I. Sub-Saharan Africa A. Atlantic Slave Trade 1. For several centuries, Africa had been

victimized by the Atlantic Slave Trade. 2. Millions of Africans had been forcibly

transported to the Americas. 3. From the 1400s onward, Europeans had

plundered gold, Ivory, and other reserves from Africa.

4. Europeans established outposts, naval bases, and small colonies.

European Colonialism

European Colonies by 1800

B. Colonization 1. European colonization of Sub-

Saharan Africa was comparatively limited until late in the 1800s.

2. After the Napoleonic wars, the slave trade was made illegal in most western countries.

3. Only the United States continued to conduct slave trading until after the Civil War.

4. Great changes began to take place after 1880. Before this time, outsiders controlled only 10 percent of the continent.

5. By 1914, foreigners controlled the entire continent with the exception of two small countries. (Liberia and Ethiopia)

6. One important reason for this was the industrial-era weaponry.

European Colonies by 1900

C. South Africa 1. South Africa had been colonized by the

Dutch in the mid-1600s. 2. These Afrikaner Boers, as they called

themselves, displaced or conquered native Africans.

3. After the British took control of South Africa, the Boers themselves were displaced.

4. The Boers made their trek to the north and east establishing the Orange Free State and the South African Republic.

5. Eventually both of them came into contact with the Zulu, a Bantu-speaking people.

6. The most powerful Zulu leader was a man by the name of Shaka, who united all the various clans into a single tribe.

7. One particular factor that heightened tensions in South Africa was the discovery of Diamond fields.

D. East Africa 1. Even though the Portuguese had

established trade on the east coast the most prolific power were the Arabs.

2. The most important East African port was Zanzibar.

3. Such resources as cloves, spices, sugar, and ivory flowed through Zanzibar but the most important resource was slavery.

Island of Zanzibar

E. White Man’s Burden 1. White Man’s Burden was a poem

written by Rudyard Kipling in 1899. 2. It also became a Eurocentric

philosophy in which non-European cultures are seen as children.

3. The view proposes that white people have an obligation to rule over uncivilized and unchristian people.

The White Man’s Burden

F. Belgium and the Congo 1. Belgium gained control over the largest African

colonies in the Congo Basin. 2. Leopold II of Belgium, with his Anglo-American

explorer Henry Stanley, establishes a private company for the economic development of the Congo.

3. Leopold’s exploitation of the Congo was brutal and is recorded as among the worst in Africa.

4. Belgian-owned rubber plantations overexploited trees and used the local populations as a form of slave labor.

5. It is estimated that over 10 million Africans died as a result of this exploitation.

Congo Basin

G. German colonization of Africa 1. German possessions of Africa included

Togoland, the Cameroons, Southwest Africa, and German East Africa.

2. Because the land Germany acquired did not produce much profits, the Germans actually lost money in their ventures.

3. The Germans dealt with many uprisings including the infamous Herero Wars were it is estimated that 80% of the Herero people had been killed.

H. Effects on European Diplomacy 1. The scramble for Africa quickly stirred up

aggression among many Europeans. 2. Otto von Bismarck of Germany attempted to

cool tensions through the Berlin Conference (1884-1885).

3. The Boer War (1899-1902) occurred between England and the Boers of South Africa.

4. More than 120,000 women, children, and male noncombatants were placed in concentration camps.

5. The Germans let their sympathies for the Boers be known which made Anglo-German relations very strained.