African countries

In the last quarter of the 19th century European states divided Africa rapidly. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 set rules for claiming land on the African coast and interior, and Africans themselves took no part. France took much of West Africa; the Sudanese leader Samori Toure resisted until 1898, when he was captured and exiled to Gabon (he died in 1900). The Congo basin became the personal possession of Belgium’s King Leopold II in 1885 and a Belgian colony in 1908. In the south, diamonds and gold found in the 1870s–1880s drew Europeans, and Cecil Rhodes’s companies took over mines. In 1879 the Zulus under Cetshwayo defeated a British column at Isandlwana, but Britain subdued Zululand later that year. The Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 was fought with the Boer republics (Transvaal and Orange Free State), which passed under British rule; in 1910 the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange colonies were united in the Union of South Africa. Ethiopia kept its independence: on 1 March 1896 Emperor Menelik II’s army defeated the Italians at Adwa. In German South West Africa the Herero rose in 1904, followed by the Nama; the revolts were crushed ruthlessly and a large part of these peoples perished (historians today describe this as genocide).