Colonialism Africa

The Scramble for Africa (1881-1914) was the period of rapid European colonization of the African continent — at the Berlin Conference (1884-85), European powers divided Africa among themselves without African representation, drawing borders that cut through ethnic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries that persist today. By 1914, only Ethiopia (which defeated Italy at Adwa, 1896) and Liberia (founded by freed American slaves) remained independent. European colonialism in Africa involved the extraction of natural resources (rubber, ivory, diamonds, gold, palm oil), forced labor (Belgian Congo's rubber quotas killed 10 million people under King Leopold II's private ownership), land dispossession, destruction of political institutions, and the slave trade (12.5 million enslaved Africans transported to the Americas, 1500-1900). Decolonization (1950s-1990s) left 54 independent African states but with colonial-era borders, languages, legal systems, and economic structures.