Лекция: Africa

AFRICA

AFRICA, the name of a continent representing the largest of the three great

southward projections from the main mass of the earth's surface. It includes

within its remarkably regular outline an area, according to the most recent

computations, of 11,262,000 sq. m., excluding the islands.1 Separated from

Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, it is joined to Asia at its N.E. extremity

by the Isthmus of Suez, 80 m. wide. From the most northerly point, Ras ben

Sakka, a little west of Cape Blanc, in 37 deg. 21' N., to the most southerly

point, Cape Agulhas, 34 deg. 51' 15'' S., is a distance approximately of 5000

m.; from Cape Verde, 17 deg. 33' 22'' W., the westernmost point, to Ras

Hafun, 51 deg. 27' 52'' E., the most easterly projection, is a distance (also

approximately) of 4600 m. The length of coast-line is 16,100 m. and the

absence of deep indentations of the shore is shown by the fact that Europe,

which covers only 3,760,000 sq. m., has a coast-line of 19,800 m.

I. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The main structural lines of the continent show both the east-to-west

direction characteristic, at least in the eastern hemisphere, of the more

northern parts of the world, and the north-to-south direction seen in the

southern peninsulas. Africa is thus composed of two segments at right angles,

the northern running from east to west, the southern from north to south, the

subordinate lines corresponding in the main to these two directions.

Main Geographical Features.—The mean elevation of the continent approximates

closely to 2000 ft., which is roughly the elevation of both North and South

America, but is considerably less than that of Asia (3117 ft.). In contrast

with the other continents it is marked by the comparatively small area both

of very high and of very low ground, lands under 600 ft. occupying an

unusually small part of the surface; while not only are the highest

elevations inferior to those of Asia and South America, but the area of land

over 10,000 ft. is also quite insignificant, being represented almost

entirely by individual peaks and mountain ranges. Moderately elevated

tablelands are thus the characteristic feature of the continent, though the

surface of these is broken by higher peaks and ridges. (So prevalent are

these isolated peaks and ridges that a special term [Inselberg-landschaft]

has been adopted in Germany to describe this kind of country, which is

thought to be in great part the result of wind action.) As a general rule,

the higher tablelands lie to the east and south, while a progressive

diminution in altitude towards the west and north is observable. Apart from

the lowlands and the Atlas range, the continent may be divided into two

regions of higher and lower plateaus, the dividing line (somewhat concave to

the north-west) running from the middle of the Red Sea to about 6 deg. S. on

the west coast. We thus obtain the following four main divisions of the

continent:—-(1) The coast plains—-often fringed seawards by mangrove

swamps—never stretching far from the coast, except on the lower courses of

streams. Recent alluvial flats are found chiefly in the delta of the more

important rivers. Elsewhere the coast lowlands merely form the lowest steps

of the system of terraces which constitutes the ascent to the inner plateaus.

(2) The Atlas range, which, orographically, is distinct from the rest of the

continent, being unconnected with any other area of high ground, and

separated from the rest of the continent on the south by a depressed and

desert area (the Sahara), in places below sea-level. (3) The high southern

and eastern plateaus, rarely falling below 2000 ft., and having a mean

elevation of about 3500 ft. (4) The north and west African plains, bordered

and traversed by bands of higher ground, but generally below 2000 ft. This

division includes the great desert of the Sahara.

The third and fourth divisions may be again subdivided. Thus the high

plateaus include:—(a) The South African plateau as far as about 12 deg. S.,

bounded east, west and south by bands of high ground which fall steeply to

the coasts. On this account South Africa has a general resemblance to an

inverted saucer. Due south the plateau rim is formed by three parallel steps

with level ground between them. The largest of these level areas, the Great

Karroo, is a dry, barren region, and a large tract of the plateau proper is

of a still more arid character and is known as the Kalahari Desert. The South

African plateau is connected towards the north-east with (b) the East African

plateau, with probably a slightly greater average elevation, and marked by

some distinct features. It is formed by a widening out of the eastern axis of

high ground, which becomes subdivided into a number of zones running north

and south and consisting in turn of ranges, tablelands and depressions. The

most striking feature is the existence of two great lines of depression, due

largely to the subsidence of whole segments of the earth's crust, the lowest

parts of which are occupied by vast lakes. Towards the south the two lines

converge and give place to one great valley (occupied by Lake Nyasa), the

southern part of which is less distinctly due to rifting and subsidence than

the rest of the system. Farther north the western depression, sometimes known

as the Central African trough or Albertine rift-valley, is occupied for more

than half its length by water, forming the four lakes of Tanganyika, Kivu,

Albert Edward and Albert, the first-named over 400 m. long and the longest

freshwater lake in the world. Associated with these great valleys are a

number of volcanic peaks, the greatest of which occur on a meridional line

east of the eastern trough. The eastern depression, known as the East African

trough or rift-valley, contains much smaller lakes, many of them brackish and

without outlet, the only one comparable to those of the western trough being

Lake Rudolf or Basso Norok. At no great distance east of this rift-valley are

Kilimanjaro—with its two peaks Kibo and Mawenzi, the former 19,321 ft., and

the culminating point of the whole continent—and Kenya (17,007 ft.). Hardly

less important is the Ruwenzori range (over 16,600 ft.), which lies east of

the western trough. Other volcanic peaks rise from the floor of the valleys,

some of the Kirunga (Mfumbiro) group, north of Lake Kivu, being still

partially active. (c) The third division of the higher region of Africa is

formed by the Abyssinian highlands, a rugged mass of mountains forming the

largest continuous area of its altitude in the whole continent, little of its

surface falling below 5000 ft., while the summits reach heights of 15,000 to

16,000 ft. This block of country lies just west of the line of the great East

African trough, the northern continuation of which passes along its eastern

escarpment as it runs up to join the Red Sea. There is, however, in the

centre a circular basin occupied by Lake Tsana.

Both in the east and west of the continent the bordering highlands are continued

as strips of plateau parallel to the coast, the Abyssinian mountains being

continued northwards along the Red Sea coast by a series of ridges reaching in

places a height of 7000 ft. In the west the zone of high land is broader but

somewhat lower. The most mountainous districts lie inland from the head of the

Gulf of Guinea (Adamawa, &c.), where heights of 6000 to 8000 ft. are

reached. Exactly at the head of the gulf the great peak of the Cameroon, on a

line of Volcanic action continued by the islands to the south-west, has a

height of 13,370 ft., while Clarence Peak, in Fernando Po, the first of the

line of islands, rises to over 9000. Towards the extreme west the Futa Jallon

highlands form an important diverging point of rivers, but beyond this, as far

as the Atlas chain, the elevated rim of the continent is almost wanting.

The area between the east and west coast highlands, which north of 17 deg. N.

is mainly desert, is divided into separate basins by other bands of high

ground, one of which runs nearly centrally through North Africa in a line

corresponding roughly with the curved axis of the continent as a whole. The

best marked of the basins so formed (the Congo basin) occupies a circular

area bisected by the equator, once probably the site of an inland sea. The

arid region, the Sahara—the largest desert in the world, covering 3,500,000

sq. m.—extends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Though generally of slight

elevation it contains mountain ranges with peaks rising to 8000 ft. Bordered

N.W. by the Atlas range, to the N.E. a rocky plateau separates it from the

Mediterranean; this plateau gives place at the extreme east to the delta of

the Nile. That river (see below) pierces the desert without modifying its

character. The Atlas range, the north-westerly part of the continent, between

its seaward and landward heights encloses elevated steppes in places 100 m.

broad. From the inner slopes of the plateau numerous wadis take a direction

towards the Sahara. The greater part of that now desert region is, indeed,

furrowed by old water-channels.

The following table gives the approximate altitudes of the chief mountains

and lakes of the continent:—

Mountains. Ft. Lakes. Ft.

Rungwe (Nyasa) . 10,400 Chad . . . . 8502

Drakensberg . . 10,7002 Leopold II . . 1100

Lereko or Sattima . 13,2143 Rudolf . . . 1250

(Aberdare Range) Nyasa . . . 16453

Cameroon . . 13,370 Albert Nyanza . 20282

Elgon . . . 14,1523 Tanganyika . . 26243

Karissimbi . . Ngami . . . . 2950

(Mfumbiro) . 14,6833 Mweru . . . . 3000

Meru . . . 14,9553 Albert Edward . 30043

Taggharat (Atlas) . 15,0002 Bangweulu. . . 3700

Simen Mountains, . 15,1602 Victoria Nyanza. 37203

Abyssinia Abai . . . . 4200

Ruwenzori . . 16,6193 Kivu . . . . 48293

Kenya . . . 17,0073 Tsana . . . . 5690

Kilimanjaro . . 19,3213 Naivasha . . . 61353

The Hydrographic Systems.—-From the outer margin of the African plateaus a

large number of streams run to the sea with comparatively short courses,

while the larger rivers flow for long distances on the interior highlands

before breaking through the outer ranges. The main drainage of the continent

is to the north and west, or towards the basin of the Atlantic Ocean. The

high lake plateau of East Africa contains the head-waters of the Nile and

Congo: the former the longest, the latter the largest river of the continent.

The upper Nile receives its chief supplies from the mountainous region

adjoining the Central African trough in the neighbourhood of the equator.

Thence streams pour east to the Victoria Nyanza, the largest African lake

(covering over 26,000 sq. m.), and west and north to the Albert Edward and

Albert Nyanzas, to the latter of which the effluents of the other two lakes

add their waters. Issuing from it the Nile flows north, and between 7 deg.

and 10 deg. N. traverses a vast marshy level during which its course is

liable to blocking by floating vegetation. After receiving the Bahr-el-Ghazal

from the west and the Sobat, Blue Nile and Atbara from the Abyssinian

highlands (the chief gathering ground of the flood-water), it crosses the

great desert and enters the Mediterranean by a vast delta. The most remote

head-stream of the Congo is the Chambezi, which flows south-west into the

marshy Lake Bangweulu. From this lake issues the Congo, known in its upper

course by various names. Flowing first south, it afterwards turns north

through Lake Mweru and descends to the forest-clad basin of west equatorial

Africa. Traversing this in a majestic northward curve and receiving vast

supplies of water from many great tributaries, it finally turns south-west

and cuts a way to the Atlantic Ocean through the western highlands. North of

the Congo basin and separated from it by a broad undulation of the surface is

the basin of Lake Chad—-a flat-shored, shallow lake filled principally by the

Shad coming from the south-east. West of this is the basin of the Niger, the

third river of Africa, which, though flowing to the Atlantic, has its

principal source in the far west, and reverses the direction of flow

exhibited by the Nile and Congo. An important branch, however—the Benue—comes

from the south-east. These four river-basins occupy the greater part of the

lower plateaus of North and West Africa, the remainder consisting of arid

regions watered only by intermittent streams which do not reach the sea. Of

the remaining rivers of the Atlantic basin the Orange, in the extreme south,

brings the drainage from the Drakensberg on the opposite side of the

continent, while the Kunene, Kwanza, Ogowe and Sanaga drain the west corst

highlands of the southern limb; the Volta, Komoe, Bandama, Gambia and Senegal

the highlands of the western limb. North of the Senegal for over 1000 m. of

coast the arid region reaches to the Atlantic. Farther north are the streams,

with comparatively short courses, which reach the Atlantic and Mediterranean

from the Atlas mountains.

Of the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean the only one draining any large

part of the interior plateaus is the Zambezi, whose western branches rise in

the west coast highlands. The main stream has its rise in 11 deg. 21' 3'' S.

24 deg. 22' E. at an elevation of 5000 ft. It flows west and south for a

considerable distance before turning to the east. All the largest

tributaries, including the Shire, the outflow of Lake Nyasa, flow down the

southern slopes of the band of high ground which stretches across the

conbnent in 10 deg. to 12 deg. S. In the south-west the Zambezi system

interlaces with that of the Taukhe (or Tioghe), from which it at times

receives surplus water. The rest of the water of the Taukhe, known in its

middle course as the Okavango, is lost in a system of swamps and saltpans

which formerly centred in Lake Ngami, now dried up. Farther south the Limpopo

drains a portion of the interior plateau but breaks through the bounding

highlands on the side of the continent nearest its source. The Rovuma,

Rufiji, Tana, Juba and Webi Shebeli principally drain the outer slopes of the

East African highlands, the last named losing itself in the sands in close

proximity to the sea. Another large stream, the Hawash, rising in the

Abyssinian mountains, is lost in a saline depression near the Gulf of Aden.

Lastly, between the basins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans there is an area

of inland drainage along the centre of the East African plateau, directed

chiefly into the lakes in the great rift-valley. The largest river is the

Omo, which, fed by the rains of the Abyssinian highlands, carries down a

large body of water into Lake Rudolf. The rivers of Africa are generally

obstructed either by bars at their mouths or by cataracts at no great

distance up-stream. But when these obstacles have been overcome the rivers

and lakes afford a network of navigable waters of vast extent.

The calculation of the areas of African drainage systems, made by Dr A.

Bludau (Petermanns Mitteilungen, 43, 1897, pp. 184-186) gives the following

general results:—

Basin of the Atlantic . . . . . 4,070,000 sq. m.

'' '' Mediterranean . . . 1,680,000 ''

'' '' Indian Ocean . . . . 2,086,000 ''

Inland drainage area . . . . . 3,452,000 ''

The areas of individual river-basins are:—

Congo (length over 3000 m.) . . 1,425,000 sq. m.

Nile ( '' fully 4000 m.) . . 1,082,0004 ''

Niger ( '' about 2600 m.) . . 808,0005 ''

Zambezi ( '' '' 2000 m.) . . 513,500 ''

Lake Chad . . . . . . . . . 394,000 ''

Orange (length about 1300 m.) . . 370,505 ''

'' (actual drainage area) . . 172,500 ''

The area of the Congo basin is greater than that of any other river except

the Amazon, while the African inland drainage area is greater than that of

any continent but Asia, in which the corresponding area is 4,000,000 sq. m.

The principal African lakes have been mentioned in the description of the

East African plateau, but some of the phenomena connected with them may be

spoken of more particularly here. As a rule the lakes which occupy portions

of the great rift-valleys have steep sides and are very deep. This is the

case with the two largest of the type, Tanganyika and Nyasa, the latter of

which has depths of 430 fathoms. Others, however, are shallow, and hardly,

reach the steep sides of the valleys in the dry season. Such are Lake Rukwa,

in a subsidiary depression north of Nyasa, and Eiassi and Manyara in the

system of the eastern rift-valley. Lakes of the broad type are of moderate

depth, the deepest sounding in Victoria Nyanza being under 50 fathoms. Apart

from the seasonal variations of level, most of the lakes show periodic

fluctuations, while a progressive desiccation of the whole region is said to

be traceable, tending to the ultimate disappearance of the lakes. Such a

drying up has been in progress during long geologic ages, but doubt exists as

to its practical importance at the present time. The periodic fluctuations in

the level of Lake Tanganyika are such that its outllow is intermittent.

Besides the East African lakes the principal are:—-Lake Chad, in the northern

area of inland drainage; Bangweulu and Mweru, traversed by the head-stream of

the Congo; and Leopold II. and Ntomba (Mantumba), within the great bend of

that river. All, exceot possibly Mweru, are more or less shallow, and Chad

appears to by drying up. The altitudes of the African lakes have already been

stated.

Divergent opinions have been beld as to the mode of origin of the East African

lakes, especially Tanganyika, which some geologists have considered to

represent an old arm of the sea, dating from a time when the whole central

Congo basin was under water; others holding that the lake water has accumulated

in a depression caused by subsidence. The former view is based on the existence

in the lake of organisms of a decidedly marine type. They include a jelly-fish,

molluscs, prawns, crabs, &c., and were at first considered to form an

isolated group found in no other of the African lakes; but this supposition has

been proved to be erroneous.

Islands.—With one exception—-Madagascar—the African islands are small.

Madagascar, with an area of 229,820 sq. m., is, after New Guinea and Borneo,

the largest island of the world.

It lies off the S.E. coast of the continent, from which it is separated by

the deep Mozambique channel, 250 m. wide at its narrowest point. Madagascar

in its general structure, as in flora and fauna, forms a connecting link

between Africa and southern Asia. East of Madagascar are the small islands of

Mauritius and Reunion. Sokotra lies E.N.E. of Cape Guardafui. Off the north-

west coast are the Canary and Cape Verde archipelagoes. which, like some

small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, are of volcanic origin.

Climate and Health.—-Lying almost entirely within the tropics, and equally to

north and south of the equator, Africa does not show excessive variations of

temperature. Great heat is experienced in the lower plains and desert regions

of North Africa, removed by the great width of the continent from the

influence of the ocean, and here, too, the contrast between day and night,

and between summer and winter, is greatest. (The rarity of the air and the

great radiation during the night cause the temperature in the Sahara to fall

occasionally to freezing point.) Farther south, the heat is to some extent

modified by the moisture brought from the ocean, and by the greater elevation

of a large part of the surface, especially in East Africa, where the range of

temperature is wider than in the Congo basin or on the Guinea coast. In the

extreme north and south the climate is a warm temperate one, the northern

countries being on the whole hotter and drier than those in the southern

zone; the south of the continent being narrower than the north, the influence

of the surrounding ocean is more felt. The most important climatic

differences are due to variations in the amount of rainfall. The wide heated

plains of the Sahara, and in a lesser degree the corresponding zone of the

Kalahari in the south, have an exceedingly scanty rainfall, the winds which

blow over them from the ocean losing part of their moisture as they pass over

the outer highlands, and becoming constantly drier owing to the heating

effects of the burning soil of the interior; while the scarcity of mountain

ranges in the more central parts likewise tends to prevent condensation. In

the inter-tropical zone of summer precipitation, the rainfall is greatest

when the sun is vertical or soon after. It is therefore greatest of all near

the equator, where the sun is twice vertical, and less in the direction of

both tropics. The rainfall zones are, however, somewhat deflected from a due

west-to-east direction, the drier northern conditions extending southwards

along the east coast, and those of the south northwards along the west.

Within the equatorial zone certain areas, especially on the shores of the

Gulf of Guinea and in the upper Nile basin, have an intensified rainfall, but

this rarely approaches that of the rainiest regions of the world. The

rainiest district in all Africa is a strip of coastland west of Mount

Cameroon, where there is a mean annual rainfall of about 390 in. as compared

with a mean of 458 in. at Cherrapunji, in Assam. The two distinct rainy

seasons of the equatorial zone, where the sun is vertical at half-yearly

intervals, become gradually merged into one in the direction of the tropics,

where the sun is overhead but once. Snow falls on all the higher mountain

ranges, and on the highest the climate is thoroughly Alpine. The countries

bordering the Sahara are much exposed to a very dry wind, full of fine

particles of sand, blowing from the desert towards the sea. Known in Egypt as

the khamsin, on the Mediterranean as the sirocco, it is called on the Guinea

coast the harmattan. This wind is not invariably hot; its great dryness

causes so much evaporation that cold is not infrequently the result. Similar

dry winds blow from the Kalahari in the south. On the eastern coast the

monsoons of the Indian Ocean are regularly felt, and on the south-east

hurricanes are occasionally experienced.

While the climate of the north and south, especially the south, is eminently

healthy, and even the intensely heated Sahara is salubrious by reason of its

dryness, the tropical zone as a whole is, for European races, the most

unhealthy portion of the world. This is especially the case in the lower and

moister regions, such as the west coast, where malarial fever is very

prevalent and deadly; the most unfavourable factors being humidity with

absence of climatic variation (daily or seasonal). The higher plateaus, where

not only is the average temperature lower, but such variations are more

extensive, are more healthy; and in certain localities (e.g. Abyssinia and

parts of British East Africa) Europeans find the climate suitable for

permanent residence. On tablelands over 6500 ft. above the sea, frost is not

uncommon at night, even in places directly under the equator. The

acclimatization of white men in tropical Africa generally is dependent

largely on the successful treatment of tropical diseases. Districts which had

been notoriously deadly to Europeans were rendered comparatively healthy

after the discovery, in 1899, of the species of mosquito which propagates

malarial fever, and the measures thereafter taken for its destruction and the

filling up of swamps. The rate of mortality among the natives from tropical

diseases is also high, one of the most fatal being that known as sleeping

sickness. (The ravages of this disease, which also attacks Europeans, reached

alarming proportions between 1893 and 1907, and in the last-named year an

international conference was held in London to consider measures to combat

it.) When removed to colder regions natives of the equatorial districts

suffer greatly from chest complaints. Smallpox also makes great ravages among

the negro population.

Flora.—The vegetation of Africa follows very closely the distribution of heat

and moisture. The northern and southern temperate zones have a flora distinct

from that of the continent generally, which is tropical. In the countries

bordering the Mediterranean are groves of oranges and olive trees, evergreen

oaks, cork trees and pines, intermixed with cypresses, myrtles, arbutus and

fragrant tree-heaths. South of the Atlas range the conditions alter. The zones

of minimum rainfall have a very scanty flora, consisting of plants adapted to

resist the great dryness. Characteristic of the Sahara is the date-palm, which

flourishes where other vegetation can scarcely maintain existence, while in the

semidesert regions the acacia (whence is obtained gum-arabic) is abundant. The

more humid regions have a richer vegetation —dense forest where the rainfall is

greatest and variations of temperature least, conditions found chiefly on the

tropical coasts, and in the west African equatorial basin with its extension

towards the upper Nile; and savanna interspersed with trees on the greater part

of the plateaus, passing as the desert regions are approached into a scrub

vegetation consisting of thorny acacias, &c. Forests also occur on the

humid slopes of mountain ranges up to a certain elevation. In the coast regions

the typical tree is the mangrove, which flourishes wherever the soil is of a

swamp character. The dense forests of West Africa contain, in addition to a

great variety of dicotyledonous trees, two palms, the Elaeis guincensis

(oil-palm) and Raphia vinifera (bamboo-palm), not found, generally speaking, in

the savanna regions. The bombax or silk-cotton tree attains gigantic

proportions in the forests, which are the home of the indiarubber-producing

plants and of many valuable kinds of timber trees, such as odum (Chlorophora

excelsa), ebony, mahogany (Khaya senegalensis), African teak or oak (Oldfieldia

africana) and camwood (Baphia nitida.) The climbing plants in the tropical

forests are exceedingly luxuriant and the undergrowth or ``bush'' is extremely

dense. In the savannas the most characteristic trees are the monkey bread tree

or baobab (Adanisonia digitata), doom palm (Hyphaene) and euphorbias. The

coffee plant grows wild in such widely separated places as Liberia and southern

Abyssinia. The higher mountains have a special flora showing close agreement

over wide intervals of space, as well as affinities with the mountain flora of

the eastern Mediterranean, the Himalayas and Indo-China (cf. A. Engler, Uber

die Hochgebirgsflora des tropischen Afrika, 1892).

In the swamp regions of north-east Africa the papyrus and associated plants,

including the soft-wooded ambach, flourish in immense quantities—-and little

else is found in the way of vegetation. South Africa is largely destitute of

forest save in the lower valleys and coast regions. Tropical flora

disappears, and in the semi-desert plains the fleshy, leafless, contorted

species of kapsias, mesembryanthemums, aloes and other succulent plants make

their appearance. There are, too, valuable timber trees, such as the yellow

pine (Podocarpus elongatus), stinkwood (Ocotea), sneezewood or Cape ebony

(Pteroxylon utile) and ironwood. Extensive miniature woods of heaths are

found in almost endless variety and covered throughout the greater part of

the year with innumerable blossoms in which red is very prevalent. Of the

grasses of Africa alfa is very abundant in the plateaus of the Atlas range.

Fauna.—The fauna again shows the effect of the characteristics of the

vegetation. The open savannas are the home of large ungulates, especially

antelopes, the giraffe (peculiar to Africa), zebra, buffalo, wild ass and four

species of rhinoceros; and of carnivores, such as the lion, leopard, hyaena,

&c. The okapi (a genus restricted to Africa) is found only in the dense

forests of the Congo basin. Bears are confined to the Atlas region, wolves and

foxes to North Africa. The elephant (though its range has become restricted

through the attacks of hunters) is found both in the savannas and forest

regions, the latter being otherwise poor in large game, though the special

habitat of the chimpanzee and gorilla. Baboons and mandrills, with few

exceptions, are peculiar to Africa. The single-humped camel—as a domestic

animal—is especially characteristic of the northern deserts and steppes.

The rivers in the tropical zone abound with hippopotami and crocodiles, the

former entirely confined to Africa. The vast herds of game, formerly so

characteristic of many parts of Africa, have much diminished with the increase

of intercourse with the interior. Game reserves have, however, been established

in South Africa, British Central Africa, British East Africa, Somahland,

&c., while measures for the protection of wild animals were laid down in an

international convention signed in May 1900.

The ornithology of northern Affica presents a close resemblance to that of

southern Europe, scarcely a species being found which does not also occur in

the other countries bordering the Mediterranean. Among the birds most

characteristic of Africa are the ostrich and the secretary-bird. The ostrich

is widely dispersed, but is found chiefly in the desert and steppe regions.

The secretary-bird is common in the south. The weaver birds and their allies,

including the long-tailed whydahs, are abundant, as are, among game-birds,

the francolin and guinea-fowl. Nany of the smaller birds, such as the sun-

birds, bee-eaters, the parrots and halcyons, as well as the larger plantain-

eaters, are noted for the brilliance of their plumage. Of reptiles the lizard

and chameleon are common, and there are a number of venomous serpents, though

these are not so numerous as in other tropical countries. The scorpion is

abundant. Of insects Africa has many thousand different kinds; of these the

locust is the proverbial scourge of the continent, and the ravages of the

termites or white ants are almost incredible. The spread of malaria by means

of mosquitoes has already been mentioned. The tsetse fly, whose bite is fatal

to all domestic animals, is common in many districts of South and East

Africa. Fortunately it is found nowhere outside Africa. (E. HE.; F. R. C.)

1 With the islands, 11,498,000 sq. m.

2 Estimated.

3 See the calculations of Capt. T. T. Behrens, Geog. Journal, vol. xxix. (1907).

4 The estimate of Capt. H. G. Lyons in 1905 was 1,107,227 sq. mi.

5 including waterless tracts naturally belonging to the river-basin.

II. GEOLOGY

In shape and general geological structure Africa bears a close resemblance to

India. Both possess a meridional extension with a broad east and west folded

region in the north. In both a successive series of continental deposits,

ranging from the Carboniferous to the Rhaetic, rests on an older base of

crystalline rocks. In the words of Professor Suess, ``India and Africa are

true plateau countries.''

Of the primitive axes of Africa few traces remain. Both on the east and west

a broad zone of crystalline rochs extends parallel with the coast-line to

form the margin of the elevated plateau of the interior. Occasionally the

crystalline belt comes to the coast, but it is usually reached by two steps

known as the coastal belt and foot-plateau. On the flanks of the primitive

western axis certain ancient sedimentary strata are thrown into folds which

were completed before the commencement of the mesozoic period. In the south,

the later palaeozoic rocks are also thrown into acute folds by a movement

acting from the south, and which ceased towards the close of the mesozoic

period. In northern Africa the folded region of the Atlas belongs to the

comparatively recent date of the Alpine system. None of these earth movements

affected the interior, for here the continental mesozoic deposits rest,

undisturbed by folding, on the primary sedimentary and crystalline rocks. The

crystalline massif, therefore, presents a solid block which has remained

elevated since early palaeozoic times, and against which earth waves of

several geological periods have broken.

The formations older than the mesozoic are remarkably unfossiliferous, so

that the determination of their age is frequently a matter of speculation,

and in the following table the European equivalents of the pre-Karroo

formations in many regions must be regarded as subject to considerable

revision.

Rocks of Archean age cover wide areas in the interior, in West and East

Africa and across the Sahara. Along the coastal margins they underlie the

newer formations and appear in the deep valleys and kloofs wherever

denudation has laid them bare. The prevailing types are granites, gneisses

and schists. In the central regions the predominant strike of the fohae is

north and south. The rocks, for convenience classed as pre-Cambrian, occur as

several unconformable groups, chiefly developed in the south where alone

their stratigraphy has been determined. They are unfossiliferous, and in the

absence of undoubted Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian strata in Africa they

may be regarded as of older date than any of these formations. The general

occurrence of jasper-bearing rocks is of interest, as these are always

present in the ancient pressure-altered sedimentary formations of America and

Europe. Some unfossiliferous conglomerates, sandstones and dolomites in South

Africa and on the west coast are considered to belong to the Cambrian,

Ordovician and Silurian formations, but merely from their occurrence beneath

strata yielding Devonian fossils. In Cape Colony the Silurian age of the

Table Mountain Sandstone is based on such evidence.

The Devonian and Carboniferous formations are well represented in the north

and south and in northern Angola.

Up to the close of the palaeozoic period the relative positions of the

ancient land masses and oceans remain unsolved; but the absence of marine

strata of early palaeozoic age from Central Africa points to there being land

in this direction. In late Carboniferous times Africa and India were

undoubtedly united to form a large continent, called by Suess Gondwana Land.

In each country the same succession of the rocks is met with; over both the

same specialized orders of reptiles roamed and were entombed.

The interior of the African portion of Gondwana Land was occupied by several

large lakes in which an immense thickness—amounting to over 18,000 ft. in

South Africa—-of sandstones and marls, forming the Karroo system, was laid

down. This is par excellence the African formation, and covers immense areas

in South Africa and the Congo basin, with detached portions in East Africa.

During the whole of the time—-Carboniferous to Rhaetic—that this great

accumulation of freshwater beds was taking place, the interior of the

continent must have been undergoing depression. The commencement of the

period was marked by one of the most wonderful episodes in the geological

history of Africa. Preserved in the formation known as the Dwyka

Conglomerate, are evidences that at this time the greater portion of South

Africa was undergoing extreme glaciation, while the same conditions appear to

have prevailed in India

TABLE OF FORMATIONS

Sedimentary. Igneous.

Recent Alluvium; travertine;

coral; sand dunes; continental } Some volcanic islands;

dunes. Generally distributed } rift-valley volcanoes.

Pleistocene. Ancient alluviums and }

gravels; travertine. }

Generally distributed. } A long-continued

Pliocene. N. Africa; Madagascar. } succession in the

} central and northern

Miocene. N. Africa. } regions and among

} the island groups.

Oligocene. N. Africa. } Doubtfully represented

} south of the Zambezi.

Eocene. N. Africa, along east and }

west coasts; Madagascar. }

Cretaceous Extensively developed in } Diamond pipes of S.

N. Africa; along coast } Africa; Kaptian

and foot-plateaus in east } fissure eruptions;

and west; Madagascar. } Ashangi traps of

} Abyssinia

{Jurassic N. Africa; E. Africa;

K{ Madagascar; Stormberg } Chief volcanic period

a{ period (Rhaeric) in S. } in S. Africa

r{ Africa }

r{Trias. Beaufort Series in S. }

o{ Africa; Congo basin; }

o{ Central Africa; Algeria; }

{ Tunis. }

{Permian. Ecca Series in S. Africa. } Feebly, if anywhere

} developed.

Carboniferous. N. Africa; Sabaki Shales }

in E. Africa; Dwyka }

and Wittebery Series in }

South Africa }

Devonian. N. Africa; Angola; Bokkeveld } Not recorded.

Series in S. Africa }

Silurian. {Table Mountain Sandstone }

{ in S. Africa, Silurian(?). }

Ordovician. { Doubtfully represented } Klipriversberg and

{ in N. Africa, French } and Ventersdorp Series

Cambrian { Congo, Angola. and by } of the Transvaal (?).

{ Vaal River and Waterberg }

{ Series in S. Africa }

Pre-Cambrian. Quartzites, conglomerates }

phyllites, jasper-bearing } S. Africa and generally.

rocks and schists. }

Generally distributed. }

Archeaan. Gneisses and schists of the } Igneous complex of

continental platform. } sheared igneous

} rocks;granites.

and Australia. At the close of the Karroo period there was a remarkable

manifestation of volcanic activity which again has its parallel in the Deccan

traps of India.

How far the Karroo formation extended beyond its present confines has not

been determined. To the east it reached India. In the south all that can be

said is that it extended to the south of Worcester in Cape Colony. The

Crystal Mountains of Angola may represent its western boundary; while the

absence of mesozoic strata beneath the Cretaceous rocks of the mid-Sahara

indicates that the system of Karroo lakeland had here reached its most

northerly extension. Towards the close of the Karroo period, possibly about

the middle, the southern rim of the great central depression became ridged up

to form the folded regions of the Zwaarteberg, Cedarberg and Langeberg

mountains in Cape Colony. This folded belt gives Africa its abrupt southern

termination, and may be regarded as an embryonic indication of its present

outline. The exact date of the maximum development of this folding is

unknown, but it had done its work and some 10,000 ft. of strata had been

removed before the commencement of the Cretaceous period. It appears to

approximate in time to the similar earth movement and denudation at the close

of the palaeozoic period in Europe. It was doubtless connected with the

disruption of Gondwana Land, since it is known that this great alteration of

geographical outline commenced in Jurassic times.

The breaking up of Gondwana Land is usually considered to have been caused by

a series of blocks of country being let down by faulting with the consequent

formation of the Indian Ocean. Other blocks, termed horsts, remained unmoved,

the island of Madagascar affording a striking example. In the African portion

Ruwenzori is regarded by some geologists to be a block mountain or horst.

In Jurassic times 1he sea gained access to East Africa north of Mozambique,

but does not appear to have reached far beyond the foot-plateau except in

Abyssinia.

The Cretaceous seas appear to have extended into the central Saharan regions,

for fossils of this age have been discovered in the interior. On the west

coast Cretaceous rocks extend continuously from Mogador to Cape Blanco. From

here they are absent up to the Gabun river, where they commence to form a

narrow fringe as far as the Kunene river, though often overlain by recent

deposits. They are again absent up to the Sunday river in Cape Colony, where

Lower Cretaceous rocks (for long considered to be of Oolitic age) of an

inshore character are met with. Strata of Upper Cretaceous age occur in

Pondoland and Natal, and are of exceptional interest since the fossils show

an intermingling of Pacific types with other forms having European

affinities. In Mozambique and in German East Africa, Cretaceous rocks extend

from the coast to a distance inland of over 100 m.

Except in northern Africa, the Tertiary formations only occur in a few

isolated patches on the east and west coasts. In northern Africa they are

well developed and of much interest. They contain the well-known nummulitic

limestone of Eocene age, which has been traced from Egypt across Asia to

China. The Upper Eocene rocks of Egypt have also yielded primeval types of

the Proboscidea and other mammalia. Evidences for the greater extension of

the Eocene seas than was formerly considered to be the case have been

discovered around Sokoto. During Miocene times Passarge considers that the

region of the Zambezi underwent extreme desiccation.

The effect of the Glacial epoch in Europe is shown in northern Africa by the

moraines of the higher Atlas, and the wider extension of the glaciers on

Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Ruwenzori, and by the extensive accumulations of

gravel over the Sahara.

The earliest signs of igneous activity in Africa are to be found in the

granites, intrusive into the older rocks of the Cape peninsula, into those of

the Transvaal, and into the gneisses and schists of Central Africa. The

Ventersdorp boulder beds of the Transvaal may be of early palaeozoic age; but

as a whole the palaeozoic period in Africa was remarkably free from volcanic

and igneous disturbances. The close of the Stormberg period (Rhaetic) was one

of great volcanic activity in South Africa. Whilst the later Secondary and

Tertiary formations were being laid down in North Africa and around the

margins of the rest of the continent, Africa received its last great

accumulation of strata and at the same time underwent a consecutive series of

earth-movements. The additional strata consist of the immense quantities of

volcanic material on the plateau of East Africa, the basalt flows of West

Africa and possibly those of the Zambezi basin. The exact period of the

commencement of volcanic activity is unknown. In Abyssinia the Ashangi traps

are certainly post-Oolitic. In East Africa the fissure eruptions are

considered to belong to the Cretaceous. These early eruptions were followed

by those of Kenya, Mawenzi, Elgon, Chibcharagnani, and these by the eruptions

of Kibo, Longonot, Suswa and the Kyulu Mountains. The last phase of

vulcanicity took place along the great meridional rifts of East Africa, and

though feebly manifested has not entirely passed away. In northern Africa a

continuous sequence of volcanic events has taken place from Eocene times to

latest Tertiary; but in South Africa it is doubtful if there have been any

intrusions later then Cretaceous.

During this long continuance of vulcanicity, earth-movements were in

progress. In the north the chief movements gave rise to the system of

latitudinal folding and faulting of the Moroccan and Algerian Atlas, the last

stages being represented by the formation of the Algerian and Moroccan coast-

outline and the sundering of Europe from Africa at the Straits of Gibraltar.

Whilst northern Africa was being folded, the East African plateau was broken

up by a series of longitudinal rifts extending from Nyasaland to Egypt. The

depressed areas contain the long, narrow, precipitously walled lakes of East

Africa. The Red Sea also occupies a meridional trough.

Lastly there are the recent elevations of the northern coastal regions, the

Barbary coast and along the east coast. (W. G.*)

III. ETHNOLOGY In attempting a review of the races and tribes which inhabit

Africa, their distribution, movements and culture, it is advisable that three

points be borne in mind. The first of these is the comparative absence of

natural barriers in the interior, owing to which intercommunication between

tribes, the dissemination of culture and tribal migration have been

considerably facilitated. Hence the student must be prepared to find that, for

the most part, there are no sharp divisions to mark the extent of the various

races composing the population, but that the number of what may be termed

``transitional'' peoples is unusually large. The second point is that Africa,

with the exception of the lower Nile valley and what is known as Roman Africa

(see AFRICA, ROMAN), is, so far as its native inhabitants are concerned, a

continent practically without a history, and possessing no records from which

such a history might be reconstructed. The early movements of tribes, the

routes by which they reached their present abodes, and the origin of such forms

of culture as may be distinguished in the general mass of customs, beliefs,

&c., are largely matters of conjecture. The negro is essentially the child

of the moment; and his memory, both tribal and individual, is very short. The

third point is that many theories which have been formulated with respect to

such matters are unsatisfactory owing to the small amount of information

concerning many of the tribes in the interior.

The chief African races.

Excluding the Europeans who have found a home in various parts of Africa, and

the Asiatics, Chinese and natives of India introduced by them (see section

History below), the population of Africa consists of the following elements:

—the Bushman, the Negro, the Eastern Hamite, the Libyan and the Semite, from

the intermingling of which in various proportions a vast number of

``transitional'' tribes has arisen. The Bushmen (q.v.), a race of short

yellowish-brown nomad hunters, inhabited, in the earliest times of which there

is historic knowledge, the land adjoining the southern and eastern borders of

the Kalahari desert, into which they were gradually being forced by the

encroachment of the Hottentots and Bantu tribes. But signs of their former

presence are not wanting as far north as Lake Tanganyika, and even, it is

rumoured, still farther north. With them may be classed provisionally the

Hottentots, a pastoral people of medium stature and yellowish-brown complexion.

who in early times shared with the Bushmen the whole of what is now Cape

Colony. Though the racial affinities of the Hottentots have been disputed, the

most satisfactory view on the whole is that they represent a blend of Bushman,

Negroid and Hamitic elements. Practically the rest of Africa, from the southern

fringe of the Sahara and the upper valley of the Nile to the Cape, with the

exception of Abyssinia and Galla and Somali-lands, is peopled by Negroes and

the ``transitional'' tribes to which their admixture with Libyans on the north,

and Semites (Arabs) and Hamites on the north-east and east, has given rise. A

slight qualification of the last statement is necessary, in so far as, among

the Fula in the western Sudan, and the Ba-Hima, &c., of the Victoria

Nyanza, Libyan and Hamitic elements are respectively stronger than the Negroid.

Of the tracts excepted, Abyssinia is inhabited mainly by Semito-Hamites (though

a fairly strong negroid element can be found), and Somali and Galla-lands by

Hamites. North of the Sahara in Algeria and Morocco are the Libyans (Berbers,

q.v.), a distinctively white people, who have in certain respects (e.g.

religion) fallen under Arab influence. In the north-east the brown-skinned

Hamite and the Semite mingle in varied proportions. The Negroid peoples, which

inhabit the vast tracts of forest and savanna between the areas held by Bushmen

to the south and the Hamites, Semites and Libyans to the north, fall into two

groups divided by a line running from the Cameroon (Rio del Rey) crossing the

Ubangi river below the bend and passing between the Ituri and the Semliki

rivers, to Lake Albert and thence with a slight southerly trend to the coast.

North of this line are the Negroes proper, south are the Bantu. The division is

primarily philological. Among the true Negroes the greatest linguistic

confusion prevails; for instance, in certain parts of Nigeria it is possible to

find half-a-dozen villages within a comparatively small area speaking, not

different dialects, but different languages, a fact which adds greatly to the

difficulty of political administration. To the south of the line the condition

of affairs is entirely different; here the entire population speaks one or

another dialect of the Bantu Languages (q.v..) As said before, the division is

primarily linguistic and, especially upon the border line, does not always

correspond with the variations of physical type. At the same time it is

extremely convenient and to a certain extent justifiable on physical and

psychological grounds; and it may be said roughly that while the linguistic

uniformity of the Bantu is accompanied by great variation of physical type, the

converse is in the main true of the Negro proper, especially where least

affected by Libyan and Hamitic admixture, e.g. on the Guinea coast. The

variation of type among the Bantu is due probably to a varying admixture of

alien blood, which is more apparent as the east coast is approached. This

foreign element cannot be identified with certainty, but since the Bantu seem

to approach the Hamites in those points where they differ from the Negro

proper, and since the physical characteristics of Hamites and Semites are very

similar, it seems probable that the last two races have entered into the

composition of the Bantu, though it is highly improbable that Semitic influence

should have permeated any distance from the east coast. An extremely

interesting section of the population not hitherto mentioned is constituted by

the Pygmy tribes inhabiting the densely forested regions along the equator from

Uganda to the Gabun and living the life of nomadic hunters. The affinities of

this little people are undecided, owing to the small amount of knowledge

concerning them. The theories which connected them with the Bushmen do not seem

to be correct. It is more probable that they are to be classed among the

Negroids, with whom they appear to have intermingled to a certain extent in the

upper basin of the Ituri, and perhaps elsewhere. As far as is known they speak

no language peculiar to themselves but adopt that of the nearest agricultural

tribe. They are of a dark brown complexion, with very broad noses, lips but

slightly everted, and small but usually sturdy physique, though often

considerably emaciated owing to insufficiency of food. Another peculiar tribe,

also of short stature, are the Vaalpens of the steppe region of the north

Transvaal. Practically nothing is known of them except that they are said to be

very dark in colour and live in holes in the ground, and under rock shelters.

Principal ethnological zones.

Having indicated the chief races of which in various degrees of purity and

intermixture the population of Africa is formed, it remains to consider them in

greater detail, particularly from the cultural standpoint. This is hardly

possible without drawing attention to the main physical characters of the

continent, as far as they affect the inhabitants. For ethnological purposes

three principal zones may be distinguished; the first two are respectively a

large region of steppes and desert in the north, and a smaller region of

steppes and desert in the south. These two zones are connected by a vertical

strip of grassy highland lying mainly to the east of the chain of great lakes.

The third zone is a vast region of forest and rivers in the west centre,

comprising the greater part of the basin of the Congo and the Guinea coast. The

rainfall, which also has an important bearing upon the culture of peoples, will

be found on the whole to be greatest in the third zone and also in the eastern

highlands, and of course least in the desert, the steppes and savannas standing

midway between the two. As might be expected these variations are accompanied

by certain variations in culture. In the best-watered districts agriculture is

naturally of the greatest importance, except where the density of the forest

renders the work of clearing too arduous. The main portion therefore of the

inhabitants of the forest zone are agriculturists, save only the nomad Pygmies,

who live in the inmost recesses of the forest and support themselves by hunting

the game with which it abounds. Agriculture, too, flourishes in the eastern

highlands, and throughout the greater part of the steppe and savanna region of

the northern and southern zones, especially the latter. In fact the only Bantu

tribes who are not agriculturists are the Ova-Herero of German South-West

Africa, whose purely pastoral habits are the natural outcome of the barren

country they inhabit. But the wide open plains and slopes surrounding the

forest area are eminently suited to cattle-breeding, and there are few tribes

who do not take advantage of the fact. At the same time a natural check is

imposed upon the desire for cattle, which is so characteristic of the Bantu

peoples. This is constituted by the tsetse fly, which renders a pastoral life

absolutely impossible throughout large tracts in central and southern Africa.

In the northern zone this check is absent, and the number of more essentially

pastoral peoples, such as the eastern Hamites, Masai, Dinka, Fula, &c.,

correspondingly greater. The desert regions yield support only to nomadic

peoples, such as the Tuareg, Tibbu, Bedouins and Bushmen, though the presence

of numerous oases in the north renders the condition of life easier for the

inhabitants. Upon geographical conditions likewise depend to a large extent the

political conditions prevailing among the various tribes. Thus among the

wandering tribes of the desert and of the heart of the forests, where large

communities are impossible, a patriarchal system prevails with the family as

the unit. Where the forest is less dense and small agricultural communities

begin to make their appearance, the unit expands to the village with its

headman. Where the forest thins to the savanna and steppe, and communication is

easier, are found the larger kingdoms and ``empires'' such as, in the north

those established by the Songhai, Hausa, Fula, Bagirmi, Ba-Hima, &c., and

in the south the states of Lunda, Kazembe, the Ba-Rotse, &c.

But if ease of communication is favourable to the rise of large states and

the cultural progress that usually accompanies it, it is, nevertheless, often

fatal to the very culture which, at first, it fostered, in so far as the

absence of natural boundaries renders invasion easy. A good example of this

is furnished by the history of the western Sudan and particularly of East and

South-East Africa. From its geographical position Africa looks naturally to

the east, and it is on this side that it has been most affected by external

culture both by land (across the Sinaitic peninsula) and by sea. Though a

certain amount of Indonesian and even aboriginal Indian influence has been

traced in African ethnography, the people who have produced the most serious

ethnic disturbances (apart from modern Europeans) are the Arabs. This is

particularly the case in East Africa, where the systematic slave raids

organized by them and carried out with the assistance of various warlike

tribes reduced vast regions to a state of desolation. In the north and west

of Africa, however, the Arab has had a less destructive but more extensive

and permanent influence in spreading the Mahommedan religion throughout the

whole of the Sudan.

The characteristic African culture.

The fact that the physical geography of Africa affords fewer natural

obstacles to racial movements on the side most exposed to foreign influence,

renders it obvious that the culture most characteristically African must be

sought on the other side. It is therefore in the forests of the Congo, and

among the lagoons and estuaries of the Guinea coast, that this earlier

culture will most probably be found. That there is a culture distinctive of

this area, irrespective of the linguistic line dividing the Bantu from the

Negro proper, has now been recognized. Its main features may be summed as

follows:—-a purely agricultural life, with the plantain, yam and manioc (the

last two of American origin) as the staple food; cannibalism common;

rectangular houses with ridged roofs; scar-tattooing; clothing of bark-cloth

or palm-fibre; occasional chipping or extraction of upper incisors; bows with

strings of cane, as the, principal weapons, shields of wood or wickerwork;

religion, a primitive form of fetishism with the belief that death is due to

witchcraft; ordeals, secret societies, the use of masks and anthropomorphic

figures, and wooden gongs. With this may be contrasted the culture of the

Bantu peoples to the south and east, also agriculturists, but in addition,

where possible, great cattle-breeders, whose staple food is millet and milk.

These are distinguished by circular huts with domed or conical roofs;

clothing of skin or leather; occasional chipping or extraction of lower

incisors; spears as the principal weapons, bows, where found, with a sinew

cord, shields of hide or leather; religion, ancestor-worship with belief in

the power of the magicians as rain-makers. Though this difference in culture

may well be explained on the supposition that the first is the older and more

representative of Africa, this theory must not be pushed too far. Many of the

distinguishing characteristics of the two regions are doubtless due simply to

environment, even the difference in religion. Ancestor-worship occurs most

naturally among a people where tribal organization has reached a fairly

advanced stage, and is the natural outcome of patriotic reverence for a

successful chief and his councillors. Rain-making, too, is of little

importance in a well-watered region, but a matter of vital interest to an

agricultural people where the rainfall is slight and irregular.

Within the eastern and southern Bantu area certain cultural variations occur;

beehive huts are found among the Zulu-Xosa and Herero, giving place among the

Bechuana to the cylindrical variety with conical roof, a type which, with few

exceptions, extends north to Abyssinia. The tanged spearhead characteristic

of the south is replaced by the socketed variety towards the north.

Circumcision, characteristic of the Zulu-Xosa and Bechuana, is not practised

by many tribes farther north; tooth-mutilation, on the contrary, is absent

among the more southern tribes. The lip-plug is found in the eastern area,

especially among the Nyasa tribes, but not in the south. The head-rest common

in the south-east and the southern fringe of the forest area is not found far

north of Tanganyika until the Horn of Africa is reached.

In the regions outside the western area occupied by the Negro proper, exclusive

of the upper Nile, the similarities of culture outweigh the differences. Here

the cylindrical type of hut prevails; clothing is of skin or leather but is

very scanty; iron ornaments are worn in profusion; arrows are not feathered;

shields of hide, spears with leather sheaths are found and also fighting

bracelets. Certain small differences appear between the eastern and western

portions, the dividing line being formed by the boundary between Bornu and

Hausaland. Characteristic of the east are the harp and the throwing-club and

throwing-knife, the last of which has penetrated into the forest area. Typical

of the west are the bow and the dagger with the ring hilt. The tribes of the

upper Nile are somewhat specialized, though here, too, are found the

cylindrical hut, iron ornaments, fighting bracelets, &c., characteristic of

the Sudanese tribes. Here the removal of the lower incisors is common, and

circumcision entirely absent. Throughout the rest of the Sudan is found Semitic

culture introduced by the Arabized Libyan. Circumcision, as is usual among

Mahommedan tribes, is universal, and tooth-mutilation absent; of other

characteristics, the use of the sword has penetrated to the northern portion of

the forest area. The culture prevailing in the Horn of Africa is, naturally,

mainly Hamito-Semitic; here are found both cyhnddcal and bee-hive huts, the

sword (which has been adopted by the Masai to the south), the lyre (which has

found its way to some of the Nilotic tribes) and the head-rest. Circumcision is

practically universal.

As has been said earlier, the history of Africa reaches back but a short

distance, except, of course, as far as the lower Nile valley and Roman Africa

is concerned; elsewhere no records exist, save tribal traditions, and these

only relate to very recent events. Even archaeology, which can often sketch

the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically powerless, owing

to the insufficiency of data. It is true that stone imple. ments of

palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the Nile valley,

Somaliland, on the Zambezi, in Cape Colony and the northern portions of the

Congo Free State, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia; but the localities are

far too few and too widely separated to warrant the inference that they are

to be in any way connected. Moreover, where stone implements are found they

are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the surface of the earth;

nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification of Europe, and

consequently no argument based on geological grounds is possible.

The lower Nile valley, however, forms an exception; flint implements of a

palaeolithic type have been found near Thebes. not only on the surface of the

ground, which for several thousand years has been desert owing to the

contraction of the river-bed, but also in stratified gravel of an older date.

References to a number of papers bearing on the discussion to which then

discovery has given rise may be found in an article by Mr H. R. Hall in Man,

1905, No. 19. The Egyptian and also the Somali land finds appear to be true

palaeoliths in type and remarkably similar to those found in Europe. But

evidence bearing on the Stone age in Africa, if the latter existed apart from

the localities mentioned, is so slight that little can be said save that from

the available evidence the palaeoliths of the Nile valley alone can with any

degree of certainty be assigned to a remote period of antiquity, and that the

chips scattered over Mashonaland and the regions occupied within historic

times by Bushmen are the most recent; since it has been shown that the stone

flakes were used by the medieval Makalanga to engrave their hard pottery and

the Bushmen were still using stone implements in the 19th century. Other

early remains, but of equally uncertain date, are the stone circles of

Algeria, the Cross river and the Gambia. The large system of ruined forts and

``cities'' in Mashonaland, at Zimbabwe and elsewhere, concerning which so

many ingenious theories have been woven, have been proved to date from

medieval times.

Origin and spread of the racial stocks.

Thus while in Europe there is a Stone age. divided into periods according to

various types of implement disposed in geological strata, and followed in

orderly succession by the ages of Bronze and Iron, in Africa can be found no

true Stone age and practically no Bronze at all. The reason is not far to

seek; Africa is a country of iron, which is found distributed widely

throughout the continent in ores so rich that the metal can be extracted with

very little trouble and by the simplest methods. Iron has been worked from

time immemorial by the Negroid peoples, and whole tribes are found whose

chief industry is the smelting and forging of the metal. Under such

conditions, questions relating to the origin and spread of the racial stocks

which form the population of Africa cannot be answered with any certainty; at

best only a certain amount of probability can be attained.

Five of these racial stocks have been mentioned: Bushman, Negro, Hamite,

Semite, Libyan, the last three probably related through some common ancestor.

Of these the honour of being considered the most truly African belongs to the

two first. It is true that people of Negroid type are found elsewhere,

principally in Melanesia, but as yet their possible connexion with the

African Negro is little more than theoretical, and for the present purposes

it need not be considered.

The origin of the Bushman is lost in obscurity, but he may be conceived as

the original inhabitant of the southern portion of the continent. The

original home of the Negro, at first an agriculturist, is most probably to be

found in the neighbourhood of the great lakes, whence he penetrated along the

fringe of the Sahara to the west and across the eastern highlands southward.

Northerly expansion was prevented by the early occupation of the Nile valley,

the only easy route to the Mediterranean, but there seems no doubt that the

population of ancient Egypt contained a distinct Negroid element. The

question as to the ethnic affinities of the pre-dynastic Egyptians is still

unsolved; but they may be regarded as, in the main, Hamitic, though it is a

question how far it is just to apply a name which implies a definite

specialization in what may be comparatively modern times to a people of such

antiquity.

The Horn of Africa appears to have been the centre from which the Hamites

spread, and the pressure they seem to have applied to the Negro tribes,

themselves also in process of expansion, sent forth larger waves of emigrants

from the latter. These emigrants, already affected by the Hamitic pastoral

culture, and with a strain of Hamitic blood in their veins, passed rapidly

down the open tract in the east, doubtless exterminating their predecessors,

except such few as took refuge in the mountains and swamps. The advance-guard

of this wave of pastoral Negroids, in fact primitive Bantu, mingled with the

Bushmen and produced the Hottentots. The penetration of the forest area must

certainly have taken longer and was probably accomplished as much from the

south-east, up the Zambezi valley, as from any other quarter. It was a more

peaceful process, since natural obstacles are unfavourable to rapid movements

of large bodies of immigrants, though not so serious as to prevent the spread

of language and culture. A modern parallel to the spread of Bantu speech is

found in the rise of the Hausa language, which is gradually enlarging its

sphere of influence in the western and central Sudan. Thus those qualities,

physical and otherwise, in which the Bantu approach the Hamites gradually

fade as we proceed westward through the Congo basin, while in the east, among

the tribes to the west of Tanganyika and on the upper Zambezi,

``transitional'' forms of culture are found. In later times this gradual

pressure from the south-east became greater, and resulted, at a comparatively

recent date, in the irruption of the Fang into the Gabun.

The earlier stages of the southern movement must have been accompanied by a

similar movement westward between the Sahara and the forest; and, probably,

at the same time, or even earlier, the Libyans crossing the desert had begun

to press upon the primitive Negroes from the north. In this way were produced

the Fula, who mingled further with the Negro to give birth to the Mandingo,

Wolof and Tukulor. It would appear that either Libyan (Fula) or, less

probably, Hamitic, blood enters into the composition of the Zandeh peoples on

the Nile-Congo watershed. These Libyans or Berbers, included by G. Sergi in

his ``Mediterranean Race,'' were active on the north coast of Africa in very

early times, and had relations with the Egyptians from a prehistoric period.

For long these movements continued, always in the same direction, from north

to south and from east to west; though, of course, more rapid changes took

place in the open country, especially in the great eastern highway from north

to south, than in the forest area. Large states arose in the western Sudan;

Ghana flourished in the 7th century A.D., Melle in the 11th, Songhai in the

14th, and Bornu in the 16th.

Meanwhile in the east began the southerly movement of the Bechuana, which was

probably,spread over a considerable period. Later than they, hut proceeding

faster, came the Zulu-Xosa (``Kaffir'') peoples, who followed a line nearer

the coast and outflanked them, surrounding them on the south. Then followed a

time of great ethnical confusion in South Africa, during which tribes

flourished, split up and disappeared; but ere this the culture represented by

the ruins in Rhodesia had waxed and waned. It is uncertain who were the

builders of the forts and ``cities,'' but it is not improbable that they may

be found to have been early Bechuana. The Zulu-Xosa, Bechuana and Herero

together form a group which may conveniently be termed ``Southern Bantu.',

Finally began a movement hitherto unparalleled in the history of African

migration; certain peoples of Zulu blood began to press north, spreading

destruction in their wake. Of these the principal were the Matabele and Angoni.

The movement continued as far as the Victoria Nyanza. Here, on the border-line

of Negro, Bantu and Hamite, important changes had taken place. Certain of the

Negro tribes had retired to the swamps of the Nile, and had become somewhat

specialized, both physically and culturally (Shilluk, Dinka, Alur, Acholi,

&c.). These had blended with the Hamites to produce such races as the Masai

and kindred tribes. The old Kitwara empire, which comprised the plateau land

between the Ruwenzori range and Kavirondo, had broken up into small states,

usually governed by a Hamitic (Ba-Hima) aristocracy. The more extensive Zang

(Zenj) empire, of which. the name Zanzibar (Zanguebar) is a lasting memorial,

extending along the sea-board from Somaliland to the Zambezi, was also extinct.

The Arabs had established themselves firmly on the coast, and thence made

continual slave-raids into the interior, penetrating later to the Congo. The

Swahili, inhabiting the coast-line from the equator to about 16 deg. S., are a

somewhat heterogeneous mixture of Bantu with a tinge of Arab blood.

In the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza, where Hamite, Bantu, Nilotic Negro and

Pygmy are found in close contact, the ethnic relations of tribes are often

puzzling, but the Bantu not under a Hamitic domination have been divided by F.

Stuhlmann into the Older Bantu (Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma, Wasambara, Waseguha,

Wasagara, Wasaramo, &c.) and the Bantu of Later Immigration (Wakikuyu,

Wakamba, Wapokomo, Wataita, Wachaga, &c.), who are more strongly Hamitized

and in many cases have adopted Masai customs. These peoples, from the Victoria

Nyanza to the Zambezi, may conveniently be termed the ``Eastern Bantu.''

Turning to the Congo basin in the south, the great Luba and Lunda peoples are

found stretching nearly across the continent, the latter, from at any rate the

end of the 16th century until the close of the 19th century, more or less

united under a single ruler, styled Muata Yanvo. These seem to have been the

most recent immigrants from the south-east, and to exhibit certain affinities

with the Barotse on the upper Zambezi. Among the western Baluba, or Bashilange,

a remarkable politico-religious revolution took place at a comparatively recent

date, initiated by a secret society termed Bena Riamba or ``Sons of Hemp,'' and

resulted in the subordination of the old fetishism to a cult of hemp, in

accordance with which all hemp-smokers consider themselves brothers, and the

duty of mutual hospitality, &c., is acknowledged. North of these, in the

great bend of the Congo, are the Balolo, &c., the Balolo a nation of

iron-workers; and westward, on the Kasai, the Bakuba, and a large number of

tribes as yet imperfectly known. Farther west are the tribes of Angola, many of

whom were included within the old ``Congo empire,'' of which the kingdom of

Loango was an offshoot. North of the latter lies the Gabun, with a large number

of small tribes dominated by the Fang who are recent arrivals from the Congo.

Farther to the north are the Bali and other tribes of the Cameroon, among whom

many primitive Negroid elements begin to appear. Eastward are the Zandeh

peoples of the Welle district (primitive Negroids with a Hamitic or, more

probably, Libyan strain), with whom the Dor trine of Nilotes on their eastern

border show certain affinities; while to the west along the coast are the

Guinea Negroes of primitive type. Here, amidst great linguistic confusion, may

be distinguished the tribes of Yoruba speech in the Niger delta and the east

portion of the Slave Coast; those of Ewe speech, in the western portion of the

latter; and those of Ga and Tshi speech, on the Gold Coast. Among the last two

groups respectively may be mentioned the Dahomi and Ashanti. Similar tribes are

found along the coast to the Bissagos Islands, though the introduction in

Sierra Leone and Liberia of settlements of repatriated slaves from the American

plantations has in those places modified the original ethnic distribution.

Leaving the forest zone and entering the more open country there are, on the

north from the Niger to the Nile, a number of Negroids strongly tinged with

Libyan blood and professing the Mahommedan religion. Such are the Mandingo, the

Songhai, the Fula, Hausa, Kanuri, Bagirmi, Kanembu, and the peoples of Wadai

and Darfur; the few aborigines who persist, on the southern fringe of the Chad

basin, are imperfectly known.

Peculiar conditions in Madagascar.

The island of Madagascar, belonging to the African continent, still remains

for discussion. Here the ethnological conditions are people were the Hova, a

Malayo-Indonesian people who must have come from the Malay Peninsula or the

adjacent islands. The date of their immigration has been line subject of a

good deal of dispute, but it may be argued that their arrival must have taken

place in early times, since Malagasy speech, which is the language of the

island, is principally Malayo-Polynesian in origin, and contains no traces of

Sanskrit. Such traces, introduced with Hinduism, are present in all the

cultivated languages of Malaysia at the present day.The Hova occupy the

table-land of Imerina and form the first of the three main groups into which

the population of Madagascar may be divided. They are short, of an olive-

yellow complexion and have straight or faintly wavy hair. On the east coast

are the Malagasy, who in physical characteristics stand halfway between the

Hova and the Sakalava, the last occupying the remaining portion of the island

and displaying almost pure Negroid characteristics.

Though the Hova belong to a race naturally addicted to seafaring, the

contrary is the case respecting the Negroid population, and the presence of

the latter in the island has been explained by the supposition that they were

imported by the Hova. Other authorities assign less antiquity to the Hova

immigration and believe that they found the Negroid tribes already in

occupation of the island.

As might be expected, the culture found in Madagascar contains two elements,

Negroid and Malayo-Indonesian. The first of these two shows certain affinities

with the culture characteristic of the western area of Africa, such as

rectangular huts, clothing of bark and palm-fibre, fetishism, &c., but

cattle-breeding is found as well as agriculture. However, the Negroid tribes

are more and more adopting the customs and mode of life of the Hova, among whom

are found pile-houses, the sarong, yadi or tabu applied to food, a non-African

form of bellows, &c., all characteristic of their original home. The Hova,

during the 19th century, embraced Christianity, but retain, nevertheless, many

of their old animistic beliefs; their original social organization in three

classes, andriana or nobles, hova or freemen, and andevo or slaves, has been

modified by the French, who have abolished kingship and slavery. An Arab

infusion is also to be noticed, especially on the north-east and south-east

coasts.

It is impossible to give a complete list of the tribes inhabiting Africa,

owing to the fact that the country is not fully explored. Even where the

names of the tribes are known their ethnic relations are still a matter of

uncertainty in many localities.

The following list, therefore, must be regarded as purely tentative, and

liable to correction in the light of fuller information:-

AFRICAN TRIBAL DISTRIBUTION

LIBYANS

(North Africa, excluding Egypt)

Berbers, including – Kabyles, Mzab, Shawia, Tuareg

LIBYO-NEGROID TRANSITIONAL

Fula (West Sudan)

Tibbu (Central Sudan)

HAMITES

(East Sudan and Horn of Africa)

Beja, including – Ababda, Hadendoa, Bisharin, Beni-Amer, Hamran, Galla,

Somali, Danakil (Afar)

Ba-Hima, including — Wa-Tussi, Wa-Hha, Wa-Rundi, Wa-Ruanda

HAMITO-SEMITES

Fellahin (Egypt)

Abyssinians (with Negroid admixture)

HAMITO-NEGROID TRANSITIONAL

Masai

Wa-Kuafi

NEGROID TRIBES

West Sudan Central Sudan Eastern

Tukulor Songhai Fur Kargo

Wolof Hausa Dago Kulfan

Serer Bagirmi Kunjara Kolaji

Leybu Kanembu Tegele Tumali

Mandingo, including— Kanuri Nuba

Kassonke Tama

Yallonke Maba Zandeh Tribes

Soninke Birkit (Akin to Nilotics, but

Bambara Massalit probably with Fula

Vei Korunga element)

Susu Kabbaga Azandeh (Niam Niam)

Solima &c. Makaraka

Malinke Mundu

Mangbettu

Probably also— Ababwa

Mossi Mege

Borgu Abisanga

Tombo } Mabode{ probably

Gurma } Momfu { with Pygmy

Gurunga } { element

Dagomba } Probably with Mandingan element Allied are—

Mampursi } Banziri Languassi

Gonja } Ndris Wia-Wia

&c. } Togbo Awaka

&c.

NEGROES

West African Tribes

Tribes of Tshi and Ga Tribes of Yeruba

speech, including—- speech, including—

Khabunke

Balanta Ashanti Yoruba

Bagnori Safwi Ibadan

Bagnum Denkera Ketu

Felup, including— Bekwai Egba

Ayamat Nkoranza Jebu

Jola Adansi Remo

Jigush Assin Ode

Vaca Wassaw Illorin

Joat Ahanta Ijesa

Karon Fanti Ondo

Banyum Angona Mahin

Banjar Akwapim Bini

Fulum Akim Kakanda

Bayot Akwamu Wari

&c. Kwao Ibo

Bujagos Ga Efik

Biafare Andoni

Landuman Tribes of Ewe speech, Kwa

Nalu including— Ibibio

Baga Ekoi

Sape Dahomi Inokun

Bulam Eweawo Akunakuim

Mendi Agotine Munshi

Limba Krepi Ikwe

Gallina Avenor

Timni Awuna

Pessi Agbosomi

Gola Aflao

Kondo Ataklu

Bassa Krikor

Kru Geng

Grebo Attaldoami

Awekwom Aja

Agni Ewemi

Oshiu Appa

Central Negroes Eastern Negroes

Bolo Pure Nilotics

Yako Shilluk

Tangala Nuer

Kali Dinka

Mishi Jur (Diur)

Doma Mittu

Mosgu, including— Jibbeh

Mandara Madi

Margi Lendu

Logon Alur (Lur)

Gamergu Acholi

Keribina Abaka

Kuri Golo

&c.

Nilotics with affinity

Nilotics with Affinity with Masai

with Zandeh tribes Latuka

Dor (Bongo) Bari

NEGRO-BANTU NILOTIC-BANTU

TRANSITIONAL TRANSITIONAL

Bali Ba-Kwiri Ja-Luo

Ba-Kossi Abo

Ba-Ngwa Dualla

Ba-Nyang Bassa PYGMY TRIBES

Ngolo Ba-Noko Central Arica

Ba-Fo Ba-Puko Akka

Ba-Kundu Ba-Koko Ja-Mbute

Isubu Ba-Bongo

Ashango

&c.

BANTU NEGROIDS

Western Central Eastern

Ogowe Luba-Lunda Group Lacustrians

Ashira Ba-Luba, including— Ba-Nyoro

Ishogo Ba-Songe Ba-Toro

Ashango Wa-Rua Wa-Siba

Bakalai Wa-Guha Wa-Sinja

Nkomi Katanga Wa-Kerewe

Orungu Ba-Shilange (with Wa-Shashi

Mpongwe Ba-Kete element) Wa-Rundi

Oshekiani Ba-Iro

Benga Ba-Lunda Ba-Ganda

Ininga Probably connected Ba-Soga

Galao are— Ba-Kavirondo,

Apingi Manyema including—

Okanda Ba-Kumu Awaware

Osaka Wa-Regga Awarimi

Aduma Ba-Rotse, including— Awakisii

Mbamba Ma-Mbunda &c.

Umbete Ma-Supia

Bule Ma-Shukulumbwe

Bane Ba-Tonga Bantu of Recent

Yaunde and probably Immigration

Maka Va-Lovale

Bomone Wa-Kikuyu

Kunabembe Tribes of the Congo Wa-Kamba

Fang (recent immigrants bend Wa-Pokomo

from the Congo group) Ba-Kessu Wa-Duruma

Ba-Tetela Wa-Digo

Ba-Songo Mino Wa-Giriama

Ba-Kuba Wa-Taita

Ba-Kongo, Ba-Lolo Wa-Nyatura

including— Ba-Kuti Wa-Iramba

Mushi-Kongo Ba-Mbala Wa-Mbugwe

Mussorongo Ba-Huana Wa-Kaguru

Kabinda Ba-Yaka Wa-Gogo { possible

Ka-Kongo Ba-Pindi Wa-Chaga { Masai

Ba-Vili Ba-Kwese { element

Ma-Yumbe &c.

Ba-Lumbo Older Bantu

Ba-Sundi Tribes of the Congo Wa-Nyamwezi,

Ba-Bwende bank including—

Ba-Lali Wa-Genia Wa-Sukuma }Trans-

Ba-Kunya Ba-Soko Wa-Sumbwa }itional

Ba-Poto Wa-Nyanyembe }to

Mobali Wa-Jui }Bantu

Mogwandi Wa-Kimbu }of

Na-Ngala{ Connected Wa-Kanongo }recent

Ba-Bangi{ with Zandeh Wa-Wende }immi-

{ group }gration

Wa-Buma

Ba-Nunu Wa-Gunda

Ba-Loi Wa-Guru

Ba-Teke Wa-Galla

Wa-Pfuru Wa-Sambara

Wa-Mbundu Wa-Seguha

Wa-Mfumu Wa-Nguru

Ba-Nsinik Wa-Sagara

Ma-Wumba Wa-Doe

Ma-Yakalia Wa-Khutu

&c Wa-Sarmo

Wa-Hehe

TRANSITIONAL Wa-Bena

FROM CENTRAL Wa-Sanga

TO SOUTHERN Wa-Swahili (with Arab

BANTU elements)

Amoela Connected are—

Ganguela Wa-Kisi

Kioko Wa-Mpoto }

Minungo Ba-Tonga }

Imbangala Ba-Tumbuka }

Ba-Achinji Wa-Nyika }

Golo Wa-Nyamwanga } Akin to

Hollo A-Mambwe } Luba-

&c. Wa-Fipa } Lunda

Mbunda peoples, Wa-Rungu } group

including— A-Wemba }

Bihe A-Chewa }

Dembo A-Maravi }

Mbaka Ba-Senga }

Ngola Ba-Bisa }

Bondo A-Jawa (Yaos)

Ba-Ngala Wa-Mwera

Songo Wa-Gindo

Haku Ma-Konde

Lubolo Ma-Wia

Kisama Ma-Nganja

&c. Ma-Kua

SOUTHERN BANTU

(South and South-East Africa)

Ba-Nyai } Ama-Zulu, including—

Ma-Kalanga, } Affinity Ama-Swazi

including } with Ama-Tonga

Mashona } Bechuana Matabele

Ba-Ronga } Angoni

Ba-Chuana, Ma-Gwangwara

including— Ma-Huhu

Ba-Tlapin Ma-Viti

Ba-Rolong Ma-Situ

Ba-Ratlou Ma-Henge

Ba-Taung &c.

Ba-Rapulana Ama-Xosa, including—

Ba-Seleka Ama-Gcaleka

Ba-Hurutsi Ama-Hahebe

Ba-Tlaru Ama-Ngqika

Ba-Mangwato Ama-Tembu

Ba-Tauana Ama-Pondo

Ba-Ngwaketse &c.

Ba-Kuena Ova-Herero

&c. Ova-Mpo

HAMITO-BANTU BUSHMEN

BUSHMEN

TRANSITIONAL

Hottentots, }

including— } S. W.

Namaqua } Africa

Koranna }

TRIBES IN MADAGASCAR

MALAYO-INDONESIANS BANTU-NEGROIDS

Hova Sakalava, including—

Betsileo (slight Bantu admixture) Menabe

Milaka

HOVA-BANTU Ronandra

TRANSITIONAL Mahafali

&c.

Malagasy, including—

Bestimisaraka Antanosi

Antambahoaka Antsihanaka

Antaimoro Antanala

Antaifasina Antaisara

Antaisaka &c.

IV. HISTORY

The origin and meaning of the name of the continent are discussed elsewhere

(see AFRICA, ROMAN.) The word Africa was applied originally to the country in

the immediate neighbourhood of Carthage, that part of the continent first

known to the Romans, and it was subsequently extended with their increasing

knowledge, till it came at last to include all that they knew of the

continent. The Arabs still confine the name Ifrikia to the territory of

Tunisia.

Phoenician and Greek colonization.

The valley of the lower Nile was the home in remotest antiquity of a

civilized race. Egyptian culture had, however, remarkably little direct

influence on the rest of the continent, a result due in large measure to the

fact that Egypt is shut off landwards by immense deserts. If ancient Egypt

and Ethiopia (q.v.) be excluded, the story of Africa is largely a record of

the doings of its Asiatic and European conquerors and colonizers, Abyssinia

being the only state which throughout historic times has maintained its

independence. The countries bordering the Mediterranean were first exploited

by the Phoenicians, whose earliest settlements were made before 1000 B.C.

Carthage, founded about 800 B.C., speedily grew into a city without rival in

the Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians, subduing the Berber tribes, who then

as now formed the bulk of the population, became masters of all the habitable

region of North Africa west of the Great Syrtis, and found in commerce a

source of immense prosperity. Both Egyptians and Carthaginians made attempts

to reach the unknown parts of the continent by sea. Herodotus relates that an

expedition under Phoenician navigators, employed by Necho, king of Egypt, c.

600 B.C., circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, a

voyage stated to have been accomplished in three years. Apart from the

reported circumnavigation of the continent, the west coast was well known to

the Phoenicians as far as Cape Nun, and c. 520 B.C. Hanno, a Carthaginian,

explored the coast as far, perhaps, as the Bight of Benin, certainly as far

as Sierra Leone. A vague knowledge of the Niger regions was also possessed by

the Phoenicians.

Meantime the first European colonists had planted themselves in Africa. At

the point where the continent approaches nearest the Greek islands, Greeks

founded the city of Cyrene (c. 631 B.C..) Cyrenaica became a flourishing

colony, though being hemmed in on all sides by absolute desert it had little

or no influence on inner Africa. The Greeks, however, exerted a powerful

influence in Egypt. To Alexander the Great the city of Alexandria owes its

foundation (332 B.C.), and under the Hellenistic dynasty of the Ptolemies

attempts were made to penetrate southward, and in this way was obtained some

knowledge of Abyssinia. Neither Cyrenaica nor Egypt was a serious rival to

the Carthaginians, but all three powers were eventually supplanted by the

Romans. After centuries of rivalry for supremacy1 the struggle was ended by

the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C. Within little more than a century from that

date Egypt and Cyrene had become incorporated in the Roman empire. Under Rome

the settled portions of the country were very prosperous, and a Latin strain

was introduced into the land. Though Fezzan was occupied by them, the Romans

elsewhere found the Sahara an impassable barrier. Nubia and Abyssinia were

reached, but an expedition sent by the emperor Nero to discover the source of

the Nile ended in failure. The utmost extent of geographical knowledge of the

continent is shown in the writings of Ptolemy (2nd century A.D.), who knew of

or guessed the existence of the great lake reservoirs of the Nile and had

heard of the river Niger. Still Africa for the civilized world remained

simply the countries bordering the Mediterranean. The continual struggle

between Rome and the Berber tribes; the introduction of Christianity and the

glories and sufferings of the Egyptian and African Churches; the invasion and

conquest of the African provinces by the Vandals in the 5th century; the

passing of the supreme power in the following century to the Byzantine

empire—all these events are told fully elsewhere.

In the 7th century of the Christian era occurred an event destined to have a

permanent influence on the whole continent.

North Africa conquered by the Arabs.

Invading first Egypt, an Arab host, fanatical believers in the new faith of

Mahomet, conquered the whole country from the Red Sea to the Atlantic and

carried the Crescent into Spain. Throughout North Africa Christianity well-

nigh disappeared, save in Egypt (where the Coptic Church was suffered to

exist), and Upper Nubia and Abyssinia, which were not subdued by the Moslems.

In the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries the Arabs in Africa were numerically weak;

they held the countries they had conquered by the sword only, but in the 11th

century there was a great Arab immigration, resulting in a large absorption

of Berber blood. Even before this the Berbers had very generally adopted the

speech and religion of their conquerors. Arab influence and the Mahommedan

religion thus became indelibly stamped on northern Africa. Together they

spread southward across the Sahara. They also became firmly established along

the eastern sea-board, where Arabs, Persians and Indians planted flourishing

colonies, such as Mombasa, Malindi and Sofala, playing a role, maritime and

commercial, analogous to that filled in earlier centuries by the

Carthaginians on the northern sea-board. Of these eastern cities and states

both Europe and the Arabs of North Africa were long ignorant.

The first Arab invaders had recognized the authority of the caliphs of

Bagdad, and the Aghlabite dynasty—founded by Aghlab, one of Haroun al

Raschid's generals, at the close of the 8th century—ruled as vassals of the

caliphate. However, early in the 10th century the Fatimite dynasty

established itself in Egypt, where Cairo had been founded A.D. 968, and from

there ruled as far west as the Atlantic. Later still arose other dynasties

Appearance of the Turks.

such as the Almoravides and Almohades. Eventually the Turks, who had conquered

Constantinople in 1453, and had seized Egypt in 1517, established the regencies

of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (between 1519 and 1551), Morocco remaining an

independent Arabized Berber state under the Sharifan dynasty, which had its

beginnings at the end of the 13th century. Under the earlier

dynasties Arabian or Moorish culture had attained a high degree of excellence,

while the spirit of adventure and the proselytizing zeal of the followers of

Islam led to a considerable extension of the knowledge of the continent. This

was rendered more easy by their use of the camel (first introduced into Africa

by the Persian conquerors of Egypt), which enabled the Arabs to traverse the

desert. In this way Senegambia and the middle Niger regions fell under the

influence of the Arabs and Berbers, but it was not until 1591 that Timbuktu—a

city founded in the 11th century—became Moslem. That city had been reached in

1352 by the great Arab traveller Ibn Batuta, to whose journey to Mombasa and

Quiloa (Kilwa) was due the first accurate knowledge of those flourishing Moslem

cities on the east African sea-boards. Except along this sea-board, which was

colonized directly from Asia, Arab progress southward was stopped by the broad

belt of dense forest which, stretching almost across the continent somewhat

south of 10 deg. N., barred their advance as effectually as had the Sahara that

of their predecessors, and cut them off from knowledge of the Guinea coast and

of all Africa beyond. One of the regions which came latest under Arab control

was that of Nubia, where a Christian civilization and state existed up to the

14th century.

For a time the Moslem conquests in South Europe had virtually made of the

Mediterranean an Arab lake, but the expulsion in the 11th century of the

Saracens from Sicily and southern Italy by the Normans was followed by

descents of the conquerors on Tunisia and Tripoli. Somewhat later a busy

trade with the African coast-lands, and especially with Egypt, was developed

by Venice, Pisa, Genoa and other cities of North Italy. By the end of the

15th century Spain had completely thrown off the Moslem yoke, but even while

the Moors were still in Granada, Portugal was strong enough to carry the war

into Africa. In 1415 a Portuguese force captured the citadel of Ceuta on the

Moorish coast. From that time onward Portugal repeatedly

Spain and Portugal invade the Barbary States.

interfered in the affairs of Morocco, while Spain acquired many ports in Algeria

and Tunisia. Portugal, however, suffered a crushing defeat in 1578 at al Kasr

al Kebir, the Moors being led by Abd el Malek I. of the then recently

established Sharifan dynasty. By that time the Spaniards had lost almost all

their African possessions. The Barbary states, primarily from the example of

the Moors expelled from Spain, degenerated into mere communities of pirates,

and under Turkish influence civilization and commerce declined. The story of

these states from the beginning of the 16th century to the third decade of the

19th century is largely made up of piratical exploits on the one

hand and of ineffectual reprisals on the other. In Algiers, Tunis and other

cities were thousands of Christian slaves.

But with the battle of Ceuta Africa had ceased to belong solely to the

Mediterranean world. Among those who fought there was

Discovery of the Guinea coast—Rise of the slave trade.

one. Prince Henry ``the Navigator,'' son of King John I., who was fired with

the ambition to acquire for Portugal the unknown parts of Africa. Under his

inspiration and direction was begun that series of voyages of exploration

which resulted in the circumnavigation of Africa and the establishment of

Portuguese sovereignty over large areas of the coast-lands. Cape Bojador was

doubled in 1434, Cape Verde in 1445, and by 1480 the whole Guinea coast was

known. In 1482 Diogo Cam or Cao discovered the mouth of the Congo, the Cape

of Good Hope was doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1488, and in 1498 Vasco da

Gama, after having rounded the Cape, sailed up the east coast, touched at

Sofala and Malindi, and went thence to India. Over all the countries

discovered by their navigators Portugal claimed sovereign rights, but these

were not exercised in the extreme south of the continent. The Guinea coast,

as the first discovered and the nearest to Europe, was first exploited.

Numerous forts and trading stations were established, the earliest being Sao

Jorge da Mina (Elmina), begun in 1482. The chief commodities dealt in were

slaves, gold, ivory and spices. The discovery of America (1492) was followed

by a great development of the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era,

had been an overland trade almost exclusively confined to Mahommedan Africa.

The lucrative nature of this trade and the large quantities of alluvial gold

obtained by the Portuguese drew other nations to the Guinea coast. English

mariners went thither as early as 1553, and they were followed by Spaniards,

Dutch, French, Danish and other adventurers. Much of Senegambia was made

known as a result of quests during the 16th century for the ``hills of gold''

in Bambuk and the fabled wealth of Timbuktu, but the middle Niger was not

reached. The supremacy along the coast passed in the 17th century from

Portugal to Holland and from Holland in the 18th and 19th centuries to France

and England. The whole coast from Senegal to Lagos was dotted with forts and

``factories'' of rival powers, and this international patchwork persists

though all the hinterland has become either French or British territory.

Southward from the mouth of the Congo2 to the inhospitable region of

Damaraland, the Portuguese, from 1491 onward, acquired influence over the

Bantu-Negro inhabitants, and in the early part of the 16th century through

their efforts Christianity was largely adopted in the native kingtom of

Congo. An irruption of cannibals from the interior later in the same century

broke the power of this semi-Christian state, and Portuguese activity was

transferred to a great extent farther south, Sao Paulo de Loanda being

founded in 1576. The sovereignty of Portugal over this coast region, except

for the mouth of the Congo, has been once only challenged by a European

power, and that was in 1640-1648, when the Dutch held the seaports.

Neglecting the comparatively poor and thinly inhabited regions of South

Africa, the Portuguese no sooner discovered than they coveted the flourishing

cities held by Arabized peoples between Sofala and Cape Guardafui. By 1520

all these Moslem

The Portuguese in East Africa and Abyssinia.

sultanates had been seized by Portugal, Mozambique being chosen as the chief

city of her East African possessions. Nor was Portuguese activity confined to

the coast-lands. The lower and middle Zambezi valley was explored (16th and 17

th centuries), and here the Portuguese found semi-civilized Bantu-Negro

tribes, who had been for many years in contact with the coast Arabs. Strenuous

efforts were made to obtain possession of the country (modern Rhodesia) known

to them as the kingdom or empire of Monomotapa, where gold had been worked by

the natives from about the 12th century A.D., and whence the Arabs, whom the

Portuguese dispossessed, were still obtaining supplies in the 16th century.

Several expeditions were despatched inland from 1569 onward and considerable

quantities of gold were obtained. Portugal's hold on the interior, never very

effective, weakened during the 17th century, and in the middle of the 18th

century ceased with the abandonment of the forts in the Manica district.

At the period of her greatest power Portugal exercised a strong influence in

Abyssinia also. In the ruler of Abyssinia (to whose dominions a Portuguese

traveller had penetrated before Vasco da Gama's memorable voyage) the

Portuguese imagined they had found the legendary Christian king, Prester

John, and when the complete overthrow of the native dynasty and the Christian

religion was imminent by the victories of Mahommedan invaders, the exploits

of a band of 400 Portuguese under Christopher da Gama during 1541-1543 turned

the scale in favour of Abyssinia and had thus an enduring result on the

future of North-East Africa. After da Gama's time Portuguese Jesuits resorted

to Abyssinia. While they failed in their efforts to convert the Abyssinians

to Roman Catholicism they acquired an extensive knowledge of the country.

Pedro Paez in 1615, and, ten years later, Jeronimo Lobo, both visited the

sources of the Blue Nile. In 1663 the Portuguese, who had outstayed their

welcome, were expelled from the Abyssinian dominions. At this time Portuguese

influence on the Zanzibar coast was waning before the power of the Arabs of

Muscat, and by 1730 no point on the east coast north of Cape Delgado was held

by Portugal.

It has been seen that Portugal took no steps to acquire the southern part of

the continent. To the Portuguese the Cape of

English and Dutch at Table Bay—Cape Colony founded.

Good Hope was simply a landmark on the road to India, and mariners of other

nations who followed in their wake used Table Bay only as a convenient spot

wherein to refit on their voyage to the East. By the beginning of the 17th

century the bay was much resorted to for this purpose, chiefly by English and

Dutch vessels. In 1620, with the object of forestalling the Dutch, two

officers of the East India Company, on their own initiative, took possession

of Table Bay in the name of King James, fearing otherwise that English ships

would be ``frustrated of watering but by license.'' Their action was not

approved in London and the proclamation they issued remained without effect.

The Netherlands profited by the apathy of the English. On the advice of

sailors who had been shipwrecked in Table Bay the Netherlands East India

Company, in 1651, sent out a fleet of three small vessels under Jan van

Riebeek which reached Table Bay on the 6th of April 1652, when, 164 years

after its discovery, the first permanent white settlement was made in South

Africa. The Portuguese, whose power in Africa was already waning, were not in

a position to interfere with the Dutch plans, and England was content to

seize the island of St Helena as her half-way house to the East3. In its

inception the settlement at the Cape was not intended to become an African

colony, but was regarded as the most westerly outpost of the Dutch East

Indies. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of ports and the absence of

navigable rivers, the Dutch colonists, freed from any apprehension of

European trouble by the friendship between Great Britain and Holland, and

leavened by Huguenot blood, gradually spread northward, stamping their

language, law and religion indelibly upon South Africa. This process,

however, was exceedingly slow.

During the 18th century there is little to record in the history of Africa.

The nations of Europe, engaged in the later half of the

Waning and revival of interest in Africa.

century in almost constant warfare, and struggling for supremacy in America

and the East, to a large extent lost their interest in the continent. Only on

the west coast was there keen rivalry, and here the motive was securance of

trade rather than territorial acquisitions. In this century the slave trade

reached its highest development, the trade in gold, ivory, gum and spices

being small in comparison. In the interior of the continent—Portugal's energy

being expended—no interest was shown, the nations with establishments on the

coast ``taking no further notice of the inhabitants or their land than to

obtain at the easiest rate what they procure with as little trouble as

possible, or to carry them off for slaves to their plantations in America''

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd ed., 1797). Even the scanty knowledge acquired

by the ancients and the Arabs was in the main forgotten or disbelieved. It

was the period when — Geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures filled

their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Placed elephants for want of towns.

(Poetry, a Rhapsody. By Jonathan Swift.)

The prevailing ignorance may be gauged by the statement in the third edition

of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that ``the Gambia and Senegal rivers are only

branches of the Niger.'' But the closing years of the 18th century, which

witnessed the partial awakening of the public conscience of Europe to the

iniquities of the slave trade, were also notable for the revival of interest

in inner Africa. A society, the African Association,4 was formed in London in

1788 for the exploration of the interior of the continent. The era of great

discoveries had begun a little earlier in the famous journey (1770-1772) of

James Bruce through Abyssinia and Sennar, during which he determined the

course of the Blue Nile. But it was through the agents of the African

Association that knowledge was gained of the Niger regions. The Niger itself

was first reached by Mungo Park, who travelled by way of the Gambia, in 1795.

Park, on a second journey in 1805, passed Timbuktu and descended the Niger to

Bussa, where he lost his life, having just failed to solve the question as to

where the river reached the ocean. (This problem was ultimately solved by

Richard Lander and his brother in 1830.) The first scientific explorer of

South-East Africa, Dr Francisco de Lacerda, a Portuguese, also lost his life

in that country. Lacerda travelled up the Zambezi to Tete, going thence

towards Lake Mweru, near which he died in 1798. The first recorded crossing

of Africa was accomplished between the years 1802 and 1811 by two half-caste

Portuguese traders, Pedro Baptista and A. Jose, who passed from Angola

eastward to the Zambezi.

Although the Napoleonic wars distracted the attention of Europe from

exploratory work in Africa, those wars nevertheless

Effects of the Napoleonic wars—Britain seizes the Cape.

exercised great influence on the future of the continent, both in Egypt and

South Africa. The occupation of Egypt (1798-1803) first by France and then by

Great Britain resulted in an effort by Turkey to regain direct control over

that country,5 followed in 1811 by the establishment under Mehemet Ali of an

almost independent state, and the extension of Egyptian rule over the eastern

Sudan (from 1820 onward). In South Africa the struggle with Napoleon caused

Great Britain to take possession of the Dutch settlements at the Cape, and in

1814 Cape Colony, which had been continuously occupied by British troops

since 1806, was formally ceded to the British crown.

The close of the European conflicts with the battle of Waterloo was followed

by vigorous efforts on the part of the British government to become better

acquainted with Africa, and to substitute colonization and legitimate trade

for the slave traffic, declared illegal for British subjects in 1807 and

abolished by all other European powers by 1836. To West Africa Britain

devoted much attention. The slave trade abolitionists had already, in 1788,

formed a settlement at Sierra Leone, on the Guinea coast, for freed slaves,

and from this establishment grew the colony of Sierra Leone, long notorious,

by reason of its deadly climate, as ``The White Man's Grave.''6 Farther east

the establishments on the Gold Coast began to take a part in the politics of

the interior, and the first British mission to Kumasi, despatched in 1817,

led to the assumption of a protectorate over the maritime tribes heretofore

governed by the Ashanti.

An expedition sent in 1816 to explore the Congo from its mouth did not

succeed in getting beyond the rapids which bar the way to the interior, but

in the central Sudan much better results were obtained. In 1823 three English

travellers, Walter Oudney, Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton, reached Lake

Chad from Tripoli—the first white men to reach that lake. The partial

exploration of Bornu and the Hausa states by Clapperton, which followed,

revealed the existence of large and flourishing cities and a semi-civilized

people in a region hitherto unknown. The discovery in 1830 of the mouth of

the Niger by Clapperton's servant Lander, already mentioned, had been

preceded by the journeys of Major A.G. Laing (1826) and Rene Caillie (1827)

to Timbuktu, and was followed (1832-1833) by the partial ascent of the Benue

affluent of the Niger by Macgregor Laird. In 1841 a disastrous attempt was

made to plant a white colony on the lower Niger, an expedition (largely

philanthropic and antislavery in its inception) which ended in utter failure.

Nevertheless from that time British traders remained on the lower Niger,

their continued presence leading ultimately to the acquisition of political

rights over the delta and the Hausa states by Great Britain.7 Another

endeavour by the British government to open up commercial relations with the

Niger countries resulted in the addition of a vast amount of information

concerning the countries between Timbuktu and Lake Chad, owing to the labours

of Heinrich Barth (1850-1855), originally a subordinate, but the only

surviving member of the expedition sent out.

Meantime considerable changes had been made in other parts of the continent,

the most notable being—the occupation of Algiers by France in 1830, an end

being thereby put to the piratical proceedings of the Barbary states; the

continued expansion southward of Egyptian authority with the consequent

additions to the knowledge of the Nile; and the establishment of independent

states ((Orange Free State and the Transvaal) by Dutch farmers (Boers)

dissatisfied with British rule in Cape Colony. Natal, so named by Vasco da

Gama, had been made a British colony (1843), the attempt of the Boers to

acquire it being frustrated. The city of Zanzibar, on the island of that

name, founded in 1832 by Seyyid Said of Muscat, rapidly attained importance,

and Arabs began to penetrate to the great lakes of East Africa,8 concerning

which little more was known (and less believed) than in the time of Ptolemy.

Accounts of a vast inland sea, and the discovery in 1848-1840, by the

missionaries Ludwig Krapf and J.Rebmann, of the snow-clad mountains of

Kilimanjaro and Kenya, stimulated in Europe the desire for further knowledge.

At this period, the middle of the 19th century, Protestant missions were

carrying on active propaganda on the Guinea

The era of great explorers.

coast, in South Africa and in the Zanzibar dominions. Their work, largely

beneficent, was being conducted in regions and among peoples little known,

and in many instances missionaries turned explorers and became pioneers of

trade and empire. One of the first to attempt to fill up the remaining blank

spaces in the map was David Livings tone, who had been engaged since 1840 in

missionary work north of the Orange. In 1849 Livingstone crossed the Kalahari

Desert from south to north and reached Lake Ngami, and between 1851 and 1856

he traversed the continent from west to east, making known the great

waterways of the upper Zambezi. During these journeyings Livingstone

discovered, November 1855, the famous Victoria Falls, so named after the

queen of England. In 1858-1864 the lower Zambezi, the Shire and Lake Nyasa

were explored by Livingstone, Nyasa having been first reached by the

confidential slave of Antonio da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established

at Bihe in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853-1856 from Benguella to the

mouth of the Rovuma. While Livingstone circumnavigated Nyasa, the more

northerly lake, Tanganyika, had been visited (1858) by Richard Burton and J.

H. Speke, and the last named had sighted Victoria Nyanza. Returning to East

Africa with J. A. Grant, Speke reached, in 1862, the river which flowed from

Victoria Nyanza, and following it (in the main) down to Egypt, had the

distinction of being the first man to read the riddle of the Nile. In 1864

another Nile explorer, Samuel Baker, discovered the Albert Nyanza, the chief

western reservoir of the river. In 1866 Livingstone began his last great

journey, in which he made known Lakes Mweru and Bangweulu and discovered the

Lualaba (the upper part of the Congo), but died (1873) before he had been

able to demonstrate its ultimate course, believing indeed that the Lualaba

belonged to the Nile system. Livingstone's lonely death in the heart of

Africa evoked a keener desire than ever to complete the work he left undone.

H. M. Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and succouring

Livingstone, started again for Zanzibar in 1874, and in the most memorable of

all exploring expeditions in Africa circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza and

Tanganyika, and, striking farther inland to the Lualaba, followed that river

down to the Atlantic Ocean—reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the

Congo. Stanley had been preceded, in 1874, at Nyangwe, Livingstone's farthest

point on the Lualaba, by Lovett Cameron, who was, however, unable farther to

explore its course, making his way to the west coast by a route south of the

Congo.

While the great mystery of Central Africa was being solved explorers were

also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara and

the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Gerhard

Rohlfs, Georg Schweinfurth and Gustav Nachtigal. These travellers not only

added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable

information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the

countries in which they sojourned.9 Among the discoveries of Schweinfurth was

one that confirmed the Greek legends of the existence beyond Egypt of a pygmy

race. But the first discoverer of the dwarf races of Central Africa was Paul

du Chaillu, who found them in the Ogowe district of the west coast in 1865,

five years before Schweinfurth's first meeting with the Pygmies; du Chaillu

having previously, as the result of journeys in the Gabun country between

1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the

gorilla, perhaps the gigantic ape seen by Hanno the Carthaginian, and whose

existence, up to the middle of the 19th century, was thought to be as

legendary as that of the Pygmies of Aristotle.

In South Africa the filling up of the map also proceeded apace. The finding,

in 1869, of rich diamond fields in the valley of the Vaal river, near its

confluence with the Orange, caused a rush of emigrants to that district, and

led to conflicts between the Dutch and British authorities and the extension

of British authority northward. In 1871 the ruins of the great Zimbabwe in

Mashonaland, the chief fortress and distributing centre of the race which in

medieval times worked the goldfields of South-East Africa, were explored by

Karl Mauch. In the following year F. C. Selous began his journeys over South

Central Africa, which continued for more than twenty years and extended over

every part of Mashonaland and Matabeleland. (F. R. C.)

V. PARTITION AMONG EUROPEAN POWERS

In the last quarter of the 19th century the map of Africa was transformed.

After the discovery of the Congo the story of exploration takes second place;

the continent becomes the theatre of European expansion. Lines of partition,

drawn often through trackless wildernesses, marked out the possessions of

Germany, France, Great Britain and other powers. Railways penetrated the

interior, vast areas were opened up to civilized occupation, and from ancient

Egypt to the Zambezi the continent was startled into new life.

Before 1875 the only powers with any considerable interest in Africa were

Britain, Portugal and France. Between 1815 and 1850, as has been shown above,

the British government devoted much energy, not always informed by knowledge,

to western and southern Africa. In both directions Great Britain had met with

much discouragement; on the west coast, disease, death, decaying trade and

useless conflicts with savage foes had been the normal experience; in the

south recalcitrant Boers and hostile Kaffirs caused almost endless trouble.

The visions once entertained of vigorous negro communities at once civilized

and Christian faded away; to the hot fit of philanthropy succeeded the cold

fit of indifference and a disinclination to bear the burden of empire. The

low-water mark of British interest in South Africa was reached in 1854 when

independence was forced on the Orange River Boers, while in 1865 the mind of

the nation was fairly reflected by the unanimous resolution of a

representative House of Commons committee:10 ``that all further extension of

territory or assumption of government, or new treaty offering any protection

to native tribes, would be inexpedient.'' For nearly twenty years the spirit

of that resolution paralysed British action in Africa, although many

circumstances—the absence of any serious European rival, the inevitable

border disputes with uncivilized races, and the activity of missionary and

trader—conspired to make British influence dominant in large areas of the

continent over which the government exercised no definite authority. The

freedom with which blood and treasure were spent to enforce respect for the

British flag or to succour British subjects in distress, as in the Abyssinian

campaign of 1867-68 and the Ashanti war of 1873, tended further to enhance

the reputation of Great Britain among African races, while, as an inevitable

result of the possession of India, British officials exercised considerable

power at the court of Zanzibar, which indeed owed its separate existence to a

decision of Lord Canning, the governor-general of India, in 1861 recognizing

the division of the Arabian and African dominions of the imam of Muscat.

It has been said that Great Britain was without serious rival. On the Gold

Coast she had bought the Danish forts in 1850 and acquired the Dutch, 1871-

1872, in exchange for establishments in Sumatra. But Portugal still held,

both in the east and west of Africa, considerable stretches of the tropical

coast-lands, and it was in 1875 that she obtained, as a result of the

arbitration of Marshal MacMahon, possession of the whole of Delagoa Bay, to

the southern part of which England also laid claim by virtue of a treaty of

cession concluded with native chiefs in 1823. The only other European power

which at the period under consideration had considerable possessions in

Africa was France. Besides Algeria, France had settlements on the Senegal,

where in 1854 the appointment of General Faidherbe as governor marked the

beginning of a policy of expansion; she had also various posts on the upper

Guinea coast, had taken the estuary of the Gabun as a station for her navy,

and had acquired (1862) Obok at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

In North Africa the Turks had (in 1835) assumed direct control of Tripoli,

while Morocco had fallen into a state of decay though retaining its

independence. The most remarkable change was in Egypt, where the Khedive

Ismail had introduced a somewhat fantastic imitation of European

civilization. In addition Ismail had conquered Darfur, annexed Harrar and the

Somali ports on the Gulf of Aden, was extending his power southward to the

equatorial lakes, and even contemplated reaching the Indian Ocean. The Suez

Canal, opened in 1869, had a great influence on the future of Africa, as it

again made Egypt the highway to the East, to the detriment of the Cape route.

Any estimate of the area of African territory held by European nations in

1875 is necessarily but approximate, and varies chiefly

The division of the continent in 1875.

as the compiler of statistics rejects or accepts the vague claims of Portugal

to sovereignty over the hinterland of her coast possessions. At that period

other European nations—with the occasional exception of Great Britain—were

indifferent to Portugal's pretensions, and her estimate of her African empire

as covering over 700,000 sq. m. was not challenged.11 But the area under

effective control of Portugal at that time did not exceed 40,000 sq. m. Great

Britain then held some 250,000 sq. m., France about 170,000 sq. m. and Spain

1000 sq.m. The area of the independent Dutch republics (the Transvaal and

Orange Free State) was some 150,000 sq. m., so that the total area of Africa

ruled by Europeans did not exceed 1,271,000 sq. m.; roughly one-tenth of the

continent. This estimate, as it admits the full extent of Portuguese claims

and does not include Madagascar, in reality considerably overstates the case.

Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan, Tunisia and Tripoli were subject in differing

ways to the overlordship of the sultan of Turkey, and with these may be

ranked, in the scale of organized governments, the three principal

independent states, Morocco, Abyssinia and Zanzibar, as also the negro

republic of Liberia. There remained, apart from the Sahara, roughly one half

of Africa, lying mostly within the tropics, inhabited by a multitude of

tribes and peoples living under various forms of government and subject to

frequent changes in respect of political organization. In this region were

the negro states of Ashanti, Dahomey and Benin on the west coast, the

Mahommedan sultanates of the central Sudan, and a number of negro kingdoms in

the east central and south central regions. Of these Uganda on the north-west

shores of Victoria Nyanza, Cazembe and Muata Hianvo (or Yanvo) may be

mentioned. The two last-named kingdoms occupied respectively the south-

eastern and south-western parts of the Congo basin. In all this vast region

the Negro and Negro-Bantu races predominated, for the most part untouched by

Mahommedanism or Christian influences. They lacked political cohesion, and

possessed neither the means nor the inclination to extend their influence

beyond their own borders. The exploitation of Africa continued to be entirely

the work of alien races.

The causes which led to the partition of Africa may now be considered. They

are to be found in the economic and political

Causes which led to partition.

state of western Europe at the time. Germany, strong and united as the result

of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, was seeking new outlets for her energies

—new markets for her growing industries, and with the markets, colonies. Yet

the idea of colonial expansion was of slow growth in Germany, and when Prince

Bismarck at length acted Africa was the only field left to exploit, South

America being protected from interference by the known determination of the

United States to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, while Great Britain, France,

the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain already held most of the other regions of

the world where colonization was possible. For different reasons the war of

1870 was also the starting-point for France in the building up of a new

colonial empire. In her endeavour to regain the position lost in that war

France had to look beyond Europe. To the two causes mentioned must be added

others. Great Britain and Portugal, when they found their interests

threatened, bestirred themselves, while Italy also conceived it necessary to

become an African power. Great Britain awoke to the need for action too late

to secure predominance in all the regions where formerly hers was the only

European influence. She had to contend not only with the economic forces

which urged her rivals to action, but had also to combat the jealous

opposition of almost every European nation to the further growth of British

power. Italy alone acted throughout in cordial co-operation with Great

Britain.

It was not, however, the action of any of the great powers of Europe which

precipitated the struggle. This was brought about by the ambitious projects

of Leopold II, king of the Belgians. The discoveries of Livingstone, Stanley

and others had aroused especial interest among two classes of men in western

Europe, one the manufacturing and trading class, which saw in Central Africa

possibilities of commercial development, the other the philanthropic and

missionary class, which beheld in the newly discovered lands millions of

savages to Christianize and civilize. The possibility of utilizing both these

classes in the creation of a vast state, of which he should be the chief,

formed itself in the mind of Leopold II. even before Stanley had navigated

the Congo. The king's action was immediate; it proved successful; but no

sooner was the nature of his project understood in Europe than it provoked

the rivalry of France and Germany, and thus the international struggle was

begun.

Conflicting ambitions of the European powers.

At this point it is expedient, in the light of subsequent events, to set

forth the designs then entertained by the European powers that participated

in the struggle for Africa. Portugal was striving to retain as large a share

as possible of her shadowy empire, and particularly to establish her claims

to the Zambezi region, so as to secure a belt of territory across Africa from

Mozambique to Angola. Great Britain, once aroused to the imminence of danger,

put forth vigorous efforts in East Africa and on the Niger, but her most

ambitious dream was the establishment of an unbroken line of British

possessions and spheres of influence from south to north of the continent,

from Cape Colony to Egypt. Germany's ambition can be easily described. It was

to secure as much as possible, so as to make up for lost opportunities. Italy

coveted Tripoli, but that province could not be seized without risking war.

For the rest Italy's territorial ambitions were confined to North-East

Africa, where she hoped to acquire a dominating, influence over Abyssinia.

French ambitions, apart from Madagascar, were confined to the northern and

central portions of the continent. To extend her possessions on the

Mediterranean littoral, and to connect them with her colonies in West Africa,

the western Sudan, and on the Congo, by establishing her influence over the

vast intermediate regions, was France's first ambition. But the defeat of the

Italians in Abyssinia and the impending downfall of the khalifa's power in

the valley of the upper Nile suggested a still more daring project to the

French government—none other than the establishment of French influence over

a broad belt of territory stretching across the continent from west to east,

from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Aden. The fact that France

possessed a small part of the Red Sea coast gave point to this design. But

these conflicting ambitions could not all be realized and Germany succeeded

in preventing Great Britain obtaining a continuous band of British territory

from south to north,while Great Britain, by excluding France from the upper

Nile valley, dispelled the French dream of an empire from west to east. King

Leopold's ambitions have already been indicated. The part of the continent to

which from the first he directed his energies was the equatorial region. In

September 1876 he took what may be described as the first definite step in

the modern partition of the continent. He summoned to a conference at

Brussels representatives of Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria-

Hungary, Italy and Russia, to deliberate on the best methods to be adopted

for the exploration and civilization of Africa, and the opening up of the

interior of the continent to commerce and industry. The conference was

entirely unofficial. The delegates who attended neither represented nor

pledged their respective governments. Their deliberations lasted three days

and resulted in the foundation of ``The International African Association,''

with its headquarters at Brussels. It was further resolved to establish

national committees in the various countries represented, which should

collect funds and appoint delegates to the International Association. The

central idea appears to have been to put the exploration and development of

Africa upon an international footing. But it quickly became apparent that

this was an unattainable ideal. The national committees were soon working

independently of the International Association, and the Association itself

passed through a succession of stages until it became purely Belgian in

character, and at last developed into the Congo Free State, under the

personal sovereignty of King Leopold. At first the Association devoted itself

to sending expeditions to the great central lakes from the east coast; but

failure, more or less complete attended its efforts in this direction, and it

was not until the return of Stanley, in January 1878, from his great journey

down the Congo, that its ruling spirit, King Leopold, definitely turned his

thoughts towards the Congo. In June of that year, Stanley visited the king at

Brussels, and in the following November a private conference was held, and a

committee was appointed for the investigation of the upper Congo.

Stanley's remarkable discovery had stirred ambition in other capitals than

Brussels. France had always taken a keen interest

The struggle for the Congo.

in West Africa, and in the years 1875 to 1878 Savorgnan de Brazza had carried

out a successful exploration of the Ogowe river to the south of the Gabun. De

Brazza determined that the Ogowe did not offer that great waterway into the

interior of which he was in search, and he returned to Europe without having

heard of the discoveries of Stanley farther south. Naturally, however,

Stanley's discoveries were keenly followed in France. In Portugal, too, the

discovery of the Congo, with its magnificent unbroken waterway of more than a

thousand miles into the heart of the continent served to revive the languid

energies of the Portuguese, who promptly began to furbish up claims whose age

was in inverse ratio to their validity. Claims, annexations and occupations

were in the air, and when in January 1879 Stanley left Europe as the

accredited agent of King Leopold and the Congo committee, the strictest

secrecy was observed as to his real aims and intentions. The expedition was,

it was alleged, proceeding up the Congo to assist the Belgian expedition

which had entered from the east coast, and Stanley himself went first to

Zanzibar. But in August 1879 Stanley found himself again at Banana Point, at

the mouth of the Congo, with, as he himself has written, ``the novel mission

of sowing along its banks civilized settlements to peacefully conquer and

subdue it, to remould it in harmony with modern ideas into national states,

within whose limits the European merchant shall go hand in hand with the dark

African trader, and justice and law and order shall prevail, and murder and

lawlessness and the cruel barter of slaves shall be overcome.'' The irony of

human aspirations was never perhaps more plainly demonstrated than in the

contrast between the ideal thus set before themselves by those who employed

Stanley, and the actual results of their intervention in Africa. Stanley

founded his first station at Vivi, between the mouth of the Congo and the

rapids that obstruct its course where it breaks over the western edge of the

central continental plateau. Above the rapids he established a station on

Stanley Pool and named it Leopoldville, founding other stations on the main

stream in the direction of the falls that bear his name.

Meanwhile de Brazza was far from idle. He had returned to Africa at the

beginning of 1880, and while the agents of King Leopold were making treaties

and founding stations along the southern bank of the river, de Brazza and

other French agents were equally busy on the northern bank. De Brazza was

sent out to Africa by the French committee of the International African

Association, which provided him with the funds for the expedition. His avowed

object was to explore the region between the Gabun and Lake Chad. But his

real object was to anticipate Stanley on the Congo. The international

character of the association founded by King Leopold was never more than a

polite fiction, and the rivalry between the French and the Belgians on the

Congo was soon open, if not avowed. In October 1880 de Brazza made a solemn

treaty with a chief on the north bank of the Congo, who claimed that his

authority extended over a large area, including territory on the southern

bank of the river. As soon as this chief had accepted French protection, de

Brazza crossed over to the south of the river, and founded a station close to

the present site of Leopoldville. The discovery by Stanley of the French

station annoyed King Leopold's agent, and he promptly challenged the rights

of the chief who purported to have placed the country under French

protection, and himself founded a Belgian station close to the site selected

by de Brazza. In the result, the French station was withdrawn to the northern

side of Stanley Pool, where it is now known as Brazzaville.

The activity of French and Belgian agents on the Congo had not passed

unnoticed in Lisbon, and the Portuguese government saw that no time was to be

lost if the claims it had never ceased to put forward on the west coast were

not to go by default. At varying periods during the 19th century Portugal had

put forward claims to the whole of the West African coast, between 5 deg. 12'

and 8 deg. south. North of the Congo mouth she claimed the territories of

Kabinda and Molemba, alleging that they had been in her possession since

1484. Great Britain had never, however, admitted this claim, and south of the

Congo had declined to recognize Portuguese possessions as extending north of

Ambriz. In 1856 orders were given to British cruisers to prevent by force any

attempt to extend Portuguese dominion north of that place. But the Portuguese

had been persistent in urging their claims, and in 1882 negotiations were

again opened with the British government for recognition of Portuguese rights

over both banks of the Congo on the coast, and for some distance inland. Into

the details of the negotiations, which were conducted for Great Britain by

the 2nd Earl Granville, who was then secretary for foreign affairs, it is

unnecessary to enter; they resulted in the signing on the 26th of February

1884 of a treaty, by which Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the

king of Portugal ``over that part of the west coast of Africa, situated

between 8 deg. and 5 deg. 12' south latitude,'' and inland as far as Noki, on

the south bank of the Congo, below Vivi. The navigation of the Congo was to

be controlled by an Anglo-Portuguese commission. The publication of this

treaty evoked immediate protests, not only on the continent but in Great

Britain. In face of the disapproval aroused by the treaty, Lord Granville

found himself unable to ratify it. The protests had not been confined to

France and the king of the Belgians. Germany had not yet acquired formal

footing in Africa, but she was crouching for the spring prior to taking her

part in the scramble, and Prince Bismarck had expressed, in vigorous

language, the objections entertained by Germany to the Anglo-Portuguese

treaty.

For some time before 1884 there had been growing up a general conviction that

it would be desirable for the powers who were interesting themselves in

Africa to come to some agreement as to ``the rules of the game,'' and to

define their respective interests so far as that was practicable. Lord

Granville's ill-fated treaty brought this sentiment to a head, and it was

agreed to hold an international conference on African affairs. But before

discussing the Berlin conference of 1884-1885, it will be well to see what

was the position, on the eve of the conference, in other parts of the African

continent. In the southern section of Africa, south of the Zambezi, important

events had been happening. In 1876 Great Britain had concluded an agreement

British influence consolidated in South Africa.

with the Orange Free State for an adjustment of frontiers, the result of

which was to leave the Kimberley diamond fields in British territory, in

exchange for a payment of L. 90,000 to the Orange Free State. On the 12th of

April 1877 Sir Theophilus Shepstone had issued a proclamation declaring the

Transvaal— the South African Republic, as it was officially designated—to be

British territory (see TRANSVAAL.) In December 1880 war broke out and lasted

until March 1881, when a treaty of peace was signed. This treaty of peace was

followed by a convention, signed in August of the same year, under which

complete self-government was guaranteed to the inhabitants of the Transvaal,

subject to the suzerainty of Great Britain, upon certain terms and conditions

and subject to certain reservations and limitations. No sooner was the

convention signed than it became the object of the Boers to obtain a

modification of the conditions and limitations imposed, and in February 1884

a fresh convention was signed, amending the convention of 1881. Article IV.

of the new convention provided that ``The South African Republic will

conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the

Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of

the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen.''

The precise effect of the two conventions has been the occasion for

interminable discussions, but as the subject is now one of merely academic

interest, it is sufficient to say that when the Berlin conference held its

first meeting in 1884 the Transvaal was practically independent, so far as

its internal administration was concerned, while its foreign relations were

subject to the control just quoted.

But although the Transvaal had thus, between the years 1875 and 1884, become

and ceased to be British territory, British influence in other parts of

Africa south of the Zambezi had been steadily extended. To the west of the

Orange Free State, Griqualand West was annexed to the Cape in 1880, while to

the east the territories beyond the Kei river were included in Cape Colony

between 1877 and 1884, so that in the latter year, with the exception of

Pondoland, the whole of South-East Africa was in one form or another under

British control. North of Natal, Zululand was not actually annexed until

1887, although since 1879, when the military power of the Zulus was broken

up, British influence had been admittedly supreme. In December 1884 St Lucia

Bay—upon which Germany was casting covetous eyes—had been taken possession of

in virtue of its cession to Great Britain by the Zulu king in 1843, and three

years later an agreement of non-cession to foreign powers made by Great

Britain with the regent and paramount chief of Tongaland completed the chain

of British possessions on the coast of South Africa, from the mouth of the

Orange river on the west to Kosi Bay and the Portuguese frontier on the east.

In the interior of South Africa the year 1884 witnessed the beginning of that

final stage of the British advance towards the north which was to extend

British influence from the Cape to the southern shores of Lake Tanganyika.

The activity of the Germans on the west, and of the Boer republic on the

east, had brought home to both the imperial and colonial authorities the

impossibility of relying on vague traditional claims. In May 1884 treaties

were made with native chiefs by which the whole of the country north of Cape

Colony, west of the Transvaal, south of 22 deg. S. and east of 20 deg. E.,

was placed under British protection, though a protectorate was not formally

declared until the following January.

Meanwhile some very interesting events had been taking place or: the west

coast, north of the Orange river and south of the Portuguese province of

Mossamaede. It must be sufficient here to touch very briefly on the events

that preceded the foundation of the colony of German South-West Africa. For

many years before 1884 German missionaries had settled among the Damaras

(Herero) and Namaquas, often combining small trading operations with their

missionary work. From time to time trouble arose between the missionaries and

the native chiefs, and appeals

Germany enters the field.

were made to the German government for protection. The German government in

its turn begged the British government to say whether it assumed

responsibility for the protection of Europeans in Damaraland and Namaqualand.

The position of the British government was intelligible, if not very

intelligent. It did not desire to see any other European power in these

countries, and it did not want to assume the responsibility and incur the

expense of protecting the few Europeans settled there. Sir Bartle Frere, when

governor of the Cape (1877-1880), had foreseen that this attitude portended

trouble, and had urged that the whole of the unoccupied coastline, up to the

Portuguese frontier, should be declared under British protection. But he

preached to deaf ears, and it was as something of a concession to him that in

March 1878 the British flag was hoisted at Walfish Bay, and a small part of

the adjacent land declared to be British. The fact appears to be that British

statesmen failed to understand the change that had come over Germany. They

believed that Prince Bismarck would never give his sanction to the creation

of a colonial empire, and, to the German inquiries as to what rights Great

Britain claimed in Damaraland and Namaqualand, procrastinating replies were

sent. Meanwhile the various colonial societies established in Germany had

effected a revolution in public opinion, and, more important still, they had

convinced the great chancellor. Accordingly when, in November 1882, F. A. E.

Luderitz, a Bremen merchant, informed the German government of his intention

to establish a factory on the coast between the Orange river and the Little

Fish river, and asked if he might rely on the protection of his government in

case of need, he met with no discouragement from Prince Bismarck. In February

1883 the German ambassador in London informed Lord Granville of Luderitz's

design, and asked ``whether Her Majesty's government exercise any authority

in that locality.'' It was intimated that if Her Majesty's government did

not, the German government would extend to Luderitz's factory ``the same

measure of protection which they give to their subjects in remote parts of

the world, but without having the least design to establish any footing in

South Africa.'' An inconclusive reply was sent, and on the 9th of April

Luderitz's agent landed at Angra Pequena, and after a short delay concluded a

treaty with the local chief, by which some 215 square miles around Angra

Pequena were ceded to Luderitz. In England and at the Cape irritation at the

news was mingled with incredulity, and it was fully anticipated that Luderitz

would be disavowed by his government. But for this belief it can scarcely be

doubted that the rest of the unoccupied coast-line would have been promptly

declared under British protection. Still Prince Bismarck was slow to act. In

November the German ambassador again inquired if Great Britain made any claim

over this coast, and Lord Granville replied that Her Majesty exercised

sovereignty only over certain parts of the coast, as at Walfish Bay, and

suggested that arrangements might be made by which Germany might assist in

the settlement of Angra Pequena. By this time Luderitz had extended his

acquisitions southwards to the Orange river, which had been declared by the

British government to be the northern frontier of Cape Colony. Both at the

Cape and in England it was now realized that Germany had broken away from her

former purely continental policy, and, when too late, the Cape parliament

showed great eagerness to acquire the territory which had lain so long at its

very doors, to be had for the taking. It is not necessary to follow the

course-of the subsequent negotiations. On the 15th of August 1884 an official

note was addressed by the German consul at Capetown to the high commissioner,

intimating that the German emperor had by proclamation taken ``the territory

belonging to Mr A. Luderitz on the west coast of Africa under the direct

protection of His Majesty.'' This proclamation covered the coast-line from

the north bank of the Orange river to 26 deg. S. latitude, and 20

geographical miles inland, including ``the islands belonging thereto by the

law of nations.'' On the 8th of September 1884 the German government

intimated to Her Majesty's government ``that the west coast of Africa from 26

deg. S. latitude to Cape Frio, excepting Walfish Bay, had been placed under

the protection of the German emperor.'' Thus, before the end of the year

1884, the foundations of Germany's colonial empire had been laid in South-

West Africa.

In April of that year Prince Bismarck intimated to the British government,

through the German charge d'affaires in London,

Nachtigal's mission to West Africa.

that ``the imperial consul-general, Dr Nachtigal, has been commissioned by my

government to visit the west coast of Africa in the course of the next few

months, in order to complete the information now in the possession of the

Foreign Office at Berlin, on the state of German commerce on that coast. With

this object Dr Nachtigal will shortly embark at Lisbon, on board the gunboat

`Mowe.' He will put himself into communication with the authorities in the

British possessions on the said coast, and is authorized to conduct, on

behalf of the imperial government, negotiations connected with certain

questions. I venture,'' the official communication proceeds, ``in accordance

with my instructions, to beg your excellency to be so good as to cause the

authorities in the British possessions in West Africa to be furnished with

suitable recommendations.'' Although at the date of this communication it

must have been apparent, from what was happening in South Africa, that

Germany was prepared to enter on a policy of colonial expansion, and although

the wording of the letter was studiously vague, it does not seem to have

occurred to the British government that the real object of Gustav Nachtigal's

journey was to make other annexations on the west coast. Yet such was indeed

his mission. German traders and missionaries had been particularly active of

late years on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. German factories were dotted

all along the coast in districts under British protection, under French

protection and under the definite protection of no European power at all. It

was to these latter places that Nachtigal turned his attention. The net

result of his operations was that on the 5th of July 1884 a treaty was signed

with the king of Togo, placing his country under German protection, and that

just one week later a German protectorate was proclaimed over the Cameroon

district. Before either of these events had occurred Great Britain had become

alive to the fact that she could no longer dally with the subject, if she

desired to consolidate her possessions in West Africa. The British government

had again and again refused to accord native chiefs the protection they

demanded. The Cameroon chiefs had several times asked for British protection,

and always in vain. But at last it became apparent, even to the official

mind, that rapid changes were being effected in Africa, and on the 16th of

May Edward Hyde Hewett, British consul, received instructions to return to

the west coast and to make arrangements for extending British protection over

certain regions. He arrived too late to save either Togoland or Cameroon, in

the latter case arriving five days after King Bell and the other chiefs on

the river had signed treaties with Nachtigal. But the British consul was in

time to secure the delta of the river Niger and the Oil Rivers District,

extending from Rio del Rey to the Lagos frontier, where for a long period

British traders had held almost a monopoly of the trade.

Meanwhile France, too, had been busy treaty-making. While the British

government still remained under the spell of the

French and British rivalry in West Africa.

fatal resolution of 1865, the French government was strenuously endeavouring

to extend France's influence in West Africa, in the countries lying behind

the coastline. During the year 1884 no fewer than forty-two treaties were

concluded with native chiefs, an even larger number having been concluded in

the previous twelve months. In this fashion France was pushing on towards

Timbuktu, in steady pursuance of the policy which resulted in surrounding all

the old British possessions in West Africa with a continuous band of French

territory. There was, however, one region on the west coast where,

notwithstanding the lethargy of the British government, British interests

were being vigorously pushed, protected and consolidated. This was on the

lower Niger, and the leading spirit in the enterprise was Mr Goldie Taubman

(afterwards Sir George Taubman Goldie). In 1877 Sir George Goldie visited the

Niger and conceived the idea of establishing a settled government in that

region. Through his efforts the various trading firms on the lower Niger

formed themselves in 1879 into the ``United African Company,'' and the

foundations were laid of something like settled administration. An

application was made to the British government for a charter in 1881, and the

capital of the company increased to a million sterling. Henceforth the

company was known as the ``National African Company,'' and it was

acknowledged that its object was not only to develop the trade of the lower

Niger, but to extend its operations to the middle reaches of the river, and

to open up direct relations with the great Fula empire of Sokoto and the

smaller states associated with Sokoto under a somewhat loosely defined

suzerainty. The great development of trade which followed the combination of

British interests carried out under Goldie's skilful guidance did not pass

unnoticed in France, and, encouraged by Gambetta, French traders made a bold

bid for a position on the river. Two French companies, with ample capital,

were formed, and various stations were established on the lower Niger. Goldie

realized at once the seriousness of the situation, and lost no time in

declaring commercial war on the newcomers. His bold tactics were entirely

successful, and a few days before the meeting of the Berlin conference he had

the satisfaction of announcing that he had bought out the whole of the French

interests on the river, and that Great Britain alone possessed any interests

on the lower Niger.

To complete the survey of the political situation in Africa at the time the

plenipotentiaries met at Berlin, it is necessary to

The position in Tunisia and Egypt.

refer briefly to the course of events in North and East Africa since 1875. In

1881 a French army entered Tunisia, and compelled the bey to sign a treaty

placing that country under French protection. The sultan of Turkey formally

protested against this invasion of Ottoman rights, but the great powers took

no action, and France was left in undisturbed possession of her newly

acquired territory. In Egypt the extravagance of Ismail Pasha had led to the

establishment in 1879, in the interests of European bondholders, of a Dual

Control exercised by France and Great Britain. France had, however, in 1882

refused to take part in the suppression of a revolt under Arabi Pasha, which

England accomplished unaided. As a consequence the Dual Control had been

abolished in January 1883, since when Great Britain, with an army quartered

in the country, had assumed a predominant position in Egyptian affairs (see

EGYPT.) In East Africa, north of the Portuguese possessions, where the

sultan of Zanzibar was the most considerable native potentate, Germany was

secretly preparing the foundations of her present colony of German East

Africa. But no overt act had warned Europe of what was impending. The story

of the foundation of German East Africa is one of the romances of the

continent. Early in 1884 the Society for German Colonization was founded,

with the avowed object of furthering the newly awakened colonial aspirations

of the German people.12 It was a society inspired and controlled by young

men, and on the 4th of November 1884, eleven days before the conference

assembled at Berlin, three young Germans arrived as deck passengers at

Zanzibar. They were disguised as mechanics, but were in fact Dr Karl Peters,

the president of the Colonization Society, Joachim Count Pfeil, and Dr

Juhlke, and their stock-in-trade consisted of a number of German flags and a

supply of blank treaty forms. They proposed to land on the mainland opposite

Zanzibar, and

The German flag raised in East Africa.

to conclude treaties in the back country with native chiefs placing their

territories under German protection. The enterprise was frowned upon by the

German government; but, encouraged by German residents at Zanzibar, the three

young pioneers crossed to the mainland, and on the 19th of November, while

the diplomatists assembled at Berlin were solemnly discussing the rules which

were to govern the game of partition, the first ``treaty'' was signed at

Mbuzini, and the German flag raised for the first time in East Africa.

Italy had also obtained a footing on the African continent before the meeting

of the Berlin conference. The Rubattino Steamship Company as far back as 1870

had bought the port of Assab as a coaling station, but it was not until 1882

that it was declared an Italian colony. This was followed by the conclusion

of a treaty with the sultan of Assab, chief of the Danakil, signed on the

15th of March 1883, and subsequently approved by the king of Shoa, whereby

Italy obtained the cession of part of Ablis (Aussa) on the Red Sea, Italy

undertaking to protect with her fleet the Danakil littoral.

One other event must be recorded as happening before the meeting of the

Berlin conference. The king of the Belgians had

Recognition of the International Association.

been driven to the conclusion that, if his African enterprise was to obtain

any measure of permanent success, its international status must be

recognized. To this end negotiations were opened with various governments.

The first government to ``recognize the flag of the International Association

of the Congo as the flag of a friendly government'' was that of the United

States, its declaration to that effect bearing date the 22nd of April 1884.

There were, however, difficulties in the way of obtaining the recognition of

the European powers, and in order to obtain that of France, King Leopold, on

the 23rd of April 1884, while labouring under the feelings of annoyance which

had been aroused by the Anglo-Portuguese treaty concluded by Lord Granville

in February, authorized Colonel Strauch, president of the International

Association, to engage to give France ``the right of preference if, through

unforeseen circumstances, the Association were compelled to sell its

possessions.'' France's formal recognition of the Association as a government

was, however, delayed by the discussion of boundary questions until the

following February, and in the meantime Germany, Great Britain, Italy,

Austria-Hungary, Holland and Spain had all recognized the Association; though

Germany alone had done so—on the 8th of November—before the assembling of the

conference.

The conference assembled at Berlin on the 15th of November 1884, and after

protracted deliberations the ``General Act of

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

the Berlin Conference'' was signed by the representatives of all the powers

attending the conference, on the 26th of February 1885. The powers

represented were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the

United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Russia,

Sweden and Norway, and Turkey, to name them in the alphabetical order adopted

in the preamble to the French text of the General Act. Ratifications were

deposited by all the signatory powers with the exception of the United

States. It is unnecessary to examine in detail the results of the labours of

the conference. The General Act dealt with six specific subjects: (1) freedom

of trade in the basin of the Congo, (2) the slave trade, (3) neutrality of

territories in the basin of the Congo, (4) navigation of the Congo, (5)

navigation of the Niger, (6) rules for future occupation on the coasts of the

African continent. It will be seen that the act dealt with other matters than

the political partition of Africa; but, so far as they concern the present

purpose, the results effected by the Berlin Act may be summed up as follows.

The signatory powers undertook that any fresh act of taking possession on any

portion of the African coast must be notified by the power taking possession,

or assuming a protectorate, to the other signatory powers. It was further

provided that any such occupation to be valid must be effective. It is also

noteworthy that the first reference in an international act to the

obligations attaching to ``spheres of influence'' is contained in the Berlin

Act.

It will be remembered that when the conference assembled, the International

Association of the Congo had only been

Constitution of the Congo State.

recognized as a sovereign state by the United States and Germany. But King

Leopold and his agents had taken full advantage of the opportunity which the

conference afforded, and before the General Act was signed the Association

had been recognized by all the signatory powers, with the not very important

exception of Turkey, and the fact communicated to the conference by Colonel

Strauch. It was not, however, until two months later, in April 1885, that

King Leopold, with the sanction of the Belgian legislature, formally assumed

the headship of the new state; and on the 1st of August in the same year His

Majesty notified the powers that from that date the ``Independent State of

the Congo'' declared that ``it shall be perpetually neutral'' in conformity

with the provisions of the Berlin Act. Thus was finally constituted the Congo

Free State, under the sovereignty of King Leopold, though the boundaries

claimed for it at that time were considerably modified by subsequent

agreements.

From 1885 the scramble among the powers went on with renewed vigour, and in

the fifteen years that remained of the

The chief partition treaties.

century the work of partition, so far as international agreements were

concerned, was practically completed. To attempt to follow the process of

acquisition year by year would involve a constant shifting of attention from

one part of the continent to another, inasmuch as the scramble was proceeding

simultaneously all over Africa. It will therefore be the most convenient plan

to deal with the continent in sections. Before doing so, however, the

international agreements which determined in the main the limits of the

possessions of the various powers may be set forth. They are:— I. The

agreement of the 1st of July 1890 between Great Britain and Germany defining

their spheres of influence in East, West and South-West Africa. This

agreement was the most comprehensive of all the ``deals'' in African

territory, and included in return for the recognition of a British

protectorate over Zanzibar the cession of Heligoland to Germany.

II. The Anglo-French declaration of the 5th of August 1890, which

recognized a French protectorate over Madagascar, French influence in the

Sahara, and British influence between the Niger and Lake Chad.

III. The Anglo-Portuguese treaty of the 11th of June 1891, whereby the

Portuguese possessions on the west and east coasts were separated by a broad

belt of British territory, extending north to Lake Tanganyika.

IV. The Franco-German convention of the 15th of March 1894, by which the

Central Sudan was left to France (this region by an Anglo-German agreement of

the 15th of November 1893 having been recognized as in the German sphere). By

this convention France was able to effect a territorial )unction of her

possessions in North and West Africa with those in the Congo region.

V. Protocols of the 24th of March and the 15th of April 1891, for the

demarcation of the Anglo-Italian spheres in East Africa.

VI. The Anglo-French convention of the 14th of June 1898, for the

delimitation of the possessions of the two countries west of Lake Chad, with

the supplementary declaration of the 21st of March 1899 whereby France

recognized the upper Nile valley as in the British sphere of influence.

Coming now to a more detailed consideration of the operations of the powers,

the growth of the Congo Free State, which

The growth of the Congo State.

occupied, geographically, a central position, may serve as the starting-point

for the story of the partition after the Berlin conference. In the

notification to the powers of the 1st of August 1885, the boundaries of the

Free State were set out in considerable detail. The limits thus determined

resulted partly from agreements made with France, Germany and Portugal, and

partly from treaties with native chiefs. The state acquired the north bank of

the Congo from its mouth to a point in the unnavigable reaches, and in the

interior the major part of the Congo basin. In the north-east the northern

limit was 4 deg. N. up to 30 deg. E., which formed the eastern boundary of,

the state. The south-eastern frontier claimed by King Leopold extended to

Lakes Tanganyika, Mweru and Bangweulu, but it was not until some years later

that it was recognized and defined by the agreement of May 1894 with Great

Britain. The international character of King Leopold's enterprise had not

long been maintained, and his recognition as sovereign of the Free State

confirmed the distinctive character which the Association had assumed, even

before that event.

In April 1887 France was informed that the right of pre-emption accorded to

her in 1884 had not been intended by King Leopold to prejudice Belgium's

right to acquire the Congo State, and in reply the French minister at

Brussels took note of the explanation, ``in so far as this interpretation is

not contrary to pre-existing international engagements.'' By his will, dated

the 2nd of August 1889, King Leopold made Belgium formally heir to the

sovereign rights of the Congo Free State. In 1895 an annexation bill was

introduced into the Belgian parliament, but at that time Belgium had no

desire to assume responsibility for the Congo State, and the bill was

withdrawn. In 1901, by the terms of a loan granted in 1890, Belgium had again

an opportunity of annexing the Congo State, but a bill in favour of

annexation was opposed by the government and was withdrawn after King Leopold

had declared that the time was not ripe for the transfer. Concessionaire

companies and a Domaine de la Couronne had been created in the state, from

which the sovereign derived considerable revenues—facts which helped to

explain the altered attitude of Leopold II. The agitation in Great Britain

and America against the Congo system of government, and the admissions of an

official commission of inquiry concerning its maladministration,

strengthened, however, the movement in favour of transfer. Nevertheless in

June 1906 the king again declared himself opposed to immediate annexation.

But under pressure of public opinion the Congo government concluded, 28th of

November 1907, a new annexation treaty. As it stipulated for the continued

existence of the crown domain the treaty provoked vehement opposition.

Leopold II. was forced to yield, and an additional act was signed, 5th of

March 1908, providing for the suppression of the domain in return for

financial subsidies. The treaty, as amended, was approved by the Belgian

parliament in the session of 1908. Thus the Congo state, after an existence

of 24 years as an independent power, became a Belgian colony. (See CONGO FREE

STATE.)

The area of the Free State, vast as it was, did not suffice to satisfy the

ambition of its sovereign. King Leopold maintained that the Free State

enjoyed equally with any other state the right to extend its frontiers. His

ambition involved the state in the struggle between Great Britain and France

for the upper Nile. To understand the situation it is necessary to remember

the condition of the Egyptian Sudan at that time. The mahdi, Mahommed Ahmed,

had preached a holy war against the Egyptians, and, after the capture of

Khartum and the death of General C. G. Gordon, the Sudan was abandoned to the

dervishes. The Egyptian frontier was withdrawn to Wadi Haifa, and the vast

provinces of Kordofan, Darfur and the Bahr-el-Ghazal were given over to

dervish tyranny and misrule. It was obvious that Egypt would sooner or later

seek to recover her position in the Sudan, as the command of the upper Nile

was recognized as essential to her continued prosperity. But the

international position of the abandoned provinces was by no means clear. The

British government, by the Anglo-German agreement of July 1890, had secured

the assent of Germany to the statement that the British sphere of influence

in East Africa was bounded on the west by the Congo Free State and by ``the

western watershed of the basin of the upper Nile''; but this claim was not

recognized either by France or by the Congo Free State. From her base on the

Congo, France was busily engaged pushing forward along the northern

tributaries of the great river. On the 27th of April 1887 an agreement was

signed with the Congo Free State by which the right bank of the Ubangi river

was secured to French influence, and the left bank to the Congo Free State.

The desire of France to secure a footing in the upper Nile valley was partly

due, as has been seen, to her anxiety to extend a French zone across Africa,

but it was also and to a large

The contest for the upper Nile.

extent attributable to the belief, widely entertained in France, that by

establishing herself on the upper Nile France could regain the position in

Egyptian affairs which she had sacrificed in 1882. With these strong

inducements France set steadily to work to consolidate her position on the

tributary streams of the upper Congo basin, preparatory to crossing into the

valley of the upper Nile. Meanwhile a similar advance was being made from the

Congo Free State northwards and eastwards. King Leopold had two objects in

view—-to obtain control of the rich province of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and to

secure an outlet on the Nile. Stations were established on the Welle river,

and in February 1891 Captain van Kerckhoven left Leopoldville for the upper

Welle with the most powerful expedition which had, up to that time, been

organized by the Free State. After some heavy fighting the expedition reached

the Nile in September 1892, and opened up communications with the remains of

the old Egyptian garrison at Wadelai. Other expeditions under Belgian

officers penetrated into the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and it was apparent that King

Leopold proposed to rely on effective occupation as an answer to any claims

which might be advanced by either Great Britain or France. The news of what

was happening in this remote region Of Africa filtered through to Europe very

slowly, but King Leopold was warned on several occasions that Great Britain

would not recognize any claims by the Congo Free State on the Bahr-el-Ghazal.

The difficulty was, however, that neither from Egypt, whence the road was

barred by the khalifa (the successor of the mahdi), nor from Uganda, which

was far too remote from the coast to serve as the base of a large expedition,

could a British force be despatched to take effective occupation of the upper

Nile valley. There was, therefore, danger lest the French should succeed in

establishing themselves on the upper Nile before the preparations which were

being made in Egypt for ``smashing'' the khalifa were completed.

In these circumstances Lord Rosebery, who was then British foreign minister,

began, and his successor, the 1st earl of

The Anglo-Congolese agreement of 1894.

Kimberley, completed, negotiations with King Leopold which resulted in the

conclusion of the Anglo-Congolese agreement of 12th May 1894. By this

agreement King Leopold recognized the British sphere of influence as laid

down in the Anglo-German agreement of July 1890, and Great Britain granted a

lease to King Leopold of certain territories in the western basin of the

upper Nile, extending on the Nile from a point on Lake Albert to Fashoda, and

westwards to the Congo-Nile watershed. The practical effect of this agreement

was to give the Congo Free State a lease, during its sovereign's lifetime, of

the old Bahr-el-Ghazal province, and to secure after His Majesty's death as

much of that territory as lay west of the 30th meridian, together with access

to a port on Lake Albert, to his successor. At the same time the Congo Free

State leased to Great Britain a strip of territory, 15 1/2 m. in breadth,

between the north end of Lake Tanganyika and the south end of Lake Albert

Edward. This agreement was hailed as a notable triumph for British diplomacy.

But the triumph was short-lived. By the agreement of July 1890 with Germany,

Great Britain had been reluctantly compelled to abandon her hopes of through

communication between the British spheres in the northern and southern parts

of the continent, and to Consent to the boundary of German East Africa

marching with the eastern frontier of the Congo Free State. Germany frankly

avowed that she did not wish to have a powerful neighbour interposed between

herself and the Congo Free State. It was obvious that the new agreement would

effect precisely what Germany had declined to agree to in 1890. Accordingly

Germany protested in such vigorous terms that, on the 22nd of June 1894, the

offending article was withdrawn by an exchange of notes between Great Britain

and the Congo Free State. Opinion in France was equally excited by the new

agreement. It was obvious that the lease to the Congo Free State was intended

to exclude France from the Nile by placing the Congo Free State as a barrier

across her path. Pressure was brought to bear on King Leopold, from Paris, to

renounce the rights acquired under the agreement, and on the 14th of August

1894 King Leopold signed an agreement with France by which, in exchange for

France's acknowledgment of the Mbomu river as his northern frontier, His

Majesty renounced all occupation and all exercise of political influence west

of 30 deg. E., and north of a line drawn from that meridian to the Nile along

5 deg. 30' N.

This left the way still open for France to the Nile, and in June 1896 Captain

J. Marchand left France with secret instructions to lead an expedition into

the Nile valley. On the 1st of March in the following year he left

Brazzaville, and began a journey which all but plunged Great Britain and

France into war. The difficulties which Captain Marchand had to overcome were

mainly those connected with transport. In October 1897 the expedition reached

the banks of the Sue, the waters of which eventually flow into the Nile. Here

a post was established and the ``Faidherbe,'' a steamer which had been

carried across the Congo-Nile watershed in sections, was put together and

launched. On the 1st of May 1898 Marchand started on the final stage of his

journey, and reached Fashoda on the 10th of July, having established a chain

of posts en route. At Fashoda the French flag was at once raised, and a

``treaty'' made with the local chief. Meanwhile other expeditions had been

concentrating on

The French at Fashoda.

Fashoda—a mud-flat situated in a swamp, round which for many months raged the

angry passions of two great peoples. French expeditions, with a certain amount

of assistance from the emperor Menelek of Abyssinia, had been striving to reach

the Nile from the east, so as to join hands with Marchand and complete the line

of posts into the Abyssinian frontier. In this, however, they were

unsuccessful. No better success attended the expedition under Colonel

(afterwards Sir) Ronald Macdonald, R.E., sent by the British government from

Uganda to anticipate the French in the occupation of the upper Nile. It was

from the north that claimants arrived to dispute with the French their right to

Fashoda, and all that the occupation of that dismal post implied. In 1896 an

Anglo-Egyptian army, under the direction of Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord)

Kitchener, had begun to advance southwards for the reconquest of the Egyptian

Sudan. On the 2nd of September 1898 Khartum was captured, and the khalifa's

army dispersed. It was then that news reached the Anglo-Egyptian commander,

from native sources, that there were white men flying a strange flag at

Fashoda. The sirdar at once proceeded in a steamer up the Nile, and courteously

but firmly requested Captain Marchand to remove the French flag. On his refusal

the Egyptian flag was raised close to the French flag, and the dispute was

referred to Europe for adjustment between the British and French governments. A

critical situation ensued. Neither government was inclined to give way, and for

a time war seemed imminent. Happily Lord Salisbury was able to announce, on the

4th of November, that France was willing to recognize the British claims, and

the incident was finally closed on the 21st of March 1899, when an Anglo-French

declaration was signed, by the terms of which France withdrew from the Nile

valley and accepted a boundary line which satisfied her earlier ambition by

uniting the whole of her territories in North, West and Central Africa into a

homogeneous whole, while effectually preventing the realization of her dream of

a transcontinental empire from west to east. By this declaration it was agreed

that the dividing line between the British and French spheres, north of the

Congo Free State, should follow the Congo-Nile water-parting up to its

intersection with the 11th parallel of north latitude, from which point it was

to be ``drawn as far as the 15th parallel in such a manner as to separate in

principle the kingdom of Wadai from what constituted in 1882 the province of

Darfur,'' but in no case was it to be drawn west of the 21st degree of east

longitude, or east of the 23rd degree. From the 15th parallel the

line was continued north and north-west to the intersection of the Tropic of

Cancer with 16 deg. E. French influence was to prevail west of this line,

British influence to the east. Wadai was thus definitely assigned to France.

When, by the declaration of the 21st of March 1899, France renounced all

territorial ambitions in the upper Nile basin, King

Fate of the Bar-el-Ghazal.

Leopold revived his claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal province under the terms of

the lease granted by Article 2 of the Anglo-Congolese agreement of 1894. This

step he was encouraged to take by the assertion of Lord Salisbury, in his

capacity as secretary of state for foreign affairs during the negotiations

with France concerning Fashoda, that the lease to King Leopold was still in

full force. But the assertion was made simply as a declaration of British

right to dispose of the territory, and the sovereign of the Congo State found

that there was no disposition in Great Britain to allow the Bahr-el-Ghazal to

fall into his hands. Long and fruitless negotiations ensued. The king at

length (1904) sought to force a settlement by sending armed forces into the

province. Diplomatic representations having failed to secure the withdrawal

of these forces, the Sudan government issued a proclamation which had the

effect of cutting off the Congo stations from communication with the Nile,

and finally King Leopold consented to an agreement, signed in London on the

9th of May 1906, whereby the 1894 lease was formally annulled. The Bahr-el-

Ghazal thenceforth became undisputedly an integral part of the Anglo-Egyptian

Sudan. King Leopold had, however, by virtue of the 1894 agreement

administered the comparatively small portion of the leased area in which his

presence was not resented by France. This territory, including part of the

west bank of the Nile and known as the Lado Enclave, the 1906 agreement

allowed King Leopold to ``continue during his reign to occupy.'' Provision

was made that within six months of the termination of His Majesty's reign the

enclave should be handed over to the Sudan government (see CONGO FREE STATE.)

In this manner ended the long struggle for supremacy on the upper Nile, Great

Britain securing the withdrawal of all European rivals.

The course of events in the southern half of the continent may now be traced.

By the convention of the 14th of February

Portugal's trans-African schemes.

1885, in which Portugal recognized the sovereignty of the Congo Free State,

and by a further convention concluded with France in 1886, Portugal secured

recognition of her claim to the territory known as the Kabinda enclave, lying

north of the Congo, but not to the northern bank of the river. By the same

convention of 1885 Portugal's claim to the southern bank of the river as far

as Noki (the limit of navigation from the sea) had been admitted. Thus

Portuguese possessions on the west coast extended from the Congo to the mouth

of the Kunene river. In the interior the boundary with the Free State was

settled as far as the Kwango river, but disputes arose as to the right to the

country of Lunda, otherwise known as the territory of the Muato Yanvo. On the

25th of May 1891 a treaty was signed at Lisbon, by which this large territory

was divided between Portugal and the Free State. The interior limits of the

Portuguese possessions in Africa south of the equator gave rise, however, to

much more serious discussions than were involved in the dispute as to the

Muato Yanvo's kingdom. Portugal, as has been stated, claimed all the

territories between Angola and Mozambique, and she succeeded in inducing both

France and Germany, in 1886, to recognize the king of Portugal's ``right to

exercise his sovereign and civilizing influence in the territories which

separate the Portuguese possessions or Angola and Mozambique.'' The

publication of the treaties containing this declaration, together with a map

showing Portuguese claims extending over the whole of the Zambezi valley, and

over Matabeleland to the south and the greater part of Lake Nyasa to the

north, immediately provoked a formal protest from the British government. On

the 13th of August 1887 the British charge d'affaires at Lisbon transmitted

to the Portuguese minister for foreign affairs a memorandum from Lord

Salisbury, in which the latter formally protested ``against any claims not

founded on occupation,'' and contended that the doctrine of effective

occupation had been admitted in principle by all the parties to the Act of

Berlin. Lord Salisbury further stated that ``Her Majesty's government cannot

recognize Portuguese sovereignty in territory not occupied by her in

sufficient strength to enable her to maintain order, protect foreigners and

control the natives.'' To this Portugal replied that the doctrine of

effective occupation was expressly confined by the Berlin Act to the African

coast, but at the same time expeditions were hastily despatched up the

Zambezi and some of its tributaries to discover traces of former Portuguese

occupation. Matabeleland and the districts of Lake Nyasa werespecially

mentioned in the British protest as countries in which Her Majesty's

government took a special interest. As a matter of fact the extension of

British influence northwards to the Zambezi had engaged the attention of the

British authorities ever since the appearance of Germany in South-West Africa

and the declaration of a British protectorate over Bechuanaland. There were

rumours of German activity in Matabeleland, and

Rhodesia secured for Great Britain.

of a Boer trek north of the Limpopo. Hunters and explorers had reported in

eulogistic terms on the rich goldfields and healthy plateau lands of

Matabeleland and Mashonaland, over both of which countries a powerful chief,

Lobengula, claimed authority. There were many suitors for Lobengula's

favours; but on the 11th of February 1888 he signed a treaty with J. S.

Moffat, the assistant commissioner in Bechuanaland, the effect of which was

to place all his territory under British protection. Both the Portuguese and

the Transvaal Boers were chagrined at this extension of British influence. A

number of Boers attempted unsuccessfully to trek into the country, and

Portugal opposed her ancient claims to the new treaty. She contended that

Lobengula's authority did not extend over Mashonaland, which she claimed as

part of the Portuguese province of Sofala.

Meanwhile preparations were being actively made by British capitalists for

the exploitation of the mineral and other resources of Lobengula's

territories. Two rival syndicates obtained, or claimed to have obtained,

concessions from Lobengula; but in the summer of 1889 Cecil Rhodes succeeded

in amalgamating the conflicting interests, and on the 29th of October of that

year the British government granted a charter to the British South Africa

Company (see RHODESIA.) The first article of the charter declared that ``the

principal field of the operations'' of the company ``shall be the region of

South Africa lying immediately to the north of British Bechuanaland, and to

the north and west of the South African Republic, and to the west of the

Portuguese dominions.'' No time was lost in making preparations for effective

occupation. On the advice of F. C. Selous it was determined to despatch an

expedition to eastern Mashonaland by a new route, which would avoid the

Matabele country. This plan was carried out in the summer of 1890, and,

thanks to the rapidity with which the column moved and Selous's intimate

knowledge of the country, the British flag was, on the 11th of September,

hoisted at a spot on the Makubusi river, where the town of Salisbury now

stands, and the country taken possession of in the name of Queen Victoria.

Disputes with the Portuguese ensued, and there were several frontier

incidents which for a time embittered the relations between the two

countries.

Meanwhile, north of the Zambezi, the Portuguese were making desperate but

futile attempts to repair the neglect

Anglo-Portuguese disputes in Central Africa.

of centuries by hastily organized expeditions and the hoisting of flags. In

1888 an attempt to close the Zambezi to British vessels was frustrated by the

firmness of Lord Salisbury. In a despatch to the British minister at Lisbon,

dated the 25th of June 1888, Lord Salisbury, after brushing aside the

Portuguese claims founded on doubtful discoveries three centuries old, stated

the British case in a few sentences:—

It is (he wrote) an undisputed point that the recent discoveries of the

English traveller, Livingstone, were followed by organized attempts on the

part of English religious and commercial bodies to open up and civilize the

districts surrounding and adjoining the lake. Many British settlements have

been established, the access to which from the sea is by the rivers Zambezi

and Shire. Her Majesty's government and the British public are much

interested in the welfare of these settlements. Portugal does not occupy, and

has never occupied, any portion of the lake, nor of the Shire; she has

neither authority nor influence beyond the confluence of the Shire and

Zambezi, where her interior custom-house, now withdrawn, was placed by the

terms of the Mozambique Tariff of 1877.

In 1889 it became known to the British government that a considerable Portuguese

expedition was being organized under the command of Major Serpa Pinto, for

operating in the Zambezi region. In answer to inquiries addressed to the

Portuguese government, the foreign minister stated that the object of the

expedition was to visit the Portuguese settlements on the upper Zambezi. The

British government was, even so late as 1889, averse from declaring a formal

protectorate over the Nyasa region; but early in that year H. H. (afterwards

Sir Harry) Johnston was sent out to Mozambique as British consul, with

instructions to travel in the interior and report on the troubles that had

arisen with the Arabs on Lake Nyasa and with the Portuguese. The discovery by

D. J. Rankin in 1889 of a navigable mouth of the Zambezi—the Chinde—and the

offer by Cecil Rhodes of a subsidy of L. 10,000 a year from the British South

Africa Company, removed some of the objections to a protectorate entertained by

the British government; but Johnston's instructions were not to proclaim a

protectorate unless circumstances compelled him to take that course. To his

surprise Johnston learnt on his arrival at the Zambezi that Major Serpa Pinto's

expedition had been suddenly deflected to the north. Hurrying forward, Johnston

overtook the Portuguese expedition and warned its leader that any attempt to

establish political influence north of the Ruo river would compel him to take

steps to protect British interests. On arrival at the Ruo, Major Serpa Pinto

returned to Mozambique for instructions, and in his absence Lieutenant Coutinho

crossed the river, attacked the Makololo chiefs and sought to obtain possession

of the Shire highlands by a coup de main. John Buchanan, the British

vice-consul, lost no time in declaring the country under British protection,

and his action was subsequently confirmed by Johnston on his return from a

treaty-making expedition on Lake Nyasa. On the news of these events reaching

Europe the British government addressed an ultimatum to Portugal, as the result

of which Lieutenant Coutinho's action was disavowed, and he was ordered to

withdraw the Portuguese forces south of the Ruo. After prolonged negotiations,

a convention was signed between Great Britain and Portugal on the 20th of

August 1890, by which Great Britain obtained a broad belt of territory north of

the Zambezi, stretching from Lake Nyasa on the east, the southern end of

Tanganyika on the north, and the Kabompo tributary of the Zambezi on the west;

while south of the Zambezi Portugal retained the right bank of the river from a

point ten miles above Zumbo, and the western boundary of her territory south of

the river was made to coincide roughly with the 33rd degree of east longitude.

The publication of the convention aroused deep resentment in Portugal, and the

government, unable to obtain its ratification by the chamber of deputies,

resigned. In October the abandonment of the convention was accepted by the new

Portuguese ministry as a fait accompli; but on the 14th of November the two

governments signed an agreement for a modus vivendi, by which they engaged to

recognize the territorial limits indicated in the convention of 20th

August ``in so far that from the date of the present agreement

British and Portuguese spheres defined.

to the termination thereof neither Power will make treaties, accept

protectorates, nor exercise any act of sovereignty within the spheres of

influence assigned to the other party by the said convention.'' The

breathing-space thus gained enabled feeling in Portugal to cool down, and on

the 11th of June 1891 another treaty was signed, the ratifications being

exchanged on the 3rd of July, As already stated, this is the main treaty

defining the British and Portuguese spheres both south and north of the

Zambezi. It contained many other provisions relating to trade and navigation,

providing, inter alia, a maximum transit duty of 3% on imports and exports

crossing Portuguese territories on the east coast to the British sphere,

freedom of navigation of the Zambezi and Shire for the ships of all nations,

and stipulations as to the making of railways, roads and telegraphs. The

territorial readjustment effected was slightly more favourable to Portugal

than that agreed upon by the 1890 convention. Portugal was given both banks

of the Zambezi to a point ten miles west of Zumbo—the farthest settlement of

the Portuguese on the river. South of the Zambezi the frontier takes a south

and then an east course till it reaches the edge of the continental plateau,

thence running, roughly, along the line of 33 deg. E. southward to the north-

eastern frontier of the Transvaal. Thus by this treaty Portugal was left in

the possession of the coast-lands, while Great Britain maintained her right

to Matabele and Mashona lands. The boundary between the Portuguese sphere of

influence on the west coast and the British sphere of influence north of the

Zambezi was only vaguely indicated; but it was to be drawn in such a manner

as to leave the Barotse country within the British sphere, Lewanika, the

paramount chief of the Marotse, claiming that his territory extended much

farther to the west than was admitted by the Portuguese. In August 1903 the

question what were the limits of the Barotse kingdom was referred to the

arbitration of the king of Italy. By his award, delivered in June 1905, the

western limit of the British sphere runs from the northern frontier of German

South-West Africa up the Kwando river to 22 deg. E., follows that meridian

north to 13 deg. S., then runs due east to 24 deg. E., and then north again

to the frontier of the Congo State.

Before the conclusion of the treaty of June 1891 with Portugal, the British

government had made certain arrangements for the administration of the large

area north of the Zambezi reserved to British influence. On the 1st of

February Sir Harry Johnston was appointed imperial commissioner in Nyasaland,

and a fortnight later the British South Africa Company intimated a desire to

extend its operations north of the Zambezi. Negotiations followed, and the

field of operations of the Chartered Company was, on the 2nd of April 1891,

extended so as to cover (with the exception of Nyasaland) the whole of the

British sphere of influence north of the Zambezi (now known as Northern

Rhodesia). On the 14th of May a formal protectorate was declared over

Nyasaland, including the Shire highlands and a belt of territory extending

along the whole of the western shore of Lake Nyasa. The name was changed in

1893 to that of the British Central Africa Protectorate, for which

designation was substituted in 1907 the more appropriate title of Nyasaland

Protectorate.

At the date of the assembling of the Berlin conference the German government

had notified that the coast-line on the

Germany's share of South Africa.

south-west of the continent, from the Orange river to Cape Frio, had been

placed under German protection. On the 13th of April 1885 the German South-

West Africa Company was constituted under an order of the imperial cabinet

with the rights of state sovereignty, including mining royalties and rights,

and a railway and telegraph monopoly. In that and the following years the

Germans vigorously pursued the business of treaty-making with the native

chiefs in the interior; and when, in July 1890, the British and German

governments came to an agreement as to the limits of their respective spheres

of influence in various parts of Africa, the boundaries of German South-West

Africa were fixed in their present position. By Article III. of this

agreement the north bank of the Orange river up to the point of its

intersection by the 20th degree of east longitude was made the southern

boundary of the German sphere of influence. The eastern boundary followed the

20th degree of east longitude to its intersection by the 22nd parallelof

south latitude, then ran eastwards along that parallel to the point of its

intersection by the 21st degree of east longitude. From that point it ran

northwards along the last-named meridian to the point of its intersection by

the 18th parallel of south latitude, thence eastwards along that parallel to

the river Chobe or Kwando, and along the main channel of that river to its

junction with the Zambezi, where it terminated. The northern frontier marched

with the southern boundary of Portuguese West Africa. The object of

deflecting the eastern boundary near its northern termination was to give

Germany access by her own territory to the upper waters of the Zambezi, and

it was declared that this strip of territory was at no part to be less than

20 English miles in width.

To complete the survey of the political partition of Africa south of the

Zambezi, it is necessary briefly to refer to the events

Fate of the Dutch Republics.

connected with the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. In

October 1885 the British government made an agreement with the New Republic,

a small community of Boer farmers who had in 1884-85 seized part of Zululand

and set up a government of their own, defining the frontier between the New

Republic and Zululand; but in July 1888 the New Republic was incorporated in

the South African Republic. In a convention of July-August 1890 the British

government and the government of the South African Republic confirmed the

independence of Swaziland, and on the 8th of November 1893 another convention

was signed with the same object; but on the 19th of December 1894 the British

government agreed to the South African Republic exercising ``all rights and

powers of protection, legislation, jurisdiction and administration over

Swaziland and the inhabitants thereof,'' subject to certain conditions and

provisions, and to the non-incorporation of Swaziland in the Republic. In the

previous September Pondoland had been annexed to Cape Colony; on the 23rd of

April 1895 Tongaland was declared by proclamation to be added to the

dominions of Queen Victoria, and in December 1897 Zululand and Tongaland, or

Amatongaland, were incorporated with the colony of Natal. The history of the

events that led up to the Boer War of 1899-1902 cannot be recounted here (see

TRANSVAAL, History), but in October 1899 the South African Republic and the

Orange Free State addressed an ultimatum to Great Britain and invaded Natal

and Cape Colony. As a result of the military operations that followed, the

Orange Free State was, on the 28th of May 1900, proclaimed by Lord Roberts a

British colony under the name ``Orange River Colony,'' and the South African

Republic was on the 25th of October 1900 incorporated in the British empire

as the ``Transvaal Colony.'' In January 1903 the districts of Vryheid

(formerly the New Republic), Utrecht and part of the Wakkerstroom district, a

tract of territory comprising in all about 7000 sq. m., were transferred from

the Transvaal colony to Natal. In 1907 both the Transvaal and Orange River

Colony were granted responsible government.

On the east coast the two great rivals were Germany and Great Britain.

Germany on the 30th of December 1886, and Great

Anglo-German rivalry in East Africa.

Britain on the 11th of June 1891, formally recognized the Rovuma river as the

northern boundary of the Portuguese sphere of influence on that coast; but it

was to the north of that river, over the vast area of East or East Central

Africa in which the sultan of Zanzibar claimed to exercise suzerainty, that

the struggle between the two rival powers was most acute. The independence of

the sultans of Zanzibar had been recognized by the governments of Great

Britain and France in 1862, and the sultan's authority extended almost

uninterruptedly along the coast of the mainland, from Cape Delgado in the

south to Warsheik on the north—a stretch of coast more than a thousand miles

long—though to the north the sultan's authority was confined to certain

ports. In Zanzibar itself, where Sir John Kirk, Livingstone's companion in

his second expedition, was British consul-general, British influence was,

when the Berlin conference met, practically supreme, though German traders

had established themselves on the island and created considerable commercial

interests. Away from the coasts the limits and extent of the sultan's

authority were far from being clearly defined. The sultanhimself claimed that

it extended as far as Lake Tanganyika, but the claim did not rest on any very

solid ground of effective occupation. The little-known region of the Great

Lakes had for some time attracted the attention of the men who were directing

the colonial movement in Germany; and, as has been stated, a small band of

pioneers actually landed on the mainland opposite Zanzibar in November 1884,

and made their first ``treaty'' with the chief of Mbuzini on the 19th of that

month Pushing up the Wami river the three adventurers reached the Usagara

country, and concluded more ``treaties,'' the net result being that when, in

the middle of December, Karl Peters returned to the coast he brought back

with him documents which were claimed to concede some 60,000 sq. m. of

country to the German Colonization Society. Peters hurried back to Berlin,

and on the 17th of February 1885 the German emperor issued a ``Charter of

Protection'' by which His Majesty accepted the suzerainty of the newly-

acquired territory, and ``placed under our Imperial protection the

territories in question.'' The conclusion of these treaties was, on the 6th

of March, notified to the British government and to the sultan of Zanzibar.

Immediately on receipt of the notification the sultan telegraphed an

energetic protest to Berlin, alleging that the places placed under German

protection had belonged to the sultanate of Zanzibar from the time of his

fathers. The German consul-general refused to admit the sultan's claims, and

meanwhile agents of the German society were energetically pursuing the task

of treaty-making. The sultan (Seyyid Bargash) despatched a small force to the

disputed territory, which was subsequently withdrawn, and in May sent a more

imposing expedition under the command of General Lloyd Mathews, the

commander-in-chief of the Zanzibar army, to the Kilimanjaro district, in

order to anticipate the action of German agents. Meanwhile Lord Granville,

then at the British Foreign Office, had

Lord Granville's complaisance towards Germany.

taken up an extremely friendly attitude towards the German claims. Before these

events the sultan of Zanzibar had, on more than one occasion, practically

invited Great Britain to assume a protectorate over his dominions. But the

invitations had been declined. Egyptian affairs were, in the year 1885, causing

considerable anxiety to the British government, and the fact was not without

influence on the attitude of the British foreign secretary. On the 25th

of May 1885, in a despatch to the British ambassador at Berlin, Lord Granville

instructed Sir E. Malet to communicate the views of the British cabinet to

Prince Bismarck:—

I have to request your Excellency to state that the supposition that Her

Majesty's Government have no intention of opposing the German scheme of

colonization in the neighbourhood of Zanzibar is absolutely correct. Her

Majesty's Government, on the contrary, view with favour these schemes, the

realization of which will entail the civilization of large tracts over which

hitherto no European influence has been exercised, the co-operation of

Germany with Great Britain in the work of the suppression of the slave gangs,

and the encouragement of the efforts of the Sultan both in the extinction of

the slave trade and in the commercial development of his dominions.

In the same despatch Lord Granville instructed Sir E. Malet to intimate to

the German government that some prominent capitalists had originated a plan

for a British settlement in the country between the coast and the lakes,

which are the sources of the White Nile, ``and for its connexion with the

coast by a railway.'' But Her Majesty's government would not accord to these

prominent capitalists the support they had called for, ``unless they were

fully satisfied that every precaution was taken to ensure that it should in

no way conflict with the interests of the territory that has been taken under

German protectorate,'' and Prince Bismarck was practically invited to say

whether British capitalists were or were not to receive the protection of the

British government. The reference in Lord Granville's despatch was to a

proposal made by a number of British merchants and others who had long been

interested in Zanzibar, and who saw in the rapid advance of Germany a menace

to the interests which had hitherto been regarded as paramount in the

sultanate. In 1884 H. H. Johnston had concluded treaties with the chief of

Taveta in the Kilimanjaro district, and had transferred these treaties to

John Hutton of Manchester. Hutton, with Mr (afterwards Sir William)

Mackinnon, was one of the founders of what subsequently became the Imperial

British East Africa Company. But in the early stages the champions of British

interests in East Africa received no support from their own government, while

Germany was pushing her advantage with the energy of a recent convert to

colonial expansion, and had even, on the coast, opened negotiations with the

sultan of Witu, a small territory situated north of the Tana river, whose

ruler claimed to be independent of Zanzibar. On the 5th of May 1885 the

sultan of Witu executed a deed of sale and cession to a German subject of

certain tracts of land on the coast, and later in the same year other

treaties or sales of territory were effected, by which German subjects

acquired rights on the coast-line claimed by the sultan. Inland, treaties had

been concluded on behalf of Germany with the chiefs of the Kilimanjaro

region, and an intimation to that effect made to the British government. But

before this occurred the German government had succeeded in extracting an

acknowledgment of the validity of the earlier treaties from the sultan of

Zanzibar. Early in August a powerful German squadron appeared off Zanzibar,

and on the 14th of that month the sultan yielded to the inevitable,

acknowledged the German protectorate over Usagara and Witu, and undertook to

withdraw his soldiers.

Meanwhile negotiations had been opened for the appointment of an

international commission, ``for the purpose of inquiring

Partition of the sultanate of Zanzibar.

into the claims of the sultans of Zanzibar to sovereignty over certain

territories on the east coast of Africa, and of ascertaining their precise

limits.'' The governments to be represented were Great Britain, France and

Germany, and towards the end of 1885 commissioners were appointed. The

commissioners reported on the 9th of June 1886, and assigned to the sultan

the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, Lamu, Mafia and a number of other small

islands. On the mainland they recognized as belonging to the sultan a

continuous strip of territory, 10 sea-miles in depth, from the south bank of

the Minengani river, a stream a short distance south of the Rovuma, to

Kipini, at the mouth of the Tana river, some 600 m. in length. North of

Kipini the commissioners recognized as belonging to the sultan the stations

of Kismayu, Brava, Marka and Mukdishu, with radii landwards of 10 sea-miles,

and of Warsheik with a radius of 5 sea-miles. By an exchange of notes in

October—November 1886 the governments of Great Britain and Germany accepted

the reports of the delimitation commissioners, to which the sultan adhered on

the 4th of the following December. But the British and German governments did

more than determine what territories were to be assigned to the sultanate of

Zanzibar. They agreed to a delimitation of their respective spheres of

influence in East Africa. The territory to be affected by this arrangement

was to be bounded on the south by the Rovuma river, ``and on the north by a

line which, starting from the mouth of the Tana river, follows the course of

that river or its affluents to the point of intersection of the equator and

the 38th degree of east longitude, thence strikes direct to the point of

intersection of the 1st degree of north latitude with the 37th degree of east

longitude, where the line terminates.'' The line of demarcation between the

British and the German spheres of influence was to start from the mouth of

the river Wanga or Umba (which enters the ocean opposite Pemba Island to the

north of Zanzibar), and running north-west was to skirt the northern base of

the Kilimanjaro range, and thence to be drawn direct to the point on the

eastern side of Victoria Nyanza intersected by the 1st degree of south

latitude. South of this line German influence was to prevail; north of the

line was the British sphere. The sultan's dominions having been thus

truncated, Germany associated herself with the recognition of the

``independence'' of Zanzibar in which France and Great Britain had joined in

1862. The effect of this agreement was to define the spheres of influence of

the two countries as far as Victoria Nyanza, but it provided no limit

westwards, and left the country north of the Tana river, in which Germany had

already acquired some interests near the coast, open for fresh annexations.

The conclusion of the agreement immediately stimulated the enterprise both of

the German East African Company, to which Peters's earlier treaties had been

transferred, and of the British capitalists to whom reference had been made

in Lord Granville's despatch. The German East African Company was

incorporated by imperial charter in March 1887, and the British capitalists

formed themselves into the British East Africa Association, and on the 24th

of May 1887 obtained, through the good offices of Sir William Mackinnon, a

concession of the 10-miles strip of coast from the Umba river in the south to

Kipini in the north. The British association further sought to extend its

rights in the sphere reserved to British influence by making treaties with

the native chiefs behind the coast strip, and for this purpose various

expeditions were sent into the interior. When they had obtained concessions

over the country for some 200 m. inland the associated

Formation of British East Africa.

capitalists applied to the British government for a charter, which was

granted on the 3rd of September 1888, and the association became the Imperial

British East Africa Company (see BRITISH EAST AFRICA).

The example set by the British company in obtaining a lease of the coast

strip between the British sphere of influence and the sea was quickly

followed by the German association, which, on the 28th of April 1888,

concluded an agreement with the sultan Khalifa, who had succeeded his brother

Bargash, by which the association leased the strip of Zanzibar territory

between the German sphere and the sea. It was not,however, until August that

the German officials took over the administration, and their want of tact and

ignorance of native administration almost immediately provoked a rebellion of

so serious a character that it was not suppressed until the imperial

authorities had taken the matter in hand. Shortly after its suppression the

administration was entrusted to an imperial officer, and the sultan's rights

on the mainland strip were bought outright by Germany for four millions of

marks.

Events of great importance had been happening, meanwhile, in the country to

the west and north of the British sphere of influence. The British company

had sent caravans into the interior to survey the country, to make treaties

with the native chiefs and to report on the commercial and agricultural

possibilities. One of these had gone up the Tana river. But another and a

rival expedition was proceeding along the northern bank of this same river.

Karl Peters, whose energy cannot be denied, whatever may be thought of his

methods, set out with an armed caravan up the Tana on the pretext of leading

an expedition to the relief of Emin Pasha, the governor of the equatorial

province of the Egyptian Sudan, then reported to be hemmed in by the

dervishes at Wadelai. His expedition was not sanctioned by the German

government, and the British naval commander had orders to prevent his

landing. But Peters succeeded in evading the British vessels and proceeded up

the river, planting German flags and fighting the natives who opposed his

progress. Early in 1890 he reached Kavirondo, and there found letters from

Mwanga, king of Uganda, addressed to F. J. Jackson, the leader of an

expedition sent out by the British East Africa

Uganda secured by Great Britain.

Company, imploring the company's representative to come to his assistance and

offering to accept the British flag. To previous letters, less plainly

couched. from the king, Jackson had returned the answer that his instructions

were not to enter Uganda, but that he would do so in case of need. The

letters that fell into Peters's hands were in reply to those from Jackson.

Peters did not hesitate to open the letters, and on reading them he at once

proceeded to Uganda, where, with the assistance of the French Roman Catholic

priests, he succeeded in inducing Mwanga to sign a loosely worded treaty

intended to place him under German protection. On hearing of this Jackson at

once set out for Uganda, but Peters did not wait for his arrival, leaving for

the south of Victoria Nyanza some days before Jackson arrived at Mengo,

Mwanga's capital. As Mwanga would not agree to Jackson's proposals, Jackson

returned to the coast, leaving a representative at Mengo to protect the

company's interests. Captain (afterwards Sir) F. D. Lugard, who had recently

entered the company's employment, was at once ordered to proceed to Uganda.

But in the meantime an event of great importance had taken place, the

conclusion of the agreement between Great Britain and Germany with reference

to their different spheres of influence in various parts of Africa.

The Anglo-German agreement of the 1st of July 1890 has already been referred

to and its importance insisted upon. Here we have to deal with the provisions

in reference to East Africa. In return for the cession of Heligoland, Lord

Salisbury obtained from Germany the recognition of a British protectorate

over the dominions of the sultan of Zanzibar, including the islands of

Zanzibar and Pemba, but excluding the strip leased to Germany, which was

subsequently ceded absolutely to Germany. Germany further agreed to withdraw

the protectorate declared over Witu and the adjoining coast up to Kismayu in

favour of Great Britain, and to recognize as within the British sphere of

influence the vast area bounded, on the south by the frontier line laid down

in the agreement of 1886, which was to be extended along the first parallel

of south latitude across Victoria Nyanza to the frontiers of the Congo Free

State, on the west by the Congo Free State and the western watershed of the

Nile, and on the north by a line commencing on the coast at the north bank of

the mouth of the river Juba, then ascending that bank of the river until it

reached the territory at that time regarded as reserved to the influence of

Italy13 in Gallaland and Abyssinia, when it followed the frontier of the

Italian sphere to the confines of Egypt. To the south-west of the German

sphere in East Africa the boundary was formed by the eastern and northern

shore of Lake Nyasa, and round the western shore to the mouth of the Songwe

river, from which point it crossed the Nyasa-Tanganyika plateau to the

southern end of the last-named lake,

Limits of German East Africa defined.

leaving the Stevenson Road on the British side of the boundary. The effect of

this treaty was to remove all serious causes of dispute about territory

between Germany and Great Britain in East Africa. It rendered quite valueless

Peters's treaty with Mwanga and his promenade along the Tana; it freed Great

Britain from any fear of German competition to the northwards, and recognized

that her influence extended to the western limits of the Nile valley. But, on

the other hand, Great Britain had to relinquish the ambition of connecting

her sphere of influence in the Nile valley with her possessions in Central

and South Africa. On this point Germany was quite obdurate; and, as already

stated, an attempt subsequently made (May 1894) to secure this object by the

lease of a strip of territory from the Congo Free State was frustrated by

German opposition.

Uganda having thus been assigned to the British sphere of influence by the

only European power in a position to contest its possession with her, the

subsequent history of that region, and of the country between the Victoria

Nyanza and the coast, must be traced in the articles on BRITISH EAST AFRICA

and UGANDA, but it may be well briefly to record here the following

facts:—The Imperial British East Africa Company, finding the burden of

administration too heavy for its financial resources, and not receiving the

assistance it felt itself entitled to receive from the imperial authorities,

intimated that it would be compelled to withdraw at the end of the year 1892.

Funds were raised to enable the company to continue its administration until

the end of March 1893, and a strong public protest against evacuation

compelled the government to determine in favour of the retention of the

country. In January 1893 Sir Gerald Portal left the coast as a special

commissioner to inquire into the ``best means of dealing with the country,

whether through Zanzibar or otherwise.'' On the 31st of March the union jack

was raised, and on the 29th of May a fresh treaty was concluded with King

Mwanga placing his country under British protection. A formal protectorate

was declared over Uganda proper on the 19th of June 1894, which was

subsequently extended so as to include the countries westwards towards the

Congo Free State, eastwards to the British East Africa protectorate and

Abyssinia, and northwards to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The British East

Africa protectorate was constituted in June 1895, when the Imperial British

East Africa Company relinquished all its rights in exchange for a money

payment, and the administration was assumed by the imperial authorities. On

the 1st of April 1902 the eastern province of the Uganda protectorate was

transferred to the British East Africa protectorate, which thus secured

control of the whole length of the so-called Uganda railway, and at the same

time obtained access to the Victoria Nyanza.

Early in the 'eighties, as already seen, Italy had obtained her first formal

footing on the African coast at the Bay of Assab

Italy in East Africa.

(Aussa) on the Red Sea. In 1885 the troubles in which Egypt found herself

involved compelled the khedive and his advisers to loosen their hold on the

Red Sea littoral, and, with the tacit approval of Great Britain, Italy took

possession of Massawa and other ports on that coast. By 1888 Italian

influence had been extended from Ras Kasar on the north to the northern

frontier of the French colony of Obok on the south, a distance of some 650 m.

The interior limits of Italian influence were but ill defined, and the negus

Johannes (King John) of Abyssinia viewed with anything but a favourable eye

the approach of the Italians towards the Abyssinian highlands. In January

1887 an Italian force was almost annihilated at Dogali, but the check only

served to spur on the Italian government to fresh efforts.

The Italians occupied Keren and Asmara in the highlands, and eventually, in

May 1889, concluded a treaty of peace and friendship with the negus Menelek,

who had seized the throne on the death of Johannes, killed in battle with the

dervishes in March of the same year. This agreement, known as the treaty of

Uccialli, settled the frontiers between Abyssinia and the Italian sphere, and

contained the following article:—

XVII. His Majesty the King of Kings of Ethiopia consents to avail himself of

the Italian government for any negotiations which he may enter into with the

other powers or governments.

In Italy and by other European governments this article was generally regarded

as establishing an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia; but this interpretation

was never accepted by the emperor Menelek, and at no time did Italy succeed in

establishing any very effective control over Abyssinian affairs. North of the

Italian coast sphere the Red Sea littoral was still under Egyptian rule, while

immediately to the south a small stretch of coast on the Gulf of Tajura

constituted the sole French possession on the East African mainland (see

SOMALILAND.) Moreover, when Egyptian claims to the Somali coast were withdrawn,

Great Britain took the opportunity to establish her influence on the northern

Somali coast, opposite Aden. Between the 1st of May 1884 and the 15th of March

1886 ten treaties were concluded, placing under British influence the northern

Somali coast from Ras Jibuti on the west to Bandar Ziada on the east. In the

meantime Italy, not content with her acquisitions on the Red Sea, had been

concluding treaties with the Somali chiefs on the east coast. The first treaty

was made with the sultan of Obbia on the 8th of February 1889. Later in the

same year the British East Africa Company transferred to Italy—the transference

being subsequently approved by the sultan of Zanzibar—the ports of Brava,

Marka, Mukdishu and Warsheik, leased from Zanzibar. On the 24th of

March 1891 an agreement between Italy and Great Britain fixed the northern bank

of the Juba up to latitude 6 deg. N. as the southern boundary of Italian

influence in Somaliland, the boundary being provisionally prolonged along lines

of latitude and longitude to the intersection of the Blue Nile with 35 deg. E.

longitude. On the 15th of April 1891 a further agreement fixed the northern

limit of the Italian sphere from Ras Kasar on the Red Sea to the point on the

Blue Nile just mentioned. By this agreement Italy was to have the right

temporarily to occupy Kassala, which was left in the Anglo-Egyptian sphere, in

trust for Egypt—a right of which she availed herself in 1894. To complete the

work of delimitation the British and Italian governments, on the 5th of May

1894, fixed the boundary of the British sphere of influence in Somaliland from

the Anglo-French boundary, which had been settled in February 1888.

But while Great Britain was thus lending her sanction to Italy's ambitious

schemes, the Abyssinian emperor was becoming more and more incensed at

Italy's pretensions to exercise a protectorate over Ethiopia. In 1893 Menelek

denounced the treaty of Uccialli, and eventually, in a great battle, fought

at Adowa on the 1st of March 1896, the Italians were disastrously defeated.

By the subsequent treaty of Adis Ababa, concluded on the 26th of October

1896, the whole of the country to the

The independence of Abyssinia recognized.

south of the Mareb, Belesa and Muna rivers was restored to Abyssinia, and

Italy acknowledged the absolute independence of Abyssinia. The effect of this

was practically to destroy the value of the Anglo-Italian agreement as to the

boundaries to the south and west of Abyssinia; and negotiations were

afterwards set on foot between the emperor Menelek and his European

neighbours with the object of determining the Abyssinian frontiers. Italian

Somaliland, bordering on the south-eastern frontier of Abyssinia, became

limited to a belt of territory with a depth inland from the Indian Ocean of

from 180 to 250 m. The negotiations concerning the frontier lasted until

1908, being protracted over the question as to the possession of Lugh, a town

on the Juba, which eventually fell to Italy. After the battle of Adowa the

Italian government handed over he administration of the southern part of the

country to the enadir Company, but in January 1905 the government resumed

control and at the same time transformed the leasehold rights it held from

the sultan of Zanzibar into sovereign rights by the payment to the sultan of

L. 144,000. To facilitate her communications with the interior, Italy also

secured from the British government the lease of a small area of land

immediately to the north of Kismayu. In British Somaliland the frontier fixed

by agreement with Italy in 1894 was modified, in so far as it marched with

Abyssinian territory, by an agreement which Sir Rennell Rodd concluded with

the emperor Menelek in 1897. The effect of this agreement was to reduce the

area of British Somaliland from 75,000 to 68,000 sq. m. In the same year

France concluded an agreement with the emperor, which is known to have fixed

the frontier of the French Somali Coast protectorate at a distance of 90

kilometres (56 m.) from the coast. The determination of the northern, western

and southern limits of Abyssinia proved a more difficult matter. A treaty of

July 1900 followed by an agreement of November 1901 defined the boundaries of

Eritrea on the side of Abyssinia and the Sudan respectively. In certain

details the boundaries thus laid down were modified by an Anglo-Italian-

Abyssinian treaty signed at Adis Ababa on the 15th of May 1902. On the same

day another treaty was signed at the Abyssinian capital by Sir John

Harrington, the British minister plenipotentiary, and the emperor Menelek,

whereby the western, or Sudan-Abyssinian, frontier was defined as far south

as the intersection of 6 deg. N. and 35 deg. E. Within the British sphere

were left the Atbara up to Gallabat, the Blue Nile up to Famaka and the Sobat

up to the junction of the Baro and Pibor. While not satisfying Abyssinian

claims to their full extent, the frontier laid down was on the whole more

favourable to Abyssinia than was the line fixed in the Anglo-Italian

agreement of 1891. On the other hand, Menelek gave important economic

guarantees and concessions to the Sudan government.

In Egypt the result of the abolition of the Dual Control was to make British

influence virtually predominant, though theoretically Turkey remained the

suzerain power; and after the reconquest of the Sudan by the Anglo-Egyptian

army a convention between the British and Egyptian governments was signed at

Cairo on the 19th of January 1899, which, inter alia, provided for the joint

use of the British and Egyptian flags in the territories south of the 22nd

parallel of north latitude. From the international point of view the British

position in Egypt was strengthened by the Anglo-French declaration of the 8th

of April 1904. For some time previously there had been

The Anglo-French agreements of April 1904.

a movement on both sides of the Channel in favour of the settlement of a

number of important questions in which British and French interests were

involved. The movement was no doubt strengthened by the desire to reduce to

their least dimensions the possible causes of trouble between the two

countries at a time when the outbreak of hostilities between Russia (the ally

of France) and Japan (the ally of Great Britain) rendered the European

situation peculiarly delicate. On the 8th of April 1904 there was signed in

London by the British foreign secretary, the marquess of Lansdowne, and the

French ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, a series of agreements relating to several

parts of the globe. Here we are concerned only with the joint declaration

respecting Egypt and Morocco and a convention relating, in part, to British

and French frontiers in West Africa. The latter we shall have occasion to

refer to later. The former, notwithstanding the declarations embodied in it

that there was ``no intention of altering the political status'' either of

Egypt or of Morocco, cannot be ignored in any account of the partition in

Africa. With regard to Egypt the French government declared ``that they will

not obstruct the action of Great Britain in that country by asking that a

limit of time be fixed for the British occupation or in any other manner.''

France also assented—as did subsequently the other powers interested—to a

khedivial decree simplifying the international control exercised by the

Caisse de la Dette over the finances of Egypt.

In order to appreciate aright that portion of the declaration relating to

Morocco it is necessary to say a few words about the course of French policy

in North-West Africa. In Tunisia the work of strengthening the protectorate

established in 1881 had gone steadily forward; but it was in Algeria that the

extension of French influence had been most marked. The movement of expansion

southwards was inevitable. With the progress of exploration it became

increasingly evident that the Sahara constituted no insurmountable barrier

between the French possessions in North and West Central Africa. But France

had not only the hope of placing Algeria in touch with the Sudan to spur her

forward. To consolidate her position in North-West Africa she desired to make

French influence supreme in Morocco. The relations between the two countries

did not favour the realization of that ambition. The advance southwards of

the French forces of occupation evoked loud protests from the Moorish

government, particularly with regard to the occupation in 1900-1901 of the

Tuat Oases. Under the Franco-Moorish treaty of 1845 the frontier between

Algeria and Morocco was defined from the Mediterranean coast as far south as

the pass of Teniet el Sassi, in about 34 deg. N.; beyond that came a zone in

which no frontier was defined, but in which the tribes and desert villages

(ksurs) belonging to the respective spheres of influence were named; while

south of the desert villages the treaty stated that in view of the character

of the country ``the delimitation of it would be superfluous.'' Though the

frontier was thus left undefined, the sultan maintained that in her advance

southwards France had trespassed on territories that unmistakably belonged to

Morocco. After some negotiation, however, a protocol was signed in Paris on

France's privileged position in Morocco.

the 20th of July 1901, and commissioners appointed to devise measures for the

co-operation of the French and Moorish authorities in the maintenance of

peaceful conditions in the frontier region. It was reported that in April

1902 the commissioners signed an agreement whereby the Sharifan government

undertook to consolidate its authority on the Moorish side of the frontier as

far south as Figig. The agreement continued: ``Le Gouvernement francais, en

raison de son voisinage, lui pretera son appui, en cas de besoin. Le

Gouvernement francais etablira son autorite et la paix dans les regions du

Sahara, et le Gouvernement marocain, son voisin, lui aidera de tout son

pouvoir.'' Meanwhile in the northern districts of Morocco the conditions of

unrest under the rule of the young sultan, Abd el Aziz IV., were attracting

an increasing amount of attention in Europe and were calling forth demands

for their suppression. It was in these circumstances that in the Anglo-French

declaration of April 1904 the British government recognized ``that it

appertains to France, more particularly as a power whose dominions are

conterminous for a great distance with those of Morocco, to preserve order in

that country, and to provide assistance for the purpose of all

administrative, economic, financial and military reforms which it may

require.'' Both parties to the declaration, ``inspired by their feeling of

sincere friendship for Spain, take into special consideration the interests

which that country derives from her geographical position and from her

territorial possessions on the Moorish coast of the Mediterranean. In regard

to these interests the French government will come to an understanding with

the Spanish government.'' The understanding thus foreshadowed was reached

later in the same year, Spain securing a sphere of interest on the

Mediterranean coast. In pursuance of the policy marked out in the Anglo-

French declaration, France was seeking to strengthen her influence in Morocco

when in 1905 the attitude of Germany seriously affected her position. On the

8th of July France secured from the German government formal ``recognition of

the situation created for France in Morocco by the contiguity of a vast

extent of territory of Algeria and the Sharifan empire, and by the special

relations resulting therefrom between the two adjacent countries, as well as

by the special interest for France, due to this fact, that order should reign

in the Sharifan Empire.'' Finally, in January-April 1906, a conference of the

powers was held at Algeciras to devise, by invitation of the sultan, a scheme

of reforms to be introduced into Morocco (q.v..) French capital was allotted

a larger share than that of any other power in the Moorish state bank which

it was decided to institute, and French and Spanish officers were entrusted

with the organization of a police force for the maintenance of order in the

principal coast towns. The new regime had not been fully inaugurated,

however, when a series of outrages led, in 1907, to the military occupation

by France of Udja, a town near the Algerian frontier, and of the port of

Casablanca on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

It only remains to be noted, in connexion with the story of French activity

in North-West Africa, that with such energy was the penetration of the Sahara

pursued that in April 1904 flying columns from Insalah and Timbuktu met by

arrangement in mid-desert, and in the following year it was deemed advisable

to indicate on the maps the boundary between the Algerian and French West

African territories.

Brief reference must be made to the position of Tripoli. While Egypt was

brought under British control and Tunisia became a French protectorate,

Tripoli remained a province of the Turkish empire with undefined frontiers in

the hinterland, a state of affairs which more than once threatened to lead to

trouble with France during the expansion of the latter's influence in the

Sahara. As already stated, Italy early gave evidence that it was her ambition

to succeed to the province, and, not only by the sultan of Turkey but in

Italy also, the Anglo-French declaration of March 1899, respecting the limits

of the British and French spheres of influence in north Central Africa, was

viewed with some concern. By means of a series of public utterances on the

part of French and Italian statesmen in the winter 1901-1902 it

Italy's interest in Tripoli.

was made known that the two powers had come to an understanding with regard

to their interests in North Africa, and in May 1902 Signor Prinetti, then

Italian minister for foreign affairs, speaking in parliament in reply to an

interpellation on the subject of Tripoli, declared that if ``the status quo

in the Mediterranean were ever disturbed, Italy would be sure of finding no

one to bar the way to her legitimate aspirations.''

At the opening of the Berlin conference Spain had established no formal claim

to any part of the coast to the south of Morocco; but while the conference

was sitting, on the 9th of January 1885, the Spanish government intimated

that in view of the importance of the Spanish settlements on the Rio de Oro,

at Angra de Cintra,

Spanish colonies.

and at Western Bay (Cape Blanco), and of the documents signed with the

independent tribes on that coast, the king of Spain had taken under his

protection ``the territories of the western coast of Africa comprised between

the fore-mentioned Western Bay and Cape Bojador.'' The interior limits of the

Spanish sphere were defined by an agreement concluded in 1900 with France. By

this document some 70,000 sq. m. of the western Sahara were recognized as

Spanish.

The same agreement settled a long-standing dispute between Spain and France

as to the ownership of the district around the Muni river to be south of

Cameroon, Spain securing a block of territory with a coast-line from the

Campo river on the north to the Muni river on the south. The northern

frontier is formed by the German Cameroon colony, the eastern by 11 deg. 20'

E., and the southern by the first parallel of north latitude to its point of

intersection with the Muni river.

Apart from this small block of Spanish territory south of Cameroon, the

stretch of coast between Cape Blanco and the

Division of the Guinea coast.

mouth of the Congo is partitioned among four European powers—Great Britain,

France, Germany and Portugal —and the negro republic of Liberia. Following

the coast southwards from Cape Blanco is first the French colony of Senegal,

which is indented, along the Gambia river, by the small British colony of

that name, and then the comparatively small territory of Portuguese Guinea,

all that remains on this Coast to represent Portugal's share in the scramble

in a region where she once played so conspicuous a part. To the south of

Portuguese Guinea is the French Guinea colony, and still going south and east

are the British colony of Sierra Leone, the republic of Liberia, the French

colony of the Ivory coast, the British Gold Coast, German Togoland, French

Dahomey, the British colony (formerly known as the Lagos colony) and

protectorate of Southern Nigeria, the German colony of Cameroon, the Spanish

settlements on the Muni river, the French Congo colony, and the small

Portuguese enclave north of the Congo to which reference has already been

made, which is administratively part of the Angola colony. When the General

Act of the Berlin conference was signed the whole of this coast-line had not

been formally claimed; but no time was lost by the powers interested in

notifying claims to the unappropriated sections, and the conflicting claims

put forward necessitated frequent adjustments by international agreements. By

a Franco-Portuguese agreement of the 12th of May 1886 the limits of

Portuguese Guinea—surrounded landwards by French territory—were defined, and

by agreements with Great Britain in 1885 and France in 1892 and 1907 the

Liberian republic was Confined to an area of about 43,000 sq. m.

The real struggle in West Africa was between France and Great Britain, and

France played the dominant part, the exhaustion of Portugal, the apathy of

the British government and the late appearance of Germany in the field being

all elements that favoured the success of French policy. Before tracing the

steps in the historic contest between France and Great Britain it is

necessary, however, to deal briefly with the part played by Germany. She

naturally could not be disposed of by the chief rivals as easily as were

Portugal and Liberia. It will be remembered that Dr Nachtigal, while the

proposals for the Berlin conference were under discussion, had planted the

German flag on the coast of Togo and in Cameroon in the month of July 1884.

In Cameroon Germany found herself with Great Britain for a neighbour to the

north, and with France as her southern neighbour on the Gabun river. The

utmost activity was displayed in making treaties with native chiefs, and in

securing as wide a range of coast for German enterprise as was possible.

After various provisional agreements had been concluded between Great Britain

and Germany, a ``provisional line of demarcation'' was adopted in the famous

agreement of the 1st of July 1890, starting from the head of the Rio del Rey

creek and going to the point, about 9 deg. 8' E., marked ``rapids'' on the

British Admiralty chart. By a further agreement of the 14th of April 1893,

the right bank of the Rio del Rey was made the boundary between the Oil

Rivers Protectorate (now Southern Nigeria) and Cameroon. In the following

November (1893) the boundary was continued from the ``rapids'' before

mentioned, on the Calabar or Cross river, in a straight line towards the

centre of the town of Yola, on the Benue river. Yola itself, with a radius

Germany in West Central Africa.

of some 3 m., was left in the British sphere, and the German boundary followed

the circle eastwards from the point of intersection as it neared Yola until it

met the Benue river. From that point it crossed the river to the intersection

of the 13th degree of longitude with the 10th degree of north latitude, and

then made direct for a point on the southern shore of Lake Chad ``situated 35

minutes east of the meridian of Kuka.'' By this agreement the British

government withdrew from a considerable section of the upper waters of the

Benue with which the Royal Niger Company had entered into relations. The limit

of Germany's possible extension eastwards was fixed at the basin of the river

Shari, and Darfur, Kordofan and the Bahr-el-Ghazal were to be excluded from her

sphere of influence. The object of Great Britain in making the sacrifice she

did was two-fold. By satisfying Germany's desire for a part of Lake Chad a

check was put on French designs on the Benue region, while by recognizing the

central Sudan (Wadai, &c.) in the German sphere, a barrier was interposed

to the advance of France from the Congo to the Nile. This last object was not

attained, inasmuch as Germany in coming to terms with France as to the southern

and eastern limits of Cameroon abandoned her claims to the central Sudan. She

had already, on the 24th of December 1885, signed a protocol with France fixing

her southern frontier, where it was coterminous with the French Congo colony.

But to the east German explorers were crossing the track of French explorers

from the northern bank of the Ubangi, and the need for an agreement was

obvious. Accordingly, on the 4th of February 1894, a protocol—which, some weeks

later, was confirmed by a convention— was signed at Berlin, by which France

accepted the presence of Germany on Lake Chad as a fait accompli and effected

the best bargain she could by making the left bank of the Shari river, from its

outlet into Lake Chad to the 10th parallel of north latitude, the eastern limit

of German extension. From this point the boundary line went due west some 230

m., then turned south, and with various indentations joined the south-eastern

frontier, which had been slightly extended so as to give Germany access to the

Sanga river— a tributary of the Congo. Thus, early in 1894, the German Cameroon

colony had reached fairly definite limits. In 1908 another convention,

modifying the frontier, gave Germany a larger share of the Sanga, while France,

among other advantages, gained the left bank of the Shari to 10 deg. 40' N.

The German Togoland settlements occupy a narrow strip of the Guinea coast,

some 35 m. only in length, wedged in between the British Gold Coast and

French Dahomey. At first France was inclined to dispute Germany's claims to

Little Popo and Porto Seguro; but in December 1885 the French government

acknowledged the German protectorate over these

Exclusion of Germany from the Niger.

places, and the boundary between French and German territory, which runs

north from the coast to the 11th decree of latitude, was laid down by the

Franco-German convention of the 12th of July 1897. The fixing of the 11th

parallel as the northern boundary of German expansion towards the interior

was not accomplished without some sacrifice of German ambitions. Having

secured an opening on Lake Chad for her Cameroon colony, Germany was anxious

to obtain a footing on the middle Niger for Togoland. German expeditions

reached Gando, one of the tributary states of the Sokoto empire on the middle

Niger, and, notwithstanding the existence of prior treaties with Great

Britain, sought to conclude agreements with the sultan of that country. But

this German ambition conflicted both with the British and the French designs

in West Africa, and eventually Germany had to be content with the 11th

parallel as her northern frontier. On the west the Togoland frontier on the

coast was fixed in July 1886 by British and German commissioners at 1 deg.

10' E. longitude, and its extension towards the interior laid down for a

short distance. A curious feature in the history of its prolongation was the

establishment in 1888 of a neutral zone wherein neither power was to seek to

acquire protectorates nor exclusive influence. It was not until November 1899

that, as part of the Samoa settlement, this neutral zone was partitioned

between the two powers and the frontier extended to the 11th parallel.

The story of the struggle between France and Great Britain in West Africa may

roughly be divided into two sections, the

Anglo-French rivalry in West Africa.

first dealing with the Coast colonies, the second dealing with the struggle

for the middle Niger and Lake Chad. As regards the Coast colonies, France was

wholly successful in her design of isolating all Great Britain's separate

possessions in that region, and of securing for herself undisputed possession

of the upper Niger and of the countries lying within the great bend of that

river. When the British government awoke to the consciousness of what was at

stake France had obtained too great a start. French governors of the Senegal

had succeeded, before the Berlin Conference, in establishing forts on the

upper Niger, and the advantage thus gained was steadily pursued. Every winter

season French posts were pushed farther and farther along the river, or in

the vast regions watered by the southern tributaries of the Senegal and Niger

rivers. This ceaseless activity met with its reward. Great Britain found

herself compelled to acknowledge accomplished facts and to conclude

agreements with France, which left her colonies mere coast patches, with a

very limited extension towards the interior. On the 10th of August 1889 an

agreement was signed by which the Gambia colony and protectorate was confined

to a narrow strip of territory on both banks of the river for about 200 m.

from the sea. In June 1882 and in August 1889 provisional agreements were

made with France fixing the western and northern limits of Sierra Leone, and

commissioners were appointed to trace the line of demarcation agreed upon by

the two governments. But the commissioners failed to agree, and on the 21st

of January 1895 a fresh agreement was made, the boundary being subsequently

traced by a mixed commission. Sierra Leone, as now definitely constituted,

has a coast-line of about 180 m. and a maximum extension towards the interior

of some 200 m.

At the date of the Berlin conference the present colonies of Southern Nigeria

and the Gold Coast constituted a single colony under the title of the Gold

Coast colony, but on the 13th of January 1886 the territory comprised under

that title was erected into two separate colonies—Lagos and the Gold Coast

(the name of the former being changed in February 1906 to the colony of

Southern Nigeria). The coast limits of the new Gold Coast colony were

declared to extend from 5 deg. W. to 2 deg. E., but these limits were

subsequently curtailed by agreements with France and Germany. The

arrangements that fixed the eastern frontier of the Gold Coast colony and its

hinterland have already been stated in connexion with German Togoland. On the

western frontier it marches with the French colony of the Ivory Coast, and in

July 1893, after an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same end by an

agreement concluded in 1889, the frontier was defined from the neighbourhood

of the Tano lagoon and river of the same name, to the 9th degree of north

latitude. In August 1896, following the destruction of the Ashanti power and

the deportation of King Prempeh, as a result of the second Ashanti campaign,

a British protectorate was declared over the whole of the Ashanti territories

and a resident was installed at Kumasi. But no northern limit had been fixed

by the 1893 agreement beyond the 9th parallel, and the countries to the

north—Gurunsi (Grusi), Mossi and Gurma—-were entered from all sides by rival

British, French and German expeditions. The conflicting claims established by

these rival expeditions may, however, best be considered in connexion with

the struggle for supremacy on the middle Niger and in the Chad region, to

which it is now necessary to turn.

A few days before the meeting of the Berlin conference Sir George Goldie had

succeeded in buying up all the French interests on the lower Niger. The

British company's influence had at that date been extended by treaties with

the native chiefs up the main Niger stream to its junction with the Benue,

and some distance along this latter river But the great Fula states of the

central Sudan were still outside European influence, and this fact did not

escape attention in Germany. German merchants had been settled for some years

on the coast, and one of them, E. R. Flegel, had displayed great interest in,

and activity on, the river. He recognized that in the densely populated

states of the middle Niger, Sokoto and Gando, and in Bornu to the west of

Lake Chad, there was a magnificent field for Germany's new-born colonizing

zeal. The German African Company14 and the German Colonial Society listened

eagerly to Flegel's proposals, and in April 1885 he left Berlin on a mission

to the Fula states of Sokoto and Gando. But it was impossible to keep his

intentions entirely secret, and the (British) National African Company had no

desire to see the French rivals, whom they had with so much difficulty

dislodged from the river, replaced by the even more troublesome German.

Accordingly Joseph Thomson, the young Scottish explorer, was sent out to the

Niger, and had the satisfaction of concluding on the 1st of June 1885 a

treaty with ``Umoru, King of the Mussulmans of the Sudan and Sultan of

Sokoto,'' which practically secured the whole of the trading rights and the

control of the sultan's foreign relations to the British company. Thomson

concluded a similar treaty with the sultan of Gando, so as to provide against

the possibility of its being alleged that Gando was an independent state and

not subject to the suzerainty of the sultan of Sokoto. As Thomson descended

the river with his treaties, he met Flegel going up the river, with bundles

of German flags and presents for the chiefs. The German government continued

its efforts to secure a footing on the lower Niger until the fall of Prince

Bismarck from power in March 1890, when opposition ceased, and on the failure

of the half-hearted attempt made later to establish relations with Gando from

Togoland, Germany dropped out of the competition for the

The Niger Company granted a charter.

western Sudan and left the field to France and Great Britain. After its first

great success the National African Company renewed its efforts to obtain a

charter from the British government, and on the 10th of July 1886 the charter

was granted, and the company became ``The Royal Niger Company, chartered and

limited.'' In June of the previous year a British protectorate had been

proclaimed Over the whole of the coast from the Rio del Rey to the Lagos

frontier, and as already stated, on the 13th of January 1886 the Lagos

settlements had been separated from the Gold Coast and erected into a

separate colony. It may be convenient to state here that the western boundary

of Lagos with French territory (Dahomey) was determined in the Anglo-French

agreement of the 10th of August 1889, ``as far as the 9th degree of north

latitude, where it shall stop.'' Thus both in the Gold Coast hinterland and

in the Lagos hinterland a door was left wide open to the north of the 9th

parallel.

Notwithstanding her strenuous efforts, France, in her advance down the Niger

from Senegal, did not succeed in reaching Sego on the upper Niger, a

considerable distance above Timbuktu, until the winter of 1890-1891, and the

rapid advance of British influence up the river raised serious fears lest the

Royal Niger Company should reach Timbuktu before France could forestall her.

It was, no doubt, this consideration that induced the French government to

consent to the insertion in the agreement of the 5th of August 1890, by which

Great Britain recognized France's protectorate over Madagascar, of the

following article:

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty recognizes the sphere of influence of

France to the south of her Mediterranean possessions up to a line from Say on

the Niger to Barrua on Lake Chad, drawn m such a manner as to comprise in the

sphere of action of the Niger Company all that fairly belongs to the kingdom

of Sokoto; the line to be determined by the commissioners to be appointed.

The commissioners never were in fact appointed, and the proper meaning to be

attached to this article subsequently became a subject of bitter controversy

between the two countries. An examination of the map of West Africa will show

what possibilities of trouble were left open at the end of 1890 by the

various agreements concluded up to that date. From Say on the Niger to where

the Lagos frontier came to an abrupt stop in 9 deg. N. there was no boundary

line between the French and British spheres of influence. To the north of the

Gold Coast and of the French Ivory Coast colony the way was equally open to

Great Britain and to France, while the vagueness of the Say-Barrua line left

an opening of which France was quick to avail herself. Captain P. L. Monteil,

who was despatched by the French government to West Africa in 1890,

immediately after the conclusion of the August agreement, did not hesitate to

pass well to the south of the Say-Barrua line, and to attempt to conclude

treaties with chiefs who were, beyond all question, within the British

sphere. Still farther south, on the Benue river, the two expeditions of

Lieutenant Mizon—in 1890 and 1892—failed to do any real harm to British

interests. In 1892 an event happened which had an important bearing on the

future course of the dispute.

French advance Timbuktu.

After a troublesome war with Behanzin king of to the native state of Dahomey,

France annexed some portion of Dahomeyan territory on the coast, and declared

a protectorate over the rest of the kingdom. Thus was removed the barrier

which had up to that time prevented France from pushing her way Nigerwards

from her possessions on the Slave Coast, as well as from the upper Niger and

the Ivory Coast. Henceforth her progress from all these directions was rapid,

and in particular Timbuktu was occupied in the last days of 1893.

In 1894 it appears to have been suddenly realized in France that, for the

development of the vast regions which she was placing under her protection in

West Africa, it was extremely desirable that she should obtain free access to

the navigable portions of the Niger, if not on the left bank, from which she

was excluded by the Say-Barrua agreement, then on the right bank, where the

frontier had still to be fixed by international agreement. In the

neighbourhood of Bussa there is a long stretch of the river so impeded by

rapids that navigation is practically impossible, except in small boats and

at considerable risk. Below these rapids France had no foothold on the river,

both banks from Bussa to the sea being within the British sphere. In 1890 the

Royal Niger Company had concluded a treaty with the emir and chiefs of Bussa

(or Borgu); but the French declared that the real paramount chief of Borgu

was not the king of Bussa, but the king of Nikki, and three expeditions were

despatched in hot haste to Nikki to take the king under French protection.

Sir George Goldie, however, was not to be baffled. While maintaining the

validity of the earlier treaty with Bussa, he despatched Captain (afterwards

General Sir) F.D. Lugard to Nikki, and Lugard was successful in distancing

all his French competitors by several days, reaching Nikki on the 5th of

November 1894 and concluding a treaty with the king and chiefs. The French

expeditions, which were in great strength, did not hesitate on their arrival

to compel the king to execute fresh treaties with France, and with these in

their possession they returned to Dahomey. Shortly afterwards a fresh act of

aggression was committed. On the 13th of February 1895 a French officer,

Commandant Toutee, arrived on the right bank of the Niger opposite Bajibo and

built a fort. His presence there was notified to the Royal Niger Company, who

protested to the British government against this invasion of their territory.

Lord Rosebery, who was then foreign minister, at once made inquiries in

Paris, and received the assurance that Commandant Toutee was ``a private

traveller.'' Eventually Commandant Toutee was ordered to withdraw, and the

fort was occupied by the Royal Niger Company's troops. Commandant Toutee

subsequently published the official instructions from the French government

under which he had acted. It was thought that the recognition of the British

claims, involved in the withdrawal of Commandant Toutee, had marked the final

abandonment by France of the attempt to establish herself on the navigable

portions of the Niger below Bussa, but in 1897 the attempt was renewed in the

most determined manner. In February of that year a French force suddenly

occupied Bussa, and this act was quickly followed by the occupation of Gomba

and Illo higher up the river. In November 1897 Nikki was occupied. The

situation on the Niger had so obviously been outgrowing the capacity of a

chartered company that for some time before these occurrences the assumption

of responsibility for the whole of the Niger region

The Franco-British settlement of 1898.

by the imperial authorities had been practically decided on; and early in

1898 Lugard was sent out to the Niger with a number of imperial officers to

raise a local force in preparation for the contemplated change. The advance

of the French forces from the south and west was the signal for an advance of

British troops from the Niger, from Lagos and from the Gold Coast

protectorate. The situation thus created was extremely serious. The British

and French flags were flying in close proximity, in some cases in the same

village. Meanwhile the diplomatists were busy in London and in Paris, and in

the latter capital a commission sat for many months to adjust the conflicting

claims. Fortunately, by the tact and forbearance of the officers on both

sides, no local incident occurred to precipitate a collision, and on the 14th

of June 1898 a convention was signed by Sir Edmund Monson and M. G. Hanotaux

which practically completed the partition of this part of the continent.

The settlement effected was in the nature of a compromise. France withdrew

from Bussa, Gomba and Illo, the frontier line west of the Niger being drawn

from the 9th parallel to a point ten miles, as the crow flies, above Giri,

the port of Illo. France was thus shut out from the navigable portion of the

middle and lower Niger; but for purely commercial purposes Great Britain

agreed to lease to France two small plots of land on the river-the one on the

right bank between Leaba and the mouth of the Moshi river, the other at one

of the mouths of the Niger. By accepting this line Great Britain abandoned

Nikki and a great part of Borgu as well as some part of Gando to France. East

of the Niger the Say-Barrua line was modified in favour of France, which

gained parts of both Sokoto and Bornu where they meet the southern edge of

the Sahara. In the Gold Coast hinterland the French withdrew from Wa, and

Great Britain abandoned all claim to Mossi, though the capital of the latter

country, together with a further extensive area in the territory assigned to

both powers, was declared to be equally free, so far as trade and navigation

were concerned, to the subjects and protected persons of both nationalities.

The western boundary of the Gold Coast was prolonged along the Black Volta as

far as latitude 11 deg. N., and this parallel was followed with slight

deflexions to the Togoland frontier. In consequence of the acute crisis which

shortly afterwards occurred between France and Great Britain on the upper

Nile, the ratification of this agreement was delayed until after the

conclusion of the Fashoda agreement of March 1899 already referred to. In

1900 the two patches on the Niger leased to France were selected by

commissioners representing the two countries, and in the same year the Anglo-

French frontier from Lagos to the west bank of the Niger was delimited.

East of the Niger the frontier, even as modified in 1898, failed to satisfy

the French need for a practicable route to Lake Chad, and in the convention

of the 8th of April 1904, to which reference has been made under Egypt and

Morocco, it was

Further concessions to France.

agreed, as part of the settlement of the French shore question in

Newfoundland, to deflect the frontier line more to the south. The new

boundary was described at some length, but provision was made for its

modification in points of detail on the return of the commissioners engaged

in surveying the frontier region. In 1906 an agreement was reached on all

points, and the frontier at last definitely settled, sixteen years after the

Say-Barrua line had been fixed. This revision of the Niger-Chad frontier did

not, however, represent the only territorial compensation received by France

in West Africa in connexion with the settlement of the Newfoundland question.

By the same convention of April 1904 the British government consented to

modify the frontier between Senegal and the Gambia colony ``so as to give to

France Yarbutenda and the lands and landing-places belonging to that

locality,'' and further agreed to cede to France the tiny group of islands

off the coast of French Guinea known as the Los Islands.

Meantime the conclusion of the 1898 convention had left both the British and

the French governments free to devote increased attention to the subdivision

and control of their West African possessions. On the 1st of January 1900 the

imperial authorities assumed direct responsibility for the whole of the

territories of the Royal Niger Company, which became henceforth a purely

commercial undertaking. The Lagos protectorate was extended northwards; the

Niger Coast protectorate, likewise with extended frontiers, became Southern

Nigeria; while the greater part of the territories formerly administered by

the company were constituted into the protectorate of Northern Nigeria—all

three administrations being directly under the Colonial Office In February

1906 the administration of the Southern Nigerian protectorate was placed

under that of Lagos at the same time as the name of the latter was changed to

the Colony of Southern Nigeria, this being a step towards the eventual

Organization of the British and French protectorates.

amalgamation of all three dependencies under one governor or governor-

general. In French West Africa changes in the internal frontiers have been

numerous and important. The coast colonies have all been increased in size at

the expense of the French Sudan, which has vanished from the maps as an

administrative entity. There are carved out of the territories comprised in

what is officially known as French West Africa five colonies—Senegal, French

Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey and the Upper Senegal and Niger, this last

being entirely cut off from the sea—and the civil territory of Mauritania. To

the colony of the Upper Senegal and Niger is attached the military territory

of the Niger, embracing the French Sahara up to the limit of the Algerian

sphere of influence. Not only are all these divisions of French West Africa

connected territorially, but administratively they are united under a

governor-general. Similarly the French Congo territories have been divided

into three colonies—the Gabun, the Middle Congo and the Ubangi-Shari-Chad—all

united administratively under a commissioner-general.

There are, around the coast, numerous islands or groups of islands, which are

regarded by geographers as outliers of the

Ownership of the African Islands.

African mainland. The majority of these African islands were occupied by one or

other of the European powers long before the period of continental partition.

The Madeira Islands to the west of Morocco, the Bissagos Islands, off the

Guinea coast, and Prince's Island and St Thomas' Island, in the Gulf of Guinea,

are Portuguese possessions of old standing; while in the Canary Islands and

Fernando Po Spain possesses remnants of her ancient colonial empire which are a

more valuable asset than any she has acquired in recent times on the mainland.

St Helena in the Atlantic, Mauritius and some small groups north of Madagascar

in the Indian Ocean, are British possessions acquired long before the opening

of the last quarter of the 19th century. Zanzibar, Pemba and some smaller

islands which the sultan was allowed to retain were, as has already been

stated, placed under British protection in 1890, and the island of Sokotra was

placed under the ``gracious favour and protection'' of Great Britain on the

23rd of April 1886. France's ownership of Reunion dates back to the 17th

century, but the Comoro archipelago was not placed under French protection until

April 1886. None of these islands, with the exception of the Zanzibar group,

have, however, materially affected the partition of the continent, and they

need not be enumerated in the table which follows. But the important island of

Madagascar stands in a different category, both on account of its size and

because it was during the period under review that it passed through the

various stages which led to its becoming a French colony. The first step was

the placing of the foreign relations of the island under French control, which

was effected by the treaty of the 17th of December 1885, after the

Franco-Malagasy war that had broken out in 1883. In 1890 Great Britain and

Germany recognized a French protectorate over the island, but the Hova

government declined to acquiesce in this view, and in May 1895 France sent an

expedition to enforce her claims. The capital was occupied on the 30th of

September in the same year, and on the day following Queen Ranavalona signed a

convention recognizing the French protectorate. In January 1896 the island was

declared a French possession, and on the 6th of August was declared to be a

French colony. In February 1897 the last vestige of ancient rule was swept away

by the deportation of the queen.

Thus in its broad outlines the partition of Africa was begun and ended in the

short space of a quarter of a century. There are still many finishing touches

to be put to the structure. The southern frontiers of Morocco and Tripoli

remain undefined, while the mathematical lines by which the spheres of

influence of the powers were separated one from the other are being variously

modified on the do ut des principle as they come to be surveyed and as the

effective occupation of the continent progresses. Much labour is necessary

before the actual area of Africa and its subdivisions can be accurately

determined, but in the following table the figures are at least approximately

correct. Large areas of the spheres assigned to different European powers

have still to be brought under European control; but this work is advancing

by rapid strides.

BRITISH— Sq. m.

Cape Colony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276,995

Natal and Zululand . . . . . . . . . . . 35,371

Basutoland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,293

Bechuanaland Protectorate . . . . . . . 225,000

Transvaal and Swaziland . . . . . . . . 117,732

Orange River Colony . . . . . . . . . . 50,392

Rhodesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450,000

Nyasaland Protectorate . . . . . . . . . 43,608

British East Africa Protectorate . . . . 240,000

Uganda Protectorate . . . . . . . . . . 125,000

Zanzibar Protectorate . . . . . . . . . 1,020

Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,000

Northern Nigeria . . . . . . . . . . . 258,000

Southern Nigeria (colony and protectorate) 80,000

Gold Coast and hinterland . . . . . 82,000

Sierre Leone (colony and protectorate) . 34,000

Gambia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000

Total British Africa . . . . . . . 2,101,411

Egypt and Libyan Desert . . . . . . . . 650,000

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan . . . . . . . . . . 950,000

1,600,000

FRENCH—

Algeria and Algerian Sahara . . . . . . 945,000

Tunisia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51,000

French West Africa—

Senegal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74,000

French Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . 107,000

Ivory Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129,000

Dahomey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40,000

Upper Senegal and Niger, and

Mauritania (including French West

African Sahara) . . . . 1,581,000 1,931,000

French Congo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700,000

French Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000

Madagascar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227,950

Total French Africa . . . . . . . 3,866,950

GERMAN—

East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364,000

South.West Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 322,450

Cameroon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190,000

Togoland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33,700

Total German Africa . . . . . . . . 910,150

ITALIAN—

Eritrea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60,000

Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000

Total Italian Africa . . . . . . . . 200,000

PORTUGUESE—

Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,000

West Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480,000

East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293,500

Total Portuguese Africa . . . . . . 787,500

SPANISH—

Rio de Oro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70,000

Muni River Settlements . . . . . . . . . . 9,800

Total Spanish Africa . . . . . . . . 79,800

BELGIAN—

Congo State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900,000

TURKISH—

Tripoli and Benghazi . . . . . . . . . . 400,000

SEPARATE STATES—

Liberia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43,000

Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000

Abyssinia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000

Total Independent Africa . . . . . . 613,000

Thus, collecting the totals, the result of the ``scramble'' has been to

divide Africa among the powers as follows:—

Sq. m.

British Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,101,411

Egyptian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600,000

French Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,866,950

German Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 910,150

Italian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000

Portuguese Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 787,500

Spanish Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79,800

Belgian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900,000

Turkish Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000

Independent Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 613,000

11,458,811

(J. S. K.)

1. Commercial treaties between Carthage and Rome were made in the 6th and

5th centuries B.C.. The first armed conflict between the rival powers, begun

in 264 B.C., was a contest for the possession of Sicily.

2. This river was called by the Portuguese the Zaire. They appear to have

made no attempt to trace its course beyond the rapids which stop navigation

from the sea.

3. France acquired, as stations for her ships on the voyage to and from

India, settlements in Madagascar and the neighbouring islands. The first

settlement was made in 1642.

4. The Association, in 1831, was merged in the Royal Geographical Society.

5. The Mamelukes, whom the Turks had overthrown in the 16th century, had

regained practically independent power.

6. In imitation of the British example, an American society founded in

1822 the negro colony (now republic) of Liberia.

7. The first territorial acquisition made by Great Britain in this region

was in 1851, when Lagos Island was annexed.

8. As early as 1848 an Arab from Zanzibar journeying across the continent

had arrived at Benguella.

9. Another great traveller of this stamp was Wilhelm Junker, who spent

the greater part of the period 1875-1886 in the east central Sudan.

10. Specially appointed to consider West African affairs.

11. See the tables in Behm and Wagner's Bevolkerung der Erde (Gotha, 1872).

12. in 1887 this society united with the German Colonial Society, an

organization founded in 1882. The united society took the title of the German

Colonial Company.

13. At this period negotiations between Great Britain and Italy had begun

but were not concluded.

14. This association, formed in 1878 by a union of associations primarily

intended for the exploration of Africa, ceased to exist in 1891.

VI. EXPLORATION AND SURVEY SINCE 1875

In giving the history of the partition of the continent, the later work of

exploration, except where, as in the case of de Brazza's expeditions, it had

direct political consequences, has of necessity not been told. The results

achieved during and after the period of partition may now be indicated.

Stanley's great journey down the Congo in 1875-1876 initiated a new era in

African exploration. The numbers of travellers soon became so great that the

once marvellous feat of crossing the continent from sea to sea became common.

With increased knowledge and much ampler means of communication trans-African

travel now presents few difficulties. While d'Anville and other cartographers

of the 18th century, by omitting all that was uncertain, had left a great

blank on the map, the work accomplished since 1875 has filled it with

authentic topographical details. Moreover surveys of high accuracy have been

made at several points. As the work of exploration and survey progressed

journeys of startling novelty became impossible—save in the eastern Sahara,

where the absence of water and boundless wastes of sand render exploration

more difficult, perhaps, than in any other region of the globe. Within their

respective spheres of influence each power undertook detailed surveys, and

the most solid of the latest accessions to knowledge have resulted from the

labours of hard-working colonial officials toiling individually in obscurity.

Their work it is impossible here to recognize adequately; the following lines

record only the more obvious achievements. The relation of the Congo basin to

the neighbouring river systems was brought out by the journeys of many

travellers. In 1877 an important expedition was sent out by the Portuguese

government under Serpa Pinto, Brito Capello and Roberto

Work in the Congo.

Ivens for the exploration of the interior of Angola. The first named made his

way by the head-streams of the Kubango to the upper Zambezi, which he descended

to the Victoria Falls, proceeding thence to Pretoria and Durban. Capello and

Ivens confined their attention to the south-west Congo basin, where they

disproved the existence of Lake Aquilunda, which had figured on the maps of

that region since the 16th century. In a later journey (1884- 1885)

Capello and Ivens crossed the continent from Mossamedes to the mouth of the

Zambezi, adding considerably to the knowledge of the borderlands between the

upper Congo and the upper Zambezi. More important results were obtained by the

German travellers Paul Pogge and Hermann von Wissmann, who (1880-1882) passed

through previously unknown regions beyond Muata Yanvo's kingdom, and reached

the upper Congo at Nyangwe, whence Wissmann made his way to the east coast. In

1884-1885 a German expedition under Wissmann solved the most important

geographical problem relating to the southern Congo basin by descending the

Kasai, the largest southern tributary, which, contrary to expectation, proved

to unite with the Kwango and other streams before joining the main river.

Further additions to the knowledge of the Congo tributaries were made at the

same time by the Rev. George Grenfell, a Baptist missionary, who (accompanied

in 1885 by K. von Francois) made several voyages in the steamer ``Peace,''

especially up the great Ubangi, ultimately proved to be the lower course of the

Welle, discovered in 1870 by Schweinfurth.

In East as in West Africa operations were started by agents of the Belgian

committee, but with less success than on the Congo.

Opening up East Africa.

The first new journey of importance on this side was made (1878-1880) on

behalf of the British African Exploration Committee by Joseph Thomson, who

after the death of his leader, Keith Johnston, made his way from the coast to

the north end of Nyasa, thence to Tanganyika, on both sides of which he broke

new ground, sighting the north end of Lake Rukwa on the east. In 1882-1884

the French naval lieutenant Victor Giraud proceeded by the north of Nyasa to

Lake Bangweulu, of which he made the first fairly correct map. North of the

Zanzibar-Tanganyika route a large area of new ground was opened in 1883-1884

by Joseph Thomson, who traversed the whole length of the Masai country to

Lake Baringo and Victoria Nyanza, shedding the first clear light on the great

East African rift-valley and neighbouring highlands, including Mounts Kenya

and Elgon. A great advance in the region between Victoria Nyanza and

Abyssinia was made in 1887-1889 by the Austrians, Count Samuel Teleki and

Lieut. Ludwig von Hohnel, who discovered the large Basso Norok, now known as

Lake Rudolf, till then only vaguely indicated on the map as Samburu. At this

time Somaliland was being opened up by English and Italian travellers. In

1883 the brothers F. L. and W. D. James penetrated from Berbera to the Webi

Shebeli; in 1892 Vittorio Bottego (afterwards murdered in the Abyssinian

highlands) started from Berbera and reached the upper Juba, which he explored

to its source. The first person, however, to cross from the Gulf of Aden to

the Indian Ocean was an American, A. Donaldson Smith, who in 1894-1895

explored the headstreams of the Webi Shebeli and also explored the Omo, the

feeder of Lake Rudolf.

In the region north-west of Victoria Nyanza the greatest additions to

geographical knowledge were made by H. M. Stanley in his last expedition,

undertaken for the relief of Emin Pasha. The expedition set out in 1887 by

way of the Congo to carry supplies to the governor of the old Egyptian

Equatorial province. The route lay up the Aruwimi, the principal tributary of

the Congo from the north-east, by which the expedition made its way,

encountering immense difficulties, through the great equatorial forest, the

character and extent of which were thus for the first time brought to light.

The return was made to the east coast, and resulted in the discovery of the

great snowy range of Ruwenzori or Runsoro, and the confirmation of the

existence of a third Nile lake discharging its waters into the Albert Nyanza

by the Semliki river. A further discovery was that of a large bay, hitherto

unsuspected, forming the south-west corner of the Victoria Nyanza.

Great activity was also displayed in completing the work of earlier explorers

in North and West Africa. Morocco was in

Expeditions in North and West Africa.

1883-1884 the scene of important explorations by de Foucauld, a Frenchman

who, disguised as a Jew, crossed and re-crossed the Atlas and supplied the

first trustworthy information as to the orography of many parts of the chain.

In 1887-1889 Louis Gustave Binger, a French officer, made a great journey

through the countries enclosed in the Niger bend, and in 1890-1892 Col. P. F.

Monteil went from St Louis to Say, on the Niger, thence through Sokoto to

Bornu and Lake Chad, whence he crossed the Sahara to Tripoli. Meantime

explorers had been busy in the region between Lake Chad, the Gulf of Guinea

and the Congo. The Sanga, one of the principal northern tributaries of the

Congo, was reached from the north by Lieut. Louis Mizon, a French naval

officer, who drew the first line of communication between the Benue and the

Congo (1890-1892). In 1890 Paul Crampel, who in the previous year had

explored north of the Ogowe, undertook a great expedition from the Ubangi to

the Shari, but was attacked and killed, with several of his companions, on

the borders of the Bagirmi. Several other expeditions followed, and in 1806

Emile Gentil reached the Shari, launched a steamer on its waters and pushed

on to Lake Chad. Early in 1900 Lake Chad was also reached by F. Foureau, a

French traveller, who had already devoted twelve years to the exploration of

the Sahara and who on this occasion had crossed the desert from Algeria and

had reached the lake via Air and Zinder.

The last ten years of the 19th century also witnessed many interesting

expeditions in east Central Africa. In 1891 Emin

Lakes and mountains of Equatorial Africa.

Pasha, accompanied by Dr F. Stuhlmann, made his way south of Victoria Nyanza

to the western Nile lakes, visiting for the first time the southern and

western shores of Albert Edward. Stuhlmann also ascended the Ruwenzori range

to a height of over 13,000 ft. In the same year Dr O. Baumann, who had

already done good work in Usambara, near the coast, started on a more

extended journey through the region of steppes between Kilimanjaro and

Victoria Nyanza, afterwards exploring the headstreams of the Kagera, the

ultimate sources of the Nile. In the steppe region referred to he discovered

two new lakes, Manyara and Eiassi, occupying parts of the East African valley

system. This region was again traversed in 1893-1894 by Count von Gotzen, who

continued his route westwards to Lake Kivu, north of Tanganyika, which,

though heard of by Speke over thirty years before, had never yet been

visited. He also reached for the first time the line of volcanic peaks north

of Kivu, one of which he ascended, afterwards crossing the great equatorial

forest by a new route to the Congo and the west coast. Valuable scientific

work was done in 1893 by Dr J.W. Gregory, who ascended Mount Kenya to a

height of 16,000 ft. In 1893-1894 Scott Elliot reached Ruwenzori by way of

Uganda, returning by Tanganyika and Nyasa, and in 1896 C. W. Hobley made the

circuit of the great mountain Elgon, north-east of Victoria Nyanza. In 1899

Mount Kenya was ascended to its summit by a party under H. J. Mackinder. The

exploration of Mount Kilimanjaro has been the special work of Dr Hans Meyer,

who first directed his attention to it in 1887.

The region south of Abyssinia proper and north of Lake Rudolf, being largely

the basin of the Sobat tributary of the Nile, was traversed by several

explorers, among whom may be mentioned Capt. M. S. Wellby, who in 1898-1899

explored the chain of small lakes in south-east Abyssinia, pushed on to Lake

Rudolf, and thence traversed hitherto unknown country to the lower Sobat.

Donaldson Smith crossed from Berbera to the Nile by Lake Rudolf in 1899-1900,

and Major H. H. Austin commanded two survey parties between the Anglo-

Egyptian Sudan and Lake Rudolf during 1899-1901. Meantime in south Central

Africa the Barotse country had been partly made known by the missionary F.

Coillard, who settled there in 1884, while the middle and upper Zambezi basin

were scientifically explored and mapped by Major A. St H. Gibbons and his

assistants in 1895-1896 and 1898-1900. In the same period the Congo-Zambezi

watershed was traced by a Belgian officer, Capt. C. Lemaire, who had ascended

one of the upper tributaries of the Kasai.

In the early years of the 19th century the first recorded crossing of Africa

took place. That crossing and all subsequent crossings had been made either

from west to east or east to west. The first journey through the whole length

of the continent was accomplished in the two last years of the century when a

young Englishman, E. S. Grogan, starting from Cape Town reached the

Mediterranean by way of the Zambezi, the central line of lakes and the Nile.

Other travellers followed in Grogan's footsteps, among the first, Major

Gibbons.

Additions to topographical knowledge were made from about 1890 onwards by the

international commissions which traced

Work of international commissions and surveying parties.

the frontiers of the protectorates of the European powers. On several occasions

the labours of the commissions disclosed errors of importance in the maps upon

which international agreements had been based. Among those which yielded

valuable results were the Anglo-French commission which in 1903 traced the

Nigerian frontier from the Niger to Lake Chad, and the Anglo-German commission

which in 1903-1904 fixed the Cameroon boundary between Yola, on the Benue, and

Lake Chad. These expeditions and French surveys in the same region during

1902-1903 resulted in the discovery that Lake Chad had greatly decreased in

area since the middle of the 19th century. In 1903 a French officer,

Capt. E. Lenfant, succeeded in establishing the fact of a connexion between the

Niger and Chad basins. Subsequently Lenfant explored the western basin of the

Shari, determining (1907) the true upper branch of that river.

In East Africa a German-Congolese commission surveyed (1901-1902) Lake Kivu

and the volcanic region north of the lake, R. Kandt making a special study of

Kivu and the Kagera sources, while the Anglo-German boundary commission of

1902-1904 surveyed the valley of the lower Kagera, and fixed the exact

position of Albert Edward Nyanza. Much new information concerning the border-

lands of British East Africa and Abyssinia between Lake Rudolf and the lower

Juba was obtained by the survey executed in 1902-1903 by a British officer,

Captain P. Maud.

While political requirements led to the exact determination of frontiers,

administrative needs forced the governments concerned to take in hand the

survey of the countries under their protection. Before the close of the first

decade of the 20th century tolerably accurate maps had been made of

the German colonies, of a considerable part of West Africa, the Algerian Sahara

and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, mainly by military officers. A British naval

officer, Commander B. Whitehouse, mapped the entire coastdine of Victoria

Nyanza. Government and railway surveys apart, the chief points of interest for

explorers during 1904-1906 were the Ruwenzori range and the connexion of the

basin of Lake Chad with the Niger and Congo systems. Lieut. Boyd Alexander was

the leader of a party which during the years named surveyed Lake Chad and a

considerable part of eastern Nigeria, returning to England via the Shari, the

Ubangi and the Nile. Two members of the party, Capt. Claud Alexander and Capt.

G. B. Gosling, died during the expedition. The Ruwenzori Mountains proved a

great source of attraction. Sir H. H. Johnston had in 1900 ascended beyond the

snow-line to 14,800 ft.; in 1903 Dr J. J. David had reached from the west to a

height he believed to exceed 16,000 ft.; and in the same year Capt. T. T.

Behrens, of the Anglo-German Uganda boundary commission, fixed the highest

summit at 16,619 ft. During 1904-1906 some half-dozen expeditions were at work

in the region. That of the duke of the Abruzzi was the most successful. In the

summer of 1906 the duke or members of his party climbed all the highest peaks,

none of which reaches 17,000 ft., and determined the main lines of the

watershed. Major Powell-Cotton, a British officer who had previously done good

work in Abyssinia and British East Africa, spent 1905-1906 in a detailed

examination of the Lado enclave and the country west of Ruwenzori and Albert

and Albert Edward lakes. This expedition was specially fruitful in additions to

zoological knowledge.

Archaeological research, stimulated by the reports of Thomas Shaw, British

consular chaplain at Algiers in 1719- 1731, by James Bruce's exploration,

1765-1767, of the ruins in Barbary, and by the French conquest of Egypt in

1798, has been systematically carried out in North Africa since the middle of

the 19th century (see EGYPT and AFRICA, ROMAN.) In South Africa the first

thorough examination of the ruins in Rhodesia was made in 1905, when Randall-

MacIver demonstrated that the great Zimbabwe and similar buildings were of

medieval or post-medieval origin. (F. R. C.)

VII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

The eagerness with which the nations of western Europe partitioned Africa

between them was due, as has been seen, more to the necessities of commerce

than to mere land hunger. Yet, except in the north and south temperate

regions, the commercial intercourse of the continent with the rest of the

world had been until the closing years of the 19th century of insignificant

proportions. In addition to slaves, furnished by the continent from the

earliest times, a certain amount of gold and ivory was exported from the

tropical regions, but no other product supplied the material for a

flourishing trade with those parts. To their Asiatic and European invaders

the Africans indeed owed many creature comforts—the introduction of maize,

rice, the sugar cane, the orange, the lemon and the lime, cloves, tobacco and

many other vegetable products, the camel, the horse and other animals—but

invaluable to Africa as were these gifts they led to little development of

commerce. The continent continued in virtual isolation from the great trade

movements of the

Causes of isolation.

world, an isolation due not so much to its poverty in natural resources, as

to the special circumstances which likewise caused so large a part of the

continent to remain so long a terra incognita. The principal drawbacks may be

summarized as: (1) the absence of means of communication with the interior;

(2) the unhealthiness of the coast-lands; (3) the small productive activity

of the natives; (4) the effects of the slave trade in discouraging legitimate

commerce. None of these causes is necessarily permanent, that most difficult

to remove being the third; the negro races finding the means of existence

easy have little incentive to toil. The first drawback has almost

disappeared, and the building of railways and the placing of steamers on the

rivers and lakes—a work continually progressing —renders it year by year

easier for producer and consumer to come together. As to the second

drawback, while the coast-lands in the tropics will always remain

comparatively unhealthy, improved sanitation and the destruction of the

malarial mosquito have rendered tolerable to Europeans regions formerly

notorious for their deadly climate.

At various periods since the partition of the continent began, united action

has been taken by the powers of Europe in the interests of African trade. The

Berlin conference of 1884-1885 decreed freedom of navigation and trade on the

Congo and the Niger, and the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1891 secured like

privileges for the Zambezi. The Berlin conference likewise enacted that over

a wide area of Central Africa—the conventional basin of the Congo—there

should be complete freedom of trade, a freedom which later on was held to be

infringed in the Congo State and French Congo by the granting to various

companies proprietary rights in the disposal of the product of the soil. More

important in their effect on the economic condition of the continent than the

steps taken to ensure freedom of trade were the measures concerted by the

powers for the suppression of the slave trade. The British government had for

long borne the greater part of the burden of combating the slave trade on the

east coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean, but the changed conditions

which resulted from the appearance of other European powers in Africa induced

Lord Salisbury, then foreign secretary, to address, in the autumn of 1888, an

invitation to the king of the Belgians to take the initiative in inviting a

conference of the powers at Brussels to concert measures for ``the gradual

suppression of the

Suppression of the slave trade.

slave trade on the continent of Africa, and the immediate closing of all the

external markets which it still supplies.'' The conference assembled in

November 1889, and on the 2nd of July 1890 a general act was signed subject

to the ratification of the various governments represented, ratification

taking place subsequently at different dates, and in the case of France with

certain reservations. The general act began with a declaration of the means

which the powers were of opinion might be most effectually adopted for

``putting an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in

African slaves, protecting effectively the aboriginal populations of Africa,

and ensuring for that vast continent the benefits of peace and

civilization.'' It proceeded to lay down certain rules and regulations of a

practical character on the lines suggested. The act covers a wide field, and

includes no fewer than a hundred separate articles. It established a zone

``between the 20th parallel of north latitude, and the 22nd parallel of south

latitude, and extending westward to the Atlantic and eastward to the Indian

Ocean and its dependencies, comprising the islands adjacent to the coast as

far as 100 nautical miles from the shore,'' within which the importation of

firearms and ammunition was forbidden except in certain specified cases, and

within which also the powers undertook either to prohibit altogether the

importation and manufacture of spirituous liquors, or to impose duties not

below an agreed-on minimum.1 An elaborate series of rules was framed for the

prevention of the transit of slaves by sea, the conditions on which European

powers were to grant to natives the right to fly the flag of the protecting

power, and regulating the procedure connected with the right of search on

vessels flying a foreign flag. The Brussels Act was in effect a joint

declaration by the signatory powers of their joint and several responsibility

towards the African native, and notwithstanding the fact that many of its

articles have proved difficult, if not impossible, of enforcement, the solemn

engagement taken by Europe in the face of the world has undoubtedly exercised

a material influence on the action of several of the powers. Moreover, with

the increase of means of communication and the extension of effective

European control, slave-raiding in the interior was largely checked and

inter-tribal wars prevented, the natives being thus given security in the

pursuit of trade and agriculture.

Other important factors in the economic as well as the social conditions of

Africa are the advance in civilization made by the natives in several regions

and the increase of the areas found suitable for white colonization. The

advance in civilization among the natives, exemplified by the granting to

them of political rights in such countries as Algeria and Cape Colony, leads

directly to increased commercial activity; and commerce increases in a much

greater degree when new countries— e.g. Rhodesia and British East

Africa—become the homes of Europeans. Finally, in reviewing the chief factors

which govern the commercial development of the continent, note must be taken

of the sparsity of the population over the greater part of Africa, and the

efforts made to supplement the insufficient and often ineffective native

labour by the introduction of Asiatic labourers in various districts—of

Indian coolies in Natal and elsewhere, and of Chinese for the gold mines of

the Transvaal.

The resources of Africa may be considered under the head of: (1) jungle

products; (2) cultivated products; (3) animal

Chief economic resources.

products; (4) minerals. Of the first named the most important are india-

rubber and palm-oil. which in tropical Africa supply by far the largest items

in the export list. The rubber-producing plants are found throughout the

whole tropical belt, and the most important are creepers of the order

Apocynaceae, especially various species of Landolphia (with which genus Vahea

is now united). In East Africa Landolphia kirkii (Dyer) supplies the largest

amount, though various other species are known Forms of apparently wider

distribution are L. hendelotii, which is found in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and

extends right across the continent to Senegambia; and L. (formerly Vahea)

comorensis, which, including its variety L. florida, has the widest

distribution of all the species, occurring in Upper and Lower Guinea, the

whole of Central Africa, the east coast, the Comoro Islands and Madagascar.

In parts of East Africa Clitandra orienitalis is a valuable rubber vine. In

Lagos and elsewhere rubber is produced by the apocynaceous tree, Funtumia

elastica, and in West Africa generally by various species of Ficus, some

species of which are also found in East Africa. The rubber produced is

somewhat inferior to that of South America, but this is largely due to

careless methods of preparation. The great destruction of vines brought about

by native methods of collection much reduced the supply in some districts,

and rendered it necessary to take steps to preserve and cultivate the rubber-

yielding plants. This has been done in many districts with usually

encouraging results. Experiments have been made in the introduction of South

American rubber plants, but opinions differ as to the prospects of success,

as the plants in question seem to demand very definite conditions of soil and

climate. The second product, palm-oil, is derived from a much more limited

area than rubber, for although the oil palm is found throughout the greater

part of West Africa, from 10 deg. N. to 10 deg. S., the great bulk of the

export comes from the coast districts at the head of the Gulf of Guinea. A

larger supply, equal to any market demand, could easily be obtained. A third

valuable product is the timber supplied by the forest regions, principally in

West Africa. It includes African teak or oak (Oldfieldia africana), excellent

for shipbuilding; the durable odum of the Gold Coast (Chlorophora excelsa);

African mahogany (Khaya senegalensis); ebony (Diospyros ebenum); camwood

(Baphia nitida); and many other ornamental and dye woods. The timber industry

on the west coast was long neglected, but since 1898 there have been large

exports to Europe. In parts of East Africa the Podocarpus milanjianus, a

conifer, is economically important. Valuable timber grows too in South

Africa, including the yellow wood (Podocarpus), stinkwood (Ocotea),

sneezewood or Cape ebony (Euclea) and ironwood.

Other vegetable products of importance are: Gum arabic, obtained from various

species of acacia (especially A. senegal), the chief supplies of which are

obtained from Senegambia and the steppe regions of North Africa (Kordofan,

&c.); gum copal, a valuable resin produced by trees of the leguminous

order, the best, known as Zanzibar or Mozambique copal, coming from the East

African Trachylobium hornemannianum, and also found in a fossil state under the

soil; kola nuts, produced chiefly in the coast-lands of Upper Guinea by a tree

of the order Sterculiaceae (Kola acuminata); archil or orchilla, a dye-yielding

lichen (Rocella tinctoria and triciformis) growing on trees and rocks in East

Africa, the Congo basin, &c.; cork, the bark of the cork oak, which

flourishes in Algeria; and alfa, a grass used in paper manufacture (Machrochloa

tenacissima), growing in great abundance on the dry steppes of Algeria,

Tripoli, &c. A product to which attention has been paid in Angola is the

Almeidina gum or resin, derived from the juice of Euphorbia tirucalli.

The cultivated products include those of the tropical and warm temperate zones.

Of the former, coffee is perhaps the most valuable indigenous plant. It grows

wild in many parts, the home of one species being in Kaffa and other Galla

countries south of Abyssinia, and of another in Liberia. The Abyssinian coffee

is equal to the best produced in any other part of the world. Cultivation is,

however, necessary to ensure the best results, and attention has been given to

this in various European colonies. Plantations have been established in Angola,

Nyasaland, German East Africa, Cameroon, the Congo Free State, &c.

Copra, the produce of the cocoa-nut palm, is supplied chiefly by Zanzibar and

neighbouring parts of the east coast. Groundnuts, produced by the leguminous

plant, Arachis hypogaea, are grown chiefly in West Africa, and the largest

export is from Senegal and the Gambia; while Bambarra ground-nuts (Voandzeia

subterranea) are very generally cultivated from Guinea to Natal. Cloves are

extensively grown on Zanzibar and Pemba islands, Pemba being the chief source

of the world's supply of cloves. The chief drawbacks to the industry are the

fluctuations of the yield of the trees, and the risk of over-production in

good seasons.

Cotton grows wild in many parts of tropical Africa, and is exported in small

quantities in the raw state; but the main export is from Egypt, which comes

third among the world's sources of supply of the article. It is also

cultivated in West Africa—the industry in the Guinea coast colonies having

been developed since the beginning of the 20th century—and in the Anglo-

Egyptian Sudan, whence came the plants from which Egyptian cotton is grown.

Sugar, which is the staple crop of Mauritius, and in a lesser degree of

Reunion, is also produced in Natal, Egypt, and, to a certain extent, in

Mozambique. Dates are grown in Tunisia and the Saharan oases, especially

Tafilet; maize in Egypt, South Africa and parts of the tropical zone; wheat

in Egypt, Algeria and the higher regions of Abyssinia; rice in Madagascar.

Wine is largely exported from Algeria, and in a much smaller quantity from

Cape Colony; fruit and vegetables from Algeria. Tobacco is widely grown on a

small scale, but, except perhaps from Algeria, has not become an important

article of export, though plantations have been established in various

tropical colonies. The cultivation of cocoa has proved successful in the Gold

Coast, Cameroon and other colonies, and in various districts the tea plant is

cultivated. Indigo, though not originally an African product, has become

naturalized and grows wild in many parts, while it is also cultivated on a

small scale. The main difficulty in the way of tropical cultivation is the

labour question, which has already been referred to.

Of animal products one of the most important is ivory, the largest export of

which is from the Congo Free State. The diminution in the number of elephants

with the opening up of the remoter districts must in time cause a falling-off

in this export. Beeswax is obtained from various parts of the interior of

West Africa, and from Madagascar. Raw hides are exported in large quantities

from South Africa, as are also the wool and hair of the merino sheep and

Angora goat. Both hides and wool are also exported from Algeria and Morocco,

and hides from Abyssinia and Somaliland. Ostrich feathers are produced

chiefly by the ostrich farms of Cape Colony, but some are also obtained from

the steppes to the north of the Central Sudan. Live stock, principally sheep,

is exported from Algeria and cattle from Morocco.

The exploited minerals of Africa are confined to a few districts, the

resources of the continent in this respect being largely

Mineral Wealth.

undeveloped. Since the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, particularly in the

district known as the Rand (1885), the output has grown enormously, so that in

1898 the output of gold from South Africa was greater than from any other

gold-field in the world. The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 lost the Rand the

leading position, but by 1905 the output—in that year over L. 20,800,000—was

greater than it had ever been. The supply of gold from South Africa is roughly

25% of the world's output. The gold-yielding formations extend northwards

through Rhodesia. The Gold Coast is so named from the quantity of gold obtained

there, and since the close of the 19th century the industry has

developed largely in the hands of Europeans. In the Galla countries gold has

long been an article of native commerce. It is also found in various parts of

the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and along the western shore of the Red Sea. Diamonds

are found in large quantities in a series of beds known as the Kimberley

shales, the principal mines being at Kimberley, Cape Colony. Diamonds are also

found in Orange River Colony, while one of the richest diamond mines in the

world—the Premier—is situated in the Transvaal near Pretoria. Some 80% of the

world's production of diamonds comes from South Africa. Copper is found in the

west of Cape Colony, in German South-West Africa, and in the Katanga country in

the southern Congo basin, where vast beds of copper ore exist. There are also

extensive deposits of copper in the Broken Hill district of Northern Rhodesia.

It also occurs in Morocco, Algeria, the Bahr-el-Ghazal, &c. Rich tin

deposits have been found in the southern Congo basin and in Northern Rhodesia.

Iron is found in Morocco, Algeria (whence there is an export trade), and is

widely diffused, and worked by the natives, in the tropical zone. But the

deposits aregenerally not rich. Coal is worked, principally for home

consumption, in Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, Orange River Colony, and in

Rhodesia in the neighbourhood of the Zambezi. Coal deposits also exist in the

German territory north of Lake Nyasa. Phosphates are exported from Algeria and

Tunisia. Of other minerals which occur, but are little worked, zinc, lead and

antimony are found in Algeria, lead and manganese in Cape Colony, plumbago in

Sierra Leone.

The imports from foreign countries into Africa consist chiefly of

manufactured goods, varying in character according to the development of the

different countries in civilization. In Egypt, Algeria and South Africa they

include most of the necessaries and luxuries of civilized life, manufactured

cotton and woollen goods, especially the former, taking the first place, but

various food stuffs, metal goods, coal and miscellaneous articles being also

included. In tropical Africa, and generally where few Europeans have settled,

the great bulk of the imports consists as a rule of cotton goods, articles

for which there is a constant native demand.

No continent has in the past been so lacking in means of communication as

Africa, and it was only in the last decade

Development of means of communication.

of the 19th century that decided steps were taken to remedy these defects.

The African rivers, with the exception of the middle Congo and its affluents,

and the middle course of the three other chief rivers, are generally

unfavourable to navigation, and throughout the tropical region almost the

sole routes have been native footpaths, admitting the passage of a single

file of porters, on whose heads all goods have been carried from place to

place. Certain of these native trade routes are, however, much frequented,

and lead for hundreds of miles from the coast to the interior. In the desert

regions of the north transport is by caravans of camels, and in the south

ox-wagons,before the advent of railways, supplied the general means of

locomotion. The native trade routes led generally from the centres of

greatest population or production to the seaports by the nearest route, but

to this rule there was a striking exception. The dense forests of Upper

Guinea and the upper Congo proved a barrier which kept the peoples of the

Sudan from direct access to the sea, and from Timbuktu to Darfur the great

trade routes were either west to east or south to north across the Sahara.

The principal caravan routes across the desert lead from different points in

Morocco and Algeria to Timbuktu; from Tripoli to Timbuktu, Kano and other

great marts of the western and central Sudan; from Bengazi to Wadai; and from

Assiut on the Nile through the Great Oasis and the Libyan desert to Darfur.

South of the equator the principal long-established routes are those from

Loanda to the Lunda and Baluba countries; from Benguella via Bihe to Urua and

the upper Zambezi; from Mossamedes across the Kunene to the upper Zambezi;

and from Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar, to Tanganyika. Many of the native

routes have been superseded by the improved communications introduced by

Europeans in the utilization of waterways and the construction of roads and

railways. Steamers have been conveyed overland in sections and launched on

the interior waterways above the obstructions to navigation. On the upper

Nile and Albert Nyanza their introduction was due to Sir S. Baker and General

C. G. Gordon (1871-1876); on the middle Congo and its affluents to Sir H.M.

Stanley and the officials of the Congo Free State, as well as to the Baptist

missionaries on the river; and on Lake Nyasa to the supporters of the

Scottish mission. A small vessel was launched on Victoria Nyanza 1896 by a

British mercantile firm, and a British government steamer made its first trip

in November 1900. On the other great lakes and on most of the navigable

rivers steamers were plying regularly before the close of the 19th century.

However, the shallowness of the water in the Niger and Zambezi renders their

navigation possible only to light-draught steamers. Roads suitable for

wheeled traffic are few. The first attempt at road-making in Central Africa

on a large scale was that of Sir T. Fowell Buxton and Mr (afterwards Sir W.)

Mackinnon, who completed the first section of a track leading into the

interior fromDar-es-Salaam (1879). A still more important undertaking was the

``Stevenson road,'' begun in 1881 from the head of Lake Nyasa to the south

end of Tanganyika, and constructed mainly at the expense of Mr James

Stevenson, a director of theAfrican Lakes Company—a company which helped

materially in the opening up of Nyasaland. The Stevenson road forms a link in

the ``Lakes route'' into the heart of the continent. In British East Africa a

road connecting Mombasa with Victoria Nyanza was completed in 1897, but has

since been in great measure superseded by the railway. Good roads have also

been made in German East Africa and Cameroon and in Madagascar.

Railways, the chief means of affording easy access to the interior of the

continent, were for many years after their first introduction to Africa

almost entirely confined to the extreme north and south (Egypt, Algeria, Cape

Colony and Natal). Apart from short lines in Senegal, Angola and at Lourenco

Marques, the rest of the continent was in 1890 without a railway system. In

Egypt the Alexandria and Cairo railway dates from 1855, while in 1877 the

lines open reached about 1100 miles, and in 1890, in addition to the lines

traversing the delta, the Nile had been ascended to Assiut. In Algeria the

construction of an inter-provincial railway was decreed in 1857, but was

still incomplete twenty years later, when the total length of the lines open

hardly exceeded 300 miles. Before 1890 an extension to Tunis had been opened,

while the plateau had been crossed by the lines to Ain Sefra in the west and

Biskra in the east. In Senegal the railway from Dakar to St Louis had been

commenced and completed during the 'eighties, while the first section of the

Senegal-Niger railway, that from Kayes to Bafulabe, was also constructed

during the same decade. In Cape Colony, where in about 1880 the railways were

limited to the neighbourhood of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London,

the next decade saw the completion of the trunk-line from Cape Town to

Kimberley, with a junction at De Aar with that from Port Elizabeth. The

northern frontier had, however, nowhere been crossed. In Natal, also, the

main line had not advanced beyond Ladysmith. The settlement, c. 1890, of the

main lines of the partition of the continent was followed by many projects

for the opening up of the possessions and spheres of influence of the various

powers by the building of railways; several of these schemes being carried

through in a comparatively short time. The building of railways was

undertaken by the governments concerned, nearly all the African lines being

state-owned. In the Congo Free State a railway, which took some ten years to

build, connecting the navigable waters of the lower and middle Congo, was

completed in 1898, while in 1906 the middle and upper courses of the river

were linked by the opening of a line past Stanley Falls. Thus the vast basin

of the Congo was rendered easily accessible to commercial enterprise. In

North Africa the Algerian and Tunisian railways were largely extended, and

proposals were made for a great trunk-line from Tangier to Alexandria. The

railway from Ain Sefra was continued southward towards Tuat, the project of a

trans-Saharan line having occupied the attention of French engineers since

1880. In French West Africa railway communication between the upper Senegal

and the upper Niger was completed in 1904; from the Guinea coast at Konakry

another line runs north-east to the upper Niger, while from Dahomey a third

line goes to the Niger at Garu. In the British colonies on the same coast the

building of railways was begun in 1896. A line to Kumasi was completed in

1903, and the line from Lagos to the lower Niger had reached Illorin in 1908.

Thence the railway was continued to the Niger at Jebba. From Baro, a port on

the lower Niger which can be reached by steamers all the year round, another

railway, begun in 1907, goes via Bida, Zungeru and Zaria to Kano, a total

distance of 400 miles. A line from Jebba to Zungeru affords connexion with

the Lagos railway.

But the greatest development of the railway systems was in the south and east

of the continent. In British East Africa a survey for a railway from Mombasa

to Victoria Nyanza was made in 1892. The first rails were laid in 1896 and

the line reached the lake in December 1901. Meanwhile, there had been a

great extension of railways in South Africa. Lines from Cape Town, Port

Elizabeth, East London, Durban and Delagoa Bay all converged on the newly

risen city of Johannesburg, the centre of the Rand gold mines. A more

ambitious project was that identified with the name of Cecil Rhodes, namely,

the extension northward of the railway from Kimberley with the object of

effecting a continuous railway connexion from Cape Town to Cairo. The line

from Kimberley reached Bulawayo in 1897. (Bulawayo is also reached from Beira

on the east coast by another line, completed in 1902, which goes through

Portuguese territory and Mashonaland.) The extension of the line northward

from Bulawayo was begun in 1899, the Zambezi being bridged, immediately below

the Victoria Falls, in 1905. From this point the railway goes north to the

Katanga district of the Congo State. In the north of the continent a step

towards the completion of the Cape to Cairo route was taken in the opening in

1899 of the railway from Wadi Haifa to Khartum. A line of greater economic

importance than the lastnamed is the railway (completed in 1905) from Port

Sudan on the Red Sea to the Nile a little south of Berber, thus placing the

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan within easy reach of the markets of the world. A west to

east connexion across the continent by rail and steamer, from the mouth of

the Congo to Port Sudan, was arranged in 1906 when an agreement was entered

into by the Congo and Sudan governments for the building of a railway from

Lado, on the Nile, to the Congo frontier, there to meet a railway starting

from the river Congo near Stanley Falls. A railway of considerable importance

is that from Jibuti in the Gulf of Aden to Harrar, giving access to the

markets of southern Abyssinia.

Besides the railways mentioned there are several others of less importance.

Lines run from Loanda and other ports of Angola towards the Congo State

frontier, and from Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of German East Africa

towards the great lakes. In British Central Africa a railway connects Lake

Nyasa with the navigable waters of the Shire, and various lines have been

built by the French in Madagascar.

All the main railways in South Africa, the lines in British West Africa, in

the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and in Egypt south of Luxor are of 3 ft. 6 in.

gauge. The main lines in Lower Egypt and in Algeria and Tunisia are of 4 ft.

8 1/2 in. gauge. Elsewhere as in French West and British East Africa the

lines are of metre (3.28 ft.) gauge.

The telegraphic system of Africa is on the whole older than that of the

railways, the newer European possessions having in most cases been provided

with telegraph lines before railway projects had been set on foot. In

Algeria, Egypt and Cape Colony the systems date back to the middle of the

19th century, before the end of which the lines had in each country reached

some thousands of miles. In tropical Africa the systems of French West

Africa, where the line from Dakar to St Louis was begun in 1862, were the

first to be fully developed, lines having been carried from different points

on the coast of Senegal and Guinea towards the Niger, the main line being

prolonged north-west to Timbuktu, and west and south to the coast of Dahomey.

The route for a telegraph line to connect Timbuktu with Algeria was surveyed

in 1905. The Congo region is furnished with several telegraphic systems, the

longest going from the mouth of the river to Lake Tanganyika. From Ujiji on

the east coast of that lake there is telegraphic communication via Tabora

with Dar-es-Salaam and via Nyasa and Rhodesia with Cape Town. The last-named

line is the longest link in the trans-continental line first suggested in

1876 by Sir (then Mr) Edwin Arnold and afterwards taken up by Cecil Rhodes.

The northern link from Egypt to Khartum has been continued southward to

Uganda, while another line connects Uganda with Mombasa. At the principal

seaports the inland systems are connected with submarine cables which place

Africa in telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.

Numerous steamship lines run from Great Britain, Germany, France and other

countries to the African seaports, the journey from any place in western

Europe to any port on the African coast occupying, by the shortest route, not

more than three weeks. (E. HE., F. R. C.)

1 Further conferences respecting the liquor traffic in Africa were held in

Brussels in 1899 and 1906. In both instances conventions were signed by the

powers, raising the minimum duty on imported spirituous liquors.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Authoritative works dealing with Africa as a whole in any of

its aspects are comparatively rare. Besides such volumes the following list

includes therefore books containing valuable information concerning large or

typical sections of the continent:—

sec. I. General Descriptions.—(a) Ancient and Medieval. Herodotus, ed. G.

Rawlinson, 4 vols.1 (1880); Ptolemy's Geographia, ed. C. Muller, vol. i.

(Paris, 1883-1901); Ibn Haukal, ``Description de l'Afrique (transl. McG. de

Slane), Nouv. Journal asiatique, 1842; Edrisi, ``Geographie'' (transl.

Jaubert), Rec. de voyages . . . Soc. De Geogr. vol. v. (Paris, 1836); Abulfeda,

Geographie (transl. Reinaud and Guyard, Paris, 1848-1883); M. A. P.d'Avezac,

Description de l'Afrique ancienne (Paris, 1845); L. de Marmol, Description

general de Africa (Granada, 1573); L. Sanuto, Geografia dell' Africa (Venice,

1588); F. Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, &c. (1597); Leo

Africanus, The History and Description of Africa (transl. J. Pory, ed. R.

Brown), 3 vols. (1896); O. Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der afrikaensche

gewesten, &c. (Amsterdam, 1668) (also English version by Ogilvy, 1670, and

French version, Amsterdam, 1686); B. Tellez, ``Travels of the Jesuits in

Ethiopia,'' A New Collection of Voyages, vol. vii. (1710); G. A. Cavazzi da

Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrittione de tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola

(Milan, 1690) (account of the labours of the Capuchin missionaries and their

observations on the country and people); J. Barbot, ``Description of the Coasts

of North and South Guinea and of Ethiopia Inferior,', Churchill's Voyages, vol.

v. (1707); W. Bosman, A New . . . Description of the Coasts of North and South

Guinea, &c., 2nd ed. (1721); J. B. Labat, Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique

occidentale, 5 vols. (Paris, 1728); Idem, Relation historique de l'Ethiopie

occidentale, 5 vols. (Paris, 1732). (b) Modern. B. d'Anville, Memoire conc. les

rivieres de l'interieur de l'Afrique (Paris, n.d.); M. Vollkommer, Die Quellen

B. d'Anville's fur seine kritische Karte von Afrika Munich, 1904); C. Ritter,

Die Erdkunde, i. Theil, 1. Buch, ``Afrika'' (Berlin, 1822); l. M`Queen,

Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and Central Africa (Edinburgh,

1821 ); Idem, Geographical Survey of Africa ( 1840); W. D. Cooley, Inner Africa

laid open (1852); E. Reclus, Nouvelle geographie universelle, vols. x.-xiii.

(1885-1888); A. H. Keane, Africa (in Stanford's Compendium), 2 vols., 2nd ed.

(1904-1907); F. Hahn and W. Sievers, Afrika, 2. Aufl. (Leipzig, 1901); M.

Fallex and A.Mairey, L'Afrique au debut du XXe siecle (Paris, 1906); Sir C. P.

Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vols. iii. and iv.

(Oxford, 1894, 1904); F. D. and A. J. Herbertson, Descriptive Geographies from

Original Sources: Africa (1902); British Africa (The British Empire Series,

vol. ii., 1899); Journal of the African Society; Comite de l'Afrique francaise,

Bulletin, Paris; Mutteilungen der afrikan. Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Berlin,

1879-1889); Mitteilungen . . . aus den deutschen Schutzegebieten (Berlin); H.

Schirmer, Le Sahara (Paris, 1893); Mary H.Kingsley, West African Studies, 2nd

ed. (1901); J. Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897); Sir Harry Johnston,

The Uganda Protectorate, 2 vols. (1902) (vol ii. is devoted to anthropology);

E. D. Morel, Affairs of West Africa (1902).

sec. II. Geography (Physical), Geology, Climate, Flora and Fauna. — (For

Descriptive Geogr. see sec. I.)—G. Gurich, ``Uberblick uber den geolog. Bau

des afr. Kontinents,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1887; A. Knox, Notes on the Geology of

the Continent of Africa (1906) (includes a bibliography); L. von Hohnel, A.

Rosiwal, F. Toula and E. Suess, B eitrage zur geologischen Kenntniss des

omstlichcn Afrika (Vienna, 1891);

E. Stromer, Die Geologie der deutschen Schutzgebieten in Afrika (Munich, 1896);

J. Chavanne, Afrika im Lichte uniserer Tage: Bodengestalt, &c. (Vienna,

1881); F.Heidrich, ``Die mittlere Hohe Afrikas,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1888; J. W.

Gregory, The Great Rift-Valley (1896); H. G.Lyons, The Physiography of the

River Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906); S. Passarage, Die Kalahari: Versuch

einer physischgeogr. Darstellung . . . des sudafr. Beckens (Berlin, 1904);

Idem, ``Inselberglandschaften im tropischen Afrika,'' Naturw. Wochenschrift,

1904. 654-665; J. E. S. Moore, The Tanganyika, Problem (1903); W. H. Hudleston,

``On the Origin of the Marine (Halolimnic) Fauna of Lake Tanganyika,'' Journ.

Of Trans. Victoria Inst., 1904, 300-351 (discusses the whole question of the

geological history of equatorial Africa); E.Stromer, ``Ist der Tanganyika ein

Rellikten-See?'' Peterm. Mitt., 1901, 275-278; E. Kohlschutter, ``Die . . .

Arbeiten der Pendelexpedition . . . in Deutsch-Ost-Afrika,'' Verh. Deuts.

Geographentages Breslau, 1901, 133-153; J. Cornet, ``La geologie du bassin du

Congo,'' Bull. Soc. Beige geol., 1898; E. G. Ravenstein, ``The Climatology of

Africa'' (ten reports), Reports Brit. Association, 1892-1901; Idem,

``Climatological Observations . . . I. Tropical Africa'' (1904); H. G. Lyons,

``On the Relations between Variations of Atmospheric Pressure . . . and the

Nile Flood,'' Proc. Roy. Soc., Ser. A, vol. lxxvi., 1905; P. Reichard, ``Zur

Frage der Austrocknung Afrikas,'' Geogr. Zeitschrift, 1895; J. Hoffmann, ``Die

tiefsten Temperaturen auf den Hochlandern,'' &c., Peterm. Mitt., 1905; G.

Fraunberger, ``Studien uber die jahrlichen Niederschlagsmengen des afrik.

Kontinents,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1906; D. Oliver and Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer,

Flora of) Tropical Africa, 10 vols. (1888-1906); K. Oschatz, Anordnung der

Vegetation in Afrika (Erlangen, 1900); A. Engler, Hochgebirgs-flora des

tropischen Afrika (Berlin, 1892); Idem, Die Pflanzenwelt Ostaftikras und der

Nachbargebiete, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1895); Idem, Beitrage zur Flora von Afrika

(Engler's Botan. Jahrbucher, 14 vols. &c.); W. P. Hiern, Catalogue of the

African Plants Collected by Dr Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-1861, 2 vols.

(1896-1901); R. Schlechter, Westafrikanische Kautschuk-Expedition (Berlin,

1903); H. Baum, Kunene-Sambesi-Expedition (Berlin, 1903) (largely concerned

with botany); W. L. Sclater, ``Geography of Mammals, No. iv. The Ethiopian

Region,'' Geog. Journal, March 1896; H. A. Bryden and others, Great and Small

Game of Africa (1899); F. C. Selous, African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

(1908); E. N. Buxton, Two African Trips: with Notes and Suggestions on Big-Game

Preservation in Africa (1902) (contains photographs of living animals); G.

Schillings, With Flash-light and Rifle in Equatorial East Africa (1906); Idem,

In Wildest Africa (1907) (striking collection of photographs of living wild

animals); Exploration scientifique de l'Algerie: Histoire naturelle, 14 vols.

and 4 atlases, Paris (1846-1850); Annales du Musee du Congo: Botanique,

Zoologie (Brussels, 1898, &c.). The latest results of geographical research

and a bibliography of current literature are given in the Geographical Journal,

published monthly by the Royal Geographical Society.

sec. III. Ethnology.—H. Hartmann, Die Volker Afrikas (Leipzig, 1879); B.

Ankermann, ``Kulturkreise in Afrika,'' Zeit. f. Eth. vol. xxxvii. p. 34; Idem,

``Uber den gegenwartigen Stand der Ethnographie der Sudhalfte Afrikas,'' Arch.

f. Anth. n.f. iv. p. 24;G.Sergi, Antropologia della stirpe camitica (Turin,

1897); J. Deniker, ``Distribution geogr. et caracteres physiques des Pygmees

africains,'' La Geographie, Paris, vol. viii. pp. 213-220; G. W. Stow and G. M.

Theal, The Native Races of South Africa (1905); K. Barthel, Volkerbewegungen

auf der Sudhalfte des afrik. Kontinents (Leipzig, 1893); A. B. Ellis, The

Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast (1887); Idem, The Ewe-speaking Peoples

of the Slave Coast (1890); Idem, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast

(1894); H. Ling Roth, Great Benin, its Customs, &c. (Halifax, 1903); H.

Frobenius, Die Heiden-Neger des agyptischen Sudan (Berlin, 1893); Herbert

Spencer and D. Duncan, Descriptive Sociology, vol. iv. African Races (1875); A.

de Preville, Les Societes africaines (Paris, 1894); D. Macdonald, Africana or,

the Heart of Heathen Africa, 2 vols. (1882); L. Frobenius, Der Ursprung der

afrikanischen Kulturen (Der Ursprung der Kultur, Band i.) (Berlin, 1898); Idem,

``Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrikas,'' Abhandl. Kaiserl. Leopoldin.-Carolin.

Deuts. Akad. Naturforscher, 1899, 1-278; G. Schweinfurth, Artes africanae

Illustrations and Descriptions of . . . industrial Arts, &c. (in German and

English) (Leipzig, 1875); F. Ratzel, Die afsikanischen Bogen . . . eine

anthrop. geographische Studie (Leipzig, 1891); K. Weule, . Der afrikanische

Pfeil (Leipzig, 1899); H. Frobenius, Afrikanische Bautypen (Dauchau bei

Munchen, 1894); H. Schurtz, Die afrikan. Gewerbe (Leipzig, 1900); E. W. Blyden,

Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1887); James Stewart, Dawn in the Dark

Continent, or Africa and its Missions (Edinburgh and London, 1903); W. H. J.

Bleek, Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, 2 parts (1862-1869);

Idem, Vocabularies of the Districts of Lourenzo Marques, &c., &c.

(1900); R. N. Cust, Sketch of the Modern Languages of Africa, 2 vols. (1993):

F. W. Kolbe, A Language Study based on Bantu (1888); J. T. Last, Polyglotta

Africana orientalis (1885); J. Torrend, Comparative Grammar of the South

African Bantu Languages (1891); S. W. Koelle, Polyglotta Africana (1854); C.

Velten, Schilderungen der Suaheli von Expeditionen v. Wissmanns, &c.,

&c. (1900) (narratives taken down from the mouths of natives); A.

Vierkandt, Volksgedichte im westlichen Central-Afrika (Leipzig, 1895). For

latest information the following periodicals should be consulted:— Journal of

the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland; Man (same

publishers); Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie; Archiv f. Anthropologie;

L'Anthropologie.

sec. IV. Archaeology and Art.— Publications of the Egyptian Exploration Fund; A.

Mariette-Bey, The Monuments of Upper Egypt (1890); H. Brugsch, Die Agyptologie

(Leipzig, 1891); G. Maspero, L' Archeologie egyptienne (Paris, 1890?); R.

Lepsius, Denkmaler aus Agypten und Athiopien . . ., 6 vols. (Berlin,

1849-1859); G. A. Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia . . . illustrating the

Antiquities of the Ancient Kingdom of Meroe (1835); Records of the Past: being

English Translations of . . . Egyptian Monuments, vols. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12

(1873-1881); Ditto, new series, 6 vols. (1890-1892); D. Randall-MacIver and A.

Wilkin, Libyan Notes (1901) (archaeology and ethnology of North Africa); G.

Boissier, L'Afrique romaine Promenades archeologiques en Algerie et en Tunisie,

2nd ed. (Paris, 1901); H. Randall-MacIver, Mediaeval Rhodesia (1906); Prisse

d'Avennes, Histoire de l'art egyptien d'apres les monuments, &c. with atlas

(Paris, 1879; G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, History of Art in Ancient Egypt, 2

vols. (1993); H. Wallis, Egyptian Ceramic Art (1900); C. H. Read and O. M.

Dalton, Antiquities from the City of Benin and from other parts of West Africa

(1899).

sec. V. Travel and Exploration.—Dean W. Vincent, The Commerce and Navigation of

the Ancients, vol. 2, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1807); G. E. de

Azurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (Eng. trans., 2

vols., 1896, 1899); R. H. Major, Life of Prince Henry the Navigator (1868); E.

G. Ravenstein, ``The Voyages of Diogo Cao and Barth. Diaz,'' Geogr. Journ.,

Dec. 1900; O. Hartig, ``Altere Entdeckungsgeschichte und Kartographie

Afrikas,'' Mitt. Geogr. Gesells. Wien, 1905; J. Leyden and H. Murray,

Historical Account of Discoveries, &c., 2 vols., 2nd ed. (1818); T. E.

Bowditch, Account of the Discoveries of the Portuguese in the Interior of

Angola and Mozambique (1824); P. Paulitschke, Die geogr. Forschung des afrikan.

Continents (Vienna, 1880); A. Supan, ``Ein Jahrhundert der Afrika-Forschung,''

Peterm. Mitt., 1888; R. Brown, The Story of Africa and its Explorers, 4 vols.

(1892-1895); Sir Harry Johnston, The Nile Quest (1903); James Bruce, Travels to

discover the Source of the Nile in 1768-1773, 5 vols., Edinburgh (1790);

Proceedings of the Association for . . . Discovery of!the Interior Parts of

Africa, 1790-1810; Mungo Park, Travels into the Interior Districts of Africa

(1799); Idem, Journal of a Mission, &c. (1815); Capt. J. K. Tuckey,

Narrative of an Expedition to explore the River Zaire or Congo in 1816 (1818):

D. Denham and H. Clapperton, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in N. and

Cent. Africa (1826); R. Caillie, Journal d'un voyage a Temboctu et a Jenne, 3

vols., Paris (1830); D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels . . . in South Africa

(1857); The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, ed. H. Waller

(1874); H. Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 5 vols.

(1857); J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches, &c., in Eastern Africa (1860);

Sir R. F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, 2 vols. (1860); J. H.

Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863).: Sir S. W.

Baker, The Albert Nyanza, 2 vols. (1866); G. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa,

2 vols. (1873); V. L. Cameron, Across Africa, 2 vols. (1877); T. Baines, The

Gold Regions of South-Eastern Africa (1877); Sir H. M. Stanley, Through the

Dark Continent, 2 vols. (1878); Idem, In Darkest Africa, 2 vols. (1890); G.

Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1879-1889); P. S. De Brazza, Les

Voyages de . . . (1875-1882), Paris, 1884; i. Thomson, Through Masai Land

(1885); H. von Wissmann, Unter Deutscher Flagge quer durch Afrika, &c.

(Berlin, 1889); Idem, My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa (1891); W.

Junker, Travels in Africa 1875-1886, 3 vols. (1890-1892); L. G. Binger, Du

Niger au Golfe de Guinee, &c. (Paris, 1892); O. Baumann, Durch Masailand

zur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894); R. Kandt, Caput Nili (Berlin, 1904); C. A. von

Gotzen, Durch Afrika von Ost nach West (Berlin, 1896); L. Vanutelli and C.

Citerni, Seconda spedizione Bottego: L'Omo (Milan, 1899); P. Foureau, D'Alger

au Congo par le Tchad (Paris, 1902); C. Lemaire, Mission scientifique du

Ka-Tanga: Journal de route, 1 vol., Resultats des observations, 16 parts

(Brussels, 1902); A. St. H. Gibbons, Africa from South to North through

Marotseland, 2 vols. (1904); E. Lenfant, La Grande Route du Tchad (Paris,

1905); Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, 2 vols. (1907).

sec. VI. Historical and Political.—H.Schurtz, Africa (World's History, vol. 3,

part 3) (1903); Sir H. H. Johnston, History of the Colonization of Africa by

Alien Races (Cambridge, 1899) (reprint with additional chapter ``Latest

Developments,'' 1905); A. H. L. Heeren, Reflections on the Politics,

Intercourse and Trade of the Ancient Nations of Africa, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1832);

G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt (1881); A. Graham, Roman Africa (1902);

J. De Barros, Asia: Ira Decada, Lisbon (1552 and 1777-1778); J. Strandes, Die

Portugiesenzeit von . . . Ostafrika (Berlin, 1899); R. Schuck, Brandenburg-

Preussens Kolonial-Politik . . . 1641-1721, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1889): G. M`Call

Theal, History and Ethnography of Africa south of the Zambesi . . . to 1795, 3

vols. (1907-1910), and History of South Africa since September 1795 (to 1872) 5

vols. (1908); Idem, Records of South-Eastern Africa, 9 vols., 1898-1903; Lady

Lugard, A Tropical Dependency: Outline of the History of the Western Sudan,

&c.; (1905); Sir F. Hertslet, The Map of Africa by Treaty, 3 vols. (3rd

ed., 1909); J . S. Keltie, The Partition of Africa, 2nd ed. (1895); F. Van

Ortroy, Conventions internationales definissant les limites . . . en Afrique

(Brussels, 1898); General Act of the Conference of Berlin, 1885: The Surveys

and Explorations of British Africa (Colonial Reports, No. 500) (1906), and

annual reports thereafter; Sir F. D. Lugard, The Rise or our East African

Empire, 2 vols. (1893); E. Petit, Les colonies francaises, 2 vols. (Paris,

1902-1904); E. Rouard de Card, Les Traites de protectorat conclus par la France

en Afrique, 1870-1895 (Paris, 1897); A. J. de Araujo, Colonies portuguaises

d'Afrique Lisbon, 1900); B.Trognitz, ``Neue Arealbestimmung des Continents

Afrika,'' Petermanns Mitt., 1893, 220-221; A. Supan, ``Die Bevolkerung der

Erde,'' xii., Peterm. Mitt. Erganzungsh. 146 (Gotha, 1904) (deals with areas as

well as population).

sec. VII. Commerce and Economics.—A. Silva White, The Development of Africa,

2nd ed. (1892): K. Dove, ``Grundzuge einer Wirtschaftsgeographie Afrikas,''

Geographische Zeitschrift, 1905, i-18; E. Hahn, ``Die Stellung Afrikas in der

Geschichte des Welthandels,'' Verhandl. 11. Deutsch. Geographentags zu Bremen

(Berlin, 1896); L. de Launay, Les Richesses minerales de l'Afrique (Paris,

1903); K. Futterer, Afrika in seiner Bedeutung fur die Goldproduktion

(Berlin, 1894); P. Reichard, ``Das afrikan. Elfenbein und sein Handel,''

Deutsche geogr. Blatter (Bremen, 1889); Sir A. Moloney, Sketch of the

Forestry of West Africa (1887); Dewevre, ``Les Caoutchoucs africains,'' Ann.

Soc. Sci. Bruxelles, 1895; Sir T. F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and its

Remedy (1840); C. M. A. Lavigerie, L'Esclavage africain (Paris, 1888); E. de

Renty, Les chemins de fer coloniaux en Afrique, 3 vols. (Paris, 1903-1905);

H. Meyer, Die Eisenbahnen im tropischen Afrika (Leipzig, 1902); G. Grenfell,

``The Upper Congo as a Waterway,'' Geogr. Journ., Nov. 1902; A. St. H.

Gibbons, ``The Nile and Zambezi Systems as Waterways,'' Journ. R. Colon.

Inst., 1901; K. Lent, ``Verkehrsmittel in Ostafrika,'' Deutsches

Kolonialblatt, 1894; ``Trade of the United Kingdom with the African Continent

in 1898-1902,'' Board of T. Journ., 1903; Diplomatic and Consular Peports,

Annual Series; Colonial Reports; T. H. Parke, Guide to Health in Africa

(1893); R. W. Felkin, Geographical Distribution of Tropical Diseases in

Africa (1895)

The following bibliographies may also be consulted: J. Gay, Bibliographie des

ouvrages relatifs a l'Afrique, &c. (San Remo, 1875); P. Paulitschke, Die

Afrika-Literatur von 1500 bis 1750 (Vienne, 1882); Catalogue of the Colonial

Office Library, vol. 3, Africa (specially for government publications). (E.

HE.) 1 Where no place of publication is given, London is to be understood.