What were the most significant changes in Africa during the nineteenth century, and why did they occur?
Brutality in the CongoNo Africans suffered more violent and brutal treatment under colonial rule than those living in Belgian king Leopold the II’s Congo Free State. When not having their hands, feet, or heads cut off as punishment, Africans were whipped with chicottes, whips made of dried hippopotamus hide. Some Congolese were literally whipped to death. (© TopFoto/The Image Works)
FFROM THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY to the global depression of the 1930s, the different regions of Africa experienced gradual but monumental change. The transatlantic slave trade declined and practically disappeared by the late 1860s. In the early nineteenth century Islam expanded its influence south of the Sahara, but Africa generally remained free of European political control. After about 1880 Africa was divided and largely conquered by Europeans, and by 1900 the foreigners were consolidating their authoritarian empires.