Intro Assignment
AJ McNutt
HST 225
Dr. Olumwullah
23 January 2013
Take Home Assignment #1 From the beginning of Africa’s history the development of its historical geography has had a very intense and interesting past. Deep in its history in the contemporary countries such as Egypt, Congo and many others there began a significant influence of the iron, copper and cereal growing movements that flooded the continent throughout. The Iron Age expanded across southern Africa causing intermixture with existing people of different culture, which resulted in cases of violence. This was an early sign of the continents developing geography being influenced by the need for resources and or land. Moving ahead in Africa’s history to partition period we begin to see the colonial empires intensifying their push into African countries to seize different parts of the continent. Few countries before 1879 were directly ruled by European nations. The French had been engaged in conquering Algeria since the 1830’s, the Portuguese had settlements in places such as Angola and small French and British colonies existed in West Africa Although there was little legitimate presence before 1880, within two decades the entire continent had been fought over, conquered and partitioned. Out of the 40 political units it became separated into, Europe dominated 36 of them (Barraclough, 236). The dominance was clear and many different countries within Europe played a part in this colonizing of Africa including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and of course France and Great Britain as well. On many different occasions these powers met to curtail violence occurring over these conquests in Africa, and each time they seemed to fail. The competition only became more heated over the years causing more competitors to enter the scene and caused a heightened level violence as well. There were many reasons to this rapid imperialism and colonialism that occurred in Africa during the late 19th century and early 20th century.
HST 225
Dr. Olumwullah
23 January 2013
Take Home Assignment #1 From the beginning of Africa’s history the development of its historical geography has had a very intense and interesting past. Deep in its history in the contemporary countries such as Egypt, Congo and many others there began a significant influence of the iron, copper and cereal growing movements that flooded the continent throughout. The Iron Age expanded across southern Africa causing intermixture with existing people of different culture, which resulted in cases of violence. This was an early sign of the continents developing geography being influenced by the need for resources and or land. Moving ahead in Africa’s history to partition period we begin to see the colonial empires intensifying their push into African countries to seize different parts of the continent. Few countries before 1879 were directly ruled by European nations. The French had been engaged in conquering Algeria since the 1830’s, the Portuguese had settlements in places such as Angola and small French and British colonies existed in West Africa Although there was little legitimate presence before 1880, within two decades the entire continent had been fought over, conquered and partitioned. Out of the 40 political units it became separated into, Europe dominated 36 of them (Barraclough, 236). The dominance was clear and many different countries within Europe played a part in this colonizing of Africa including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and of course France and Great Britain as well. On many different occasions these powers met to curtail violence occurring over these conquests in Africa, and each time they seemed to fail. The competition only became more heated over the years causing more competitors to enter the scene and caused a heightened level violence as well. There were many reasons to this rapid imperialism and colonialism that occurred in Africa during the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Cited: Barraclough, Geoffrey, and Geoffrey Parker. The Times Atlas of World History. Maplewood, NJ: Hammond Incorporated, 1993. Print.