AFRICA - MODERN HISTORY I 1 th century there was a great Arab immigration. Even before this the Berbers had very generally adopted the speech and religion of their conquerors. Arab influence and the Mohammedan religion thus became indelibly stamped on northern Africa. Together they spread southward across the Sahara, and became firmly established along the eastern sea-board, where Arabs, Persians and Indians planted flourishing maritime and commercial colonies. Of these eastern cities and States both Europe and the Arabs of north Africa were long ignorant.
The first Arab invaders had recognized the authority of the caliphs of Baghdad. Early in the loth century the Fatimite dy nasty established itself in Egypt, where Cairo had been founded A.D. 968, and from there ruled as far west as the Atlantic. Later still arose other dynasties such as the Almoravides and Almohades. Eventually the Turks, who had seized Egypt in 1517, established the regencies of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (between 1519 and 1551), Morocco remaining an independent Arabized Berber State under the Sharifan dynasty, which had its beginnings at the end of the 13th century. Under the earlier dynasties the spirit of ad venture and the proselytizing zeal of the followers of Islam led to a considerable extension of the knowledge of the continent. This was rendered more easy by their use of the camel, which enabled the Arabs to traverse the desert. In this way Senegambia and the The Portuguese.—But with the battle of Ceuta, Africa had ceased to belong solely to the Mediterranean world. Among those who fought there was Prince Henry "the Navigator," son of King John I., who was fired with the ambition to acquire for Portugal the unknown parts of Africa. Under his inspiration and direction was begun that series of voyages of exploration which resulted in the circumnavigation of Africa and the establishment of Portuguese sovereignty over large areas of the coast-lands. Cape Bojador was doubled in 1434, Cape Verde in and by 148o the whole Guinea coast was known. In 1482 Diogo Cam or Cao discovered the mouth of the Congo; the Cape of Good Hope was doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1488, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama, after having rounded the Cape, sailed up the east coast, touched at Sofala and Malindi, and went thence to India. Over all the countries discovered by their navigators Portugal claimed sovereign rights, but these were not exercised in the extreme south of the continent. The Guinea coast, as the first discovered and the nearest to Europe, was first exploited. Numerous forts and trading stations were established, the earliest being Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina), begun in 1482. The chief commodities dealt in were slaves, gold, ivory and spices. The discovery of America (1492) was followed by a great development of the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era, had been an over land trade almost exclusively confined to Mohammedan Africa. The lucrative nature of this trade, and the large quantities of alluvial gold obtained by the Portuguese, drew other nations to the Guinea coast. English mariners went thither as early as 1553, and they were followed by Spaniards, Dutch, French, Danish, and 'D'Isalguier afterwards wrote an account (never published) of his travels, which were made known in 1927 by Charles de la Ronciere in vol. iii. of La Decouverte de l'Afrique au Moyen Age.
other adventurers. Much of Senegambia was made known as a result of quests during the 16th century for the "hills of gold" in Bambuk and the fabled wealth of Timbuktu, but the middle Niger was not reached. The supremacy along the coast passed in the 17th century from Portugal to Holland and from Holland in the i8th and 19th centuries to France and England. The whole coast from Senegal to Lagos was dotted with forts and "fac tories" of rival Powers, and this international patchwork per sists though all the hinterland has become either French or British territory.
Southward from the mouth of the Congo' to the inhospitable region of Damaraland, the Portuguese, from 1491 onward, ac quired influence over the Bantu-Negro inhabitants, and in the early part of the 16th century through their efforts Christianity was largely adopted in the native kingdom of Congo. An irrup tion of cannibals from the interior later in the same century broke the power of this semi-Christian state, and the Portuguese activity was transferred to a great extent farther south, Sao Paulo de Loanda being founded in 1576. The sovereignty of Portugal over this coast region, except for the mouth of the Congo, has been only once challenged by a European Power, and that was in 164o-48, when the Dutch held the seaports.
Neglecting the comparatively poor and thinly inhabitated re gions of South Africa, the Portuguese no sooner discovered than they coveted the flourishing cities held by Arabized peoples be tween Sofala and Cape Guardafui. By 1520 all these Muslim sultanates had been seized by Portugal, Mozambique being chosen as the chief city of her East African possessions. Nor was Portu guese activity confined to the coast-lands. The lower and middle Zambezi valley was explored (16th and 17th centuries), and here the Portuguese found semi-civilized Bantu-Negro tribes, who had been for many years in contact with the coast Arabs. Strenuous efforts were made to obtain possession of the country (modern Rhodesia) known to them as the kingdom or empire of Monomotapa, where gold had been worked by the natives from about the 12th century A.D., and whence the Arabs, whom the Portuguese dispossessed, were still obtaining supplies in the 16th century. Several expeditions were despatched inland from 1569 onward and considerable quantities of gold were obtained. Portu gal's hold on the interior, never very effective, weakened during the 17th century, and in the middle of the i8th century ceased with the abandonment of the forts in the Manica district.
At the period of her greatest power Portugal exercised a strong influence in Abyssinia also. In the ruler of Abyssinia (to whose dominions a Portuguese traveller had penetrated before Vasco da Gama's memorable voyage) the Portuguese imagined they had found the legendary Christian king, Prester John, and when the complete overthrow of the native dynasty and the Christian religion was imminent by the victories of Mohammedan invaders, the exploits of a band of 400 Portuguese under Christopher da Gama during 1541-43 turned the scale in favour of Abyssinia and had thus an enduring result on the future of north-east Africa. After da Gama's time Portuguese Jesuits resorted to Abyssinia. While they failed in their efforts to convert the Abyssinians to Roman Catholicism they acquired an extensive knowledge of the country. Pedro Paez in 1615, and, ten years later, Jeronimo Lobo, both visited the sources of the Blue Nile. In 1663 the Portuguese, who had outstayed their welcome, were expelled from the Abyssinian dominions. At this time Portuguese influence on the Zanzibar coast was waning before the power of the Arabs of Muscat, and by 1730 no point on the east coast north of Cape Delgado was held by Portugal.
chiefly by English and Dutch vessels. In 1620, with the object of forestalling the Dutch, two officers of the East India Corn pany, on their own initiative, took possession of Table Bay in the name of King James, fearing otherwise that English ships would be "frustrated of watering but by licence." Their action was not approved in London, and the proclamation they issued remained without effect. The Netherlands profited by the apathy of the English. On the advice of sailors who had been ship wrecked in Table Bay the Netherlands East India Company, in 1651, sent out a fleet of three small vessels under Jan van Rie beck which reached Table Bay on April 6, 1652, when, 164 years after its discovery, the first permanent white settlement was made in South Africa. The Portuguese, whose power in Africa was already waning, were not in a position to interfere with the Dutch plans, and England was content to seize the island of St. Helena as her half-way house to the East.' In its inception the settlement at the Cape was not intended to become an African colony, but was regarded as the most westerly outpost of the Dutch East Indies. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of ports and the absence of navigable rivers, the Dutch colonists, freed from any apprehension of European trouble by the friendship between Great Britain and Holland and leavened by Huguenot blood, gradually spread eastward.