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.