50 Fun Facts About Scramble for Africa

Which African empire kept its independence by routing an invading Italian army at the Battle of Adwa in 1896?

Ethiopia was the only African country of its day to owe its independence to a battlefield victory, and within months Italy signed a treaty recognising it as a sovereign state.

Which European king ran the Congo Free State as his own private property rather than as a colony of his country?

Leopold II never once visited the Congo, yet he remained its sole owner for more than two decades until the Belgian state took it over in 1908.

Which island sultanate off East Africa lost history's shortest recorded war, to British warships in 1896?

Zanzibar's new sultan had taken the throne without British consent; the shelling lasted under 45 minutes, and he fled his burning palace for the German consulate.

Which animals killed workers building Britain's Uganda Railway at Tsavo in 1898, halting work on a bridge?

Lions, two maneless males hunting as a pair, dragged workers from their tents for nine months; their skins now stand mounted in Chicago's Field Museum.

Which West African republic, founded as a home for freed American slaves, was never colonised by a European power?

Liberia declared independence in 1847 and is Africa's oldest republic; European powers largely left it alone because they saw it as an American protectorate.

Which future British prime minister, then a war reporter, escaped from a prison camp in Pretoria in 1899?

Winston Churchill was captured when his armoured train was ambushed, then got away by hiding in a mine and stowing aboard freight trains, an escape that made his name at home.

Which malaria drug from cinchona bark let Europeans survive in tropical Africa, long known as the white man's grave?

Quinine was so bitter that British colonials in India are said to have mixed their dose with gin, the traditional origin of the gin and tonic.

Which statesman hosted the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, where European powers set rules for claiming African territory?

Otto von Bismarck gathered fourteen countries in the German capital, yet not one African state was invited to the talks.

Which machine gun, invented in 1884, gave small European forces crushing firepower in African colonial wars?

The Maxim gun used its own recoil to reload and could fire up to 600 rounds a minute; historian Martin Gilbert called it the weapon most associated with imperial conquest.

Which republic outside Europe sent delegates to the 1884–85 Berlin Conference on Africa yet gained no territory?

The United States was the only one of the fourteen delegations to reserve the right to accept or decline whatever the conference concluded.

Which mining magnate dreamed of a Cape to Cairo railway and had a vast British territory in Africa named after him?

Cecil Rhodes got the honour in 1895 from his own British South Africa Company, and his will funded the Oxford scholarships that still carry his name.

Which raw material, gathered under brutal quotas of forced labour, made the Congo Free State notorious around 1900?

Rubber grew wild in the forest, so villagers were forced to tap it, and soldiers had to bring back a severed hand to account for every bullet they fired.

Which gemstones, found near Kimberley from the late 1860s, set off a mining rush that transformed southern Africa?

Diamonds came to light after a farmer's son picked up a shiny pebble by the Orange River; it proved to be a 21-carat stone, later named the Eureka.

Which settlers of mainly Dutch descent fought Britain twice to keep their South African republics independent?

The Boers took their name from the Dutch word for farmer, and in the second war their guerrillas held out against a far larger British army until 1902.

Which kingdom's warriors, armed mainly with spears and shields, wiped out a British column at Isandlwana in 1879?

Zulu forces some 20,000 strong overran the camp eleven days into the invasion, killing more than 1,300 of its roughly 1,800 defenders.

Which country did Britain occupy in 1882 to safeguard the Suez Canal, its shortcut to India?

Egypt's army had risen in a nationalist revolt under Ahmed Urabi; Britain shelled Alexandria, landed over 40,000 troops and sent Urabi into exile.

Which treaty after the First World War stripped Germany of every African colony it had won in the Scramble for Africa?

Versailles turned the German colonies into League of Nations mandates, run by the victors with a pledge that none would ever be handed back.

Which 1899 Joseph Conrad novella drew on his stint as a steamboat officer on the Congo River?

Heart of Darkness grew out of an 1890 voyage on which Conrad took command when his captain fell ill, and it later inspired the film Apocalypse Now.

Which fabled Saharan trading city, once a centre of Islamic scholarship, fell under French colonial rule in the 1890s?

Timbuktu's reputation in Europe had shifted from rich to mysterious, but its golden age was centuries behind it when the French arrived.

Which Scottish missionary and anti-slavery crusader was the first European to see the falls he named for Queen Victoria?

David Livingstone's motto was Christianity, Commerce and Civilization, a trio he hoped would replace the slave trade, and missions inspired by him spread during the Scramble.

Which doctrine, built on survival of the fittest, was used to justify Europe's colonial expansion in Africa?

Social Darwinism is chiefly the work of Herbert Spencer, not the naturalist whose name it bears, and Spencer's ideas on evolution both predated and contradicted Darwin's.

Which territory did France invade in 1830, three years after its ruler struck the French consul with a fly whisk?

Algeria gave France a foothold half a century before the Scramble; the conquest dragged on until 1847, and the Saharan south was not secured until 1903.

Which Indian Ocean kingdom did France conquer in 1895, later sending its last queen, Ranavalona III, into exile?

Madagascar's queen surrendered after French artillery shelled her palace, and two years later she was shipped to the island of Réunion and her monarchy abolished.

Which present-day country was the colony of German South West Africa until Allied troops captured it in 1915?

Namibia had to wait until 1990 for independence, because South Africa took it over under a League of Nations mandate and then held on for decades.

Which West African kingdom's famous royal bronzes were carried off by a British punitive expedition in 1897?

Benin's treasures were shipped to London, where about two hundred pieces went to the British Museum and the rest were scattered among other European museums.

Which West African kingdom, famed for its all-female regiment of warriors, was conquered by France in the 1890s?

Dahomey's women soldiers were dubbed Amazons by Europeans, and they fought in the kingdom's final war against the French under King Béhanzin.

Which British general was killed in 1885 when Mahdist forces stormed Khartoum, two days before a relief column arrived?

Charles Gordon had been sent to evacuate the Sudanese capital but chose to fortify it instead, then held out through a siege of more than ten months.

Which Welsh-born reporter turned explorer secured the Congo basin for a European king's private colonial venture?

Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands and spent his boyhood in a Welsh workhouse; his part in founding the Congo Free State later wrecked his reputation.

At which White Nile outpost did British and French forces face off in 1898, bringing the two empires close to war?

Fashoda sat where Britain's north-south ambitions crossed France's east-west ones; France backed down, and the settlement paved the way for the Entente Cordiale.

Which African country did Kaiser Wilhelm II visit in 1905, parading on a white horse and sparking a crisis with France?

Morocco's sultan won the Kaiser's public backing that day, but a second crisis in 1911, when a German gunboat anchored off Agadir, ended in a French protectorate.

Which European power's Pink Map claimed a band of land from Angola to Mozambique until a British ultimatum in 1890?

Portugal had the oldest European presence in Africa, yet it gave way when London demanded that its troops leave what are now Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Which principle agreed at the Berlin Conference said a power must actually govern African land before claiming it?

Effective occupation meant treaties with local leaders, a flag and a police force on the ground, though the rule strictly covered only land fronting the coast.

Which British system, championed by Frederick Lugard in Nigeria, governed colonies through existing chiefs and emirs?

Indirect rule was partly about money: with few European staff on hand, Britain found it cheaper to run territories through traditional institutions.

Which French colonial policy promised citizenship to African subjects who adopted French culture and customs?

Assimilation was showcased in Senegal's Four Communes, whose residents could vote and send a deputy to the National Assembly in Paris.

Which people of German South West Africa were driven into the Omaheke Desert in 1904, where most of them died?

The Herero had been surrounded and routed at the Battle of Waterberg, and about half of those later captured died in concentration camps.

Which 1905 rebellion in German East Africa was named for the holy water that fighters believed would stop bullets?

Maji Maji fighters were given water mixed with millet and castor oil by the spirit medium Kinjikitile Ngwale; the revolt began over forced cotton growing.

Which West African product, prized in Britain as a machine lubricant, led the exports of parts of the region by 1870?

Palm oil later formed the basis of Lever Brothers' Sunlight soap and of the American brand Palmolive.

Which colonial tax sparked an 1898 uprising in Britain's Sierra Leone protectorate, led by the Temne chief Bai Bureh?

The hut tax ran to five or ten shillings a year depending on a home's size, and such levies pushed farming households to send members out to earn cash wages.

Which Ottoman territory did Italy invade in 1911, in a war that saw the first bomb ever dropped from an aeroplane?

Libya took shape when Italy merged its new colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica; pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped that first bomb on Turkish troops there.

Which queen mother led the 1900 war against the British in the Gold Coast, fought over the sacred Golden Stool?

Yaa Asantewaa was queen mother of Ejisu, and after the war she was sent into exile in the Seychelles, where she died in 1921.

Which founder of the Wassoulou Empire resisted French armies in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898?

Samori Touré's name returned to power in the end: Ahmed Sékou Touré, the first president of independent Guinea, claimed descent from him.

Which Swahili word for soldier named the African troops who served European colonial armies in East Africa?

Askari were recruited locally by the Italian, British, German and Belgian colonial armies alike, and in Somali the same word also means police.

Which British consul, later executed for treason, wrote the report that exposed atrocities in the Congo Free State?

Roger Casement was knighted in 1911 for a second human rights investigation, in Peru, then stripped of the honour before his execution in 1916.

Which colonial administrator led the botched raid into the Transvaal over the New Year weekend of 1895–96?

Leander Jameson expected a settler uprising that never came, yet Rudyard Kipling later wrote that his poem If— was drawn from the raider's character.

Which colonial army of the Congo Free State, founded in 1885, became notorious for severing the hands of villagers?

The Force Publique was led by European officers and outlived the Free State itself, serving as the Belgian Congo's army until 1960.

Which livestock disease swept eastern and southern Africa in the 1890s, wiping out herds and easing colonial conquest?

Rinderpest killed more than five million cattle south of the Zambezi alone, and the famine and economic collapse that followed left societies less able to resist.

Which Italian-born explorer won France a foothold on the Congo River through a treaty with King Makoko of the Teke?

Pierre de Brazza gave his name to Brazzaville, the settlement that grew from that treaty, and the Republic of the Congo kept the name after independence.

Which North Sea possession did Britain hand to Germany in 1890 as part of a deal over East African territory?

Heligoland had been British since 1814; Germany wanted it to guard the approaches to the new Kiel Canal and its North Sea ports.

Which Ndebele king granted the 1888 Rudd Concession, signing away mining rights across much of present-day Zimbabwe?

Lobengula later tried to disavow the deal, but it became the basis for a royal charter and for the settler column that took Mashonaland two years later.

Which European power held the Western Sahara coast and what is now Equatorial Guinea after the Scramble for Africa?

Spain had held its Gulf of Guinea territory since a treaty of 1778 and at first ran it from Buenos Aires, as part of a South American viceroyalty.