Most non- and early-academic approaches to European imperialism attempts to depict the Europeans as acting in a vacuum - Africans did not resist and even when they wanted to, they could not.

Both of these points are fundamentally wrong, and, more importantly, misleading. The agency of Africans (as in the ways in which the Africans themselves acted and reacted during the expansion of European imperialism across the continent) is crucial, and manifested itself in a infinite number of ways. However, more important is the simple nature of colonialism in Africa. It was not absolute control. Empires were run by accountants, and cost and practicality often outweighed whatever ideal objectives the metropoles hoped to achieve. Total control of regions often ten or fifteen times the size of the European nation itself (such as Leopold II in the Congo, or Portuguese territories in Angola and Mozambique) was impossible to achieve without investing sums of money which were largely inconsistent with the predicted economic returns and the actual levels of control deemed realistic. Direct rule did occur, especially in regions where traditional African societies were deemed too violent or savage or divided to cooperate with (i.e. at contrast with colonial intent), but indirect rule was, generally, the norm, particularly where existing states had a centralised socio-political authority with and upon which the colonial officials could utilise existing forms of authority.

Under indirect rule, colonial regimes incorporated on-going struggles over power and social identity into the structure of colonial administration, and relied upon traditional socio-political authorities to support colonial rule. Resistance to colonial rule was thus either: i) played out in within the colonial system, utilising newly implemented native courts or customary law; or ii) enacted in resistance to the system itself, often manifesting itself in violence. Europeans sought to avoid direct confrontation with existing African structures simply because it was too expensive and too impractical to do so. Traditional African leaders were necessary to the colonial effort because, simply put, they controlled the labour upon which the colonial capitalist economy was dependent. In the pre-colonial period, when Europeans acted more as trading partners than primary producers, European access to labour and land depended upon good relationships with the traditional local leaders. As European rule was expanded and land and people were brought under the authority of the colonial state, the integration of African labour and land into the colonial economy was highly dependent on the assistance of African leaders. When offered both a chance to consolidate their own power and to expand their social and economic wealth under a colonial state, many African patriarchs took the opportunity. The strong nature of authority within African society subsequently saw disputes played out within rather than against the colonial system.

Violent resistance however did occur, and to correct what you have read, the majority of the violence did not occur between European powers, but was actually violence targeted at the Africans the imperial nations were attempting to subjugate. Broadly speaking (because the timelines over which European colonisation began differed greatly by region and metropole), it is possible to divide the violent resistance into two periods: the Primary Defensive period from about 1870 to 1910, and the Secondary Offensive period from the 1920s onwards. It is this former period which you are really asking about.

In the Primary Defensive period, as Europeans began to lay claim to huge swathes of land and consolidate what had until then been relatively isolated coastal enclaves (such as Lourenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique, or Accra on the Gold Coast), Africans sought to resist this expansion through military action. In Southern Rhodesia, the influx of white settlers and the establishment of European rule saw two African led rebellions (the First Matabele War of 1893, and the Chimurenga or Ndebele and Shona Uprisings of 1896-97) which saw direct conflict between European forces and the Africans they were seeking to colonise. In German East Africa in 1905, the Maji-Maji rebellion also saw large scale violent revolts against what was a very small German population that had began large scale economic and social colonisation. In 1879 in South Africa, the Zulu rose up against the British, as did the Bunyoro in the 1890s. In Ethipoia, Minilik II infamously defeated a large-scale Italian invasion multiple times, including the 1887 Battle of Dogali, and 1895 when 14,500 Italian and Eritrean troops invaded. These are just a few examples of what could be called large-scale violent resistance.

At a local level, violent resistance during this Primary Defensive period was even more widespread. Localised skirmishes continued throughout the majority of areas which were beginning to come under colonial control. Colonialism obviously varied greatly region by region, and depended heavily upon the actions and policies of the colonial officials on the ground, but some common themes can be picked out. The concept of a state-monopoly on violence was impractical to enforce and subsequently, white settlers in Southern Africa and white merchants in other areas were able to use violence as a tool to ensure their control over specific areas. I have written previously about the differences even within the colonising efforts of Germany and the fundamental distinctions made between direct and indirect rule, and certainly the form that colonial government took, and the necessity of maintaining practical control compared to the cost of absolute control, dictated the nature and type of resistance provided by African societies.

Military might certainly played a part (and more importantly the access to weapons and the types of warfare engaged in were crucial), but as was demonstrated in Ethiopia, technological superiority did not always guarantee victory, and in some cases both sides were similarly armed (the 1896 uprisings in Southern Rhodesia saw Ndebele armed with rifles they had seized from European stocks during their training as Native Police). It is, however, no coincidence that the Scramble took place between 1870 and 1919, in the midst of the Technological Revolution in Europe and the emergence of New Imperialism. The decades after 1870, as a result of both the technological advances and European imperialism, witnessed an unprecedented explosion of production leading to heightened market transactions, many of which crossed national borders and spanned continents. The Second Industrial Revolution, John Darwin contends, permitted the Scramble simply because technology such as steam boats, railways, telegraph, etc,

gave Europeans 'the means to colonize far faster and on a far larger scale than was previously possible. It gave them the means to penetrate new markets and crush old competition..Above all, it enhanced their capacity to project their physical power over far greater distances and at much lower cost.' (John Darwin, After Tamerlane, p.493)

When reinforcements could arrive from the metropole in days or weeks rather than months, when troops and ammunition could be transported from the coast to the hinterland by train in hours, when food and other supplies could be guaranteed through protected corridors - suddenly the ability of smaller European forces to face off against larger African forces shifted the advantage towards logistics. Guerrilla warfare, as would become popular in the Wars of Liberation of the 1940s-1990s, did emerge in certain areas and proved devastating against massed European forces, but certain weapons like the (often overly exaggerated importance) Maxim gun provided defensive advantages which were difficult to overcome.

Overwhelmingly, therefore, the attempts at resistance played out in other spheres.

Economic resistance was one field. The reluctance and sometimes refusal of Africans to integrate into the capitalist colonial economy, and especially to resist the acceptance of waged labour over traditional means of subsistence or trade-based production, was widespread and often found itself at the locus of European suppressive efforts. As I mentioned earlier, the integration of the colonial economy into African labour and land access rights was paramount to the colonial effort, and resistance could therefore be something as simple as refusing to participate. Violence was often brought in as the solution to such reluctance, but it was nevertheless a form of resistance.

(Cont'd below)