March 13

The promise of great wealth was held in a continent which Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy all sought to get a piece of. Interest in acquiring territory and ruling large populations in Africa was not shown by Europeans until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A British missionary and explorer of central Africa named David Livingstone had work that exposed the horrors of the Arab slave trade. The British who lived in Egypt enforced a law "that no major European power should be allowed to control the headwaters of the Nile" (Strayer, 924). For more than eighteen months, Jean-Baptiste Marchand led his troops across much of Africa. A British-born businessman and politician named Cecil Rhodes made a fortune in South African diamonds. He also became an enthusiastic advocate of British imperialism.