Characterizing Nineteenth-Century European Attitudes Towards Africans
A series of vital social, economic, and political changes that occurred between 1790 and 1875 characterize Europe’s entrance into the modern world. Following the decline of the slave trade in the late eighteenth century, the African continent became the center of the imperial race between competing European nations. As the African presence in European culture grew, European attitudes towards African shifted to focus on a ‘civilizing mission,’ based on the ideology of the superiority of European civilization on a global scale. Changing intellectual tides motivated Europeans to look to empirical evidence of the biological inferiority of Africans in order to justify colonial operations. European-educated African intellectuals embraced the idea of westernization as a way to promote their own interests and improve the lives of colonial Africans. The nineteenth century was a pivotal period for the relationship between Europe and Africa; it would take a Great War to alter the attitudes formed during this time.
Between the eve of the French Revolution in 1790 and the start of the “Partition of Africa” in 1875, the consciousness of Europeans changed dramatically. This was the greatest period of capital accumulation in Europe; wealth garnered from the slave trade fueled the development of Industry, placing an enormous amount of wealth at the fingertips of European governments and investors. “Larger populations with more money to spend meant a steady growth in demand for the products of other continents, products that included the cotton of Egypt, the palm oil of West Africa, the ivory of tropical Africa and the wool of South Africa.”[1] In addition, this period experienced key changes in the political structure of Europe. New notions of the modern, unified European nation created a newly important competition in the creation of world empires. Because of the decline of the slave trade and changing intellectual tides, European ideas about Africans were no longer derived from slave owners, but from the scientific investigators who penetrated the continent seeking to classify and map out the inner parts of Africa. By the late 1800s, European explorers were most concerned with spreading European influence, “Their work was nationalistic, concerned to thwart the activities of other European explorers in a developing scramble for possession.”[2] These forces stimulated the development of the ‘civilizing mission’, which added new dynamics to the relationship between Europe and Africa.
The change in European attitudes towards Africans in the nineteenth century is characterized by the ‘civilizing mission’ ideology. Since European colonizers had gained political control over Africa, their chief concern became the spread of Western civilization in colonized areas: “It was incumbent upon the Western colonizers to replace corrupt and wasteful indigenous regimes with honest and efficient bureaucracies, to reorganize the societies of subjugated peoples in ways the Europeans deemed more rational and more nurturing of individual initiative and enterprise, and to restructure the physical environment of colonized lands in order to bring them into line with European conceptions of time and space.”[3] The events of the past centuries had inspired confidence in European prosperity, technology, and culture. “The overwhelming majority of thinkers and political leaders who concerned themselves with colonial issues had little doubt that the scientific and industrial revolutions had elevated Western societies far above all others in the understanding and mastery of the material world.”[4] The combination of anxiety associated with the consciousness of superiority and the importance of seeking non-religious justification of European subjugation of other races brought the movement of scientific racism to the fore, significantly among members of the British Anthropological Institute: "The combination of these elitist assumptions with a strong orientation toward medicine and natural science makes it hardly surprising that these late-Victorian members of the Institute, a significant number of whom had military or colonial connections, should look for biological explanations for the geopolitical reality of the expansion of European dominion over nonwhite peoples."[5] The ‘civilizing mission’ is characterized by scientific justification of the superiority of the European race and the economic and political confidence in Western civilization.
Although African intellectuals were alienated by their awareness of white hypocrisy, they embraced the possibility of introducing European advanced to Africa in order to promote their own interests. African intellectuals educated in Europe believed that in order to revive the continent that had been shattered by the slave trade, it would be essential to employ the assistance of Western technologies and sensibilities.[6] Before World War I, the African response to the European ‘civilizing mission’ was “highly essentialist, mainly reactive rather than proactive, and framed by Western gauges of human achievement and worth.[7] This was partially because "African professionals and intellectuals tended to have fewer avenues of access to institutions of higher learning in Europe and fewer opportunities for artistic and literary collaboration."[8] However, African students in Europe were a key part of the response during this time period. They helped organize pan-African groups that connected over shared difficulties presented by colonial life. “Attempts by Africans and others of African descent to organize to combat the consequences of colonialism and racism had come to the attention of the British government and other interested parties… From this time on, more concerted efforts were made by defenders of the empire to control and monitor the activities of African students."[9] Only after World War I had ended were African groups able to coalesce into a coherent movement against civilizing mission ideology.
The political and economic changes sustained by Europe between 1790 and 1875 resulted in a 'civilizing mission' ideology. This ideology of ultimate European superiority, fueled by changing intellectual tides that increased the importance of scientific evidence, marked a shift in European attitudes toward Africa from one dictated by the slave trade to one dictated by competition between European imperial powers. The response by African intellectuals to this shift in attitude was characterized by their inability to overcome the power of the civilizing mission, leading them to embrace Westernization as the essential means to improve colonial life in the African continent.
Bibliography
Adas, Michael. “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology.” Journal of World History, 15:1 (2004): 31-63.
Adi, Hakim. “Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britain.” African Studies Review 43:1 (2000): 69-82.
Hallett, Robin. “Changing European Attitudes to Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Africa Vol 5.: From c. 1790 to c. 1870, edited by John E. Flint. Cambridge Histories Online: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Lorimer, Douglas. “Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropology, 1870-1900.” Victorian Studies, 31:3 (1988): 405-430.
McKenzie, J.M. Partition of Africa, 1800-1900: And European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1983.
[1] Robin Halett, “Changing European Attitudes to Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Africa Vol 5.: From c. 1790 to c. 1870, edited by John E. Flint (Cambridge Histories Online: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 461.
[2] J.M. MacKenzie, Partition of Africa, 1800-1900: And European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1983), 13-14.
[3] Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History, 15:1 (2004): 36.
[4] Ibid. 36.
[5] Douglas Lorimer, “Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropology, 1870-1900.” Victorian Studies, 31:3 (1988): 408.
[6] Ibid. 39.
[7] Ibid. 49.
[8] Ibid. 56.
[9] Hakim Adi, “Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britain.” African Studies Review 43:1 (2000): 74.
