&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
