ABSTRACT

The whole of Africa, but particularly its most southerly part, has been profoundly affected by its contact with Europe, The earliest European explorers were the Portuguese under Henry the Navigator, who rounded its shores at Senegal in 1460 and made settlements at various points on the West African coast in the years which followed. Lagos, once the capital of Nigeria, was founded in 1475 and bears the name of a Portuguese town in the Algarve, which still exists today. The Portuguese were concerned to engage in trade in gold, ivory and other commodities and, with the passage of time, a substantial trans-Saharan trade built up between Portugal and the various kingdoms of West Africa. Rather later, in 1485, the Portuguese founded settlements in Angola and, later still, in 1550, in Mozambique. They were not, at this juncture, at all interested in the acquisition of African territory in the interior, their settlements being confi ned to coastal areas.