Scramble for Africa

The Current Game*

Set up: The board is an outline map of Africa. Make it as simple as possible-- a few major physical features (Nile River, Suez Canal, Congo River are all that's on mine) and that's it. Each student is a European nation seeking territory in Africa. I set up six players per board (Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal) giving each player a set of colored construction squares and a goal. The goals are based on the actual goals/empires, for example, Britain is trying to create a transcontinental (N-S) empire. The students get colored squares based on the power their nation, so Britain has the most.

Play: Students take turns placing their squares one at a time to claim territory in Africa according to their nations' goal. They may overlap, and play until everyone has run out of squares. The board at this point will be a jumbled mess of overlaps. That's good!

War: There is no peaceful solution to these territorial conflicts. Like nations throughout all of history, we solve our disputes by strength of arms in the ancient game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. To ensure fairness, all wars must be monitored by the teacher and are best 2 throws out of 3. Loser removes their square and cannot re place it. (I tell them that those soldiers are dead, so they can't go conquer some other territory with their ghosts.)

After you've solved all the wars, it's time to determine the winners. Each nation reveals their goal and we figure out who, if anyone, actually met their goal. Sometimes no one has, and sometimes a few lucky throws lead you to a clear winner.

Wrap Up: I tend to follow this up by displaying a map of colonial territories in Africa ca. 1914 and ask them to do a little compare/contrast between their own maps and the real territorial divisions. Depending on how well your various students play RPS, it can lead to some pretty realistic maps. We discuss how the real map makes sense in terms of the students' goals in game and then move on to the rest of the lesson on Imperialism in Africa. (If you don't teach in the block, that will probably be next period. This does take 30-45 minutes depending on class size and wars.)

Someone else did it Prettier

The day after I taught this lesson this year, I found this Scramble for Africa board game online. There are some serious differences -- their game includes points values for colonies w/preset borders, dilemmas based on historical situations, and a more real win condition. The basic goal is the same.

The Plan for Next Year

Based on my simple game and the pretty one I found this year, I'm going to try to do a SmartBoard version of Scramble for Africa. I will set up the board as a blank Africa made up of hexes, which will change color to be claimed by a country. I still plan on setting national goals, rather than the points-based system, but I will add some scenarios to exploration and probably a movement system. I'm not sure whether I'll keep the conflicts over territory--the creators of the other Scramble for Africa game had a good point about how little violent conflict there really was between European powers. I'm still working on a lot of details, because this will move from being a group game where every student is involved (with 4-6 Africa boards out) to something that is whole-class by necessity of using the SmartBoard.

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* I'm not at work where all my binders/files are because it's break, but when I get back I'll post links to my goals and details of set up if you want them.