ABSTRACT
The colonization of Africa by foreigners had gained momentum throughout the course of the nineteenth century. It culminated in the carving up of the continent by seven European powers. The most influential of these drafted maps in Berlin in 1885 and agreed to more or less respect each others’ spheres of influence. They did not, however, consult the people of Africa. Indeed, they sent small armies to Africa in order to turn the boundaries on their maps into frontiers on the ground. Owners of the land who resisted the arrival of the self-styled forces of “civilization” were to be “pacified” by conquest. Eventually Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain carved out 54 territories that were later to become nations.
