when did Europeans influence begin in Africa ? Why would the 8 European countries want to control Africa and ?

Question

when did Europeans influence begin in Africa ? Why would the 8 European countries want to control Africa and ?

Answer 1

well the dutch and portuguese, along with the rest, started setting up trading posts and forts in west africa in the 1400's to trade with arabs and local tribes for resources like gold and jewls, to get spices/refuel for ships, and to get slaves from Africa.

Then, in the 1800's the colonization of the part of africa away from the ocean began. "the scramble for africa" was called that becuase each country wanted to claim their own land. the reason for colonialization is for natural resources, land for settlers from the mother country which reduces crowding, a workforce (not nescesarily slave labor), and an empire.

Answer 2

Why? Exploitation of resources and the ability to colonize and increase trade (not just slaves). When? People from regions that are now Europe have been trading with North Africa since the early Roman Empire, but those that we call Europeans today were getting serious about exploiting Africa's resources by the early 15th century. Since then, Europeans have had a significant impact on all regions of Africa economically, culturally, linguistically, politically, environmentally, and artistically.

Answer 3

CaptainCarney gives a good answer, but as for the French and later and more strongly the British some of their impetus was to ensure routes to India. Thus the control of Egypt and its Suez Canal and to a lesser extet the Cape Colony had as much to do with the Indian trade as with Africa itself.

Answer 4

roman and greek,phoenician contacts that might have reached the cape of good hoe before the time of christ or earlier!!alexander the great took egypt out of the persian empire and holdings!!trade missions of the phoenicians would sail for extended voyages alon foreign coasts and into unknown seas!they would place trde goods on the beaches for the natives to exchange what they had!!this was done without the use of diplomacy or even direct contact initially!!after the natives had taken the trade goods ;if they had laeft nothing of their our the phoenicians would not readily return with their glass beads,metal tools,eating utensils,pottery and exotic goods!!contiguous tribes would make great strides with the trade by comparison culturally and economically if the "good trading" were nurtured and equalitable to all parties!!!metal weapons would also give phoenician trading partners greater success in war and in the capture of other tribes peoples for slavery!!ivory,gold,silver,copper(for the production of bronze) and slaves became the main staples of the trade very early!!honey,exotic animals,war elephants,lions and leopards,cheetahs and monkeys were also traded!!some for the arena,some for beast contest of sentries and guard animals!!jewels and gold were exposed in the river banks in all of africa's great rivers fed by torrential tropical rains!!rich untapped soils were also thus nourished and replenished yearly for centuries untouched by a plow or advanced husbandry of a european standard of useage!!the tsetse fly and parasitic malaria have kept africa from being as fully developed as it might well yet be!!"wealth herding" just for the sake of possession denudes land into deserts because it is more than a settlements soils can bear ecologically!!goats denude everything in their path plants,foliage ,roots and forage;then the soils blow away and desertification causes marching dunes to form even wasting soils outside of the settled areas!!africa always presented a great potential for development!!however it does much better as an ecosystem if it is left totally devoid of any human inhabitants!!millions of animals
fertile it and march thousands of miles to the rhythym of it's rains,monsoons and seasonal fecundity and have since time immemorial!!sugar,spices,coffee and the essential SALT HAVE BEEN and willl continue to be IMPOTANT FACTORS IN AFRICA VIABILITY AND COMMERCE;AS MUCH SO AS GOLD AND DIAMONDS,RHODIUM,CHROMIUM,PLATINUM,PITCHBLENDE,TIN AND OTHER STRATEGIC MINERAL WEALTH!!

Answer 5

Influence is a broad term, and the earliest influence of Europeans in Africa occurred before Europe and Africa meant what they do today.

Athens and other classical Greek states had trade ties across the Mediterranean, and Egypt was a major influence on Athens in the fifth century BCE. One of the reasons Socrates was executed was that his interest in Egyptian mysticism alarmed some powerful Athenians.

The Roman Republic took an interest in Africa's Central Mediterranean coast and hinterlands. The Phoenicians, of West Asian ancestry, established a major trade city called Carthage in what is now Tunisia - the ruins are just outside the capital - and Rome fought two wars (The Punic Wars), in 202 BCE against Carthage.

In the Second Punic War, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal brought Carthaginian War Elephants into the Italian Peninsula where they laid waste to the Roman countryside for 17 years... but the crafty Romans avoided direct conflicts and (here's the "influence") sacked Carthage by attacking it from the sea. Efrikiyah and Libya became two Roman provinces. The name Efrikiyah evolved into Africa, but Libya was more often used to denote the whole unknown lands beyond, at that time.

European influence in Africa waned with the end of the Classical age around 500 CE. Europe turned in on itself more, with power shifting north into Gaul (France and Germany) and east into Byzantium (northern Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, and Turkey).

During the period of about 500 AD to 1500 AD, the major relationships were between Europe and Asia on the one hand, and Africa and Asia on the other. There was little significant Eruopean-African contact. This is a very broad statement, but recall that Europe repelled the Mongolians, and much of Africa and southern Europe came under Arab-Muslim control in this period.

Wealthy merchants on the European side of the Mediterranean suffered from the Christian/European conflicts with the Asian and African Muslims (the Crusades), and wanted direct trade with India and lands beyond in Asia. For centuries, they had relied on the Arabs and other muslims as suppliers, but trade was drying up because of the Crusades.

Because of this, the Pope's interests in expanding his influence, and Portugal's hunger for trade, Portuguese explorers aggressively tested routes around Africa in the late fifteenth century (the 1480s). In doing so, they began to realize information about Africa - mainly locations of harbors, types of vegetation, sizes of cities, etc. They also established coastal trade ports in the early 1500s, especially in the Indian Ocean, along Africa's coasts.

Other European states joined the race to India and China to get a piece of the trade. Holland - much smaller than today's small country of the same name - in the sixteenth century established a trade post and "reviictualling station" (supply stop) at the Cape of Good Hope for ships. The period of exploration (about 1480-1700) was characterized by small coastal European settlements in Africa and peaceful trade in goods (not people).

The next period, about 1700-1850, saw the emergence of a large scale trade in slaves for export off the continent. Europeans were involved in that trade mainly from the Atlantic coast of Africa and areas just inland. The effects of this are well outline in Philip Curtin's books. Google him for articles and summaries.

Next came the phase of colonization, about 1850-1960. Some date this only from 1885, when a group of European leaders met in Berlin (1884-85, Berlin Conference on Africa) to divide the continent of Africa among them. Most of Africa remained unexplored by Europeans, so this was a great exercise in ignorant power.

Colonial rule was characterized by large scale resource extraction, the calming and eventual near-ending of the slave trade, large scale wars, slave-like conditions inside the colonies, and the development of some very unhealthy attitudes and expectations about government that last to this day.

Colonial rule began to break up in the 1950s, but the last colony, Namibia (formerly South-West Africa), won its independence from the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1989.

The Europeans wanted wealth from Africa. Pretty simple. If one European power threatened to cut into another's profits, they fought. But generally they reserved violence for Africans.

Sorry for the ramble, but nobody asks about this, and I'm intensely interested in it.