ABSTRACT
AFRICA, like Asia and the Americas, was an objective of the European expansionist movement that began in the fifteenth century, but the experience of Subsaharan Africa during the period of European expansion differed from that of the New World and Asia in two important respects. In the first place, incursion into Africa came not only from Europe but continued to come also from Asia and the Arabized north. Just as the Portuguese and British and French, the Hollanders and Danes established themselves on the western and southern coasts, so from the east came Arabs and Indians, while in addition the impact of Islam was continuously felt in the north. The fringe of forts established by European powers on the Guinea Coast, the Portuguese depots in Angola and along the eastern coast, the Dutch possession of Table Bay were paralleled by the trading centers of Arabs and others that by the fourteenth century reached almost to the mouth of the Limpopo, as far south as Sofala, in what became Mozambique, and sent cargoes of precious stones, gold, amber, ivory, rare woods, and slaves to the ports of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.'
