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 17th
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
