was a famous Turkish author and nationalistleader. Her father was a progressive who believed women should be educated. Thus Halide was schooled inTurkish, English, and French by tutors. She later became one of the first graduates of the new American Col-lege for Girls and wrote a famous novel on the problems of the educated woman. Married at a young age to aprominent scholar many years her senior, she divorced him in 1910 when he decided to take a second wife.Afterward, Edib became a pioneer educator, fought along with her second husband in the War of TurkishLiberation after World War I, and became a prominent international lecturer. She was a member of the Turk-ish parliament from 1950–1954. Halide Edib’s memoirs reflect the era of transformation during which shecame of age. Ottoman society during the rule of the Young Turks was refashioning itself and the “WomanQuestion” was a topic of considerable debate. Here she reflects (for 1913–1914) on the differences betweenthe generations and on a conflict of class and dress that arose while she was pursuing her work in education.

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visits, in 1889 and 1898, including a triumphant tripto Jerusalem during which the kaiser, a good poli-tician, declared his friendship with the world’s Muslims. Wilhelm’s visit had an impact on the archi-tecture of Jerusalem as well as on Ottoman-Germanrelations. The gates of the old walled city ofJerusalem were too narrow to admit the kaiser’s car-riage. Rather than subject the German empress to theindignity of getting out of her carriage and walkingthrough the gate, Abdülhamid had one of the gatesknocked out and enlarged.

The sultan fostered the ideology of Pan-Islam tolegitimize his reign and mobilize the support of theworld’s Muslims. His rhetoric of Islamic unity and hisclaim to be caliph decidedly did not strike a chordamong all Muslims. But his project for a Hijaz railwayto bring pilgrims from Damascus to the Holy City ofMecca did generate popular support for the sultan,

and schoolchildren across the empire contributedtheir coins to help ensure its success.

The constitutional ideal in the Ottoman Empire,however, had not been lost, and opposition to the sul-tan mounted as Abdülhamid entered the third decadeof his reign. Outside the empire, a group of exileslabored to promote the reinstatement of the constitu-tion. Inside the empire revolutionary sentiments grewamong students, bureaucrats, and some members ofthe military. In 1889 a group of students in the mili-tary-medical school founded a secret organizationcalled the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP).This group was instrumental in mobilizing oppositionto the regime.

In 1908 a military revolt became the catalyst forthe second Ottoman constitutional revolution, knownas the Young Turk Revolution. Support for the revoltspread rapidly, and the revolutionaries demanded that


Young Turks march in triumph after their successful coup and overthrow of Abdülhamid II and his gov-ernment. Like the sultan, the Young Turks used photography to document the events and successes oftheir government.


The Political Transformation of Persia

1848–1896 Reign of Nasir al-Din Shah

1891 Tobacco Rebellion and boycott

1896–1906 Reign of Muzaffar al-Din Shah

1905 Constitutional revolution begins

1907–1909 Reign of Muhammad Ali Shah

1909 Constitutionalists depose Muhammad Ali Shah

Abdülhamid reinstate the constitution. He accededreluctantly to their demands, elections were held, cen-sorship was suspended, and the Young Turks relegatedthe sultan to a position of secondary importance.Among the issues debated by the new assembly wererehabilitating the navy, reforming the police, andwarding off attacks by the empire’s neighbors.

Reactionaries launched a counterrevolution, inwhich Abdülhamid was implicated, in April 1909; butit was put down by the army. Abdülhamid waspromptly deposed, and the CUP came to dominate theOttoman constitutional regime. Although a new sul-tan was installed, the revolution marked the end of acenturies-long era of Ottoman monarchical power.The new government remained firmly in the hands ofa civilian elite. Discontent simmered in the Arabprovinces as the CUP continued the centralizing poli-cies of Abdülhamid. But in general, the governmentand the remaining provinces stayed committed to theempire until World War I.

As in other areas of the globe, the population ofthe empire was affected to varying degrees by thischange of regime. The lives of peasants in the coun-tryside were not radically altered, and many of thosewho held power under the old regime took positionsin the new one. There was, however, a greater oppor-tunity for political participation, more freedom of thepress, a mass freeing of prisoners, and expandedopportunities for the lower classes to be educated andfor women in the middle classes to have a greater rolein public society.

PERSIA AND THE GREATPOWER STRUGGLEThe Ottoman revolution of 1908 was not the onlyupheaval to transform government and society in theMiddle East. In fact, the same tensions among monar-chy, foreign intervention, and Western-style constit-utional reform that prompted the Young TurkRevolution also provoked a constitutional revolutionin Persia two years earlier. Farther east, a series ofAfghan rulers struggled to retain their autonomy whilecaught between the expansionist powers of BritishIndia and tsarist Russia.

Qajar Rule and the TobaccoRebellionPersia had been controlled by the Qajar dynasty since1794. After a military defeat by the Russians in 1828,the Qajar shah was forced to concede extraterritorialrights to Russian merchants and give them special

commercial privileges. Soon the British were demand-ing similar rights. As the nineteenth century pro-gressed, the Qajars found themselves caught in amilitary and commercial squeeze play between Russiaand Britain.

Foreign incursions reached a climax in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century with the long reign ofNasir al-Din Shah (1848–1896). Unlike the Ottomans orMuhammad Ali, the Qajars remained dependent on thedecentralized military power of tribal chiefs to defendPersia. Nasir al-Din implemented some military andeducational reforms, but his government remainedweak. To bolster his position, the shah negotiated loans,sold concessions to foreign investors, and brought inRussian military advisers to establish a Cossack brigade.

While Russian influence prevailed in the Qajarmilitary, Britain moved to penetrate various spheresof the Persian economy. The British completed a tele-graph line from London to Persia in 1870, symboliz-ing their increased interest in the area. In 1890 Nasiral-Din granted a British group exclusive rights over the entire Persian tobacco industry. This act alienatedthe merchant classes, who aligned themselves with theShi‘ite ulama to launch a rebellion against the shahand the tobacco concession.

The ulama in Persia had never been subordinatedby the government to the same degree as in theOttoman Empire. More like their counterparts inAfrica, these religious leaders constituted a powerfulforce for opposition against the government andwould be instrumental in the national revolutions ofthe twentieth century. During the tobacco rebellion of 1891, the ulama engineered a countrywide boycottof tobacco, and the shah was forced to cancel thetobacco concession. This boycott not only illustratedthe mobilizing power of the Shi‘ite clerics, but (like theDinshaway Incident in Egypt) also pointed up popu-lar discontent over the increasingly intrusive Euro-pean presence.


2500 500

MILES

THE PERSIAN GULF REGIONc. 1900

Russian territoryBritish territoryRailroadsProposed Russian railroads

KHYBER PASS

BALUCHIS

TAN

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

OMAN

PERSIA

QATAR

KUWAITBRITISH

INDIA

AFGHANISTAN

ARABIA

I N D I A N

O C E A N

PE

RSIAN

GULF

ARALSEA

CA

SPIA

N S E

A

RE

D SE

A

BAHRAIN

Territory given toAfghanistan by

Russia and Britain

Area underBritish control

Area underRussian control

Territory annexedby Russia from

Turkey

Bender

Kerman

Meshed

Merv

KhivaBokhara

Bushire

Tehran

Gunib

Samarkand

Tashkent

Kazalinsk

Andizhan

Kabul

Kandahar

By the late nineteenth century Britain and Russia were bothpressing hard to advance their interests in Persia andAfghanistan. Negotiating agreements with local rulers, Britainused the Persian Gulf region as a strategic base for its powerfulfleets and as a link to its empire in India. Afghanistan became acontested buffer zone between British India and tsarist Russia.

The Persian ConstitutionalRevolutionBy the beginning of the twentieth century, parts ofnorthern Persia were under the control of the Rus-sians. Tsarist forces trained the Persian army, put uptelegraph lines, established a postal system, and devel-oped trade. Some Persian workers crossed into Russiato work in the Caucasus oilfields. The Russian ministryof finance even set up a bank, The Discount and LoanBank of Persia, with branches in many parts of thenation. This bank lent the Persian government 60 mil-lion rubles and provided 120 million rubles to Persianmerchants to enable them to buy Russian goods.

The British in turn set up the Imperial Bank ofPersia in the southeastern part of the country. In 1901Muzaffar al-Din Shah (1896–1906) granted a Britishsubject a concession for the oil rights to all of Persiaexcept a few northern provinces. This grant wouldlead to British control over Persian oil that would con-tinue into the second half of the century. Already crip-

pled by his economic dependence on foreign powers,the shah made three costly trips to Europe during hisshort reign. These visits were criticized by the Persianpublic as extravagant. But the shah used these visitsto solicit still more foreign loans from the British, theFrench, and the Russians.

Aiming to dominate the sea routes between Suezand their Indian empire, the British also gainedfootholds in the Persian Gulf region through treatieswith a number of shaykhs, including the rulers ofMuscat, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait (1899). In 1903the British foreign secretary issued what has beencalled a British Monroe Doctrine over the area: “I sayit without hesitation, we should regard the establish-ment of a naval base or a fortified port in the PersianGulf by any other power as a very grave menace toBritish interests, and we should certainly resist it byall means at our disposal.”6 Thus, the British won theimperialist struggle for control of the Persian Gulf justas France won the struggle for control of the coast ofNorth Africa. Persia had no navy and could not, in anycase, match British firepower.

Responding to foreign intervention in Persia, theshah’s ineffectual rule, and the growing impetus forrepresentative government, various factions within thenation mobilized a revolt beginning in 1905. This rev-olution began with a series of protests culminating ina general strike. Mass demonstrations, a strike by theulama, and a massacre of protesters in Tehran by theCossack brigade followed in 1906.

The shah succumbed to this pressure and autho-rized a Constituent National Assembly. Electionswere held, and new newspapers flourished in the cap-ital. But Muzaffar al-Din died in 1906, and his suc-cessor, Muhammad Ali Shah (1907–1909), soonattempted to overturn the constitutional regime,plunging Persia into civil war. The new shah’styranny and his use of Russian troops against Per-sians prompted some members of the ulama to senda telegram to the Ottoman sultan, asking for his aidto protect fellow Muslims.

After a bitter struggle, the constitutional forceswon and deposed Muhammad Ali Shah in July 1909,installing his 12-year-old son in his place. The nationhas had a constitutional government ever since,although its power has often been compromised bythe preservation of the monarchy.

The Persian constitutional revolution waswatched closely in Istanbul and served as a prelude tothe Ottoman revolution, which followed quickly on itsheels. The constitutionalists in both empires wereinspired by the example of Japan, a modernizingpower with a strong military. They were impressedthat Japan was an Asian power (with a long history oftraditional monarchy) that had successfully modern-ized and decisively beaten a European power, Russia,


in 1905. The new Persian and Ottoman constitutionalregimes faced similar problems and were preoccupiedwith many of the same issues of modernization, free-dom, and reform.

The Great Power Struggle for the EastAs so often happens, revolution provided the oppo-nents of the Ottoman and Qajar Empires with oppor-tunities to grab territory. European powers extendedtheir hold on onetime Ottoman lands. Between 1908and 1913 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia andHerzegovina, Greece annexed Crete, and Italy—in thecourse of a short but difficult war—seized Tripoli andCyrenaica (northeastern Libya). In 1912 and 1913 theBalkan nations fought two wars, which resulted inthe partitioning of Macedonia. Although theOttomans launched popular boycotts against bothAustria and Italy (boycotting, for example, Italianspaghetti) they could do nothing to reverse their ter-ritorial losses.

In Persia, Russia capitalized on the revolution toseize territory in the northwest. The British and Rus-sians signed a treaty in 1907 dividing Persia intospheres of influence, with the British claiming powersof intervention in the south and Russia claiming thesame powers in the north. These two states held Per-sia in a great pincers, with the British navy protectingits interests in the Persian Gulf and Russia’s powerfularmies posing a constant threat to Persian sovereigntyin the north.

Persia was not, however, the only object of thiscompetition. Afghanistan, to its east, controlled theKhyber Pass, the most direct land route through themountains from Russia to British-controlled India.The country had been divided previously between theMughul and Persian Empires, but with its mountain-ous terrain and contending warlords, Afghanistan didnot lend itself to unified rule. By the nineteenth cen-tury the shah in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, held ten-uous sway over the tribal confederations thatcontrolled the area.

During the first half of the nineteenth century,Persia and Afghanistan were caught up in armed con-flicts with the Russians and the British. In an effort toincrease their influence in the area and protect India’snorthern frontiers, the British attempted to installtheir own handpicked ruler in Afghanistan. Theattempt backfired, and the British were forced toretreat. But in 1879 Britain, using its powerful colo-nial army, seized the Khyber Pass and Kabul and sub-ordinated the Afghan ruler, Yaqub Khan. Between1881 and 1901 Amir Abdur Rahman consolidated his

power over Afghanistan, but Britain retained its holdon Afghanistan’s foreign affairs.

Russia, meanwhile, was expanding toward thesoutheast. Many indigenous peoples, such as the Mon-gols, Afghans, Turkomans, and Tatars, came withinRussia’s sphere of influence. Their cities—Samarkand,Tashkent, and Bokhara—became tsarist administra-tive centers. Russia’s advance was accomplished notonly by its army but also by the construction of theTrans-Caspian railway, which, at its completion in1888, reached 1064 miles into the heart of Asia. TheOrenburg-Tashkent railway, completed in 1905,stretched 1185 miles farther. Inspired by the feats ofboth the army and the engineers, some Russian impe-rialists dreamed of conquering Afghanistan and pen-etrating India itself. But British pressure blockedRussia’s design on Afghanistan, and a British militaryexpedition to Lhasa in 1904 countered Russian influ-ence in Tibet.

By the terms of the Anglo-Russian entente in1907, Russia and Britain agreed to leave Afghanistanintact. Russia agreed to deal with the sovereign ofAfghanistan only through the British government.Great Britain agreed to refrain from occupying orannexing Afghanistan so long as the nation fulfilled itstreaty obligations. This partnership was, however, onlya marriage of convenience brought on by larger pres-sures in Europe. Neither side wished to alienate theother in the face of the emerging threat of Germany’swar machine.

CONCLUSIONBy 1914, European states had established their pri-macy over Africa and the Middle East. While thou-sands of Africans worked in European-owned mines,thousands of Persians crossed into Russia to work intsarist oilfields. While financiers in London, Berlin,and Paris skimmed the profits from the resources ofAfrica and Asia, European officials and diplomats dic-tated policy for much of the region. Although theYoung Turk and Persian Revolutions brought consti-tutional governments to the Ottoman and QajarEmpires in the Middle East, only Persia would survivethe consuming conflicts of World War I. The YoungTurks, engaged in rebuilding the Ottoman Empire,chose to enter the war on the German side and suf-fered disastrous consequences.

Even before 1914, however, the forces that wouldeventually remove European dominance in the next halfcentury were at work. In Africa and Egypt variousindigenous groups mobilized to throw off the Europeanyoke. In Europe citizens and parliamentary representa-


tives debated the relative costs and benefits of empireand colonies. Many remained committed to social Dar-winism, the idea of civilizational hierarchy expressed inthe notions of carrying the “white man’s burden” ofspreading “civilization” to the “lesser peoples.” Butdespite European military, economic, and technologicalsuperiority over the Middle East and Africa, the “whiteman’s burden” would become increasingly onerous asthe twentieth century progressed and as the conqueredpeoples mobilized to gain independence and to asserttheir own cultural identities.

Culture and identity, of course, are not fixed; theyare constantly evolving. The period from 1800 to 1914in the Middle East and Africa was one of particularlyintense and rapid cultural change prompted bymarked transformations in economic organizationand in the technologies of transportation and com-munications. The effects of such transformations onAfrican and Middle Eastern societies were com-pounded as those societies were subjugated by, or sub-ordinated to, European states and economies.

People reacted in different ways to that subordi-nation, depending on their position, class, education,religion, and ethnicity. Some advocated emulation ofEurope in order to regain lost powers; others advo-cated vigorous resistance and adherence to traditionalmores; many saw some advantage in compromise,taking technologies and organizational structures

from the West while retaining many elements of theold order.

The assertion of European primacy over Africaand the Middle East had dramatic effects. Euro-peanization altered economic, political, and legalstructures. In many cases it radically altered the edu-cation systems and even the languages of the con-quered territories. French and English culture wereadopted to some degree by many subject peoples,especially among the upper and middle classes. OtherAfrican and Middle Eastern peoples rejected theimported European traditions or modified them tosuit their own needs.

European influence thus created new cultural syn-theses. While upper-class ladies in Istanbul sought outFrench fashions, upper-class European womendressed in “Turkish” style and consumed Orientalistart. In many ways, however, European culture was aveneer applied to powerful local cultural traditions.Islam retained its strength, and European Christianmissionaries met with little success in their efforts toconvert Muslims in the Middle East. African peoplesadapted Christianity to their own rituals. Armed withthe technological, intellectual, and political lessonsthey learned confronting the Europeans, African andMiddle Eastern peoples would soon craft new statesin the nation-state mold of the new twentieth-centuryworld order.

Suggestions for Web BrowsingYou can obtain more information about topics included in thischapter at the websites listed below. See also the companionwebsite that accompanies this text, www.ablongman.com/brummett,which contains an online study guide and additional resources.

Age of European Imperialism: The Partitioning of Africa in theLate Nineteenth Century

http://pw2.netcom.com/~giardina/colony.html

Site discusses the partitioning of Africa and includes an inter-esting selection of maps tracing the imperial drive in Africa.

End of the Slave Trade in Africahttp://www.fordham.edu/halsall/africa/africasbook.htmlThe Impact of Slavery

Documents regarding the termination of slave trade in Africa,from the Internet African History Sourcebook.

Internet Islamic History Sourcebook: Western Intrusion,1815–1914

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook.html

Extensive on-line source for links about the history of the Mid-dle East, including short primary documents describing nine-teenth-century European imperialism and the end of theOttoman Empire.

Literature and FilmA prominent early twentieth-century South Africa politician andjournalist, Solomon Plaatje set his novel Mhudi (PassagiattaPress, 1986) during the wars of the Mfecane, while contempo-rary wirter Andre Brink treated a slave uprising in the westernCape in the early nineteenth century in A Chain of Voices (Mor-row, 1994). Beverly Mack and Jean boyd, The Collected Works ofNana Asma/ui (African Historical Sources, No. 9, 1998) is a col-lection of the poetry and other writings of the daughter of afamed West African cleric, Usman dan Fodio. Marcia Wright’sStrategies of Slaves and Women (Lillian Barber Press, 1993) pre-sents the histories of nineteenth century East and CentralAfrican women.

In The Days, trans. Hilary Wayment (American Universityat Cairo Press, 2001), Taha Hussein presents the wonderfulthree-volume biography of Taha Hussein, the blind village boywho studied at al-Azhar in Cairo and became a famous scholarand author. The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (KalimatPress, 1984 reprint of 1914 edition) by Edward G. Brown is acollection of prose, poetry, cartoons, and excerpts from thepress. Hasan Javadi, in Satire in Persian Literature (FairleighDickinson University Press, 1988) offers a survey of satiredivided topically, including, for example, satire on women andon religion. The Strangling of Persia (Washington, D.C.: ImagePublishers, 1987, reprint of 1912 edition) is a memoir of the


American financial expert brought to Iran in 1911 to managethe empire’s finances. Edwin Pears, in Forty Years in Constan-tinople, the Recollections of Sir Edwin Pears 1873–1915 (Booksfor Libraries Press, 1871 reprint of 1916 edition.) gives aninteresting commentary by an outsider on Ottoman affairs.The Diary of H.M. The Shah of Persia During His Tour ThroughEurope in A.D. 187, trans. J. W. Redhouse (Mazda, 1995) is amemoir of the Iranian Shah Nasir al-Din’s journey to Europe.

Ethiopian fimmaker Haile Gerima’s Adwa (1999) chroniclesthe famous victory of the Ethiopians over the Italians in 1896.Senegalese fimmaker Ousmane Sembene’s Ceddo (1977) dealswith how nineteenth century West Africans responded to exter-nal forces, such as European traders, Christian missionaries,and Muslim jihads. Part of an eight-part series on Africa nar-rated by Basil Davidson, The Magnificent African Cake (1984)covers the European scramble for Africa.

Suggestions for ReadingUsman dan Fodio’s jihads and the creation of the SokotoCaliphate are treated in Mervyn Hiskett, The Sword of Truth: TheLife and Times of the Shehu Usman dan Fodio (NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1994) and Ibrahim Sulaiman, A Revolution inHistory: The Jihad of Usman dan Fodio (Mansell, 1986). Thetrans-Saharan slave trade is covered in Elizabeth Savage, ed.,The Human Commodity (Cass, 1992). The decline of the Atlanticslave trade and the expansion of trade with Europe are traced inPaul Lovejoy, Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition inNorthern Nigeria, 1897–1938 (Cambridge University Press, 1993),and Robin Law, From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce: TheCommercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cam-bridge University Press, 1996). Long-distance trade and state for-mation in eastern Africa is treated in John Iliffe, A ModernHistory of Tanzania (Cambridge University Press, 1979); AbdulSheriff, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (Ohio University Press,1987); and Edward Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa(Heinemann, 1975).

John D. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (Northwestern UniversityPress, 1966), remains the only overview of the Mfecane insouthern Africa, while Carolyn Hamilton covers the historio-graphical debates about the period in The Mfecane Aftermath:Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History (Witwater-srand University Press, 1995). Because facts about Shaka’s lifeare the subject of dispute, several writers have examinedShaka’s powerful imagery, including Carolyn Hamilton, TerrificMajesty: The Power of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of HistoricalInvention (Harvard University Press, 1998), and Dafnah Golan,Inventing Shaka: Using History in the Construction of ZuluNationalism (Rienner, 1994). John Laband has written a com-prehensive treatment of nineteenth-century Zulu history, TheRise and Fall of the Zulu Nation (Arms & Armour, 1997).Moshoeshoe’s life is treated in biographies by Leonard Thomp-son, Survival in Two Worlds: Moshoeshoe of Lesotho (OxfordUniversity Press, 1975), and Peter Sanders, Moshoeshoe, Chiefof the Sotho (Heinemann, 1975).

The impact of the end of slavery in South Africa is treatedin Nigel Worden and Clifton Crais, eds., Breaking the Chains:Slavery and Its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony(Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). Studies on nineteenth-century South Africa include Timothy Keegan, Colonial SouthAfrica and the Origins of the Racial Order (University of VirginiaPress, 1996) and Jeff Peires, The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuseand the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–7 (IndianaUniversity Press, 1989). An overview of the diamond industry isStefan Kanfer, The Last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds, and the

World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993). The best treatments ofthe Anglo-Boer War are Bill Nasson, The South African War,1899–1902 (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Thomas Paken-ham, The Boer War (Random House, 1979).

Studies on the European scramble for Africa includeRonald Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (St.Martin’s Press, 1969); Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble forAfrica (Random House, 1991); H. L. Wesseling, Imperialism andColonialism (Greenwood Press, 1997); and David LeveringLewis, The Race to Fashoda: Colonialism and African Resistance(Henry Holt, 1995). The use of technology to facilitate conquestis treated in Daniel Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technol-ogy Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1988) and Michael Adas, Machines as the Measureof Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance(Cornell University Press, 1989).

The general subject of African resistance to Europeanconquest is comprehensively treated in Robert Rotberg and AliMazrui, Protest and Power in Black Africa (Oxford UniversityPress, 1970), and Bruce Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquestin Africa, 1830–1914 (Indiana University Press, 1998). YvesPerson has written the authoritative biography of SamoriTouré, Samori: La Renaissance de L’Empire Mandique (ABC,1976). Ethiopia’s return to a centralized kingdom and its resis-tance to European conquest is covered in Harold Marcus, TheLife and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia, 1844–1913 (Red SeaPress, 1995).

On the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, seeRoderic H. Davison, Turkey: A Short History, 3rd ed. (EothenPress, 1998), for a brief, well-written survey; and DonaldQuataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (Cambridge, 2000)for a student-friendly survey. Bernard Lewis provides the intel-lectual and cultural context in The Emergence of ModernTurkey, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1968). See also CarterFindley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Prince-ton University Press, 1989); and Selim Deringil, The Well Pro-tected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in theOttoman Empire, 1876–1909 (I.B. Tauris, 1999). On the YoungTurk revolution and its political and cultural impacts, seeFeroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union andProgress in Turkish Politics, 1908– 1914 (Clarendon Press,1969); and Palmira Brummett, Image and Imperialism in theOttoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911 (State University ofNew York Press, 2000).

Economic issues are covered in Roger Owen, The Middle Eastin the World Economy, 1800–1914 (Methuen, 1981), and CharlesIssawi, ed., The Economic History of the Middle East, 1800–1914:A Book of Readings (University of Chicago Press, 1975).

A lucid and balanced survey of the “Eastern Question” is J.A. R. Marriott, The Eastern Question: A Historical Study in Euro-pean Diplomacy (Clarendon Press, 1917). L. S. Stavrianos, TheBalkans Since 1453 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), providesa treatment of the evolution of the Balkan states in the contextof Ottoman rule. See also Mark Pinson, ed. The Muslims ofBosnia Herzegovina (Harvard, 1994). For a British account of theMahdi and the Sudan, see Winston Churchill, The River War(Prion, 1997). On North African politics and culture see AliAhmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colo-nization, and Resistance, 1830–1932 (State University of NewYork Press, 1994); and Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Min-nesota, 1984).

For treatments of the Qajars and the Persian constitu-tional revolution, see Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly, and CharlesMelville, eds., The Cambridge History of Iran: Vol. 7, From NadirShah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge University Press,1968); Edmond Bosworth and Carole Hellenbrand, eds., QajarIran: Political, Social and Cultural Change, 1800–1925 (Mazda,

4. Adu Boahen, Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume VII (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1985), p. 4.

5. Harold Marcus, The Life and Times of Menelik II Ethiopia1844–1913 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), p. 160.

6. Quoted in N. D. Harris, Europe and the East (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1926), p. 285.


1992); Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution,1906–1911 (Columbia University Press, 1996), which also con-siders the origins of Iranian feminism; and Ervand Abra-hamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton UniversityPress, 1982).

Notes1. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (New York:

Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), p. 58.2. London Times, Aug. 7, 1890.3. David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums

in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press,1985), p. 6.