Africa

In the coastal regions of the modern colonies of Kenya and Tanganyika,  the Portuguese, first among Europeans, came into contact with the Arab-African civilization that flourished on the edges of the Indian Ocean.

Reputed to be a place of enormous wealth and during the seventeenth century known as “the golden isle”, Madagascar, before it achieved its independence, was long the subject of contention between French and British empire-builders.

The inward movement of European peoples and the southward migration of Bantu tribes supply the key to South African history and, write Edna and Frank Bradlow, to the problems that confront the country today.

The Battle of Majuba Hill during the First Boer War, had immense political and military significance to British arms—and not only in South Africa. Its chief cause, writes Brian Bond, was a gross underestimation of the Boer’s tactical aptitude and courage.

On November 17th, 1874, when Henry Morton Stanley marched away from Bagamoyo on what was to be his greatest exploring achievement, he was retracing his own steps of 1871 along the well-worn caravan route used by Burton and Speke in 1857; by Speke and Grant in 1860, and, writes C.E. Hamshere, many Arab traders before them.

Prospects seemed encouraging for the Italian Empire in 1940, writes Patricia Wright, but an arduous defeat ensued.

The traditions of organized statehood in the countries of French West Africa stretch back for some fifteen centuries. During the past sixty years, writes Basil Davidson, French influence has greatly strengthened the feeling of federal community that inspires many of the newly evolving republics of the Western Sudan and the Guinea coast.

“A game of bluff from start to finish,” said Robert Baden-Powell, British commander during the Second Boer War. Nicholas King describes the seven-months’ siege, that took place in present day South Africa.

Portugal's colonial empire was, at the C.R. Boxer wrote this article in 1956, the oldest in the world, with Mozambique as its most prosperous possession.

In Rwanda, Hutu turned on Tutsi and a genocide lasting 100 days began, an episode of intense violence many thought impossible in the late 20th century.