Editing Africa (section)

===European Imperialism===

With Henry the Navigator, the Portuguese began the exploration of the African coasts. Numerous expeditions were organized starting in 1420, and each expanded knowledge of the African coast southward until, in 1497-98, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

The Portuguese explorations were driven by several impulses: a thirst for knowledge, a desire for conquest, the search for potential allies against the Islamic threat, and the hope of discovering new and lucrative trade routes to the East. The Portuguese were followed by the English, French, and Dutch, who disrupted existing economic and political systems. They faced hardships and began exploiting the resources of the African regions and engaging in the slave trade.

====Trade Routes====

The Portuguese founded numerous trading posts along the West African coast; the main one was El Mina, established on the Gold Coast in 1482.  In fact, Europeans believed that only this area and the regions of Congo and Luanda were favorable for trade. Gold, ivory, foodstuffs, and African slaves were exchanged for iron, firearms, and textiles. The Portuguese attracted merchants from other European countries, who, in the 16th century, created new trading posts or tried to monopolize existing trade routes.

In West Africa, these new developments in trade had considerable repercussions. Previously, trade routes were directed north, across the Sahara, mainly towards the Muslim world; subsequently, the flow of trade began to shift towards the coast, and as the savanna states declined economically, the coastal states increased their wealth and power. They quickly came into conflict with each other for control of the trade routes and for the acquisition of the new firearms introduced by the Europeans.

====The Slave Trade====

With the beginning of the slave trade to the Americas, the conflicts over the control of African trade intensified. During the four centuries in which the slave trade was practiced, millions upon millions of Africans were victims of this trafficking in human lives. The first important kingdom to profit from the slave trade was Benin. From the end of the 17th century, it was supplanted by the kingdoms of Dahomey and Oyo.

By the mid-18th century, the Ashanti had risen to become the main African power. During the reign of the Asantehene (king) Osei Kojo (1764-1777), Ashanti armies pushed towards the European trading posts located along the Gold Coast. They secured regular supplies of firearms, which they used to expand northwards and fight against Dahomey for control of the eastern frontiers. Further east, the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo declined at the end of the 18th century, with the outbreak of civil war and the intervention of Fulani forces from the north. Around 1835 the imperial capital was abandoned, and in the Battle of Oshogbo (c. 1840) the Fulani were repelled. The civil wars lasted until 1893, when the Yoruba kingdom disintegrated into numerous rival states.

At the turn of the 18th century, Great Britain began to adopt an attitude against the slave trade, and after the Mansfield ruling of 1772, Great Britain decided to establish a colony in West Africa for former slaves. The first attempt (1787-1790) at St George's Bay (in present-day Sierra Leone) failed; a second attempt was made by abolitionists who, in 1787, founded Freetown. After prohibiting the slave trade in 1807, the British made Freetown a useful base for conducting naval operations against this trade; in 1808 Sierra Leone became a British Crown colony. The example of Sierra Leone attracted Americans interested in the emancipation of blacks, and in early 1822, the American Colonization Society founded a colony, Liberia, at nearby Cape Mesurado. ====British Expansion====

The British design to suppress the slave trade (for both humanitarian and economic reasons: slaves provided competitors with cheap labor) found expression in attempts to reorient African trade towards other exports, such as palm oil, in strengthening missionary activity, and in imposing British law on territories previously held by British merchants. These developments often involved the United Kingdom in conflicts with African states and led it to declare its sovereignty over increasing portions of territory. In 1821, the British government assumed control of a series of fortifications in the Gold Coast. Two years later, the first of a series of wars between the British and the Ashanti broke out, lasting until 1826; these conflicts would continue for a long time: the British only managed to permanently subdue the Ashanti in 1900. In the Niger Delta, in Nigeria, the abolition of slavery led to the development of the palm oil trade and the need to establish a port; the British were also anxious to remove slave traders from the delta states (Calabar, Bonny, and Brass). Consequently, in 1852, they forced the ruler of Lagos to accept British protection, and in 1861 Lagos was annexed by the United Kingdom as a crown colony.

====Central and East Africa====

In Central and East Africa, European influence had diverse consequences. Arriving on the Congolese and Angolan coast towards the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese immediately allied themselves with the rulers of Congo, who converted to Christianity and attempted to create a state inspired by Western institutions. Their plan failed due to fratricidal wars and the introduction of the slave trade by the Portuguese. The region soon became the scene of fierce conflicts, and during the 16th century, the kingdom collapsed. Further south, the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1575 and used it as a base to penetrate the interior of Angola; approximately half of the slaves sent to the Americas came from this region. Upon arriving on the East African coast, the Portuguese attempted to disrupt the trade flow to the Muslim world, resulting in the destruction of many city-states, the occupation of others, and a profound economic crisis throughout the region.

In 1698, the East African coast returned to the rule of local leaders, but during the 18th century, it came under the control of the Sultans of Oman. At the beginning of the 19th century, Sultan Sayyid Said, ruler of Oman, transferred the seat of the sultanate to Zanzibar, which was subsequently used to strengthen control over the coast, penetrate the interior, and trade with the states of the Great Lakes region. British attempts to control the slave trade in East Africa, which was less significant than the trade managed by Europeans in West Africa, culminated in a treaty signed in 1822 that prohibited the sale of slaves to subjects of Christian countries. However, the treaty did not end the trade: many Africans were captured and destined for the clove plantations in Zanzibar and the markets of the Middle East.

In Ethiopia, the arrival of the Portuguese had hindered the Muslim conquest. In 1542, the Ethiopians repelled the Muslims with the help of the Portuguese, who, in 1632, following religious disputes, were expelled from the Ethiopian kingdom. Subsequently, Ethiopia entered a period of isolation and decline and was fragmented into a series of small kingdoms ruled by local lords (the so-called "ras"). Theodore II, with the help of the clergy, subdued most of the feudal lords in 1855 and founded an empire.

====Southern Africa====

The Portuguese largely ignored Southern Africa, but their rivals, the Dutch, from 1652 onwards, developed the area as a stopover on the route to the Indies. For a short period, settlers were encouraged to settle around Cape Town; thus, a new culture and a new people, the Boers or Afrikaners, developed. Despite the opposition of the London government, the Boers began to penetrate the interior in search of better lands and, after 1815, to escape British control. During these incursions, they encountered the Zulu and other Bantu peoples with whom they came into conflict over the possession of territories. During their migrations, the Boers were among the first white people to explore the interior regions of Africa.

====The Partition of the Continent====

At the end of the 18th century, interest in science and the search for new markets spurred a new era of exploration. The British explorer James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1770, while his compatriot Mungo Park explored (1795 and 1805) the course of the Niger River. The German explorer Heinrich Barth ventured into the western part of the Sudanese Sahel, while the Scottish missionary David Livingstone explored the Zambezi River and in 1855 named the waterfalls Victoria Falls, which the local population called Musi-oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders"). Following (and sometimes preceding) the explorers were Christian missionaries, and in their wake, merchants.

The expansion of European private interests in Africa corresponded to greater involvement of their governments. The French began the conquest of Algeria and Senegal in the first decades of the 19th century, but the systematic occupation of tropical Africa only occurred in the second half of the century. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium established the International Congo Association, a private company for the exploration and colonization of the region, directed by Henry Morton Stanley. From 1880 to 1905, much of Africa was divided among Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Portugal. From 1884, the strong rivalry between the European powers seeking further territorial acquisitions and the poorly defined boundaries of their various territories posed a threat to international relations. To resolve these problems, the Berlin Conference was convened, attended by delegates from European nations and the United States.

At the Congress of Berlin (1884-85), the European powers defined their spheres of influence and established the rules for the future occupation of the African coasts and for navigation on the Congo and Niger rivers. A rule was also established according to which, when a power acquired new territories in Africa or assumed a protectorate over a region of the continent, it had to notify the other signatory powers. During the following 15 years, the European nations signed numerous treaties, which implemented and modified the provisions of the conference. Two were signed by Great Britain in 1890: the first, with Germany, delimited the spheres of influence of the two powers in Africa; the second, with France, recognized British interests in the region between Lake Chad and the Niger River and legitimized French influence in the Sahara. Other agreements, in particular those between Great Britain and Italy in 1891, between France and Germany in 1894, and between Great Britain and France in 1899, further defined the limits of the various European companies operating in Africa.

====African Resistance====

No African state was present at the Berlin Congress, and none of them were among the signatories of the agreements that resulted from it. When possible, the decisions made in Europe were resisted when they were applied on African soil. The French faced a revolt in Algeria (1870) and encountered strong resistance (1881-1905) in their attempts to control the Sahara. In western Sudan, the Mandinka ruler Samory Touré and Ahmadu, the son and successor of al-Hajj Umar of the Tukolor state, tried to maintain their independence, but both were defeated by the French: Ahmadu in 1893 and Samory five years later. Dahomey was occupied by French forces in 1892; The Wadai region was the last to fall into French hands in 1900.

British administrators encountered similar resistance from the Boers and Zulus in Southern Africa in 1880-81 and 1899-1902 (Anglo-Boer War). British and Boer settlers conquered Matabeleland in 1893, and three years later, both the Matabele (Ndebele) and Shona rebelled. Revolts broke out repeatedly in the Ashanti region and Sierra Leone (1897) in 1893-94, 1895-96, and 1900. The British conquest of the Fulani-Hausa states also met with resistance (1901-1903). Sokoto revolted in 1906. The Germans faced the Herero uprising in South-West Africa (1904-1908).

Only the Ethiopians, led by Emperor Menelik II (reigning 1889-1909), successfully resisted European conquest, annihilating the Italian troops at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.