Imperialism In West Africa
Jake Frederick, Caleb Phipps, Felix Haynes, Tyler Phillips
Vocab:
Annexed- to incorporate territory into the domain of a city, country, or state.
Merchants- A person or company involved in wholesale trade, esp. one dealing with foreign countries or supplying merchandise to a particular trade.
Slavery- The state of being a slave.
Gold Coast- The Gold Coast was the region of West Africa that at the time was known for having an excessive amount of trading posts.
The Berlin Conference- Also known as the Congo Conference or West Africa Conference, regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power.
Important Events:
Between 1450 and 1750 Europeans traded with Africa, but they set up very few colonies. By 1850, only a few colonies existed along African coastlines, such as Algeria (French), the Cape Colony (Great Britain,) and Angola (Portugal). Instead, free African states continued, and after the end of the slave trade in the early 1800s, a lively exchange took place between Europeans and African states, such as the Sokoto Caliphate in western Africa and Egypt and Ethiopia in northeast Africa. They traded manufactured goods for gold, ivory, palm oil.
1865 Leopold II becomes King of Belgium and begins the New Imperialist rant; that is he starts giving speeches in which he pushes the glories of exploration and conquest. In the 1870s Leopold sets his sights on the heart of Africa and in 1876 sends H. M. Stanley up the Congo to establish trading posts and the beginnings of the Belgian Free Congo State. This opens up the question of control of the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa.
The re-conquest of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan characterizes much of the conquest of West, Central and East Africa: European forces conquered quickly. Organized resistance sometimes caused temporary setbacks, but the many large and small resistance armies were in time destroyed by the superior armaments of European armies and a brutal cultural arrogance.
The picture shown above is the Berlin Conference
Questions:
1.When did imperialism strike west Africa? How long did it last?
2: what region is the Gold Coast known as today?
3: Why did most of Europe want to take over Africa?