Age of Imperialism

Age of Imperialism

The Age of Imperialism and the development of colonies divided Africa. Nowhere was the competition for colonies more intense than in Africa. When the age of Imperialism began in 1875, less than 10 percent of the continent was controlled by Europe. By 1900, 90 percent of Africa was divided up into colonies.
Until well into the 1800’s, Africa was pretty unknown to the Europeans. All they knew was that they traded at the ports along the coast for centuries, never knowing what lied in the interior. The exploration of Africa began with Mungo Park’s exploration of the Niger River in 1805 and 1806. It continued with Rene Caillie who crossed the Sahara in 1827 and 1828 as well as Heinrich Barth who traveled all over western Africa during the 1850’s. The most famous explorer was David Livingstone, a missionary who spent 30 years in central Africa. All of these explorations gave Europeans their first detailed information about Africa and its inhabitants.
The scramble for African territory began right after 1879. The reason being that that was the year Henry Stanley, the reporter who found David Livingstone, returned to Africa and claimed most of the Congo River valley in the name of King Leopold II of Belgium. This was renamed the Belgian Congo and was 80 times larger than Belgium. This action alarmed France. In response, the French took the northern bank of the Congo River in 1882. Soon enough, Britain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were also claiming parts of Africa. In order to prevent a war, representatives from European countries met in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 to lay down the rules for this new competition. They agreed that any European country could claim land in Africa by sending troops to occupy strategic points, meaning locations that assured control of nearby areas. Until 1869, no other European country paid much attention to North Africa other than France. In that same year, a French company built a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. The canal...