What Should Have Colonial Powers Taken Into Consideration Before Drawing Boundaries?

Most of today'due south international boundaries within Africa derive from the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, when the colonial powers divided the region betwixt themselves in order to provide a framework for their own political administrations and for the regulation of merchandise. Many boundaries were drawn through regions where the detailed geography was unknown, explaining why effectually thirty per cent of the boundaries in Africa are straight lines. The bogus way in which they were allocated has been criticised for creating arbitrary divisions betwixt communities on the ground, or for preventing the free motility of indigenous nomadic groups, only nigh of the boundaries accept come to exist recognised past the African community and persist to this day.

In the years following their initial allocation, a number of the boundaries were surveyed and demarcated on the ground by boundary commissions sent from Europe. While the boundary lines were oftentimes finessed to accommodate local geographical features, the locations of population groups were rarely taken into account, though this was not unknown. Amid the material held in the State of war Office Archive is a file which documents a British agreement to manus over territory in order to respect the wishes of the local population.

At the Berlin Briefing the region at present occupied by Rwanda and Burundi was incorporated into German East Africa and became a single province in the northward-west of the colony. After the First World War it was handed to Kingdom of belgium as a League of Nations mandate, while the rest of German East Africa became a British mandate re-named Tanganyika. The newly-created boundary betwixt the British and Belgian territories was surveyed by the 'Anglo-Belgian Purlieus Committee (Ruanda-Urundi) 1922-1924', which created field sheets, fair drawings and a sheet index, all now preserved in the annal at reference BL Maps WOOS/four.

Item of WOOS/4/ane/3

Particular of WOOS/4/1/7

The field sheets record regions of mountain, swamp and thick forest, and are in a good state of preservation considering the weather in which they were made. Some of the ink drawing is highly skilled, with half-erased pencil workings still visible.

The commission started survey work in the northward, on the tripoint with Republic of uganda and moved southwards equally far every bit Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika. The sail index gives an overview of the serpentine road they followed, which is marked in green.

WOOS/4/4

The agreed boundary followed the traditional tribal boundaries of the kingdoms of Ruanda and Urundi that had been incorporated into the former High german province. However, in the northern portion the British had negotiated a shift of the line westwards to adjust the planned construction of a British railway connecting Tanganyika to Republic of uganda - marked 'POSSIBLE […RAILWAY ROUTE]'.

Particular of WOOS/4/4

Just soon after the boundary committee had passed through the surface area, Belgian missionaries in Rwanda made a formal protest to the League of Nations at 'the social, political and economic impairment caused past the imposition of this capricious boundary', and proposed moving it back eastward 'to the "natural borderland" of the Kagera River'. The British government later on agreed that the imposition of the boundary had had harmful furnishings on the resident population, and since by this time an alternative rail route existed between Uganda and Tanganyika they had no objection to the re-location of the boundary. The agreement was made in 1923, and is shown on the index canvas in blood-red hatching labelled 'Expanse to be handed over to Kingdom of belgium'.

Item of WOOS/four/4

The Times of 21 Jan 1924 reported that the Belgians 'expressed their deep gratitude for the spirit of equity and the sincere desire to answer to the wishes of the native population manifested past Swell U.k. in these negotiations'. But a more recent study has concluded that, 'far from beingness a natural cultural divide, the new boundary did still cut across four modest culture areas – Ha, Hangaza, Haya and Zinza'.

The Belgians surveyed the new portion of the boundary shortly after the transfer was fabricated, only the precise definition and demarcation of its grade through wide papyrus swampland was not finally settled until 1934, when the sale of tin mining concessions in the area made it imperative to establish the purlieus once and for all. In the nowadays day it remains unchanged every bit the boundary betwixt Rwanda and Tanzania.

Nicholas Dykes

The British East Africa portion of the War Office Annal is being conserved, catalogued and digitised with generous funding from the Indigo Trust.

Farther Reading:

Adekunle Ajala, 'The Nature of African Boundaries', Africa Spectrum, vol. 18, no. 2 (1983)

Ian Brownlie, Ian R. Burns, African Boundaries: A Legal and Diplomatic Encyclopaedia (1979)

Ieuan Griffiths, 'The Scramble for Africa: Inherited Political Boundaries', The Geographical Journal, vol. 152, no. 2 (Jul., 1986)

United States Bureau of Intelligence and Research, International Boundary Study, no. 69 (May two, 1966), Rwanda-Tanzania Boundary

H.B. Thomas, 'The Kagera Triangle and the Kagera Salient', The Uganda Periodical, vol.23, no.1 (March 1959)

Source: https://blogs.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/2015/10/most-of-todays-international-boundaries-within-africa-derive-from-the-berlin-conference-of-1884-5-when-the-colonial-power.html

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