British Imperialism In Africa

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The British Imperialism of Africa was not much different, in terms of motivation, from any of the other Imperial moves made by Britain around this time. Each conquest of a new country and foreign land had a strong economic influence behind it. Without one, there would seem to be no logical reason to move on the country in the first place. The “Neo-Imperialist” movement in Africa was following the industrial revolution in Britain. The country desperately needed a new source for raw materials, and the Empire turned its focus onto Africa. There were three main causes, which all seemed to be linked, which drove Britain straight into Africa. First were the economic causes. The industrial revolution was expanding rapidly, and Britain strongly relied …show more content…
Many other countries, however, were developing new factories and employing cheap labor. These new factories and major industries were much more cost effective and nearly looked to put Britain out of the industrial picture. These new industrialized countries were putting Britain’s economical standing in jeopardy and they quickly needed to find somewhere that offered a large quantity of raw goods for them to manufacture. Africa offered them just that. To Britain, Africa was an uncharted area they showed some material promise. They already had Cairo under their influence. They also had control of South Africa after they managed to take of from the Boers, whom The Boers were the Dutch-speaking farmers in South Africa. They had arrived as a result of the Dutch Trading Company. The Boers were constantly fighting the British on the use of slavery in their works and the British were trying to eliminate the practice of slavery in its entirety. The British knew of the raw goods that would lie in between these two locations. They just needed to power to do …show more content…
One was that Africa was an unknown land. The British government essentially had no idea where they were going once they got there. They were relying on partially filled-in maps and current exploration attempts. This brought them to their second challenge: malaria. The cure for malaria came as a “consequence and a cause of new imperialism” (Headrick, 73). Had it not been for the cure of this disease, there may have never been an imperialist movement in Africa due to the death toll. However, the consequence meant losing many lives prior to the cure in order to not only find a cure, but to also chart out the land in order to give Britain an idea of what it was truly getting itself
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