*For most of history, the Sahara Desert separated most of Africa from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.  There were some trade routes through the Sahara, though, and some merchants did sail along the coast of the Indian Ocean.

*The Kingdom of Axum (which began about 500 BC, and lasted until about 1200 AD, although most later Emperors of Ethiopia (including the current royal house in exile since 1974) claimed descent from the Kings of Axum) had long had trading ties with the Middle East and with certain Jewish communities there, especially in Yemen.  Ethiopia still has Jewish communities who fled there during various times of persecution, and many Ethiopian Christians follow dietary laws similar to the Kosher laws of Orthodox Judaism. 

*The majority of the Kingdom of Axum converted to Christianity about 325 AD, and Ethiopia has remained a traditionally Christian nation since then although most of the countries around it later were converted to Islam  (making the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church the oldest church in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the only major pre-colonial church).  Ethiopia is famous for its monolithic churches—11 churches cut entirely from one giant rock each.  Today the Ethiopian Church claims to have the Ark of the Covenant in its possession.

*In the 700s and 800s, Islam began to spread to Africa, both across the Sahara Desert and along the east coast of Africa, as Moslem traders carried their religion with them.  By the 1200s and 1300s, Islam was widespread in much of Northern and Eastern Africa.

*West Africa, a fertile region that had relatively easy trade with Europe, developed the Ghana Empire about 700 AD.  It grew rich on trade (and taxes on trade) and on the rich deposits of gold found in the region—later European explorers would call the area south of Ghana the ‘gold coast.’  Ghana allowed Islam to be taught and practised, but the kings of Ghana did not convert.  Eventually, Moslem kingdoms around Ghana declared jihad against it.

*About 1240 AD Ghana, already in decline, was replaced by the Mali Empire, based around the great city of Timbuktu.  This was a Moslem kingdom, and it also grew wealthy from trade, and eventually created a larger empire than that held by ancient Egypt, although it did not last as long.

*About 1400, Mali was taken over by the empire of Songhai, but it, in turn, was taken over in 1591 by the Moroccans, who had gunpowder.  However, the Moroccans were not prepared to control so large an empire, and they let it go, after which it collapsed into a number of minor kingdoms.

*At one time, most of Central and Southern Africa were populated by the Khoi-San peoples, but at some point, probably about 700 AD, Bantu-speaking peoples (related to the Niger-Congo peoples of West Africa) began to migrate into central and southern Africa, killing, pushing aside, or absorbing the indigenous Khoi-San.  They reached their fullest extent in the early 1700s, by which time they had become the main cultural group of all of central and southern Africa outside the Kalahari.

*Two of the major Bantu peoples of South Africa today are the Xhosa, who mixed with the Khoi-San and picked up a few click-consonants, and the Zulu.  These remain two of the most important and influential tribes in South Africa today.

*Another major Bantu people are the Swahili, who inhabit the east coast of Africa from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique.  Their language is so wide-spread that it is employed as a second language or trade language among many east Africa peoples; it has at least 5 million native speakers and 30-50 million people who use it as a second language.

*The Bantu created several kingdoms, including a great trading empire around the city of Great Zimbabwe between about 400 and 1629 AD (initially trading gold, and later slaves).

*The slave trade has always been part of African history.  African tribes had always used prisoners of war as slaves.  Since the 800s, Arab traders had brought African slaves back from their missions to Africa.  In the 1500s and 1600s, Europeans began to trade with Africa, seeking gold, ivory, cloth, and slaves.  Eventually slaves became the most important subject of European trade, with the trade reaching its peak in the late 1700s.

*The United States, one of the major importers of African slaves, officially outlawed the importation of slaves in 1807, and Britain banned all slave trading, and used the Royal Navy to enforce that, although this brought it into conflict with Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and France.  Britain also created the colony of Sierra Leone as a place to send freed slaves, and the USA created Liberia (Latin:  ‘Land of the Free’) as a place to ‘colonize’ freed slaves in Africa.  During the 1800s, the former Spanish colonies of the New World also outlawed slavery completely, as did Britain in 1833, the United States in 1865, and Brazil in 1888.  Slavery still exists in parts of Africa today.

*Some parts of Africa were colonised by Europeans, notably South Africa, which had been settled by the Dutch in 1652.  The British seized South Africa in 1797 during the Napoleonic Wars, and officially created the Cape Colony in 1805. 

*Many of the Dutch farmers, called Boers, resented this, and fled to the interior in the Great Trek, where they formed two independent republics, the Orange Free State and Transvaal. 

*Both the Boers and the British fought against the Zulu, a Bantu people in southern Africa first united under Shaka between 1818 and 1828.  The Zulu would remain a powerful kingdom until the Zulu War of 1879, in which the Zulu destroyed several British columns, but were eventually overwhelmed by superior firepower.  However, the Zulu nation remains a powerful force in South African politics.

*Eventually these were taken over by Britain as well, in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), and, with Natal and the Cape Colony, formed the Union of South Africa in 1910.

*The Boers, along with other settlers of Dutch descent, became known as Afrikaners, and speak their own language, Afrikaans.

*In the 1800s, Africa was slowly explored and divided up among the European powers.

*Between 1856 and 1858 Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke explored the lakes of equatorial Africa and discovered the source of the Nile in Lake Victoria.

*Between 1874 and 1877, Henry Morton Stanley explored the Congo River Basin and claimed it for the King of Belgium, Leopold II.  This meant that now almost all of Africa had been at least somewhat explored, and, with King Leopold claiming so much territory, everyone else wanted in on it, too.

*In 1884-1885, the great powers of Europe (as well as the United States) met in the Berlin Conference to divide Africa among them. 

*Britain and France got the majority of Africa, with Britain getting much of southern and eastern Africa and France getting most of West Africa. 

*Portugal and Spain retained a few colonies along the coasts, notably Angola and Mozambique for Portugal and Western Sahara for Spain, although both had a number of other little islands and enclaves. 

*Germany was awarded what are now Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda (after World War I, most of these would go to Britain, although South Africa would hold Namibia as a League of Nations Mandate until 1990). 

*Italy got parts of Libya and Somalia. 

*Leopold II was recognised as the legal owner of the Congo, although eventually his agents’ mistreatment of the people there became so infamous that he gave the Congo Free State to Belgium.

*Ethiopia remained independent, although Italy tried to take it over in 1896 (and was defeated by King Menelik II’s army (with help from the British)) and later did take it in 1936.  Liberia was also allowed to remain independent, because it was ruled by former American ex-slaves.  The Orange Free State and Transvaal remained independent for the moment, but were later conquered in the Second Boer War.

*The borders drawn at the Berlin conference (with the exception of some in North Africa) were mostly created without regard for the existing cultural, tribal, ethnic, or historical homelands of the African peoples in the new colonies, so that today, many of the nations of Africa have serious problems with ethnic tensions, and also with irredentism (the desire of related people in different countries to be in one united country, which often has diplomatic complications).

*The agreements made at the Berlin Conference also ended up with some countries feeling somewhat short-changed.  Portugal had hoped to link Mozambique and Angola, and failed (partly because that would have interfered with a British railroad from the Cape to Cairo), which led to the decline of the Portuguese monarchy.  Germany got a geographically large empire, but not a rich one, and the Italians got very little.  A desire to protect and expand its place in the sun would be one of the causes of German aggression in the early 20th century.

*By the start of World War I, Africa belonged to Europe, which was rapidly created an extractive colonial economy there even more pernicious than the old mercantile colonial economies of the Americas.  Africa existed primarily as a source of raw materials to be shipped back to Europe, so most of Africa’s industries were based on getting the most out of Africa’s mineral wealth, forests, and wild game.  Most roads and railroads were designed to run to major seaports, not to link major settlements in the interior.

*One of the most successful and powerful of all European exploiters of Africa was Cecil Rhodes, head of the British South African Company, which had the power to negotiate and trade with African rulers, form banks, build railroads, manage land, and raise a police force.  In return, Rhodes had to develop the land he controlled.  Among other things, he and the British government wanted to construct a railroad linking the Cape Colony with Cairo.  He even developed the colony of Rhodesia, named after himself.  Furthermore, although he was a very loyal British subject, and wanted to see the British colonise almost the whole world (and even declared 'I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far'), he favoured as much local government as possible, and even wished Parliament would take in Members from all the British colonies of the world. To this end, his will created the Rhodes Scholarship, paying for selected citizens of British colonies, the USA, and Germany to attend Oxford University in the UK.

*Despite the exploitation of Africa, Europe's conquest of Africa (and its subjugation of Asia) was seen as a great thing for the conquered peoples (at least from the European point of view).  Europeans saw themselves as spreading the word of God and the benefits of western civilisation:  medicine, transportation, education, stable government, and peace.  Indeed, because war was bad for business, the Royal Navy helped maintain a century of peace—the Pax Britannica—during the Victorian era.  Some reforming Europeans saw it as their duty to help the less fortunate, even those overseas, and viewed the work required to build and maintain vast colonial empires as the White Man's Burden.  This is sometimes called paternalism, or benevolent racism.

*Despite the money to be made there and the good to (ostensibly) be done there, most African colonies did not see large numbers of European immigrants, except in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, and Algeria (and even where they did come, Europeans were a minority, although a politically powerful one).  The African colonies were places to make a fortune, not to start a new life.