ABSTRACT
In some parts of Africa, colonization began well before the nineteenth century. Ever since the Age of Exploration, all European maritime nations had been acquiring footholds abroad. Luanda and St. George of the Mine on the Gold Coast were among the earliest to be occupied by Europeans. They both became Portuguese possessions in the sixteenth century, and the latter was known as Elmina by the time it came under British control. By the mid-seventeenth century, the French were in Saint-Louis du Senegal, and the Dutch in Cape Town. By the end of the eighteenth century, the British had solid footing in Cape Town, which was taken from the Dutch East India Company between 1795 and 1803, then from the Batavian Republic in 1806. The British occupied holdings along the coast to Freetown, which became the center for “liberated” slaves in the 1790s.
