1.32 Africa: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 6/7)

They then discovered that there was already a garrison of British troops at Port Natal (later Deurbar) and by 1843 the area was made into a British colony. Most of the Dutch then went back over the range to the region of the Orange and Vaal rivers to establish the independent Boer state of the South African Republic (Transvaal) and two years later the Orange Free State. (Ref. 211 , 154 , 83 ) (Continue on page 1057)

The last half of the 19th century showed some great changes in those portions of Africa under European control, but even as late as 1875 those areas were primarily Algeria, Senegal and South Africa, although the pressure was gradually increasing overall. Although the European slave trade was supposedly banned early in the century, by 1850 some 25,000,000 blacks, supplied by local Africans, had been sent away from the continent by European, American, and Arab slavers. But Christian missionary activity increased and the hinterlands began to be explored with gun-boats behind them. As the Europeans gradually increased their coastal influence, the Age of Imperialism in Africa was initiated. This was about 1860 and we shall now re-examine the five sections of sub-saharan Africa as they received the impact of the 2nd half of the 19th century:

Sudanic states

The Ashanti Kingdom comprised most of what is modern Ghana and in 1850 had 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 people in its 125,000 square miles. There was great opulence in the royal court at the capital, Kumasi. In an unusual arrangement, a new ruler was chosen by the Queen Mother, assisted by senior chiefs. Trade was active in gold, slaves, livestock and food-stuffs. In neighboring Dahomey there was a royal core of women warriors consisting of some 5,000 women backed up by 7,000 men. It was their custom to have an annual killing of several score criminals and war captives.

The French began to penetrate along the Senegal River to obtain a profitable gum trade and the British began to occupy Sierra Leone and to take over the Niger basin.

A crown colony was established at Lago in Nigeria in 1861 and by the 1870s there were 14 British steamers on the Niger River. On the upper Niger, however, the Tukolors, under their leader al-Haji Umar, were active and expanded to come up against the French on the Senegal.

Equatorial africa

White explorers penetrated central Africa in this time period, going chiefly from east to west. Prominent among those was Sir Henry Morton Stanley