ABSTRACT
By 1460 the three great European trades with West Africa had been established: gold, ivory and slaves. The Portuguese pressed along the coast of Africa seeking a sea route to India. Ethiopia was again regarded by the European imperial powers as one of them, to the lasting discomfiture of her neighbours in the Horn of Africa. Unlike their European counterparts in West Africa, Arab slave traders penetrated the African hinterland, carrying the Swahili language deep into the interior where it still survives in occasional place-names such as Bwana Mkubwa in Zambia. European rivalry, such a feature of the scramble for Africa, was manifest first over the East India trade. For the most part Africa was to Europeans an impediment on the sea route to India. Johannes van der Kemp, a Dutchman who arrived in South Africa in 1799 and under the auspices of the London Missionary Society established a mission at Bethelsdorp, was the next missionary to trouble the Boers.
