The Cambridge History of Africa Volume 6 c. 1870-c. 1905

Volume VI of The Cambridge History of Africa covers the period 1870-1905, when the European powers (Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Italy) divided the continent into colonial territories and vied with each other for control over vast tracts of land and valuable mineral resources. At the same time, it was a period during which much of Africa still had a history of its own. Colonial governments were very weak and could exist only by playing a large part both in opening up the continent to outside influences and in building larger political unities. The volume begins with a survey of the whole of Africa on the eve of the paper partition, and continues with nine regional surveys of events as they occured on the ground. Only in northern and southern Africa did these develop into classical colonial forms, with basis of outright conquest. Elsewhere, compromises emerged and most Africans were able to pursue the politics of survival. Partition was a process, not an event. The process was essentially one of modernisation in the face of outside challenge. The five and a half centuries described in this volume were those in which Iron Age cultures passed from their early and experimental phases into stages of maturity characterized by long-distance trade and complex, many-tiered political systems. In Egypt and North Africa it was a period of religious and cultural consolidation when the Arabic language and the faith of Islam were adopted by the majority of the indigenous Copts and Berbers. In the sub-Saharan Savanna it was a period rather of penetration when Muslim merchants and clerics built up small but significant minorities of Negro African converts. Muslim migrants conquered the Nilotic Sudan, encircled Christian Ethiopia and settled the coastline of eastern Africa. Intercontinental trade developed across the whole width of the Sahara and also toward the Indian Ocean ports. During the last century and a half of the period the Portuguese opened the Atlantic coasts and competed with the Muslim traders of the Indian Ocean. But throughout the period African states, large and small, were strong enough, relatively, to control their visitors from the outside world. The main significance of the outsiders, whether Muslim or Christian, was as literate observers of the African scene. pdf_handler(1)......Page 1 pdf_handler(2)......Page 17 pdf_handler(3)......Page 26 pdf_handler(4)......Page 112 pdf_handler(5)......Page 175 pdf_handler(6)......Page 224 pdf_handler(7)......Page 272 pdf_handler(8)......Page 312 pdf_handler(9)......Page 330 pdf_handler(10)......Page 373 pdf_handler(11)......Page 436 pdf_handler(12)......Page 507 pdf_handler(13)......Page 536 pdf_handler(14)......Page 554 pdf_handler(15)......Page 607 pdf_handler(16)......Page 694 pdf_handler(17)......Page 781 pdf_handler(18)......Page 838 Binder1.pdf 1 pdf_handler(1) 1 pdf_handler(2) 17 pdf_handler(3) 26 pdf_handler(4) 112 pdf_handler(5) 175 pdf_handler(6) 224 pdf_handler(7) 272 pdf_handler(8) 312 pdf_handler(9) 330 pdf_handler(10) 373 pdf_handler(11) 436 pdf_handler(12) 507 pdf_handler(13) 536 pdf_handler(14) 554 pdf_handler(15) 607 pdf_handler(16) 694 pdf_handler(17) 781 pdf_handler(18) 838 It has become a truism of historical writing to conceive of Africa in the course of the nineteenth century as becoming increasingly apart of, and a product of, the expansion of Europe, which, beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had integrated ever larger areas of the world into a single economic system. Specialists in various aspects of African history and civilization contribute to an integrated portrait of internal and foreign influences on the course of Africa's development