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The Crowning Chapter of Geography: The Royal Scottish Geographical Society and the Scramble for Africa 1884-18931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

J. J. V. Kuitenbrouwer
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Extract

The Scramble for Africa between the European powers at the end of the nineteenth century has always struck people as quite an extraordinary process. It has played an important role in the debate about European overseas expansion, and still does. This article is about the discussion surrounding the partition of Africa which took place within a geographical society in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS). In those days, as the expansion reached its zenith, the question of how the British Empire should be organised was one of the most important political issues. The debate about imperialism continued after Africa had been partitioned, and the nature of the debate changed in the light of two World Wars and the era of decolonisation. As time went by, scholars who mainly focused on the economic and political motivations for European overseas expansion dominated the imperialism debate. The role that groups such as geographical societies played became obscured as their ideas were seen as outdated. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the ways societies like the RSGS contributed to the metropolitan culture of imperialism.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , July 2004 , pp. 135 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2004

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