hi there You guys can call me Mel I am currently in grade 10, and learning about the scramble of Africa, and man I don’t get it one bit. So I started to look on the internet and I came across this website so yeah. Maybe someone here can explain something to me. How did the scramble for Africa affect relationships among European nations?
The only thing that I know is that because of the scramble for Africa it brought European powers to the brink of war; This all happened in 1870 to like 1914.
Thanks for your help

Mel!

Hi Mel and Welcome to the Forum,

In which country are you studying? If you are Grade 10 in the UK (where this site is based) then really you should be posting in our 14 -16 section. Let me know and I'll move your thread there if necessary.


Basically you've got the answer 'right', but it all depends on how much detail you need to go into and which view point you take (see Mr Clare's reply below). One sentence as your answer above, or a much more detailed one? Many people would say the 'scramble' made relationships between European countries (especially Britain, Germany and France) worse as they competed for territory and trade.

For more detailed info. see these websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa ... a very detailed article
http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/empires/0048.html .... good on factual info. but focuses on causes and facts rather than your actual question.

I hope that helps but if you have any specific questions then do post again.

Hi Mel!!!

Mrs Faithorn and you have a good point, and the key times when you could argue that the scramble for colonies in Africa brought the European nations close to war were Fashoda (1898), Moroccan Crisis (1905) and Agadir Crisis (1911). (Britain and Germany whined at each other about the Boer War, too).
If you are doing an essay on this, then you ought to mention and describe those 'flashpoints'.


HOWEVER

There is another argument which says that the scramble for Africa wasn't a cause of war AT ALL, but that - far from it - it was a 'safety valve' which actually stopped them coming to blows for nearly 50 years.

This argument goes like this. Until 1914 there was unlimited land up for grabs in Africa - yes they were all grabbing it, but if somebody else grabbed a bit you wanted, you could just move on and grab a different bit and everyone could be happy. Yes, Britain and France did meet tensely at Fashoda when a British army pursuing the British dream of a railway from Cairo in the north to Cape Town in the South bumped into a French army pursuing the French dream of an empire stretching from the Atlantic in the west to the Indian Ocean in the east, but Africa was so HUGE that this kind of thing happened rarely. The 'scramble for Africa' mostly involved travelling around the vast wilderness machine-gunning people armed with nothing better then grass skirts and viciously-sharpened mangoes (to quote Blackadder).
If Africa HADN'T been there to grab, goes this argument, war would have come much SOONER to Europe, because the nations of Europe would have had to seek to expand at each other's expense in Europe.
Thus also by this argument, war came (in 1914), when the land in Africa ran out.
In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia in Europe.
In 1914, Germany - having been rebuffed in Morocco - sought conquest in Europe.
And it is arguable that it was this transfer of attention back to Europe that threw the nations of Europe into war.

Aaaah!
Hadn't thought of that, eh?

But which theory is right???

yes I will post my topics in 14-16 guidance. Thanks for your help it makes sense to me now!

That's good to hear.

I have now moved your thread to the 14-16 section, but left a 'trail' from the 16+ section.