‘A Range of Modernisms'

At the 1884–5 Berlin Conference, African territories were carved up among six European nations in a move to resolve ‘the Scramble for Africa’, a frenzied rivalry for the control and exploitation of African peoples and resources. By 1912 every African nation, save South Africa, Liberia, and Ethiopia, was a European colony. ¹ Thus, ‘those very ideologies of scientific rationalism and teleological progress’ embraced by European powers ‘served as instruments of imperial governance by which global majorities were mismeasured and managed’ (O’Brien 2013: 8). Not only did European knowledge construe Africa as its inferior ‘other’, it also proclaimed Europe's divine duty to ‘civilize’ and graciously usher it into the ‘modern’ world. Of course, this was flimsy justification for Europe's political subjection and massive exploitation of Africa's economic and human resources.