ABSTRACT
This chapter traces any certainty the effects of the policy of economic imperialism in Africa and attempts to disentangle its manifestations from the complex of national beliefs and desires which determined the action of European States in Africa. The partition of Africa thus assumes the aspect of a movement not within the control of individual human beings, and all responsibility is smoothed away by the easy explanation that all this is the "logic of events." The conquest of Algeria is immediately distinguished from later imperialist movements because no one has ever been able even to pretend that there was any demand for it in the French nation. The "question" of piracy and Algeria, though intermittent, did not become acute until 1827. It is unnecessary to trace in detail the events of the three years' quarrel between France and the Dey, which led eventually to the conquest of Algeria.
