The Scramble for Africa

Before Europeans drew their lines, Africa held somewhere between 700 and 1,000 distinct political entities. The Kingdom of Asante controlled the gold-rich forests of West Africa with a sophisticated bureaucracy and a standing army. The Zulu Kingdom under Cetshwayo commanded disciplined regiments across southeastern Africa. The Ethiopian Empire, one of the oldest continuous states on earth, maintained its independence through diplomacy and military skill. The Sokoto Caliphate governed perhaps ten million people across the West African savanna. In East Africa, Swahili city-states ran trade networks linking the interior to the Indian Ocean, Arabia, and beyond.

These were not primitive societies waiting for European civilization. They were states, kingdoms, confederacies, and trading networks with their own legal systems, technologies, currencies, and diplomatic traditions. Some were expansionist. Some were oppressive. All of them were functioning polities run by people who understood power, administration, and war.

What happened to them between 1881 and 1914 was not a natural evolution. It was a seizure. In roughly thirty years, European powers claimed nearly ninety percent of the African continent. The speed was staggering. The methods ranged from treaty fraud to outright military conquest. And the human cost defies easy summary.