Scramble for Africa
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50 free Scramble for Africa trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In 1870 European powers held only scattered footholds on Africa's coasts. By 1914 they claimed almost the entire continent. That land grab, known as the Scramble for Africa, redrew the map within a single generation and left borders, languages and grievances that still shape the continent. This quiz follows the story from start to finish: the conference where diplomats set the terms, the powers that took part and the colonies each one carved out, the explorers, soldiers and company men who did the claiming, and the medicine and weapons that made conquest possible. It also covers the African side, from the kingdoms and leaders who fought back to the few countries that kept their independence. The questions suit students revising imperialism in Africa from 1880 to 1914, teachers who want a ready-made check-in quiz, and anyone curious about how the continent's modern borders came about. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which African empire kept its independence by routing an invading Italian army at the Battle of Adwa in 1896?
Ethiopia
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.
Q 02Which European king ran the Congo Free State as his own private property rather than as a colony of his country?
Leopold II
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.
Q 03Which island sultanate off East Africa lost history's shortest recorded war, to British warships in 1896?
Zanzibar
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.
Q 04Which animals killed workers building Britain's Uganda Railway at Tsavo in 1898, halting work on a bridge?
Lions
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.
Q 05Which West African republic, founded as a home for freed American slaves, was never colonised by a European power?
Liberia
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.
Q 06Which future British prime minister, then a war reporter, escaped from a prison camp in Pretoria in 1899?
Winston Churchill
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.
Q 07Which malaria drug from cinchona bark let Europeans survive in tropical Africa, long known as the white man's grave?
Quinine
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.
Q 08Which statesman hosted the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, where European powers set rules for claiming African territory?
Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck gathered fourteen countries in the German capital, yet not one African state was invited to the talks.
Q 09Which machine gun, invented in 1884, gave small European forces crushing firepower in African colonial wars?
Maxim gun
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.
Q 10Which republic outside Europe sent delegates to the 1884–85 Berlin Conference on Africa yet gained no territory?
United States
The United States was the only one of the fourteen delegations to reserve the right to accept or decline whatever the conference concluded.
Q 11Which mining magnate dreamed of a Cape to Cairo railway and had a vast British territory in Africa named after him?
Cecil Rhodes
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.
Q 12Which raw material, gathered under brutal quotas of forced labour, made the Congo Free State notorious around 1900?
Rubber
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.
Q 13Which gemstones, found near Kimberley from the late 1860s, set off a mining rush that transformed southern Africa?
Diamonds
Q 21Which doctrine, built on survival of the fittest, was used to justify Europe's colonial expansion in Africa?
Social Darwinism
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.
Q 22Which territory did France invade in 1830, three years after its ruler struck the French consul with a fly whisk?
Algeria
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.
Q 23Which Indian Ocean kingdom did France conquer in 1895, later sending its last queen, Ranavalona III, into exile?
Madagascar
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.
Q 14Which settlers of mainly Dutch descent fought Britain twice to keep their South African republics independent?
Boers
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.
Q 15Which kingdom's warriors, armed mainly with spears and shields, wiped out a British column at Isandlwana in 1879?
Zulu
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.
Q 16Which country did Britain occupy in 1882 to safeguard the Suez Canal, its shortcut to India?
Egypt
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.
Q 17Which treaty after the First World War stripped Germany of every African colony it had won in the Scramble for Africa?
Versailles
Versailles turned the German colonies into League of Nations mandates, run by the victors with a pledge that none would ever be handed back.
Q 18Which 1899 Joseph Conrad novella drew on his stint as a steamboat officer on the Congo River?
Heart of Darkness
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.
Q 19Which fabled Saharan trading city, once a centre of Islamic scholarship, fell under French colonial rule in the 1890s?
Timbuktu
Timbuktu's reputation in Europe had shifted from rich to mysterious, but its golden age was centuries behind it when the French arrived.
Q 20Which Scottish missionary and anti-slavery crusader was the first European to see the falls he named for Queen Victoria?
David Livingstone
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.
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.
Q 24Which present-day country was the colony of German South West Africa until Allied troops captured it in 1915?
Namibia
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.
Q 25Which West African kingdom's famous royal bronzes were carried off by a British punitive expedition in 1897?
Benin
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.
Q 26Which West African kingdom, famed for its all-female regiment of warriors, was conquered by France in the 1890s?
Dahomey
Dahomey's women soldiers were dubbed Amazons by Europeans, and they fought in the kingdom's final war against the French under King Béhanzin.
Q 27Which British general was killed in 1885 when Mahdist forces stormed Khartoum, two days before a relief column arrived?
Charles Gordon
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.
Q 28Which Welsh-born reporter turned explorer secured the Congo basin for a European king's private colonial venture?
Henry Morton Stanley
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.
Q 29At which White Nile outpost did British and French forces face off in 1898, bringing the two empires close to war?
Fashoda
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.
Q 30Which African country did Kaiser Wilhelm II visit in 1905, parading on a white horse and sparking a crisis with France?
Morocco
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.