Power And Persuasion In Africa
LeAnn
Mon, 04/24/2023 – 08:00
A second scramble for Africa is under way among the great powers. Unlike in the first scramble, foreign powers now seek access to Africa’s abundant mineral wealth without any of the pretense, displayed by Europeans a century ago, of a civilizing mission. Russia and China are leading this current resource grab. Both are content to exercise influence through weak autocratic and dependent indigenous regimes, which welcome Russian mercenaries and Chinese state economic enterprises to bolster their rule.
The first scramble for the African continent escalated in the waning years of the nineteenth century and lasted until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. This partition of nearly 90 percent of the world’s second-largest continent by area and population witnessed its conquest, annexation, and colonialization by seven European nations. Great Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and other West European countries dispatched soldiers, missionaries, officials, and even settlers to take over land and grow sought-after crops like cotton and coffee. Today’s “scramblers” have much less interest in planting their national flags in colonies than did their nineteenth-century predecessors, who strove to color the map with British red or French blue.
After World War …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution
