BRITISH

COLONIZATI
ON OF
AFRICA

First interactions with Africa

1530 English merchants started trading in

West Africa and many of them came into
conflict with Portuguese troops;

1663 the English built Fort James in modernday Gambia;

1664 the English tried to colonize

Madagascar, but they failed;

the English trading posts and forts in

Western Africa were eventually taken by the

Fort James, the

Gambia

Exploration of Africa

until the Abolition of Slavery in the British

Empire (1807), the merchants managed to trade
around 3.5 million people from Africa to Central
and North America;
The British Empire won the Battle of Blaauwberg
and occupied The Cape Colony in 1806;
a huge immigration in The Cape Colony started
in 1820 because of the resources found there;
David Livingstone, a protestant missionary,
explored most of the southern part of Africa; his
discoveries made the English interested in
colonizing more;

The Scramble for Africa (1)

in 1870,only 10% of the African territory was

colonized ( Cape Colony by the UK, Angola and
Mozambique by Portugal and Algeria by France);
The technological advancement and the
discovery of the treatment for Malaria enables
vast expansion in Africa;
the Suez Canal went under English
administration in 1875; in 1882, the UK took
control over Egypt, then, in 1881, over Sudan;
Britain's administration ofEgypt, Sudanand
theCape Colonycontributed to a preoccupation
over securing the source of theNile River;

The Scramble for Africa (2)

Nigeria,KenyaandUgandawere
subjugated by the English in the 1890s and
early 20th century;
As the Cape Colony extended, the UK came
into conflict with the Dutch settlers; in 1879,
the UK managed to control most of South
Africa after the conquest of the Dutch and the
Zulu territories;
The Dutch protested, leading to the First
Boer War in 1880 and the Second Boer War in
1899-1902;

Cape to Cairo Empire

The British wanted to link their possessions

inSouthern Africa(modern South
Africa,Botswana,Zimbabwe,andZambia),
with their territories inEast
Africa(modernKenya), and these two areas
with Egypt;

the British colonial minister in South Africa,

Rhodes, wanted a "Cape to Cairo" empire,
linking the Suez Canal to the territories rich in
diamond and gold deposits in Central and

UK - the winner of the African colonization

war

By the time the First World War outbreak, the UK,

even though not having the largest territory of
Africa (French territories were bigger), it had by far
the largest population (30% of the African
population);

Nigeria was the most populated colony, while, due

to the Suez Canal, Egypt was the most important
one from the economic point of view;

The only independent countries in Africa were

Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Liberia;

Decolonization of Africa

After the Second World War, many territories in

Africa started a batter for independence;
The first country to obtain independence from
the UK was Egypt, following the Egyptian
Revolution of 1952;
From 1952 to 1980, England decolonized all the
territories in Africa in the following order: Sudan,
Ghana, Somalia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa
(1961), Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia,
The Gambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius,
Swaziland, Seychelles and Zimbabwe; 19 countries
including Egypt gained independence;