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From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations A section of West African coast, now part of Ghana, named for the primary product taken from it by the Portuguese, who first reached it in 1471 and then built a fortification known as Elmina in 1482.
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide Diamond-mining capital city of Northern Cape Province, South Africa. Its mines have been controlled by De Beers Consolidated Mines since 1887.
From A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and its Empires The Berlin Conference has often been regarded as the beginning of the partition of Africa. Yet the ‘Scramble for Africa’ started well before it.
From The companion to British history
The uitlanders (non-Dutch Europeans) in the Boer republics (especially the Transvaal) represented the enterprise and capital, paid the taxes but had no rights. Numerous and noisy, they conspired (autumn 1895) against the Boer Govt. of Paul Kruger.
From The Reader's Companion to Military History 1899–1902. The Boer War began when Sir Alfred Milner, the British high commissioner in South Africa, goaded the Boers in the South African republics into declaring war on October 12, 1899.
From Chambers Dictionary of World History The bellicose venture by Mussolini aimed at winning popular support at home, an increase in Italian prestige and strategic gains to pressurize the British in the Eastern Mediterranean.
From Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History “Diaspora” is a term describing mass migrations of people, forced and voluntary. Africa and the Americas have each been defined by such mass migrations of both kinds.
Extension of political and economic control over an area by a state whose nationals have occupied the area and usually possess organizational or technological superiority over the native population.
From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations In colonial administration: When there was no local intermediary (chief, emir, bey, dey, nawab) acting as go-between for the colonial governor with the native population
From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations When an imperial power governed a colony through local intermediaries (chief, emir, bey, dey, nawab) in return for leaving unchanged the local social arrangements.
From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology Orientalism is a largely implicit paradigm within which Oriental civilizations have been understood by the West.
From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations A territory declared, or agreed by treaty to be, dependent on and defended by a more powerful state.
Racism can be described as an extreme form of ethnocentrism (i.e., seeing one’s language, customs, ways of thinking, and material culture as preferable).
From Chambers Dictionary of World History The name given to Europeans of a variety of national origins who flocked to the Transvaal after the discovery of gold there in 1886.
From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable In the days of imperialism the duty supposed to be imposed upon the white races, especially the British, to govern and to educate the more 'backward' coloured peoples.
From Encyclopedia of World Trade From Ancient Times to the Present Trade both within and across the Sahara has existed since prehistoric times, when the Sahara was considerably less dry, to the present.
Institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services.
From Encyclopedia of World Trade From Ancient Times to the Present Atlantic trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
A movement culminating in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed first to end the slave trade, and then to abolish the institution of slavery and emancipate slaves. The movement took place in Europe, mainly in the UK, and in the USA.
Second-largest continent (after Asia), straddling the equator and lying largely within the tropics. Africa's first great civilization emerged in ancient Egypt in c.3400 BC. Carthage was founded by Phoenicians in the 9th century BC.
Shortly after landing at Aboukir (Abu Qir), he won a brilliant victory over the Mamluks in the battle of the Pyramids (July, 1798). His successes, however, were made useless when the French fleet was utterly destroyed (Aug. 1–2) by Nelson in Aboukir Bay.
In his autobiography and his later Miscellaneous Verses, Equiano idealized his African past, taking pride in his race yet condemning those Africans who trafficked in slavery.
From An African Biographical Dictionary Lord Frederick John Dealtry Lugard was a British imperialist and colonial administrator who drafted the most comprehensive theory of colonialism, which became the basis of much British colonial management.
From Encyclopedia of African History King of Belgium (r. 1835: 1865-1909); closely associated with the “Scramble” for Africa, the formation of the Congo State, and Belgian colonial expansion.
Fixed in the popular mind for his rescue of Dr. David Livingstone in 1872. Besides this feat, however, he was a significant explorer in his own right, crossing the continent and securing the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) for the king of the Belgians.
From An African Biographical Dictionary Founder of the Transvaal Republic; one of the leaders of the Great Trek, during which much of the Afrikaner population moved away from British dominance to establish their own independent states.
From An African Biographical Dictionary Barnett Isaacs Barnato—financier, speculator and diamond merchant—was prominent among the White entrepreneurs who became wealthy in South Africa before the Boer War.
A trip in 1875 through the rich territories of Transvaal and Bechuanaland apparently helped to inspire Rhodes with the dream of British rule over all southern Africa; later he spoke of British dominion "from the Cape to Cairo."
From An African Biographical Dictionary Friend and confidant of Cecil Rhodes; a leading figure in early South African politics; best remembered as the commander of a disastrous military attack against the Transvaal Republic, for which he was tried and imprisoned.
From Chambers Dictionary of World History The diamond mining company formed by Cecil Rhodes in 1887 from the amalgamation of several companies operating at Kimberley, Cape Province.
From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations The rapid, competitive Great Power partition of Africa during the latter third of the nineteenth century, in which formal and informal spheres of influence were converted into colonies by annexation or conquest.
From World Politics Since 1945 The Europeans took possession of Africa at the height of the Industrial Revolution. The effect of industrialization was heavily adverse for the African. A first pan-African conference of African political leaders was held in 1900, followed by a second in Paris during the peace conference of 1915. A mere ten years later West Africa was leading the way to independence from European rule.
Empire covering, at its height in the 1920s, about a sixth of the landmass of the Earth, all of its lands recognizing the United Kingdom (UK) as their leader.
From Encyclopedia of African History Between about 1770 and 1880, exploration of Africa made possible accurate maps and publishable information on the continent.
Covering the entire continent from Morocco, Libya, and Egypt in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in the south, and the surrounding islands from Cape Verde in the west to Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles in the east, the Encyclopedia is an A-Z reference resource on the history of the entire African continent.