British Colonialism in Somalia: The Partition of Africa and Its Impact - Essay Sample

Introduction

Colonial power established several policies during the era of African nations colonization, which had a lot of impacts and influence on African countries which led to African Scramble for partition. The papers focus on the Scramble for and Partition of Africa/ British Colonial Policies in Somalia.

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The British were using three central policies to colonize Somalia which included taking advantage of them not being united as they had differences thus could not effectively resist .rivalries within their clan greatly affected them. There were some weaker groups that cooperated to secure positions which had threats from other stronger groups. After the second world, the British started using the policy of greater Somalia, where they thought that once Somalia was united, they would easily be administered, Ernest Bevin suggested the policy. They also wanted to entice the Somalis by giving them special treatment like finances for those who remained royal. Another strategy was to fight the secessionists' by killing then in them ruthlessly.

The British also used indirect rule policy which is a governance system where governance was left to the traditional leaders where the leader in return gained prestige and was protected by the European powers these was easier for the Europeans as it required fewer administrators. Use of conquest was another policy used. This is where territories were concurred and enslaved. This conquest made it easy for the colonizers to be able to control and be able to occupy African territories directly. The other effective strategy was which made it easy for the British to have direct rule was using forced labor where Africans had to work in Europeans plantations and industrial areas. This had to be done since there was no way the Africans could agree to give labor willingly. There was also imposed taxes where every grown-up had to pay a certain amount of tax. This ensured that Africans worked in the farms to get some money which would be used in payment of these taxes. They had very effective ways of collecting the taxes as they had up to date records. In other cases, they would use the African leader to collect these taxes.

The monetization of the economy was a different strategy used. Initially, the people were operation on barter trade where goods were exchanged with other assets. They made it too difficult to be obtained by the Africans. They did this to ensure those type products produced by the European were cheap and could not be of great importance to them. They also ensured that the goods they produced were highly valued for making the African spend all they had earned buying their products and by doing these, they ensured that African had spent all and had to go to work the following day. They did this to ensure that the Africans became poorer and poorer

Africa by 1870was formerly controlled by the European but by 1914, it had significantly increased to an unacceptable level. There were so many motivators these colonizers among the being need for more valuable resources in most African territories, the quest for prestige tension of being overpowered by the other European colonizers and religion. Other causes of the scramble for Africa included the end of the slave trade where Britain had succeeded in trading the slaves in many African shores but never in the inland. Exploration was another reason where the Europeans used to visit the African countries often. With time the need for this exploitation changed and instead of just travelling to satisfy their curiosity, they started recording the resources for the philosophers who finance them. Capitalism was another reason where even after the end of slave trade the was commerce that had established between the European and the Africans but their main aim was to establish the reserves for the law materials and also know the trade routes and also identify those areas that would serve as market places for those goods that they manufactured in their European countries

Different African communities reacted differently to the scramble and colonization. Some accommodated it and cooperated with the colonizers. Those who collaborated did so to get favors from the European people, and such favors included receiving the higher position. Most of them would be given the positions to control the other blacks as they working in European farms. Some accommodated them for protection; this way, they would not be subjected to whatever the other Africans were being subjected to like hard work and being denied permission to do cash crop farming. Others resisted due to various reasons like cultural reasons where land was considered a symbol of wealth and therefore giving out their land would mean giving out all their wealth. Among other communities, some species of trees and ridges and rivers had their significance in the society, and they would not let then go thus had to fight for the. Others had delayed reaction; thus, they neither opposed nor accommodated them.

Introduction of hulled boats and steam engines also made it easy to navigate that area was easy to trade in like the inland since with the ships the cities became more navigable. Quinine and other health advances also made it more favorable because initially Africa was feared as it posed a danger to the European due to the two diseases that made most lose their lives and this was yellow fever and malaria where before these medical advances, out of all the people sent, only ten percent survived these diseases. Discovering quinine which was extracted from a native tree, reduced the rate of the people dying from the diseases.

These European countries were able to colonize the African countries fast as because of the rivalry that existed between the African leaders where the kings and the chiefs were competing for each other as all wanted to be the richest in their tribes. The Europeans, therefore, took advantage of these rivalry and convinced them to support them against their leaders .other reason was natural disaster influenced by decrease in rainfall that decreased all over sudden which left no crop's in the field, their livestock also died, the remaining crops were destroyed by locust, and therefore people were left with nothing to eat making them very weak and unable to fight against the Europeans. They then started controlling Africans land by force as they had more powerful weapons that the Africans Never had. African could not quickly get access to these weapons as they were not sold to them. African were mostly affected by diseases like smallpox which the European who had been to Africa before had become resistant to, most indigenous groups had lower immunity and therefore and this weakened their population as many of them died.

There were both good and bad effects of the scramble and colonialization. Firstly, there was a mass movement of people where some moved from rural to other rural areas, and others moved from rural to urban areas. This movement resulted in most people being dislocated thus affecting their culture and society. As a result, social beliefs, cultural beliefs and other practices were changed while some had to be adopted from these Europeans. Members of the family were also dislocated since as they had to move from their household to work for the Europeans in their mines and plantation as their wives and children were left behind, those left being the young and the women had to take some new roles as well as cope with the absence of their family members. Urbanization was another effect of colonization as it led as those small towns grew due to many people moving from the rural areas to the urban areas and also due to change in economic activities, others also changed the beliefs and the existing values. There was also a change in religion as they adapted the beliefs of the Europeans.

Conclusion

In conclusion, during those days there was a small percentage of people who were regarding themselves as Christians compared to today where Christians have significantly increased, and the colonizers greatly influenced this as they provided a spreading environment for the Africans. There was also a change in the education system. Before colonization education was informal where children learnt what was expected of them from their older family members with young girls learning from their mothers while the boys learnt from their fathers, this was changed by the introduction of formal education where both boys' and girls' study in the same setup and also follow the same curriculum. This was done for better conversation between the European and Africans.

Bibliography

Debbahi, Mabrouk, and Aziz Mostefaoui. "Colonial Roots of Post-colonial Somali Conflict." PhD diss., Ahmed Draia University-Adrar, 2016.

MacKenzie, John M. "Partition of Africa." The Encyclopedia of Empire (2016): 1-8.

Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. "The long-run effects of the scramble for Africa." American Economic Review, 106, no. 7 (2016): 1802-48.

Nnadozie, Emmanuel. "Overview of African Development." In African Economic Development, pp. 21-37. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2019.

Frankema, Ewout, Jeffrey Williamson, and Pieter Woltjer. "An economic rationale for the West African scramble? The commercial transition and the commodity price boom of 1835-1885." The Journal of Economic History 78, no. 1 (2018): 231-267.