African Cuisines and Colonization in the Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, Europeans invaded Africa. Between 1878 and 1913, every country on the African continent with the exceptions of Liberia on the west coast and Ethiopia on the east fell to a European power, and in 1935, Italy took Ethiopia. Three things enabled Europeans to colonize Africa: quinine, a New World herb that warded off malaria; the steamship, which made sailing upstream into the interior of Africa possible; and machine guns, which allowed a handful of men to control millions. France had the greatest amount of territory, almost thirty-six percent of the continent, which it controlled with the French Foreign Legion. England followed with more than thirty-two percent, mostly in the east and south, including modern Egypt, the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, part of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa. Germany and Belgium had almost eight percent each. Portugal, Italy, and Spain split what was left. This is why there are croissants and baguettes in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast in West Africa, spaghetti in Ethiopia and Eritrea on the east, and curry and chutney in British east and West Africa.

            The British attitude towards people of other cultures was profoundly racist. These colonial powers caused complete disruption of the life and the land, the cuisine and the culture. They forced the native people to grow non-native staple crops like peanuts and cacao, which displaced native African foods. By the end of the nineteenth century, Africa was the world’s leading producer of cacao. This caused the economy to shift from a self-sufficient barter system to cash, because the native people now had to buy food with money, so they had to work for wages. Some went to work on rubber plantations in the Belgian Congo, under the extremely harsh rule of King Leopold. Workers who didn’t do their work well enough or quickly enough had their hands or feet cut off. The Congo was also rich in copper and tin. But South Africa was a gold mine and still until this day.

            Many of the ports of Africa were originally settled by European countries as stations where their ships could stop for repairs and supplies, including food. South Africa, almost halfway between Indonesia and the Netherlands, served this purpose for the Dutch East India Company, which first established a colony there in 1652. They immediately planted fruits and vegetables that would keep the ships’ crews healthy and free from scurvy and other vitamin-deficiency diseases: “sweet potatoes, pineapples, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, and citrus trees such as lemons and oranges.” They also made a dried meat, like jerky, called biltong. By the eighteenth century, the Dutch brought slaves from Malaysia and their spicy cuisine, including one dish called Kerrie-kerrie, later shortened to curry. Another Malaysian spice mixture composed of onions, ginger, dried shrimp or prawns, and chilli powder, is called a sambal.

            In eastern Africa, in Ethiopia and Eritrea, injera bread, like a thick, elastic sourdough crepe, is “the daily bread, tablecloth, and silverware.” The bottom of an enormous round tray the diameter of a small table is lined with injera; the stew is on top of the bread, soaks into it, and is used to scoop up the food with the hand. The east also has strong Indian influences because the British brought experienced workers from India to work on the railroad in Africa, including one young man named Gandhi, who later led the successful fight for India’s freedom.